Consider that for many people on Earth, getting access to the internet takes them from the knowledge shared amongst the members of their community to the collective knowledge of world. That's quite a leap, and I'd argue that having to read flat-earther nonsense once in a while is a price well worth the benefit
Some believe that fringe information was a major factor in the U.S. Presidential election. A leader of a fringe community is the chief political advisor to the most powerful person in the world-elect.
Yes, the internet allows people to be mis-informed if they don't care for being informed. Still, not being connected at all is basically equivalent to not being able to connect meaningfully with modern civilization. I literally don't know anyone who isn't connected to the internet. It's simply a prerequisite for modernity.
Very true, but not relevant: as a rebutal to the statement that "you're overstating the effect of fringe communities", they do have a point.
(Does anyone have a map?)
Perhaps corporate media has defined the Overton window for so long that we've come to believe that they speak for the mainstream, even when millions of people send a clear message that that is not true.
> Perhaps corporate media ...
There is so much confusion packed into that statement, it's hard to respond. All I'll say is that the election was in no way a mandate for racism. And why would anyone want to argue that it was?
Bannon was Trump's adviser during his campaign and even before that, Trump's statements were consistent with Bannon's and Breitbart's. Whether those statements were racist is a debate that's been held a thousand times and is not worth rehashing.
> Whether those statements were racist is a debate that's been held a thousand times
I disagree; it is not a matter of debate. In fact, I've never heard anyone but the most dedicated apologists say otherwise. The racists generally have said that they don't care, which I believe.
> Those members of a group or political party holding extreme views
Then that's simply a subjective term, as is "extreme". By that definition "fringe" expresses nothing more than your opinion.
Thus, when you say Trump and Lenin were fringe, all you've done is clarify where you stand politically.
But that is not the only factor. There are probably a dozen stewing issues and Trump managed to ride the coat tails of quite a few of them, not least of which is some people who didn't want Trump president couldn't be bothered to show up and vote. There's a roughly 8 million voter gap between 2012 and 2016.
Most likely if we had compulsory voting in this country, most of the plurality, who did not show up to vote, would not have voted for Trump. It may have been a scant amount, but very clearly the more eligible voters vote, it favors Democrat candidates.
I'd absolutely call it fringe. It has a very tiny base of support. It is also on the political extreme - far to the right of the mainstream.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/18/10...
Outside the racism, I agree that he is very conservative, in a way that used to be fringe, which has little support now, but is widely accepted as normalized. That, I strongly feel, is a serious error by us, the public.
Edit: And there were (are?) "code words" for getting referrals. Some have even become everyday slang. But I've forgotten the specifics.
Anyway, the Trump team has now somehow made European-Americans more racist and xenophobic. They just did an outstanding job with the Wallace strategy. Wallace was appealing to blue-collar union members in the North. But now unions are largely gone, and that demographic is either unemployed, or earning minimum wage. And arguably, that has exacerbated racism and xenophobia. Pushback against globalization and the concentration of wealth.
Something should be both extreme ideologically, and a relatively small minority to be "fringe".
Mostly, interestingly enough, the premise of these contrasting groups and opinions are actually based on the idea that some third party external group is imposing on their freedoms and well-beings. Romans laid continents under their taxing rule by fear mongering, nothing new and you hardly need a free and open digital global communication network for that.
My personal belief here is that these developments will self adjust. Unfortunately through great friction and pain. Any open society that eventually submerges into the rule of a "Trump/Bannon" group, will eventually self destruct slowly. If the core premise of a society is fear mongering of a third party external group (Jews, Muslims, Republicans, West-, East-, Capitalist-, Communist.. ) the core problem is that you're trying to fix your head ache by shooting yourself in the foot. And then the next foot from that..
Power is profoundly addictive and corrupting. If you've been a failure up to now, and suddenly you're in power for blaming some low influence group, that blame will only grow stronger and stronger with the failures of making a positive impact for the desperate people that put you in power.
I would argue that a small taste of power corrupted the left.
When they started censoring conservative views, banning conservative speakers on campuses, "no platforming", they were not defending freedom.
The comment I responded to, however, was partisan and I was simply adding balance.
* Subscribe to The Economist and read it weekly. It's designed for busy people but has real, sophisticated information and exceptional breath of coverage. It's a bit right of center, but not ideological (except their obsession with the free market solving every problem), and very credible.
* Read this news summary daily. It's a bit left-of-center, but again non-ideological and the coverage is exceptional.
https://www.justsecurity.org/category/news/
* Check the headlines at the NY Times. They are criticized by all sides for being biased against them, an excellent sign of good journalism. Their editorials are left-of-center, but ignore them and read the news:
In about 20 min a day, you'll be better informed than almost everyone you know. Final tip: Skip all editorials, columns, talk radio - 99% is either uninformed, intended to twist things and manipulate you, or both.
