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This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first

This is the dumbest thing I have seen come from Jonathan Haidt. If social media is this powerful a destabilizer of societies, I wonder how Haidt explains first world countries like Germany, Canada, and most of the rest of the planet that have social media but haven't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has.

echlebek 4y ago
Canada isn't immune from this, just look at these moronic displays. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22926134/canada-trucker-freedom-convoy-protest-ottawa https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22926134/canada-truc... This idiocy was all organized on social media. The convoys are overwhelmingly unpopular among larger Canadian society, but social media allowed them to organize in an echo chamber. No comment on Germany, but I would be betting on things being similar there, not different. My personal theory is that before social media, a lot of the people involved in this would have been bullied or shamed into not doing this by their peer group. But social media lets you set your peer group without geographical restrictions.
- mathlover2 4y ago
  It isn't immune, but it certainly hasn't gotten to the point it has in the US. We had a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. The truck convoy was a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way by going to Ottawa and being absolutely obnoxious --- and ultimately failing because no one wanted to put up with their shit. Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries. Why would the government do that if no one supported them anyways? Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way. I get that there's a weird urge to make that event some sort of insanely important historical moment but it doesn't mean you have to make up dead people. Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious". It doesn't look that way when you are knees deep in american partisan culture wars, but Americans have a tendency to think that anything that happens in the US is exceptional and unique.
    - mathlover2 4y ago
      > Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries. Why would the government do that if no one supported them anyways? Probably because they didn't have to deal with a large number of numpties doing that before. > Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way. There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa. > Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious". Was some high-profile Tory premier instigating the protests in Ottawa with a rally there? Were his own officials involved in the planning? Was there a large number of people breaching the Canadian parliament building while it was in session? Were extreme right MP's feeding information to convoy organizers on where Trudeau was? Because while that's not what happened in Canada, it's what happened in the US a year ago. I get what you are saying about Americans thinking anything in the US must be exceptional. I've seen that before myself, especially with certain members of my family. But there is a difference between idiot protesters occupying a capital city's downtown and having to be forced to leave and an attempted self-coup by an outgoing head of state.
      - rootsudo 4y ago
        >Probably because they didn't have to deal with a large number of numpties doing that before. So, the government can suspend rights of the people, while they are using those rights to protest? Is it only okay when the government does it if you "agree" with it? Convenient. That's not a good excuse, or reason - the government willy nilly choosing to enforce and invalidate it's own restrictions and human based rights based on "political feeling." >There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa. Stroke (Potentially Unrelated), Heart Attack (Potentially Unrelated), Crushed, Head Trauma (Police Officer), Shot. Context matters - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-bu... While not supporting the insurrectionists/protestors, I still do not see any mention of other riots that happened during 2020 which, IMO were far more deadlier, at 25 from direct physical violence on both sides - the protesters and law enforcement. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill...
  - rootsudo 4y ago
    I wonder what you think about other riots and events. You do know the history of the United States is one that supports insurrection (from the English Monarchy) and those rights are protected by the bill of rights? "Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly. " The newspaper and printing press back in the day was the social media equalizer. What about pamphlets like Common Sense by Thomas Paine? Was education more common back in those times than today? The average American in a day reads more information/published material than an "American" back in 18th century, or even 19th century. Was there no religious fueled political class back in the 17th century? Isn't the point of Freedom of Religion? Even going back, what about the availability of the Bible to the masses vs just the "educated" clergy. What system is better than the one now, where people are free to come together to support their own notions and beliefs? -- Reading your reply, and other generalized replies from other people with the same viewpoint is shocking. It feigns complete insight in the "other side" or that people can have different opinions but still come to the same conclusion or end goal. It is this type of post that creates a "THEM" narrative blame game. It shouldn't be an US vs THEM - or Me vs You. That's what makes Social Media so powerful, people are divided into their beliefs and opinions and then go seek people to re-enforce those those ideas because they are pushed from one extreme to another. It's the same with Pro Obesity groups, Pro Ana groups, Pro Sexual Fetish Groups, etc. It warps what was normal into a narrow individual experience. That's only possibly by the ease of entry of social media vs, what was essentially a web ring back 20 years ago and needing to know a bit of html to host a page on geocities.
    - jgod 4y ago
      Doesn't it make you wonder what they would say about the Founding Fathers had they lost?
  - jkhdigital 4y ago
    > a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. I’m not sure what’s nuttier, the actual event itself or the fact that people still call it an “insurrection”. Either way, you are doing a good job of (unwittingly?) providing evidence for your own points, I guess.
  - basisword 4y ago
