05-28-2017, 01:29 PM
(05-22-2017, 07:06 PM)Dill Wrote: For me, the kernel issue in that article is stated here.
The 45-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur criticized the internet for rewarding extremes calling it “broken.” Williams said that he was wrong for thinking that the world would be a better place if there was a platform for everyone to freely speak and exchange ideas.
I fear he was right about that.
Your bold part here has a spin on it. The actual quote is:
Quote:Evan Williams
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” “I was wrong about that.”
It very well could just be me, but the word "automatically" makes a fairly big difference in what he was saying there.
Platforms like Twitter and Facebook among others (youtube comes to mind) are great for the exchange of information and ideas. However, it is it's much more than that. Along with the information and ideas, you also get conspiracy theories, hate speech, bullying, fake news, live streams of suicides and beating...the list goes on. I think that the latter is what Williams regrets about Twitter. While there is the easy way out in saying that people need to do their own research or ignore it, the reality is that people don't, and that's how we get to conspiracy theories like Obama being a Kenyan born Muslim Homosexual married to a Transsexual. Or how Trump enjoys getting peed on by Russian hookers on Putin's payroll.
Those sorts of "ideas and information" certainly do not make the world a better place. And unfortunately Twitter has been the biggest platform for such absurdities to gain traction.
