The mute button was invented in 1956 by Robert Adler, an Austrian-born engineer working for the Zenith Radio Corporation in Chicago. So Zenith boasted that the mute button would allow viewers to “shut off the sound of long, annoying commercials”. Mute promises a snake-free garden, a world where you can curate your content and silence dissent. Instead of “blocking” someone objectionable (which they will know about) you can now discreetly “mute” them (which they won’t know about). If you want a glimpse of happy Twitter, type “mute button” into the search box: “Just wanna thank my ‘mute’ button for never giving up on me <3”; “Mute button is top 10 most powerful things in the universe”; “I thank @instagram for creating their mute posts and story buttons” etc.

Source: The Guardian June 12, 2019 04:52 UTC