    >> We had a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. Every time I see this I just think it is peak “American exceptionalism”. You had a small group of red necks, who had what could barely be described as a riot, who walked into the government building and vandalised it a little. It was not an “insurrection”. That is language that was used specifically to create more division and fear.
rayiner 4y ago
Odd comment coming the day after far right and far left candidates won more than half the votes in the French presidential election, with the center left and right collapsing and centrist Macron getting under 30% (despite having moved significantly to the right on cultural issues).
- mathlover2 4y ago
  France has its own issues as well, in many ways parallel to the US from what I have heard, with a sharp urban-rural divide and a legacy of colonialism that has largely not been addressed.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    I mean yeah if you dismiss or downplay the issues every other country has, the US looks unique. But that's not exactly meaningful right? Also, considering what's happening in france, do you agree that your original comment was not accurate?
    - mathlover2 4y ago
      My comment is certainly less accurate than I originally thought. I will give you that.
quantified 4y ago
They may not be as dumb as the US is?
- pzduniak 4y ago
  Pretty much. If you look at other EU countries, social media was essential in dividing the populations and promoting populist, nationalistic and xenophobic parties.
  - mathlover2 4y ago
    Was social media the cause of the division, or did it merely allow people to exploit existing problems? Assuming that social media is a primary factor, for the sake of argument, the solution to this problem isn't regulating the platforms via Haidt's proposals (which I should add seem to be too limited in effect). Instead, we should decentralize the platforms into protocols. While this will still allow stupid people to go into echo chambers (like with any forum or blog online) it will also limit their reach by depriving them of a singular place for a giant number of people to hear them all at once.
    - redmen 4y ago
      We can spend forever debating this, or we can use our common sense that anything Zuckerberg touches is bad for society and probably causing deep rooted issues. Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%. Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when we have this common sense. Stop anyone on the street and ask them if they think constant notifications, scrolling, phone addiction and apps like tinder, TikTok and Instagram are good for our brains. I'd be sad if people didn't unanimously agree that it's poison
      - idiotsecant 4y ago
        'common sense' often does not have either property.
zht 4y ago
we are getting there in Canada
redmen 4y ago
Canada has massive division. It's just masked.
- mathlover2 4y ago
  In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off.
  - redmen 4y ago
    Haha agreed
  - tharne 4y ago
    > In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off. You sure about that? As recently as 1995, Canada was with 0.4% of a vote to split the country in two. In the 1970's the deputy Premier of Quebec was kidnaped and murdered by Quebec separatists. In 1990 the Canadian and Quebec governments used the military and authorized lethal force to put down an armed rebellion by the Mohawk tribe, after a Canadian court allowed the development of a golf course on native land. Just because Canada is largely ignored by the American and International media, doesn't mean that everything is lovely and everyone is sitting around singing kum ba yah.
    - lioeters 4y ago
      Interesting that you mention the Mohawk tribe and their protest, I just learned about it earlier today from watching the film Beans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beans_(2020_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beans_(2020_film)
      - mardifoufs 4y ago
        Yeah and even when there was literally hundreds of armed men and a confrontation against the Canadian army... the Canadian government still did not invoke the emergency measure act. They were also blocking crucial bridges into montreal for weeks, killed a police officer and set up a no man's land... yet after multiple weeks they still negotiated a peaceful settlement and kept talking to Mohawk Leaders. Just goes to show how insanely irresponsible the current federal governement's handling of the trucker rally has been in comparison. (That doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to the Mohawk cause, or that I think the federal government should have used force against them.)
Rodeoclash 4y ago
New Zealand had the front lawn of its parliament occupied by a combination of anti-vax, pro indigenous rights (which I support, adding them here because they were a major contingent), some pro trump MAGA types and natural healing types (hippies) for over two weeks before police removed them. This was nominally because they wanted the vaccine mandates removed but soon devolved into general anti-establishment sentiment.
throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
Does the USA have a common national identity to rally around anymore; what do a Floridian, a California, and Minnesotan have in common in the 2020's? America has always been a melting pot of different cultures. You can tell a story about how the "american dream" united Americans in the past but you can also argue that dream has been degraded over the years. Even things such as the constitution and bill of rights are being disputed in various ways.
- fullshark 4y ago
  Funny thing is local politics is dying. Your hypothetical statesmen are rallying around how much they hate the other political party, and what they are trying to use the federal gov't to accomplish. That Floridian basically has everything in common with that Californian, as long as they are on the same side of the political divide (give or take one or two "contarian" positions within the tent).
- smileysteve 4y ago
  Surprisingly, if you think about it, a lot. Fruit, logging, Disney, NFL, MLB, boating, cheap foreign imports, militias, and wild fires.
oh_sigh 4y ago
Are you intimately familiar with modern life in the US and (Germany/Canada)? Because divisions you see from the inside might not be obvious from the outside.
- NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
  Tbh I think that's an indication that they're less intense
  - freeone3000 4y ago
    It's more an indication of the US-centricism of US media.
qball 4y ago
