Comment on Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act
sculd@beehaw.org 3 weeks agoI tried the “have empathy” approach in 2016. It doesn’t work.
This is the part where I would blame the Democratic Party for failing to provide a better road map for future. They were captured by neoliberals in Wall Street, in tech industry, etc. Of course, the Democrats are still miles better than whatever Trump is proposing.
For the average person, algorithm dependency in news consumption is increasingly becoming an issue with no effective ways to combat the problem. Google, Facebook, Musk controlled major platforms and they also have the money to influence real world politics.
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
I agree with your second paragraph, and find your third to be understandable (though I would contend that propaganda has been a problem for a long time now and wasn’t made meaningfully worse by tech, just different). Where I lose you completely though is this comment’s first statement.
Neither of your other points stated here back up a lack of empathy. In fact, they counter it, as you’ve provided two far better things to get mad at. I hope you haven’t abandoned empathy because it didn’t change minds, because empathy isn’t supposed to be contingent on getting people to agree with you.
sculd@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Okay, I guess I will try again.
Besides the big platforms and capitalism, I think I am also angry that so many people just decided to stop learning or being actively against the idea of intellectualism.
There are so many books being free in the age of internet. There are resources for one to break from the toxic right wing algorithm.But so many people just prefer to let “influencers” tell them what to think.
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
I understand why you’re frustrated, but you’ve got to realize that the presence of resources that can break you out of bad thinking doesn’t mean it’s easy to break out of bad thinking, nor does it absolve those who duped you into the bad thinking in the first place. Cults work for a reason.
Just as an example, consider how hard it is to:
This is just a smattering of ways a path out of broken thinking can be more fraught than it looks. There are plenty more, so even in cases where these specific ones don’t apply, that doesn’t mean the person in question is intentionally ignorant or malicious.
If you’re angry, be angry. I don’t judge that whatsoever. I only ask that you be angry at the people deliberately trying to make everything worse, rather than the those who they’re tricking. Get mad at the influencers, not the audience.