13 ms·

At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem? Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. in

At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem? Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. influenced elections because they refused to serve information from a candidate they didn't like? If we aren't already there, it's not long before it is. What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data associated to the Republican Party? For that matter, the Democratic Party? It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways. They can choose to police the content provided by their users but can't be held responsible for said content? Are they a publisher or a platform? I don't think comparing old thinking based around old methods of communication compares to what we have today, it requires new thinking. These aren't like newspapers sold by kids on the corner in a city that can have dozens of newspapers countering each other. Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas. Tim Pool is right, at this rate, sooner or later, the Feds will come knocking and will shut that party down.

commandlinefan 7y ago
> influenced elections In fairness to Google and Facebook, etc. TV networks have always been super biased and had far more reach than internet platforms - and it was actually conservatives who shut down (with good reason) the "fairness doctrine" that would have forced them to carry content they didn't necessarily agree with.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dqpb 7y ago
This already happens. "Mainstream Media" doesn't give equal coverage to 3rd party candidates.
- cynoclast 7y ago
  Or even DNC candidates, if they're actual progressives: https://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-president-2016/ https://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-pres...
  - leereeves 7y ago
    Hillary was the media's anointed candidate. Trump was supposed to be the fringe candidate she could beat. The rest (from both parties) were buried intentionally.
    - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      Perhaps the other way around. The media was Hillary’s tool. She asked for increased coverage on Donald Trump because she thought she could beat him easier than anyone else (if you don’t like Trump, thank Hillary) asking to the pied piper strategy from the Podesta emails. She was funding the DNC so she could deliver or withhold media access. Small point and while I agree overall I’m not sure the media ‘selected’ Hillary. I think Obama Admin did, and after all, it was her turn.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      Here's a recent quote from Alan Dershowitz that's illustrative: > I received off-the-record information that an order had come from the very top: CNN executive Jeff Zucker didn’t want me on CNN any more. My centrist, nuanced perspective was anathema to CNN’s emerging brand as the anti-Trump network. That should make it clear that a very small number of media executives ultimately decide what we see on the news. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436059-alan-dershowitz-how-cnn-misled-its-viewers https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436059-alan-dershowi...
      - taurath 7y ago
        Not to go way off topic here, but Alan Dershowitz is the type of person to say anything as long as there’s benefit for him (see: extremely highly paid defense attorney for billionaire child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, and last year Harvey Weinstein), and while he may not be wrong your comment sort of holds him up as having any sort of credibility on the inner workings of the media world. Nobody should take that man at his word.
burfog 7y ago
We're already there. Repeating a previous study, which had shown bias in the 2016 election, Dr. Robert Epstein shows that bias in the 2018 election pushed voters towards democrats. Approximately 4.6 million undecided voters are likely to have flipped. Numerous districts, particularly CA 45, are likely to have been flipped by Google's weaponized bias. There has also been an awful lot of bans of beginner politicians, all on one side, often corrected after the election (damage is done) with a lame excuse about algorithms making mistakes.
- maldusiecle 7y ago
  Do you have citations for any of this?
  - beat 7y ago
    I'm guessing not.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - humblebee 7y ago
    It looks like the poster above is referencing the following [0] https://www.theepochtimes.com/another-way-google-manipulates-votes-without-us-knowing-a-go-vote-reminder-is-not-what-you-think-it-is_2754073.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/another-way-google-manipulates... [1] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_2018-Manipulating_minds-The-power_of_search_engines_to_influence_votes_and_opinions-UNCORRECTED_PROOFS.pdf https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_2018-Manipulating_minds-...
    - bduerst 7y ago
      These are both written by the same person, and amount to spreading FUD about liberal bogeymen and painting conservatives as a victim. For example, he is quoting Hillary Clinton instant search debacle as an example of bias, which was debunked as being technical illiteracy: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-clinton/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-...
sagichmal 7y ago
> What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data associated to the Republican Party? For that matter, the Democratic Party? They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.
- hcurtiss 7y ago
  Are you sure? Do we even know, for sure, what "white nationalist" means? I'm white, and I favor a government that's principally oriented toward advancing this nation's interests. Am I a white nationalist?
  - jpkiser 7y ago
    Banned.
  - 0xbadcafebee 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism
  - Veraticus 7y ago
    Words have meaning, and people know what those meanings are. "White nationalist" does not mean "white people who like their country" and it's disingenuous to pretend it does.
    - atmosx 7y ago
      There is an infinite number of definitions for “like their country”. Nazis in Greece like their country or what they perceive as “their country”.
    - fastball 7y ago
      It's much more disingenuous to pretend that words and phrases have universal meanings.
zelon88 7y ago
> Tim Pool is right, at this rate, sooner or later, the Feds will come knocking and will shut that party down. What party? The government is gonna come into a private organization and tell them they are obligated to spend money to preserve, host, and broadcast hate speech that doesn't align with the company's values? Please tell me how this differs from telling small business owners they can't refuse service.
- samaItman 7y ago
  Greetings, We've determined that your username contains hate speech [https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88 https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88]. We'll be shutting down your account forthwith and contacting the local authorities. Have a nice day.
- jdsully 7y ago
  The US government forces companies to spend money on many things they don’t want to do. Regulatory authority is extremely broad.
- jonfw 7y ago
  The government tells power and phone companies that they can't cut off service to people discriminately. I'm pretty libertarian in respects to market regulation, but when it comes to mopolistic industries you need regulation.
- NotAnEconomist 7y ago
