"Democracy and Social Media" is our NEXT PROJECT (deadline: April 30)

[Doctor Fab]

Hello All,

What about "Democracy and Social Media" as a topic for our next project?

The NYT article below is indeed a good read and can be an excellent source of inspiration.

Submission Deadline : APRIL 30th

Each poet can submit up to 3 (three) poems of any length.

To collect the submissions, we'll use our "old group" 13-poetry-for-democracy

The poets who are not yet registered members of this group, can go to

• https://groups.google.com/g/13-poetry-for-democracy

and ask to join.

All registered members can submit their poem(s) to the group's email:

• 13-poetry-f...@googlegroups.com

Submit only unpublished poems.

__________

Please, note:
The new entries have to add a BIOGRAPHY no longer than 200 words, written in 1st person, stating clearly:
     First name
     Family name
     Nationality
     Country + Year of birth
     City/Country where currently living
Note: for publishing and copyright issues, we need to know the real name of all the poets.

The copyright of the poems will remain in the hands of their Authors, but all Participants will accept to make us free to publish the book at no cost and without any other obligation on our part than to publish the poems selected (the acceptance of this point will be attested, by each Participant, by simply sending their poems). To make it clear: by submitting their poems the Authors agree to grant non-exclusive world rights to Fabrizio Frosini and 'Poets Unite Worldwide' for publishing the submitted poems in books, without fee, so long as the Authors are credited --this does not prevent the Authors from publishing their poems anytime, anywhere, by themselves, or from granting others the right to do so.

NO FEES are requested.

A Judging Committee will decide if the poems are worthy to be accepted for publication.

