Digital culture

Internet, social media, online cultural output

Arma 3 and faked war footage

A tweet/X post purporting to depict an IDF helicopter being shot down by a Hamas missile has garnered 9.3 million views. The account supported both Hamas and Russia, and the post is an example of the use of computer-game footage made with Bohemia Interactive’s military simulator Arma 3. Videos propagating false information about the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria are a regular occurrence, and some have even made it to national television. A 2016 research paper on Russian-originated disinformation found a “firehose of falsehood”, with impact increased by a high number of channels and messages...

The politics of the ChatGPT hype

Readers have no doubt seen all the news stories surrounding “Artificial Intelligence” in general, and ChatGPT in particular — whether they are talking about how it poses an existential threat, or how it is coming for our jobs. There are many problems with how mainstream media is covering this topic — first and foremost blurring the line between “AI”, and what is known as Large Language Models (LLMs). The latter powers ChatGPT. The former doesn’t actually exist. In order to cut through the nonsense, we must first understand what ChatGPT is, and what it is not. Large Language Models have been...

AI’s hidden moderators unionise

On International Workers’ Day, 150 workers, whose labour underpins the AI content moderation systems for some of tech’s biggest players, met in Nairobi to form Africa’s first content moderators’ union. The decision by the workers, employed by third parties variously for Meta, Tiktok, Bytedance and OpenAi, is the culmination of a struggle beginning in 2019 after Daniel Motaung, then working for Sama and contracted to Facebook, was fired for his attempts at unionising the workforce. Motaung, who travelled from South Africa, said: “I never thought, when I started the Alliance in 2019, we would be...

Letter: Musk’s banning culture

Matt McGowan’s article in Solidarity 668 , misses one side of the problem. The purported “free-speech absolutism” of twitter’s new dictator, Elon Musk, only applies to his allies. In December several journalists and other accounts who criticised Musk were suspended from Twitter. After push-back this was reversed. Facing a mass exodus the same month, Twitter blocked links to other platforms — Mastodon , Facebook, etc. — and threatened suspensions . This too was reversed following outcry. Sustained silencing of easier targets is more concerning. Numerous accounts of USA antifascist organisers...

Musk, Twitter and the far right

It is now nearly six months since Elon Musk was forced to honour his pledge to buy the social media platform Twitter. Musk parted with $44 billion for the loss-making platform: some Schadenfreude for us there. But the potential political damage of Musk’s “free-speech absolutism” is real. Twitter is one of the smaller social media platforms. It does have its niche, being described by one (cynical) online media editor as “a medium for people with high opinions about themselves [and for] pseudo-elites and their supporters.” More generously, it is the first stop for politicians, journalists and...

Letter: Abuse is easier online

While Stalinism obviously made its own execrable “contribution” to the standard of discourse within the left (Eric Lee, Solidarity 644), I think it’s wrong to give it all the “credit” for cultures of aggressive meanness and apolitical paranoid accusations of bad-jacketing or conspiracy. For one thing, online communication has made it easy and much more “risk-free” to spew insult and vitriol from behind a screen. It has also facilitated armchair sectarianism. Being sharp in the cut and thrust of argument is one thing when you’re engaged in a powerful movement and you both know you’re comrades...

Women's Fightback: Using hate to become a TikTok star

TikTok is facing calls to remove videos of a misogynist influencer. Andrew Tate is one of the biggest stars of TikTok, his videos getting 11.6 billion views. In August so far alone, clips tagged with his name have been watched more than a billion times. He says a woman is a man’s property. He explained women should “bear responsibility” if they are raped. He runs a school “Hustler University” on how to pick up women and make a fortune. His students are told to cut and share videos of him, choosing the most controversial clips to drive engagement. The coordinated effort has artificially boosted...

Musk plans an "anti-woke" Twitter

The tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is, on some measures, the richest person in the world. His fortune of $218 billion is equivalent to the GDP of Portugal. This self-styled “free speech absolutist” has bought Twitter for $44 billion. Musk tends towards an anarcho-capitalism where states run police and migration controls and little else. This is not a progressive wing of capitalism, but a rapacious form of it. It seeks to free individual capitalists from even limited social regulation by capitalist states. In the past few years, Twitter has taken the largely commercial decision to ban some on the...

Facebook, Australia and democracy

In the week ending 20 February, users of Facebook platforms in Australia found links to many external sites no longer available. Facebook claimed they aimed only to cut links to news outlets, but the bans were more wide-ranging including some trade-union and campaigning organisations (such as Living Income For Everyone, LIFE, where Workers’ Liberty people in Australia are active), as well as state bodies. Facebook have stated that some of the bans have been errors, but it is unclear which will be reinstated or when. It has gone for “shoot first, question later” maximum disruption. That is its...

Regulating social media

Two previous articles in Solidarity ( 579 and 580 ) have examined censorship on social media. I argued that social media is a breeding ground for right-wing and far-right ideas. The current moves by both states and the social media corporations mainly aim to check right-wing incitement and misinformation, and it is difficult to oppose such moves as Twitter banning Trump. But then what? Many on the left see unrestricted access for all to the social-media megaphones as a free speech issue, on the supposition that the left will be the main targets of censorship. But in fact the issue now is the...

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