Human facial expressions and other non-verbal communication cues are being replaced by the arrangement of dots on a screen.

Daily Mail:

Full stops intimidate young people when used in social media communication as they are interpreted as a sign of anger, according to linguistic experts.

Teenagers and those in their early twenties, classified as Generation Z, have grown up with smartphones which they use to send short messages without full stops.

And a study from Binghamton University in New York suggested that people who finish messages with full stops are perceived as insincere.

Linguistic experts are now investigating why teens interpret a correctly-punctuated text as a signal of irritation.

The debate was reignited after writer Rhiannon Cosslett tweeted: ‘Older people – do you realise that ending a sentence with a full stop comes across as sort of abrupt and unfriendly to younger people in an email/chat? Genuinely curious.’

Several Twitter users expressed disbelief, and, despite her own use of a full stop, one even accused her of ‘peak snowflakery’.

That prompted crime novelist Sophie Hannah to reply: ‘Just asked 16-year-old son – apparently this is true. If he got a message with full stops at the end of sentences he’d think the sender was “weird, mean or too blunt“.’

According to experts, youngsters used to communicating electronically break up their thoughts by sending each one as a separate message, rather than using a full stop, which they use only to signal they are annoyed or irritated.

Some have said the full stop is redundant when used in texting because the message is ended just by sending it.

According to The Telegraph, Linguist Dr Lauren Fonteyn of Leiden University in Holland, tweeted: ‘If you send a text message without a full stop, it’s already obvious that you’ve concluded the message.

‘So if you add that additional marker for completion, they will read something into it and it tends to be a falling intonation or negative tone.’

A linguist from the University of Cambridge, Owen McArdle, told the newspaper: ‘I’m not sure I agree about emails. I guess it ­depends how formal they are.

‘But full stops are, in my experience, very much the exception and not the norm in [young people’s] instant messages, and have a new role in signifying an abrupt or angry tone of voice.’

And the potential change in meaning of the full stop, in relation to online communication, has been debated by linguists for years.

Professor David Crystal, one of the world’s leading language experts, argues that the usage of full stops is being ‘revised in a really fundamental way’.

In his book, Making a Point, he says that the punctuation mark has become an ’emotion marker’ which alerts the recipient that the sender is angry or annoyed.

He wrote: ‘You look at the internet or any instant messaging exchange – anything that is a fast dialogue taking place. People simply do not put full stops in, unless they want to make a point.

The full stop is now being used in those circumstances as an emotion marker.’

Perhaps technology was a mistake and we should be watching people’s faces and listening to people’s voices to figure out their emotions instead of reading too much into whether they respect proper grammar in instant messages or not. The fact that people automatically and subconsciously look for emotion markers in text exposes the need for face-to-face communication.

But it’s 2020 and we’re living in some kind of science fiction dystopia where the government can do anything “because of the virus,” and people are adapting to a lifestyle of complete social isolation.

Punctuation marks are the closest to markers for human emotion that you’re going to see.

When I saw the lawsuit headline, I figured they were being sued for bad security – which would be bad.

But in fact they’re being sued for good security.

Which implies it’s a good app. It doesn’t necessarily mean that – it just implies it.

RT:

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is facing criminal charges in Iran due to the encrypted messaging application’s popularity with terrorists, child pornographers and other criminal elements, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi has said.

Telegram is “providing services to terrorist groups such as IS (Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL), creating a suitable platform for the activities of other groups and promoting and facilitating the perpetration of child pornography, human trafficking and narcotics trafficking,” Dolatabadi said as cited by BBC Persian.

The prosecutor didn’t specify the charges against the Russian entrepreneur, only saying that the case has been referred to the international affairs division of Tehran Prosecutor’s Office. According to Dolatabadi, “Western law” didn’t apply to the Iranian case against Telegram.

Durov can only be tried by Iran in absentia as he lives outside of the Islamic Republic and is unlikely to come to Iran for the trial. The entrepreneur holds passports of Russia as well as Saint Kitts and Nevis, with his place of residence unknown to the public.

Does he even exist? 

Durov was addressed on the Iranian charges on Twitter. He replied that he was “surprised” to hear the news.

I am surprised to hear that. We are actively blocking terrorist and pornographic content in Iran. I think the real reasons are different.

— Pavel Durov (@durov) September 26, 2017

“We are actively blocking terrorist and pornographic content in Iran,” he wrote.

According to the entrepreneur, Telegram’s moderators have been blocking around 1,000 channels, chats and bots with terrorist or pornographic content in Iran on a daily basis.

“I think the real reasons are different,” Durov suggested, allegedly referring to the row between the Iranian authorities and Telegram.

The encrypted app allows millions of users in Iran to bypass the country’s ban on social media.

Telegram also has a feature, which lets users to set their messages to “self-destruct” after they were read by the addressee.

The app has been previously blamed for being used by the terrorists and other criminals for communication purposes.

Indonesia blocked the web versions of Telegram in July, arguing that “many channels in the service are propaganda of radicalism, terrorism, hatred, invitation or how to assemble bombs, how to attack.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) also said Telegram was used by the terrorists behind the St Petersburg metro suicide attack which killed in 15 people in April.

Obviously, terrorism is bad, but an app that can be used successfully by terrorists to communicate is probably good.

Encryption of chat rooms is always going to be more complicated and way less secure than encryption of one-to-one communication.

But I think Telegram is a good option for people to use. I recommend Book Club guys use this. Though I have recommended Discord before, due to it’s functionality, it is basically as bad as Skype as far as security, and following Charlottesville, it looks like they might have been monitoring people’s private communications.

You can use it for bullshitting and shitposting, but for anything more serious, you should use an encrypted app.

Signal is best, but only allows 1-on-1 communication.

I think Signal even signaled us in an ad – look at the middle there.

The problem with Telegram is that as of right now, it requires a phone number to register to use it. But once you’ve registered the number, you are good – so you can buy a disposable SIM card and then trash it.

It has a desktop version which is very good. I’ve started using it since Laura Loomer got us all banned from Discord.