The web kept its romantic aura long after real harms accumulated

Evidence

The world was slow to turn on the web, still after all the fountain of the new. Whether for reasons of politics or politesse, the web would suffer a lot of ruin before many critics, who’d fallen in love with its openness, would admit that things had gone awry. Even so, by the mid-2010s, more and more ordinary users had their own impression of the emperor’s new clothes. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1091

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of technological enchantment persisting past evidence of harm, similar to how critics stayed faithful to broadcast’s promise. — connects to: Web 2.0 celebratory claims faded into structural critiques — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 47; Electronic harms carried out remotely escape personal moral control because outcomes stay diffuse — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 477

Broader Connections

• Web 2.0 celebratory claims faded into structural critiques #corroborates (0.82) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 47
• Electronic harms carried out remotely escape personal moral control because outcomes stay diffuse #qualifies (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 477