Think about it. Jobs gave a voice to every idiot on the planet. We wouldn’t be here had the smartphone remained a tool for business types or a toy for nerds.
That tech was coming regardless. Andy Rubin was already working on Android.
The tech was headed in a different direction. Early Android was nothing like iPhoneOS, it had to play catch-up and adapt to the new form factor (boring rectangle with a touchscreen). Apple created a demand for their cool shiny toy in a way that Android couldn’t have done. Think about it, by the time the first iPhone was announced, we already had Windows, Symbian and Blackberry phones. Regular people were not buying them, they were a niche product. Android was just heading to join their ranks.
Regular people had stated buying them. I had a smartphone and at least one of my friends did a well. Even feature phones were getting so many apps they were converging on being smartphones. They were already getting Facebook and Twitter apps even on those feature phones.
I would love to know what those middle panels are.
People are saying Facebook, but really it’s the introduction of the algorithm controlling your feed instead of a chronological feed. It wasn’t just Facebook that did that, they all did.
Facebook groups, echo chambers, leniency on hate speech, propaganda, Cambridge Analytica, people ushering in right wing extremism by their own volition, Brexit, Green Deal opposition, war in Ukraine, lunatic in the White House, there’s a lot of stuff that happened because the smartphone was used as a channel for manipulation. At least the pandemic would have happened anyway, but vaccination rates would have probably been higher without everyone having easy, unrestricted access to the internet.
One of those fuckers is Facebook.
