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• 1 2017-10-23T18:46:33-07:00 #79, attend to the structural problems inherent in the platform ecosystem 5 April 5, 2017 plain 2019-07-25T16:20:30-07:00 In “All I Know Is What’s on the Internet: Information literacy is not the antidote to fake news, because the institutions for teaching it can’t be trusted either,” Rolin Moe writes:

  If we can blame fake-news makers for the Trump presidency and other social ills, then we can continue to deny this wider complicity in developing a society that promises knowledge as power, but primarily treats information as an economic resource. Fake news is just squatting in one part of one building in an entire landscape of neglect and corruption; evicting them will make no difference to the blight. Fake news is a convenient framing that sets the stage for feel-good, ultimately escapist solutions. One such solution is “information literacy,” which is beingproposed by many educators as the antidote to fake news.

  cut to
  
  “Google and Facebook Can’t Just Make Fake News Disappear.” Dana boyd writes:

  The puzzles made visible through “fake news” are hard. They are socially and culturally hard. They force us to contend with how people construct knowledge and ideas, communicate with others and construct a society. They are also deeply messy, revealing divisions and fractures in beliefs and attitudes. And that means that they are not technically easy to build or implement. If we want technical solutions to complex socio-technical issues, we can’t simply throw it over the wall and tell companies to fix the broken parts of society that they made visible and helped magnify. We need to work together and build coalitions of groups who do not share the same political and social ideals to address the issues that we can all agree are broken.

  Now, attend to The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism recent report, “The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism,” by Emily Bell and Taylor Owen, who explain:

  The recent push to develop tools for flagging misinformation and digital literacy campaigns are important initiatives and signal that platform companies are beginning to engage with problems they have long avoided. These efforts will make a tangible difference to the quality of information shared on digital platforms and will help citizens responsibly engage with the false information that will always get through. But these types of initiatives are limited by their detachment from the structural problems inherent in the platform ecosystem. Namely, the near dominance of Silicon Valley ideology, the pernicious effect of adtech economics, and the opacity of automation.

  And here's one key finding:

  The “fake news” revelations of the 2016 election have forced social platforms to take greater responsibility for publishing decisions. However, this is a distraction from the larger issue that the structure and the economics of social platforms incentivize the spread of low-quality content over high-quality material. Journalism with high civic value—journalism that investigates power, or reaches underserved and local communities—is discriminated against by a system that favors scale and shareability.

  See More (readings found with help from Eileen Clancy):
  • “All I Know Is What’s on the Internet,” Rolin Moe
  • “Google and Facebook Can’t Just Make Fake News Disappear,” dana boyd
  • “The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism,” Emily Bell and Taylor Owen

  To see a poetic response to this hardtruth:

  we evoloved living
• 1 2019-07-25T16:19:13-07:00 we evoloved living 2 Dartmouth gallery 2019-07-30T09:17:07-07:00

  We evolved living 
  Workers living 
  Natural-food living 

   

  Are workers good? 

   

  History is fighting 
  Workers are fighting 
  We began living 

   

  Workers want films 
  Films love quacks 
  Films demand Anarchists 

   

  We are living 

   

  No revolution no peace 

   

  We have attacks 
  We have concept 
  We have ignorance 
  We have equity 
  
  -By Josh Urban Davis and Laura Braunstein
   

  This poem is a response to hardtruth #79:

  #79, attend to the structural problems inherent in the platform ecosystem