At the Firing Line-style debate between Ann Coulter and Mickey Kaus, audience questions were required to be sent via Twitter.
On many websites, comments can only be submitted if you have Facebook, Google+ or another social media account.
This is frustrating to me for a couple reasons.
First, Twitter, Facebook and Google are large corporations, with political agendas that are often at odds with the sites that require them. Do people realize that by requiring participation/subscription to a particular corporation's offerings they are explicitly supporting that corporation?
Second, it's very disturbing to have people frozen out of much the community of ideas because they refuse to deal with a particular corporation. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social media account. I'm opposed to the entire idea of social media -- all social media sites engage in Orwellian tracking of their users to truly astonishing degrees. I've done research professionally that bears this out. I also have nothing but contempt for Twitter's trivializing, anti-intellectual effect on public discourse. The tiny bites of text it allows are anti-communication.
I'm required to have a Google account just to host this blog, but it's not a plus account. I even feel guilty about having that, because I know Google, even without plus accounts, is a major tracker and monitor of behavior.
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