6 ms·

>I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. I understand your argument but I also in no way want to distract from the culpability own

>I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. I understand your argument but I also in no way want to distract from the culpability owned by social media companies, their product designers and managers, and the people who wrote the code to implement their desires. They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. Traditional media companies may have exacerbated the issue with their participation, but they didn't create it. >Unfortunately, I don't think we can roll back on the constant need for more 'breaking news' We can't, but just like smoking cigarettes or shooting up opioids we can recognize it as a source of damage and addiction and start changing things to combat it.

vorpalhex 6y ago
Do you have any evidence for that point? Like sure, I'd love to blame Twitter and Facebook for all of our societal ills, but they aren't new. Culture wars didn't just suddenly happen in the early 00s. Cue the 1960s and 70s long before any social media and the amazing amount of not just protests but bombings, assassinations and so on that make the current culture war seem like a mere shouting match.
- andrew_ 6y ago
  "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix touches on this - in part, the algorithms that run these platforms and govern (guide?) user interaction are responsible in large part for pitting people against each other. It's in their best interest to keep eyeballs on their respective sites as much has humanly possible.
  - TheKarateKid 6y ago
    Yes algorithms contribute, but the media is the reason these problems go from being just an argument on social media, to an actual societal issue. Before the media started using social media as “facts” for their reporting, these arguments would just be another online “flame war.” Remember when we used those terms? Remember when online arguments remained as just that? Now, when 1000 people on Twitter try to cancel someone the media reports it as if it’s an actual popular opinion, thus amplifying the problem for better or worse.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      There are legitimately things on social media that become much bigger and become a story in and of itself though. Breonna Taylor's case was not covered in MSM initially, and the continued pressure on it is largely due to social media self-sustaining it.
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      I think this conflates two separate, but equally damaging issues. (1) Social media sites have been optimized in the same way tobacco was, to take advantage of human chemistry to make it as addictive as possible; and (2) news companies are run for a profit, and the profits all started going to online advertisers, so the news companies had to follow. Thus things that are important on social media, become important to news companies, which becomes mainstream news. I find it tough to blame the news for this — the social media companies were making deliberate design choices and the news companies were reacting in an attempt to stay in business in a rapidly changing market.
      - dnissley 6y ago
        Don't you think it's too soon to play the blame game? Both of these groups were just following incentives (both to make money and also just survive in a competitive landscape). On top of that there's also two other groups that further complicate the picture: end users and advertisers. It's not clear to me that we need to go through the motions of trying to persecute one of these groups in particular, since the situation is already evolving. End users are starting to become wise to the ways in which they are manipulated by all three of the other groups, and not necessarily always in a conscious way -- I personally had a turning point where I was just tired of the cycle, it got boring, and I didn't even have to try to consciously cut out these things, they just kind of fell away while I spent my time elsewhere.
        arrosenberg 6y ago
        I don't think so, no. It's wrong to equivocate between groups "following their incentives". Facebook could have chosen not pursue algorithm-based advertising as a business model. The news companies didn't have the option of ignoring Facebook (and Google) by about 2014 or 2015 (news companies also didn't conduct unregulated psychological tests or commit fraud to push a video-first model). I don't really blame Facebook for playing the game, but if you play, you also accept the consequences when society gets sick of your shit. It's hardly persecution to insist that American businesses stop doing gross harm to the American people. Your personal anecdote is largely irrelevant compared to Facebook's earnings report - lots of people still use these platforms and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It's unlikely that these companies will pivot their business model in the absence of oversight. I've stopped using it too, but we absolutely should create market rules to deal with the obvious abuses that have occurred so they don't crop up again.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ilyaeck 6y ago
    Hardly a credible source of objective information, given that The Social Dilemma is itself a piece of media designed to trigger people into consuming and spreading it.
    - ozim 6y ago
      That was my main "funny thing" about that movie. It makes those algorithm choices more dramatic than they are just to trigger people more. If you are into those things movie about "how bad big corporations are" is then served algorithmically to you by Netflix which is one of those big bad corporations.
  - lotu 6y ago
