Iran's Blogfather: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Are Killing the Web (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Iranian writer Hossein Derakhshan has a unique perspective on the internet. He got into blogging early on, and sparked the spread of blogs across the Iranian internet. In 2008, this earned him a 20-year jail sentence. Late in 2014, he was released early. Derakhshan was a major participant in the early-2000s web, but missed the social media revolution. Here are his thoughts on the change: "The hyperlink was my currency six years ago. It represented the open, interconnected spirit of the world wide web – a vision that started with its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. The hyperlink was a way to abandon centralization – all the links, lines and hierarchies – and replace them with something more distributed, a system of nodes and networks. Since I got out of jail, though, I've realized how much the hyperlink has been devalued, almost made obsolete.

But the scariest outcome of the centralization of information in the age of social networks is something else: it is making us all much less powerful in relation to governments and corporations. Surveillance is increasingly imposed on civilized lives, and it gets worse as time goes by. ... I miss when people took time to be exposed to opinions other than their own, and bothered to read more than a paragraph or 140 characters."

Comments

Frist psot?

[ireallyhateslashdot]

Frosty piss. Also, I think Derakhshan may be right.

Twitter and Facebook is good for friendships

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use twitter and facebook to make new friends. I preach about Jesus and being good and loving. And I make many friends. Make 2016 the year you value friends and family at a premium.