>Canada hasn't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has Canada is, politically, even more harshly-divided than the US is. We even have specific political parties for it: the Quebec Party, the Western Party, and the Largest Cities Party (the latter two will deny this, but that's the truth). Quebec has tried to separate from Canada twice in the last 50 years, and was within a Brexit's margin of their latest attempt not succeeding- for all Texas' bluster, they haven't even come close to this. What makes the division worse here is that the stakes are raised higher- our legislature is unicameral, the executive is formed as a consequence of the vote breakdown for the legislature, every single vote is along party lines, and there's effectively no constitution (as an American would understand it). The rough equivalent in the US is if there was no Constitution, and NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. The difference is that the average American would go to war if that happened, and the rhetoric downstream of that property makes their division look worse than it is; it's the opposite in the other parts of the world that are more stereotypically concerned with looking polite and respectable.
- floren 4y ago
  > NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. This is essentially the goal of those who complain about the electoral college and the Senate.
  - confidantlake 4y ago
    Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president. Wouldn't matter if it was 51-49 percent in California and 0-100 in every other state. Under a popular vote California or NYC or DC wouldn't pick anything. States wouldn't vote, people would. One person, one vote no matter where you live.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president. Not true. California would have the majority of the House, but only two Senators. So they would not have the majority of the electoral votes.
jprd 4y ago
Whoaaaaaaa... I'm not one to downplay how bad the divisiveness in US politics is, but if you look a bit closer you'll see the EXACT same dumbsh*t happening in DE and CA, perhaps with less obviousness. Take a closer look at what is happening in Germany's armed forces, Canada's use of emergency powers to remove...truckers. The world has lost its collective mind, just as sure as if The Singularity or First Contact was happening tomorrow. Meaning, the promise of the open 'net has been subverted and this is what we get. Facebook Pograms, the O.J. of NYC (Orange Joke) becoming PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VV thinking he's the second coming of Ivan the Terrible. This would all honestly make a lot more sense if Terry Crews was President.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Meanwhile in France…
NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
They're more homogeneous in almost every way, including wealth, race, culture. They're also smaller.
- JimTheMan 4y ago
  Homogenous is simply not true, outside of say Japan or China. It's a popular trope thrown mostly around by Americans, and is sometimes (often) a dog whistle for racism.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
    Germany is 87% not just white but European white. 74% of those are ethnic Germans. Gini is 0.816 Canada is 72.9% European white and Gini is 0.728 The U.S. is 60% non-Hispanic white and Gini is 0.852 These numbers don't capture everything (e.g., distribution going in to Gini is important), but they do capture a lot. I think the conversation could do without the race-baiting, too :-( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Demographic_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Demogr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada
weatherlite 4y ago
Netherlands was barely able to form a government, took around 6 months I think and it seems shaky. Belgium, well ...has its own issues. UK - pretty polarized (Brexit was around 50% split), France - rise of the far right, Israel - election every 6 months, and so on and so on.
suction 4y ago
I can only speak for Germany, but Social media here still is much, much less widely adopted than in the US, because sharing one's life with strangers is culturally not as well regarded as it is in the US. This also applied before social media - telling one's life story to strangers was just not done. Now, this is changing for younger generations, but even they are still not nearly as willing to share as their American counterparts. It may just be a matter of time but here the Q-Anons and other divisive, Anti-Democratic groups are still more fringe than over there
- hnbad 4y ago
  That last part is only true if you completely ignore the Querdenker movement, which has overlaps (or at least "strategic alliances") with the far-right and QAnon. What Germany is lacking in social media it makes up for in WhatsApp status updates and Telegram groups. The landscape is less homogeneous in Germany with only a minute fraction of people using Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok for example, but you're extremely underselling the overall magnitude. There's a ouroboros of sharepics and clips spreading between Facebook/Instagram and WhatsApp/Telegram and vice versa dragging in additional people in every rotation. Instagram sharepics being shared in Telegram groups, TikTok clips showing up in WhatsApp status updates, and so on, often with direct links back to the source so people can jump right into the funnel. I've seen it with the anti-mask and anti-vax protesters, now I'm seeing it with pro-Russian propaganda. Meanwhile the Querdenker movement seems to be slowly rebranding as a "peace movement", but always with the same broad strokes messaging to distrust the government and to be critical of every party other than the AfD. Whether it's anti-queer, anti-vax or "anti-war", the ideology is fungible and arbitrary, but the underlying message remains the same.
- da39a3ee 4y ago
  Has Germany seen the same rise in young people adopting strongly entrenched positions on racial identity politics and not tolerating a diversity of opinion? E.g are undergraduates trying to ban speakers they disagree with? Can a person under the age of 40 voice agreement with a traditional feminist like JK Rowling without being socially and professionally ostracized?
  - 4y ago
pjerem 4y ago
Oh no, the rest of the planet isn’t immune to this. We, in France, will choose our next president in two weeks between a man who spent the last 5 years breaking all the public services he could or an openly fascist woman. The EU countries just have more social safety nets that renders them more socially solid. So we are not doing as bad as America right now but don’t be fooled, the trend is the same one.
- da39a3ee 4y ago
  You don’t seem to be identifying the same trends; you just seem to be voicing your left wing sympathies.

