
How We Broke Democracy - metafunctor
https://medium.com/@tobiasrose/empathy-to-democracy-b7f04ab57eee
======
pfranz
One other contributor (and I hear this often repeated but rarely
substantiated) was 24 news. There's only so many facts to present (and facts
are difficult to find and vet). To fill the extra time they focused more on
pundits and opinions. Since this was now a majority of the content each side
got stronger and more polarized. I still think this has a stronger effect than
people realize because not everyone uses computers.

I try to do what they recommend and it's tough to listen to both sides. They
start with the basis you're already supporting them so they skip the
"foundation" of their argument and the content generally is lies and
condescension for the other (to be clear, I'm talking about both sides).

~~~
noobiemcfoob
I don't believe the issue is an actual dearth of facts. The reality is (and
presumably always will be) there are far too many facts to report them all,
particularly in an entertaining way.

Editors must make a selection of which facts are relevant and interesting
enough to make it into... whatever it is they're editing. When that's
political news, that selection bias becomes more important. And in today's
age, it can be so extreme that both sides are operating with inconsistent
perspectives. Not because someone is lying or misleading.

/Then you add lying and misleading and the whole thing is a dumpster fire.

~~~
pfranz
Yes, there's more raw data there, but it's not always useful until it's
aggregated and analyzed. Not everyone has time to sift through raw CSPAN
footage or census data (I try). People (myself included) rely on sources for
that. If some breaking news is happening, spotty raw data from the front lines
can be really misleading about what's actually happening. You can also see the
money draining out of traditional long-form reporting (and polls).

These outlets more and more rely on rhetoric, opinions, and emotions instead
of facts.

I think part of it is that incentives are misaligned. I didn't want to throw
shade on one side, but the Les Moonves quote, "It may not be good for America,
but it's damn good for CBS." I think in addition to a news businesses focusing
on being the best and financially successful, there's focus in politics where
the only goal for each side is on winning instead of being right or living up
to some ideals.

------
dv_dt
I think the humans have been dividing themselves up into tribes for a long
time. While technology isn't completely blameless, Technology does provide
another avenue where humans establish and patrol boundaries via social cues.
And those cues can maybe be magnified by tech and exploited by political
parties on both sides.

I found this podcast particularly interesting (though maybe not 100% correct),
but it discusses interesting urban/rural social and cultural boundaries. And I
think it's fairly perceptive in the observation that completely unrelated
political issues are bound together simply because they happened to fall on
different sides of that cultural divide. I think that divide had formed long
before the internet and certainly social media.

It was also recorded just before the election which additionally makes for
some prophetic elements.

Cracked Podcast #148 [http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-
country/](http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-country/)

~~~
smpetrey
I completely agree. Humans will be humans and we will always have tribes. And
that's okay. What needs to change is modern voting systems to accomadte the
growing fractions of views. Such as, The Alternative Vote (Instant Run-off)
[1] Also, The Cracked podcast is so fantastic!

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

------
pohl
My first thought after election day was that Brandolini's Law had been
successfully weaponized, and that Firaxis should get busy adding it to the
tech tree in Civ 6.

Sam Biddle wrote an article[1] in The Intercept recently where he uses a
phrase that would be a great name for this new tech:"Internet-Augmented
Ignorance"

The clickbait phenomenon appears to be a much bigger problem today than it did
a week ago. A week ago, I thought of it as a mere annoyance. Now I fear it is
an existential threat – especially in light of Zuckerberg's take:

 _" I think the idea that fake news on Facebook—of which it’s a very small
amount of the content—influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy
idea."_

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-
you-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-you-please-
make-yourself-better/)

~~~
dictum
_" Sam Biddle wrote an article [on] the clickbait phenomenon"_

Well, leave it to the experts.

~~~
pohl
The article that I linked to may be one that not everybody agrees with, but it
is a well-written and thoughtful article that isn't anywhere near the
clickbait-farm model.

If the problem were merely that people selectively shared thoughtful but
biased articles within their own information bubble, the problem would not be
so severe.

The clickbait problem, in contrast, is that people share – within milliseconds
- articles that are designed merely to siphon money from that dopamine hit,
with no good-faith effort to even make any sense whatsoever.

------
roboneal
The U.S. may appear to be a broken democracy to most but it is a functional
constitutional republic. This was was the purposeful intent of the founders to
safeguard the sovereign interests of the individual states.

------
mamon
It's funny how leftists think that democracy is "broken" because they
favourite candidate has lost democratic elections :) The truth is exactly the
opposite: the fact that candidate so despised by elites, media, lobbysts has
won with votes of common people is a sign that the democracy is working better
than ever.

