Quote:
Originally Posted by Doctorfever
I really don’t disagree with you and opendoor on this. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about information that was as outlandish as ‘government wants to make you eat bugs’. Is that really a thing?
Anyways, you feel trying to suppress the information is better? It might be when it comes to stuff this crazy.
Maybe instead of an actual ‘debate’ there are just a couple of people talking and explaining why the information is not correct. But it might be too boring to draw an audience.
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I think the cat's out of the bag at this point. You can't really even begin to suppress this kind of information, nor is that really a road that a government should go down. I suppose you could lower the barrier for things like libel so people and platforms have to become more responsible for what they say, but that might not really be workable. And it would probably just lead to people with deep pockets suing everyone into silence to avoid cricitism.
It's just a bad mix of different incentives. Platforms don't really care what people say on them, as long it makes them money. Grifters will say whatever gets them views. And the most obsessed people are the ones who are going to be the most engaged and generate the most ad revenue. So the aim is to tell disaffected people exactly what they want to hear and who the blame for all their problems. But instead of that person having to seek out alternative print media or go see a radical speaker in-person like in the past, they just have to go on YouTube or Facebook and it'll be served right up to them.
To me, the only real long-term solutions are:
1) Try to improve peoples' media literacy and rationality. But that's an uphill battle and any adults who believe these kinds of things are probably lost causes already.
2) Improve the material conditions of the working class, so they're less likely to be swayed by the more extreme stuff. That would help to some degree, but there are also a lot of people who are outwardly in good shape (well off, good jobs, families, etc.) who fall into this junk.