mozz

This is a fascinating conversation

Wheatpasting is great. To me, the difference is twofold. Roughly speaking, you could say:

• Honestly presenting the source of what you're putting out is opinion, disguising or being deceptive with it is propaganda
• A method that offers 1 unit of influence per person, is opinion, whereas a method that gives 1 unit of influence over the narrative per dollar is propaganda

Like I say, I am fascinated that you don't see a problem with running a large number of accounts to create the illusion of popularity of a certain viewpoint, without it needing to be a persuasive enough viewpoint to gain popularity on its own

is capable of holding their own in a debate with trump (not easy!)

Well that’s certainly notable

Dude I literally JUST explained this, IN THE MESSAGE YOU ARE REPLYING TO.

I have no idea if the Democrats can save the country. Actually, on their own, I am pretty confident that they cannot based on the track record. I am extremely sure that Trump will do catastrophic damage to it, though, which is a different statement.

Next you’re gonna tell me that engaging in rational explanations of the flaws in their viewpoint does not lead to a productive response

So. That’s why I say community operated, and that the internet was a big step forward whatever its flaws. I wouldn’t consider the Black Panther viewpoint to be propaganda, and yet I think there’s been a pretty consistent consensus from newspapers to TV to modern corporate social media that if the Black Panthers’ viewpoint is on your front page one day, then that’s a problem and we’re gonna have to fix it and probably someone’s getting fired or at least moved around.

How community operated social media can determine the difference between somebody in Akron who thinks Joe Biden is a bum and wants to say so, and somebody managing 59 accounts through a VPN each of which keeps up a steady stream of content including a healthy dose of “Joe Biden is a bum and I want to say so,” I honestly have no idea. In a perfect world, to me. the social media software would contain the judgement that:

• the Black Panthers would not be propaganda
• an honest Trump supporter would not be propaganda
• the guy in Akron would not be propaganda, and
• and the guy with 59 accounts would be propaganda.

How to implement that though, I don’t really know.

Recasting “you are in danger if you don’t do X” as someone threatening / coercing you into doing X, is one of those little skillful emotional reframings that I was talking about in my other comment. If you watch closely on Lemmy there are like 8-10 of them (all pointing in the direction of “don’t vote for Joe Biden”) that come up again and again.

By “Media” I mean everything. Newspapers, TV, social media, anything that lets people know what’s going on in the world

It used to be like a few thousand independent editors all across the country, then with TV and corporate consolidation it dwindled to basically just 1 corporate viewpoint, now with social media and the internet I think public opinion is more or less up for grabs for whoever wants to spend the most money to influence it (not that different from the later stages of the TV era tbh)

For quite a while now media has been out of “control” of any single grouping; basically that was one of the big advantages of the internet era. But the disadvantage is that real journalism costs money, and modern newspapers don’t have a good business model to stay alive and do it, and modern social media isn’t really configured to be able to keep out propaganda viewpoints, and so the public narrative winding up de facto “in control” of whoever puts more money and effort into distorting it.

I don’t think we should go back to where anyone can have “control” necessarily but it would be nice if real journalism could make money again to be able to do the investigative aspect, and if normal person social media (for the opinion aspect and sharing-news-stories aspect) was community operated and resistant to deliberate propaganda

Best answer I can come up with to your question as I see it

Yeah you relayed your humanitarian concerns

Hm

I mean you’re not wrong. The US spent most of the previous two centuries wandering around the world killing and enslaving anyone who made them nervous or unprofitable while the whole “honest” media wrote a never ending stream of stories enthusing about how nice it was that the price of bananas was going down

Then when the internet came along we replaced that with an absolute explosion of viewpoints some of which are honest, some of which are just lazy and pointless, and some of which are manufactured propaganda which shows a remarkable level of effectiveness

But… if you wanna tell me that that’s not the pure step backwards I described it as, I won’t say you’re totally wrong about that tbh

Regardless of all that, yes, I still think making it work effectively and honestly is as important now as it ever was

Like a lot of the founding fathers, I think a strong and honest press is one of the key features of a democracy, and without that, it won't function, and people being able to vote won't do a damn thing to prevent the whole thing from turning into tyranny

And hey! Look at our media!

And hey! Look what kind of government we have, oh no oh fuck

That was kind of my point about the whole thing: That skillful manipulation of the voters happens, and has ruined the country pretty thoroughly. I don't think the answer is to turn away from democracy, but I do that think that fixing the media so that people have some semblance of an accurate picture of what's happening is an absolutely urgent issue right now.

Tell me you've never had a lengthy conversation with someone who gets all their political news from Tiktok without telling me etc

You could literally nominate a chocolate milkshake or a dead squirrel and they wouldn't know the difference if they saw some meme videos that said chocolate milkshake is gonna lower gas prices

There is a wonderful quote from Sadhguru, which I think will be difficult to find so I will try to replicate it. It was something like:

Where are these perfect people? In all the time I have been working in our organization, I have not found one. People are at times rude, and emotional, and short sighted, and wrong, because they are real human people. It is allowed! They can be involved and they can do great things, but if you are waiting for your organization to be staffed entirely of people who do not do wrong things, I am sorry to tell you that you will be waiting forever, my friend.

Something like that. IDK, I just sort of made it up, but that's the gist.