AN ORWELLIAN GEORGE SOROS CALLS FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE A �MENACE� FOR HACKING OUR MINDS
Apparently forgetting that he owns stock in the megalithic corporations Facebook and Google,
billionaire George Soros called the companies a �menace to society� because they are
monopolistic and deliberately engineer their products to be addictive.
Soros is, of course, correct, and his statements come on the heels of comments recently made
by ex-Facenook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, who made headlines with his scathing criticism
of the platform.
�I feel tremendous guilt� I think in the back deep, deep recesses of our minds, we
kind of knew something bad could happen� It literally is a point now where I think
we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.
That is truly where we are.
It is a point in time where people need to hard break from some of these tools, and the
things that you rely on.
The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we�ve created are destroying how society
works� No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.
And it�s not an American problem� this is a global problem.
It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.�
~Chamath Palihapitiya
Soros� appearance at Davos is already being broadly criticized, as he went out of his
way to dramatize his personal opinions of the Trump administration, and because his
statements about Google and Facebook have an almost Orwellian quality as he talks about
the need to free people�s minds from certain information.
As reported by The Independent:
Mr Soros also turned his attentions to Google and Facebook and argued they were in need
of regulation.
Branding the companies a �menace�, he warned against the rise of �ever more powerful
monopolies�.
�The power to shape people�s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands
of a few companies,� he said.
�It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called �the freedom
of mind�.
There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty
in regaining it.�
He added: �People without the freedom of mind can be easily manipulated.
This danger does not loom only in the future; it already played an important role in the
2016 US presidential elections�.
Soros is well-known for his fiscal support of social revolutionary movements around the
world include his support for Antifa, which serves as fifth-column agitators to foment
political instability and press for communism in the United States.
Soros continues:
�They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide.
This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents.
There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies.
Casinos have developed techniques to hook gamblers to the point where they gamble away
all their money, even money they don�t have.
Something very harmful and maybe irreversible is happening to human attention in the digital
age.
Not just distraction or addiction: social media companies are inducing people to give
up their autonomy.�
Soros also said that giants like Facebook and Google should be looked at as public utilities,
calling for government regulation of the platforms, a move which would completely solidify political
control over the a vast majority of content on the internet.
As it is, the censorship we see emerging today is motivated by corporate elites, however
regulating these companies would introduce federal control over content as well.
An Orwellian nightmare.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét