• sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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    8 days ago

    I don’t think the state works. More like political party or “side”

    muhh team good, muhh daddy strong. Muhh daddy kick your daddy’s ass, your team bad

    Generic Political Discourse on Reddit and lemmy.world

        • DandomRude@lemmy.worldOP
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          8 days ago

          You don’t follow politics?

          What I mean by this analogy is that democratic states face a massive problem because voters no longer receive decent information, as they mostly get their news from social media. But these sites do not operate according to the logic of traditional journalism (at least halfway researched stories based on a at least somewhat comprehensible standard concerning truth - quality journalists usually go for “both sides of the medallion”).

          Social media works completely differently: it’s not about the value of the information, but just about clicks – and it doesn’t matter whether stories that are sold as “news” actually have any truth to it at all. I mean, you may remember the presidential debate in which Drump was convinced that foreigners eat pets — which, of course, is not true, it’s of course ridiculous, but that orange moron still has fallen victim to social media misinformation (newsflash: he is even US president now).

          As a voter, you have no control over how or where your fellow citizens get their information. Unfortunately, they now get it primarily on social media, where not the truth matters but just how you sell your viewpoint - even if it is absolutely ridiculous. That’s why someone like Drump gets away with all his lies – he has simply created his own reality in which what he says is, strangely enough, the truth for his followers.