Re:Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
by bhupy on Wednesday June 17, 2020 @09:51AM
(#23551337)
I think you’re really overestimating the integrity of historic media. The sober tendency of media to “fact check” has only been the case in the last few decades.
https://www.wired.com/story/journalism-isnt-dying-its-return...
The history of the printing press was fraught with exactly the kinds of concerns people appear to have with social media. In those days, you had politicians routinely troll political opponents, publish partisan screeds under pseudonyms, and openly advertise their own biases.
They were never regulated by law because the Constitution makes such regulation essentially impossible.
Re:Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
by rsynnott on Wednesday June 17, 2020 @09:55AM
(#23551381)
Well, yeah, I'm thinking mostly of mid to late 20th century media.
To be clear, I don't really see a problem with media being partisan as such. It always has been to some extent. The direct line from politicians to public is new, though (at least on this scale; there are prior examples of politicians using radio in this way, but it was somewhat more restrained).
There's a big difference between "candidate X says that pigs can fly and this is why that's wrong", and "The flying pigs above your house are bigly bad", as far as public messaging goes. Social media has enabled the latter, and it's kind of an unsolved problem. Social media has also caused a major blurring between advertisement and content, which doesn't help.
EDIT: An interesting/worrying byproduct of this seems to be that parts of the media are going further and further off-piste, and letting complete _nonsense_ go by without the "and here's why that's wrong" bit. A glaring recent example was parts of the US right-wing media absolutely tying itself in knots to explain why Trump's rambling about disinfectants for treatment of COVID in humans made sense. It's just really hard to imagine this happening 20 years ago.