Blogging increasingly feels like a pointless exercise, carrying risks that are difficult to anticipate or control. What was supposed to expand human communication has become an environment of commercial manipulation, trolling, automated noise, opaque identities and unpredictable consequences. We cannot reliably know who is reading, who is responding, what their intentions are, or how our words will be used. Serious thought demands considerable effort, while trolling, misrepresentation, appropriation and intimidation cost almost nothing. The more consequential an idea, the greater the potential cost of expressing it, while the systems mediating communication reward precisely the conflict and instability they help generate. We have constructed a communications environment in which speaking freely carries increasing risks, meaningful engagement becomes increasingly unlikely, and silence begins to look like the only rational response.
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On Blogging
The internet promised freedom of expression. Instead, it has created a communications environment where serious thought carries increasing personal risks, while trolling, manipulation and intimidation flourish.
