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.
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.
I agree it’s worse, but i was just thinking how there are regions where people play ONLY Fox on every public television, and if you turn on the radio it’s exclusively a right-wing propagandist ranting to tell you democrats are taking all your money to give it to black people on welfare.
Well it’s kind of true.
Actually, liberal taxes pay for rural white America.
Uh, no. For one, Republicans spend like fuck, they just also cut taxes so they end up running up the deficit. Social welfare programs account for a tiny fraction of government budgets. The vast majority is the military and interest payments on debt.
Yes, I agree - there have always been malevolent forces at work within the media - but before facebook started algorithmically whipping up old folks for clicks, cable TV news wasn’t quite as savage. The early days of hate-talk radio was really just Limbaugh ranting into the AM ether. Now, it’s saturated. Social media isn’t the root cause of political hatred but it gave it a bullhorn and a leg up to apparent legitimacy.
Social media is more extreme, but we can’t discount the damage Fox and people like Limbaugh or Michael Savage did.