She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
the damage that corporate social media has inflicted on our social fabric and political discourse is beyond anything we could have imagined.
Populism and racism is as old as societies. Anciant Greece already had it. Rome fell to it. Christianism is born out of it.
Funnily enough, people always complained about how bad their society was because of this new thing. Like 5 thousand years ago already. Probably earlier even.
Which is not to say we shouldn’t do anything about it. We definitely should. But common sense won’t save us unfortunately.
This is true, but one could say the same about talk radio or television.
Talk radio or television broadcasts the same stuff to everyone. It’s damaging, absolutely. But social media literally tailors the shit to be exactly what will force someone farther down the rabbit hole. It’s actively, aggressively damaging and sends people on a downward spiral way faster while preventing them from encountering diverse viewpoints.