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This is why critical thinking is such an important skill. We have entire portions of the population who legitimately believe they are well informed while actually understanding nothing.
It's just a symptom of a bigger problem. Poor access to good education for anyone but the super rich will lead to this. So will demonization of higher ed.
Dunning-Kruger needs to be duct taped to some people's foreheads
"Ouch, my balls!"
Average American political literacy.
"turning to Youtube" doesn't really say much one way or another. There is a wide range of content from professional media over smaller alternative media outlets over individual opinion pieces to manufactured disinformation from state actors all hosted on Youtube.
The algorithm doesn't really send you down the helpful rabbit holes in my experience. Every reasonable video on YouTube is like two away from Infowars level content.
I use Freetube so my algorithm has been slightly neutered. Yet I have gotten video recommendations that are all about “End Wokeness in Games” or “Trump is going to save us.” Those videos will take you directly to the far right.
Yep and as per usual everyone in the media and in big tech that helped misinform all the voters will say "oh it's so weird that such and such a group moved to Trump" as if they had nothing at all to do with it.
Fucking morons bouta get rekt.
"I didn't do anything beyond confirm my own biases. Why are things this terrible all of a sudden? I didn't want this!"
We can blame voters or fix our media landscape. You can do both, but we need to do the latter to have a functioning democracy.
People are really not ready for the media landscape conversation because it has absolutely no easy answers. The first amendment means that well-funded misinformation systems have an absolute right to keep operating.
I have an easy answer: just give Trump full control over everything and he'll fix everything and make the good things and good words and good and stuff.
Sure, stopping billion dollar, profit-driven corporate media conglomerates should be super easy.
Honestly, "corporate mainstream media sucks" is a thing most people agree on. I know a guy who voted for Trump at least once who has been turning away from that kind of politics lately, and it's this kind of message I hear him repeating. Now, I'm sure we have different views on how to solve that and what alternative sources should be used, but if it's something to agree on, then maybe it's a point of leverage.
How would you fix something that isn't broken? This is what for-profit capitalist media does and has always done. Manufacturer consent for capitalism and its desires. Regulation in the past made it mildly less obvious? I mean they still breathlessly covered and promoted the Red Scare a half a century ago.
Not to mention that state and nonprofit media still have issues. How would one fix any of them? The only way to fix the media is to fix the voters. Actually teach critical thinking stills and encourage them. Not gullibly devouring anything fed to you unquestioningly.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. All the information to debunk every claim ever made by Trump is out there. All anyone has to do is look. But most people cannot be bothered. They will just go with whatever hearsay they see on Facebook.
On that note I recently had to deal with my sister getting a bit frothy. Raging about how the Harris administration had spent so much more money than the Trump administration had on some meaningless thing. I had to insert myself and point out if there had never been a Harris administration. And that not even the Biden Administration had done what she was talking about.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink.
The issue here is that the horse has been drilled into being gullible for generations now. Compared to other civilised nations, what Fox & co are allowed to spew forth on a daily basis goes way beyond what would be considered libel or incitement in other places. But the root of the problem isn't even that, the real crux is that whoever pays the most, decides what is legal and what not in the US. The fact that pumping money into politics has been decided to be perfectly a-ok freedom of speech instead of skewing legislation towards the richest is incomprehensible in many other societies. The Supreme Court and the lobbies make a mockery of actual democracy in favour of buying influence.
only way to fix the media is to fix the voters.
This narrative serves the capitalist class and cannot be proven. You don't "fix" voters, you create solidarity by dealing with their material conditions (engage in mutual aid).
That is well put. Thank you for that.
Solidarity is great. And I I'm all for it. But how do you have solidarity with a group of people that cannot even agree on what constitutes reality. How do you address the material conditions of people who reject addressing the material conditions if it also helps someone who isn't them.
The answer is you cannot. Not until critical thinking skills Etc are addressed. As long as people are blindly ideological of any stripe. There can't be solidarity
How would you fix something that isn't broken?
I would respectfully disagree and point out that all of your well-considered points are in fact indicative that media in the US and to some other extent the rest of the world is very much broken.
And has been for well over 50 years.
part of me wishes that the democrats spent money to put up a decent fight against the VERY rampant misinformation in spanish media instead of using the money to attack third party candidates.
Third party candidates are often part of the misinformation machine. Used as an attack Vector as well. The problem is Democrats cannot address everything. Oligarchs fund conservative media more than most people realize. So many outlets exist just to push a narrative. Not to make a profit. Tim Pool and several other right-wing demagogues were recently exposed for getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars effectively a week to put out one or two low effort barely edited videos of propaganda. They made more in a couple weeks than someone like Sam Cedar for instance makes in a year. And they are just the ones we know about. Democrats simply cannot compete with or push back against all of it with the minuscule funding they do get.
the democrats literally broke campaign fund raising records and their donor list includes some of the richest oligarchs on this planet.
it was clear that they barely tried at all on univision and telemundo based on the professionally-polished trump-loving pundits mopping the floor with unpracticed volunteers and nonprofits; it was like watching the debate but in reverse with trump's side dominating the discourse just as hard as kamala did.
i think that the democrats just assumed that latinos would vote for them anyways like they did with almost everyone else.
They do it every 4 years only. Republicans break unofficial funding records daily. Wealthy capitalist financiers pump untold sums of money into media outlets to provide campaign messaging constantly. 24/7/365 every year. Dwarfing every single record Democrats have broken summed together. Just of the tip of the iceberg we know. Tim pool was being paid by your buddies the Russians / Putin in the realm of millions of dollars. For making one to two minimally edited propaganda videos per week. Every 2 weeks he would double what someone like Sam Cedar earns in a year. It's why there's such a disparity in messaging Democrats don't have those kind of resources or accessibilities.
democrats have proven that they have the resources and can win if they do it wisely; but they are merely the controlled opposition so that your buddies can justify their monopoly over our system.
