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Blaming Social Media, ACM Publication Argues Computing 'Has Blood On Its Hands' (acm.org) 121

Posted by EditorDavid from the harsh-words dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In the January 2024 Communications of the ACM, Rice University professor and former CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi minces no words in Computing, You Have Blood on Your Hands!. He argues that the unintended consequences of the rise of social media and mobile computing include hate mongering on a global scale and a worldwide youth mental health crisis.

"How did the technology that we considered 'cool' just a decade ago become an assault weapon used to hurt, traumatize, and even kill vulnerable people?" Vardi asks. "Looking back at my past columns, one can see the forewarnings. Our obsession with efficiency came at the expense of resilience. In the name of efficiency, we aimed at eliminating all friction. In the name of efficiency, it became desirable to move fast and break things, and we allowed the technology industry to become dominated by a very small number of mega corporations. It is time for all computing professionals to accept responsibility for computing's current state. To use Star Wars metaphors, we once considered computing as the 'Rebels,' but it turns out that computing is the 'Empire.' Admitting we have a problem is a necessary first step toward addressing the problems computing has created."
Examples cited in the piece include:

So far the ACM's piece has attracted one comment. "Deep thanks for your long-term commitment to ethics and how you articulate clearly its challenges."


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Blaming Social Media, ACM Publication Argues Computing 'Has Blood On Its Hands' More

Blaming Social Media, ACM Publication Argues Computing 'Has Blood On Its Hands'

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  • Computing is amoral (Score:3)

    by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @12:50AM (#64137920)

    It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.

    • Start with requiring that browsers shall protect the user against cross site data exchange.

      That would kill a lot of trackers.

    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      "In 1980 Winner proposed that technologies embody social relations, i.e. power.[2] To the question he poses "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Winner identifies two ways in which artifacts can have politics. The first, involving technical arrangements and social order, concerns how the invention, design, or arrangement of artifacts or the larger system becomes a mechanism for settling the affairs of a community. This way "transcends the simple categories of 'intended' and 'unint

      • What...the hell...makes a guy who spent this entire life in academia an authority on anything? It looks like the only hard skills he has are writing books and playing the piano. I mean it would be one thing if he conducted a large body of research like historians do, or performed experiments of any kind and made some kind of discovery, or at least maybe come up with a novel theorem that has real world applications like John Nash...but it looks like this guy has done none of that.

        • What...the hell...makes a guy who spent this entire life in academia an authority on anything? It looks like the only hard skills he has are writing books and playing the piano. I mean it would be one thing if he conducted a large body of research like historians do, or performed experiments of any kind and made some kind of discovery, or at least maybe come up with a novel theorem that has real world applications like John Nash...but it looks like this guy has done none of that.

          What... the heck... makes a guy who spends his time on slashdot an authority on Winner's argument?
          It looks like the only way to find out is for you to take the time to log into your library's website and use their research database collections to actually read his article where he presents examples and explanations of his thesis, and then develop your own critique. I mean it would be one thing if you truly wanted to understand the issue so you conducted a large body of research to read his argument, the maj

    • This.

      It's interesting that they specifically cite Myanmar*. They are currently fighting a civil war against their deeply unpopular military government and that war has been enabled, in part, by 3D printed weapons.

      (If you're old, Myanmar = Burma.)

  • Need to fix title... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @12:58AM (#64137924)

    Blaming Media, ACM Publication Argues Media 'Has Blood On Its Hands'

    • Re:Need to fix title... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @01:01AM (#64137932) Homepage

      You're right, to a degree, but it's important to recognize the unprecedented level and speed of damage to basic social cohesion that can be done by foreign nationals participating unfettered in our social media. Other forms of media that are primarily one-way conversations, or at the very least delayed and filtered two-way conversations held through human middle-men, just can't do the same amount of damage so quickly, which is why this never was such an apparent problem to everyone before now.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

        this never was such an apparent problem to everyone before now.

        So, before the rise of social media, there was no hate in the world? Jim Crow never happened? The Holocaust was a hoax?