  The safe harbor protections from copyright violations for user uploads require neutrality in content hosting, because pre-approval implies you must also vet copyright. They're welcome to censor to editorialize, but they lose their protections from copyright suits for relaying copyright material uploaded by their users. For Facebook to be immune from copyright liability for my uploads, when they display them to others publicly for profit, they cannot express prior restraint over my upload. Such commercial copyright violations carry heft penalties, in the thousands of dollars per view: Facebook and Google can't operate in an environment where they're liable to such a degree for uploads. The government recognized this about internet services, and granted them immunity to copyright related suits in exchange for supporting the American value of free speech on their platforms. (This is a law.) They're free to not accept that deal, but they're liable for their commercial copyright infringement in that case.
salty_biscuits 7y ago
"Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas." Come over to Australia, that is what our traditional media has been like for years!
metafunctor 7y ago
Neutral might not exist. > It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways. Of course Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways, and, indeed, all ways — there are many more ways for people to communicate, or stances to take, than “both”. Platforms like FB and Twitter hope to be the communications backbone of the world. The problem is, the world has opinions on what kinds of communications are acceptable. These platforms try to stay neutral, but the people are not. Neutral does not exist. It's all relative. In a polarized world, a neutral platform will die because either side won't like it. In a more interesting world, it might still die because people don't like people who don't think like them.
- prewett 7y ago
  I like your idea that "neutral might not exist." FB is going about this in the obvious control-oriented strategy: we have a problem, ok, we'll make a rule against it. This doesn't work, and can only lead FB to having lots of rules and everyone unhappy with them. The problem with FB is that they have built a system that rewards polarizing opinions. Edward Deming said that your system is perfectly set up to give you the results you are getting, so if you want different ones, you need to change your system. Incentivize quality, disincentivize "viral-ness". Maybe limit viral-ness. Optimize for something besides addictiveness^Wengagement. Admit that people think, say, and do harmful things and build a system that is robust to it. Add some kind of negative feedback for posts.
- JamesLeonis 7y ago
  Here's another "way" that's ignored: Nearly all services give users little to no control over the content they see. They can't self-moderate or filter the content coming their way. Instead, users have to "Appeal To Authority" (whether Facebook or the Feds) in order to make changes. It's incredibly disempowering in both cases, and doesn't need to be this way. "Mods" on Reddit help. Page Owners on FB pages help. However these are still "Authorities" that must be appealed to. Even resorting to contacting advertisers to pressure them to not sponsor "bad" content is still an Appeal To Authority. Essentially, you have no control so the only solution is to not participate or appeal to a higher authority. Both are terrible. In a weird tangental side-thought: The Internet is to Western Capitalism what Glasnost/Perestroika was to the Soviet Union. The opening of information, while allowing many great things through, also removed the filters that kept harmful content on the margins. In the Soviet state, it was the authority of the State that dictated content. In the Western world, it's mostly those who own/control large media platforms. Since liberalization, each situation found The Authority under acerbic attack from these new wellsprings of content, both legitimate and illegitimate.
13415 7y ago
I don't believe these slippery slope argument are sound. You can apply these kind of arguments to almost every alleged free speech issue. Just make it an argument against banning <insert whatever content you find absolutely reprehensible and clearly worth banning>.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
codedokode 7y ago
> Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. influenced elections because they refused to serve information from a candidate they didn't like? If we aren't already there, it's not long before it is. That's an interesting question. What if Google and Facebook would secretly demote and hide articles about one political party and promote articles about another party? Theoretically they are absolutely free to do so but how do you think, will it cause a Congress investigation or not? Those people made noise about much smaller things. Also, what if Google would start demoting its competitors and everyone who deals with those "untouchable" companies? That would be interesting to see. I think people don't realise what power these new media have. The monopoly of Facebook or Google is a serious issue and we should not believe that they will always stay neutral.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  Well, sure, they could do all sorts of bad things. Normally we don't go after people until they actually do those bad things though, instead of removing their ability to act because they might.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
seventytwo 7y ago
You listen to Tim Pool? He’s a right wing psycho that hides behind fake journalistic integrity to cherry pick stories for his target audience of white supremacists, xenophobes, and other anti-social nut jobs.
- talmand 7y ago
  I, for one, listen to everybody I'm allowed to listen to.
tibbydudeza 7y ago
I don't see Germany tolerating any support of National Socialism in their public sphere and rightly so ... some ideologies just too bloody abhorent and against the public good.
- aryehof 7y ago
  For now. The passing of time and new generations will result in the loss of the lessons of the past.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Contrary to popular believe we already had laws against hate-speech in the middle of the 19th century. The authoritarians used that regularly to underline their alleged prosecution. And it worked because they were right to a degree. You can only remember the lessons of the past if you understood them in the first place. And frankly, arguing for more content controls by authorities is an insult to anyone actually having an understanding of those times.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ptah 7y ago
slippery slope. at the moment there is no dialogue. commenting on white supremacist content on facebook and calling it out currently will get you banned. this statement purports that they will be more balanced from now on
coldtea 7y ago
>At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem? When they censor opinions that the top 10% agrees with, since those are that control the media and what's acceptable.
Natanael_L 7y ago
They're protected by the US first amendment, unconditionally so given that online websites by design work through publishing. You can't compel them to host unwanted speech. As for liability, here's why the laws intentionally shield them; https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepresenting-communications-decency-act https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepre... And finally, there's nothing forcing you to use them. Convenience (or lack of it) is not a sufficient argument for regulation.
samhain 7y ago
>Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas. Could you explain how this is any different than the handful of television companies for the past 70 years? As best as I can tell, the older demographics seem to be the ones primarily watching the news, and it shows in polling data. Their opinions and narratives are easily manipulated by the "news" networks they are faithful to. Companies run by a "small group of people."

