Big Brother, Big Tech
I still use Twitter an awful lot, really just as a news feed. At times, on my account or by using the KXEL account, I will want to retweet or like a post.
I had noticed Twitter asking me a few times lately if I was sure I wanted to do that, but I sort of ignored it.
On Monday, though, news broke about Iowa’s new law limiting abortions being temporary halted by a district court judge. Fox News had posted on Twitter with a link to its story…it’s our network, I trusted it, and tried retweeting it. But Twitter stopped me, noting that I had not yet read the story, and asking if I was sure I wanted to retweet it.
I said I did, and the tweet was retweeted.
But then I thought I’d try an experiment.
The ABC News World News Tonight account had a story on the same subject. Lo and behold, when I tried to retweet it…Twitter allowed me to do so, even though I had not read the story I was retweeting.
On top of it, when I then tried to delete the retweet…it wouldn’t let me.
Now, I’m willing to believe this is all coincidence, that it’s just the goofy world of social media acting up innocently…but do any of us really believe that anymore, after all the information we know—with an exponentially greater amount of things we don’t know—about such platforms and algorithms?
