3 ms·

Mass communication is a threat to democracy? That somehow only more censorship (fake news screening or whatever people want to call it) can fix? This is such a

Mass communication is a threat to democracy? That somehow only more censorship (fake news screening or whatever people want to call it) can fix? This is such a profoundly anti-democratic position, with extra overtones of “these voters didn’t know any better”.

rchaud 8y ago
> Mass communication is a threat to democracy? Why did you think that strawman would work on HN of all places? FB didn't invent email, chatrooms, message boards, or the internet, things that actually support mass communication.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Curious how you can call that a strawman without knowing OP's actual position. I mean to be fair I likely misrepresented his ideas but to do otherwise requires a lot of back and forth questions to really understand the positions at hand. I hope we don't have a long internet argument about what "mass communication" is, that would be a great waste of time. I just suspect that if facebook didn't exist, message boards and chatrooms would have launched Trump into the white house just the same, and we'd be casting them as a "threat to democracy".
  - rchaud 8y ago
    > I hope we don't have a long internet argument about what "mass communication" is, that would be a great waste of time. 100% agree. That is why I don't bother reading the comments where the discussion veers into the semantics of the label used ("socialism" and "market forces" related stories being the worst offenders).Usually the story isn't about that at all, but people seem to love rehashing their college-era debates that ended nowhere. > I just suspect that if facebook didn't exist, message boards and chatrooms would have launched Trump into the white house just the same I partially disagree. Without FB, Twitter could still have spread mass misinformation and divisive propaganda. Either way, the scale of either isn't comparable to message boards of yore. Those allowed for total anonymity. You weren't mandated to provide a real name. You weren't encouraged to share details of your personal life (relationship status, alma mater, location). Message boards also didn't have ad networks built into it that incentivized data gathering on a mass scale. Finally, message boards were not built around "sharing". That's what got fake news posts outside of your crazy uncle's FB circle and into local news website comments page, etc, giving it visibility it wouldn't have otherwise. What were the biggest message boards back in the day? Something Awful? Digg? 4chan? A few million members max. FB has 2 billion + on a single network. A single point of entry where the network gives you (as an advertiser/bad actor) near-unprecedented targeting ability for promoted posts and ads. If you popped into your local phpBB baseball forum and dropped off a meme showing Clinton with the Star of David with no additional context, you'd get booted by a moderator for being off-topic and thread would be locked. No way to spread it to the outside world. Not so on social networks.

rchaud 8y ago

> Mass communication is a threat to democracy? Why did you think that strawman would work on HN of all places? FB didn't invent email, chatrooms, message boards, or the internet, things that actually support mass communication.

chillacy 8y ago
Curious how you can call that a strawman without knowing OP's actual position. I mean to be fair I likely misrepresented his ideas but to do otherwise requires a lot of back and forth questions to really understand the positions at hand. I hope we don't have a long internet argument about what "mass communication" is, that would be a great waste of time. I just suspect that if facebook didn't exist, message boards and chatrooms would have launched Trump into the white house just the same, and we'd be casting them as a "threat to democracy".
- rchaud 8y ago
  > I hope we don't have a long internet argument about what "mass communication" is, that would be a great waste of time. 100% agree. That is why I don't bother reading the comments where the discussion veers into the semantics of the label used ("socialism" and "market forces" related stories being the worst offenders).Usually the story isn't about that at all, but people seem to love rehashing their college-era debates that ended nowhere. > I just suspect that if facebook didn't exist, message boards and chatrooms would have launched Trump into the white house just the same I partially disagree. Without FB, Twitter could still have spread mass misinformation and divisive propaganda. Either way, the scale of either isn't comparable to message boards of yore. Those allowed for total anonymity. You weren't mandated to provide a real name. You weren't encouraged to share details of your personal life (relationship status, alma mater, location). Message boards also didn't have ad networks built into it that incentivized data gathering on a mass scale. Finally, message boards were not built around "sharing". That's what got fake news posts outside of your crazy uncle's FB circle and into local news website comments page, etc, giving it visibility it wouldn't have otherwise. What were the biggest message boards back in the day? Something Awful? Digg? 4chan? A few million members max. FB has 2 billion + on a single network. A single point of entry where the network gives you (as an advertiser/bad actor) near-unprecedented targeting ability for promoted posts and ads. If you popped into your local phpBB baseball forum and dropped off a meme showing Clinton with the Star of David with no additional context, you'd get booted by a moderator for being off-topic and thread would be locked. No way to spread it to the outside world. Not so on social networks.