        Sure. Whatever.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by jsonn ( 792303 )
          Sure, there was hate. But it tended to be far more localized and if it wasn't, it took a lot more effort to reach that point.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by ShakaUVM ( 157947 )

            The hate we saw in the 19th and 20th Centuries was far worse than what we see on social media these days.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by jsonn ( 792303 )
              Yes and no. There was a lot more direct, physical violence involved. "Social" media on the hand has a toxic corrosiveness and that can be a lot more harmful. Being part of an oppressed group is one thing, being an oppressed loner can be even worse. This is especially noticeable when kids and teens have access to unmoderated social media. Bullying was bad 20 years ago, in many ways it has become a lot worse, especially when it is only emotional damage.
              • More harmful than direct physical violence? You aren't making any sense, that is absurd.

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by jsonn ( 792303 )
                  Let's use a moderately obvious examples: rape. What do you think lasts longer, the physical or the mental trauma?
                  • You used an example of physical violence. That ruins the point you are trying to make. You're showcasing that physical violence would be the worst since it involves lasting psychological damage as well as the physical it's also likely even worse psychologically since it will leave physical reminders. It's easier to forget someone that traumatized you if you don't have to look at a scar in the mirror every day.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by jsonn ( 792303 )
                      Many cases of violence of both a physical and mental component. Home violence is as much about beating the partner as it is about inflicting mental trauma. Both components go hand in hand. Rape is such a repugnant crime, not because most rape victims are physically damage. For many, if not most, victims of sexual violence the physical wounds actually heal perfectly fine. It's the mental scares that last. If you don't understand or can agree on that point, it becomes pointless to discuss any further.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by skam240 ( 789197 )

                      What? How many rape victims end up with a scar they have to look at in the mirror every day? You call the other poster absurd but that's all you've been this conversation.

                    • Your premise that bullying on social media is more harmful than physical violence is absurd and it has been borne out by your own example. Give me an example of social media bullying that is worse than real life rape, that's your premise you said social media can be a lot more harmful. Rape doesn't take place on social media so can't be used as an example of social media being more harmful. Any attempt to use a psychological repercussions from an in person traumatic event disproves your premise, rape wou
                  • I'll fix the question for you. What's worse 100 DMs calling you horrible names and telling you to kill yourself or 1 brutal rape that leaves you physically damaged and wanting to kill yourself? I'll take the 100 DMs.
          • The big change with the rise of social media is that, prior to social media, public communication was behind gatekeepers - if you couldn't get the reporter or TV station to want to carry your story, it wasn't (for any meaningful intent or purpose) getting out.

            And throughout the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, this had had a tremendously valuable effect because as a result of the media simply shutting pro-racism views out, we'd reached the point where plenty people - My late teenage self was one of them - ge

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jsonn ( 792303 )
              The difference is not so much the presence of gatekeepers, but the general reach of platforms. A national newspaper might have had a similar reach to what social media platforms have now, but they had significant less space. We had newspapers and magazine for niche interests before, we still have many in fact. But the barrier of entrace and the price for publication space was infinite higher than a post on Twitter or Facebook is.

      • You're right, to a degree, but it's important to recognize the unprecedented level and speed of damage to basic social cohesion that can be done by foreign nationals participating unfettered in our social media. Other forms of media that are primarily one-way conversations, or at the very least delayed and filtered two-way conversations held through human middle-men, just can't do the same amount of damage so quickly, which is why this never was such an apparent problem to everyone before now.

        I dunno about that.

        I recently finished reading this book [wikipedia.org] which goes through various delusions throughout history.

        Social media of the time was a letter from the pope, the town crier relating items of news, people talking in pubs, individuals orating in the town square, and the local pastor voicing views during church.

        That's all local and delayed, but still brought us the witch mania, the crusades, fortune telling, haunted houses, alchemy, and the Tulip bubble.

        Modern flat earth society compares well with fort

        • Modern flat earth society compares well with fortune telling, anti vaxxing with alchemy, and the witch mania with virtue signaling and cancel culture.

          While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your post, I have to point out that fortune telling is alive and well today. Visiting my parents, I saw a full ad for psychic fortune telling from "our professional psychics". Just call X number and pay by the minute.

          Anti-vaxxing is actually as old as variolation, and I'd actually rate it as the opposite of alchemy. Alchemy was, after all, an attempt to FIND knowledge, even if they were incredibly off base.

          Now witch mania and virtue signaling/cancel cultu

        • Uh, that was part of a larger Soviet famine...

      • Social cohesion? Nothing can compare to the inorganic onslaught of divisive politics pushed by the good old mainstream media in the last decade. Just look at one of those graphs showing divisive identity politics word usage in print. It's a hockey stick.

