General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFaux News-worst threat to Democracy
I have been asking non-Trump fan Republicans and Trump supporters why they support the party. All of these people are college graduates and are otherwise pretty intelligent people. All of them watch Faux News. It keeps them in the cult. No matter what you bring up they quote Faux News. It just allows them to strengthen their cognitive dissonance. Despite all of the despicable things The Republicans do they are still behind them. What can be done to fix this. It is the key to the problem.
BlueWaveNeverEnd
(8,085 posts)orthoclad
(2,910 posts)We've ceded the ground.
kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)People used to be somewhat embarrassed to admit they watch it.
orthoclad
(2,910 posts)kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)I think people like us and the main-stream media no longer make fun of them. Perhaps theyve given up. If MBNBC was successfully sued for falsehoods people would be going nuts. The left is too afraid or something.
orthoclad
(2,910 posts)kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)orthoclad
(2,910 posts)Prosecute Gaetz for pedophilia. We had the evidence, including receipts, but backed off.
Prosecute Gosar for threatening murder.
Air Gym Jordan's dirty laundry.
Fight voter suppression/intimidation laws.
Call a liar a liar. Fox has admitted in court to lying, and got off with the excuse of "we're just entertsinment".
Nominate solid leftists for judgeships. Why do we let the Federalists control the ground?
Enforce the antitrust laws.
Fight climate change.
Feed children.
Fire or neuter the moles that Trump left in civil service and executive positions.
Prosecute DeJoy for ignoring a court order.
Court-martial Flynn.
Expand the Court to 13 to match the number of lower courts.
Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico.
All the things we hoped for in 2021.
Etc.
If we even strongly attempted half these things, we could motivate independents to vote, and would not have lost the House. But we're afraid of offending our enemies. And they are enemies, not just the other side of the aisle. They tried to overthrow the government!
kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)TwilightZone
(25,492 posts)It's certainly much more far-reaching, and far-right social media makes Fox News look moderate.
FakeNoose
(32,784 posts)If anything the damage is even worse.
kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)Celerity
(43,562 posts)in terms of its user base. I have a 52yo Gen X co-worker, a native white Swede, extremely wealthy, from a hundreds of years old noble family, multiple post grad degrees (including a masters from Oxford), who has become utterly indoctrinated the past 3 or so years, due to Facebook. He was very normal but has since went down the rabbit hole and is a RW loon now. Raging Sweden Democrat (our far RW nationalist party) asshole now, and a massive anti-vaxxer (Covid set him off to a huge degree). He has become a Swedish version of a QAnon type, it is sad.
What Happened When Facebook Became Boomerbook
Leaked documents reveal that a company that was once rebellious and optimistic is now bloated, regretful, and uncool.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-midlife-crisis-boomerbook/620307/
https://archive.is/f8XRo
OCTOBER 5, 2021
Sometimes its hard to remember that Facebook is only 17 years old: If it were a person, it could drive but not drink. If Facebook were a person, it would also be fabulously wealthy, incredibly successful, and exhaustingly argumentative. And it probably wouldnt use Facebook. The disclosures in The Wall Street Journals Facebook Files, leaked by a whistleblower named Frances Haugen, are incendiary. But one of them probably troubles the companys executives more than yesterdays service outage, the proliferation of fake news, or even suggestions that Facebook stoked the Capitol riot and violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. According to the companys own research, young people think Facebook is uncool. In a statement that will chill the heart of anyone who remembers cassette tapes and the original version of Baywatch, one 11-year-old boy told the companys researchers: Facebook is for old peopleold as in 40.
The statistics bear out that assessment. Five million U.S. teenagers log in to Facebook every day, compared with 22 million for Instagram, according to the materials leaked to The Journal. Most teens I know regard Facebook as the place where their parents go to argue about politics and their grandparents post vacation pictures. And which self-respecting member of Generation Z wants to hang out in an old folks home? So its goodbye to Boomerbook, and hello to TikTok or Instagram instead. (There is some consolation in this for the company because Instagram, like the messaging platform WhatsApp, is also owned by Facebook.)
Facebooks gray shift should change how we talk about the companys effect on society, and about social media more generally. This isnt a young persons problem. Yes, teenagers are particularly susceptible to peer pressure and the social contagions of suicide and self-harm. The Facebook Files included an internal study into how Instagram makes teenage girls feel about their body image (not good), while TikTok and YouTube appear to be driving sociogenic illnesswhat was once called mass hysteriaamong the same demographic. But social-media companies are no longer new, and their users are no longer early adopters. Too much focus on impressionable youngsters obscures research such as the 2019 study of Facebook that found that people older than 65 were the most likely to share links to sites that regularly published false stories. (Around the 2016 presidential election, 11 percent of over-65ers shared links to fake news, but only 3 percent of those ages 18 to 29 did so.) Whatever social media is doing, its doing it to all of us.
In my own experience, young people who have never known a world without social media are more attuned to its downsides. They might have lived through a sexting scandal at school, or seen a video of bullying passed around by their peers on WhatsApp, and many correctly regard rage-tweeting as a risk equivalent to volunteering for land-mine clearance. One of Facebooks own researchers found that older children counsel younger ones not to post content they might regret. The Journal quoted the researcher suggesting further studies to understand if this influence over preteen sharing holds at scale. If it is common that teens are discouraging preteens from sharing, there are obvious implications for creation and the ecosystem both in the near and longer-term as preteens are the next generation coming onto the platform.
snip
kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)I only have one person on Facebook that posts crazy stuff and most people ignore him except maybe 2 people. He just asked why more people dont like his posts. I think it bothers him mor being ignored than interacting with him.
TwilightZone
(25,492 posts)you couldn't be more wrong.
Raine
(30,541 posts)lindysalsagal
(20,739 posts)kerry-is-my-prez
(8,133 posts)Probably Faux.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)...such as another couple of indictments. Overwhelm them with news they cannot ignore. Let them spin the facts the way they want.