sharp claws to tear native advertising a new one, saying publishers who sell native ad space
The article requires the reader to understand what "native advertising" means in this case, suggesting that the article is targeting an audience who is knowledgable about news sources and ad industries.
whatever messages people with money want to push at us
How does this play into equity? Does this provide an unfair advantage for certain groups? Should we be obligated to support or should this be an impetus for people to support underrepresented groups against those with hateful opinions?
This means those using pseudonyms to protect their identities while posting about human rights violations in repressive regimes and are flagged by members of those regimes may face consequences for breaking the rule, while others go unnoticed.
This is also an issue on YouTube, where many LGBTQ+ videos were flagged as inappropriate. Is this an industry-wide issue that will continue to hold, or are companies simply dismissive of these issues at hand?
It’s a combination that leaves it without effective competition.
Is this concerning? Does this effectively make it a pseudo-monopoly (I'm not an economist, so I can't say what is actually defined as such) or does it act as a company that simply outcompetes its competition?
Rather, as this latest incident should remind us, we are Facebook’s product.
Although this article is in the Opinions section, the article also does have a large journalistic aspect in reporting just how Facebook's ad system works. It's somewhat shorter than I expected, but makes its point quickly and recaps it right here.
Out of curiosity, the other day I searched “cellphones” on Google.
Similarly, this is under NYT's "Sunday Review," indicating that it's not a purely journalistic article and along with the first-person view, contains a very vivid opinion. That being said, the reader can choose to trust or not trust the author.
But, really, how can you tell?
This sentence is an exemplification of the writing style that caters to a general audience rather than a more niche audience. The author is talking to the public at large, not to other Silicon Valley people--it's a warning siren rather than simply just a critical response.
Growth becomes the overriding motivation — something treasured for its own sake, not for anything it brings to the world.
This article chooses to break up the text (although not in full) -- with quotes instead of photos. Rather, it relies on the flashing image at the top to carry the reader through.
Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend
The sensory overload of the title and the drawing behind it is somewhat overwhelming but ultimately seems to serve a greater purpose of appealing to engrained perceptions of neon colors as alarming and flashing screens as worrisome and triggering.
What is required is that people actually know and understand that information, and there are reasons to think we are no closer to an informed citizenry understood in that way than we ever have been.
For me, this is the biggest takeaway from this article -- all avenues lead back to the idea that it's all about perception of information rather than the state of information itself. No matter what information is on the Internet or how true it is, it can and will always be manipulated by those handling the information -- whether intentionally or not. There's no true objectivity to anything, and that's where this point gets dangerous. Uninformed citizens lead to misinterpretation of information and this scratches at an underlying concern about people consuming information as if it's complete and utter truth. With such a wealth of information (or misinformation), it's easy for people to fall into this trap rather than question it and think critically about what is being presented.
Consent is still being manufactured, but the manufacturing is being done willingly by us, usually intended for consumption by other people with whom we already agree, facts or no facts.
The fact that the article phrases "consent" as "manufactured" immediately jumps out as me as somewhat contradictory -- to me, consent shouldn't be "manufactured," it should just be given. As such, this form of "informational" consent does seem to be engrained into a culture of dismissiveness and agreeing to what we already know. In a way, it doesn't seem like a particularly authentic form of consent -- we want to get on with things, we believe them and take them for granted based on our upbringings and environments -- and so I think it's more complicated than simply saying it's a matter of consent being done "willingly by us." As products of our childhoods, those around us, where we lived, who we interact with, and so, so much more -- so maybe it's more accurate to say that consent is being almost "conditioned" into us in a Pavlovian sense (albeit less dark). Our biases are reconfirmed and the biases we hold are from how we grew up and formed these biases in the first place -- so reaffirming them averts back to this Pavlovian sense of agreement and association of certain opinions with what we believe.
Liberals “friend” liberals and share liberal-leaning media stories and opinions with them; conservatives friend conservatives, and do the same.
I've found that many friends and/or peers that I've met have clearly observed this phenomenon on social media -- yet it's one thing to notice it and one thing to take action against it. Is there a "right" way to approach this? Attempting to fill one's feed with the other side often becomes polarizing, and it's comforting to revel in the viewpoints of those who share them. We seem to be stuck in a machine that, due to the nature of opinion in our lives and our society, puts us into a place where it's nearly impossible to find a healthy balance of viewpoints on a digital platform that literally inundates us with bountiful (and potentially too bountiful) amounts of information.
So if the ideal of being informed means having more information available for uptake, there is a case for saying that we are now closer than ever to realizing that ideal.
At the same time, is it a little ironic to have more and more information but see our population generally become less and less informed? Volume doesn't necessarily equate to effectiveness or striving towards a certain ideal. It does give us the opportunity, per se, to pursue becoming informed, but that's on us to do.