    The problem I see a lot is, "the algorithm contributes X" implies that "getting rid of the algorithm will fix X". This is not true. For an analogy imagine a town that with an arsonist setting lots of homes on fire. It is obviously true that "storing gas in your hose contributes to houses burning down", but "getting rid of gasoline in house will not fix the fires". For clarity I consider "the algorithm" the sophisticated ordering of your follower's posts, and the recommendation of new followers. This means getting rid of "the algorithm" mostly means going back to the 00's when post where sorted by date, likes, or simple formula that combined the two. Content still went viral, and people still sorted themselves into information silos. This meant people spend more time searching for content, but I don't see any real fundamental difference that is going to result in less polarization. The underlying problem is people communicating with other people. I argue if we got rid of the internet it would not get rid of this polarization and spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. In fact you saw many similar problems prior to the Civl War, when the fastest method of communication was a telegram. People still distributed pamphlets, formed clubs with like minded individuals, gossiped, and spread rumors and falsehoods. I think people grab on to idea "the algorithm is causes polarization", because it puts single thing, presents a specific solution (change/get rid of the algorithm), and has an specific, abstract group of people to blame the owners and employees of the big tech companies. People don't like it what the problems affecting their lives are caused by dozens of interacting forces and there is no clear simple solution, but rather a lot of work in a lot of areas. As an aside drop in disappearing manufacturing jobs and illegal immigrants. See what you get.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  If we're going to blame one thing for the US culture wars, I'd have to pick the removal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. It's obviously much more complicated than than that though.
- int_19h 6y ago
  What's new is the ability to quickly spread information. In pre-social-media age, we had "fake news", but outside of newspapers and TV, any rumor would have to spread by word of mouth - and even with phones, it places a significant upper limit on the number of people one person can spread it to. But with modern social networks, a single mouse click can send it into dozens of feeds; hundreds, for some people. And then you get this effect magnified manyfold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
mainstreem 6y ago
Sorry, in what way are the dominant social media websites (Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit in particular), NOT main stream media in 2020? Certainly they aren't part of the legacy media, but they all seem to carry water for the same narratives and ideologies. The non-mainstream media is publications that people in polite urban mostly-coastal American culture sneer at: Breitbart, The Post Millenial, Reason, Parler, Gab, specific independent journalists on some of the mainstream platforms, etc. But certainly Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are media and they are mainstream. And they have demonstrated their willingness to censor stories with more or less the same bias (in the same ideological direction) as the mainstream legacy media. They're just the mainstream new media.
jariel 6y ago
The PMs of Facebook are not responsible for the decision by CNN producers to use Twitter commentary as a source of information and legitimacy. I'm not generally one to speak out against capitalism, but having come from a country that has 'strong, communitarian and cultural ideals' - I believe that hyper-individualism and capitalism have created an ugly, 'perfect storm of self flagellation' here with MSM, Social Media, Politics, Entertainment. 'Communitarian ideals' mean that there are unspoken rules of legitimacy, fraternity, civility, professionalism etc. that exist in many fields like the media, even in politics where all the 'grey areas' of civility count for so much, a lot of US Senate functions like this historically. These soft ideals however leave the door way open for radicals and money-seekers to 'disrupt' and take over, justifying their cause through either 'moral legitimacy of social justice' or 'responsibility towards shareholders' - or, like in the case of Nike for example - both. Any institution that can be instrumentalist and submitted will be. Though I don't blame FB PM's specifically - it's right there in the ethos: 'disrupt' and 'move fast / break things / do it ask for permission later'. Without any regard at all for social and cultural ideals, they just get completely uprooted in the search for whatever it is the objective is, in the case of FB, money.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  I'm not sure why we'd treat FB and Twitter PMs separately? They both built a virality engine, and then acted dumbfounded (at first) when news sites used this to tune their content to go viral. It's an intentionally incredibly addictive, and borderline malicious, product that capitalizes on the worst human instincts. The entire thing exists as a feedback loop that grants you legitimacy by counting the number of eyeballs (real or not) that see it.
zarkov99 6y ago
