- Before widespread internet use, say year 2000, all communities were local. News were local + nation wide, people still focused on their physical proximity of

- Before widespread internet use, say year 2000, all communities were local. News were local + nation wide, people still focused on their physical proximity of 20 miles that affected them the most. Today, none of my friends read local news. Local news outlets are being bankrupted left and right. talk radio was popular in the 90s and is the same sort of echo chamber that you'd find on facebook. - Anonymity on the internet. People can say whatever they want without attaching their name, face and self-pride. This creates extremely unproductive conversations without consequences. Platforms such as Twitter propel this behavior to new heights. When it was local, you'd lose friends for being unpleasant, you'd lose credibility in your community for being inflammatory. okay, but if the conversation has no consequence then why does it matter? does twitter matter? i know it seems to matter, but is that not just an effect of every individual person who comprises the media being on twitter representing their company or promoting themselves personally? - Foreign interference - when internet use was not widespread, it was difficult to infiltrate a foreign election campaign and interfere with it. this was the point that prompted me to comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention - Data collection and manipulation - Targeted newsfeeds that feed these echo chambers could not possibly reach critical mass before the internet. Echo chambers were physical places to go to - Hells Angels or joining the Evangelical Christian church. No such limits exist now. i really don't understand this. is the idea that all the time you're not in church or at the hells angels club you're soaking up some stuff from the surrounding culture? wouldn't that balance out given how weak of an influence the internet is on one's identity compared to being physically at a place with other people who are physically there, literally forming an actual group of people? - Scale - The internet allows unprecedented scale to operate on. Echo chambers reverb into unimaginable self-resonance. Joe Rogan can say something and millions could hear it. +1M subscriber channels on YouTube span thousands. That was practically impossible unless you were on national TV. you're opining that now there are more echo chambers compared to when there was one? first, that's questionable on its own, but that wasn't how things were before the internet was pervasive. the democrats and republicans as they are now were not different in the 90's. there was a time that there were liberal republicans and conservative democrats, then the democrats veered away from the legacy of the new deal, and the republicans congealed around neo conservatism. now we have two homogenous brands that are competing with each other. this all was in place during the clinton admin, which is why he got impeached for getting a blow job. perhaps your memory is fuzzy on the 90s.