commandlinefan 7y ago

> influenced elections In fairness to Google and Facebook, etc. TV networks have always been super biased and had far more reach than internet platforms - and it was actually conservatives who shut down (with good reason) the "fairness doctrine" that would have forced them to carry content they didn't necessarily agree with.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dqpb 7y ago

This already happens. "Mainstream Media" doesn't give equal coverage to 3rd party candidates.

cynoclast 7y ago
Or even DNC candidates, if they're actual progressives: https://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-president-2016/ https://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-pres...
- leereeves 7y ago
  Hillary was the media's anointed candidate. Trump was supposed to be the fringe candidate she could beat. The rest (from both parties) were buried intentionally.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Perhaps the other way around. The media was Hillary’s tool. She asked for increased coverage on Donald Trump because she thought she could beat him easier than anyone else (if you don’t like Trump, thank Hillary) asking to the pied piper strategy from the Podesta emails. She was funding the DNC so she could deliver or withhold media access. Small point and while I agree overall I’m not sure the media ‘selected’ Hillary. I think Obama Admin did, and after all, it was her turn.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    Here's a recent quote from Alan Dershowitz that's illustrative: > I received off-the-record information that an order had come from the very top: CNN executive Jeff Zucker didn’t want me on CNN any more. My centrist, nuanced perspective was anathema to CNN’s emerging brand as the anti-Trump network. That should make it clear that a very small number of media executives ultimately decide what we see on the news. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436059-alan-dershowitz-how-cnn-misled-its-viewers https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436059-alan-dershowi...
    - taurath 7y ago
      Not to go way off topic here, but Alan Dershowitz is the type of person to say anything as long as there’s benefit for him (see: extremely highly paid defense attorney for billionaire child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, and last year Harvey Weinstein), and while he may not be wrong your comment sort of holds him up as having any sort of credibility on the inner workings of the media world. Nobody should take that man at his word.

burfog 7y ago

We're already there. Repeating a previous study, which had shown bias in the 2016 election, Dr. Robert Epstein shows that bias in the 2018 election pushed voters towards democrats. Approximately 4.6 million undecided voters are likely to have flipped. Numerous districts, particularly CA 45, are likely to have been flipped by Google's weaponized bias. There has also been an awful lot of bans of beginner politicians, all on one side, often corrected after the election (damage is done) with a lame excuse about algorithms making mistakes.

