Two stories here: The ongoing QAnon madness that Joe Biden is really not running the country right now, coupled with the ongoing disintegration of the Twitter platform, under Elon Musk’s “guidance.” The following is from what is now a “verified” account, meaning somebody who is willing to shell out nine bucks a month and that’s their only credibility.
Isn’t this site great? 6.2 million views and counting on this video from a “verified” account. pic.twitter.com/UkSh0qUw8P
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 3, 2023
The answers are “maybe” and “no.” There’s no reality here. Anymore than it was real last week when it was reported on Twitter that actor Jeremy Renner was dead. Allegedly Renner had slipped on an escalator in San Francisco and died in a local hospital. Sheer fantasy. But Twitter moderation isn’t getting where it needs to get to handle things, probably because it’s stretched so thin. And the mods may not go near the people with the checkmarks. I’m not sure about that, I’m trying to verify, and trying to verify anything about Twitter in the state of flux it’s in is not easy.
Our civil discourse falling further into disarray like this is not a good sign, it goes without saying.
This entire incident with Twitter does beg an interesting question, though: Should social media be regulated by the government? This is not the first time it’s been asked. Facebook became such a behemoth years ago, and also a cesspool of disinformation, that the question arose.
Maybe we need a state social media, or maybe it’s even simpler than that: maybe some enterprising broadcaster could put together a social media platform and the laws that govern broadcasting could govern social media. Just spinning ideas off the top of my head. Only one thing is certain and that’s that social media needs to be reliable and moderated for reliability. When something basic like life or death, particularly of our sitting president, is being misreported, we’ve hit the bottom of the barrel and gone way beyond.
This kind of garbage has been around since well before Twitter. It used to come from the supermarket wrapped in tabloids like the National Enquirer. Most of us will remember the headlines like “I Had an Alien’s Baby!,” with a crude scissors-and-glue mash-up of a baby with lobster claws and snail antennae pictured on the front page. The problem now is that the technology for faking these images is infinitely better, and the scams move and multiply at the speed of light on social media.
It wouldn’t be such a problem if the people who read this stuff didn’t vote. But they do, and that’s how the mango moron got in. Maybe we should have a means test as a prerequisite for voter registration. Nothing too difficult, but hard enough that it would filter out persons who can’t find Puerto Rico on a map and can’t name at least three presidents. That would eliminate almost all MAGAs and many GOP candidates.
And wouldn’t that stir their nest?
If republicans ran on their policies rather than cheating by gerrymandering, there would be a lot less of them in public office. If idiots were eliminated from the voting pool, there’d be no republicans in public office.
Roger,
“Maybe we should have a means test as a prerequisite for voter registration.”
We are in dangerous times and tidy answers like this tempt me over and over again. But doesn’t that mindset take us to the dark side? Aren’t we switching from victim to perpetrator if we go down that road? How long before voters are asked to count beans in a glass jar?
I’d rather fix our inadequate education system. Rescuing our country is going to take long-range thinking, tolerance and a smidgen of creativity.
This would be “Domestic Terrorism” if we were living in a legitimate Democracy! RW Nazi’s are UNFIT to GOVERN!
“now everything’s a little upside down
as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
what’s good is bad, what’s bad is good
you’ll find out when you reach the top
you’re on the bottom”
“Idiot Wind…
blowing every time you move your mouth
blowing down the back roads head’in south…
Idiot wind.”
Bob Dylan. Idiot Wind
Don’t know why people use that twitter garbage. I never have and never will. It was never particularly a reliable source for anything worthwhile. It is worse now that space karen took over. Can’t wait until it’s in the trash-heap which with space karen having the business acumen of trump, it shouldn’t be too much longer.
Yeah, I’d be willing to bet, Musk-melon head, Elon….gets off on this sort of “tweet”!
Whatever change is made, having social media sites run by billionaires who have unlimited power and no sign of ethics has proven to be a really bad idea. Neither Zuckerburg nor Musk are mentally, morally or ethically connected to the real world that most of us inhabit, so we are all just prey to them. Get the billionaires out of social media, space, and other places in which they’ve proven themselves to be inept (deep-sea diving?), thoughtless, and callous about. We really need to get back to equitable taxing of the rich. Maybe if they had a bit less money to throw around?
Perhaps I’m being naive, but I believe 99% of problems with social media could be solved by banning all bots and requiring everyone to log in using their real name, ID verified as if applying for a passport. Knowing everything you say is linked to your personal identity, you’ll watch what you say online. Anonymity breeds $$holes.
0h, I believe you may be on to something. Although I use my name, and get accused of being an a$$hole, but i keep coming back to the consternation of people who don’t want to hear anything that challenges their opinion, religion, etc. Some seem to think nazis will listen to sweet conversation and being nice. Coming from a family that fought in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, I don’t believe you can reason with absolute evil. Of course, in my 70 years, I’ve heard men are the problem, until it’s time to face bullets, and whaddayouknow…our collective stock goes up, and Arlington and the graveyards are filled by boys. Most people are trying to run a popularity contest as our species is facing extinction by the laws 1% of humans in power make. Our ‘democracy’, really a dressed up culture that makes slaves of all who aren’t born rich, is facing extinction also. I would be willing to bet the farm you won’t ever see real names here. People love to shoot at you from the weeds. And let’s not forget everyone is SO FULL OF THEMSELVES, they’re easily offended. So don’t hold your breath. I doubt people who are dealing with REAL murderous evil are easily offended. I’ve been there, and not being killed was a higher priority. Sitting at home typing breeds people, as Pink Floyd sang, who are ‘comfortably numb’. Yet, they live in fear. I don’t. 70 years of fighting injustice and real violence removes it. I now fight for my children and grandchild so they won’t have to. I promise to be nice in the next life, if there is one.
I’m not quite as old as you but fairly close and I get what you are saying. I never had kids so obviously no grandkids either. But I have friends (ok, so many have become former friends but still…) who do and even if not for that I care about all those I will never meet, much less know. I too have served, as did relatives. And I’ve served communities I’ve lived in in other ways both before and after my time on active duty trying to make both whatever small corner of the country I was in but also the country overall better. To help inch us (and for much of our history progress has been measure in inches) towards the vision laid out in the Preamble of our Constitution. The work will never be done but that doesn’t relieve a single one of us to do what we can, even if in small ways towards realizing that vision. That’s what it means to me to be an American. To do what I could/can when I could/can to move us to that place.
Sure, let the government regulate social media.
What could possibly go wrong?