
How Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Brexit funders, and others broke the law - mariedm
https://threader.app/thread/1059758943474454528
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save_ferris
Am I the only one that hates reading what's essentially a full-fledged story
via tweet-sized chunks that are smashed together?

I get that Twitter is great for blasting small pieces of content into the
world, but stitching tweets together into a a news story creates zero cohesion
because Twitter doesn't allow users to write with form in mind.

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BuildTheRobots
I found it very hard to read - especially as they seem to have made scrolling
slower. On the flip side, I am thankful every paragraph links to the original
tweet.

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seapunk
Hi, creator of Threader here, can you tell me on what device/config you have
the scroll issue?

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hirundo
> We are at a crossroads. Trust and confidence in the integrity of our
> democratic processes risks being disrupted because the average person has
> little idea of what is going on behind the scenes. ... This must change.

Funny, I would have thought that it would be the integrity of our democratic
processes that must change, and that trust and confidence in it were secondary
effects.

Also it seems overly optimistic to think that when the average person has a
better idea of what is going on behind the scenes that their trust and
confidence in the process would _improve_.

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throwaway5752
In case anyone would prefer to look at it the original format:
[https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1059758943474454528](https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1059758943474454528)

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ch4ck
Democracy=when the voting results are in line with my vote. Populism=when they
are not.

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gadders
They also investigated the Brexit Remain campaign. I don't think anyone has
clean hands in this.

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lordnacho
The question is what do you do when someone is found to have cheated on their
campaign funding? You can fine them, throw them in jail, but what happens to
the referendum result? If you don't have a do-over, people will learn there's
not really a consequence. If you do, a lot of people who legitimately voted
will be annoyed.

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karmenblack
What if both sides were funded? Do you think people can't think for
themselves?

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ben_w
That’s a bad way of phrasing it. Democracy _requires_ a well-informed
electorate to function. If the electorate is badly informed or misinformed
then it doesn’t function as a democracy, but as a (Propaganda-ocracy?). The
complexity of the world that leads to economic specialisation also precludes
informed decision making by a conventional electorate. I don’t have a solution
to this yet. I don’t even know if there is a solution — I’ve heard that
humanity has swung from democracy to aristocracy and back over the ages for
this exact reason, but the very specialisation that has me concerned is also
making me unsure about that.

One of the modifications of democracy we discussed in A-level philosophy was
getting one vote for existing, another for having a degree, another for being
a parent, etc.

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karmenblack
So only propaganda peddled by the state is valid? These days every outlet has
an agenda and blocking one just because it is coming from Russia is a false
economy. Either block all propaganda or none and let people figure out the
truth.

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ben_w
By what chain of reasoning did you go from what I wrote to that response?

Of course state propaganda is as invalid as anyone else’s! And all states
equally, too!

Neither attempting to block nor failing to block solves the problem of
discovering what the truth is. The former because it _presupposes_ you already
know the answer, the latter because it’s trivial to algorithmically create
endless variations and combinations of lies and truths so that there literally
isn’t enough time to decide what to believe.

Even intelligence agencies fall for fabrications. What hope do the rest of us
have?