Yes, but Trump won despite the fringe information against him.
See why these political posts are vapid garbage that do nothing to add to the conversation?
Now that everyone can communicate on the same system, the next issue to figure out is how to pick up the good bits and filter out the bad bits. But consolidating all that information (onto the internet) is a great way to start doing that.
Internet culture is still very young. At least in the US based on the election last week, the majority of people 18-25 voted progressive in most states. These are people who have never known the world without internet access.
I guess that the people who voted the other way are folks who have transitioned into internet-required lifestyles later in life and had their young adult lifestyles set in the 80's and early 90s and earlier. This makes them less digital natives and more like immigrants (ironically).
Again, none of these are universally true of course and this is all just personal opinion.
I believe that in general, younger people have become better at filtering out bullshit because they've had access to much more information than older folks did growing up.
I was born in 1980 and while I'm technically outside the millennial cutoff, I still identify with that group more than any other. While we didn't have a computer in the house until the early 90's, I was always exposed to computers and the internet from a super early age. Most of my viewing habits are gaming and making on YouTube, some streaming, etc. Still haven't really gotten the value from Snapchat personally, but I think that's more of a function of not having much need to use it.
Overall I am hopeful things are getting better as boomers age out and die off and the younger folks are coming into their own.
This is entirely normal - the young like things to change, the old do not. This voting pattern well predates the internet.
> I believe that in general, younger people have become better at filtering out bullshit because they've had access to much more information
I disagree. It's about the same as it always has been. Yellow journalism exists now, just as it existed in the 19th century, and people still fall for it now.
If the internet stopped people from falling for bullshit, "post-truth" would not have been 'word of the year' for 2016.
Makes no sense given the context. Clinton was absolutely not the change candidate in this election.
Old people predominantly voted for a shakeup, a radical change in the way American govt operates.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but both houses went Republican, and the Republicans who have been controlling congress for the past 6 years have been stonewalling and blocking everything. The people who were voted in? They actually aren't up for change.
edit: The Republicans in particular are not going to change the current system, and Trump, even if he wanted to, can't do it without a 2/3rds majority for the constitutional change. The Republicans don't want to change the current system, because it's their force multiplier - they are overrepresented because they've been able to more successfully bend the current system via gerrymandering and similar. They also will have serious trouble fiddling with the constitution, because in order to get where they are, they've made a lot of shouty people very religiose about the original document - changing their 'holy bible of politics' will be a very difficult sell.
Trump will change the rhetoric coming out of the oval office, sure, but he's not going to substantially change how government functions.
There are actually two ways to pass a constitutional amendment. 2/3 of both Federal legislative houses is one, but they can also do it with 2/3 of all state legislatures.
Republicans do very well in the state legislatures, they're only about five states short of the latter threshold.
2018 is likely to be a bad year for Democrats, there's a huge number of seats to defend and only a handful of Republican seats that must be defended, with only like 2-3 competitive seats. A very real possibility is that this turns into the usual midterm bloodbath and they pick up a few more seats/legislatures and start pushing constitutional amendments on wedge/social issues to lock in their wins.
People's adherence to this as a "religious document" is oversold - the document includes a method to change itself, and this is "playing by the rules". But frankly they wouldn't even think twice before rationalizing, when presented with the opportunity to lock in their wins for multiple decades.
You're right about it being in their best interest not to mess with the election system right now. The multi-level (state/federal) and district-by-district/state-by-state nature of the system favors them heavily compared to the popular vote. Republicans have near total dominance of all levels of government, with what amounts to a popular loss. One thing they may change is to have more blue states start splitting their electoral votes, like Nebraska and Maine do. States get to determine how their electoral votes are allocated, and Republicans control many of the "blue" states' governments (eg Michigan, Wisconsin, etc). Republicans can essentially make those states not count for Democrats electorally, since they will go half-and-half for both Republicans and Democrats (+/- a few seats).
the person you're replying to didn't make such a strong claim.
"If the internet stopped people from falling for bullshit, "post-truth" would not have been 'word of the year' for 2016."
which is making a general claim. Whereas now you're implying that you weren't making a general claim about "stopped".
If you 'stop' corruption, it doesn't mean you 100% eliminate corruption. A journalist can 'stop people in the street' to talk to them, but that doesn't mean that they stand still rather that walk-and-talk. If a parent is able to 'stop' a kid sleeping badly, it doesn't mean their kid never again sleeps badly, just that the incidence is considerably reduced. Even a traffic 'stop' sign doesn't completely stop people all the time. 'Stop', when applied to human behaviour, is not the fucking same as corking a bloody wine bottle.