The difference is while few people would claim social media companies are in any way a credible source of truth, there is still a residual notion that the main stream media's role is to be the eyes and ears of society, a role that it obviously no longer deserves.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  "The difference is while few people would claim social media companies are in any way a credible source of truth" Many, many people in my area regard social media as a credible source of truth. I know that people don't think much of the people where I live, and that comes from the lack of good educational opportunities afforded them out here in flyover country. But these people get to vote too. They get to participate in society as well. I guess I mean that they count. You can't say there is no one who claims social media is credible, when it is obvious there are millions who are swayed by social media precisely because it is credible in their view. In fact, if a story is only on social media, it's proof of the story's validity in their eyes. If the mainstream media won't run a story they found on social media, then it must be part of a conspiracy to keep the "truth" from getting out. I hear this narrative everyday in my area of the midwest.
  - ctrlp 6y ago
    Sadly there's more and more support for their point of view. We are entering a new period of MSM censorship but this time we're seeing the social media platforms out in front taking active measures to censor political speech, probably due to a mix of short-sighted "best intentions" (flyover country is no more susceptible to indoctrination than the sophisticates on the coasts) and partly to avoid anti-trust suits from the likely victors in the upcoming election. Just like they censor on behalf of authoritarian regimes abroad to protect access to markets, they will do the same here. Good reason to break up the FAANGs for the public good.
centimeter 6y ago
It’s not clear that cigarette smoking is actually net harmful, due to the substantial decrease in obesity associated with smoking.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  They did the math actually on that one - comparing smoking rate and obesity counter-correlations and the rise and fall across various countries. The smoking drop was modest, less than 10% which makes it a fairly clear net harm unless one defines net harm ghoulishly such that dying soon after retirement is a good thing due to reduced healthcare costs.
- pixl97 6y ago
  What an insane point of view. Both are terrible things that we should find solutions to.
  - centimeter 6y ago
    "Both are bad" isn't an interesting or useful observation when there's a tradeoff between the two.
blm202021 6y ago
I'm going to retort, specifically in the context of a very important issue in the US currently: the BLM movement. Contrary to popular thought, the "liberal" media utterly failed minorities. The abuse of minorities in the US spans generations and has consistently been relegated to the margins of mainstream news. It has been typical in the US -- for decades -- for the NY Times to grant a single death in Israel front page coverage while a death of an African American at the hands of police in NYC would barely get coverage. My point is not that either is acceptable -- but rather that both are bad. Perhaps non-coverage of an incident in NY is worse because a NY paper might want to consider the atrocities happening right down the street. The BLM movement finally came to the forefront not because of the "liberal" media but in spite of it. The BLM movement was enabled by Social Media. If Twitter did not exist, there is no reason to assume we would have made any progress. The media overall and the liberal media have lost part of their control over the narrative (and the power that selective coverage conveys) and trying to blame things on social media. But believe this -- what we have seen in 2020 is progress. As messy and as ugly as it is, we've actually moved forward with minority rights. Consider also how hypocritical the coverage has been. Liberal media tells us that "Silicon Valley lacks diversity". TBH it does, but you know the real problem is not SV, it is a national media controlled by four families with zero minorities on their boards and executive staff -- telling an industry with huge numbers of minorities (including many brown people in senior/CxO ranks) they lack diversity. SV does need to get better, but saying SV is the start and end of all problems is absolutely false.
- Veen 6y ago
  Which media companies and which families? I’d like to verify those claims about zero minority executives and board members?
  - wnissen 6y ago
    Forget the boards, the LA Times has one (1) black reporter out of 90 covering local news. LA is 8% black. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/874530954/rancor-erupts-in-la-times-newsroom-over-race-equity-and-protest-coverage https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/874530954/rancor-erupts-in-la...
dmix 6y ago
> They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. What damage? The stuff people wrote on it? That's the people. That's what I love about people who think everyone should vote. But just look at Twitter. Most people are poorly informed idiots who are hyper-emotional and inclined to mob-think. I'm all for more direct democracy but that doesn't mean I want anyone and everyone to vote. We need informed voters. Which is why I despise the drives to get random people out to vote for whoever they heard spoken the loudest about in relation to their issues.
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
  > The stuff people wrote on it? That's the people. That’s like putting an alligator pit in a mall and blaming people for getting eaten.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > I'm all for more direct democracy but that doesn't mean I want anyone and everyone to vote. We need informed voters. There is no incentive for people to become more informed. Public choice theory explains this, voters are rationally ignorant.

