4 ms·

Once upon a time public opinion was manipulated by TV and the big newspapers; now it is manipulated by new media companies. My stupid question is: where is the

Once upon a time public opinion was manipulated by TV and the big newspapers; now it is manipulated by new media companies. My stupid question is: where is the big difference?

foepys 7y ago
Because newspapers and TV at least had somebody in the country. Facebook et al make it available to foreigners and despite what you may think, Western democracies are still a lot better than dictatorships or authoritarian leaders.
- MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  I didnt say that dictators are better than democracy. Why did you turn personal?
barry-cotter 7y ago
The people who used to be able to manipulate public opinion are really, really pissed off that others are doing it and they’re even more pissed off that manipulating public opinion has become more difficult and people who aren’t respectable members of the elite are being listened to by the public. Before the internet Sanders, Trump, AOC, Yang, they would never have gotten anywhere. The ruling class is pissed off that people aren’t doing what they’re told and they want to stuff the communications revolution genie back in its bottle.
- ghaff 7y ago
  There were plenty of outsider demagogues in politics long before the Internet.
- MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  I dont know about Trump, but this makes some sense. Thanks.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  To tell you the truth, I think that Trump would have done well in any political era, particularly those where unflagging public speaking was necessary to get the gig. Good political instincts, ability to speak extemporaneously (a rare ability in the modern era). I expect that he could have picked up a House seat fairly easily on the way to a Presidential campaign as sort of a Williams Jennings Bryanesque character. I do agree though that the internet has changed the character of politics (painfully obvious). Anything that breaks the back of newspapers and broadcasters as gatekeepers isn't such a bad thing, the trick is to avoid having youtube/facebook/etc. become activist successors to the NYT and CBS.
- CM30 7y ago
  Yeah, pretty much this. And to be honest, as someone who's both done independent journalism and known people who do the same, it's honestly kind of worrying. I suspect the old guard despise the new media sites and creators the internet has brought about, and the competition it's giving them, and are trying everything they can to try and make them go away.
DanBC 7y ago
Newspapers are responsible for what they publish and the owners can be sued for defamation or held to account. Big tech companies off-load that burden by saying "our users are arseholes and it's impossible to police what they say". The most extreme example are the lengths BackPage went to in order to keep taking money to place ads for children that had been kidnapped and drugged and were being offered for rape.
- MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  And in addition they can can claim to be unbiased and blame it all on the ML modell.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  In terms of celebrities/politicians, it's worth glancing through late 19th C. newspapers. They make the modern version look positively unbiased and polite.
- makomk 7y ago
  Newspapers in the US have extremely strong protections against defamation lawsuits. This is especially true when the falsehoods in question are targeted against politicians they disapprove of, but even spreading partisan lies about kids that lead to the kids in question receiving a torrent of death threats and a large number of people plotting to make them unemployable for the rest of their lives is not sufficient grounds for a defamation lawsuit. The anti-big-tech folks, for the most part at least, seem to have absolutely no problem with this.
entropea 7y ago
I've been using NewPipe for a few months now instead of the Youtube application. I tried the Youtube application the other day and the app is one big advertisement. You get more ads than traditional TV now between sponsored Youtubers, ads every 5 minutes, full page ads in the Youtube app, dark patterns to make you click ads, except Google has all of the live analytics and demographics where traditional TV didn't. Things really went south and nobody noticed.
Fricken 7y ago
We had something like a consensus reality when big newspapers framed the terms of debate. Now we're retribalizing. Different groups are working not only with different beliefs, but also different sets of facts to cement their beliefs. By the time that a society recognizes that a new medium has changed them, it's too late.
- equalunique 7y ago
  Too late for what? To change it? The people who have a problem with this are the ones who cling to the consensus reality la-la-land. If their worldview was so fragile, then maybe they don't deserve to be the ones who dictate it for everyone else.
  - Fricken 7y ago
    Functional societies are founded on trust, shared beliefs, and shared goals. You can reject the consensus reality la-la land, as a great number of people have in the last decade, but you're just trading in for a non-consensus reality la-la land. We don't really do objective reality well beyond the scope of our own immediate shit. We're like the six blind men and the elephant. We each have our own little fact about the elephant, but no one is able to see the elephant as a whole, and trying to paint a complete picture out of the disparate bits of information can yield outcomes very different from objective reality.
    - MichaelMoser123 7y ago
      The post war consensus seems to have been a very complex thing. Part if it came from the New Deal, part of it was a shared goal to win the cold war. Goals change, i dont know if values also change.
- MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  Interesting thought, but then everything else is much more fragmented: entertainment is more fragmented, consumer products more varied and cars with lots of customizations. Now politics are alsomore fragmented. I really hope we find a way to adjust democracy to these realities.
blackflame7000 7y ago
Stories echo around the internet like a game of telephone to the point where you can't trust much of them at all. It's amazing how often authors on large publications like Yahoo blatantly copy and paste without attribution.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
TV was/is heavily regulated. And starting a newspaper was much easier than starting a Google or FB competitor is today. IOW, big tech dominates in a way that is more complete, closer to total, than TV and newspapers did.

