There's been a shift from freedom of speech to successful demands for censorship everywhere, and it only took about two years. That's scary.
The real power behind this was not social media. It was television. No need to rehash the history of Fox News and Trump. The key point is that news detached from real-world facts became the major input for a sizable fraction of the population. Fox discovered that there's a huge market for telling people what they want to hear. Notably, to the exclusion of contrary views.
Supply-side propaganda has been around for centuries. Now we have a market demand for propaganda. One that pulls media into being even more radical. That's new. Eventually even Fox felt they'd gone too far. Then they started losing viewers to Breitbart and OAN. It really is demand pull, not supply push.
Social media let you listen to people you want to listen to. So it amplifies this phenomenon. But it didn't create it.
The demand pull for propaganda is the disturbing bit.
I'm not sure it's entirely new, though; people keep repeating stories from the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Material that tells you your country is great and all the problems are the fault of the Other is always going to be tempting.
Using censorship as a tool to silence the voices of the other side side is shocking to me. In the US, freedom of speech use to be very sacred and a third rail no one dared touch. Now young people (who use to be the staunchest defenders) actively call for it. Strange times.
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There's been a shift from freedom of speech to successful demands for censorship everywhere, and it only took about two years. That's scary.
The real power behind this was not social media. It was television. No need to rehash the history of Fox News and Trump. The key point is that news detached from real-world facts became the major input for a sizable fraction of the population. Fox discovered that there's a huge market for telling people what they want to hear. Notably, to the exclusion of contrary views.
Supply-side propaganda has been around for centuries. Now we have a market demand for propaganda. One that pulls media into being even more radical. That's new. Eventually even Fox felt they'd gone too far. Then they started losing viewers to Breitbart and OAN. It really is demand pull, not supply push.
Social media let you listen to people you want to listen to. So it amplifies this phenomenon. But it didn't create it.
The demand pull for propaganda is the disturbing bit.
I'm not sure it's entirely new, though; people keep repeating stories from the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Material that tells you your country is great and all the problems are the fault of the Other is always going to be tempting.
Using censorship as a tool to silence the voices of the other side side is shocking to me. In the US, freedom of speech use to be very sacred and a third rail no one dared touch. Now young people (who use to be the staunchest defenders) actively call for it. Strange times.
It's shocking to me, because the situation is worse in other countries. And people are alright with it!
It seems as though there's this widespread belief these days that things you don't like are harmful to society.