echlebek 4y ago

Canada isn't immune from this, just look at these moronic displays. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22926134/canada-trucker-freedom-convoy-protest-ottawa https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22926134/canada-truc... This idiocy was all organized on social media. The convoys are overwhelmingly unpopular among larger Canadian society, but social media allowed them to organize in an echo chamber. No comment on Germany, but I would be betting on things being similar there, not different. My personal theory is that before social media, a lot of the people involved in this would have been bullied or shamed into not doing this by their peer group. But social media lets you set your peer group without geographical restrictions.

mathlover2 4y ago
It isn't immune, but it certainly hasn't gotten to the point it has in the US. We had a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. The truck convoy was a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way by going to Ottawa and being absolutely obnoxious --- and ultimately failing because no one wanted to put up with their shit. Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries. Why would the government do that if no one supported them anyways? Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way. I get that there's a weird urge to make that event some sort of insanely important historical moment but it doesn't mean you have to make up dead people. Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious". It doesn't look that way when you are knees deep in american partisan culture wars, but Americans have a tendency to think that anything that happens in the US is exceptional and unique.
  - mathlover2 4y ago
    > Canada literally had to suspend the charter and due process by enacting the emergency measures act, which is unprecedented amongst western countries. Why would the government do that if no one supported them anyways? Probably because they didn't have to deal with a large number of numpties doing that before. > Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way. There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa. > Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious". Was some high-profile Tory premier instigating the protests in Ottawa with a rally there? Were his own officials involved in the planning? Was there a large number of people breaching the Canadian parliament building while it was in session? Were extreme right MP's feeding information to convoy organizers on where Trudeau was? Because while that's not what happened in Canada, it's what happened in the US a year ago. I get what you are saying about Americans thinking anything in the US must be exceptional. I've seen that before myself, especially with certain members of my family. But there is a difference between idiot protesters occupying a capital city's downtown and having to be forced to leave and an attempted self-coup by an outgoing head of state.
    - rootsudo 4y ago
      >Probably because they didn't have to deal with a large number of numpties doing that before. So, the government can suspend rights of the people, while they are using those rights to protest? Is it only okay when the government does it if you "agree" with it? Convenient. That's not a good excuse, or reason - the government willy nilly choosing to enforce and invalidate it's own restrictions and human based rights based on "political feeling." >There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa. Stroke (Potentially Unrelated), Heart Attack (Potentially Unrelated), Crushed, Head Trauma (Police Officer), Shot. Context matters - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-bu... While not supporting the insurrectionists/protestors, I still do not see any mention of other riots that happened during 2020 which, IMO were far more deadlier, at 25 from direct physical violence on both sides - the protesters and law enforcement. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill...
- rootsudo 4y ago
