When people thought it would usher in an era of world peace and understanding?
Stephen Fry explained this brilliantly 6 years ago
In 2024 thoughtful young US vlogger Joel reacts to what he said.
Great listening to Joel from Maryland at any time! Just 20 years old. I have followed his vlogs for a few years now, from when he was still in high school.
Speaking of the good side of the Internet I spoke of the E M Forster tag “only connect” in a 2022 post about some of the Russian and Ukrainian vlogs I had been following:
I discern it also in vloggers like Joel in Maryland USA who reaches out with eyes open and willingness to find the good in people and the world. It is encouraging that there are in the world young people like Joel and Zack and Nik and Niki and Natasha and Roman and Anna from Ukraine and Pavlo from Ukraine and Konstantin (not quite as young) and Daniil and Artyom and Denis in Vladivostok and so on. And only through technology have I found them — and in some cases have they found one another.
I recall conversations with my boss Dick Stratford in the 1990s about the wonders of the “world-wide web” and similar conversations equally hopeful in The Albury with the late Dowager Empress of Hong Kong. I did not enter this magic kingdom until late 1999! And I too was wonderstruck, and by 2000 had even become a blogger! Though I called it a diary, and what I was doing I called “journalling”, using the term I learned in the 70s through Bob Walshe in the English Teachers Writing Group.
And now? Well, there’s social media — and despite the past couple of days I still like Facebook, even if the crass treatment I copped there in those two days, and described in the last two posts, still rankles.
Fact is Facebook has in many ways been a wonderful means of renewing otherwise lost links, being exposed to great conversations, and so much more…
But there is also:
Stephen Fry again
Meanwhile I have reviewed the way I use Facebook
It could be the Dumbbot yesterday was reacting to the number of posts I was sharing, not the content of the one it removed. Still dumb, of course. However, I trimmed yesterday’s output and much that was on my FB feed or would have been later that day ended up on Mastodon, where humans, not AI and algorithms still rule. It is even possible on Mastodon to put your case to actual human beings,in the event of a troubling post being flagged. I have not had to resort to that, but I have seen it done with other users of Mastodon.
I announced the changes on FB in a pinned post yesterday:
Yes, using that link on the phone version of my Facebook I can go straight to my Mastodon which renders well. There you can scroll down all the posts I have made there.
Obviously you can in a similar way get from the link to my Mastodon that sits in the Intro box on the top left of the laptop view. So it is easy to find the posts which may not be on Facebook any more. That will include quite a few of the vlogs I have normally featured on Facebook, such as Joel or Roman the Russian.
So, please follow me over to Mastodon, but of course much will also be shared on posts here in the blog. I am due for another vlog catch-up soon.
Neil's Commonplace Book 