vorpalhex 6y ago

Do you have any evidence for that point? Like sure, I'd love to blame Twitter and Facebook for all of our societal ills, but they aren't new. Culture wars didn't just suddenly happen in the early 00s. Cue the 1960s and 70s long before any social media and the amazing amount of not just protests but bombings, assassinations and so on that make the current culture war seem like a mere shouting match.

andrew_ 6y ago
"The Social Dilemma" on Netflix touches on this - in part, the algorithms that run these platforms and govern (guide?) user interaction are responsible in large part for pitting people against each other. It's in their best interest to keep eyeballs on their respective sites as much has humanly possible.
- TheKarateKid 6y ago
  Yes algorithms contribute, but the media is the reason these problems go from being just an argument on social media, to an actual societal issue. Before the media started using social media as “facts” for their reporting, these arguments would just be another online “flame war.” Remember when we used those terms? Remember when online arguments remained as just that? Now, when 1000 people on Twitter try to cancel someone the media reports it as if it’s an actual popular opinion, thus amplifying the problem for better or worse.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    There are legitimately things on social media that become much bigger and become a story in and of itself though. Breonna Taylor's case was not covered in MSM initially, and the continued pressure on it is largely due to social media self-sustaining it.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    I think this conflates two separate, but equally damaging issues. (1) Social media sites have been optimized in the same way tobacco was, to take advantage of human chemistry to make it as addictive as possible; and (2) news companies are run for a profit, and the profits all started going to online advertisers, so the news companies had to follow. Thus things that are important on social media, become important to news companies, which becomes mainstream news. I find it tough to blame the news for this — the social media companies were making deliberate design choices and the news companies were reacting in an attempt to stay in business in a rapidly changing market.
    - dnissley 6y ago
      Don't you think it's too soon to play the blame game? Both of these groups were just following incentives (both to make money and also just survive in a competitive landscape). On top of that there's also two other groups that further complicate the picture: end users and advertisers. It's not clear to me that we need to go through the motions of trying to persecute one of these groups in particular, since the situation is already evolving. End users are starting to become wise to the ways in which they are manipulated by all three of the other groups, and not necessarily always in a conscious way -- I personally had a turning point where I was just tired of the cycle, it got boring, and I didn't even have to try to consciously cut out these things, they just kind of fell away while I spent my time elsewhere.
      - arrosenberg 6y ago
        I don't think so, no. It's wrong to equivocate between groups "following their incentives". Facebook could have chosen not pursue algorithm-based advertising as a business model. The news companies didn't have the option of ignoring Facebook (and Google) by about 2014 or 2015 (news companies also didn't conduct unregulated psychological tests or commit fraud to push a video-first model). I don't really blame Facebook for playing the game, but if you play, you also accept the consequences when society gets sick of your shit. It's hardly persecution to insist that American businesses stop doing gross harm to the American people. Your personal anecdote is largely irrelevant compared to Facebook's earnings report - lots of people still use these platforms and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It's unlikely that these companies will pivot their business model in the absence of oversight. I've stopped using it too, but we absolutely should create market rules to deal with the obvious abuses that have occurred so they don't crop up again.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ilyaeck 6y ago
  Hardly a credible source of objective information, given that The Social Dilemma is itself a piece of media designed to trigger people into consuming and spreading it.
  - ozim 6y ago
    That was my main "funny thing" about that movie. It makes those algorithm choices more dramatic than they are just to trigger people more. If you are into those things movie about "how bad big corporations are" is then served algorithmically to you by Netflix which is one of those big bad corporations.
- lotu 6y ago
  The problem I see a lot is, "the algorithm contributes X" implies that "getting rid of the algorithm will fix X". This is not true. For an analogy imagine a town that with an arsonist setting lots of homes on fire. It is obviously true that "storing gas in your hose contributes to houses burning down", but "getting rid of gasoline in house will not fix the fires". For clarity I consider "the algorithm" the sophisticated ordering of your follower's posts, and the recommendation of new followers. This means getting rid of "the algorithm" mostly means going back to the 00's when post where sorted by date, likes, or simple formula that combined the two. Content still went viral, and people still sorted themselves into information silos. This meant people spend more time searching for content, but I don't see any real fundamental difference that is going to result in less polarization. The underlying problem is people communicating with other people. I argue if we got rid of the internet it would not get rid of this polarization and spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. In fact you saw many similar problems prior to the Civl War, when the fastest method of communication was a telegram. People still distributed pamphlets, formed clubs with like minded individuals, gossiped, and spread rumors and falsehoods. I think people grab on to idea "the algorithm is causes polarization", because it puts single thing, presents a specific solution (change/get rid of the algorithm), and has an specific, abstract group of people to blame the owners and employees of the big tech companies. People don't like it what the problems affecting their lives are caused by dozens of interacting forces and there is no clear simple solution, but rather a lot of work in a lot of areas. As an aside drop in disappearing manufacturing jobs and illegal immigrants. See what you get.
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
If we're going to blame one thing for the US culture wars, I'd have to pick the removal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. It's obviously much more complicated than than that though.
int_19h 6y ago
What's new is the ability to quickly spread information. In pre-social-media age, we had "fake news", but outside of newspapers and TV, any rumor would have to spread by word of mouth - and even with phones, it places a significant upper limit on the number of people one person can spread it to. But with modern social networks, a single mouse click can send it into dozens of feeds; hundreds, for some people. And then you get this effect magnified manyfold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

