The confusion of democracy with populism seems to be a trend over the past decade. Popularity is not democracy. In fact it’s often best if everyone is a little bit unhappy with whatever concession they are making.
Except they objectively do not work on popularity, and optimize for short-term engagement largely through negativity and toxicity instead, as this manipulates the threat-response part of our brains. Instagram's top comment will never be the one with the most likes (i.e the most popular), it will show a comment that has extreme negative sentiment in order to draw your attention in. X/twitter is even worse in this regard. Of course you also have to remember that there are also algorithms that are meant to drive sentiment towards a particular direction, one which you may or may not like.
Algorithm based social media is as undemocratic as it gets. There is only one authority in charge of what you see or don't see.
Traditional media is running their own LLM before LLM even existed. They absorbed their own bubble of information and hallucinate their narrative. I don’t mean it in a bad way. That’s how our tribal brain works, come up with stories with limited exposure to the world.
This article, as with many like it, ignores the fact that trust in "traditional media" is at an all time low globally. That's not because people enjoy fake news on social media, it's because traditional media has failed them. There are many studies that look at bias in traditional media. But journalists within that system completely ignore that aspect (it's harder to deal with), and simply assume they just need to embrace videos or new formats.
But it’s undemocratic to ask the people whether it’s working, the democratic way is to ask the media if they are doing a good job and then tell the people they are wrong.
We can't have a discussion about "traditional media" until we talk about the perverse incentives of advertising.
Right now all media is focused on driving eyes to ads and data harvesting and that is it. There is no "defense of democracy" or any other high minded fantasy morals at play here.
It's a business like any other, only it's been granted vast protections from the repercussions of its actions.
Something I've been wondering about is whether fake news and these alternative realities people live in will eventually have a material impact on their lives.
In my country, where the political divide is huge, I know people who are very successful professionally and financially, yet believe all sorts of things that seem completely detached from reality. For example, I have a cousin who was convinced that if a certain presidential candidate won, the government would confiscate people's savings. Her solution was to convert a large part of her savings into jewelry.
She's highly educated. She also gets a lot of her information about climate change from a fortune teller on Instagram. I know that sounds made up, but it's not.
What's interesting to me is that, despite all this, their lives seem to go on just fine. Maybe they're a bit more anxious than they need to be, but they don't seem materially worse off because of these beliefs.
It makes me wonder whether we're just in an unusual transition period. As it becomes harder to trust what we see online, and as misinformation gets more convincing, will there eventually be a real advantage to consistently relying on reputable sources.
In various places and times in the past, otherwise rational and successful people had all sorts of odd religious (or other ideological) beliefs, that caused them to do odd things. Sometimes, those odd behaviors even had a modest negative impact on them. However, they signaled (perhaps more powerfully because somewhat costly) to those around them that they were on the "correct" side of things, that they had internalized the religion of their peers. This may have paid off for them, on balance, by making them more trusted or liked by other believers.
Not that it always turns out to be a net positive, but it can often enough to keep happening. Some niche religions have too costly demands on their members (e.g. chastity for all believers, giving away all possessions, etc.), and thus fail to survive. But others, and other belief systems that function psychologically in a similar way, can survive despite (or even because of) the modestly costly irrational behaviors. Costly signaling is a more honest testament to your commitment to the ideology.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 45.1 ms ] threadAlgorithm based social media is as undemocratic as it gets. There is only one authority in charge of what you see or don't see.
[0]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...>
Right now all media is focused on driving eyes to ads and data harvesting and that is it. There is no "defense of democracy" or any other high minded fantasy morals at play here.
It's a business like any other, only it's been granted vast protections from the repercussions of its actions.
But honestly, the answer is no. Traditional Media is biassed opinion wrapped up as fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
* Good libraries
* Local news papers
* Volunteering
which all have to do with increasing community, seeing real people with different perspectives, gaining real knowledge.
https://www.nrk.no/kultur/xl/lokalaviser_-frivillighet-og-bi...
In my country, where the political divide is huge, I know people who are very successful professionally and financially, yet believe all sorts of things that seem completely detached from reality. For example, I have a cousin who was convinced that if a certain presidential candidate won, the government would confiscate people's savings. Her solution was to convert a large part of her savings into jewelry.
She's highly educated. She also gets a lot of her information about climate change from a fortune teller on Instagram. I know that sounds made up, but it's not.
What's interesting to me is that, despite all this, their lives seem to go on just fine. Maybe they're a bit more anxious than they need to be, but they don't seem materially worse off because of these beliefs.
It makes me wonder whether we're just in an unusual transition period. As it becomes harder to trust what we see online, and as misinformation gets more convincing, will there eventually be a real advantage to consistently relying on reputable sources.
Not that it always turns out to be a net positive, but it can often enough to keep happening. Some niche religions have too costly demands on their members (e.g. chastity for all believers, giving away all possessions, etc.), and thus fail to survive. But others, and other belief systems that function psychologically in a similar way, can survive despite (or even because of) the modestly costly irrational behaviors. Costly signaling is a more honest testament to your commitment to the ideology.