Special Edition for the Week of Jan 4 2021
Happy 2021! I started this year thinking to make some changes/improvements, including tweaking the flow and structure of this newsletter a bit, but was completely thrown off track by the incident in US Capital hill on Wednesday. I then decided to put away the previous draft, and cover a few related articles as I reflect on this incident.
First off, I will say that I typically don’t care much about politics so there would be some immaturity or even insensitivity in my angles. Please let me know if my words get you in any negative ways, I welcome any feedback and discussions. Also, there are already a lot of great articles written about the incidents, how it was incited, and what’s being done to address and prevent future recurrence so I am only going to share my personal perspective.
First let’s look at a few noteworthy news/articles:
- Hijacking the electoral college: The plot to deny JFK the presidency 60 years ago (The Washington Post) – this shows no matter how great of a system there are loopholes that require constant vigilance and periodic ‘patching’.
- Beer Hall Putsch (History.com) – found this referenced by OneZero’s Pattern Matching newsletter. What if the violence on July 6th was just the first act of something bigger?
- ‘The storm is here’: Ashli Babbitt’s journey from capital ‘guardian’ to invader (The Washington Post) – An outspoken Air Force vetern from SoCal who was an Obama backer, gaslighted/confused by QAnon, mobilized by Trump and became the first death in Wednesday’s incident. That’s enough said as a cautionary tale.
- The QAnon conspiracy theory and a stew of misinformation fueled the insurrection at the Capitol (Insider.com) – additional QAnon and its scary capability to mobilize people into action.
- Substack’s view of content moderation (Substack Blog) – substack raised a lot of interesting points on its perspective on social platforms’ ads-monetization model and the accompanying moderation issues. It is very well written, but I can’t help to wonder: what if QAnon content gets distributed via its Substack’s free offer?
When the above articles are put into context, it begs our continuous vigilance towards misinformation on the internet as a clear and present danger against our democracy. We finally have a people-voted, confirmed & counted, electorally voted, congressionally confirmed POTUS, but who knows if Wednesday’s violence isn’t just the first act? (there are reports on potentially another gathering on 17th). What is QAnon is just an outset of something even more sinister?
What is QAnon is just an outset of something even more sinister?
While a few major social platforms finally recognized blood on their hands and took action to deplatform Trump and the implicated, there’s really no guarantee to stop gaslighting / brainwashing misinformation from spreading like the 2020 California wildfire on the internet.
As I worked on this writeup, I read this very nice writeup (Margins) that resonates with my thoughts a lot: “we’re all disoriented, and in the world of online misinformation warfare, disorientation is always the first step.”
As a parent of 2, I am personally concerned with the state of the internet. Who knows which would be the next platform for these misinformation to flow into our youth’s minds, and may one day ‘activate’ them into doing something extreme? Yes, parents always have to work on cultivating a trusting, loving environment for kids to communicate and share what they’ve observed and learned on the internet. Yet one ponder if that would be enough, and if there are better ways to ‘fix’ the internet.
Who knows which would be the next platform for these misinformation to flow into our youth’s minds, and may one day ‘activate’ them into doing something extreme?
While there are great educational, constructive contents on all the platforms, we can’t ignore the fact there are a lot of questionable content also. There are so-called ‘influencers’ doing outrageous acts, cruel jokes, irresponsible pranks just to ‘feed the gram’ or get more attention. Similar to the rioters on the past Wednesday, they took the risk to become more ‘successful’ influencers, but at what cost to the overall society?
Having seen how the internet went from BBS boards, to AOL and Yahoo! Search, then to more modern Google search, to today’s social platforms, I will say that it’s been a run ride. But this incident serves as a wake up call: the internet is no longer just some virtual space dwelled by techy nerds and hackers. It is an integral part of our lives and the issues around it shouldn’t be slighted or delayed resolution. Let’s just face it, the internet has been exploited for the purpose of profiteering and manipulation.
While social media are spinning their wheels justifying their algorithms behind how content gets spewed out of individual user’s feed, the action only reaffirms that the whole thing is an imperfect system that would always be prone to the attack of misinformation. Can we as a society really accept the risk of ours and our future generations’ mental/intellectual balance and trade for the value these platforms and their algorithms claim to provide?
Or can we, as human beings, come up with a solution to maintain the convenience of the internet while alleviating the need for ads based algorithms to dictate the information we absorb?
Can we as a society really accept the risk of ours and our future generations’ mental/intellectual balance and trade for the value these platforms and their algorithms claim to provide?
If there’s no better systems, then we will be expecting governments everywhere to start regulating ALL of the platforms, putting in control for all content to go through review processes for age-rating and fact-check rating labels, similar to how it is on TV and movies.
I don’t know if that’s the best solution going forward, but personally, I hope for a future of the internet to maintain the fun and convenience we have enjoyed for the past 20~30 years, while figuring out a solution against this information toxicity.
Nostalgic Game Review is intentionally paused for this episode.