  I wonder what you think about other riots and events. You do know the history of the United States is one that supports insurrection (from the English Monarchy) and those rights are protected by the bill of rights? "Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly. " The newspaper and printing press back in the day was the social media equalizer. What about pamphlets like Common Sense by Thomas Paine? Was education more common back in those times than today? The average American in a day reads more information/published material than an "American" back in 18th century, or even 19th century. Was there no religious fueled political class back in the 17th century? Isn't the point of Freedom of Religion? Even going back, what about the availability of the Bible to the masses vs just the "educated" clergy. What system is better than the one now, where people are free to come together to support their own notions and beliefs? -- Reading your reply, and other generalized replies from other people with the same viewpoint is shocking. It feigns complete insight in the "other side" or that people can have different opinions but still come to the same conclusion or end goal. It is this type of post that creates a "THEM" narrative blame game. It shouldn't be an US vs THEM - or Me vs You. That's what makes Social Media so powerful, people are divided into their beliefs and opinions and then go seek people to re-enforce those those ideas because they are pushed from one extreme to another. It's the same with Pro Obesity groups, Pro Ana groups, Pro Sexual Fetish Groups, etc. It warps what was normal into a narrow individual experience. That's only possibly by the ease of entry of social media vs, what was essentially a web ring back 20 years ago and needing to know a bit of html to host a page on geocities.
  - jgod 4y ago
    Doesn't it make you wonder what they would say about the Founding Fathers had they lost?
- jkhdigital 4y ago
  > a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. I’m not sure what’s nuttier, the actual event itself or the fact that people still call it an “insurrection”. Either way, you are doing a good job of (unwittingly?) providing evidence for your own points, I guess.
- basisword 4y ago
  >> We had a failed insurrection two years ago that killed 5 people. Every time I see this I just think it is peak “American exceptionalism”. You had a small group of red necks, who had what could barely be described as a riot, who walked into the government building and vandalised it a little. It was not an “insurrection”. That is language that was used specifically to create more division and fear.

rayiner 4y ago

Odd comment coming the day after far right and far left candidates won more than half the votes in the French presidential election, with the center left and right collapsing and centrist Macron getting under 30% (despite having moved significantly to the right on cultural issues).

mathlover2 4y ago
France has its own issues as well, in many ways parallel to the US from what I have heard, with a sharp urban-rural divide and a legacy of colonialism that has largely not been addressed.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  I mean yeah if you dismiss or downplay the issues every other country has, the US looks unique. But that's not exactly meaningful right? Also, considering what's happening in france, do you agree that your original comment was not accurate?
  - mathlover2 4y ago
    My comment is certainly less accurate than I originally thought. I will give you that.

quantified 4y ago

They may not be as dumb as the US is?

pzduniak 4y ago
Pretty much. If you look at other EU countries, social media was essential in dividing the populations and promoting populist, nationalistic and xenophobic parties.
- mathlover2 4y ago
  Was social media the cause of the division, or did it merely allow people to exploit existing problems? Assuming that social media is a primary factor, for the sake of argument, the solution to this problem isn't regulating the platforms via Haidt's proposals (which I should add seem to be too limited in effect). Instead, we should decentralize the platforms into protocols. While this will still allow stupid people to go into echo chambers (like with any forum or blog online) it will also limit their reach by depriving them of a singular place for a giant number of people to hear them all at once.
  - redmen 4y ago
    We can spend forever debating this, or we can use our common sense that anything Zuckerberg touches is bad for society and probably causing deep rooted issues. Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%. Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when we have this common sense. Stop anyone on the street and ask them if they think constant notifications, scrolling, phone addiction and apps like tinder, TikTok and Instagram are good for our brains. I'd be sad if people didn't unanimously agree that it's poison
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      'common sense' often does not have either property.

