likes

Less than a month after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin took the extraordinary step of pausing all operations for 24 hours to “address extremism in the ranks.” Pentagon officials had been shaken by service members’ prominent role in the events of Jan. 6. Of the 884 criminal defendants charged to date with taking part in the insurrection, more than 80 were veterans. That’s almost 10% of those charged. More remarkable, at least five of the rioters were serving in the military at the time of the assault: an active-duty Marine officer and four reservists. Service members’ involvement in the insurrection has made the spread of extremism – particularly white nationalism – a significant issue for the U.S. military. Solving the problem A blu...

Imagine a popular social media channel that did not display the number of “likes,” mentions, impressions, followers, engagements or any other metric to show how many times one’s content has been viewed, by whom and when. A flourishing “how-to” industry has arisen dedicated to increasing “counts” on social media, while also claiming this is the silver bullet to becoming more popular, rich and famous. You can purchase the services of click-farms to artificially increase your like-counters. This potentially increases your content’s chances of being cross-syndicated, appearing higher up in newsfeeds and possibly meaning the ability to convert “online social wealth” into material wealth. In other cases, approbation markers such as likes can be used to generate popularity or condemnation of a...

Tag: likes

The Ruthless Pursuit Of Online ‘Likes’ Gives You Nothing