
Do social media threaten democracy? - dredmorbius
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21730871-facebook-google-and-twitter-were-supposed-save-politics-good-information-drove-out
======
macawfish
One of the greatest tragedies I know of right now is a complete ignorance
about alternative tools for collective decision making. Even in conversations
with well educated friends, I struggle to convince people that this is
anything more than an obscurity. The deep reality is that many voting systems
incentivize polarization. First-past-the-post is a _source_ of the political
us vs. them that is so vulnerable to exploitation in the first place!

Nicky Case made an excellent game/article about this issue. I encourage you to
read it all the way through:
[http://ncase.me/ballot/](http://ncase.me/ballot/)

~~~
koube
It's certainly true that FPTP doesn't help, but I wouldn't single it out as
the primary cause. 70 years ago we still had FPTP and things were not nearly
as bad as now, and at that point we had been using FPTP for more than 150
years.

[http://www.mamartino.com/projects/rise_of_partisanship/](http://www.mamartino.com/projects/rise_of_partisanship/)

~~~
indubitable
One thing to keep in mind is population is a factor. Literally every single
member of the House of Representatives is either a Democrat or a Republican.
In the Senate there are 2 exceptions, Bernie Sanders and Angus King. The
interesting thing is that Sanders and King represent Vermont and Maine
respectively. Vermont has a population of 0.6million. Maine has a population
of 1.3 million. They're the 2nd and 9th least populated states in the country.
First past the post isn't awful with smaller populations. With a small
population it's possible for people to get their message out without the
resources of an enormous party, and similarly not get drowned out by the
resources of said parties when running against them.

But as population sizes increase the resources of parties become critical. And
as voters become more and more disconnected from their representatives, the
value of having a symbol by your name becomes much more important than what
you actually believe, and in some cases the former actually ends up redefining
the latter. In any case the fact that nearly everybody at most all levels is a
republican or democrat even though fewer people than ever actually identify as
republican or democrat, is something that I would call very strong evidence of
a systemic problem in our electoral system.

~~~
koube
I'm not an expert on this but from a quick google it appears ME and VT both
have above average polarizations: [http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-
drum/2013/05/how-polarized-...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-
drum/2013/05/how-polarized-your-state/)

------
eighthnate
No. It threatens media/propagandists control over information.

That's why russia, china, europe and now we are working so hard to control
social media.

It's threatens russian establishment propaganda. It threatens chinese
establishment propaganda. It threatens western establishment propaganda. There
is a reason why the media is attacking social media so vociferously.

~~~
dredmorbius
If Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit, et al, _manifestly demonstrated that
they produced and distributed more rather than less accurate information_ your
comment might have merits.

The fact is that they don't, that the platforms have been very much wide open
to manipulation, that the founders and executives of the companies have denied
that there is any such problem, and that malicious agents _have_ subverted the
systems and through them social and political dynamics.

Your last paragraph frankly makes your first nonsensical. Either ensuring a
sound epistemic and media system is good, or it is not. You're trying to have
it both ways. The fact that manipulating media for control and influence is
undertaken is very widely recognised, and has been for millennia.

~~~
eighthnate
> Your last paragraph frankly makes your first nonsensical.

How?

> You're trying to have it both ways.

No. I'm explaining why all governments and all propaganda organizations want
to control social media.

It's why china banned facebook and why they are building their own
internal/national social media platforms. The same thing with russia.

> The fact that manipulating media for control and influence is undertaken is
> very widely recognised, and has been for millennia.

I know. That's my point.

------
aaron-lebo
Is this a repost? (No, it's not):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628132)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15628471)

It's funny how media outlets are scrambling to state what was obvious at the
very least a couple years ago but it's also kind of scary. It's great people
are waking up to this, but worried about some kind of overreach based on
emotion which limits not just the big players but also further innovation.

Is that a sign of incompetent media? Why do media outlets wait to talk about
an issue until everyone else is, versus doing some kind of investigative
research and informing their readers ahead of time? They seem way behind the
curve.

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks for those.

In its print edition, _The Economist_ begins with a set of "leaders" \-- brief
introductions to a topic, for which there's almost always a much more detailed
briefing.

The first item you link appears to be the corresponding briefing to the leader
I've posted here.

------
Alex3917
> between January 2015 and August this year, 146m users may have seen Russian
> misinformation

As if the fact that Russia may have funded it matters at all.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Why would the source of misinformation not matter? Don't understand why people
are so willing to ignore the Russia thing like it didn't happen. If you want
to live in a democracy, sources of information matter.