Best regards -- and.. take care! 😷
Fabrizio Frosini

Continue reading the main story February 19, 2021 The Reluctant Overlords Australia’s treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said Facebook’s sweeping removal of content confirmed “the immense market power of these digital giants.”Mick Tsikas/Australian Associated Press, via Reuters Picture this: There’s a deadly pandemic. Your community has fared significantly better than most, at least so far. Most of your neighbors think your leaders have done well. At the same time, a little under half of your community, 39 percent, gets its news and information through a website run by a foreign corporation based 7,500 miles away. Most in your community say that your government should regulate this website. Maybe they believe the corporation is too powerful, or taking too much money from local competitors, or they have some other reason. Continue reading the main story Your government moves toward requiring the company to pay local news organizations for linking to their articles. Some experts think this regulation is a good idea, others that it’s half-baked and counterproductive. The company refuses. It takes the nuclear option: blocking users in your community from using their site to access any news whatsoever. And not just news. Politicians running for re-election, groups that work with victims of domestic violence, the state weather service, even government health offices (don’t forget that pandemic!) all go dark. Some later come back online, others don’t. That 39 percent who get their news through the foreign website, your neighbors and family members, keep checking it; habits die hard. Anecdotal reports suggest that, with news blocked, they see rumor and speculation instead, not all of it factual. There is still the pandemic. The country is Australia. The website is Facebook. It all happened this week. If you live in Australia or have been following the story from afar, you might blame Facebook for this or you might blame the government, or even both. Continue reading the main story But the story represents a trend that has been growing for a few years now: Facebook and other social media platforms acting as reluctant powers in the societies where they operate. If this feels new, it’s only because you live in a wealthy Western democracy where the companies have been humbler and not in the developing world, where they have been bolder. In late 2017, in an effort to boost what it calls “meaningful interaction” among users, Facebook relegated news organizations from its primary news feed to a secondary page. The change, called Explore, was implemented in a handful of small countries in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. News outlets in those countries reported plummeting readership. Misinformation and hate speech, shared by everyday users, seemed to rise in their place. “While this experiment lasted, many of us missed out on the bigger picture, on more credible news,” Nalaka Gunawardene, a technology analyst in Sri Lanka, one of the affected countries, said at the time. “The unintended consequences can be significant in societies that are already volatile, societies where communal tensions or other kinds of tensions are already building up,” he said. “So a little nudge from a platform like Facebook can spark it off.” The week we spoke, hateful rumors spread on Facebook had sparked riots in Sri Lanka, leaving at least one person dead. For weeks beforehand, government officials and rights groups had asked Facebook to remove the hate speech, or at least limit its spread, but were, they said, ignored. Ultimately, the government blocked nationwide access to Facebook and other platforms. It had done so reluctantly; officials credited social media with helping to usher in their country’s nascent democracy. Finally, Facebook responded, promising to act. It had also shut down Explore. Later, it took responsibility for helping drive the violence. Australia and Sri Lanka fit a pattern dating back to as early as 2012, when India’s government blocked access to American social platforms that it accused of helping to provoke deadly riots. It’s worth getting familiar with this pattern because, as governments get bolder about demanding changes from the companies and the companies get bolder about pushing back, it’s something we might see again. It goes like this: American social media companies move quickly to dominate a market. Maybe they even cover users’ mobile data fees, making their services the only affordable option for many people. By design, millions of people come to rely on the platforms as their primary news source. There is a disagreement between the government and the companies over how its services operate. It escalates until one of them blocks access. Usually, it’s the government that pulls the plug. As Richard Allan, a former Facebook executive, said in 2018, “They have the ultimate weapon, which is the off switch.” But the fight in Australia is a reminder that the companies have this power, too. Social media services are not just another product. It’s not like pulling tainted Tylenol from store shelves or recalling the Ford Pinto. By the companies’ own efforts, their services have become intertwined with — and, to many users, indistinguishable from — essential services. It is true that sites like Facebook or YouTube are hardly the only ways to access information. Australians who want updates from their state health authority or desperately need to reach their local nonprofit for domestic abuse have other ways to access them both. But the companies, by design, have so effectively and ruthlessly dominated the flow of information worldwide as to make themselves, many rights groups argue, essential. Human Rights Watch, in a statement calling on Facebook to “immediately lift these restrictions” imposed in Australia, accused the company of “severely restricting and censoring the flow of information to Australians.” Even Facebook’s harshest critics in the Sri Lankan government, who saw it as complicit in deadly violence, said they had anguished over blocking access, and rushed to reinstate it, because Facebook and other platforms had made themselves indispensable. These far-off corporations had hard-wired themselves into Sri Lankan society, for better or worse. “Because the platform is global and has more than two billion users, they may not realize all the consequences,” Mr. Gunawardene said. Facebook and other companies have since dedicated more resources to managing their influence responsibly. Governments too have sought, imperfectly, to improve both their understanding of the platforms’ influence and their levers for guiding them. But these are still private corporations, unelected, governed by an imperative to maximize shareholder value. Facebook’s market capitalization is about 20 times the size of the world’s median national economy. These services are more ingrained in our informational infrastructure all the time, whether the companies want that responsibility or not. Which means that their interests, corporate and otherwise, get balanced against other needs like, say, Australians’ access to news during a pandemic. Yesterday’s Sri Lanka is today’s Australia, is tomorrow’s … well, we’ll find out.

[Doctor Fab]

Hi,

I hope that all of you are well, and so are your loved ones

As a reminder, these are our 3 projects for this Spring and Summer:

— POETRY: "Democracy & Social Media" (Deadline: April 30)
— members can submit up to 3 poems of any length.

— POETRY: "What Planet For Our Grandchildren?" (Deadline: May 31)
— members can submit up to 3 poems of any length.

— SHORT STORIES: a collection of free-themed stories (Deadline: June 30)
— members can submit up to 2 short tales [each story has to be longer than 1,000 words]

Everybody can join one or all the projects.
To take part in the projects, you have to register (see below).

*******************************
REGISTRATION and SUBMISSION:
*******************************

1. — "Democracy & Social Media"

To collect the submissions, we'll use our "old group" 13-poetry-for-democracy

The poets who are not yet registered members of this group, can register at:
https://groups.google.com/g/13-poetry-for-democracy

All registered members can then submit their poem(s) to the group email:
13-poetry-f...@googlegroups.com


2. — "What Planet For Our Grandchildren?"

