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Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Social media  As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. Godwin's law © 2017 Kwiple.com
Social media At some point, the instrument of misinformation becomes less troubling than the underlying receptiveness to it. … … social media users are discussed as if they were passive victims of demonic possession. The implication, that they would be model citizens were it not for the apps, slips by unquestioned. The politics is impeccable. It is safer to challenge a business than the public. But if the point is to fathom the problem, the evasion becomes self-defeating. Janan Ganesh,, Financial Times, July 20, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media The cliché used to be that people had moved to social media for news. Well, they have moved to social media, but increasingly not for news.  After all, why let journalists you don’t trust tell you about politicians you don’t trust? Meta says news now accounts for under 3 per cent of what users see on its biggest platform, Facebook. Instagram, too, has deprioritised news. TikTok won’t even show political adverts. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, March 21, 2023 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Social media The crusade against these apps is hardly groundless. But it has become a way of dodging the age and depth of civic rot, and not just in the US. Facebook is easier to confront than the prospect that mature democracies must live with a permanent mass of essentially unreachable citizens. To curse social media is to exonerate society. Janan Ganesh,, Financial Times, July 20, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media The dose makes the poison. toxicological adage © 2020 Kwiple.com
Social media I'd still rather do this than work 9-5 somewhere. A Cameroonian immigrant quoted in Get Rich or Lie Trying, Symeon Brown's book about social media  influencers, who starred in a live-streaming show where Americans paid to racially abuse him © 2022 Kwiple.com
Social media If you don't have haters, you ain't poppin'. A woman quoted in Get Rich or Lie Trying, Symeon Brown's book about social media influencers, who was trolled for a video that went viral of her performing a sex act on a robot © 2022 Kwiple.com
Social media If you want to know why it's called social media, I’ll tell you why: Because Karl Marx was hired by  Henry Rothschild, by the Rothschild family, to develop a system of social control. So when you see social, it is a form of control — that’s all it is. Social media is a form of controlling us all. Lara Logan © 2023 Kwiple.com
Social media In a leaked memo, a Facebook executive, Andrew Bosworth, describes this willful disregard for truth and meaning: “We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. … That can be bad if they make it negative. … Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack. … The ugly truth is … anything that allows us to connect more people more often is “de facto” good.” In other words, asking a surveillance extractor to reject content is like asking a coal-mining operation to discard containers of coal because it's too dirty. Shoshana Zuboff, New York Times, January 29, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media In an era of social media and nonstop news from endless outlets, the politicians who get the most attention are those who create unusual, supposedly “authentic” characters for themselves. This system rewards narcissists and what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls “bullshitters”: people distinct from liars in that they have no interest in what's true or not. They just say what sounds good. Their high verbal intelligence reduces their need for analytic intelligence. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, July 2, 2020,  on the rise of the attention economy and mediagenic rightwing nationalists  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Social media Left unchecked, the presently evolving information environment must be expected to unmake our democratic constitutional systems. Perhap not imminently, but with certainty over time. Larry D. Kramer, former dean of Stanford Law School © 2024 Kwiple.com
Social media My use of social media is not Presidential - it's MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again! Donald Trump, 3:41 PM - Jul 1, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Social media On social media, we have all become hammers searching for nails. Roxanne Gay, New York Times, July 18, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media Social media companies' mistake has been to assume that  unregulated speech from powerful people is a hallmark of democracy rather than a threat to it. Emily Bell, Financial Times, January 13, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media Social media doesn't just drive countries down the democratic ladder. It also heightens the ethnic, social, religious and geographic divisions that can be the first step in the creation of factions. That is, of course, because myth, emotion, and the politics of grievance — all of which drive factionalism — make for incredibly engaging content. Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Social media Social media is not a public square but a private one governed by machine  operations and their economic imperatives, incapable of, and uninterested in, distinguishing truth from lies or renewal from destruction. Shoshana Zuboff, New York Times, January 29, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media Social media isn't a tool that's just waiting to be used. It has its own goals and it has its own means of pursuing them by using your psychology against you. Tristan Harris, formerly a design ethicist at Google specializing in the ethics of human persusion © 2020 Kwiple.com
Social media Tapping a "Like" button is not friendship; it's a data point. Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic, July/August 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Social media We built Reddit around the principle of “No editors. The people are the editors.” Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit © 2019 Kwiple.com
 
Social media We now have to reckon that any election we have is actually being subverted before it begins. I fear for democracy. It's being made unworkable. Onora O'Neill © 2019 Kwiple.com