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Not sure how your comment relates to that point. The bias of the Economist is well known. Same for the NYT and the Guardian, for example. Who their readership i

Not sure how your comment relates to that point. The bias of the Economist is well known. Same for the NYT and the Guardian, for example. Who their readership is and how they are funded is more or less public knowledge. The tint of their lens is more or less a given. So it's a known quantity, we can deal with that. What isn't so well known is who is funding the people making content on Youtube, or Facebook or TikTok. It's a unknown quantity, with the potential to do a lot of damage (to whoever the target is, good or evil), so much so that regimes like the China/CCP (and Russia to an increasing extent) are adamant that it must be controlled at all costs. Information is a tool. It can be used to do good, but also do terrible things and this is regardless of whether it is traditional media or social media.

Applejinx 5y ago
Russia's methods of controlling the social media are, shall we say, a leetle bit different from that of China… I think one could make a pretty good case that Russia has indeed controlled social media to their benefit. Not tracelessly, but to a really impressive extent. Pity they choose to do with it, what they've done.
paganel 5y ago
> The bias of the Economist is well known. Same for the NYT and the Guardian I used to regard those type of institutions as pillars of the mainstream media and as such as very solid members of the Fourth Estate. I used to think that we do need a non-partisan, even independent Fourth Estate for our democracy to actually work. My realisation that those media institutions were very biased and as such that the Fourth Estate was itself biased and non-independent kind of shattered my hopes in the future well-being of our democratic process. > Information is a tool. That's the thing, I didn't regard (not ultimately, at least) information as being a tool, I genuinely did think that the powers that be behind those mainstream media institution had the interest of the public in mind.

Applejinx 5y ago

Russia's methods of controlling the social media are, shall we say, a leetle bit different from that of China… I think one could make a pretty good case that Russia has indeed controlled social media to their benefit. Not tracelessly, but to a really impressive extent. Pity they choose to do with it, what they've done.

paganel 5y ago

> The bias of the Economist is well known. Same for the NYT and the Guardian I used to regard those type of institutions as pillars of the mainstream media and as such as very solid members of the Fourth Estate. I used to think that we do need a non-partisan, even independent Fourth Estate for our democracy to actually work. My realisation that those media institutions were very biased and as such that the Fourth Estate was itself biased and non-independent kind of shattered my hopes in the future well-being of our democratic process. > Information is a tool. That's the thing, I didn't regard (not ultimately, at least) information as being a tool, I genuinely did think that the powers that be behind those mainstream media institution had the interest of the public in mind.