2021-11-03T11:49:58+01:00

In an article at The Atlantic Ian Bogost writes about the differences between the Facebook Papers and older leaked documents:

The Facebook Papers are, in aggregate, a supersensory supply of materials about a social network, produced on its own, internal social network, prima facie assumed to have meaning whose depth exceeds their surface, and mustered as rapidly as possible to generate emotions. They’re a tiny outrage machine, sucking the exhaust from a much bigger one.

Furthermore, he notes that the analysis of these documents reflects the discourses on social media platforms themselves:

This dance between Facebook’s internal debates and journalists’ interpretation of them as withering revelations repeats the ritual that online debate has normalized: Posts beget discourse that begets ever more posts that take the place of action, let alone knowledge. Depth and surface become indistinguishable, always implying that there’s more to the story, only to recede back into the shadows moments later.