Kinda makes you wonder: if Trump had been in office a hundred years ago, would he have tried to govern thru classified ads in the newspapers?
I don’t agree. There are relatively few reputable news organizations, social media platforms, and search engines, but there still are a decent number of places to get information. The actual problems we’ve seen from news are not from the big guys, but from how easy it is for little sites to pop up and push fake news.
Sure, Google and Facebook’s algorithms have problems that can lead to walled gardens of information, only letting people see what they already were predisposed to believe. But at least that isn’t intentional. At least, to have broad appeal, these sites have to remain mostly content neutral. And if they become sources of dangerous misinformation, they have a reason to try and fix that, rather than it being working as intended.
There are still enough sources of information that I don’t think any one company could start pushing their own version of the truth and control the information. They would be called out for doing so, and that would be picked up on the other platforms.
That’s not to say there are no monopolistic problems–sites owning too many other sites is a problem. I do have a problem with sites having too much of our personal private information and ability to use it. I do have a problem with how hard it is to monetarily compete.
But at the information level? I see having a few but not only one source of news information to be good for being able to filter out false news. Until we get to where spreading knowingly fake news is prosecutable as an exception to freedom of speech along with other forms of lying like defamation (libel and slander) or false advertising, being able to put pressure on the large organizations who want to stay neutral is a good thing.
I have a much bigger problem with the even larger entertainment industry. They don’t only get their content from their users. And they still have more money and thus power than Google or Facebook or Twitter, to the point that they don’t seem to feel any pressure by others to change.
Advertisers and media companies are still the ones in charge here, not Facebook, Twitter, and Google. The latter at least somewhat have to answer to us.
Hi Mange. I love your Youtube channel. I’m not real concerned about administration by Twitter — only by the fact that an insane person is doing it. But functionally, I don’t see it as much different than F. D. Roosevelt and Churchill doing radio addresses.
I am much more worried about Rupert Murdoch and other media giants that sell controversy with zero-concern for facts. They are the ones breeding the tweeting monsters.
Maybe it’s just me getting old, but it just seems like Twitter is a cacophony of emotionally charged and ill-considered drivel; the immediacy of the medium cultivates that. The really important differences between that, and a broadcast speech on Radio or TV are time taken to think about the message and speech writers and advisors. I suppose a responsible leader could still do those things and use Twitter to broadcast the message after time to think and take advice, but that’s not what Twitter really expects, or encourages.
I’d say the worse part was the bit about performing official actions such as firing people or issuing specific orders through that medium, instead of doing it through the official channels of office and announcing it on the public venue.
It goes beyond Trump and it is worrisome because it helps create in the minds of the masses the perception that there IS officialness to what’s on Twitter and that you do not need the proper form or process to make things happen.
Both can be true.
—fellow old guy
But these are all PRIVATE companies that can conduct business as they see fit. And fortunately, some of them still have a sense of public responsibility and standards beyond making a profit.
And it’s not like all sources of this crap are shut down. There will always be QAnon, Fox News, streetcorners (like in the old days), and other outlets where like-minded people can gather and get themselves all worked up.
Now, if you want total control of all media/web outlets by One Entity-- the you’ve got COMMUNISM and a TOTALITARIAN GUMMINT! Oh noes!
As someone said, this is the marketplace in action. When the market doesn’t want to read/see this shit, the vendor removes it. That’s a good thing.
Yep - that’s the crux of it - trying to perform the administration of the role via social media, with immediacy, whereas when done by the normal process, a lot of the time (at least for some participants), some advisor would intervene and say “Actually, we can’t do that Mr President”, or “Have you considered [some alternative and much more sensible thing] Mr President?”
This has infuriated me from Day One of trump’s admin. Announcing policy (such as it was), hirings and firings, official pronouncements, etc., by TWITTER-- are you fucking kidding me?? In the beginning he pretended to have press conferences, and then abandoned those. Twitter became his main way of communicating with the world. That’s just wrong wrong wrong.
