[takeda]

Or election were hacked, but not the way you think.

Social media was weaponized and turned into a tool that manipulates people's view of the reality. Each person gets a personalized feed that presses their buttons to think certain way.

For example with war in gaza. If for example you were pro Israeli, you will see content that Harris was siding with Hamas, and trump actually was the most Israel friendly candidate.

If you were supporting Palestine you would get that there's no difference between Harris and trump, and it is best to do protest vote.

Same with leaning too much to the left, or not enough to the left etc.

Pretty much every issue was handled this way. People who got their news from social media had no idea what her stance were on any topic, because that was filtered.

Few years ago we had huge scandal about Cambridge Analytica, there was a bit loud about it and then died out, meanwhile it all continued and was perfected.

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook manipulated older generation. While TikTok managed to capture younger, left leaning generation and make it more apathetic.

I don't think it is a coincidence that pretty much all social media (except the Chinese TikTok) was present on his inauguration.

I also don't think it is a coincidence that all social media companies have involvement with AI. With it, they no longer need humans to generate content, so the whole manipulation is much easier to do.

This isn't just isolated to US and it is being used in Europe too. Look at elections in Moldova, Romania, what's happening in Germany etc.

Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century" book is a must read so we can prevent this.

Here's summary of the lessons: https://substack.com/@snyder/p-155209838

The book is quite short and he also reads and discussed them on his YouTube channel.

[khazhoux]

> Social media was weaponized and turned into a tool that manipulates people's view of the reality

I really dislike this argument. It shifts responsibility from the voters to evil nebulous puppet-masters. I reject that. At some point, you have to accept that people can think and make decisions for themselves.

[nicce]

> At some point, you have to accept that people can think and make decisions for themselves.

And then we have to accept that this world is what we want and deserve, and this dicussion goes in cycles.

[basementcat]

Is it reasonable that social media influencers may be assigned some degree of credit? After all they are generally effective at selling products.

I also agree that people have responsibility for their actions. For example, it has been personally sobering to observe some friends and colleagues agree that defunding PEPFAR and putting 20 million lives at risk was morally the right thing to do.

[takeda]

Yeah. Everyone is convinced ads don't work on them, yet somehow it is a trillion dollar industry.

Perhaps you are lucky and don't have anyone in your family affected by disinformation.

I have family members that no longer watch TV, listen radio, read news papers. All "news" they are getting is from sources that also tell them that all other sources lie.

They live in complete different reality that it is a distorted mirror of actual reality.