I'm struggling with the takeaway here. Most of the people on the planet have grown up watching blatant misinformation being broadcast on TV, radio, and print. Specifically, during every single government election of note, anyone recall John Kerry and the swiftboats? Social networks now present a new tool to amplify a message, in addition to TV, Radio, Print. So is this a movement to police the messages? And where does this lead, marketing companies can't do business with international organizations during elections? And who decides what messages are allowed and disallowed? Seems this line or reasoning only leads to infringement of freedom of speech.
I'm not sure how to word this well, but almost everything to do with clinton loosing had nothing to do with fake news. they seem to have this duality where the russians hacked their systems and spread real news and aknowledge it was real, but complain they lost because of russians spreading fake news. talk about a red scare.
- maybe clinton could have done better if her campaign wasnt the archetype of bad data science. sticking to models empirical truth disagreed with, sticking to models that failed to predict Bernie Sanders losses.
- maybe Clinton could have done better by not calling 49% of the country a basket of deplorables.
- maybe the party in general could have done better by calling everyone who disagreed with them a racist bigot, then were surprised how many people disagreed with them because they didnt hear people disagreeing with them.
- maybe the party should get away from identity politics. you can only shame someone so many times for 'white privilege' before they say hey, I'm just going to vote for the other candidate.
The difference is the ease and scale with which identity and source can be hidden or spoofed to exploit trust relationships and herd instincts on the internet.
Whether something is white (e.g. RT, Voice of America, etc), grey (e.g. swift boat vets for truth, astroturfed citizens for X), or black hat propaganda (e.g. Black Matters, @TEN_GOP) depends on whether you represent yourself as (a) yourself, (b) a neutral party, or (c) your adversary.
So yeah, the problem is one of policing identity rather than messages. In other words, how do we make it more difficult for people to get catfished?
Can you explain to me why a couple hundred thousand in ads matter more than a couple billion of super PACs and why those people that spent those billions are blaming it on the couple hundred?
I mean maybe they do, but I feel like in that case you just have to be really shit in marketing and sales, no?
EDIT: you may say: "But I mentioned so many other topics", yes, true, yet the very first in your list is RT. and no I have no skin in this game
In the US establishment politics has had a complete, and absolutely uncontested, grasp of control of control. 'Establishment' in this case is mostly a translation to indenture to corporations and other well monied special interests, including banks. Corporations put politicians into office using their money. Politicians repay them by legislating unreasonably favorably on behalf of corporations. Rinse, wash, repeat.
And to date it's always been easy for establishment backed politicians to win. Give heavily focus tested response and speeches. Call your opponent unelectable in primaries, unpresidential if somebody somehow makes it to the general, and of course pile on the attack ads. And then have the media, which is owned by the same people funding your presidential run, give you biased and preferential coverage.
That didn't work this election. Trump won the presidency on an anti-establishment platform, and Sanders came incredibly close to winning a primary that was completely stacked against him. And he did it running on a platform where he openly referred to himself as a democratic socialist. The DNC no doubt viewed him as something that could help unite the further left individuals into the DNC once he was handily defeated. That his loss was anything but 'handy' is probably something that was never even considered.
It seems the idea is now to try to restrict political speech to only coming from approved sources in approved ways. And I expect in part it's also an attempt to prevent the outright collapse of the DNC. Hillary gained fewer votes in 2016 than Obama did in 2012, and millions fewer than he did in his 2008 election. Just from 2012 to 2016 the US voting age population increased by 15 million - the majority of which ought, demographically, lean democrat. Taking eyes off a failure of that magnitude requires a comparably magnificent distraction. Enter Red Scare 3.0.
> Most of the people on the planet have grown up watching blatant misinformation being broadcast on TV, radio, and print.
Misinformation isn't the new problem. The problem is that people who believe the misinformation can find each other more easily via social media, and amplify the message. Due to a human cognitive quirk, we tend to lend more credence to statements we've heard repeated from various different people. And so, powerful but false messages can more easily spread, and when those messages serve a motivated political agenda...
Bernie Sanders, a progressive, tried to win the Democratic nomination in the primary but he then campaigned for Hillary Clinton, a centrist, in the general. Calling Bernie's campaign anything like Cheeto is sheer nonsense.
