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The article and my comment are not about determining which was better or more justified. If you’re going to talk about social media leading to political action,

The article and my comment are not about determining which was better or more justified. If you’re going to talk about social media leading to political action, but you leave out the single biggest political action of the last year, it’s hard to see that as anything but biased. At best, it’s deeply uninformed.

neogodless 6y ago
This kind of debate is likely to go nowhere. As outlined in the article, "reality" varies based on where you get what you consider "information." One perspective is that centuries of systemic racism lead to Black Lives Matter protests, which were largely peaceful. Social media was a tool used to organize the protests, but did not lead to them. One perspective is that decades of polarization has led to more extreme views further from an objective reality, which was further enabled and amplified by social media. One of those realities argues that a massive conspiracy coordinated a secret interference with the election, so that Joe Biden won (but Republicans were allowed to gain quite a few seats in Congress.) (Yes you can tell which reality I believe, and I can't quite figure out what reality is believed by those that support the invasion of the Capitol building. Perhaps someone can educate me.) If you cannot agree on some of the above perspectives, then we aren't starting from a shared reality in which we can debate which comments are justified, which are biased, which are uninformed.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Good thing it wasn’t a debate I asked for or mentioned whatsoever in my comment. Clearly technology has affected politics in the last five years. That doesn’t mean it was the sole source of said political action. This seems so tritely obvious to me I don’t know why it needs to be debated.
  - neogodless 6y ago
    Your insistence that the necessity of Black Lives Matter protests is an equivalent phenomenon to the demagoguery of Donald Trump suggests that you do not believe there is systemic racism, that police unequally target and murder black people, that perhaps the election was actually stolen. Using social media for disinformation campaigns is not equal to using social media to organize peaceful protests. The fact that 7% of those protests involved some kind of violence (which includes escalation by police, counter-protests, opportunistic looters and yes, perhaps some protestors who have plenty of reason for anger escalating to violence) does not take us to the conclusion that social media caused these protests. They were not based on a disinformation campaign. They were based on violent events that took place. The belief that the election was stolen is not based on violent events taking place. The claims of evidence have all been hand-waving, such as misunderstanding the Blue wave due to a much higher percentage of mail-in ballots going to Democrats, which was caused by disinformation about mail-in ballot fraud. Looks like we're debating which reality is based on facts, and it does need to be debated. If we had a shared reality, then perhaps there could be debate on what data points need included in an article exploring social media used in disinformation campaigns, but we do not share the same perspective on what is reality.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      Nowhere did I say they were equivalent. I said they were both manifestations of the same technological phenomenon.
  - loceng 6y ago
    You're gatekeeping here, interesting tactics you've developed to avoid having to counter valid arguments people put forward - along with claiming one of my replies to you was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop - here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802608

neogodless 6y ago

This kind of debate is likely to go nowhere. As outlined in the article, "reality" varies based on where you get what you consider "information." One perspective is that centuries of systemic racism lead to Black Lives Matter protests, which were largely peaceful. Social media was a tool used to organize the protests, but did not lead to them. One perspective is that decades of polarization has led to more extreme views further from an objective reality, which was further enabled and amplified by social media. One of those realities argues that a massive conspiracy coordinated a secret interference with the election, so that Joe Biden won (but Republicans were allowed to gain quite a few seats in Congress.) (Yes you can tell which reality I believe, and I can't quite figure out what reality is believed by those that support the invasion of the Capitol building. Perhaps someone can educate me.) If you cannot agree on some of the above perspectives, then we aren't starting from a shared reality in which we can debate which comments are justified, which are biased, which are uninformed.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Good thing it wasn’t a debate I asked for or mentioned whatsoever in my comment. Clearly technology has affected politics in the last five years. That doesn’t mean it was the sole source of said political action. This seems so tritely obvious to me I don’t know why it needs to be debated.
- neogodless 6y ago
  Your insistence that the necessity of Black Lives Matter protests is an equivalent phenomenon to the demagoguery of Donald Trump suggests that you do not believe there is systemic racism, that police unequally target and murder black people, that perhaps the election was actually stolen. Using social media for disinformation campaigns is not equal to using social media to organize peaceful protests. The fact that 7% of those protests involved some kind of violence (which includes escalation by police, counter-protests, opportunistic looters and yes, perhaps some protestors who have plenty of reason for anger escalating to violence) does not take us to the conclusion that social media caused these protests. They were not based on a disinformation campaign. They were based on violent events that took place. The belief that the election was stolen is not based on violent events taking place. The claims of evidence have all been hand-waving, such as misunderstanding the Blue wave due to a much higher percentage of mail-in ballots going to Democrats, which was caused by disinformation about mail-in ballot fraud. Looks like we're debating which reality is based on facts, and it does need to be debated. If we had a shared reality, then perhaps there could be debate on what data points need included in an article exploring social media used in disinformation campaigns, but we do not share the same perspective on what is reality.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Nowhere did I say they were equivalent. I said they were both manifestations of the same technological phenomenon.
- loceng 6y ago
  You're gatekeeping here, interesting tactics you've developed to avoid having to counter valid arguments people put forward - along with claiming one of my replies to you was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop - here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802608