10/28/2021
Hello! I hope you are are doing well! I wanted to take a moment and give you all an update on Peter Demuth Photography. As you may have noticed I haven’t been posting on the various social media platforms recently. Although I’ve been continuing to photograph amazing weddings, families, and portraits I haven’t been posting images on these platforms.
I have various reasons for this. In many ways I think that these platforms have transitioned away from a method of bringing people together and building connection and have morphed into platforms that spread misinformation, and controversial and often absurd ideas. We all have seen this happening throughout the past few years. The recent Wall Street Journal investigation only confirmed this (and I encourage you to listen to their 6 part podcast). To summarize what I found to be the most disturbing aspect of the investigation, after years of dwindling engagement from its users, Facebook learned to increase user engagement they could prioritize controversial posts which generally contain misinformation over posts from your close friends. The implications of this are, in my opinion, immense. Not only does this make these platforms divisive, but they also are supporting spreading lies and exploiting and intensifying peoples’ fears. When you read the same things repeatedly, when you engage with posts on Facebook and then all of sudden see more posts that further these ideas your sense of reality is altered. Truth no longer matters. When truth is so easily altered our world becomes infinitely more dangerous.
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