Is social media shaping world politics and is populist agenda now more important than democrasy?

Bl4ckGryph0n

Evidence that foreign actors interfere? Really. You do realise what security services do around the world don’t you? Or perhaps not? Disruption is a key part of their brief.

raduv1

We have had the WH press sec stating that POTUS tweets can be regarded as policy so social media in this regard and said democracy only has one true voice as in dissenting voices can be blocked from discussion by said voice .

Did you just sort of normalize these actions  in your second paragraph ?

Faust

The British Government along with the security services have stated there is evidence of Russian meddling in elections, though they were at pains to say they didn't think it had any effect on the result of our GE. Not sure how they could know that.

Then of course there is the Cambridge Analytica debacle and the whole controversy surrounding the U.S. Presidential election.

I don't see any evidence for election interference prior to the advent of social media, so given the claim that interference is nothing new I think it appropriate to ask the poster to provide some evidence for that.

To answer your second question regarding the lunatics running the madhouse.  You only have to look at some of the extreme views and tone on some social media sites to realise that is a fair assessment.  If such extreme views can gain traction and possibly influence politicians this cannot be a good thing i.e. society becomes the 'madhouse'.

I'm unclear as to why this should illicit your comment - 'trolling' and I've no idea what BFFE enki means at all.

Sonic67

How do you believe the former from the government but not the latter?

Trollslayer

About
About 0.6 percent.

Trollslayer

About
About 0.6 percent.

imightbewrong

Trump can't block people from twitter right?

He can stop listening to people, and he can stop their official profile seeing his tweets, but you can still see what's going on, and say what you like about any policy.

Trollslayer

No, to stop listening to people he would have to listen in the first place.

Bl4ckGryph0n

And did you look into what kind of meddling they did, and how that is different from other kind of 'propaganda' from the past?

Please do explain what you think the Cambridge Analytica debacle is? I'd love to hear your technical analysis of what it was they did wrong and how it relates to social media.

Ok, really. So what kind of interference do you think social media helped with that traditional media didn't do? Please do explain in our own words why social media is so bad.

But who determines what is good or bad? Why would 'you' be the arbiter for that?

973 joint encounters and you forgot about him already. That is not nice

Faust

I note in the news today The children’s Society is blaming social media as a contributory factor in the alarming rise in children self-harming.

The more I see, hear and read about social media the more I’m convinced my view that a largely unregulated social media is a bad thing for society is correct.

I don’t have to justify that view as continuing events are doing that for me.