zht 4y ago

we are getting there in Canada

redmen 4y ago

Canada has massive division. It's just masked.

mathlover2 4y ago
In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off.
- redmen 4y ago
  Haha agreed
- tharne 4y ago
  > In the US the division is arguably worse and the masks are coming off. You sure about that? As recently as 1995, Canada was with 0.4% of a vote to split the country in two. In the 1970's the deputy Premier of Quebec was kidnaped and murdered by Quebec separatists. In 1990 the Canadian and Quebec governments used the military and authorized lethal force to put down an armed rebellion by the Mohawk tribe, after a Canadian court allowed the development of a golf course on native land. Just because Canada is largely ignored by the American and International media, doesn't mean that everything is lovely and everyone is sitting around singing kum ba yah.
  - lioeters 4y ago
    Interesting that you mention the Mohawk tribe and their protest, I just learned about it earlier today from watching the film Beans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beans_(2020_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beans_(2020_film)
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      Yeah and even when there was literally hundreds of armed men and a confrontation against the Canadian army... the Canadian government still did not invoke the emergency measure act. They were also blocking crucial bridges into montreal for weeks, killed a police officer and set up a no man's land... yet after multiple weeks they still negotiated a peaceful settlement and kept talking to Mohawk Leaders. Just goes to show how insanely irresponsible the current federal governement's handling of the trucker rally has been in comparison. (That doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to the Mohawk cause, or that I think the federal government should have used force against them.)

Rodeoclash 4y ago

New Zealand had the front lawn of its parliament occupied by a combination of anti-vax, pro indigenous rights (which I support, adding them here because they were a major contingent), some pro trump MAGA types and natural healing types (hippies) for over two weeks before police removed them. This was nominally because they wanted the vaccine mandates removed but soon devolved into general anti-establishment sentiment.

throw_nbvc1234 4y ago

Does the USA have a common national identity to rally around anymore; what do a Floridian, a California, and Minnesotan have in common in the 2020's? America has always been a melting pot of different cultures. You can tell a story about how the "american dream" united Americans in the past but you can also argue that dream has been degraded over the years. Even things such as the constitution and bill of rights are being disputed in various ways.

fullshark 4y ago
Funny thing is local politics is dying. Your hypothetical statesmen are rallying around how much they hate the other political party, and what they are trying to use the federal gov't to accomplish. That Floridian basically has everything in common with that Californian, as long as they are on the same side of the political divide (give or take one or two "contarian" positions within the tent).
smileysteve 4y ago
Surprisingly, if you think about it, a lot. Fruit, logging, Disney, NFL, MLB, boating, cheap foreign imports, militias, and wild fires.

oh_sigh 4y ago

Are you intimately familiar with modern life in the US and (Germany/Canada)? Because divisions you see from the inside might not be obvious from the outside.

NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
Tbh I think that's an indication that they're less intense
- freeone3000 4y ago
  It's more an indication of the US-centricism of US media.

qball 4y ago

>Canada hasn't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has Canada is, politically, even more harshly-divided than the US is. We even have specific political parties for it: the Quebec Party, the Western Party, and the Largest Cities Party (the latter two will deny this, but that's the truth). Quebec has tried to separate from Canada twice in the last 50 years, and was within a Brexit's margin of their latest attempt not succeeding- for all Texas' bluster, they haven't even come close to this. What makes the division worse here is that the stakes are raised higher- our legislature is unicameral, the executive is formed as a consequence of the vote breakdown for the legislature, every single vote is along party lines, and there's effectively no constitution (as an American would understand it). The rough equivalent in the US is if there was no Constitution, and NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. The difference is that the average American would go to war if that happened, and the rhetoric downstream of that property makes their division look worse than it is; it's the opposite in the other parts of the world that are more stereotypically concerned with looking polite and respectable.

