While it’s true that “all elections are won on lies spewed by the parties”, it’s always a matter of context. The media landscape of the past 10 years has both shrunk and inflated at the same time: centralized social media now overwhelmingly represent the main source of information from which people read news and shape their views of the world. The fact that some of those social media have more or less explicitly stated their affiliation to some sort of government which might make their interests offers a worrying scenario: in one case, the state can require the manipulation of information so as to steer the results of election towards governments that might create strategic geopolitical tension or sweetened deals (i.e. China and TikTok). On the other, through the “loaning” of centralized social media to the highest bidder can create enormous echo chambers which corrupt the results only for symbiontic, growing entanglement of social media corporations into forms of government (i.e. Elon Musk in 2024).
Tl;Dr: Social media are a bigger problem than good old politicians’ lies because they can be easily manipulated by external forces and because everyone uses them.
I guess the problem falls to people only getting their news sources from one place and it being biased. That’s why with today’s sponsor ground news…
I kid, but have news papers ever been blamed for an election?
It still seems to me that that people need to get their information from other places.
Tik Tok doesn’t want to allow posts by politicians A then maybe don’t rely on them when they talk about politician B.
@Aussiemandeus well, that’s a fair point. We do have a state authority (CNA) who should deal with misinformation and poor reporting, but it was politically infiltrated (and still is) and did not bat an eye at everything that was said on TV at stations that are pretty much affiliated with certain parties. There’s this station called Romania TV which pretty much takes all the most mainstream online conspiracies and gives them air time.
In addition we have some intelligence services who we don’t know what they were doing all this time, but who enjoyed poor state control and being politically affiliated as well (having been given a lot of power in the previous decade). What did they do with this Russian interference that was clear to appear? I don’t know.
So yeah. TikTok played a big role, but it was not the only one. They could see it coming. But they didn’t do anything.
Yeah so a failing of regulation i guess. Either way it’s not great, I just think it’s short sighted to blame a platform when there is a larger problem at play.
Governments need to protect their democratic processes with the same ferver that those who seek to undermine it display.
I guess it’s hard to be the democratic “good” government and still impose harsh punishments and expectations on citizens without being labled some form of “evil”
While it’s true that “all elections are won on lies spewed by the parties”, it’s always a matter of context. The media landscape of the past 10 years has both shrunk and inflated at the same time: centralized social media now overwhelmingly represent the main source of information from which people read news and shape their views of the world. The fact that some of those social media have more or less explicitly stated their affiliation to some sort of government which might make their interests offers a worrying scenario: in one case, the state can require the manipulation of information so as to steer the results of election towards governments that might create strategic geopolitical tension or sweetened deals (i.e. China and TikTok). On the other, through the “loaning” of centralized social media to the highest bidder can create enormous echo chambers which corrupt the results only for symbiontic, growing entanglement of social media corporations into forms of government (i.e. Elon Musk in 2024).
Tl;Dr: Social media are a bigger problem than good old politicians’ lies because they can be easily manipulated by external forces and because everyone uses them.
I guess the problem falls to people only getting their news sources from one place and it being biased. That’s why with today’s sponsor ground news… I kid, but have news papers ever been blamed for an election?
It still seems to me that that people need to get their information from other places.
Tik Tok doesn’t want to allow posts by politicians A then maybe don’t rely on them when they talk about politician B.
@Aussiemandeus well, that’s a fair point. We do have a state authority (CNA) who should deal with misinformation and poor reporting, but it was politically infiltrated (and still is) and did not bat an eye at everything that was said on TV at stations that are pretty much affiliated with certain parties. There’s this station called Romania TV which pretty much takes all the most mainstream online conspiracies and gives them air time.
In addition we have some intelligence services who we don’t know what they were doing all this time, but who enjoyed poor state control and being politically affiliated as well (having been given a lot of power in the previous decade). What did they do with this Russian interference that was clear to appear? I don’t know.
So yeah. TikTok played a big role, but it was not the only one. They could see it coming. But they didn’t do anything.
@iagomago
Yeah so a failing of regulation i guess. Either way it’s not great, I just think it’s short sighted to blame a platform when there is a larger problem at play.
Governments need to protect their democratic processes with the same ferver that those who seek to undermine it display.
I guess it’s hard to be the democratic “good” government and still impose harsh punishments and expectations on citizens without being labled some form of “evil”