Tag: Facebook
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Facebook: putting profit over safety
According to ex Facebook employee Frances Haugen Facebook’s puts its profits over protecting users from harm – over the last several years it has consciously chosen to recommend posts which spread online hate and encourage addictive behaviour rather than protect users. Haugen has gone on record stating that Facebook’s own research shows that many children…
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Women are Receiving more Online Abuse than Ever…
Social Media can be a toxic place for women who are getting more online hate than ever, while companies such as Facebook prefer to profit from this trend rather than protect the female victims, and the police lack the expertise (or the resources/ willpower) to do anything about it either. This is based on research…
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Censorship on Facebook and Twitter – supporting the dominant ideology?
Pluralists would argue that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are just neutral sites through which anyone is free to express their opinion, however, Marxists would suggest that they work with governments and corporations to suppress views which go against the dominant ideology by censoring anything which challenges the mainstream capitalist world view.…
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China’s Social Credit System: Big Data meets Big Brother
Most of us are used to having our daily activities constantly monitored and evaluated – what we buy, how much tax we pay (or not), what television programmes we watch, what websites we visit, where we go, how ‘active’ we are’, who our friends are and how we interact with them – such monitoring is…
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Technology Companies and the Digital Privatisation of Public Education
Education has long been influenced by private companies, but the rise of digital education has expanded the role of private technology companies, in public education enormously. Such companies range from the big global technology companies such as Microsoft and Facebook to smaller, silicon valley tech startups. This post explores the companies involved, and the neoliberal,…
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How Technology Companies Manipulate our Behaviour
Design features such as likes, swipes, notifications and autoplays make being on-line more addictive, less autonomous, and cause pyschological and social harm, at least according to this recent Guardian Article by Paul Lewis: Our minds can be hijacked: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia‘. Below I summarize this article and add in a…