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Wednesday, 07 December 2022 12:50

This Week in Tech with Jeanne Destro-12-9-22: Twitphobia!

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Everybody's been talking about the big Twitter meltdown, ever since the world's richest man, Elon Musk, bought it, laid off thousands of employees, and demanded those who are left, pledge "hardcore" allegiance to getting the job done, whatever it takes.

For some of them; that means sleeping there overnight, which Musk 'thoughtfully' enabled this week, allegedly by installing beds in some conference rooms–which might be great for him– but might also be a dangerous violation of San Francisco's zoning code.

But I've been worried about another kind of danger; the kind that comes from using one of the world's largest and most influential social media sites, without enough people left on staff to block dangerous and misleading content, safeguard user data, and block hackers.

That's why I've developed "Twitphobia" – the fear of posting on Twitter.

Now, while I just made up that completely imaginary malady; the underlying danger is real.

Two points for me as well, because I actually admit that I made it up – which is a whole lot more than you can say for all the people spreading lies, hate speech and disinformation on Twitter, since Musk laid off most of his content moderators.

Then, there was Musk himself, releasing internal data this week, seeking to prove former Twitter management was (allegedly) doing something shady when they at first declined to spread information about Hunter Biden's purloined and hacked laptop a few years ago, and then a few days later changed their minds, after discussing how to best handle the situation based on their content moderation standards.

Listen now to find out you might want to think twice before posting on Twitter, according to Computer Information Systems Professor, John Nicholas, from the University of Akron, who teaches Cybersecurity.


 

JOHN NICHOLAS

Dr. John Nicholas, University of Akron

Read 3509 times Last modified on Thursday, 15 December 2022 09:19