> In a real world gathering, you have media and government obseevers, and anybody making incorrect statements is most of the time scrutinized and exposed.

Yeah, we've never had genocidal movements whose propaganda was spread, among other means, by in-person rallies or other such assemblies, precisely because “real world” gatherings have the kind of real time fact checking you discuss.

I am not saying that at all. I am just saying the online gatherings we have now are unprecedented both in their size and in their numbers.

Imagine an in person rally of 10k people. It would be a huge event both and get huge coverage. Bigger rallies will have even more. So some local media or local government has a chance to counter the falsehoods and make people aware. Governments may even choose to not allow some gatherings in some parts of the world if they fear they will cause a significant law and order issue.

Also, offline gatherings depend on people propagating the issue. This would have previously required people brain washed or dedicated for the cause. Now even normal people can forward anything to all theie WhatsApp contacts and boom, the chain goes on.

> Imagine an in person rally of 10k people. It would be a huge event both and get huge coverage. Bigger rallies will have even more. So some local media or local government has a chance to counter the falsehoods and make people aware.

In Myanmar, as in most other cases, the government was an active belligerent; they wouldn't have been a check in any case. Genocides are usually conducted by groups that are already dominant in government, media, and society in general, so the kind of social institutions you point to are usually subverted before rallies (physical or virtual) directed imminently at violence occur.

So, it's quite unlikely that those institutions will check in-person rallies; more likely they will be organizing them and spreading their message.

Indeed. One of the most horrific modern genocides, the Rwandan genocide, was organised via radio broadcasts and the state's police and military.

Okay. But even with the government as part of the gathering the premise remains the same. Even for the government it is vastly easier to use the new communication platforms to spread hate and solidify it's grip on power. I am not saying the government couldn't use posters and banners and newspapers ads, I am just saying the new tools make it vastly easy and provide the government a shield that they didn't know about it.

you're correct that there's a similar process in real life as online. the issues are that online (a) these effects are more automated and distributed online than in real-life (Toyama nicely summarizes this as "technology as amplifier" [1]) and that (b) the methods of automation and distribution are (by design and intent) less visible online than in real-life.

People have little ability to change A, but could exert influence on companies to combat B if sufficient pressure were exerted...

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/why-te...

When it’s Tunisians and Egyptians using FB and Twitter, everyone is quick to take credit and talk about the “transformative” power of social media. When it’s genocide, suddenly everyone is mumbling and looking at the ground. You can’t have every job listing include “changing the world” and then duck responsibility when you actually do change the world, just for the worse.

Hypocrisy is an untenable position. Watching people argue that social media is equivalent to rallies, on HN would be funny if it weren’t so desperately sad. You can make this comment disappear, but you know I’m right about this. Even a brief glance through comment histories and submission histories bears it out.

We've made mass communication wildly more efficient without education or credulity making the same leap so it becomes possible to share a twisted and false version of reality to suit one's needs. Or hatred. My time on the Internet has been one of constantly remembering this[0] image from the old comic Nexus where he is forced to modify the repository of truth in order to stop violence. I'm guessing something similar will be required here and then we'll need to come to grips with the fact "reality" is a pretty local concept, or perhaps a concept whose diameter is proportional to one's education/ luck.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/3dhxt

It still astounds me that many people I know are unable to decouple the source of the information from 'Google'. It usually goes like this: someone I know will state some odd claim about some natural treatment for something, I will ask for a source and invariably get the answer 'Google'. I will then try to use the radio vs. radio station analogy and then ask for the source again, to be often told that they don't remember where the claim came from. Facebook seems to be the same: I will often be told about something someone 'read on Facebook' but they are often unable to say who posted the information.

> media and government observers, and anybody making incorrect statements is most of the time scrutinized and exposed.

This is not true. When groups of people get together in public, they're free to state falsehoods. Big Brother-style government oversight is not the answer to the "problem" of that freedom.

They are free to state falsehoods. However, gatherings of even a moderate size ger covered in local newspapers, which would analyze and publish their own perspectives. Generally, the larger the gathering, the higher the scrutiny.

However the new platforms allow everyone to create very large gatherings anytime. Both the size and number of these gatherings are very large, and so are their scopes. It becomes impossible for people to keep track of the content discussed in these and people then go by whatever they feel good to believe in. On a country level, this can cause huge changes, both good and bad.

Generally, racist/genocidal falsehoods are used to attack a vulnerable minority.

The interests of said minority are typically un-represented in local newspapers. The papers are often the second to cheer-lead this sort of behaviour.

On the contrary, historical tweets are often systematically picked apart.