In Germany, social media algorithms are pumping out huge amounts of far-right, pro-AfD content.
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No, but I don’t believe voters are mindless drones which vote for whatever they are told to. Do you? This contempt for voter agency is a major reason the AfD is polling so well.
What makes it tricky is, I think, that there are both kinds of voters so both viewpoints are kind of correct but piss the other side off with the implications.
E: typo -
Apparently telling voters “no” is working terribly because right wing parties keep rising in polls. The evidence directly contradicts your claim. I don’t see how Brexit was caused in any way by appeasement. If anything, Brexit was caused by derision and dismissal, leaving low socioeconomic voters in particular no other way to vent their anger than by burning an institution to the ground. If you don’t give voters what they want they will vote extremists into power, or vote for extreme solutions out of spite.
Broadly speaking I find the argument of telling voters “no” in a democracy absurd and authoritarian.
I was talking about telling the far right "no", not the voters.
If you don't see how Brexit was caused by appeasing the right wing then you aren't in possession of all the facts, as it is a fact. Go read about it.
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What makes it tricky is, I think, that there are both kinds of voters so both viewpoints are kind of correct but piss the other side off with the implications.
E: typoThat’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 was talking about telling the far right "no", not the voters.
If you don't see how Brexit was caused by appeasing the right wing then you aren't in possession of all the facts, as it is a fact. Go read about it.
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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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.
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? This contempt for voter agency is a major reason the AfD is polling so well.
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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This is an easy problem to solve. Denmark solved their right wing problem years ago. The centre left party adopted slightly tougher immigration policies and the right wing party last half their supporters almost overnight. Poll after poll across Europe finds the same: immigration is a major issue for voters. Get tougher on immigration and watch AfD disappear. It’s the easiest political win in history but so many parties refuse to do it. Bleating about social media influence is a losing battle. The internet is free and will remain free. It’s literally designed to work around censorship like it’s a damaged part of the network.
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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I think that’s your opinion and you’re making a claim for which you don’t have any evidence. We have real world evidence that giving voters what they want wins elections. I cited the Danish example. The Social Democrats adopted slightly tougher immigration policies after the 2015 election, in which the right wing Danish People’s Party (DF) won 21.1% of the votes. Following these changes, the DF lost most of their votes, dropping to 8.7% in 2019. I would hardly call Denmark a right wing hellscape today.
I take issue at your broader contention that it’s somehow wrong to give voters what they want. That’s how democracy works.
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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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.
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 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.
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, 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?
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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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.
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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No need to thank me.
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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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.
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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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.
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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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.
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. 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.
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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Wtf? How are there still people using this kinda garbage app? Lemmy and the fediverse is free, run and developed by volunteers. There are plenty of open source clients to choose from. Why in the fuck are people actively choosing to look at ads?
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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Ooh, I'm on trackercontrol - is adaway better or pretty much the same? I get ads on tiktok but not much else
I don't know about trackercontrol but I haven't seen a single ad in the last three years with Adaway.
