In Germany, social media algorithms are pumping out huge amounts of far-right, pro-AfD content.
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That’s probably a fair and nuanced take. Perhaps some voters are swayed by TikTok ads. I suppose I believe this contingent is small and inconsequential, while the person above believes it is large and consequential. Perhaps my perception is coloured by my belief in the principles of free speech. I think it is essential to the functioning of a democracy, and for science. Free speech only exists if we protect speech we don’t like. I grow very uneasy with equivocating over which political dissent is allowed. History has taught us that it is inevitably used for nefarious purposes eventually.
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I have, and I think you are wrong. However both of us are using very vague words like “appeasement” and I’m beginning to think we’re not using the same definitions. We might be remembering the facts which align with our narrative and ignoring those which do not. The truth might lie somewhere in between.
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Brexit happened because David Cameron needed to appease the right wing of his party. That is a fact, and I won't be ceding any ground there. It looks like you might try and rewrite history next, and I had taken you for someone who just didn't know, rather than someone spreading lies.
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No, but I don’t believe voters are mindless drones which vote for whatever they are told to. Do you?
No, I wouldn't agree with that statement.
This contempt for voter agency is a major reason the AfD is polling so well.
Voters will vote in favor of addressing whatever issue is important to them. And whatever issue happens to be important to them can be influenced by advertising, just like the purchase decision of a customer. That's why that 4-trillion-dollar industry, on par with the petrochemical sector, exists. That's neither a secret nor an insult to individualism, but an academic and economic reality. Do you... not agree with that?
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I see this as well. "Nationalist" parties only have traction because they keep on talking about immigration problems (which they enhance). Take that away and their fascist and elite agendas become extremely obvious.
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The voters from DF mostly switched to other populistic right wing parties. In total very few voters moved across the middl, even if the middle has moved further to the right.
People are being polarized more which is exactly the intention with the foreign propaganda. So, no, Denmark did not solve the problem.
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I don't think that's accurate. You can see voter turnout for the 2015 and 2019 elections here. It's true that some voters went to KF and Nye Borgerlige, but even more voters went to RV and SF. I think you are right to argue it caused more people to vote for parties further on the left and right, but the far left appears to be the aggregate winner.
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Brexit happened because successive neoliberal governments ground low and middle class workers into dust. The two party system provided no alternative to voters than the two neoliberal governments. So when voters got the chance, they burned a cherished institution to the ground in protest. The issue here is decades of neglecting the wellbeing of citizens, and I'm dismayed that you would argue the issue might be actually listening to voters for the first time in generations. It is the exact opposite that is needed in the UK and around Europe.
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No. Advertising exists to inform people about products and services. I do not subscribe to the notion that advertising can convince an average voter to vote against their best interests or contra to facts. Not in a Western society in which one can easily obtain the facts on the internet. This might be true in a country like China where the internet is tightly controlled and facts aren't easy to obtain.
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Yep. Rewriting history.
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BAAAAANNNN THEEEEEEMMMM
Jesus fucking christ if I could go back in time and destroy the internet I would.
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Ooh, I'm on trackercontrol - is adaway better or pretty much the same? I get ads on tiktok but not much else
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Popper's paradox of tolerance gives in my view pretty clear guidelines on what to protect and what not to tolerate. I believe that if we held onto that, fascism would have a much harder time.
I am not an expert on political science, so I don't know what the data tells us. The feeling I get from the world though is that the "impressionable" part is large enough to be consequential, in part because the "educated" part has already made up their minds.
It's also not sufficient to talk specifically about ads in tiktok without considering them in the wider context of online messaging, all of which is going to be systemically tailored to feed into the same fears and shame.
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I.e
I disagree; free speech only exists if we specifically reject speech that aims to suppress free speech, while accepting speech we don't like but that doesn't aim to suppress.Can we do that? Can we draw the line? Why do so many believe there is no line to be drawn here?
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In the West yes, people can obtain information on the internet.. But will they?
With declining economy and increasing disinfo, we don't have the time to sift through all the nonsense and obtain the actual facts. We might as well be living in China.
Did you follow what happened when a lot of American TikTok users made a trip to Rednote, a Chinese lifestyle app, to escape the looming ban earlier this year? The Americans discovered that a lot of what they knew about China was propaganda. The Chinese, to their horror, discovered what they knew about America, that they assumed to be propaganda, was correct..
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No. Advertising exists to inform people about products and services. I do not subscribe to the notion that advertising can convince an average voter to vote against their best interests or contra to facts.
Then I commend for your idealism and congratulate you further for never having had anything to do with the cancerous growth on humanity's back that is the advertising industry. Keep it that way, you're already making the world a slightly better place by staying away. But no, it unfortunately does not work as you describe it. Spending X on advertising will increase your product sales by Y. That's the simple equation that justifies the industry's existence - and it works. Helping consumers (or voters) to make informed decisions does not factor into it.
Not in a Western society in which one can easily obtain the facts on the internet. This might be true in a country like China where the internet is tightly controlled and facts aren’t easy to obtain.
You'd think that, yeah, it's absolutely natural! But then you could also consider that even though a rural forest warden in the Harz mountains may hold and be entitled to opinions on, for example, both bark beetle control and foreign policy, he'll only ever be able to make a truly informed decision on how one these issues should be handled in his best interest. For the other he'll substitute a lifetime of proficiency with whatever is available. And that may or may not be in his best interest.
That's how everybody does it. Spending your lifetime immersed in academic peace-and-conflict-studies for example might leave you to conclude that in a world of squabbling monkey tribes, transnational governing bodies with actual agency and legislative weight like the EU are, so far, humanity's greatest and most unlikely achievement and that maintaining, growing and strengthening them while further eroding national borders is a reliable (and possibly the only) way to ensure sustainable peace and prosperity for everybody. And after reaching that conclusion you'd think "Why is this not obvious to everybody? The facts are freely available." They are not. They are there, but in a complex world the cost to aquire them is high. Few will spend six months researching a tricky solution if they already got tricked by somebody else into believing that there's an easy solution. That's not on them though, that's on the trickster.
And now I'll probably dive into reading about bark beetles for a week because I've nerd-sniped myself. But that's another thing: I can just do that. I have a well-paying job and plenty of spare time. In other words, I have a high budget to spend on informed decisions. That's a bit of a tangent from the original topic but the gist is: If you wish to assume ideal voters then you quickly arrive at ultimate socio-economic and educational equality as a necessary prerequisite for a working democracy.
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Fuck off for trying to control what people do. You're literally a subhuman like Spez for that. The whole point of defederation is a breakdown of centralised power, if your little dictator brain can't understand that then jump off a cliff with Reddit.
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I don't know about trackercontrol but I haven't seen a single ad in the last three years with Adaway.
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Ayee i caught a nazi that uses nazi words
Seriously tho what are you even talking about?
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Its not only that but how the left has been marginalised, as what happened with the labour party in the UK - Jeremy corbyn, the old leader who was actually left wing has been barred from the party, which he was part of for his whole life. A lifelong anti-racist on the correct side of every issue has been smeared as being a racist and that is now the mainstream 'truth'.
The only left wing party of any size in the UK now is the green party. The only alternatives to business as usual labour/conservatives (same thing) are the greens (seen mostly as a middle class protest vote) or reform.
Labour are definitely not for the working class anymore.
