Established in 2009, Dangerous Minds is a news and media website-or, according to another interpretation, a clickbait.
What is novel is the increased and organized monetization of viral content that emerges and results from such circulation of data.Įxceptions do apply, of course. Content published in order to bemuse, cheer up, amuse, irritate, and shock has been shared on discussion forums and home page links of all kinds throughout the history of the Web-and, well before, in e-mail, bulletin board systems (BBSs), and Usenet newsgroups. That this attention economy is elaborate, is finely attuned, and operates at expansive scales and speeds is not to say that its principles of circulation and distraction would be entirely novel, or that it was suddenly born around 2005 with the coining of the concepts of Web 2.0 and social media.
This is explicitly the key aim of clickbaits that feed, and live on (and off), Facebook and Twitter traffic generated through eye-catching headlines and visuals promising affective jolts, shivers of amusement, interest, and fascination. From the perspective of the platforms in question, content that grabs is valuable in its stickiness that makes users pay attention. The logic is not altogether dissimilar from that of dating apps where the task is to find attractive options after being presented with a contingent mass of available choices by actors such as databases, social networks, likes, preferences, and algorithms. When something does grab attention, it leaves some kind of impression, no matter how momentary or minor, that evokes a desire to engage. When browsing through Facebook news feeds, trending tweets, or the top images of Imgur, most content flows by with little effect. Jodi Dean argues that the search for affective intensities drives the movements of users across social media platforms in search of both distracting thrills and more lingering attachments. Furthermore, any uploaded images that are determined to be illegal will be removed and your account will be suspended.Awash with content available at scales too massive for human cognition to fathom, social media revolves around the constant quest of capturing and diverting attention tracking it through the clicks, likes, shares, and recorded visits and monetizing it. The company points out that they do not mediate content, however the service may not be used for any unlawful purpose. Twitter's Media Policy suggests labeling any content containing nudity, violence, or medical procedures as sensitive. What is classified as "sensitive material" will likely vary from one user to the next. The feature is in the initial testing phase where the API cannot be relied upon for accuracy. The message to developers points out that only tweets containing a link will initiate the new field and as such, only the link itself may or may not be considered NSFW, not the actual content of the tweet. Sensitive tweets won't be removed from the site, but simply tagged with a warning to those who wish not to view such content. Additionally, anyone else will be able to tag your material as sensitive which will send a notification to Twitter for further review.
Social networking site Twitter has added the ability to filter NSFW tweets to its API, according to a new post on Twitter's developer website.Īs it stands, users will be able to tag their own tweets as "possibly sensitive" as well as filter out any incoming tweets with the same tag.