First Blog

Social Media Standards We see more and more inciteful postings appearing on various social media sites.  These include of course recruitment to terrorism – the big one.  Social media sites state they are continually trying to reduce such postings, but they are completely on their own recognizance on how to do it and what to do.  Thus, little is achieved.  They don’t know what to do and simply do not wish to spend the resources to do anything. What is currently missing is a set of standards for what should not be posted.  Such standards for what cannot be transmitted on broadcast television do exist, and while they are mild they have worked for decades.  Ask anyone, I do not favor more regulations, but it is time the government should create an independent agency to first study this problem and then develop standards and guidelines.  Representatives of the the industry, elected officials, and media experts should be involved. However, unless and until there are standards, t

Social media : The dangers of  highly misunderstood social  media are without historical precedent.  They is scarcely research, and few case studies.   They allow contact with select groups with no possible reflection, with no possible oversight, and with only a slight possibility of correction.  They allow the naïve to be converted to almost any persuasion. They are used to bully others, sometimes to the act of suicide.  The worst possible outcome is a populace convinced by errant arguments onto a pathway of destruction.  This allows results generated by the clever miscreant to recruit the ignorant toward societal demise.  Principles from hundreds of generations past are cast aside in favor of an emotional construction of truth. Base principles seem to have disappeared.  On top of all that social media operators mine all subscribers for information about them and at minimum their possible buying habits, possible political beliefs, and religious affiliations.  This is an aspec

Social Media . One item of note today is the great preponderance of cell phones, blogs, twitters, and Facebook.  There are a dozen or more others, as you know.  The question I pose here is why? The Worldwide Data.   All numbers given are estimates, as there is no clear methodology for such data collection ('cept maybe cell phones) as there is for medical conditions, educational information, voters, religions, and the like.  Cell phones: There are  an estimated 5,980,000,000 mobile accounts worldwide, greater than the world population. Mobile accounts out number land lines 5:1. India and China account for at least 30% of this business.  Blogs: There are more than 160,000,000 blogs and 75% of that number are blog readers.  Some estimates are vastly higher. Twitter: There are at least 500,000,000 accounts, with more than 170,000,000 tweeting daily. The average visit time is more than 11 minutes.  People tweet, organizations tweet, religions tweet, even governments tweet. Facebo