~~~
Alex3917
> If you want to live in a democracy, sources of information matter.

How would it be any different if the NYT distributed the same material?

~~~
aaron-lebo
Because the NYT is a US media institution and not a foreign country run by an
authoritarian (ex-KGB no less) with strong incentives to disrupt politics in
the US?

~~~
convolvatron
isn't the basic problem that people are willing to swallow entire narratives
from random people without being sufficiently critical? Even if the propaganda
came from one of the US parties directly instead of being funded by a foreign
agent, democracy fails if whoever yells the loudest most ridiculous thing wins
the election.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Of course that's the basic problem, but if you don't lock your door, you'd
still want to know who broke into your house?

~~~
convolvatron
eh...not really? it doesn't seem particularly fruitful. its not going to
change anything, or prevent the Finns or Alabama State Bowling League or the
Presbyterians from having an undue influence in any future election. I'm
really alot more concerned that there seemingly isn't any way to get people to
vote based on reasoned discourse about the best way to govern the country.

Given that, showing that some Russians who may or may not have had some ties
to Putin's government posted misinformation on Facebook seems a bit
irrelevant. Anyone can post misinformation. In your analogy my prized
possessions are heaped in the middle of a field 2 hours outside of town.

------
dredmorbius
A friend made the observation this past January that gets to the heart of the
matter:

 _because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now
substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place._

Source:
[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCyGi3HQ...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/RCyGi3HQnL1?sfc=true)

Discussion:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/)

What she said, in conjunction with a lot of thinking and research on my part
makes me realise that media, communications, politics, and economics always
_have_ been very, very tightly interconnected, though we seem to like
pretending this isn't the case, or that the consequences don't matter.

(This ties into another observation: that masterminds are very often not so
much _evil_ and _geniuses_ as _uninhibited_. And that removal of inhibitions
can come through various mechanisms, including ignorance, stupidity, and
denial. I suspect several of these are at play, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg
in particular has been slow to realise that connecting a few billion not-
entirely-BFFs might reveal some interesting dynamics.)

What a still-in-process review of the field of media studies and philosophy is
turning up is the fact that _very nearly every major revolution in
communications has resulted in massive and often painful or devastating
disruptions to social order_. We see this in the written record _going back to
the origin of the written record itself_ , and there's anthropological
evidence to suggest that speech may also have contributed to an accelerated
divergence between various proto-human clades.

Writing, maths, accounting, insurance and risk, printing, calculus, literacy,
telegraph, telephone, phonographs, radio, cinema, television, and subsequent
technologies have each produced major shifts in political and military
systems. Printing and literacy are associated with the Protestant Reformation
(just celebrating its 500th anniversary this week), the 30 Years War, arguably
the American Revolution -- the first of the modern revolutions -- and the
French and many revolutions of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The rise of Fascism is _very_ tightly tied to the emergence of radio, public
address and recording equipment (Germany remains a centre of excellence for
same), and mass distribution of cheap books. _Quotations from Chairman Mao
Tse-tung_ (a/k/a "The Little Red Book") rivals the Bible as the most published
book of all time, with estimates ranging from 2 - 6.5 _billion_ copies
printed.

And Facebook can reach _two billion people worldwide_. It is quite literally
the single largest media platform ever developed, with global and instant
reach.

The thought that parties interested in power, manipulation, or disruption
_wouldn 't_ seek to influence this is ... frankly, idiotic.

And the truth that the impacts of any such manipulation extend _far_ beyond
the management and beneficial shareholders of Facebook, Google, Twitter,
Reddit, etc., is a, pardon, trumping argument for why these platforms _must_
be regulated.

