Hey brother, I’m still suspended from Twitter. Four months now because I told someone it was wrong to wish that a persons children would get sick and die. How crazy is that? I miss our interactions on there and I was so glad to get this newsletter. God gave you a wonderful mind and I love reading your thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
As someone born I. 1953, a generation earlier than you, Steve, I recall the old fashioned practice of writing Letters to the Editor of a newspaper or magazine. Anyone who thinks that the Good Old Days were better has obviously never seen UK tabloids at their indescribably vile worst. It was amazing that even more reputable publications produced grotesque errors - which were obvious on the rare occasions when I had personal knowledge of a story. It left me with little respect for the alleged "professional" journalists who wrote this rot.
It is great to be able to contribute my knowledge and insights on stories where I have serious knowledge. I try to be calm and polite, as I am sure that adds authority. And I have learned much from any number of below the line contributers.
The late Malcolm Muggeridge recalled the "unbridled insanity" of most letters to most British editors in the 1950s, so perhaps not much has changed in the deranged bile level. Theodore Dalrymple, as ever, has interesting insights into the world wide shouting competition we can all join.
Born 1984, so I do also remember the Before Time, sort of, but my mom was a TV addict herself, so she had no care whatsoever about us binging TV for hours on end as long as our grades were good. Dad was at work in the city during the day, so what could he do about it? Nothing, really. She also had no problems with content, either; there was no such thing as "inappropriate for children" in her world if protecting us from something meant that she would have to change the channel, to give up watching what she wanted to watch. None of us girls made it to first grade expecting her to give up watching what she wanted to watch for anyone or anything. I can't imagine she would have been any better about the internet, so I'm glad in hindsight we barely had dial-up.
I knew FB was going to ruin society when it was first reported that they were hiring psychologists, neurologists, etc., to figure out how to keep people on the site. When my entire immediate circle was installing the Obama campaign app in 2012 and I saw how that was sucking down *MY* data without my consent, I deleted my FB like a celebrity trying to hide a racist Tweet from 2007.
As far as user verification, part of the problem is that if FB or Twitter, whoever, starts logging stuff that can ACTUALLY prevent sock puppets and etc., hacking them becomes far more enticing. In South Korea, a lot of games require you to use their version of an SSN to login to enforce gaming laws; imagine how tempting Twitter's data would become to a hacker if they were using our SSNs =-\ Phone numbers...well, they'd have to somehow stop Google Voice and other VoIP numbers from being usable, because otherwise you wind up in the same place. It has to be something, data, whatever, that people are comfortable surrendering. Sites that have tried to lock certain features behind verifying your identity don't seem to be too terribly successful, on the balance, and none are in danger of dethroning any member of the current oligopoly.
I'm very much one of those people who would lose her job if my Twitter could be linked to me, and IT is so liberal as a whole that I doubt I'd be hired anywhere else, honestly. Our corporate policy disallows speaking ill of our clients...and one of them is Planned Parenthood, who I've been criticizing on Twitter for about as long as I've had that account. I don't say anything on Twitter that I wouldn't say in a real-world conversation, but the common thread to both is how hard it would be for my corporate overlords to link this-phobic or that-ist statements to me to a degree that would pass legal muster. If US or EU law made it harder to fire people for a 15-year-old Tweet, one might find more people willing to come out of the shadows on their profiles, but I'm not holding my breath...
Within a few years of graduating law school in 1987, I had to get a computer and printer to keep up with a law practice. I can still recall the wonder of it. When we hooked up to the internet, I can still recall the excitement of surfing the many websites around the world. One day I tapped into a diary in 'real time' from someone camped at Mount Everest. What? Here I was a person in an office, with doors closed, and inside this office, right in front of me, I was on Mount Everest. I can recall tapping into a jail system in Ireland, where statistics of incoming and outgoing prisoners was tallied. Right out there, in front of me, in my office. Wow. Today, my 30 year old daughter says, 'Mom, you cannot trust anything on media. You have to vet everything - somehow. Even the truth gets tweaked. Haven't you seen the movie 'The Social Dilemma? And by the way, the less you on the media, the better. They addict you with their logorithms, then excite you, then when you're hooked, propagandize you. Stay off." 2002 to 2022.
