I'm wondering. Was it when we found out that pre-elon, that Twitter was working with governments worldwide to censor citizens? Or when Mark Zuckerberg admit that the previous administration pushed to censor anything that went against the current narrative?
Or when the side that said they were gonna be totally above doing that and were pro free speech started censoring 'cisgender', people that got traction making fun of them/calling them out and criticisms of governments committing war crimes.
Maybe its cause people realise its a purely profit interested business with lots of influence that will change to what ever governmetns want to stay in business. Even drastically changing algorithms to meet regulatory needs like the EU's or who evers incharges feelings like china/usa/russia
It was definitely the Cambridge Analytica scandal and then subsequent media-rampage any time any social-media company touched politics (directly through censorship or indirectly through algorithms).
I've been thinking about this lately and I think the last point at which Internet driven mass politics was a progressive force was the early 2010s. Tahrir Square (2011), Euromaidan (2014), Scottish Indyref (2014).
(now, how organic was that? Probably impossible to tell at this distance in time)
The Facebook driven Rohingya genocide was starting up in the same time frame (adoption in 2011, military forces deployed in 2017). But following the effectiveness of social media as a revolution-triggering force, governments and political parties had to catch up and control it for their own purposes. Now we have what's effectively been a rightwing revolutionary force derived from the Tea Party take over the Republican party and replace it with strongman populism.
Cambridge Analytica wasn't censorship. It basically involved simple form questions to gauge political affiliation and was brilliant. Ad companies do this every day with no issues.
It only became an issue because it helped Trump win. Obama spammed Facebook years earlier, which I think is much worse and people in the tech community called it 'genius'.
This sort of double standards is why nobody trusts big tech.
Who said anything about that being censorship? I am saying that scandal brought it up to public attention, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was just the triggering point because:
1) It allegedly had russian influence
2) It involved Trump and he was much more controversial at the time
3) By my definition it counts as an "indirect interference from a social media company into politics through the use of algorithms", not censorship
> Distrust in Big Tech has been building in the U.S. for years, from the 2013 revelation of the government’s mass data collection, to the data scandal involving consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, to the 2021 Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s leaks indicating Meta was aware of its harms on society, to the multiple Congressional hearings where lawmakers grilled Big Tech CEOs over app safety, antitrust issues, and harmful algorithms.
> This year, tech CEOs lined up to pledge allegiance to the Trump administration in the form of $1 million donations to the president’s inaugural fund, hoping to buy favor and avoid scrutiny and regulation of their businesses — no matter the cost to their users. (Even for those aligned with Trump, the tech leaders’ actions are seen as disingenuous, given how they’ve flip-flopped after previously criticizing Trump in his earlier term.)
Personally (not a teen) I think you're both onto something, and its the general lack of any pushback to ANY of these activities that made me lose confidence.
> Was it when we found out that pre-elon, that Twitter was working with governments worldwide to censor citizens?
And post-Elon. One of his first acts, in fact, was banning an account he'd previously promised not to, on free speech grounds. (And retroactively changing the rules to justify it.) For a practical demonstration, try tweeting the word "cisgender". You'll be censored.