mainstreem 6y ago

Sorry, in what way are the dominant social media websites (Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit in particular), NOT main stream media in 2020? Certainly they aren't part of the legacy media, but they all seem to carry water for the same narratives and ideologies. The non-mainstream media is publications that people in polite urban mostly-coastal American culture sneer at: Breitbart, The Post Millenial, Reason, Parler, Gab, specific independent journalists on some of the mainstream platforms, etc. But certainly Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are media and they are mainstream. And they have demonstrated their willingness to censor stories with more or less the same bias (in the same ideological direction) as the mainstream legacy media. They're just the mainstream new media.

jariel 6y ago

The PMs of Facebook are not responsible for the decision by CNN producers to use Twitter commentary as a source of information and legitimacy. I'm not generally one to speak out against capitalism, but having come from a country that has 'strong, communitarian and cultural ideals' - I believe that hyper-individualism and capitalism have created an ugly, 'perfect storm of self flagellation' here with MSM, Social Media, Politics, Entertainment. 'Communitarian ideals' mean that there are unspoken rules of legitimacy, fraternity, civility, professionalism etc. that exist in many fields like the media, even in politics where all the 'grey areas' of civility count for so much, a lot of US Senate functions like this historically. These soft ideals however leave the door way open for radicals and money-seekers to 'disrupt' and take over, justifying their cause through either 'moral legitimacy of social justice' or 'responsibility towards shareholders' - or, like in the case of Nike for example - both. Any institution that can be instrumentalist and submitted will be. Though I don't blame FB PM's specifically - it's right there in the ethos: 'disrupt' and 'move fast / break things / do it ask for permission later'. Without any regard at all for social and cultural ideals, they just get completely uprooted in the search for whatever it is the objective is, in the case of FB, money.

remarkEon 6y ago
I'm not sure why we'd treat FB and Twitter PMs separately? They both built a virality engine, and then acted dumbfounded (at first) when news sites used this to tune their content to go viral. It's an intentionally incredibly addictive, and borderline malicious, product that capitalizes on the worst human instincts. The entire thing exists as a feedback loop that grants you legitimacy by counting the number of eyeballs (real or not) that see it.

zarkov99 6y ago

The difference is while few people would claim social media companies are in any way a credible source of truth, there is still a residual notion that the main stream media's role is to be the eyes and ears of society, a role that it obviously no longer deserves.

