The internet has taken the social influence people have on each other and magnified, intensified and filtered it so grotesquely. Is it net evil? Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable? I'm so grateful there are still smaller places (like hubski!!) where that magnification is less apparent and influential. On a lighter note, A friend of mine worked as a flight attendant and told me to just treat the ground staff well and politely ask for an upgrade (rather than fraudulently demand one) but it hasn't paid off for me yet. I did get an unrequested upgrade on a short haul flight to Hong Kong once. Business class was about 50% occupied and it was so pleasant to just get randomly bumped like that.
pun score +1 I think about this a lot. The internet is inevitable, for one thing. How do we regulate the very nature of an open internet, which will always have an available channel for society's craziest folks to link up and fan each other's flames of stupid? Apparently, human beings naturally form online echo chambers to most efficiently delude ourselves. Pretty much every major world government has capitalized on this fact by waging radicalization campaigns against the citizens of their enemy countries. Major companies attempt astroturfing operations on social media. Someone is using a shirtless picture of me from highschool to catfish. People often don't have enough critical thinking skills to determine whether information they come across online is true or not. It seems entirely too common to struggle with discerning whether information is an opinion or factual, even when opinion articles clearly state as such. Although it has enabled commerce, technological advancement, entertainment, etc., the internet has completely upended the old information infrastructure. In the now-distant past, reconfiguration of this infrastructure only happened gradually, and it was easier for people to ascribe reputation and trust to news organizations with established track records of good work. Meanwhile, folks getting their news on facebook are currently playing a game of telephone, injecting human error on top of bad actors inserting propaganda into the mix. How are we gonna regulate against negligence? From these standpoints, the internet seems like a failure. At a species-wide scale, we aren't socially mature enough to handle the technology.Is it net evil?
Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable?
Unequivocally yes. But the only way out is up. I figure they don't upgrade everyone that asks because otherwise they'd be putting everyone in business when they have space and that would defeat the purpose. But it's nice when it happens.Is it net evil? Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable?
I did get an unrequested upgrade on a short haul flight to Hong Kong once.