Once upon a time public opinion was manipulated by TV and the big newspapers; now it is manipulated by new media companies. My stupid question is: where is the big difference?

foepys 7y ago

Because newspapers and TV at least had somebody in the country. Facebook et al make it available to foreigners and despite what you may think, Western democracies are still a lot better than dictatorships or authoritarian leaders.

MichaelMoser123 7y ago
I didnt say that dictators are better than democracy. Why did you turn personal?

barry-cotter 7y ago

The people who used to be able to manipulate public opinion are really, really pissed off that others are doing it and they’re even more pissed off that manipulating public opinion has become more difficult and people who aren’t respectable members of the elite are being listened to by the public. Before the internet Sanders, Trump, AOC, Yang, they would never have gotten anywhere. The ruling class is pissed off that people aren’t doing what they’re told and they want to stuff the communications revolution genie back in its bottle.

ghaff 7y ago
There were plenty of outsider demagogues in politics long before the Internet.
MichaelMoser123 7y ago
I dont know about Trump, but this makes some sense. Thanks.
PorterDuff 7y ago
To tell you the truth, I think that Trump would have done well in any political era, particularly those where unflagging public speaking was necessary to get the gig. Good political instincts, ability to speak extemporaneously (a rare ability in the modern era). I expect that he could have picked up a House seat fairly easily on the way to a Presidential campaign as sort of a Williams Jennings Bryanesque character. I do agree though that the internet has changed the character of politics (painfully obvious). Anything that breaks the back of newspapers and broadcasters as gatekeepers isn't such a bad thing, the trick is to avoid having youtube/facebook/etc. become activist successors to the NYT and CBS.
CM30 7y ago
Yeah, pretty much this. And to be honest, as someone who's both done independent journalism and known people who do the same, it's honestly kind of worrying. I suspect the old guard despise the new media sites and creators the internet has brought about, and the competition it's giving them, and are trying everything they can to try and make them go away.

DanBC 7y ago

Newspapers are responsible for what they publish and the owners can be sued for defamation or held to account. Big tech companies off-load that burden by saying "our users are arseholes and it's impossible to police what they say". The most extreme example are the lengths BackPage went to in order to keep taking money to place ads for children that had been kidnapped and drugged and were being offered for rape.

MichaelMoser123 7y ago
And in addition they can can claim to be unbiased and blame it all on the ML modell.
PorterDuff 7y ago
In terms of celebrities/politicians, it's worth glancing through late 19th C. newspapers. They make the modern version look positively unbiased and polite.
makomk 7y ago
Newspapers in the US have extremely strong protections against defamation lawsuits. This is especially true when the falsehoods in question are targeted against politicians they disapprove of, but even spreading partisan lies about kids that lead to the kids in question receiving a torrent of death threats and a large number of people plotting to make them unemployable for the rest of their lives is not sufficient grounds for a defamation lawsuit. The anti-big-tech folks, for the most part at least, seem to have absolutely no problem with this.

entropea 7y ago

I've been using NewPipe for a few months now instead of the Youtube application. I tried the Youtube application the other day and the app is one big advertisement. You get more ads than traditional TV now between sponsored Youtubers, ads every 5 minutes, full page ads in the Youtube app, dark patterns to make you click ads, except Google has all of the live analytics and demographics where traditional TV didn't. Things really went south and nobody noticed.

Fricken 7y ago

We had something like a consensus reality when big newspapers framed the terms of debate. Now we're retribalizing. Different groups are working not only with different beliefs, but also different sets of facts to cement their beliefs. By the time that a society recognizes that a new medium has changed them, it's too late.

equalunique 7y ago
Too late for what? To change it? The people who have a problem with this are the ones who cling to the consensus reality la-la-land. If their worldview was so fragile, then maybe they don't deserve to be the ones who dictate it for everyone else.
- Fricken 7y ago
  Functional societies are founded on trust, shared beliefs, and shared goals. You can reject the consensus reality la-la land, as a great number of people have in the last decade, but you're just trading in for a non-consensus reality la-la land. We don't really do objective reality well beyond the scope of our own immediate shit. We're like the six blind men and the elephant. We each have our own little fact about the elephant, but no one is able to see the elephant as a whole, and trying to paint a complete picture out of the disparate bits of information can yield outcomes very different from objective reality.
  - MichaelMoser123 7y ago
    The post war consensus seems to have been a very complex thing. Part if it came from the New Deal, part of it was a shared goal to win the cold war. Goals change, i dont know if values also change.
MichaelMoser123 7y ago
Interesting thought, but then everything else is much more fragmented: entertainment is more fragmented, consumer products more varied and cars with lots of customizations. Now politics are alsomore fragmented. I really hope we find a way to adjust democracy to these realities.

blackflame7000 7y ago

Stories echo around the internet like a game of telephone to the point where you can't trust much of them at all. It's amazing how often authors on large publications like Yahoo blatantly copy and paste without attribution.

HillaryBriss 7y ago

TV was/is heavily regulated. And starting a newspaper was much easier than starting a Google or FB competitor is today. IOW, big tech dominates in a way that is more complete, closer to total, than TV and newspapers did.