With the rise of internet juggernauts Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, this insight seems obvious now. But over the past two decades, a fundamentally new business model emerged which even Castells had not foreseen – one in which attracting users onto digital platforms takes precedence over everything else, including what the user might say, do, or buy on that platform.
Kids these days, eh? Can’t even take away their smart devices, and they go ahead and access social platforms and tweet from smart-home devices
Journalist Eve Livingston’s recent article for The Face examines the many social and cultural features of Scottish Twitter. But the fact it has provided a medium for written Scots language to evolve in a way that wasn’t possible before the advent of social media is equally fascinating.
Faceboook-owned Instagram has terminated its relationship with a marketing company called Hyp3r after it was found that the company was ignoring privacy rules and collecting user data it wasn’t supposed to have. What makes this worse is that the company was listed as a preferred Facebook Marketing Partner for the past year.
When it comes to shaping the online conversation around climate change, a new study suggests that deniers and conspiracy theorists might hold an edge over those believing in science. Researchers found evidence that most YouTube videos relating to climate change oppose the scientific consensus that it’s primarily caused by human activities.
Young people are now fully ensconced in the digital age as it whirls around and within them. This is the epoch of the Anthropocene — the age of humans, wherein a technological worldview and human tools hold the central place in re-shaping the earth and its people. It’s also a time when 1.8 billion youth make up the largest generation of 10 to 24 year olds in human history with 50 per cent of the world’s population under 30 years of age.
Facebook has faced increasing scrutiny from the public and regulators because of digital privacy, and wants to rebrand its other apps: Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook envisions a future in which people will be able to type out words and send messages using only their minds with project Moonshot.
Instagram’s recent decision to remove its “like” counter from its platform in select geographic regions is an interesting, perhaps long overdue, measure. Although recently users in Canada reported seeing the “like” counter back on for a day, the counter is currently off. The roll-out is a techno-social experiment, and there are advantages — and a few unintended consequences — of such an action.
The platform everyone heads to when Facebook or Instagram is down was down on Thursday night. Twitter went down around…