~~~
yolesaber
More people voted for Hillary than Trump. This is the second time in 16 years
that a candidate has received the popular vote but lost the election. It
didn't happen once in the 20th century. The system is in fact broken at this
point, thanks to voting rights suppression, gerrymandering, and the sheer
madness that is the Electoral College. Even Trump himself in his 60 Minutes
interview on Sunday said he would prefer a system in which the popular vote
determined the winner, even after his victory.

~~~
ewzimm
I agree that the system needs to change, but you should also take into
consideration that the purpose of the electoral college is to prop up the
power of smaller states that don't have large populations, as minority
opinions are important too. How people vote is partially a reflection of who
the campaigns addressed. Because it's the electoral college that counts,
candidates campaign to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. If the
popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to
address the popular vote. This would mean less focus on swing states and more
focus on addressing the population overall.

Trump winning while losing the popular vote is the system working as intended,
but we can definitely debate whether those intentions were good and if the
reasons for the system still apply today. The political situation is very
different now from when the electoral college was implemented. As it stands,
it's entirely up to the states to change the laws binding their electors to
the state popular vote. Eleven have already signed on to National Popular Vote
Interstate Compact which would bind their electors to the national popular
vote if enough states sign on.

~~~
hga
_If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy
to address the popular vote._

Exactly, these complaints are based on an unknowable counterfactual, that if
the rules of the game were total votes, a Trump campaign based on them
wouldn't have won. All we know is that if you change the rules of the game
after it's been played, Hillary "won".

Plus states generally don't count absentee ballots unless they could change
election results (which wouldn't necessarily be for the presidential race), so
we're only talking about votes _counted_ , not votes _cast_. And absentee
ballots strongly break Republican, like 2/3rds to 1/3rd from one source I just
read.

~~~
mikeyouse
There's a certain bit of irony in your critique including an incorrect and
unsourced rumor that has been making its way around social media.

In case it isn't clear, yes, all ballots are counted in every election. Even
absentee ballots. The idea that they're not counted is ludicrous.

[https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/appendix/faq](https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/appendix/faq)

~~~
hga
While it may be an "unsourced rumor that has been making its way around social
media.", it's also something I learned _years_ ago, it's a simple and very
obvious economy measure.

And whatever that Official Federal Government FAQ might say to, for example,
encourage people to vote absentee, it has no bearing on the facts on the
ground. The rules of which are, for Presidental elections, the sole
prerogative of each state's legislature.

~~~
mikeyouse
The fact that you learned it years ago doesn't change whether it's an
unsourced rumor. Every single state certifies their ballot totals and every
single state counts each vote. I challenge you to find a single state where
their policy is to only count absentees in close races.

------
ryanx435
this analysis completely ignores the fact that reddit.com is the 8th largest
website in the united states and a primary source of news for large portions
of its users. And I'm sure that pretty much every reddit user ever can attest
that multiple viewpoints on political issues were HEAVILY debated and often
led to flamewars.

just saying that this is direct evidence against the article's conclusions.

[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com)

~~~
bbctol
A flamewar is not a real connection of opposing sides that lets each
understand the other, it's a progressive back-and-forth of increasingly
simplified versions of the other's position until both sides hate each other
more than when they started. It's still a part of the echo chamber phenomenon;
just because there are people who hate each other shouting at each other,
doesn't mean the inherent structure of the medium won't make each more rigid
in their views.

~~~
judahmeek
I'm hoping that platforms like Pol.is can lead to a better future:
[https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-
da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq](https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-
da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq)

