Adam Brown

What is the name of these groups?

You mean worse in terms of people feeling able to speak freely, exactly as if they were texting, but of course in terms of the societal damage, they're not radicalising anyone who isn't already radicalised enough to have been invited to join the radical whatsapp group, so they're far less damaging

Are there specific examples, and if Whatsapp didn't exist, wouldn't people just communicate some other way?

Its the same as they say in the pub or the cafeteria or the locker room (stereotype), and what people would have previously just said via email or text message instead. I don't think you can blame the medium.

The pattern was already set: they suddenly pivoted hard right, and in doing so normalised and legitimised Farage's odious talking points, raising Reforms' vote share at the expense of their own. If they were paid Reform plants they couldn't have executed it better

These media channels are less P2P communication channels like whatsapp or email, but effectively mass entertainment broadcasters but in which there is absolutely no quality control, no attempt to prevent abuse or misinformation, no accountability, and no-one has legal responsibility

I think the distinction is that Whatsapp just provides another channel for existing group dynamics (family arguments, mates "banter" etc), whereas twitter, instagram, tiktok, facebook etc are an entirely new form of media with a whole range of negative side effects we're only just recognising

but why is the green line not green arrgh

Amongst all the other extremely ethically dubious stuff, Dubai is basically the epitome of nouveau riche

This has been happening since the 70s though - at one point an accomplished engineer or academic would earn as much as a senior financial services worker. Now the gulf in wealth is enormous.

Its not the fault of voters (well it kinda is) that we've had 15 years (debatably 45 years) of zero sum economic policy, where sustainable long-term growth was deliberately sacrificed in favour of short-term enrichment and cronyism. At this point to believe in anything else would be incredibly naive

and I may have this wrong because I've never used them, but a quick google tells me that channels are just signing up to voluntarily receive adverts from big corporations, not any kind of open chat forum

but click on whatsapp communities and it just shows groups you've actively been invited to by someone who had your phone number. If you're getting invited to eg neo-Nazi groups, I suggest you urgently change your phone number

and we've long had group text messages, and before that, group emails, going back to the mid 90s. People collectively setting up private discussion groups is a very different thing to social media that anyone can access

but these are closed groups of people you know you've been invited to (and chosen to accept). If people are saying bad stuff then that's really on you for associating with the wrong type of person. Its not like these are public groups spreading hate through facebook videos that people can't avoid

The above piece could just have easily have started "in text messages leaked to the Miami Herald..."

99% of my whatsapps are just p2p - its literally just a like for like replacement on SMS - the other one is for signing up to weekly cricket nets. Does that count as radicalisation? I've never met anyone who had any other experience.

Whatsapp is just text messages. Its not even really social media

emails is just the way work is transmitted in a knowledge economy. Its how you organise, delegate, communicate, enquire, explain. Its just the medium. Its like how most historic or blue collar jobs are just "moving stuff about"

and even at the bottom end: over 50% said very or strongly attached. There are ZERO counties in England where the majority of people don't feel at least a fairly strong attachment.

This really does demonstrate just how strongly the English are to their counties: %s who said either very or fairly strongly running into the 80% + at the top end

and tbf, these numbers are a "very strong" attachment. Presumably there are also lots of people reporting merely "strong" or "quite strong", that would take the numbers well over 50%

Its essentially a measure of how much your historic county allegiance has been out-competed by allegiance to nearby large cities (often via the media of sports teams)

That's an interesting question, but, why? It doesn't really matter where you locate your servers from a user POV, does it?

In the UK electricity prices are set nationally, not locally, so it doesn't make any difference (to households) whether the data centre is next door or 500 miles away

Is this a US thing? As far as I am aware, in the UK the proximity of a data centre has no impact on your water rates or energy bills

Presumably there will end up being quite a lot of vertical segmentation. You don't need the latest model for morons to make pictures of puppies

It's still not clear to me how big the endogenous sunk costs are going to be, and how many players the global market will support as a result, and hence how uncompetitive of an oligopoly we eventually end up with

Comparative advantage enters stage left

Consider perhaps that you have dunning Kruger syndrome