Recently, I learned that the Edge web browser references a different database of known phishing sites than Chrome, Firefox, and Safari do. A phishing link was texted to me, made to look like the Wells Fargo website. About one hour after I reported it to Google, it was banned in all of the latter browsers, but when I last checked, it was still accessible in Edge, allowing additional people to be scammed.
We should fix that. Perhaps Congress can do something; a rare bi-partisan issue. I would think it would be possible for these vendors to share lists of known phishing sites in a privacy-respecting manner.
I once considered adopting a rule that I would not discuss politics with anyone who uses social media.
Consider why we don't discuss politics during holiday meals. We understand that, over the course of a single dinner, we cannot possibly compete with the thousands of hours that our family members have spent watching cable news that year. In the same way, I know that my perspective, my opinions, and my questions cannot possibly make sense to most people who are subjected to hours of misinformation, half-truths, and confirmation from social media each day.
I immediately realized that my rule was unworkable. Likewise, it would have been impossible to completely avoid second-hand smoke several decades ago. Still, I think it's a good rule in theory. I hope for a future when more people recognize its appropriateness.
The other day, I was listening to an interview with John Carmack wherein he described his use of the Finger protocol early in his career. The Finger protocol, which predates modern blogging, enables the publication of status updates, simple maxims, and even longer essays. There are no likes, no comments, and no news feeds. Readers need to seek out content that interests them.
It strikes me that thoughts is very similar. I appreciate that it doesn't offer “modern” social networking features. I don't learn much from hot takes; I'm not sure anyone does. If you disagree with something I write and are genuinely interested in the subject, let's have a real conversation about it. I also welcome thoughtful written rebuttals. Comment sections don't foster these things.
On social media, communication is not about learning. It's not about listening. It's certainly not about changing our minds. Instead, communication serves to score points, to show others how smart and how moral we are, to perform. It's no wonder we can't get along when we use it.
A keynote speaker once made an interesting observation that I hadn't previously considered. “The dirty little secret of social media,” she said, “is that people mainly use it to brag about themselves and only incidentally see what others are up to.”
I believe that social media is making us profoundly antisocial, profoundly unhappy, and profoundly stupid. By using it, we are becoming ineffective, misinformed, and narrow-minded. I believe that we would be better off without social media or with a radically different form of it.
This micro-blog won't focus exclusively on social media. However, given that the service that powers it*, thoughts.page, offers a compelling alternative to the enchanting digital battlegrounds of Twitter and Facebook, it only seemed appropriate to share those thoughts first.
I believe that social media is the cigarette smoke of our time. Some day, our grandchildren will demand answers.
“You knew it was bad for you. Why did you keep doing it?”
(For whatever it's worth, I tweeted that sentiment in 2019, before it was cool to compare social media to cigarettes. Of course, I later deleted my account.)
Last week, I read the bizarre story of Governor Mike Parson of Missouri vowing to prosecute local journalists who notified his office of a data leak in a state website. In a press conference, he claimed that the reporters “decoded” the site's HTML in a “multi-step process,” struggling to pronounce the unfamiliar abbreviation and testing the credulity of his technologically-literate audience. (Does clicking View source involve more than one step? Perhaps among those who find mice to be confusing.)
As someone who started a career by clicking View source, I couldn't let this weird, funny, aggravating news story go. After calling the governor's office to call his actions, “respectfully, moronic,” I decided to create a change.org petition asking him to apologize, which I have copied below.
