It seems increasingly likely that our society will one day view our infatuation with Twitter, Facebook, and the like as a passing, often destructive fad... when I think about social media and its current domination of our society. Will a future generation look back in 10, 20, or maybe 100 years from now and wonder, mystifyingly, why a generation of humans believed in these platforms despite mounting evidence that they were tearing society apart—being used as terrorist recruitment tools, facilitating bullying, driving up anxiety, and undermining our elections—despite the obvious benefits and facilitations they provide?.. I expected to receive angry e-mails and text messages from current or former Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram employees. Instead, my inbox was flooded with former (and even current!) employees of these social networks, who confided that they felt the same way... “Whether the tech industry can move beyond mining our social anxieties to sell ads, or feeding our anger to increase engagement, may require renegotiating a new relationship between the Bay Area and the rest of the country,”.. I can’t recall the last time I looked at social media and felt happy afterwards, or even enriched by the experience... these platforms act, in many ways, like drugs... Sean Parker, one of Facebook’s earliest investors and the company’s first president, came right out and said what we all know: the whole intention of Facebook is to act like a drug, by “[giving] you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.”.. the promise of connection has turned out to be a reality of division. We’ve all watched the way Donald J. Trump used social media to drive a wedge between us all, the way he tweets his sad and pathetic insecurities out to the world.. Facebook executive told me that the biggest reason people unfriend each other is because they disagree on an issue. The executive jokingly said, “Who knows, if this keeps up, maybe we’ll end up with people only having a few friends on Facebook.”
Did James Comey Subtweet Michael Flynn? Perhaps.
Mr. Comey’s post reflects a habit on display in recent months in which he has appeared to use a carefully chosen quotation to allude to someone or something in the news. Of course, all subtweets — the term of Twitter art for critical tweets with unnamed targets — have deniability.
The End of the Social Era Can’t Come Soon Enough
It seems increasingly likely that our society will one day view our infatuation with Twitter, Facebook, and the like as a passing, often destructive fad.
Donald Trump Jr. Exchanged Messages With WikiLeaks
The messages, seen in an email, mark the first evidence of direct contact between senior Trump campaign officials and the leak-spilling website
.. Donald Trump Jr. was in communication during the 2016 campaign with WikiLeaks, the online operation that last year published a trove of damaging Democratic emails that the U.S. intelligence community concluded were stolen by Russian hackers, according to an email obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
On Sept. 20, 2016, WikiLeaks contacted the son of President Donald Trump through a direct message on Twitter to advise him about the pending launch of a website that would highlight ties between the elder Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the email.
“A PAC run, anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks warned the younger Mr. Trump, who was a top campaign adviser to his father.
The WikiLeaks message told him it had “guessed the password” behind the website, and asked Mr. Trump Jr.: “Any comments?”
.. He subsequently forwarded the email to top campaign aides, including then-campaign chief executive Steve Bannon, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser Jared Kushner and digital director Brad Parscale, according to the email viewed by The Journal.
“Do you know the people mentioned and what the conspiracy they are looking for could be?,” he asked the group.
.. The exchange—which was first reported by the Atlantic on Monday and is part of a collection of documents turned over to congressional investigators by the younger Mr. Trump’s lawyers—marks the first evidence of direct contact between senior Trump campaign officials and the Sweden-based WikiLeaks.
.. On Oct. 3, 2016, WikiLeaks asked him to “comment on/push” a quote by Mrs. Clinton saying she wanted to “Just drone” Mr. Assange.
“Already did that earlier today. It’s amazing what she can get away with,” the president’s son responded.
.. On Oct. 12, 2016, WikiLeaks said it was “great to see you and your dad talking about our publications” and suggested a link for the elder Mr. Trump to tweet if he were to mention the website, according to the Atlantic.
Fifteen minutes later, the elder Mr. Trump tweeted: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”
He didn’t include the suggested link but his son tweeted it out two days later. “For those who have the time to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy all the @wikileaks emails are right here: http://wlsearch.tk/,” the younger Mr. Trump wrote.