Of course it’s intentional.
They carefully designed those algorithms exactly the way they want them to function. Drawing people down rabbit holes brings them in more clicks and therefore more income.
They don’t care whether it’s conspiracy theories or funny cat videos. Getting people to keep clicking on them again and again brings them in more income. That’s the problem.
I have no problem with Trump getting kicked off all the platforms. I don’t think I’d have any problems with “my guy/gal” getting kicked off; if one is so toxic that multiple platforms don’t want to have anything to do with you then that’s your fault. Some other thoughts:
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Every previous administration got along fine without Twitter; Trump chose Twitter to be his main platform. Twitter has no obligation to let him keep it. As Mangetout alluded to, Twitter is not necessary to govern.
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We need to differentiate “reach” with “monopoly”. I think people are calling Twitter a monopoly because it has massive reach but there are plenty of other platforms. Trump is so toxic he’s been kicked off (almost) all of them.
Yeah, ultimately, even if those platforms are doing the kicking without a shred of social altruism, but only to preserve their own business and protect themselves from potential future litigation or some such, that’s perfectly fine; they are businesses, not charities.
And the parent corporation of Westwood One is barring its talk show hosts from pushing conspiracy theories. I’m excerpting this from The Washington Post (paywalled).
After months of stoking anger about alleged election fraud, one of America’s largest talk-radio companies has decided on an abrupt change of direction.
Cumulus Media, which employs some of the most popular right-leaning talk-radio hosts in the United States, has told its on-air personalities to stop suggesting that the election was stolen from President Trump — or else face termination.
A Cumulus executive issued the directive on Wednesday, just as Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory and an angry mob of Trump supporters marched on the Capitol, overwhelmed police and briefly occupied the building, terrorizing lawmakers and leading to the deaths of five people.
“We need to help induce national calm NOW,” Brian Philips, executive vice president of content for Cumulus, wrote in an internal memo, which was first reported by Inside Music Media. Cumulus and its program syndication arm, Westwood One, “will not tolerate any suggestion that the election has not ended. The election has been resolved and there are no alternate acceptable ‘paths.’ ”
The memo adds: “If you transgress this policy, you can expect to separate from the company immediately.”
A Cumulus representative did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Sunday.
And… from Politico:
Goldman Sachs is expected to join other Wall Street banks, including JPMorganChase and Citigroup, in taking a pause on corporate political giving to either party following the mob attack on the Capitol last week.
Goldman will be bipartisan in its refusal to give corporate cash. But the bank’s anger, per a person familiar with the matter, is clearly aimed at President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans who supported his unhinged challenge to clearly legitimate election results.
It hardly seems an effective threat to withhold money equally from both sides. Pretty absurd to withhold it from the side that didn’t support storming the Capitol.
The article says that the companies will almost certainly renew giving after Biden’s inauguration, but that it would look very bad for them to just be giving money to one party.
Nonsense. Getting your account blocked for violating the social-media company’s terms of service is something that’s been happening to everybody but powerful right-wingers for years now.
If social-media companies remain as strict with liberals about disallowing incitement to violence and sedition as they are belatedly deciding they need to be with conservatives, no liberals will mind at all.
https://twitter.com/barronjohn1946
https://twitter.com/JohnBarron1946
Though they both seem to be satire accounts, one has over 435K followers already…
This one is my favorite, though: https://twitter.com/IvankaBarron
Recent Tweet from @IvankaBarron
" According to a recent news article — my father has recently been banned from [@Minecraft] (https://twitter.com/Minecraft), how else can he find ways to export ‘coal’ now!
I posted last year a YouTube video of JFK’s entire We choose to go to the moon speech at Rice, eighteen minutes where he laid out the plan for one of mankind’s greatest achievements and the reasons for doing so. I puzzled rhetorically how that could be condensed down to 140 characters or, conversely, how well Trump could speak for eighteen minutes without coming off the rails.