Pluralistic: Zuck's gravity-defying metaverse money-pit (30 Oct 2023)


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Pluralistic: Ireland's privacy regulator is a gamekeeper-turned-poacher (15 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: We should ban TikTok('s surveillance) (30 Mar 2023)


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Pluralistic: Podcasting "Twiddler" (27 Feb 2023)


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Pluralistic: The public paid for "Moderna's" vaccine, and now we're going to pay again (and again and again); How Facebook's Real Names policy helps Cambodia's thin-skinned dictator terrorize dissenters (25 Jan 2023)


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“Metaverse” means “pivot to video”

Fool me twice, we don’t get fooled again.

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth — stepped back to note the effect — added a touch here and there — criticised the effect again — Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

In 2003, a 19-year-old Harvard undergrad named Mark Zuckerberg had an idea: he’d create a website for Harvard students to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of their classmates. He called it Facemash.

Later that year, Zuckerberg changed the name of the site to The Facebook, and, in 2005, the site was renamed, simply, “Facebook.”

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Pluralistic: 22 Nov 2022 Tax prep services send sensitive financial info to Facebook


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How to Leave Dying Social Media Platforms

(without ditching your friends)

An imaginary dialog box from a future Facebook; the user is being asked whether they want to continue to follow a friend who has left Facebook and is now on a small, community-managed social media service.

Lazar: Tevye! Tevye, I’m on my way.

Tevye: Where are you going?

Lazar: Chicago, in America.

Tevye: Chicago, America? We are going to New York, America.

Lazar: We’ll be neighbors. My wife, Fruma Sarah, may she rest in peace, has a brother there.

Tevye: That’s nice.

Lazar: I hate him, but a relative is a relative.

Collective Action Inaction in Action

In the opening scenes of the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, the narrator, Tevye, introduces us to his village of Anatevka, which is a pretty fraught place where people are unhappy and danger is on the horizon. Nearly three hours and (spoiler alert) innumerable indignities and terrors later, Tevye and his neighbors leave the village, all to go their separate ways.

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Pluralistic: 19 Sep 2022 How to ditch Facebook without ditching your friends


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Pluralistic: 17 Jun 2022


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