"Efforts to reach voters with trusted information are becoming more difficult as tech platforms lean into viral trends, instead of quality news."
The snake is eating itself. What is most dangerous about the current situation is now how easy it is to pull the natural strings of the western world order. Democracy. The ballot referendum. How you "vote" with your dollar. All of these things could always have been tightly influenced and controlled, but this was done more or less through an indirect incentive structure that favored existing large investment.
Now, anything is able to use these social media tools to run around existing capital structure and get whatever message out to voters and consumers directly. What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors, but simply whatever is able to abuse the viral phenomenon the best at the time and in the context.
Coupled with the ease of generating high quality propaganda of any shape or form through various publicly released tools, we are in for interesting times, for sure.
> What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors,...
If that is true, then there is your problem right there. A firm and stable democracy requires a large group of people with good education, political influence and capital. In other words, bourgeoisie.
The 'major investors' should be this bourgeoisie. They should be with many, to ensure political discussion is actively supported throughout all layers of society. If this group shrinks, and there are fewer people with larger capital and influence, there is no incentive for political discussion, and thus no incentive for a healthy democracy.
The major investors do not want the discussion, as they can easily discuss with the few of them. The proletariat do not want the discussion, cause they either do not have the education, or do not have the capital to organize it.
Then the media is more and more reduced to propaganda and perception management from the 'major investors'.
Democracy is not merely the freedom to vote. It is the open discussion in which everyone can participate and contribute with their knowledge and perspectives.
I agree with all of this. But I do wonder, hasn't it always been this way all the way back to the Greeks? I can't imagine they just let anyone in the polity influence weighty matters in the early democracies, they probably gossiped and bickered nonstop like the schoolyard/workplace drama we see today. I don't think its in human nature to just let off the controls and let everyone have an equal part in anything, you have to be some sort of trained monk free of desire and agenda to actually do that, along with everyone else too. I think most prefer to pick their friends and family ahead of strangers, and this in turn snowballs into the sort of world we see today, full of varying shades of nepotism and pulling up the ladder behind you whether you work at the top level of government or at a truck stop.
The snake is eating itself. What is most dangerous about the current situation is now how easy it is to pull the natural strings of the western world order. Democracy. The ballot referendum. How you "vote" with your dollar. All of these things could always have been tightly influenced and controlled, but this was done more or less through an indirect incentive structure that favored existing large investment.
Now, anything is able to use these social media tools to run around existing capital structure and get whatever message out to voters and consumers directly. What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors, but simply whatever is able to abuse the viral phenomenon the best at the time and in the context.
Coupled with the ease of generating high quality propaganda of any shape or form through various publicly released tools, we are in for interesting times, for sure.
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