4 ms·

Fatigue? We are fighting this with different names since 2002. I guess normal people just can't hear about it anymore and that's probably on purpose.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
It's hard to reach normal people, too. At least here in America the right wing has consolidated a lot of propaganda power into cable news like Fox
- ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
  Cable everything is dead. FOX is doing relatively well, but they reach maybe 1% or 2% of the population, and presumably that's almost all already unshifting right-wing people. I'm not saying it's impossible that it's a propaganda power center, but I don't personally know how that would work. It feels like a leftover enemy from the early 2000s that just doesn't make sense post-internet.
  - icameron 1y ago
    "According to data from Nielsen, Fox News — from the period spanning June 20 through Sept. 1 — finished as the no. 1 network in all of broadcast television during the primetime hours of 8-11 PM. During those hours, Fox News averaged 2.43 million total nightly viewers in primetime — topping ABC at 2.38 million, NBC at 2.21 million, and CBS at 2.03 million. It is the second time in the network’s history they accomplished that feat — with the other coming in the summer of 2020." Whlie it sounds accurate that maybe 1-2% of the population watches it live, it is also the most highly rated and influencing "news" outlet in the US. Their reach is far deeper than 1-2%. It gets retweeted, talked about, and trickles down. It sure seems like at least 1/3rd of the population has a FOX brainworm infection. I've seen in on 24/7 in hotels and some sport bars or restaurants too.
    - bongodongobob 1y ago
      Exactly. Come to the Midwest and you'll see Fox News on in bars, oil change waiting rooms, dentist offices, etc. The other thing to keep in mind is that thanks to the electoral college, that percentage of viewers translates to a higher percentage of electoral votes.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > The other thing to keep in mind is that thanks to the electoral college, that percentage of viewers translates to a higher percentage of electoral votes. Except that it's the opposite. The Dakotas are over-represented in the electoral college but getting them from 60% Republican to even 99% Republican wouldn't gain them a single electoral college vote. Meanwhile states like Michigan and Ohio where changing minds could change outcomes are under-represented in terms of electoral college votes. But the vote allocations are the least impactful part of the electoral college. If you got rid of the +2 electoral college votes for each state independent of its population, votes in Arizona would still matter more than California. The primary thing the electoral college does isn't to give red states slightly more power than blue states, it's to give swing states dramatically more power than safe states.
        BrenBarn 1y ago
        > If you got rid of the +2 electoral college votes for each state independent of its population, votes in Arizona would still matter more than California. There's a bit more to it than the +2 electoral votes from the senate, because even within the House the representations are skewed due to the strange decision to cap the size of the House at 435 seats while guaranteeing each state at least one seat. Thus California has 52 times as many reps as Wyoming although its population is about 67 times greater. > The primary thing the electoral college does isn't to give red states slightly more power than blue states, it's to give swing states dramatically more power than safe states. Strictly speaking this too could be changed to some extent without changing the electoral college itself, namely by states switching to allocate their electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote, instead of winner-take all. That is entirely possible now and two states already do it, but it has minimal effect because those states are tiny. But if, for instance, you could win 20 EVs in CA by winning ~40% of the popular vote, you can bet that some campaign dollars would shift to CA from, say, Ohio, because Ohio doesn't even have a total of 20 EVs. You could win more EVs in California while losing the election than you could by winning in Ohio! But most states will not do this because usually the party that wins all the EVs is also the party that controls the state government, and they don't want to give away half their EVs to the other party.
  - BrenBarn 1y ago
    But what about all the re-presentations of the same content in YouTube clips, etc.? It's true that cable as a delivery mechanism is declining but that doesn't necessarily mean stuff like Fox as a content source is declining in influence.
- beeflet 1y ago
  Blast! Those propagandists will soon have an iron grip over every nursing home in the country that forgot to cancel their cable subscription.
jonaharagon 1y ago
Totally. This is exactly the problem with things like Chat Control in the EU and KOSA in the US. They will just introduce the same bill over and over and over again until they get the desired result. What we need is for legislatures to pass "NO Chat Control" and "NO KOSA" bills that specifically block this behavior, but unsurprisingly governments don't seem to be too keen about limiting their own rights, only those of their citizens.
- tormeh 1y ago
  You mean enshrine a right to messaging privacy in a constitution? That's going to be difficult.
  - jonaharagon 1y ago
    I mean that'd certainly be nice, and it is also their only job, but even if they wanted to do it in regular legislation that'd be better than nothing. Make a law that says companies have to protect the data of their citizens without the possibility of any intentional backdoor, perhaps. Make a law that says companies can't require people to dox themselves with ID scans simply to use a publicly available internet platform that provides no services in the physical world. Make a law that says OS developers can't create client-side scanning services that upload results off-device without revocable user consent.
  - nine_k 1y ago
    The US constitution already has a provision against unreasonable search properly enshrined, and well tested in courts. Things like KOSA can be rejected as clearly violating it. The EU does not seem to have such simple and ironclad norm.
    - asdff 1y ago
      Do you imagine the current SCOTUS stepping up to bat for the common person in the face of three letter agencies and federal autocracy?
    - Bud 1y ago
allenrb 1y ago
It’s this. Even when an effort fails, there are no consequences for the politicians behind it. Nobody gets voted out of office. Nobody loses power. All they need to do is wait a year or two or five and try again. Eventual success is almost guaranteed. Trust only software and systems you control and even then, approach with a hefty amount of side-eye.
nullc 1y ago
the price of Liberty is eternal vigilance
- tremon 1y ago
  And periodically washing the streets with the blood of tyrants. People always seem to forget that part.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    Of course nowadays it's much cleaner and less sticky to use synthetic tyrant blood

