2 ms·

You’re thinking these big social media companies are like the telephone, but I would say they are more like newspapers. No one has been banned from using messen

You’re thinking these big social media companies are like the telephone, but I would say they are more like newspapers. No one has been banned from using messenger apps, afaik, which I would say fits your metaphor better. And you can definitely find yourself banned from the editorial pages of every newspaper if you say enough evil things. I think your first statement is hyperbole. There are countless times when the few controlled the dissemination of information to the masses. What about when only monks and scribes knew how to write? What about when the printing press had just been invented? What about in the early 20th century before television even existed? If anything, people have been able to throw their opinions around more today than ever before in human history.

babesh 6y ago
That was not a good time when William Randolph Hearst could help start wars. But the same thing happened in the 90s when the big networks helped start the second Gulf War with fake news about weapons of mass destruction. I, for one, am tired of being fed fake news by those in power.
- pjc50 6y ago
  2000s for the second gulf war. I don't think that was really the newspapers on their own, they were being fed that by US intelligence services. Since there was basically zero ability to check the facts on the ground, they were left relaying lies - that had bipartisan popularity. > I, for one, am tired of being fed fake news by those in power. So am I. But the antidote to fake news from those in power is not even more fake news from random cultists and foreign intelligence services.