It's today then ... (Trump thread)

[garynysmon 1,727]

I'm almost at the stage where I wish the internet and social media never became the phenomenon it has, given all its done to give mad conspiracy theories an outlet and platform they don't deserve and dangerous (almost always) right wingers a chance to coalesce and spread their poison.

It wasn't long ago these mad fuckers were launching pirate ham radio broadcasts to an audience of 12, not facebook groups of hundreds of thousands.

Edited November 11, 2020 by garynysmon

[AshC 447]

Internet is definitely a huge negative at this point.

[Liam O'Rourke 1,263]

Internet is fine. Social media isn't worth wiping your arse with.

[Uncle Zeb 1,897]

The concept of social media's fine, the problem is platform owners taking the position that failing to adequately moderate the crazies constitutes political balance.

[BomberPat 7,466]

40 minutes ago, Uncle Zeb said:

The concept of social media's fine, the problem is platform owners taking the position that failing to adequately moderate the crazies constitutes political balance.

that, and building the entire concept around algorithms that were intended to push advertising content to cover costs, but have instead ended up pushing only the most reactionary of views to boost "engagement". 

There are, undoubtedly, ways to run social media platforms that don't just give an unearned pedestal to the people who shout loudest and dumbest, but absolutely nothing about how Facebook or Twitter operates will ever see things done any differently.

In the interest of balance, I have a friend who's disabled and has been spending lockdown doing weekly live music streams as her main source of income, and who absolutely swears by social media as a means of bringing people together, and of giving voices to people who otherwise have no means of expression in mainstream discourse, so while I still have a ton of problems with it, I do try and remember the positives.

 

Val's thing about rallies is the same thing my genuinely schizophrenic, increasingly right wing, ex posted on Facebook - "Biden can't have won, because no one attends Joe Biden rallies". As if "attends rallies" was ever a tenet of democracy, least of all in the middle of a pandemic. 

[Cod Eye 862]

There was a post somewhere(possibly here) where some dickhead was saying that Trump couldn't have lost as he has (something like)70m twitter followers and Biden only had 11m. People who live on social media have had their perception of reality changed and believe it is the be all and end all. It's fucking mad!

[Factotum 1,216]

One of the most interesting things I heard about the Biden campaign, was they were ordered not to look at Twitter throughout as it gives this distorted image of the world. They stood with their goals and did not look at any criticism/positive enforcement throughout.

We seem to think EVERYONE is on Twitter, but in reality its quite a small percentage of the population, and I would say most who use it, use it sparingly. That leaves the obsessives, nutjobs, blowhards, conspiracy nuts, wannabe saints and Emma Kennedy's of the world to be the dominant voice. Its why we think everything is so polarised as you find it will be those on the far reaches of the political spectrum who take up the space.

Its dangerous. News companies using tweets to show 'backlashes' against people or shows etc. give power to people when it is in reality a small number.  Companies using it as a barometer for whats good/bad. It's the worst form of vox pops/market research there is.

You can easily compare political twitter with what Football Twitter is now. A load of nonsense theories, demands for actions, people comparing EVERYTHING and refusing to concede ground. Its tribalism.

There are some great bits about social media (not Facebook, that can fuck off) and I hope that this is the sort of confused time that we are working through in order to be in a better place 10 years down the line.

[Gay as FOOK 1,408]

The irony is a lot of the post mortem in 2016 from the right was "We were the silent majority!"

Well you wouldn't shut the fuck up in the last four years. And a slightly bigger silent majority handed your arse to you in the presidential vote. 

[CavemanLynn 936]

Social media is a platform for all voices, but the nature of trolls and nut jobs is that they spit their bile and the majority of other users don't rise to it. The thing is, this causes the perception to be that that bile is going unchecked or unopposed, when the fact is it's actually being ignored, the catch-22 then being that anyone who does rise to it simply fuels said troll and the vicious circle continues.

It was Trump's entire media game for years. Drop a grenade on social media, and while duty-bound commentators and journalists rush to fact-check and interpret while still trying to maintain the appearance of impartiality, he'd go off and do whatever the fuck he liked. You can't rely or trust the platforms themselves to police and censor all their users' content. We've already seen the "And finally..." stories of algorithms going haywire censoring unrelated posts as pornography or inflammatory. But it does need to be made much clearer what the extent of the allegations actually are, and I don't know how you do that. It's a version of the climate change reporting criticism, where multiple news networks were shown to trot out Bill Nye in the pro camp vs any one of a dozen other faces in the con camp, meaning the perception became that there were many more deniers than confirmers. But social media is this on a MASSIVE scale.

Edited November 11, 2020 by CavemanLynn

[PunkStep 6,007]

4 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

The concept of social media's fine, the problem is platform owners taking the position that failing to adequately moderate the crazies constitutes political balance.

They need proper moderating. @jack and Mark Zuckerberg should look at Mod Challenges, we all know that's a proven method. Trump must provide evidence of a rigged election, otherwise he must have his Twitter handle changed to LoserDad.

 

2 hours ago, Cod Eye said:

There was a post somewhere(possibly here) where some dickhead was saying that Trump couldn't have lost as he has (something like)70m twitter followers and Biden only had 11m. 

I saw somebody on Twitter suggest that Trump couldn't have lost because he had so many people at his rallies. Madness.

 

Anyway I saw Jon Voight trending on Twitter today. I immediately thought: dead? Nope, unfortunately it's worse.

 

[Chest Rockwell 7,347]

Fucking mental. I'm glad George torched his car.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Chest Rockwell

[Factotum 1,216]

Kanye's holograms are getting worse

[gmoney 4,280]

It should have been him getting bummed by those mountain men, not Ned Beatty. 

[garynysmon 1,727]

[David 3,930]

6 hours ago, Factotum said:

We seem to think EVERYONE is on Twitter, but in reality its quite a small percentage of the population, and I would say most who use it, use it sparingly.

I'd go as far as saying that most of the people who vote for Trump aren't even on Twitter. They don't partake in pre-election polls by the looks of it, so what chance they're actively tweeting on the reg?