Let me put it another way: in your subsequent replies you are implying that what your original claim meant was "If the internet stopped even just a few people from falling for bullshit, "post-truth" would not have been 'word of the year' for 2016." which is clearly not what you meant (and, BTW, would clearly be a false statement) - hence the equivocation.
Maybe, but if so it's not like a phase of the moon, which changes on its own. This phase will only pass if we do something to make that happen.
... this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists [and everyone else] set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.
Er... yes, I basically deeply disagree with all of your points :-)
I didn't vote for Trump, so it's not like I was supporting him, but damn Hillary voters were so ignorant of her history. They were so mad that Trump didn't want to welcome more Syrian refugees. How many of them knew Hillary literally created the Syrian refugee crisis in a failed attempt at a coup? Not a single one I talked to.
There is no evidence that Clinton backed or supported a coup in Syria. The US did support elements of a popular uprising in Syria during the Arab spring, and then provided and continues to provide military support to Anti-Assad factions after Assad viciously cracked down on the uprising. A coup d'etat is a very different beast.
The refugee crisis is a result of Assad and Anti-Assad factions acting to change the demographics of Syria via ethnic cleansing. It is unclear, but seems unlikely to me, that the refugee crisis would be lower if the Anti-Assad factions had gotten less support from the US. The refugee crisis would have just happened over a shorter period of time. To avoid increased US involvement Assad regulated his behavior somewhat (see Chemical Weapons controversy). It seems likely to me that the US by providing limited support to Anti-Assad factions acted to limit/control military support given by gulf nations to the more extreme Anti-Assad elements. Such support would likely have made the more radical elements of the civil war much more powerful and likely increased the flow of refugees.
US involvement in the Syrian Civil War did in certain circumstances limit the refugee crisis and has allowed refugees to return home. For example the US/YPG defense of Sinjar Mountain in N. Iraq allowed refugees to escape genocide, then with the recapture of Sinjar, allowed refugees to return home. Another example would be halting of the Islamic State's campaign in N. Syria, which if continued would have generated hundreds of thousands of refugees. Not only was the Islamic State's advance halted, but it has been rolled back significantly with large numbers of refugees returning home. This would not have been possible without US support to the factions (YPG/SDF) fighting the Islamic State.
We can debate the exact nature of US responsibility for the refugee crisis, but (1). any direct responsibility for foreign policy at this level is with the President not the Secretary of State, (2). there was no coup d'etat attempted or otherwise in Syria.
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-i...
>Srian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.
2. As another poster noted, ISIS started in Iraq not Syria.
3. The Syrian factions which the US supported are opposed to ISIS and fought several early battles against them. Some US allies in the region sent aid to ISIS, but the US worked to limit and stop that aid.
4. The Pentagon is not backing Assad and still provides aid to anti-Assad groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#Parami...
Wikileaks has reported that the US government has been covertly funding the Syrian opposition since 2006.[40]
2. Yes, ISIS started in Iraq, by not primarily by Iraqis. As I said, the Syrians who had been trained, armed, and radicalized by the CIA fled to Iraq when the coup failed and started ISIS.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isi... A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
3. See #2 above, we clearly funded and armed what became ISIS.
4. You're right on this one. The reports of the two parties backed by the CIA and Pentagon fighting each other had me mixed up. That doesn't change the rest of the stuff above for which I've provided citations.
2. What happened in Syria is a civil war not a Coup d'etat.
>"the Syrians who had been trained, armed, and radicalized by the CIA fled to Iraq when the coup failed and started ISIS."
The civil war was going well for the rebels all throughout the rise of ISIS, so I'm curious when you thought this was happening? All sources agree that ISIS was formed in Iraq and then infiltrated into Syria.
"the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups - they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state”"
Lets parse that carefully as it is deceptively written:
* "the US and its allies" that is, the US had one policy and its allies had another, but the author chooses to group them together to blame the US for activities undertaken by US allies which the US actively opposed and ran counter to US interests.
* "supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups" while true the US was going out of its way to arm the less extreme elements (unlike some US allies).
* "they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state”", that is, a DIA intelligence assessment considered the possibility that the Sunni population of Iraq might break away from Iraq. They didn't support this possibility, just said it could happen (and it did). This state need not be "The Islamic State", but author choose the name "Islamic State" to make it sound like the US supported the Islamic State.
The author of that piece is being willfully misleading. Note that it was published in the Opinion section of the guardian. Even with all that the author supports my claim that ISIS started in Iraq.
