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Facebook’s role in democracy

Here is a powerful and sobering TED talk by journalist Caroline Cadwalladr about social media’s role in democracy (I don’t think it’s up on YouTube yet but you can watch it on TED’s website).

Also worth checking out is Cadwalladr’s write-up about her talk in The Guardian:

The world needs all kinds of brains. But in the situation we aresdsd in, with the dangers we face, it’s not these kinds of brains. These are brilliant men. They have created platforms of unimaginable complexity. But if they’re not sick to their stomach about what has happened in Myanmar or overwhelmed by guilt about how their platforms were used by Russian intelligence to subvert their own country’s democracy, or sickened by their own role in what happened in New Zealand, they’re not fit to hold these jobs or wield this unimaginable power.