ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Before modern mass communications, most people didn’t know what anyone said next door let alone the next town. Outside news was filtered through newspapers, radio or just plain word of mouth or reading a book about info that was often years old.
Most people said things to people next to them or who they met in town that day.
It wasn’t until about 30 years ago that we started getting to the point of knowing exactly what people were saying everywhere all over the world in real time.
Those were the days. The idiotic crackpots were kept separate. They didn’t know there were others like them. They couldn’t discuss and coordinate their insane theories together easily.
The Internet allowed them to find each other, and recruit others to their cause one by one, bringing people down to their insane level of stupidity until they found their way into politics.
Radio transmission doesn’t require state-level capacity (yes there are other barriers like cost or skill) and waves don’t care about borders. Receiving foreign radio was a big thing and it doesn’t require special equipment
I remember reading once that a weekday broadsheet newspaper contains more information in one single edition than a normal person a couple of centuries ago would receive in a lifetime.
I’ve just googled where this came from, and found that this was being reported/discussed around the turn of the millennium … so clearly this problem has just got worse and worse since then.
Newsletters kept some informed, plays even, books. After the printing press especially.
That is why the church was so powerful though, they had people all pushing the same message working off the same game plan and it gave them real power in organization and numbers.
Not until the 18th century did they lose strict control of truth and expression.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In the old times people would only know the opinions of people close to them or what the rich people wanted them to think. Glad things have changed.
Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 hours ago
Yeah, now people are free to know the opinions of the rich person that trained the AI model they use instead of a search engine, or the rich person that controls the social network they use! /s