Who are those guys | The Schottky Monkey

For some time now social media platforms have been hearing the footsteps of Ms. Mea Culpa as more and more evidence surfaces indicating that many of these platforms carried propaganda intended to shift the outcome of last November’s presidential election.

Propublica and other journalism organizations have reported that Facebook, and, most likely other social media platforms sold ad space to foreign entities for use in promoting propaganda and other ‘information’. Social media platforms when challenged as to whether or not foreign sources took out ads foreign entitles took out and used space to influence our elections responded emphatically no!!!!, and one, Facebook, by way of it’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg went so far as to not only minimize the scale on which Facebook was used, but to maintain that the practice was NOT wide spread and that thinking this tactic had influence on the election was crazy. This, even after President Obama personally pulled him aside at a meeting abroad and tried to give the leader a heads up. Zuckerberg’s response was especiall galling given that President Obama had access to information from our intelligence communities’ that Zuckerberg did not and would not ever have.

In my opinion, this was due both because of Zuckerberg’s hubris (and that of the valley in general) his lack of knowledge around regarding how the entirety of Facebook works. The latter is forgivable given the size of the system underpinning Facebook. The former less so given that Zuckerberg, and other social media platform execs have little if any experience in foreign affairs, intelligence gathering, or other related activities. Unfortunately, in this culture, making money is more often than not attributed to being smart or smarter than someone else.

The funny thing about Zuck’s “crazy” denial regarding the impact of social media on elections is that in the abstract, he is also unwittingly discounting the actual value of ads placed on facebook by it’s clients. In short, he is undermining the very value his company provides to paid advertisers. Is this what he intended with his “crazy” refutation ?

To date, it seems that the concensus approach has been to push back on the Social Media platforms and demand they provide more scrutiny (and transparency) around account usage, the people resonsible for political ads of any ilk and to to monitor if not block hate speech as best they can. I guess I should acknowledge the kindess of social media lords to take time out and actually take care of we , their consuming minons

It is is easy to what-if and therefore indrectly blame the social media industry. If only the social media industry had not rushed to be so ubiquitous, or to have least found a model in which good well crafted, depndable, reasoned journalism could have co-existed outside of their platforms instead of sucking all of the money it possibly could have into its coffers. If only people like Zuck had managed their hubris and ambition and just admitted there are in fact unintended consequences to their actions…

Or maybe, this:

What if the rest of us, the reading thinking, general public had not fallen asleep, become intellectually lazy, cheap at our own expense. Imagine if we had actually continued to develop our critical reading and thinking skills. Maybe we wouldn’t be wimpering while at the same time asking the social media industry to change our digtially soiled diapers.

Yes, if only, indeed

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First, resuming traditions established previously on this blog. The musical selection for this post is Beck’s Round The Bend

For some time now, the business model for Twitter has been falling short in providing a sustainable future for the company. Over the course of the last the last month or so, Twitter has found itself in the unenviable position of having to cut costs in the only way most companies know how to. The “axe”. Further evidence of Twitter’s new economy maturity can be seen in this comment from Dorsey during a conference call “our board is committed to maximizing long-term shareholder value”.

In the real world the laws of physics are a hard to violate, last I checked, you still can’t travel faster than the speed of light AND gravity still works. Similarly, in the business world, there are some fundamentals which cannot be ignored without consequence. The most fundamental is that a company HAS to produce revenue and profit.

I remember early on in the social media space how the most important objective was growth, not revenue growth, just growth. How to actually make money was always something to be determined afterwards. No one, myself included- a jaded HW -guy would dismiss the importance of cultivating market share. And yes, using the social media model of growth before revenue there have been some SIGNIFICANT successes. Unfortunately for the legions of entrepreneurs flooding our tech media and conscious those successes are relative far and few in between

What comes too mind for me in all of this are the Roadrunner cartoons I watched as a kid some 40 years ago. The coyote was always dreaming up all ploys intended to catch the roadrunner. Some were were marginally plausible, some were not. Always constant was the fact that the coyote NEVER caught the roadrunner. Usually, at the end of the show, there was one last grand attempt by the Coyote which as you might guess, also failed usually with much pain and some sort of long distance fall which ended up in a puff of dust at the base some canyon.

In unsuccessfully shopping itself around for a possible owner Twitter seems to have taken that final step and found it’s inner coyote. The question now is whether or not Twitter, like that coyote, will go over cliff and become that puff of dust.

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