maldusiecle 7y ago
Do you have citations for any of this?
- beat 7y ago
  I'm guessing not.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- humblebee 7y ago
  It looks like the poster above is referencing the following [0] https://www.theepochtimes.com/another-way-google-manipulates-votes-without-us-knowing-a-go-vote-reminder-is-not-what-you-think-it-is_2754073.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/another-way-google-manipulates... [1] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_2018-Manipulating_minds-The-power_of_search_engines_to_influence_votes_and_opinions-UNCORRECTED_PROOFS.pdf https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_2018-Manipulating_minds-...
  - bduerst 7y ago
    These are both written by the same person, and amount to spreading FUD about liberal bogeymen and painting conservatives as a victim. For example, he is quoting Hillary Clinton instant search debacle as an example of bias, which was debunked as being technical illiteracy: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-clinton/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-...

sagichmal 7y ago

> What do you think would happen if these "private companies" with such deep hooks into our communication infrastructure suddenly decided to remove all data associated to the Republican Party? For that matter, the Democratic Party? They wouldn't do that, because there would be justified public outcry. Luckily, as moral agents, we humans are capable of differentiating "general political party" from "white nationalists", and can target the latter and not the former.

hcurtiss 7y ago
Are you sure? Do we even know, for sure, what "white nationalist" means? I'm white, and I favor a government that's principally oriented toward advancing this nation's interests. Am I a white nationalist?
- jpkiser 7y ago
  Banned.
- 0xbadcafebee 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism
- Veraticus 7y ago
  Words have meaning, and people know what those meanings are. "White nationalist" does not mean "white people who like their country" and it's disingenuous to pretend it does.
  - atmosx 7y ago
    There is an infinite number of definitions for “like their country”. Nazis in Greece like their country or what they perceive as “their country”.
  - fastball 7y ago
    It's much more disingenuous to pretend that words and phrases have universal meanings.

zelon88 7y ago

> Tim Pool is right, at this rate, sooner or later, the Feds will come knocking and will shut that party down. What party? The government is gonna come into a private organization and tell them they are obligated to spend money to preserve, host, and broadcast hate speech that doesn't align with the company's values? Please tell me how this differs from telling small business owners they can't refuse service.

samaItman 7y ago
Greetings, We've determined that your username contains hate speech [https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88 https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88]. We'll be shutting down your account forthwith and contacting the local authorities. Have a nice day.
jdsully 7y ago
The US government forces companies to spend money on many things they don’t want to do. Regulatory authority is extremely broad.
jonfw 7y ago
The government tells power and phone companies that they can't cut off service to people discriminately. I'm pretty libertarian in respects to market regulation, but when it comes to mopolistic industries you need regulation.
NotAnEconomist 7y ago
The safe harbor protections from copyright violations for user uploads require neutrality in content hosting, because pre-approval implies you must also vet copyright. They're welcome to censor to editorialize, but they lose their protections from copyright suits for relaying copyright material uploaded by their users. For Facebook to be immune from copyright liability for my uploads, when they display them to others publicly for profit, they cannot express prior restraint over my upload. Such commercial copyright violations carry heft penalties, in the thousands of dollars per view: Facebook and Google can't operate in an environment where they're liable to such a degree for uploads. The government recognized this about internet services, and granted them immunity to copyright related suits in exchange for supporting the American value of free speech on their platforms. (This is a law.) They're free to not accept that deal, but they're liable for their commercial copyright infringement in that case.

salty_biscuits 7y ago

"Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas." Come over to Australia, that is what our traditional media has been like for years!

metafunctor 7y ago

Neutral might not exist. > It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways. Of course Facebook and Twitter are trying to have it both ways, and, indeed, all ways — there are many more ways for people to communicate, or stances to take, than “both”. Platforms like FB and Twitter hope to be the communications backbone of the world. The problem is, the world has opinions on what kinds of communications are acceptable. These platforms try to stay neutral, but the people are not. Neutral does not exist. It's all relative. In a polarized world, a neutral platform will die because either side won't like it. In a more interesting world, it might still die because people don't like people who don't think like them.

