“…one of the primary ways that democracy is degraded by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is, for obvious reasons, typically ignored in such discussions: the way they are used by American journalists to endorse factually false claims that quickly spread and become viral, entrenched into narratives, and thus, can never be adequately corrected.”
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/05/four-viral-claims-spread-by-journalists-on-twitter-in-the-last-week-alone-that-are-false/
It’s unsurprising that the MSM put out disinformation given they are the propaganda arm of the DNC. On balance, social media and blogs help the cause, though, because they destroy the MSM’s monopoly on information, hence making possible articles like the one cited.
Oh, I agree that social media have been tremendously useful in finally shredding the credibility of Leftist mass media.
I just worry that the largest social media platforms are all owned and managed by Leftists. Bad things are gonna happen.
True that social media types are all leftists who toe the politically-correct line. Two bright spots in this otherwise dismal picture:
1. Anti-trust. I’m ambivalent about anti-trust enforcement in general but these guys operate as monopoly public utilities. Judge Green may have gone too far in breaking up AT&T but our phone service is better and cheaper for it.
2. The Left are going to extremes and eating their own. By pushing to ever more absurd limits (57 genders, every woman has been thrice raped), the Left have lost credibility with the Normals and turned on each other.
Our new environment of Social Media/blogs/websites/podcasts has brought speed and access to massive new heights.
It has destroyed assumed trust and common experience, which underpinned the old Mass Media in the broadcast days.
When people do not trust they fall back on instinct and emotion to sort through the noise.
In todays world, many people are not driven by actual reality, but contrived reality, things not actually lived but seen on the media. Black Lives Matter is a case in point, selling a fable rather than an experienced fact.
Trump campaigned on concrete things that people have actually experienced. It overcame the contrived reality where “lack of diversity’ is a bigger problem than “criminals poring across the border”.
We will see if actual reality has a chance anymore in the next mid terms.
“It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you don’t stop to think.”–Thomas Sowell