bilbo0s 6y ago
"The difference is while few people would claim social media companies are in any way a credible source of truth" Many, many people in my area regard social media as a credible source of truth. I know that people don't think much of the people where I live, and that comes from the lack of good educational opportunities afforded them out here in flyover country. But these people get to vote too. They get to participate in society as well. I guess I mean that they count. You can't say there is no one who claims social media is credible, when it is obvious there are millions who are swayed by social media precisely because it is credible in their view. In fact, if a story is only on social media, it's proof of the story's validity in their eyes. If the mainstream media won't run a story they found on social media, then it must be part of a conspiracy to keep the "truth" from getting out. I hear this narrative everyday in my area of the midwest.
- ctrlp 6y ago
  Sadly there's more and more support for their point of view. We are entering a new period of MSM censorship but this time we're seeing the social media platforms out in front taking active measures to censor political speech, probably due to a mix of short-sighted "best intentions" (flyover country is no more susceptible to indoctrination than the sophisticates on the coasts) and partly to avoid anti-trust suits from the likely victors in the upcoming election. Just like they censor on behalf of authoritarian regimes abroad to protect access to markets, they will do the same here. Good reason to break up the FAANGs for the public good.

centimeter 6y ago

It’s not clear that cigarette smoking is actually net harmful, due to the substantial decrease in obesity associated with smoking.

Nasrudith 6y ago
They did the math actually on that one - comparing smoking rate and obesity counter-correlations and the rise and fall across various countries. The smoking drop was modest, less than 10% which makes it a fairly clear net harm unless one defines net harm ghoulishly such that dying soon after retirement is a good thing due to reduced healthcare costs.
pixl97 6y ago
What an insane point of view. Both are terrible things that we should find solutions to.
- centimeter 6y ago
  "Both are bad" isn't an interesting or useful observation when there's a tradeoff between the two.

blm202021 6y ago

I'm going to retort, specifically in the context of a very important issue in the US currently: the BLM movement. Contrary to popular thought, the "liberal" media utterly failed minorities. The abuse of minorities in the US spans generations and has consistently been relegated to the margins of mainstream news. It has been typical in the US -- for decades -- for the NY Times to grant a single death in Israel front page coverage while a death of an African American at the hands of police in NYC would barely get coverage. My point is not that either is acceptable -- but rather that both are bad. Perhaps non-coverage of an incident in NY is worse because a NY paper might want to consider the atrocities happening right down the street. The BLM movement finally came to the forefront not because of the "liberal" media but in spite of it. The BLM movement was enabled by Social Media. If Twitter did not exist, there is no reason to assume we would have made any progress. The media overall and the liberal media have lost part of their control over the narrative (and the power that selective coverage conveys) and trying to blame things on social media. But believe this -- what we have seen in 2020 is progress. As messy and as ugly as it is, we've actually moved forward with minority rights. Consider also how hypocritical the coverage has been. Liberal media tells us that "Silicon Valley lacks diversity". TBH it does, but you know the real problem is not SV, it is a national media controlled by four families with zero minorities on their boards and executive staff -- telling an industry with huge numbers of minorities (including many brown people in senior/CxO ranks) they lack diversity. SV does need to get better, but saying SV is the start and end of all problems is absolutely false.

Veen 6y ago
Which media companies and which families? I’d like to verify those claims about zero minority executives and board members?
- wnissen 6y ago
  Forget the boards, the LA Times has one (1) black reporter out of 90 covering local news. LA is 8% black. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/874530954/rancor-erupts-in-la-times-newsroom-over-race-equity-and-protest-coverage https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/874530954/rancor-erupts-in-la...

dmix 6y ago

> They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. What damage? The stuff people wrote on it? That's the people. That's what I love about people who think everyone should vote. But just look at Twitter. Most people are poorly informed idiots who are hyper-emotional and inclined to mob-think. I'm all for more direct democracy but that doesn't mean I want anyone and everyone to vote. We need informed voters. Which is why I despise the drives to get random people out to vote for whoever they heard spoken the loudest about in relation to their issues.

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
> The stuff people wrote on it? That's the people. That’s like putting an alligator pit in a mall and blaming people for getting eaten.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> I'm all for more direct democracy but that doesn't mean I want anyone and everyone to vote. We need informed voters. There is no incentive for people to become more informed. Public choice theory explains this, voters are rationally ignorant.