The coming, dangerous hyper-segmentation of "news"
It’s bad, and it is on ALL sides.
I make a point to never unfollow or block anyone on social media, and to follow sources of information as diverse as possible, be they “MainStream Media” (MSM) or independent websites. The reason is extremely simple, of course: I need to hear diverse voices to really understand what is going on.
This week I am very worried from several comments and threads I came across on Facebook in the past days, that is while US vote counting was still going, and nobody could say for sure who had won more electoral votes. The two paragraphs below contain small snippets of some of those comments, without any further remark from me. I am doing this because:
- it is important to raise awareness of this fact, as it will only increase the extreme, dangerous, useless polarization of societies, not just in the US
- what you are about to read is also one more proof (not that we needed them, did we?) that any version of “breaking up facebook” is idiotic, and will not solve any real problem. It will only increase the number (that is the political fragmentation and polarization) of incorporated, NASDAQ-quoted eco chambers, one per side, with more sides popping up every year
- above all: this is NOT a “far-right” or “alt-right” or any other “right thing only. I regularly see the same behaviour and attitude in people and groups on the opposite side of the spectrum. This is a general, 360-degree, really bi-partisan issue!
- update 30/12/2020: this is important because “Truth is more than a collection of facts; it’s a mechanism for belonging” (found here)
<u><em><strong>CAPTION:</strong>
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filter_bubble_illustration.png" target="_blank">Click for source (Wikipedia)</a>
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Running away from “MSM TV”
If FOX has betrayed us, where will we go?
If all news outlets are biased, then why rely on those which are biased against those of us who are derided as extreme right-wingers? Hey, I’ll go with the biased news outlets which prefer truth over lies. Newsmax is very good. OANews is OK.
I think people are fed up with the liberal commentators at FOX News, too.
From what I’ve seen, conservatives are flocking to NewsMax online and to OANews.
I downloaded the NewsMax app. Thus far I have been quite impressed. They do what I expect from a news source: report the facts.
Running away from “MSM social networks”
My advice, after watching the crazed move to Parler and MeWe this weekend: If you own Facebook stock, SELL NOW!
It looks like Parler’s server is overwhelmed, as millions more sign on to use the site.
As Parler grows I’m sure Zuckerberg or someone like that will offer to buy it because that’s what they’ve been doing is buying off their competition. And we just have to stay vigilant and maybe traverse to another one after that.
Going to Gab is better than coming back here
Isn’t it obvious how much we love our freedom of speech and freedom in general? Too bad Zuck and his band of “independent fact checkers” are so tyrannical.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
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