I think you will find the opposite is true. You have completely out-of-touch elitists who think everything is great, and then you have people who voted for Trump who are extremely aware of the reality of the situation.
The people who voted for Trump had to actually seek out the truth because they realised that would they were being fed by the mainstream media and social media didn't match their reality.
The people who voted for Hillary just continued to be fed information. The end result is the Trump voters became extremely knowledgeable about all of the various issues, and Hillary voters look like products of brainwashing.
For example, Hillary voters would see the cnn article about how citibank predicted the sharemarket would drop 3% if Trump was elected and just take it at face value. Trump supporters know that citibank has strong ties to the democrats to the point that they selected the Obama team and can see that CNN is merely a propaganda arm of the clinton foundation.
Hillary was under investigation from the FBI at the time that article was written and their logic for suggesting the 3% decrease was supposedly that at some point Trump wasn't the favourite and so it would be an unexpected result. So being an unexpected result will cause a 3% drop, but not your president being under investigation by the FBI.
That is just one example of literally hundreds of examples. Hillary voters never bothered to seek the truth.
Yes, it's true that underground utilities and services can be produced that skirt legal responsibility for a good while, but without the legal ability to come into the sunlight and flourish, such things will always remain incomplete, spotty, and hard to come by, always denied a full resource allocation and full publicity profile.
We need to update copyright to something that's sane for the digital age, something that doesn't pretend like a RAM representation that exists for microseconds represents millions of dollars in damages. We need to update patent law to something that protects small innovators without becoming a club that can bludgeon competitors who are playing fair. We need to repeal and replace the Soviet-era CFAA and its copycats, which still govern most network access and allow tech monopolists to take your data, and thus your life (calendars, emails, photos, phone numbers...), hostage.
The true potential of a free internet remains unseen, stifled by greedy monopolists hiding behind their hypocritical rhetoric about freedom and openness while they prosecute and harass anyone that tries to ensure you can keep control of your most personal records.
The long-term view, spanning decades or hundreds of years, overwhelmingly argues in favor of information availability leading to progress. That progress doesn't happen all at once, gains are not always evenly distributed, it's gradual and eventual. All great leaps of human progress have directly coincided with immense increases in information availability. I'd be very skeptical that that is a coincidence. Ignorance is gradually boxed into smaller and smaller enclaves when confronted with unfettered access to information. The only way to truly retard that progression is through violence and that is always temporary.
What other explanation is there for seven billion people having such a drastically higher median when it comes to knowledge, versus what the median was 500 or 5,000 years ago? 500 years ago, the median on the planet was extraordinarily ignorant compared to today.
You can see ignorance collapse rapidly when confronted with information. Countries as varied as China, Vietnam, Romania, Colombia, Brazil, etc. have been or actively are incredible demonstrations of it in action the past few decades. Cuba will demonstrate it once again over the next ~20 years. China's last 30 years may be the single largest / greatest leap in history, going from a median that was hyper ignorant and impoverished agrarian to quickly closing the gap with the global median. That China leap directly coincided with a vast increase in knowledge availability for the median (even if state censorship is still present, the education level available to their median has skyrocketed).
With Steve Bannon he has the best man on board to do exactly that /without even alienating his followers/, at least the loyal ones. We might see a propaganda alliance between the White House and far-right media, so it's not at all clear to me that Trump will be destroyed by fake news.
I'm not sure discussions of a free and equal internet approach something that will be a net good.
I think there's ample evidence that the internet is really most similar to TV.
I've yet to see any evidence that it overall makes the world a worse place.
People give examples like immigration but leave out things like gay marriage acceptance which would have been unheard of pre-internet. Drug reform seems to be improving.
> Knowledge does not seem to be enough.
Correct, access to knowledge is useless, but the internet is more.
It's access to incredible AI machines and software, like Googles search engine. The ability for Uber to work. For free phone calls.
So I do think we'll have issues controlling that false information doesn't spread faster and wider on the Internet then true info.
> I've yet to see any evidence that it overall makes the world a worse place.
Donald Trump, potentially. We'll see.
> People give examples like immigration
They don't know what they're talking about. Migration isn't even a particularly modern phenomenon.
This doesn't harm anyone. People follow and believe in all kinds of unreal things - The Pope tweets, Dalai Lama has a website... at least there's not going to be Flat Earth terrorism.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing avenues towards a smarter, more progressive planet.
Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat.
Knowledge does not seem to be enough. Wisdom and the ability to sift through knowledge with some degree of appropriate skepticism need to spread at least as fast as the knowledge if we are to get a smarter planet.