The current state of social media is making many things worse. I shared a few years ago how the tendency to share screenshots instead of links is problematic, and it’s only gotten worse since then.
According to some studies, social media posts without links will perform 10x better than those that include links — these companies are encouraging users to share screenshots instead of links, which is bad for everyone.
In reading the book “The Future of Text“, there was a small snippet that I pulled this title from, when they said:
“…a world with Fake News text which is quick to forward but slow to consider“
They go on to share how things are getting worse, where it’s often not just the lack of a link (which you can likely find on your own), but where sources are literally inaccessible. Also from the book:
“A 21st century academic cites a passage from a history of modern politics but cannot refer to the page number since he is reading a commercially published electronic book or a PDF behind a paywall. It is not practical for the reader to track down the document (and pay for it) and the fact that it does not have internal addressing (no page number) results in his reader either blindly agreeing with the argument or simply discarding it– without having read the citation source. This scenario highlights the vital importance of being able to point while communicating and thinking.“
This ties in closely to my recent post about the need to break text free. Every year, our words are getting locked down further and further — not in what we’re allowed to say, but in our ability to save (and later retrieve) the words that we’re saying.
I encourage you, whenever possible, to share the details behind the headlines that you share, and publish your text in places where it can be found in the future. I fear this may be a losing battle, but I’ll continue to fight for it.
