Features

XXVIII.6 November - December 2021
Page: 62
Digital Citation

Social media platforms are failed cities


Authors:
André Ourednik, Jakub Mlynář, Nico Mutzner, Hamed Alavi

As the astronaut Dave Bowman, armed with a screwdriver, disconnects the murderous computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the machine complains, "My mind is going; I can feel it; please stop, Dave." Similarly, advocates for the alt-right Twitter clone Parler kept on pleading that "we're a town square, not a publication" as Google and Apple pulled Parler's plug from their app stores, as Amazon later did from its cloud servers. Parler's users then made their exodus to Gab and other dark corners of the Internet. Days before, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and many others had banned these users, along…




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