Actually, it's pretty easy for people in power to avoid the truth revealing effect that 'common knowledge'presents: simply label your less powerful adversary as a 'conspiracy theorist', and nobody will want to deal with that matter again. Nobody likes being labeled, or associated with, a loony.
Simple social dynamics tricks can mitigate the 'annoying' liberating effect that the internet poses.
Want an example? The content of this article by journalist Seymour Hersh will never become public knowledge. For reasons pertaining to simple social dynamics.
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s...
Regarding the linked article, I was alarmed after reading reading it in its entirety.
The portrayal of incompetence and worse at the nexus of the Trump administration is horrifying, but entirely believable, and even predictable at this point.
It also seems fairly plausible to me that the US military might have ultimately attacked Syria even though it knew Syria had not actually used chemical weapons in their attack. That wouldn't be unprecedented.
However, it didn't seem at all plausible to me that such knowledge, if it could be substantiated/corroborated, wouldn't be a major, stop-the-presses, huge-font-headline story in most of the many newspapers we still do have that do real journalism (e.g., the Washington Post, New York Times, or many many others).
It's pretty hard to believe that such news wouldn't get out, regardless of social dynamics. Not knowing much about it beyond the articles (and horrific photos of dead kids) I'd seen in the papers, I googled it a little more.
But there seems to be pretty compelling evidence that it was, in fact, a sarin gas attack perpetrated by Syria. I mean, the OPCW has issued a report concluding that[1].
So it strikes me that the content of the article by Seymour Hersh might not become public knowledge simply because it's one guy's anonymous sources vs. various entities that seem pretty credible, even if you entirely rejected the US government itself.
Pretty thought provoking. It ties into my view that a free internet is a major democratizing force (like the next stepping stone after printing): anyone may speak up, anyone may distribute knowledge, it spreads at near light speed. And possibly, given an initial investment, basically for free. This is very powerful, which is why I don't approve of the glorification of the developments in many governments or Silicon Valley or elsewhere. A walled internet is just as powerful as an open one, but in the wrong direction.
The problem is that when anyone can speak equally how do you tell the sage apart from the village idiot.
This is why fox news survived as fox.com along with most of the existing journalistic culture of never digging too deep into something the authorities are going to react to badly to having dug up survived the transition from airwaves to Internet. You might have some blogger somewhere knowing the truth but you also have some blogger somewhere who thinks the truth is something radical different then it is and when those are equal they are equally easy for the "press" to dismiss.
[+] [-] jonloldrup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veidr|8 years ago|reply
The portrayal of incompetence and worse at the nexus of the Trump administration is horrifying, but entirely believable, and even predictable at this point.
It also seems fairly plausible to me that the US military might have ultimately attacked Syria even though it knew Syria had not actually used chemical weapons in their attack. That wouldn't be unprecedented.
However, it didn't seem at all plausible to me that such knowledge, if it could be substantiated/corroborated, wouldn't be a major, stop-the-presses, huge-font-headline story in most of the many newspapers we still do have that do real journalism (e.g., the Washington Post, New York Times, or many many others).
It's pretty hard to believe that such news wouldn't get out, regardless of social dynamics. Not knowing much about it beyond the articles (and horrific photos of dead kids) I'd seen in the papers, I googled it a little more.
But there seems to be pretty compelling evidence that it was, in fact, a sarin gas attack perpetrated by Syria. I mean, the OPCW has issued a report concluding that[1].
So it strikes me that the content of the article by Seymour Hersh might not become public knowledge simply because it's one guy's anonymous sources vs. various entities that seem pretty credible, even if you entirely rejected the US government itself.
[1] https://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-fact-finding-mission-...
[+] [-] scalio|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stranger43|8 years ago|reply
This is why fox news survived as fox.com along with most of the existing journalistic culture of never digging too deep into something the authorities are going to react to badly to having dug up survived the transition from airwaves to Internet. You might have some blogger somewhere knowing the truth but you also have some blogger somewhere who thinks the truth is something radical different then it is and when those are equal they are equally easy for the "press" to dismiss.
[+] [-] pasbesoin|8 years ago|reply