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It seems like it's so easy to manufacture majority opinions that don't actually exist. And people tend to vote based on how they think their group will vote. Ta
by leggomylibro 9y ago
It seems like it's so easy to manufacture majority opinions that don't actually exist. And people tend to vote based on how they think their group will vote. Take somewhere like reddit or even here, and look at the disparity between political opinions on ordinary threads in random places, and the top comments/voting patterns on explicitly political ones.
So yeah, I'll sign on to "gaming social media kills the democracy." The question is, what are we going to do about it? As an individual you don't have to participate in social media, sure, but that counts about as much as your vote does.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- paulsutter 9y agoIf it’s so easy to manufacture majority opinions, why didn’t the candidate with the biggest budget win? ($1.4B) Social media over-amplifies outrage and pushes the most reactive stories to the top of the feed. That’s a big problem, with or without foreign government involvement. At the same time, news controlled through a handful of TV networks wasn’t a good state of affairs either. It will be interesting to see how the media evolves.
- atmosx 9y agoBecause parent is a victim of the manufactured opinion that fake news is the main reason Trump won. There are many other reasons not to vote Clinton but you get systematically harassed if you even mention the huge failures of the previous administration. So there is a little bit of hidden irony there.
- ewjordan 9y agoTrump won because American democracy is twisted to overvalue rural voters, who have really fucked up and detestable values. Hillary won the actual popular vote, which you already know, if the pathetic approval ratings lately haven't made clear. Congrats for being on the side of the undereducated, underskilled, and xenophobic.
- dang 9y agoThis comment breaks the site guidelines. It's not ok to post flamebait or personal attacks, regardless of how right you are and/or wrong someone else is. We all know about the growth of online shaming culture and we all need to contribute to avoiding it on this site. If you'd read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and abide by it when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
- ewjordan 9y agoI'll accept that this may break site guidelines, and should be dinged. I don't feel too bad about posting it, though. I'm a left-center person calling out pretty standard far right nastiness that is definitely de rigeur for those types. I absolutely reject the idea that saying US rural culture is all sorts of fucked up is in any way a personal attack or flamebait. We accept all sorts of far left attacks against centrism as if they are reasonable, and while I don't agree, I don't complain.
- dogruck 9y agoYou are ignorant.
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- mjevans 9y agoI'm really disappointed that you've mixed opinion and fact. The FACT that the vote of some in rural America, by design, is worth more than the vote of someone living in a city (for the race of the US presidency) is literal fact. Back when the system was designed the difference in representation strength would surely have been far less; cities were far smaller and their density within a state arguably balanced by the likelihood of someone way out in the far flung reaches to actually turn out to vote. Leave the topic of who ran last time, and also the other topic of what views some voters you might not have even met, have any due time elsewhere... (maybe a different sub-thread in this discussion).
- ern 9y agoBecause parent is a victim of the manufactured opinion that fake news is the main reason Trump won. Whether Trump won because of fake news or because of Clinton's weaknesses as a candidate, or because of his own agenda, surely it must be interesting to ponder why Russia felt the need to expend so much effort in creating a sophisticated fake news operation to attempt to sway the election. They certainly thought they'd accomplish something by doing so, right?
- ubernostrum 9y agoIf it’s so easy to manufacture majority opinions, why didn’t the candidate with the biggest budget win? For the same reason the side with the most money doesn't always win legal cases. Money is a help, but not a guarantee. Money applied in just the right way, at just the right times, is extremely effective. The better-funded campaign in 2016 did a worse job of manipulating social media, and that certainly had an effect on the outcome.
- dogruck 9y agoCorrect, it is not easy to manufacture majority opinion. In fact, we are seeing: 1. HRC spent more 2. HRC had total support from media (every major newspaper) 3. HRC even had social media employees manipulating their algos and data to her advantage And now, after HRC lost, we are still using the same mechanism, and lenses, to form conclusions about why she lost. That’s the definition of insanity.
- tomjen3 9y ago2 is only the case if you limit media to things 45-50+ year olds consume (ie newspapers). And I don't even mean that there were blogs that disagreed with her: talk radio (I assume) and Fox didn't like her - and it is really not strange that newspapers supported the democratic candidate, especially in such a polarized election. As for 1), she clearly spent too much on old-media. You don't win the presidential election by setting fire to 4 billion USD, even if you technically "spend" the most.
- ern 9y agoAnd now, after HRC lost, we are still using the same mechanism, and lenses, to form conclusions about why she lost. That’s the definition of insanity. Would you be able to explain why a foreign government felt the need to expend enormous resources on trolling operations in support of Trump when Hillary was going to lose anyway?
- observation 9y ago> HRC even had social media employees manipulating their algos and data to her advantage This is definitely true. If those autocompletes weren't biased then I must be blind.
- bencollier49 9y agoDepends what you can get for free I suppose. Foreign governmental intervention, that sort of thing.
- sundaeofshock 9y ago>>If it’s so easy to manufacture majority opinions, why didn’t the candidate with the biggest budget win? << She did win the popular vote. It is only because of the electoral college that the loser of the popular vote sits in the White House.
- anovikov 9y agoI think it brings about about as much change in democracy as TV did. I mean, gradually people will adjust to that new level of openness of information, 'opinions' on social media will simply mean less to people.
- MichaelMoser123 9y agoHow is it possible to educate people so that they are likely to form their own opinion rather than to put blind trust into the opinion of their peers? It would be a big win if this debate would move at least some people into a direction of looking at the information that is served to us in a more critical manner
- dogruck 9y agoOh, you mean, forming their own opinion instead of blindly following the opinion of the newspaper editorial boards, and the experts predicting immediate financial collapse?
- MichaelMoser123 9y agoA skeptic might read several news sources as as to get a more complete picture of what is happening. The problem is that this requires some time and attention to details while reading. What other options are there?
- tomjen3 9y agoAs a start: not spend 12+ years of their lives being told to regurgitate information by their teachers whether it is right or not. Not have them say a pledge every morning without thinking about it. Teach the kids to question _everything_, feed them information from all sorts of different sources.
- eecc 9y agoSo basically you can manufacture an Overton Window for whatever idea you wish to sell. Oh well...
- tynpeddler 9y agoEven better, create several different "Overton Groups", where each group has a different overton window. When these groups try to communicate with each other, they find each other's positions to be outrageous and compromise is impossible.