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As an American, I completely agree. So many of my compatriots are full of optimism, bravado, or even a sense of underserved privilege - all over the spectrum th

As an American, I completely agree. So many of my compatriots are full of optimism, bravado, or even a sense of underserved privilege - all over the spectrum they're the same manifestation of the idea that we're "better" than other nations - but almost a year later we're still wallowing around in these melodramatics over what happened. The undeniable fact of the matter is that 42% of eligible voters did not cast a ballot last year. And presidential elections are our highest turnout years. People are getting angry about Facebook? Gimme a break.

ethbro 9y ago
Conflating events isn't helpful. The following are independent of each other, so it's illogical to say something like "Trump won with populist support, therefore Facebook did not have an impact." - The Trump campaign mobilized sufficient support to be elected. - The Trump campaign demobilized Clinton's support. - This was the first "social media at critical mass" election. - Voter turnout was low, as usual in the US. - Conservative organizations appear to have harnessed targeted ads on social media more effectively than liberals. - Political and apolitical "news" businesses realized there was money to be made in sensationalist, false stories. - Foreign governments realized there were no prohibitions on using these levers to affect US (and other) elections. - Facebook appears to have been completely ignorant at the time of this impact. (Likely because, as the Atlantic article points out, their KPIs were truth-agnostic) Is "X won Trump the election?" unproductive? Yes, in the sense that it precludes further examination and the fact that there were many factors. But that doesn't mean that X isn't important in its own right and shouldn't be examined. A move from a limited oligarchy of old guard news sources to an explosion of anonymous, high-sharing-velocity, profit-driven sources is absolutely going to have an effect on democracy. And is important for that reason alone.

ethbro 9y ago

Conflating events isn't helpful. The following are independent of each other, so it's illogical to say something like "Trump won with populist support, therefore Facebook did not have an impact." - The Trump campaign mobilized sufficient support to be elected. - The Trump campaign demobilized Clinton's support. - This was the first "social media at critical mass" election. - Voter turnout was low, as usual in the US. - Conservative organizations appear to have harnessed targeted ads on social media more effectively than liberals. - Political and apolitical "news" businesses realized there was money to be made in sensationalist, false stories. - Foreign governments realized there were no prohibitions on using these levers to affect US (and other) elections. - Facebook appears to have been completely ignorant at the time of this impact. (Likely because, as the Atlantic article points out, their KPIs were truth-agnostic) Is "X won Trump the election?" unproductive? Yes, in the sense that it precludes further examination and the fact that there were many factors. But that doesn't mean that X isn't important in its own right and shouldn't be examined. A move from a limited oligarchy of old guard news sources to an explosion of anonymous, high-sharing-velocity, profit-driven sources is absolutely going to have an effect on democracy. And is important for that reason alone.