Digital culture

Internet, social media, online cultural output

Gun clubs, churches, unions

As Matt Cooper describes ( Solidarity 579 and 580 ), social media has been a prime vehicle for the far right. So much so that mainstream bourgeois institutions want curbs. How do we find an answer from the left? I don’t know. A further bit of diagnosis may help us along the way, though. Why do so many people believe such off-the-wall ideas? As Matt reports, false conspiracy theories and “secret scandal” stories spread faster on social media than truth because they are more emotive and more adhesive to “continuous partial attention”. But why are they then believed enough to motivate people to...

How social media has fed the right

The first part of this article ( Solidarity 579 ) looked at the recent rash of internet censorship. Much of this has been directed at the right, as we saw with Trump’s removal from Twitter and Facebook, though there have been some attacks on the left. This second part will examine why social media platforms have become seedbeds for the right. Because social media relies on user-generated and third-party content, it has become not only a forum for discussion but the medium through which other media, including the news, is now seen. In the UK 75% of people get some of their news via television...

After Twitter bans Trump

Anyone who is not amused by the tantrum of a spoilt child who at long last breaks that gratingly noisy toy some distant relative unthinkingly gave them has a heart of stone. But just as most of us have qualms about openly mocking upset children, many on the left kept to themselves the warm glow of satisfaction that followed from Trump having his preferred trumpet of Twitter snatched from his hands. Our reticence is likely the result of a fear of damaging the cause of free speech. The internet has been for many years a realm where free speech has been assumed. It has been the rise of Trump, and...

A trade union at Google

“We are the workers who built Alphabet. We write code, clean offices, serve food, drive buses, test self-driving cars and do everything needed to keep this behemoth running." The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) was launched on 4 January by 226 workers at Google and its parent company Alphabet, in partnership with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Within their first week they trebled their membership and denounced YouTube for “its insufficient response” to the storming of the Capitol on 6 January. In 2018 Google deprioritised the motto “don’t be evil”. The company’s main business is...

New threats from online abuse

Online abuse of women is widespread in the UK, with one in five women having suffered online abuse or harassment, according to research from Amnesty International. Almost half of women said the abuse or harassment they received was sexist or misogynistic, with a worrying 27% saying it threatened sexual or physical assault. And it affects the left more now. With physical distancing measures and continuing lockdown, much of political activity has moved online. Zoom meetings have become the new normal, with forgetting to unmute and poor connection now routine in our political discussions. Worse...

Activists need better tools than Facebook

When tens of thousands of people in Belarus decided to protest in the streets, they first of all needed a way to communicate with each other. With internet being widely available, they chose to use the Telegram messaging app. Telegram is not nearly as well known in Britain, where Skype (owned by Microsoft), Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger (both owned by Facebook) are more popular. But it should be – especially by those of us on the Left. Telegram was set up in Russia in 2013 by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, tech millionaires who originally created the social network Vkontakte, which...

The AWL, elections and controversies

Over the next two weeks the left wing Labour group Momentum is holding internal elections in which we are participating and we have already seen agitation focused on damaging candidates who are supporters of the AWL and other candidates with whom we have worked. What's going on? Over the last three to four years, since the Labour Party became a hotbed of factional in-fighting, individuals and small groups of Labour Party members have from intermittently organised social media campaigns of lies and distortions against the AWL. This agitation always coincides with Labour or left elections in...

The future and robots

Fuelled by rapid developments in technological innovation hyped in recent years, although mostly developed over the last two decades, many cerebral types suggest we may be at the start of some significant changes in capitalist production. They even gave it a grandiose name: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Socialists, Marxists, progressives have a history of taking technology and advocating its use for more than just the most efficient exploitation. Perhaps however, the pace of innovation is making this harder. The techy elite, a traditionally well-meaning liberal bunch, and the...

The world of online hate

In 2013, the Australian journalist Ginger Gorman became the subject of an online hate campaign. In 2010, she had interviewed two gay men, seemingly an ordinary couple, about their adoption of a young boy. Three years later the men were convicted of child sexual exploitation; they had been involved in an international paedophile network. Naturally Gorman was mortified that she had, however inadvertently, given these men a platform. But a few days after the conviction Gorman began to be inundated by tweets from ″conservatives″ saying she was a paedophile collaborator, and, equally horrifying to...

A new humanist politics?

Paul Mason’s latest book, Clear Bright Future , is written as a defence of humanism and human-centred politics, against the resurgent threat of the far-right, from Trump to Bolsonaro, Le Pen to Salvini. The title is a reference to Leon Trotsky’s testament. Mason entreats us to fight “all evil, oppression, and violence”, and shares Trotsky’s optimism for the future. Mason draws a convincing link from the financial crash in 2007-08 to Trump’s election. Mason emphasises how the monopolisation of information (think Google and Facebook) has led to systems outside our control, for example, of online...

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