  • Oh, the whole field of computing is it? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xarius ( 691264 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @01:05AM (#64137942) Homepage

    What a shitty and inaccurate headline, how about Capitalism, You Have Blood on Your Hands! or Meta, You Have Blood on Your Hands! or Greedy Foolish Billionaires, You Have Blood on Your Hands! instead?

    • Re:Oh, the whole field of computing is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @01:53AM (#64138008)

      Perhaps the best headline is, "Humanity, You have Blood Your Hands!"

      • Ah but that would make everyone seem guilty when in fact you need to have some kind of power to get your hands bloody. Let's not absolve the powerful because "that's how people are". Most people don't cause large-scale damage.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 )
        No, we don't. Most of us are pretty decent folk who'd be horrified to hear the kinds of things executives discuss & plan for us & others, let alone to see the outcomes of their actions.

        We have a system where corporations have corrupted their governments & regulators & are now free to maximise profits regardless of the harm it might do. Like Joseph Pulitzer & William Randolph Hearst back in the 1890s, Zuckerberg, Musk, et al. have re-discovered that spreading division, fear & hate

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          No, we don't. Most of us are pretty decent folk

          Are you paying taxes which are being used to commit genocide in other countries? Yeah, me too. Guess what that makes us? NOT PRETTY DECENT FOLK, I'll tell you that much.

          • You'll have to do better than that. Yes, I agree that we in wealthy western countries benefit from horrific acts of violence & inflict suffering on massive scales, as citizens, not only aren't we given the choice, nor is our informed consent requested, but it's actively kept secret &/or deceptively framed to us. We're not accomplices because we haven't been asked & we don't really know (the vast majority of us would baulk at some of what our governments do in our names). Anyone who gets anywhere

            • Re:Oh, the whole field of computing is it? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @10:14AM (#64138424)

              You'll have to do better than that. Yes, I agree that we in wealthy western countries benefit from horrific acts of violence & inflict suffering on massive scales,

              If it were only the wealthy west. No country is exempt from those acts.

              If I were to make some conjectures, I think it is because our noggins evolved as a tribal creature, maybe dealing with 20 or so people. The exact number doesn't matter, it's a small number though. We're usually loving and caring to each other. Nice people.

              Over time, we've adapted a little, enough to get 8 billion people here on earth. But the same old problem shows up:

              The other. Back in the day, with tribes competing with each other for resources, and often women - you can't have small tribes of related people without eventual inbreeding. So kidnapping happened. "Slaughter the Boazites, all of the males, and take their young women as your own." Creepy from a modern perspective. A survival mechanism. Brutal violence, and immoral acts.

              So that propensity to be loving and decent and murderous at the same time is possibly hardwired. We have almost subjugated it, but it rears up from time to time in all human societies.

              The other. Same old process. Identify a group, dehumanize it, then go after it. Back in the day it was those Boazites, today it's a racial group, a religious group, immigrants, or political groups.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by HBI ( 10338492 )

                Beautiful, accurate comment.

              • "We're usually loving and caring to each other. Nice people." Maybe to those 20 people but what about the outsiders?

                • "We're usually loving and caring to each other. Nice people." Maybe to those 20 people but what about the outsiders?

                  That was my whole point. We aren't nice to others when they are cast as the other.

              • So what do you make of the claims by Steven Pinker that over the millennia, centuries, & decades, we're steadily getting less violent & more humanitarian? Pinker's an impressive critical thinker & researches his subjects very thoroughly, cites his sources, etc.. According to him, humans have never been so peaceful & empathetic, & we're at the point where the citizenry are particularly intolerant of violence against others & suffering in general.

                • So what do you make of the claims by Steven Pinker that over the millennia, centuries, & decades, we're steadily getting less violent & more humanitarian? Pinker's an impressive critical thinker & researches his subjects very thoroughly, cites his sources, etc.. According to him, humans have never been so peaceful & empathetic, & we're at the point where the citizenry are particularly intolerant of violence against others & suffering in general.

                  That's the part where we have managed to improve despite our base instincts. And what has happened is that we've engaged in smaller wars in recent years. And of course there was that one rather big one. WW2, we managed to decrease the world's population by an estimated 3 percent - 70-80 million out of 2.5 billion at that time. Even now, we have a presidential candidate that encourages violence against his enemies, and is now openly broaching the quiet part in promising blood purity and what is increasingly

                  • Sure, you can get that impression if you believe that what you see in the media is a representative sample of humanity. As with social media, main stream media tends to present humanity at its worst & we could be forgiven for believing that most people around the world are "bad."

