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fliptop writes:

Over at ACM.org, Samuel Greengard speculates Elon Musk buying Twitter is more about freedom to control speech:

The press has mostly accepted Musk's statement that the $44-billion acquisition is a "free speech" crusade that will create wonderful online town squares brimming with democratic ideas! It's 1998 naivete revisited. The Internet will bridge the digital divide! It will end oppression and censorship! It's the dawn of a new era for world freedom!

This isn't 1776, or even 1976. No one assembles at a town square to politely share ideas and debate philosophies. The Federal Communications Commission's imperfect but beneficial Fairness Doctrine is now buried deep in history. Today's online world, while delivering an appearance of democratization, has introduced hidden traps and limitations that we can't see.

It's no secret that algorithmic engines run (and rule) the Internet—and Twitter. They amplify, magnify, and even distort ideas. They introduce biases and, too often, they discriminate. They also manipulate our minds—and our thinking.

[...] Make no mistake, there will be a line; actually, lots of lines. What's more, even if Musk somehow accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of ensuring that everyone on the platform is verified, there's no way to guarantee that this will stop abuse—or that there will be any real penalty for the offenders.

[...] Yes, Twitter will wind up with different rules, results and outcomes—and it may be the better or worse for it. Along the way, some people will cheer, and others will jeer. But framing the discussion as a "free speech" issue is entirely disingenuous. This is simply a billionaire attempting to etch his world view into an algorithm—even if he brands himself a swashbuckling digital freedom fighter.

Previously
After Musk's Twitter Takeover, an Open-Source Alternative is 'Exploding'
Elon Musk has just bought Twitter

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Content moderation is guided by profits and by ideology more than policy:

If there's anything that Elon Musk's Twitter saga and Twitter Files has shown us, its that content moderation by social media platforms is anything but straightforward. Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook need to strike the balance between making a user's feed as engaging as possible, and keeping users, especially impressionable users away from harmful content. This is where most social media platforms fail miserably.

A previously unpublished document that has not been leaked from Meta, shows that the people heading Meta when it was still called Facebook, knew that Instagram was intentionally pushing young teenage girls to dangerous and harmful content, and did nothing to stop it.

The document reveals, how an Instagram employee ran an investigation on Instagram's algorithm and recommendations, by pretending to be a 13-year-old girl looking for diet tips. Instead of showing the user content from medical and proper fitness experts, the algorithm chose to show content from more viral topics that got more engagement, which was adjacent to having a proper diet. These "adjacent" viral topics turned out to be content around anorexia. The user was led to graphic content and recommendations to follow accounts titled "skinny binge" and "apple core anorexic."

[...] "Time after time, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits," said Bergman in an interview with a news agency in the US. He argues the design of social media platforms is ultimately hurting kids.

[...] "They have intentionally designed a product that is addictive," Bergman said. “They understand that if children stay online, they make more money. It doesn't matter how harmful the material is." Bergman argues the apps were explicitly designed to evade parental authority and is calling for better age and identity verification protocols.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection (UDCP) is suing TikTok over allegations that the app’s “addictive nature” harms children and that TikTok deceptively obscures its relationship with ByteDance, its parent company in China. The state’s lawsuit is the latest in a long-and-growing string of bans and legal action from US-based governments and organizations to rein in TikTok’s popularity, generally on espionage fears.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox accused the company of “misleading parents that its app is safe for children” in a press release announcing the lawsuit today. He said the app “illegally baits children into addictive and unhealthy use” with features that encourage young users to scroll endlessly in order to make more advertising money.

The lawsuit alleges that TikTok violates the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act (UCSPA) by making the app addictive to children and profiting from it; misrepresenting things like the safety of its app and fairness of its policies; and claiming that it’s based in the US and not controlled from China by ByteDance.

[...] Beyond TikTok, Utah also passed a law this year requiring parents to consent before their children can use social media, in a move that’s part of a larger censorship trend in the United States.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The numbers confirm what many of us have long suspected — that Twitter wasn't worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic:

A lot of people threaten to leave Twitter. Not many of them have actually done it.

This was true even before Elon Musk's purchase of the platform a year ago. But the parade of calamities since — cutting back on moderation, unplugging servers, reinstating banned accounts, replacing verified check marks with paid subscription badges, throttling access to news sites, blaming the Anti-Defamation League for a decline in advertising — has made stepping away more appealing, either because the timeline is toxic or because the site simply doesn't function the way it used to.

Last April, the company gave NPR a reason to quit — it labeled the network "U.S. state-affiliated media," a designation that was at odds with Twitter's own definition of the term. NPR stopped posting from its account on April 4. A week later, it posted its last update — a series of tweets directing users to NPR's newsletters, app, and other social media accounts. Many member stations across the country, including KUOW in Seattle, LAist in Los Angeles, and Minnesota Public Radio, followed suit.

