• 6 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • My thought is that these people think that their smarter than everyone else therefore they are justified doing anything they do. On the other hand, anyone with a billion dollars got it by making a whole lot of other people poorer. And they ate neither actually geniuses nor benevolent in any other way.

    The Phillip Morris CEO makes money by hooking people onto something that isn’t good for them. Tech CEOs are very seldom any different. Anyone who says otherwise usually has a financial interest in making you believe them.
















  • I agree with you.

    And youre right that the article doesnt focus on the algorithmic hate factory which to me is the main difference between social media and traditional media. For instance, and this is just anecdotal, my grandma who had nothing besides an analog telephone and broadcast tv became just as polarized and angry as someone with social media just by reading and watching Fox news (and eventually OAN and Newsmax) all day. I cant imagine that Facebook would have made it any worse.

    The algorithm is probably accelerating the polarization pipeline, but i guess my point was that social media isnt necessarily doing anything new or distinct. Its doing the same thing Rush Limbaugh was doing on the radio 25 years ago, its just on a new frontier.

    The 24 hour news cycle was already throwing sensational controversial stories up and speculating wildly if not outright lying about to hold on to eyeballs. The longer you watch, the more commercials you see. Etc etc.

    I would love to see a study of social media vs traditional media to see whether the mean time to full polarization changes and if so, how significantly.

    Good Ted talk!