
How a Handful of American Tech Companies Help Radicalized the World - cryptozeus
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/ryanhatesthis/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-facebook-elections?__twitter_impression=true
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0xcde4c3db
Non-AMP link (readable without JS, at least for me):

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/brazil-
ja...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/brazil-jair-
bolsonaro-facebook-elections)

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gambiting
It's reaching the level for me where I am sitting at my desk right now, I am
supposed to be writing code for a huge corporation, and I'm just thinking to
myself - what's the point? The world is literally going down the drain and
there's few hundred people around me producing entertainment content - it
almost feels like a joke, like we should stand up and walk out. I feel like
few years ago maybe it wasn't great, but at least it felt like it was getting
better, slowly. Now it's the exact opposite - I wouldn't be surprised if all
of this lead to another world war, or a huge genocide against a minority
somewhere.

Anyone has any ideas on how to deal with how depressing the world is around
us? And then - how do we help(without getting killed/landing in jail)?

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cryptozeus
Its interesting how the shift happens very quickly. I feel exactly the same
and so do many of my friends. I don’t have answer for you.

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josefresco
How a Handful of American Tech Companies Helped Radicalized the World

or

How a Handful of American Tech Companies Help Radicalize the World

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bryanrasmussen
surely Helped Radicalize.

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narrator
Catholic Church headline in 1500s: "How a handful of Gutenberg press printers
radicalized the world."

Distributing a Gutenberg bible was punishable by death at one point. Plenty of
war and persecution resulted from the conflict between Protestants and
Catholics. Availability of printed bibles in the vernacular played a major
role in magnifying the conflict.

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happytoexplain
That's a pretty dramatic metaphor. Can you describe why you think it applies?

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narrator
The Ottoman Empire banned printing presses because they were blasphemous and
politically destabilizing and they fell dramatically behind the west leading
to their eventual total defeat.

Free speech enabled by new technologies has good and bad parts, but it's more
good than bad. The desire for political stability and maintaining the status
quo over everything else is a really lousy way to run things and it's just
better to accept that the benefits of free and open communication are better
than the risks or a pervasive A.I enabled censorship state like they have in
China.

