Yeah, Fox news was the feeder into this - they’ve really been training their viewers in non-critical thinking (although the Republicans have long voiced opposition towards the very idea of critical thinking). They’ve been peddling lies and conspiracy theories and adopting completely contradictory positions for wholly partisan reasons. Anyone watching it (without going insane) has to be willing to uncritically accept partisan propaganda.
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That’s all we’ve got…
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Correlation not causation. I think they just stem from the same right-wing AND left-wing (think Mercola and Naturalnews) the source makes the fact line of rationalization.
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I don’t think he’ll have problems finding new vectors; people want to be deceived.
Every once in a while during the last election I would check out the articles my Trumpeteer relatives would share. They basically failed every rubric I use for establishing trustworthiness.
-They were clickbaity in the extreme requiring multiple page views
-Popup ads all over the place
-unrelated adds on every scrap of white space
-no attributed authorship
-and on and on and on.
I opened up one “article”, and I shit you not, there was only one line of relevant text viewable on my screen.
But yeah, the problem isn’t going away. The Echo Chamber isn’t just real, it’s apparently a destination resort with an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet.
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If I see anyone sharing shit sites on FB, I am calling them out on it.
I already do on a lot of things. Fortunately, most of the time, it is not my friends, but either friends of friends, friends posting on their friends, or some times people I have friended as a contact for something, but not really friends with.
I tried that; I don’t think it works.
My personal take is that Facebook isn’t a public forum, but more of a public coliseum. Whenever I engaged in debate, discussion, bullshit calling, or whatever, it invariably turned into a red-team blue-team spectator sort with the two of us duking it out for fans on the sidelines.
I only started changing my political mind when I left my midwestern bubble and started actually talking with people from other cultures and backgrounds. I am not exotic enough to encourage that kind of self-reflection in my conservative friends, nor connected-enough to offer those opportunities to those in far flung rural locales.
That just leaves me with a) ignoring their insipid shared articles and/or b) private chats. I am not holding out much hope that that will work, either.
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What a delightful fellow!
Sounds like a resort with a certain short fingered vulgarian’s paw prints on it
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NPR tracks down “fake news” entrepreneur claiming up to $30,000 a month from ads: “I have a beautiful life”
Really? Rupert Murdoch only makes $360K a year from ad sales?
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You’ll be surprised at how he looks now!
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Well, it’s down to fake news or weapons dealing in the idgaf sweepstakes. Not sure which job I should hit bottom with.
Who knew that being a tap-dancing, hypocritical sociopath could offer one a “good” living?
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I mean, we’d all live well if we didn’t have to live with ourselves.
It’s the same reason why I’m not selling whatever affinity/pious fraud to Evangelicals who eat that shit up. Hucksters live long, safe lives and even after getting out of prison enrich themselves immediately.
We have the means to build new and social sites that are not for profit. There are a number of ways we can fund it. Costs are always dropping.
We do not have the means to scale them without funding and research.
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Are you discussing blogging platforms or social media?
Yes, we have the means and either no one is doing it or, when they occasionally do, no one uses them. See Diaspora or whatever twitter-clone the Free Software people embraced.
This is not a problem of capability. This is a problem that people don’t want to use these sites and they never become more than a flash in a pan (see Ello) if they are noticed at all.
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Why not both?
Blogging is plenty decentralized. Social networks are not so easily disentangled from a need for scalable services.
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