One word:
Money
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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it got trump elected, and probably won putins war. it's an effective set of methods
Outrage gets clicks. Tech companies want clicks, and are only beholden to the bottom line.
All the big platforms are owned by US techno-fascists. They are working as intended. Why the fuck do people use them. I don't know. People are stupid.
Its a mistake to think Putin divided the US. Russia does run big misinformation campaigns. But they had plenty of help from willing allies.
People are stupid.
People aren't stupid, you are just in a bubble that knows a lot about how social media services work while the friend of mine that works as a carpenter has a few icons on his phone where, when he presses them, he sees messages and funny things from his friends and family and some funny videos that may or may not be russian propaganda.
The masses are mostly medium to low information people and none the wiser, especially regarding tech. To them, the phone in their hand is not a computer, but a shiny toy that lets them look at pictures and videos that distracts them from their screaming kids or mundane job. Your average person doesn't really think past their own hand, they just kinda "do" without considering the wider implications of their actions.
There's an old adage from I want to say George Carlin (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here), "Think about how dumb the average person is. Remember that 100 is the median IQ, median being middle of the road. Now realize that half of all people are even dumber than that." Obviously IQ is quite antiquated, but it summarizes the point pretty well.
This is true. Its all magic to most people and they don't think much deeper.
When I say people are stupid I don't mean it in some elitist IQ sense like I am smarter because I am not. I mean we are all flawed creatures who are generally exploitable.
It takes discipline and awareness of manipulation to take corrective action. This platform probably isn't healthy to be on for large amounts of time either. We need real human relationships as well.
rupert murdoch discovered this formula in the 70s. you are right; we have to give people the tools to cultivate, curate and control their own media so that people can create, share and consume the information they really want and need, rather than be abused, baited an traumatized by addictive trash
Yes that's what I'm talking about, the question is: Why are we allowing this?
The return on investment is positive and/or is projected to be so. To fix, we need to change that. To change that we need education and training on sources, fact-chexking, and more to render propeganda useless.
Money
I'm pretty sure Europe is loosing more money from it
Europe as a whole, yes. Europe’s oligarchics who benefit from the far right parties Russia is pushing, no.
Russian propaganda promotes oligarchy, and most powerful people love oligarchy. And you'd think the masses would extend their xenophobia to foreign billionaires, but it's embarassingly easy to convince people to focus on refugees instead.
Exactly, we don't need a race war. We need a class war. Billionaires have no right to exist. There will never be a need for this much money.
Yet poor ppl go after other poor ppl because they get a little bit of money
Exactly, we don’t need a race war.
Excuuuuse me, au contraire my friend, I think you need a [race,gender,veganism,drivetrain]-war and also that guy over there said your [race,gender,veganism,drivetrain] is stupid so, off you go, slap him maybe, I don't care as long as I can siphon more of your money and worktime unchecked.
-- signed, every billionaire out there.
On a more broader historical note, I think we simply have yet to learn the lessons of the information age.
The historical parallel would be WW1/WW2 after which people globally said "never again".
With respect to less abstract thinking, Germany continued to largely support russian imperialism, partly out of corruption (Schröder) and partly out of a foolish fantasy that the russians are going to reject genocidal imperialism just like that (Merkel).
It of course doesn't help that American technology oligarchs are deeply corrupt and lack humanity.
Germany tried to be "friends" aka do business with everyone.
US, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Mexican drug cartels...
But you cannot be neutral, while also being part of one imperial bower bloc (West) and trying to establish your own (economic) power bloc EU, but also take maximum advantage and fuck over the other countries in your power bloc.
Germanys economic egoism has left much of the European integration lacking behind. So the EU countries are weakened and easily divisible. Running after the US instead is equally stupid like not giving limits to Russia.
A great example the head of the Left party gave in a recent interview is how Germany loves giving weapons to Ukraine, but does not like blocking Russias shadow fleet from passing from the Baltic to India, because Germany keeps wanting to buy the Russian oil after it is refined in India. In the same way a lot of German parts still end up in Russian military equipment, while the "Conservatives", and "Liberals" scream about how we should stop demanding companies to document their supply chains.
Finally "never again" is a sham in Germany, like Germanys "learning from history" is largely superficial and fetishized as can been seen by the rise of fascism and supposed progressive or center politics making the exact same "mistakes" like in the 1920s.
Unless we want to create a "great firewall" around Europe and let it soak in internal propaganda from the rising fascists, the only way to secure Europe is by focusing European integration, in particular with Germany to take a step back and genuinely cooperate instead of smacking down their supposed partners economically, while not taking responsibility diplomatically or militarily.
EDIT: i am using Germany as an example, because i am most familiar with it. Obviously the UK with Brexit and France with, whatever the fuck Macron and his other elite crownies are doing, also have significant responsibility in this.
Agreed. Germany wanted to have its cake and eat it too. They wanted all the economic benefits of integration and trade, but had no interest in difficult issues like EU governance, fiscal integration, rule of law (suspending Hungary from EU market access and Schengen for enabling and choosing corruption and criminality).
The seemingly naive approach to russia is another example. It's easy to come up with BS slogans like "freedom through trade", it's to actually do something and take often risky steps to put real pressure on russia.
Controversy attracts users. Users attract advertisers. Advertising is how social media makes money. Some of that money is used to bribe officials who would otherwise regulate social media, harming their profits. Social media companies also fight regulation by making claims like “regulation chips away at free speech”.
A for-profit social media company is, ultimately, only interested in the bottom line. They don’t give a damn about ethics or responsibility.
Isn't a "for profit social media company" extremely dangerous? Isn't it obvious that they are doing these things? I'm asking why we are allowing this in the EU?
Social media has to be independent from money and billionaires.
Sometimes people ignore problems until they’re too big to overlook. By then, though, what’s causing the problems is entrenched and too big/difficult to get rid of. Nobody suspected that a few folks arguing about Linux would evolve into what’s happening now.
I agree with you completely. Unfortunately, since there’s so much money involved now, plus free speech issues, it’s a very difficult situation to unravel.
As with a lot of problems in society, the people causing the problem are far more motivated than anyone in a position to prevent it.
It doesn't help that in this case causing the problem is also substantially easier than fixing it.
The EU is trying, but just forbidding huge parts of social media isn't easy - and there isn't a law against gross misinformation. The only thing that would help is a ban on centralized social media, so there isn't a single (or 3) platform(s) that replaces the historic Volksempfänger.
A temporary ban sounds great actually
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