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago

It's hard to reach normal people, too. At least here in America the right wing has consolidated a lot of propaganda power into cable news like Fox

ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
Cable everything is dead. FOX is doing relatively well, but they reach maybe 1% or 2% of the population, and presumably that's almost all already unshifting right-wing people. I'm not saying it's impossible that it's a propaganda power center, but I don't personally know how that would work. It feels like a leftover enemy from the early 2000s that just doesn't make sense post-internet.
- icameron 1y ago
  "According to data from Nielsen, Fox News — from the period spanning June 20 through Sept. 1 — finished as the no. 1 network in all of broadcast television during the primetime hours of 8-11 PM. During those hours, Fox News averaged 2.43 million total nightly viewers in primetime — topping ABC at 2.38 million, NBC at 2.21 million, and CBS at 2.03 million. It is the second time in the network’s history they accomplished that feat — with the other coming in the summer of 2020." Whlie it sounds accurate that maybe 1-2% of the population watches it live, it is also the most highly rated and influencing "news" outlet in the US. Their reach is far deeper than 1-2%. It gets retweeted, talked about, and trickles down. It sure seems like at least 1/3rd of the population has a FOX brainworm infection. I've seen in on 24/7 in hotels and some sport bars or restaurants too.
  - bongodongobob 1y ago
    Exactly. Come to the Midwest and you'll see Fox News on in bars, oil change waiting rooms, dentist offices, etc. The other thing to keep in mind is that thanks to the electoral college, that percentage of viewers translates to a higher percentage of electoral votes.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > The other thing to keep in mind is that thanks to the electoral college, that percentage of viewers translates to a higher percentage of electoral votes. Except that it's the opposite. The Dakotas are over-represented in the electoral college but getting them from 60% Republican to even 99% Republican wouldn't gain them a single electoral college vote. Meanwhile states like Michigan and Ohio where changing minds could change outcomes are under-represented in terms of electoral college votes. But the vote allocations are the least impactful part of the electoral college. If you got rid of the +2 electoral college votes for each state independent of its population, votes in Arizona would still matter more than California. The primary thing the electoral college does isn't to give red states slightly more power than blue states, it's to give swing states dramatically more power than safe states.
      - BrenBarn 1y ago
        > If you got rid of the +2 electoral college votes for each state independent of its population, votes in Arizona would still matter more than California. There's a bit more to it than the +2 electoral votes from the senate, because even within the House the representations are skewed due to the strange decision to cap the size of the House at 435 seats while guaranteeing each state at least one seat. Thus California has 52 times as many reps as Wyoming although its population is about 67 times greater. > The primary thing the electoral college does isn't to give red states slightly more power than blue states, it's to give swing states dramatically more power than safe states. Strictly speaking this too could be changed to some extent without changing the electoral college itself, namely by states switching to allocate their electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote, instead of winner-take all. That is entirely possible now and two states already do it, but it has minimal effect because those states are tiny. But if, for instance, you could win 20 EVs in CA by winning ~40% of the popular vote, you can bet that some campaign dollars would shift to CA from, say, Ohio, because Ohio doesn't even have a total of 20 EVs. You could win more EVs in California while losing the election than you could by winning in Ohio! But most states will not do this because usually the party that wins all the EVs is also the party that controls the state government, and they don't want to give away half their EVs to the other party.
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  But what about all the re-presentations of the same content in YouTube clips, etc.? It's true that cable as a delivery mechanism is declining but that doesn't necessarily mean stuff like Fox as a content source is declining in influence.
beeflet 1y ago
Blast! Those propagandists will soon have an iron grip over every nursing home in the country that forgot to cancel their cable subscription.

jonaharagon 1y ago

Totally. This is exactly the problem with things like Chat Control in the EU and KOSA in the US. They will just introduce the same bill over and over and over again until they get the desired result. What we need is for legislatures to pass "NO Chat Control" and "NO KOSA" bills that specifically block this behavior, but unsurprisingly governments don't seem to be too keen about limiting their own rights, only those of their citizens.

tormeh 1y ago
You mean enshrine a right to messaging privacy in a constitution? That's going to be difficult.
- jonaharagon 1y ago
  I mean that'd certainly be nice, and it is also their only job, but even if they wanted to do it in regular legislation that'd be better than nothing. Make a law that says companies have to protect the data of their citizens without the possibility of any intentional backdoor, perhaps. Make a law that says companies can't require people to dox themselves with ID scans simply to use a publicly available internet platform that provides no services in the physical world. Make a law that says OS developers can't create client-side scanning services that upload results off-device without revocable user consent.
- nine_k 1y ago
  The US constitution already has a provision against unreasonable search properly enshrined, and well tested in courts. Things like KOSA can be rejected as clearly violating it. The EU does not seem to have such simple and ironclad norm.
  - asdff 1y ago
    Do you imagine the current SCOTUS stepping up to bat for the common person in the face of three letter agencies and federal autocracy?
  - Bud 1y ago

allenrb 1y ago

It’s this. Even when an effort fails, there are no consequences for the politicians behind it. Nobody gets voted out of office. Nobody loses power. All they need to do is wait a year or two or five and try again. Eventual success is almost guaranteed. Trust only software and systems you control and even then, approach with a hefty amount of side-eye.

nullc 1y ago

the price of Liberty is eternal vigilance

tremon 1y ago
And periodically washing the streets with the blood of tyrants. People always seem to forget that part.
- Y_Y 1y ago
  Of course nowadays it's much cleaner and less sticky to use synthetic tyrant blood