floren 4y ago
> NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. This is essentially the goal of those who complain about the electoral college and the Senate.
- confidantlake 4y ago
  Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president. Wouldn't matter if it was 51-49 percent in California and 0-100 in every other state. Under a popular vote California or NYC or DC wouldn't pick anything. States wouldn't vote, people would. One person, one vote no matter where you live.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president. Not true. California would have the majority of the House, but only two Senators. So they would not have the majority of the electoral votes.

jprd 4y ago

Whoaaaaaaa... I'm not one to downplay how bad the divisiveness in US politics is, but if you look a bit closer you'll see the EXACT same dumbsh*t happening in DE and CA, perhaps with less obviousness. Take a closer look at what is happening in Germany's armed forces, Canada's use of emergency powers to remove...truckers. The world has lost its collective mind, just as sure as if The Singularity or First Contact was happening tomorrow. Meaning, the promise of the open 'net has been subverted and this is what we get. Facebook Pograms, the O.J. of NYC (Orange Joke) becoming PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VV thinking he's the second coming of Ivan the Terrible. This would all honestly make a lot more sense if Terry Crews was President.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Meanwhile in France…

NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago

They're more homogeneous in almost every way, including wealth, race, culture. They're also smaller.

JimTheMan 4y ago
Homogenous is simply not true, outside of say Japan or China. It's a popular trope thrown mostly around by Americans, and is sometimes (often) a dog whistle for racism.
- NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
  Germany is 87% not just white but European white. 74% of those are ethnic Germans. Gini is 0.816 Canada is 72.9% European white and Gini is 0.728 The U.S. is 60% non-Hispanic white and Gini is 0.852 These numbers don't capture everything (e.g., distribution going in to Gini is important), but they do capture a lot. I think the conversation could do without the race-baiting, too :-( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Demographic_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Demogr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada

weatherlite 4y ago

Netherlands was barely able to form a government, took around 6 months I think and it seems shaky. Belgium, well ...has its own issues. UK - pretty polarized (Brexit was around 50% split), France - rise of the far right, Israel - election every 6 months, and so on and so on.

suction 4y ago

I can only speak for Germany, but Social media here still is much, much less widely adopted than in the US, because sharing one's life with strangers is culturally not as well regarded as it is in the US. This also applied before social media - telling one's life story to strangers was just not done. Now, this is changing for younger generations, but even they are still not nearly as willing to share as their American counterparts. It may just be a matter of time but here the Q-Anons and other divisive, Anti-Democratic groups are still more fringe than over there

hnbad 4y ago
That last part is only true if you completely ignore the Querdenker movement, which has overlaps (or at least "strategic alliances") with the far-right and QAnon. What Germany is lacking in social media it makes up for in WhatsApp status updates and Telegram groups. The landscape is less homogeneous in Germany with only a minute fraction of people using Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok for example, but you're extremely underselling the overall magnitude. There's a ouroboros of sharepics and clips spreading between Facebook/Instagram and WhatsApp/Telegram and vice versa dragging in additional people in every rotation. Instagram sharepics being shared in Telegram groups, TikTok clips showing up in WhatsApp status updates, and so on, often with direct links back to the source so people can jump right into the funnel. I've seen it with the anti-mask and anti-vax protesters, now I'm seeing it with pro-Russian propaganda. Meanwhile the Querdenker movement seems to be slowly rebranding as a "peace movement", but always with the same broad strokes messaging to distrust the government and to be critical of every party other than the AfD. Whether it's anti-queer, anti-vax or "anti-war", the ideology is fungible and arbitrary, but the underlying message remains the same.
da39a3ee 4y ago
Has Germany seen the same rise in young people adopting strongly entrenched positions on racial identity politics and not tolerating a diversity of opinion? E.g are undergraduates trying to ban speakers they disagree with? Can a person under the age of 40 voice agreement with a traditional feminist like JK Rowling without being socially and professionally ostracized?
- 4y ago

pjerem 4y ago

Oh no, the rest of the planet isn’t immune to this. We, in France, will choose our next president in two weeks between a man who spent the last 5 years breaking all the public services he could or an openly fascist woman. The EU countries just have more social safety nets that renders them more socially solid. So we are not doing as bad as America right now but don’t be fooled, the trend is the same one.

da39a3ee 4y ago
You don’t seem to be identifying the same trends; you just seem to be voicing your left wing sympathies.