Register at our "old group" 12-poetry-for-our-planet :
https://groups.google.com/g/12-poetry-for-our-planet

All registered members can then submit their poem(s) to the group email:
12-poetry-fo...@googlegroups.com


3. — SHORT STORIES: a collection of free-themed stories ***

For this project we'll use our "old group" 34-short-tales. To register, go to:
https://groups.google.com/g/34-short-tales

After registration, the writers can submit their tale(s) to the group email:
34-shor...@googlegroups.com


— *** For Project # 3.:
— Please, note: if there is a good number of stories suitable for children, we may decide to collect them in a CHILDREN's book --but to do so, we need a book of at least 20.000 words.

On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 1:16 PM Doctor Fab <docto...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

'Poetic Fantasies, Volume 4.' has been published at Amazon:

• PAPERBACK Edition:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XYNH3NY

• EBOOK (Kindle Edition):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/dp/B08XMQ9PSZ/

And these are our NEXT projects:

1. POETRY: "Democracy & Social Media" (Deadline: April 30) -see below-
2. POETRY: "What Planet For Our Grandchildren?" (Deadline: May 31)
3. SHORT STORIES: a collection of free-themed stories (Deadline: June 30)

Cheers

F.

_____________________________________________________________

"Democracy and Social Media" is the topic of our next project

The NYT article below is indeed a good read and can be an excellent source of inspiration.

Submission Deadline : APRIL 30th

Each poet can submit up to 3 (three) poems of any length.

To collect the submissions, we'll use our "old group" 13-poetry-for-democracy

The poets who are not yet registered members of this group, can go to

• https://groups.google.com/g/13-poetry-for-democracy

and ask to join.

All registered members can submit their poem(s) to the group's email:

• 13-poetry-f...@googlegroups.com

Submit only unpublished poems.

__________

Please, note:
The new entries have to add a BIOGRAPHY no longer than 200 words, written in 1st person, stating clearly:
     First name
     Family name
     Nationality
     Country + Year of birth
     City/Country where currently living
Note: for publishing and copyright issues, we need to know the real name of all the poets.

The copyright of the poems will remain in the hands of their Authors, but all Participants will accept to make us free to publish the book at no cost and without any other obligation on our part than to publish the poems selected (the acceptance of this point will be attested, by each Participant, by simply sending their poems). To make it clear: by submitting their poems the Authors agree to grant non-exclusive world rights to Fabrizio Frosini and 'Poets Unite Worldwide' for publishing the submitted poems in books, without fee, so long as the Authors are credited --this does not prevent the Authors from publishing their poems anytime, anywhere, by themselves, or from granting others the right to do so.

NO FEES are requested.

A Judging Committee will decide if the poems are worthy to be accepted for publication.

Best regards -- and.. take care! 😷
F

[Doctor Fab]

Hello All,

This is to remind you of the deadline of April 30 for submitting poems on "Democracy and Social Media" (however, the poems can just be about "Democracy" - generally speaking).

I also remind you that the anthology will contain an Addendum to commemorate the poet and friend Daniel Brick, who passed away on March 16th. Short poems written about him can be added in such a section.

Cheers
F.

[Doctor Fab]

Hello All,

This is to remind everyone who'd like to submit their poetry (of any length) for the Anthology "Democracy & Social Media", that the submission DEADLINE is April 30.

You can also submit a few lines as a commemoration of Daniel Brick, to be published in a special section dedicated to Him. In this case, you can send a brief prose eulogy or a short poem *

Thanks
Cheers
F.

P.S.: so far, 29 poets have submitted their poetry for the project "DEMOCRACY"; and 38 have sent a brief eulogy or a poem to commemorate Daniel Brick [* Poem length should be limited to 10/15 lines].