On Groupthink, Mindless 'Sheep', and Toxic Online Cults
This week, treat yourself to a life free of social control media
Back in 2016 ("ahead of his time" as the saying goes; also ahead of his death) Pieter Hintjens explained why he had quit Twitter. His explanation aged very well, predating by more than half a decade Musk's fatal takeover of Twitter.
Daniel Pocock cautioned about it in November 2018 at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights:
As he put it yesterday (days ahead of Irish elections), with us noting that he consistently says "social control media" (a term we coined):
Mr Pocock makes the point that social control media gives activists like Hutch Hussein a false sense of empowerment. People have come to see the truth in this during 2024 as Elon Musk's Twitter / X appeared to help one US election candidate more than the other. The Guardian newspaper recently decided to stop using the Twitter / X platform.Mr Pocock's point is equally valid for all enterprises, whether they be political parties, non-profits, small businesses or whatever.
Let's not forget Operation Trojan Shield, whereby the secure messaging app ANOM was really controlled by the FBI and Australian Federal Police (AFP). Social control media is really not much better than this and unlike an app operated by the police, social control media can sell information about their users to just about anybody.
Days ago he wrote
Nonetheless, by using social control media for her campaign Brigid is giving power to billionaires in Silicon Valley. Brigid is giving power to a lot of privileged white men who work in the social control media ecosystem. Every minute Brigid spends on social control media is unpaid work adding to the share price of Meta and X. Every friend she connects with through these platforms increases the value of those networks and their share prices based on the theory proposed by Metcalfe's law.Therefore, by building up social control media, People Before Profit are augmenting the capital accounts of billionaires. Those same billionaires have the power to manipulate their message in very subtle ways or in a very big way at any time. Artificial Intelligence is only going to make it more difficult.
Daniel Pocock is the only candidate building a campaign without social control media.
The catchy term "social control media" is used 29 times in this page. Many politicians all around the world have surrendered sovereignty to GAFAM and social control media. All their communication (both ways) is controlled by hostile and sometimes private interests. GMail spies on them, Microsoft culls their outgoing/incoming mail, Facebook suspends them, Twitter subjects them to extreme-right propaganda, YouTube shadowbans them etc.
You want freedom? Be ready to pay the price of letting go of pure nonsense.
One of our favourite coffee shops (or pubs) decided to do the same nearly 7 years ago. Quoting Wikipedia: "On 16 April 2018, Wetherspoons deleted all of its social media profiles. Chairman Tim Martin cited the "current bad publicity surrounding social media, including the trolling of MPs and others"..."
What I've found the 'hard' way, based on personal experience, is that social control media attracts some of the most toxic interactions. Some aren't worth having at all. So in 2020 I quit "engaging" and in spite of that Twitter would still sanction me for merely linking to verified facts. Nobody needs nonsense like that! Twitter then censors evidence of its own censorship (a very common tactic of dictators). This is how absurd it has become.
Being outside of social control media does not mean having no visibility. The Web isn't just a handful of domains like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix etc.
Perhaps Dr. Andy Farnell's latest explanation of this is a lot clearer (it's certainly more detailed) than mine.
Some people say utterly shitty and really dumb things like, if it's not indexed in Google, then it does not exist. Oh, really? Are you working for Google? Google determines your pages' existence like Mark Zuckerberg determines who your real friends are.
As my wife put it yesterday, "there's no regret and I'm better off without social control media."
Groupthink and abuse aren't a desirable feature or facet of society. Crowds can indeed be large and noisy; their size isn't indicative of anything but sheep mentality. █
