https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies
This is a much-underestimated factor that didn't exist, on that scale, previously.
When I was hanging out in chat groups in the late 90's I didn't have to worry about my conversational partner having, financially motivated and sinister, motives to change my opinions about certain topics.
Except for straight up scams, but nobody had a vested financial interest in "convincing" me about something.
These days there's a whole industry built around exactly that (social media marketing), the web is full of dishonest information players, even on a governmental level, on literally all sides. This isn't even that new, it's a development that the US military caught on years ago [0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
Living inside a bubble of criticism and misinformation doesn't lead one to immediately question and then reform the system. More often, people choose to adapt to their environment which only perpetuates the existing infrastructure.
Instead of pointlessly debating each other on this app, a platform designed to capture attention and manipulate emotions, these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation.
If we simply continue with this twitter/facebook/instagram trend of summarizing our most important debates in 150 words or less in a brief amount of time, we're only going to become less educated and more vulnerable to coercion.
Someone probably write this same thing about news papers when they were a recent invention. Television also.
> these people should take time to research and then carefully write an essay. Once they are satisfied with their opinions, they could share their thesis with the public and request contestation.
More people than ever before are now university educated, or presently attending university. That’s got to help counteract the misinformation trend.
Well, I don't think television or the news paper is a good place to debate either. They do however give people more than 30 seconds to think about their responses.
By contrast, what these kids are doing, trying to pressure and misinform each other, is exactly what I'd want them to do : they're learning. Maybe, God forbid, they'll learn how that works and when it's being done to them.
And that, I'm sure, a decent fraction of them will disagree with you ... that's a very good thing indeed.