3 ms·

You could just... not follow Trump, or block him.

jollybean 5y ago
??? Trump came within inches of putting enough pressure on politicians to throw the election for him. Were he to have more support, which is entirely elicited via platforms like Twitter, than the 30% of Americans who believe the election was rigged and 'Trump Won' - would be 55% and we'd have a constitutional crisis, it would be very, very bad. It's oddly naive to fail to understand how this works because it seems pretty obvious. Why does anyone think that the US, Japan, UK etc. could not fall into the same trap other nations are in? Russians right now believe Ukraine is a giant country of Nazis, and that the hundreds of dead bodies showing up after their Army withdraws are people killed by Ukrainians as a false flag, or they're actors, or fake, or 'it doesn't exist'. If the lie is big enough, and you keep telling it, it can be real. Reality matters as much as anything else. We probably need a constitutional amendment on that frankly.
- gigatexal 5y ago
  Exactly. I want him nowhere near the water cooler that I enjoy called Twitter. And he used Twitter to bolster his campaign. The news coverage he garnered was worth billions from his outrageous takes. He's a threat to modern democracy, the rule-of-law, and anything resembling sensible governance. I do have some schadenfreude watching Truth Social(sic) fail, though.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Exactly. Propaganda works. Not just social media but traditional media. Thirty years of nonsense anti-EU stories got the UK out of the EU. Arguably we already fell into that trap. Hungary have re-elected Orban. > We probably need a constitutional amendment on that frankly. Unfortunately you really cannot legislate for this, except in very specific cases like constitutional amendments against Holocaust denial. And even then there's plenty of ways to power that let it be changed or neutralized.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    You are being sarcastic? France, Ireland, the Netherlands voted against ratifying the treaty of Lisbon, which gave considerable sovereign to the EU. Sarkozy adopted it anyhow. EU leaders decided to forgo any form of referendum in the rest of Europe, because they knew they would lose. It was one of the most blatant anti-democratic acts in all of history. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Paradoxically, the amount of Pro-EU propaganda and complete lack of both understanding and questioning of the institution is staggering. It should be noted that at this very moment of crisis, the EU actually isn't providing leadership, rather individual EU nations are forging their own momentum: Baltic states + Poland are closing their borders, dumping Russian Oil, Macron is 'talking' to Putin (not Von Der Leyen), and from a military perspective the EU has no relevance it seems. So no - that's the opposite of a good example and why we'd have to be careful about legislation. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, are all full of propaganda and misrepresentation - the issue has fundamentally to do with material reality. We can actually probably legislate against misinformation, that might be possible but probably not 'propaganda'. For example: making unproven claims about medical technology - already there's health reasons for that, imagine how that would apply to vaccine misinformation? It might require skeptics to be very deliberate about their skepticism, which for example is fine, it's what we want. But they can't run around arbitrarily saying 'it causes cancer' etc.. For elections, if you want to make claims of 'stolen' you might have to provide evidence. Perhaps if we treated drugs and election standing like individuals, who can be subject to slander and 'sue' their antagonists, there might be something there.

??? Trump came within inches of putting enough pressure on politicians to throw the election for him. Were he to have more support, which is entirely elicited via platforms like Twitter, than the 30% of Americans who believe the election was rigged and 'Trump Won' - would be 55% and we'd have a constitutional crisis, it would be very, very bad. It's oddly naive to fail to understand how this works because it seems pretty obvious. Why does anyone think that the US, Japan, UK etc. could not fall into the same trap other nations are in? Russians right now believe Ukraine is a giant country of Nazis, and that the hundreds of dead bodies showing up after their Army withdraws are people killed by Ukrainians as a false flag, or they're actors, or fake, or 'it doesn't exist'. If the lie is big enough, and you keep telling it, it can be real. Reality matters as much as anything else. We probably need a constitutional amendment on that frankly.

gigatexal 5y ago
Exactly. I want him nowhere near the water cooler that I enjoy called Twitter. And he used Twitter to bolster his campaign. The news coverage he garnered was worth billions from his outrageous takes. He's a threat to modern democracy, the rule-of-law, and anything resembling sensible governance. I do have some schadenfreude watching Truth Social(sic) fail, though.
pjc50 5y ago
Exactly. Propaganda works. Not just social media but traditional media. Thirty years of nonsense anti-EU stories got the UK out of the EU. Arguably we already fell into that trap. Hungary have re-elected Orban. > We probably need a constitutional amendment on that frankly. Unfortunately you really cannot legislate for this, except in very specific cases like constitutional amendments against Holocaust denial. And even then there's plenty of ways to power that let it be changed or neutralized.
- jollybean 5y ago
  You are being sarcastic? France, Ireland, the Netherlands voted against ratifying the treaty of Lisbon, which gave considerable sovereign to the EU. Sarkozy adopted it anyhow. EU leaders decided to forgo any form of referendum in the rest of Europe, because they knew they would lose. It was one of the most blatant anti-democratic acts in all of history. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Paradoxically, the amount of Pro-EU propaganda and complete lack of both understanding and questioning of the institution is staggering. It should be noted that at this very moment of crisis, the EU actually isn't providing leadership, rather individual EU nations are forging their own momentum: Baltic states + Poland are closing their borders, dumping Russian Oil, Macron is 'talking' to Putin (not Von Der Leyen), and from a military perspective the EU has no relevance it seems. So no - that's the opposite of a good example and why we'd have to be careful about legislation. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, are all full of propaganda and misrepresentation - the issue has fundamentally to do with material reality. We can actually probably legislate against misinformation, that might be possible but probably not 'propaganda'. For example: making unproven claims about medical technology - already there's health reasons for that, imagine how that would apply to vaccine misinformation? It might require skeptics to be very deliberate about their skepticism, which for example is fine, it's what we want. But they can't run around arbitrarily saying 'it causes cancer' etc.. For elections, if you want to make claims of 'stolen' you might have to provide evidence. Perhaps if we treated drugs and election standing like individuals, who can be subject to slander and 'sue' their antagonists, there might be something there.