Six months later, we can see that the effects of leaving Twitter have been negligible. A memo circulated to NPR staff says traffic has dropped by only a single percentage point as a result of leaving Twitter, now officially renamed X, though traffic from the platform was small already and accounted for just under two percent of traffic before the posting stopped. (NPR declined an interview request but shared the memo and other information). While NPR's main account had 8.7 million followers and the politics account had just under three million, "the platform's algorithm updates made it increasingly challenging to reach active users; you often saw a near-immediate drop-off in engagement after tweeting and users rarely left the platform," the memo says.

There's one view of these numbers that confirms what many of us in news have long suspected — that Twitter wasn't worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic. "It made up so little of our web traffic, such a marginal amount," says Gabe Rosenberg, audience editor for KCUR in Kansas City, which stopped posting to Twitter at the same time as NPR. But Twitter wasn't just about clicks. Posting was table stakes for building reputation and credibility, either as a news outlet or as an individual journalist. To be on Twitter was to be part of a conversation, and that conversation could inform stories or supply sources. During protests, especially, Twitter was an indispensable tool for following organizers and on-the-ground developments, as well as for communicating to the wider public. This kind of connection is hard to give up, but it's not impossible to replace.

[...] These strategies move publishers further away from seeing social media as a source of clicks. This could be a risky pivot away from traffic sources, given that NPR and many member stations have laid off staff or made other cuts due to declining revenues. But the social media clickthrough audience has never been guaranteed; a Facebook algorithm change this year also tanked traffic to news sites. Instead, recognizing that social media is not a key to clicks seems like a correction to years of chasing traffic through outside platforms.

upstart writes:

European Union orders X to hand over algorithm documents:

Brussels has ordered Elon Musk to fully disclose recent changes made to recommendations on X, stepping up an investigation into the role of the social media platform in European politics.

The expanded probe by the European Commission, announced on Friday, requires X to hand over internal documents regarding its recommendation algorithm. The Commission also issued a "retention order" for all relevant documents relating to how the algorithm could be amended in future.

In addition, the EU regulator requested access to information on how the social media network moderates and amplifies content.

The move follows complaints from politicians in Germany that X's algorithm is promoting content by the far right ahead of the country's February 23 elections. Musk has come out in favour of Alternative for Germany (AfD), arguing that it will save Europe's largest nation from "economic and cultural collapse." The German domestic intelligence service has designated parts of the AfD as right-wing extremist.

Speaking on Friday, German chancellor Olaf Scholz toughened his language towards the world's richest man, describing Musk's support for the AfD as "completely unacceptable." The party is currently second place in the polls with around 20 percent support, ahead of Scholz's Social Democrats and behind the opposition Christian Democratic Union.

Earlier in the week, Germany's defence ministry and foreign ministry said they were suspending their activity on X, with the defence ministry saying it had become increasingly "unhappy" with the platform.

canopic jug writes:

The Absurd Pirate's Internet Blog asks, is gen alpha screwed?:

However, I do think there is a STARK contrast between a curated show from the 90s-00s and a show like Cocomelon that is designed to be like heroin for babies. I walked in on my MIL and daughter watching Cocomelon together one time, and it was jarring seeing how, for one, low effort the animation and songs are, and two, how stimulating this show is, between the incredibly saturated colors to the jump cuts every second. What I learned was that this show uses focus groups of children to make it so there is not a break in the concentration. If a kid shifts his eyes away from the screen, the scene gets edited to address that.

Companies are literally designing everything for addiction these days. Trying to get you hooked on whatever they can profit off of as early in your development as possible.

The points raised there are discussed further by Andre Franca. He adds,

The author also mentions the "mental death" of parenting under modern life, and I totally get that. There are days when I'm so drained that a screen feels like a life raft, so the comparison of high-stimulant shows to "baby heroin" makes total sense to me. That crap is bad enough for an adult; for a child, it can be devastating. I've watched my oldest son's behavior shift in real-time depending on what he's consuming. When it's junk, he turns into different person - more reactive, less patient. It makes me realize that parenting today is largely about shielding them from a culture that wants to outsource their development to an algorithm.

What happens when a substantial portion of a whole generation achieves an age of majority with an nearly complete substitution of life experience for exposure to mindless digital heroin?

Previously:
(2025) Ban Social Media for Under 15s, Says French Report Warning of TikTok Dangers
(2025) Social Media Is Dead – Here's What Comes Next
(2015) Kids These Days: Six or Seven Nicknamed Generations

Original Submission