Comment by officialjunk
5 years ago
other countries also have internet access. the impact on them doesn't appear to be the same. why is that?
5 years ago
other countries also have internet access. the impact on them doesn't appear to be the same. why is that?
I dunno. The UK got whipped into an online frenzy prior to the Brexit vote. Notably, there was possible Russian interference during that campaign on Twitter, similar to the US [1]. And Bolsonaro got elected in Brazil, largely due to manipulation on WhatsApp. Roughly 47% of the country uses WhatsApp, and of the top fifty images circulating at the time of the election, only four were real [2].
Social media has proven itself to have massive impact on the zeitgeist, and it has been weaponized the world over to serve the interests of those willing to manipulate others in order to further their own (often misanthropic) goals.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/how-400-russia...
[2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/whatsapps-influence-brazilian-elect...
Most of the Russian stories were pure election stories, there is almost no merit to it at all.
This is actually one thing I don't understand about the alleged progressive side and many people share this view. You could be made to believe basically anything the same way Trump supporters believe a communist overtake of the US is imminent.
Furthermore the support these stories got from intelligence agencies point to very serious problems that do indeed influence democracy in a very bad way, far worse than Putin can imagine in his dreams. Of course it might put a smile on his face, that much is understood.
True that the zeitgeist has influence, but it is mainly driven by western companies, not by the Russian government. Aside from the language barrier you cannot name one talking point this alleged Russian propaganda contained.
You do understand the implication if you decry any opposition to EU integration as Russian interference? Because any political discourse stops right there with you.
No, there was honest dissatisfaction with the EU in Britain. That might be wrong or not, but the Russian thing just made people reinforce their views, because that actually makes sense now.
Russians, seriously...
Brazil is another story here, although I think the facts have to be checked.
> honest dissatisfaction with the EU in Britain
Well, I don't know how honest you'd call The Sun. Obviously, it wasn't Russia - but equally obviously, the whole euro-skepticism thing was hardly an organic phenomenon. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single issue of a right wing British tabloid published in the last ten years that didn't have at least one article in it about how bad the EU is.
Influencing democracy is older than democracy - I think the thing that's causing such a furore is that the internet is lowering the barriers for this kind of yellow-press skulduggery, to the point that losers like Steve Bannon start to have actual power.
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Bolsonaro was not elected because WhatsApp, this was a fake news and the journalist that spread that lie was condoned by spreading fake news.
It surely does.
Social Media did not create division. Internet did not create division. TV did not create division.
They only amplify it. US was divided long before the creation of Internet. That baseline were far higher than other countries. Compared to other countries Internet definitely has its impact, but the baseline was small it isn't as obvious.
Let's put some number into it.
Division Score of US is 100, Internet Usage as a Multiplier, US also has one of the highest Internet usage ( especially with Social Media ) around the world. if you put that as 10. You get a total of 1000.
Division in Country A is 50, Internet usage as 4 ( If you take social media ads revenue split per capita between US and other countries as an indicator ), you have 200.
That is 5x difference.
Maybe it is affected by the number of people on the internet. Back in my initial internet troll days, you could go on pretty much any forum and know you would be treated fairly even if you were a dickhead.
Now you can start whole blood feuds talking about pineapple on pizza.
My money would be on a more homogeneous culture. Look at somewhere like Australia, the Scandinavian countries or NZ where we pretty much share our attitudes with the most of the others in the country.
As opposed to the US where you're pretty much divided on whether you grew up in the city, suburbs or rural and then again on state. A Californian is wildly different from a Texan, who are again wildly different from a Wisconsonian. The UK is similar with the divide between the north and south of England, the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish.
I think some of it is natural, but it's being amplified with the advent of globalism.