Comment by agumonkey
19 hours ago
I'd be curious to know how much cable tv content was direct propaganda or hype
on youtube most of what i see is hyped hyperbolic content, polarized podcasts, shorts.. the way and reason why "content" is produced has changed
Direct propaganda? Not too much. However, the amount of content in the 1980s and 1990s that was in some way funded by the DOD was a bit crazy. Likewise, stuff like NED funded content. If one considers corporations part of the state, then the percentage of content that was propaganda would likely be more than 40%.
Today, this would be harder to figure. Because anyone can use a VPN and pose as a person in any country, any country’s intelligence people could be carrying out misinformation/disinformation campaigns at any time. How much of the left or right content on FB that mom is reading is from genuine actors vs intelligence actors? How many calls for violent action on the left and right are just FBI entrapment or Russian attempts to destabilize the USA?
When all of this was being built, this angle never occurred to me. It should have, but it didn’t. I naively thought, as so many did, that the ability of people to connect across national boundaries, across racial and gender lines, and across socio-economic divides would lead to a better, safer, and happier world. Sadly, I was completely mistaken. The internet became worse than life AFK on those fronts, people joined echo chambers, and radicalism increased.