                    A few years ago, Hans Rosling went on a campaign to try to address the imbalance in media reporting (i.e. it doesn't reflect the facts of the modern world particularly well) & to show how societies around the world &

                    • Sure, you can get that impression if you believe that what you see in the media is a representative sample of humanity. As with social media, main stream media tends to present humanity at its worst & we could be forgiven for believing that most people around the world are "bad."

                      I'm inclined not to say that they are good or bad. They are the animal homo sapiens sapiens , one of many in this spheroid. Just our nature. And make no mistake, acknowledging our baser instincts is not necessarily saying we are bad, any more than saying that particular animals are bad because of how they evolved. It's something that probably needs to evolve more - quite a lot. Which is going to be tough, because it is linked to our survival instincts. Preserving survival instincts while tossing our aggress

            • I agree that we in wealthy western countries benefit from horrific acts of violence & inflict suffering on massive scales, as citizens, not only aren't we given the choice

              We all make the choice, don't we? Go to jail for not funding it, or fund it and people die.

          • Which genocide are you speaking of? I suspect if we scratch the surface on your claim it will quickly be revealed it isn't a genocide.
    • Things are so broken the situation is beyond reasonable problem solving. It seems every government is owned by psycho-billionaires. Until they are toppled everyone else will continue to suffer the consequences of their derangement.

  • Hypocrisy (Score:3)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @01:07AM (#64137946) Journal
    Computers are a tool that can be used for good or ill. Trying to blame everyone who works in computing for all the bad uses computers can be put to would be like blaming axe manufacturers for axe murderers.

    Indeed, wrong arguments like this which are intended to make everyone feel bad about what they do are _exactly_ the sort of thing that leads to poor mental health. So if this hypocritical idiot wants to find someone to blame a great place to start would be a mirror.

    • "What has science done!?" -- Dr. Weird, South Jersey Shore

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsonn ( 792303 )
      From what I have seen of the industry, there is quite a bit of truth to the headline. It's amazing how willing almost everyone is to ignoring bad trends for a bit of comfort. Just look at the last decade's loss of control that most people in tech are perfectly happy to embrace. Cloud computing and the as a service model, walled gardens, dongling up of hardware etc.

    • Re:Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @05:11AM (#64138154)

      I'll blame many working in computing...

      For instance:
      The guys (developers employed by the manufacturer) who made polish trains brick themselves when they visited a 3rd party repair shop.
      Chrome developers implementing slower adblock updates https://arstechnica.com/google... [arstechnica.com]
      The people who implement "silent privacy option reset" on ToS update (looking at LG)
      And that's just from the last month.

      The guys at facebook (or any other company) who "maximize engagement" . They know what they're doing, and have known for at least 10 years now.

      "If not me, then someone else would" ... yeah, but it was you in the end, you who didn't say "no".
      I get it: mortgages, income , golden handcuffs...
      Also a boss is an "authority" , coercive, but still an authority. The Milgram experiment comes to mind.

      I'm lucky, I do have the financial situation to walk away. Would I? I hope so, but can't say for sure.
      I do know I have already said "no" to implementing something. And I didn't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        I completely agree. And I had the financial wherewithal to walk away from working in tech, and I did. Retired from software development at the end of April 2023 and don't miss it one bit.

        The developers who work on DRM, on software to enable privacy-invading business models, and on exploits to infect activists' phones are just as culpable as the business and political leaders driving these things.

      • All of those are decided by manager at higher level than the dev. After the decision has been done the dev has the choice between : 1) refusing to implement it and get fired 2) do it and get their bread and home. Unless you are independently rich there is no other choice. The fact ACM media and you accuse the dev - the cog in the machine - rather than the management and CEO and billionaire is quite telling.

        • Yes, and I tried to say that I see that nuance. I guess you didn't get to the "golden handcuffs" paragraph.

          As for
          > All of those are decided by manager at higher level than the dev

          The Polish case was something that if I were to be put in such a position I hope I'd at the very least find the courage to blow the whistle on it... There are many ways to do it anonymously.
          And the "[subordinates] forced to serve as mere instruments" argument, I thought we went through that at Nurenberg.

      • Not updating ad blockers quickly leads to genocide.

  • Cool (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now do easy access to firearms. Watch how the comments change.

    • Easy access? More like ANY access.

