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A comment on US goverment seeks to rehire recently fired nuclear workers. Parent comment

Re:US goverment seeks to rehire recently fired nuclear workers by ben_w on Sunday February 16, 2025 @05:19AM (#43066974)
> Real world has a different political distribution than the Internet.

5% different, almost everyone is online.

But, thinking about your oft-quoted blog post about advertising bring a cancer, I guess if the top ad spenders cut themselves out entirely, then the bidding system could result in the runner-up bidder finding their ads are now almost arbitrarily cheaper.

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Re:US goverment seeks to rehire recently fired nuclear workers by johnnyanmac on Sunday February 16, 2025 @06:31PM (#43072938)
>5% different, almost everyone is online.

We at best get 70% participation in voter representation. Online wise, I'd wager we get at best 20% "public" participation in terms of who bothers to participate online as opposed to lurking. And that 20% is spread amongst hundreds of subjects.

And we know these aren't created equal. The internet is disproportionately on the younger side, is very slightly biased by "middle class", educated workers, and the gender demographics vary site to site, despite being overall even (e.g. disproportionately male on Reddit, female on Pintrest). There will definitely be a different resuts online compared to making physical surveys.

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