prewett 7y ago
I like your idea that "neutral might not exist." FB is going about this in the obvious control-oriented strategy: we have a problem, ok, we'll make a rule against it. This doesn't work, and can only lead FB to having lots of rules and everyone unhappy with them. The problem with FB is that they have built a system that rewards polarizing opinions. Edward Deming said that your system is perfectly set up to give you the results you are getting, so if you want different ones, you need to change your system. Incentivize quality, disincentivize "viral-ness". Maybe limit viral-ness. Optimize for something besides addictiveness^Wengagement. Admit that people think, say, and do harmful things and build a system that is robust to it. Add some kind of negative feedback for posts.
JamesLeonis 7y ago
Here's another "way" that's ignored: Nearly all services give users little to no control over the content they see. They can't self-moderate or filter the content coming their way. Instead, users have to "Appeal To Authority" (whether Facebook or the Feds) in order to make changes. It's incredibly disempowering in both cases, and doesn't need to be this way. "Mods" on Reddit help. Page Owners on FB pages help. However these are still "Authorities" that must be appealed to. Even resorting to contacting advertisers to pressure them to not sponsor "bad" content is still an Appeal To Authority. Essentially, you have no control so the only solution is to not participate or appeal to a higher authority. Both are terrible. In a weird tangental side-thought: The Internet is to Western Capitalism what Glasnost/Perestroika was to the Soviet Union. The opening of information, while allowing many great things through, also removed the filters that kept harmful content on the margins. In the Soviet state, it was the authority of the State that dictated content. In the Western world, it's mostly those who own/control large media platforms. Since liberalization, each situation found The Authority under acerbic attack from these new wellsprings of content, both legitimate and illegitimate.

13415 7y ago

I don't believe these slippery slope argument are sound. You can apply these kind of arguments to almost every alleged free speech issue. Just make it an argument against banning <insert whatever content you find absolutely reprehensible and clearly worth banning>.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

codedokode 7y ago

> Do we wait until it can be shown that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. influenced elections because they refused to serve information from a candidate they didn't like? If we aren't already there, it's not long before it is. That's an interesting question. What if Google and Facebook would secretly demote and hide articles about one political party and promote articles about another party? Theoretically they are absolutely free to do so but how do you think, will it cause a Congress investigation or not? Those people made noise about much smaller things. Also, what if Google would start demoting its competitors and everyone who deals with those "untouchable" companies? That would be interesting to see. I think people don't realise what power these new media have. The monopoly of Facebook or Google is a serious issue and we should not believe that they will always stay neutral.

amanaplanacanal 7y ago
Well, sure, they could do all sorts of bad things. Normally we don't go after people until they actually do those bad things though, instead of removing their ability to act because they might.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

seventytwo 7y ago

You listen to Tim Pool? He’s a right wing psycho that hides behind fake journalistic integrity to cherry pick stories for his target audience of white supremacists, xenophobes, and other anti-social nut jobs.

talmand 7y ago
I, for one, listen to everybody I'm allowed to listen to.

tibbydudeza 7y ago

I don't see Germany tolerating any support of National Socialism in their public sphere and rightly so ... some ideologies just too bloody abhorent and against the public good.

aryehof 7y ago
For now. The passing of time and new generations will result in the loss of the lessons of the past.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Contrary to popular believe we already had laws against hate-speech in the middle of the 19th century. The authoritarians used that regularly to underline their alleged prosecution. And it worked because they were right to a degree. You can only remember the lessons of the past if you understood them in the first place. And frankly, arguing for more content controls by authorities is an insult to anyone actually having an understanding of those times.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ptah 7y ago

slippery slope. at the moment there is no dialogue. commenting on white supremacist content on facebook and calling it out currently will get you banned. this statement purports that they will be more balanced from now on

coldtea 7y ago

>At what point do such things change into a public discourse problem? When they censor opinions that the top 10% agrees with, since those are that control the media and what's acceptable.

Natanael_L 7y ago

They're protected by the US first amendment, unconditionally so given that online websites by design work through publishing. You can't compel them to host unwanted speech. As for liability, here's why the laws intentionally shield them; https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepresenting-communications-decency-act https://www.lawfareblog.com/ted-cruz-vs-section-230-misrepre... And finally, there's nothing forcing you to use them. Convenience (or lack of it) is not a sufficient argument for regulation.

samhain 7y ago

>Imagine if there were only three newspapers in the entire country, soon the world, controlled by a small group of people who wish to use their publishing for their own agendas. Could you explain how this is any different than the handful of television companies for the past 70 years? As best as I can tell, the older demographics seem to be the ones primarily watching the news, and it shows in polling data. Their opinions and narratives are easily manipulated by the "news" networks they are faithful to. Companies run by a "small group of people."