  • Humans (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @01:44AM (#64137998)

    Humans may ultimately be incapable of a civilized stable society. Jealousy, ignorance, intolerance, lack of universal empathy .. all these traits are highly destabilizing. The only solution may be genetic engineering. We'll need some serious gene modification. You know how humans took wolves and turned them into docile golden retrievers. Well that, multiplied by 50 given all the traits that need correcting.

    • Okay, great! You first.

      • Totally willing. Once many of the gene mods are identified that can improve my already high sense of empathy, intelligence, reflexes for gaming, agility, and civilizedness I'll be first in line for the jabs.

    • Humans may ultimately be incapable of a civilized stable society.

      Define "stable". The only thing stable about our society is that it is always changing and redefining what "civil" is. What was considered perfectly civil 20 years ago is considered offensive today - it's hard to call that "stable" - but I'd argue that a society that cannot change would be much worse because if you cannot change it how can you improve it and adapt it to whatever the current challenges are.

    • The only solution may be genetic engineering.

      Who would you trust to make those kinds of decisions? Why would you trust them?

  • Singapore saw this coming in 1979 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @02:07AM (#64138024)
    And had a program to stop rudeness -AND enforced it for a while. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. But they also arrested offenders, put them on national television, and or strokes of the cane. China, with social points, is also beginning to draw a line in the sand. Nowadays people and the diversity of soap box interest groups are incredible. But it is an old problem - Roman senators were complaining of the 'Power of the mob' well before that.

  • So, it is ok to blame the tool now? (Score:3)

    by khchung ( 462899 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @02:27AM (#64138034) Journal

    How did the technology that we considered 'cool' just a decade ago become an assault weapon used to

    Since when is it right to blame the *tool* for how someone used the tool to hurt other people? Did people in the past also blamed horses, railroads, or the telegram, for allowing harmful ideas to spread much faster than it used to?

    If that is ok, then how about starting the blame from, e.g., some of the tools that was designed to hurt people first? Such as some of those actual assault weapons? Rather than other tools that were alleged to have "became" one?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Since when is it right to blame the *tool* for how someone used the tool to hurt other people?

      Since the U.S. Constitution, if not earlier. The founders knew [wikipedia.org] that a direct popular vote could be used as a tool to hurt other people, and that is why they chose a representative form of government and put in place [wikipedia.org] the Electoral College.

  • Since a few people are apparently confused about Vardi referring to the technology...

    That said, he is not wrong.

  • Slashdot (Score:3)

    by quintessencesluglord ( 652360 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @06:11AM (#64138196)

    As Slashdot was one of the early and premier social media websites, I'm curious about the trail of hurt, traumatize, and vulnerable people killed in its wake. Who new Natalie Portman and foodstuff could be so destructive.

    Slashdot did accelerate pointing out glaring holes in my thought processes (not so much anymore), forcing me to reconsider several sacred truths.

    That aspect of social media seems to have died down a great deal, but it's available in limited pockets.

    Self-aggrandizement however is in full tilt. Still can't wrap my head around "influencer" without receipts.

    So is it really social media or the new crop of users?

    • Older boards and forums and whatnot never attracted the kind of dimwits that clutter current social media sites. Because the makers of those boards had standards other than "let's have as many eyeballs as possible". That's the only metric these new social media sites care about. Only very rarely do they rein that problem in, usually when it starts to attract the attention of their advertisers and how they don't want to run ads next to sexist or racist content.

      Older boards also got their "regulars" at a time

  • Telephone, radio, TV, electricity, the fax machine, the automobile, airplanes, you name it. Every new technology can be and has been used as a tool of war.

  • >Our obsession with efficiency came at the expense of resilience.

    Things still seem pretty resilient, here. Haven't had a dropped connection or down web page in quite some time.

    > In the name of efficiency, we aimed at eliminating all friction. In the name of efficiency, it became desirable to move fast and break things,

    Sounds pretty good to me, as long as they don't move fast and break things in the safety space, which we crack down on when we find out about.

    >we allowed the technology industry to be

  • This is really no different from IBM punch card tabulators being used to track Jews in 1930s Germany -- once a technology is out there, it's incredibly difficult to keep it from being put to use in any application it's suitable for, and some it isn't. Freedom to do good is often freedom to do harm as well. Of course IBM kept selling them more even after they knew what was being done, which is a stain they acknowledge, but I don't see how anyone could have prevented the use of tabulators to track and oppress

  • The big question is this: did social media cause all of these problems, or just reveal them? These feelings have existed in humanity long before social media came to be, but remained under the surface because of societal pressures, resulting in things like ulcers and emotional breakdowns.

  • Responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @01:26PM (#64138747)

    "It is time for all computing professionals to accept responsibility for computing's current state."

    I don't like this language. Diluting responsibility in this manner only diverts accountability away from those who are actually responsible for the outcome.

    Whether it is tech industry deliberately constructing fancy message boards with piss poor governance to maximize attention or MSM trolling the public with fear and outrage to maximize attention. Someone somewhere made an affirmative decision to fuck over society for profit and a whole lot of other people made an affirmative decision to go along with it.

    While I believe it is constructive to call on people with relevant experience to help fix the problem "all computing professionals" are not responsible for it.

  • I think he is definitely on to something.
    Collectively, we are the ones responsible for building this
    steaming pile of shit we call the internet. Without our skills
    and enthusiasm, this would never have happened.
    It's time we accepted responsibility for it.

  • I don't recall anyone forcing me to have a social media account. If you are concerned about the harm it may do to you, there is a simple solution: don't use social media! Instead people seem to use it voraciously and then complain about the supposed harm it's doing. That doesn't make sense to me.

  • The same was said of the printing press, the telegraph and the telephone.

    There are always luddites harelipped by progress. Shit sorts itself out if you let it.

  • Not even close to true (Score:3)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Sunday January 07, 2024 @02:32PM (#64138901)

    ... dominated by a very small number of mega corporations.

    This is the only complaint even close to true and it's still false: How did writing code decide the size of a corporation? Product differentiation and vendor lock-in has always been a thing: He didn't complain when big iron, AOL, CompuServe, then Apple, created walled gardens. Software developers didn't cause people to buy one of those products and ignore the competition.

    ... used to hurt, traumatize, and even kill ...

    George Orwell and Ray Bradbury wrote stories where the government used microphones, newspapers, billboards and censorship to damage the people: The people didn't help corporations exploit customers and didn't turn social media into hate-mongering. It is dishonest of Moshe Y. Vardi to claim this was invented by computing technology and its minions.

    ... become an assault weapon ...

    This ignores how much antisemitism and yellow journalism newspapers published 120 and 100 years ago: Main-stream media didn't bock hate-mongering, just like social media on computers. Even in the 21st century, hate-mongering continues with Fox News: But today it is more subtle, no longer a call to violence. It is passive yellow journalism: Their propaganda of 'someone else fight this and someone else fix my feelings' means Fox News is not the ring-leader and not responsible. They turned American against American long before Facebook, Twitter/X and Youtube chose to glorify vitriol and hate-mongering. Fox News also exports this elitism to other countries, where corporations and billionaires have less celebrity status.

    Moshe Y. Vardi is ignoring the the fact that hate-mongering doesn't start on social media. Social media has its own demons but ignoring MSM, ignoring US racism and caste, and spouting half-truths, is the Salem witch-trials, is McCarthyism, in a new dress.

    ... that we considered 'cool' ...

    Blaming all computing-tech people because of the damage done by a handful of corporations means we can also blame a multitude of corporations for global warming, for pollution, for the persistence of American racism, and especially for the unending worship of winner-take-all capitalism.

  • A correction is happening and many old people are struggling to understand they are not the victims they were (wrongly) taught they were. Watching the white as a sheet Jews and Irish Roman Catholics lose control over media and defining who is a victim is funny (both partook in slavery and KKK too). One culture is now known for lying about its population proportion for political control, world wide incest and paedophilia, ran pogroms at home against Jews, and killed more black people throughout the Northern

  • We thought social media, open access to information, and unfettered communication would shine light in every dark spot and democratize information and access.

    We didn't realize it would provide an unlimited platform to the hate-mongers, misogynists, and bigots as well. It turns out people have no problem using this wide access to attack their neighbors and build stronger suppression tools.

  • Every engineering and science discipline has known that they are both the solution and the problem.

    Mechanical engineering has built bows, cross bows, trebuchet.
    Civil and structural engineering has been building and destroying fortifications since before AD,
    Chemical engineering has built gunpowder and plastic explosives.
    Biological engineering has biological weapons
    Electrical engineering has guidance systems for missiles
    Nuclear engineers have THE BOMB
    CompSci has had rose colored glasses on and co

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Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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