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To me the inflection point was the 2016 US election (which also coincided with Brexit). Independent of the elections I think social media websites had by this
by opportune 3y ago
To me the inflection point was the 2016 US election (which also coincided with Brexit).
Independent of the elections I think social media websites had by this time “perfected” engagement-driven algorithmic feeds and online news had started getting good at optimizing their content for those purposes. And around this time, anecdotally, is when I think a lot of older people started taking the internet more seriously, as real-world services like Airbnb/Uber/Amazon prime (to be fair, started earlier) became popular and middle aged people started using social media more. This, in combination with the polarizing content of the elections, made the internet into the hostile and echo-chambery place it is today. And it also attracted a lot more Government attention leading to things like GDPR (good in theory, bad inasmuch as it led to the current cookie banner bullshit) and link taxes.
- pessimizer 3y ago> To me the inflection point was the 2016 US election (which also coincided with Brexit.) And with the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict.
- metabagel 3y agoDo you mean the Russian invasion of sovereign Ukraine territory?
- pessimizer 3y agoI mean what the hell I said.
- AlexandrB 3y agoRussian annexed Crimea in 2014. Or are we talking about "2016-ish"?
- pessimizer 3y agoWhen do you think the 2016 election was held, and when did the participants in it campaign?
- opportune 3y agoYeah I wanted to mention Euromaidan and Russia increasing its general hostile activity on the internet (overstated in the wake of the 2016 election? Yes. Literally something that verifiably happened with eg various Facebook groups for divisive political issues run by Russians acting on behalf of their government? Also yes). I do think Euromaidan was partially the root cause as it woke Russia up to the possibility that the internet could be used to destabilize its various client states as in Euromaidan or its rivals like the US. But a lot of people will debate the actual overall influence of that vs it being a scapegoat used to delegitimize the right wing surge at the time; undeniably even if the right wing surge/political divisiveness trend was aided by Russian activity, it was still real people who engaged with it online and voted for the right wing causes.
- Duwensatzaj 3y agoCell phones. The shift away from desktop and laptops to cell phones is a major factor as well.
- ars 3y agoI wonder how old you are to think anything changed in 2016. To me 2016 was just a continuation of what started before, there was no inflection then. The 2000's are when things started to change, not 2016. And Obama's first election was when the internet started to be taken seriously by politicians (2008). It's basically what gave him the win.