this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Like a lot of the founding fathers, I think a strong and honest press is one of the key features of a democracy, and without that, it won't function, and people being able to vote won't do a damn thing to prevent the whole thing from turning into tyranny
And hey! Look at our media!
And hey! Look what kind of government we have, oh no oh fuck
That was kind of my point about the whole thing: That skillful manipulation of the voters happens, and has ruined the country pretty thoroughly. I don't think the answer is to turn away from democracy, but I do that think that fixing the media so that people have some semblance of an accurate picture of what's happening is an absolutely urgent issue right now.
It seems a tad ahistorical to suggest that biased media is in any way new.
If anything we are now living in an era of choice where we can choose which approved narrative we’ll take in as opposed to being subject to the local hearst papers outlook.
If control over media gives so much power though, why not change who has that control?
Because to do that we need a supermajority in the Senate and no Liebermans, Manchins, or Sinemas. The tools we have to fix things are as broken as the things we need to fix.
Those things didn’t change any of the last times some party had a supermajority. What makes you think some new supermajority would be any different, or that republicans or democrats are any different now?
Hm
I mean you’re not wrong. The US spent most of the previous two centuries wandering around the world killing and enslaving anyone who made them nervous or unprofitable while the whole “honest” media wrote a never ending stream of stories enthusing about how nice it was that the price of bananas was going down
Then when the internet came along we replaced that with an absolute explosion of viewpoints some of which are honest, some of which are just lazy and pointless, and some of which are manufactured propaganda which shows a remarkable level of effectiveness
But… if you wanna tell me that that’s not the pure step backwards I described it as, I won’t say you’re totally wrong about that tbh
Regardless of all that, yes, I still think making it work effectively and honestly is as important now as it ever was
If media is used by a tiny group to control what people think and new technology allows the same tiny group to reach people with more granularity, is it really a move “forwards” or “backwards”?
If you believe that media is a part of functioning democracy, who should be in control of it?
By “Media” I mean everything. Newspapers, TV, social media, anything that lets people know what’s going on in the world
It used to be like a few thousand independent editors all across the country, then with TV and corporate consolidation it dwindled to basically just 1 corporate viewpoint, now with social media and the internet I think public opinion is more or less up for grabs for whoever wants to spend the most money to influence it (not that different from the later stages of the TV era tbh)
For quite a while now media has been out of “control” of any single grouping; basically that was one of the big advantages of the internet era. But the disadvantage is that real journalism costs money, and modern newspapers don’t have a good business model to stay alive and do it, and modern social media isn’t really configured to be able to keep out propaganda viewpoints, and so the public narrative winding up de facto “in control” of whoever puts more money and effort into distorting it.
I don’t think we should go back to where anyone can have “control” necessarily but it would be nice if real journalism could make money again to be able to do the investigative aspect, and if normal person social media (for the opinion aspect and sharing-news-stories aspect) was community operated and resistant to deliberate propaganda
Best answer I can come up with to your question as I see it
When is a community organization, say the black panther party, judged to be putting out deliberate propaganda that social media needs to resist?
So. That’s why I say community operated, and that the internet was a big step forward whatever its flaws. I wouldn’t consider the Black Panther viewpoint to be propaganda, and yet I think there’s been a pretty consistent consensus from newspapers to TV to modern corporate social media that if the Black Panthers’ viewpoint is on your front page one day, then that’s a problem and we’re gonna have to fix it and probably someone’s getting fired or at least moved around.
How community operated social media can determine the difference between somebody in Akron who thinks Joe Biden is a bum and wants to say so, and somebody managing 59 accounts through a VPN each of which keeps up a steady stream of content including a healthy dose of “Joe Biden is a bum and I want to say so,” I honestly have no idea. In a perfect world, to me. the social media software would contain the judgement that:
How to implement that though, I don’t really know.
To compare it to a previous era of media, would you say that someone wheatpasting a bunch of flyers everywhere is propaganda in the same way that the person with 59 accounts is?
I take issue with defining propaganda as only that kind of amplifying a point of view through technology, because that’s a really limited definition that doesn’t fit with the last two hundred years of use and one that almost seems to point at smaller organizations more than large ones but I’m willing to dive into it anyway.
This is a fascinating conversation
Wheatpasting is great. To me, the difference is twofold. Roughly speaking, you could say:
Like I say, I am fascinated that you don't see a problem with running a large number of accounts to create the illusion of popularity of a certain viewpoint, without it needing to be a persuasive enough viewpoint to gain popularity on its own
I brought up wheatpasting specifically to bring this point up, you said methods that produce more influence based on the monetary input are propaganda. Would you say that lobbying is propaganda? Would you say using any technology (such as wheatpasting) beyond yelling in the street is propaganda?
The reason I ask that last one is because that technology, the printing press, the paste and brush, cost money and produce a lasting effect.
Would you say that the way the Washington post and New York Times exercise editorial control over reporting about Gaza is propaganda?
I never said that I don’t see a problem with running a large number of accounts, we’re talking about weather it’s propaganda, not weather it’s problem or bad.
Ha. Let’s try again.
Does that clarify my categorizations?
I have trouble treating even the afp article I linked you to as having a relatively low amount of bias despite the reality that it presents more of the story than even the debunking site snopes does. The reason I don’t like it is that the article itself is very clearly trying to lessen the importance of trump regime eo 13937 (I think that’s the number. I don’t tend to open up a million tabs to verify everything and just type off the dome) to rebut actual republican propaganda about it.
Even though it has the information in there, I don’t like having to turn to counterpunch type stories to chase down proof of the basic facts that I saw play out.
Of course, there’s a real kernel of truth to that propaganda and while I don’t think that trump should get credit for the insulin price cap (which is why I didn’t say it!), I think that’s where you’re getting the idea that my completely factual claim from some other thread that the biden regime shut down the trump regimes price cap before they shut down the cia antivax disinformation campaign.
And I understand why you might be inclined to view things that way. It takes either sober minded and clear eyed assessment or naked cynicism to recognize that eo 13937, however flawed, was fundamentally a good thing and allowing people to suffer for an extra two years by walking it back and not funding it, allowing the drug companies complaints to hhs to result in its ultimate rescintion, while including an expanded version in a giant contentious bill is a fundamentally bad thing.
A clear eyed assessment would simply recognize these things as they are and a cynical minded outlook would see the history of the insulin price cap as a feather industry had assented to years before and both parties had been trying to claim for a while.
The point of all this is to say: it really seems like your gauge for propaganda is more of an us versus them scale than one that has a clear definition.
Our trustworthy, objective media, their cynical propagandists.
Cool