Hey brother, I’m still suspended from Twitter. Four months now because I told someone it was wrong to wish that a persons children would get sick and die. How crazy is that? I miss our interactions on there and I was so glad to get this newsletter. God gave you a wonderful mind and I love reading your thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
As someone born I. 1953, a generation earlier than you, Steve, I recall the old fashioned practice of writing Letters to the Editor of a newspaper or magazine. Anyone who thinks that the Good Old Days were better has obviously never seen UK tabloids at their indescribably vile worst. It was amazing that even more reputable publications produced grotesque errors - which were obvious on the rare occasions when I had personal knowledge of a story. It left me with little respect for the alleged "professional" journalists who wrote this rot.
It is great to be able to contribute my knowledge and insights on stories where I have serious knowledge. I try to be calm and polite, as I am sure that adds authority. And I have learned much from any number of below the line contributers.
The late Malcolm Muggeridge recalled the "unbridled insanity" of most letters to most British editors in the 1950s, so perhaps not much has changed in the deranged bile level. Theodore Dalrymple, as ever, has interesting insights into the world wide shouting competition we can all join.
https://lawliberty.org/which-came-first-twitter-or-the-troll/
Born 1984, so I do also remember the Before Time, sort of, but my mom was a TV addict herself, so she had no care whatsoever about us binging TV for hours on end as long as our grades were good. Dad was at work in the city during the day, so what could he do about it? Nothing, really. She also had no problems with content, either; there was no such thing as "inappropriate for children" in her world if protecting us from something meant that she would have to change the channel, to give up watching what she wanted to watch. None of us girls made it to first grade expecting her to give up watching what she wanted to watch for anyone or anything. I can't imagine she would have been any better about the internet, so I'm glad in hindsight we barely had dial-up.
I knew FB was going to ruin society when it was first reported that they were hiring psychologists, neurologists, etc., to figure out how to keep people on the site. When my entire immediate circle was installing the Obama campaign app in 2012 and I saw how that was sucking down *MY* data without my consent, I deleted my FB like a celebrity trying to hide a racist Tweet from 2007.
As far as user verification, part of the problem is that if FB or Twitter, whoever, starts logging stuff that can ACTUALLY prevent sock puppets and etc., hacking them becomes far more enticing. In South Korea, a lot of games require you to use their version of an SSN to login to enforce gaming laws; imagine how tempting Twitter's data would become to a hacker if they were using our SSNs =-\ Phone numbers...well, they'd have to somehow stop Google Voice and other VoIP numbers from being usable, because otherwise you wind up in the same place. It has to be something, data, whatever, that people are comfortable surrendering. Sites that have tried to lock certain features behind verifying your identity don't seem to be too terribly successful, on the balance, and none are in danger of dethroning any member of the current oligopoly.
I'm very much one of those people who would lose her job if my Twitter could be linked to me, and IT is so liberal as a whole that I doubt I'd be hired anywhere else, honestly. Our corporate policy disallows speaking ill of our clients...and one of them is Planned Parenthood, who I've been criticizing on Twitter for about as long as I've had that account. I don't say anything on Twitter that I wouldn't say in a real-world conversation, but the common thread to both is how hard it would be for my corporate overlords to link this-phobic or that-ist statements to me to a degree that would pass legal muster. If US or EU law made it harder to fire people for a 15-year-old Tweet, one might find more people willing to come out of the shadows on their profiles, but I'm not holding my breath...
Within a few years of graduating law school in 1987, I had to get a computer and printer to keep up with a law practice. I can still recall the wonder of it. When we hooked up to the internet, I can still recall the excitement of surfing the many websites around the world. One day I tapped into a diary in 'real time' from someone camped at Mount Everest. What? Here I was a person in an office, with doors closed, and inside this office, right in front of me, I was on Mount Everest. I can recall tapping into a jail system in Ireland, where statistics of incoming and outgoing prisoners was tallied. Right out there, in front of me, in my office. Wow. Today, my 30 year old daughter says, 'Mom, you cannot trust anything on media. You have to vet everything - somehow. Even the truth gets tweaked. Haven't you seen the movie 'The Social Dilemma? And by the way, the less you on the media, the better. They addict you with their logorithms, then excite you, then when you're hooked, propagandize you. Stay off." 2002 to 2022.