Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Social Control Media Works: The Case of Twitter, Visualised and Annotated

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Twitter Visualised and Annotated

A: We suggest you listen to people you quite likely dislike, based on our "Hey Hi" (AI) algorithm, optimised to stir up confrontation

B: We tell you what the news is, according to Twitter Inc.

C: We throw a cryptic clue to 'clickbait' you into a trail of meaningless and out-of-context tweets (because your time is worthless, just scroll on)

D: We throw pop-ups at you to give you the illusion of control, privacy, etc.

E: We decide for you what tweets you need to read (it's not about who you follow, chronological timelines are dead because they put you in control)

F: We've repeatedly asked you to upload more files for the surveillance engines; the more you upload, the more we reward you

G: We want to know what you have in mind and gossip too is good

H: We insist that the more "likes" there are, the more accurate and important it is (not the person)

I: Submit comments, they help us sell ads and keep people in the site more active ("engaged")

J: Talk as if you have "private messages" (but we read everything and relay -- or lose -- this data)

K: Help us categorise people; lists that cluster people help the state control the population

L: Keep your bookmarks dependent on a private company in "clown computing" (vendor lock-in)

M: We always want to keep you totally distracted, addicted and we conflate this with "popularity" or "success" (your online "friends" and "followers")

N: Find random things that corporations think will net them more profits (you're bored, right?)

O: Our site is your "home", the centre of your universe (see logo above; harmless bird)

P: Waste more time in our site, as "engagement" gives us power

Q: Even Christine is starting to understand how annoying Social Control Media really is (it's like a design flaw)

R: We expand your links onto a "card" (even when the links themselves are more descriptive and informative than some site's logo)

S: We give you an illusion that we value your privacy when in fact violating it is our business model

S+: Missing option? Can I have no ads at all?

Extra: You need several megabytes of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and fonts just to render a message or a bunch of messages (at most 280 characters long)

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