Latinos have been a huge concern for the Dems since 2020, as they supported Biden to a far lesser extent than HRC. They may have done a bad job at targeting them, but no way the campaign took them for granted.
Democracy: "of the People, by the People, for the People".
Y'all seem to forget the middle part. Institutions, including the media, are not there to hand democracy on a silver platter. Democracy must be safeguarded. Constantly. There is no room for passive participation. American democracy is under threat because people are so apathetic and just expect it to happen on its own.
Statements like "the media should..." are not going to accomplish anything. It's just more passive participation.
If only there was some warning that disinformation was going to play a role in the election.
Some of my fellow Chicanos can be stupid motherfuckers. They're proud of being Mexican yet ignore the racist shit spewed by Trump and vote for him anyways for "the economy." I'm a full citizen but I really hope the naturalized ones who voted for him lose their citizenship and get deported. It's like pulling the ladder behind you is such a self destructive human instinct.
Please don’t give up or condemn these people.
Keep in mind the total bombardment of right wing propaganda they are under.
All you need is to look at YouTube for an example. With a fresh account, or anything you search you’re quickly overrun with right wing, “anti woke”, Jordan Peterson type garbage.
These working class people are also victims of ruling class fascists. We all have to fight for each other now, or they will pick us off one by one.
That would include you.
If everyone watched MeidasTouch for the political/legal news, America would be far saner and harder to dupe. Its the only media outlet I have any respect or hope for
Trump's election seems/feels like reoccurring issue with short term memory, long term planning, critical thinking, and reading deficiencies amoung the American population.
All the direct result of decades worth of work by Republicans to erode public education and vilify ‘expertise’ as a concept.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” - Isaac Asimov
remember when talking about "dumbing down the country" got you labeled as a tinfoil hat conspiracy loon? peppridge ranch remembers
Shit, I remember reading about a quasi-secretive government agency called the NSA that was listening in to your phone calls and it was called batshit insane.
After Snowden, they just pretended like of course it was always there and why would anyone ever not know they were monitoring communications of course they were it's national security - and nobody said another fucking word.
denial. "i don't like this fact that i just learned, so i'm going to pretend i didn't hear it and carry on like nothing ever happened"
Trump’s election seems/feels like reoccurring issue with short term memory,
This is actually about all we have. If it happened more than 5 minutes ago, it didn't happen.
long term planning,
Dems tend not to see more than about 5 minutes ahead, either.
critical thinking,
Nonexistent in the modern age. People have long since spoken and have said they prefer online echo chambers where critical thinking is actively discouraged.
and reading deficiencies amoung the American population.
When do you think the last time your average American voter read a book? Or for that matter consumed a piece of news media that wasn't a social media clickbait video from their echo chamber of choice?
If everyone watched MeidasTouch for the political/legal news, America would be far saner and harder to dupe. Its the only media outlet I have any respect or hope for
I'm going to be honest, I watch a lot of very left-leaning independent media. MeidasTouch, BTC, David Pakman, Jesse Dollemore. I subscribe to BTC. But I've got a lot of issues with them, including MeidasTouch, myself.
They all use extreme and misleading hyperbole and clickbait in their titles and thumbnails that have a strained-at-best relationship with objective facts and the subject at hand. Saying that Jack Smith is winding down his cases against Trump is not "BIG news on FEDERAL PROSECUTION of TRUMP before inauguration!!!!", for example. BTC is particularly noteworthy for this.
They all focus their coverage almost entirely on Trump, to the point where it's not unreasonable to question what these people would do if Trump really were to just ride off into the sunset, and cover him in such a way where they are clearly profiting off of the outrage.
None of them promote new Democrat ideas or give coverage to Democrat politicians unless they are going on the air to speak against Trump. Little to no time is dedicated to left-leaning topics that aren't somehow heavily tied to Trump and keeping Trump outrage high.
With the exception of BTC, they all hock products that nobody has ever heard of, they have never heard of, and by the way they read the script, couldn't care less about beyond the check they get from the sponsor. David Pakman is particularly egregious with his claims about how long he's been using the product and is a fan of it, which you can tell is 100% grade-A bullshit by the way he reads the script.
Don't get me wrong. At the end of the day, they are still at least giving factual and accurate information even if it's clouded in hyperbole and clickbait, which is infinitely far more than I can say for Fox, Newsmax, Twitter, Trump Social, or OANN. The products they're hocking are at least actual products and won't actively harm consumers, unlike the crypto scams, ads for ivermectin, and whatever other money laundering schemes RAN is peddling this week.
But at the same time, they are all profiting heavily off of making sure outrage against Trump stays high. They all shy away from covering anything that could be construed as beneficial to Trump out of fear of losing subscribers. They all, with the exception of BTC, lie to their subscribers by claiming they use a product they clearly care nothing about. They all skew their coverage with an extreme left bent. They are far better than what we get from the right, but they are by no means objective, are not above and beyond skewing coverage in a way that they feel is most profitable for them, and would absolutely sell out to the very mainstream media they claim to despise if given the chance.
You should give the Humanist Report a shot. Mike is extremely measured and doesn't do advertisements apart from a book he wrote and that's just in the background. I find his takes more reasonable than anyone else on the left, although I watch a lot of different sources. At least worth mixing it in.
Will do 😘