[paulsutter]

Are you talking about yourself or other people?

My Facebook feed is mostly personal updates about hundreds of people I have met, and it feels like the most democratic media I’ve ever seen. It improved a lot when I unfollowed the handful of people who post junk like sportsball.

Are you assuming the faceless masses are exposed to some unimaginable horror that you aren’t seeing? Or tell us more about the horrors you do see.

[wu-ikkyu]

>feels like the most democratic media I’ve ever seen.

The Democrats thought the same thing too, before Trump won the election. Perhaps you are falling victim to a filter bubble confirmation bias?

A democracy implies independent national sovereignty. When anyone (govt, corp, or rogue hackers) across the world can effectively manipulate your elections at scale, sovereign democracy is no longer a thing.

[paulsutter]

A $100,000 ad campaign overpowered the dems $1.4B budget? The DNC should hire those guys! They're political geniuses!

[wu-ikkyu]

I'm having a hard time finding the link, but there was an article posted here on HN a while back (which the author deleted because of the underhanded nature of the endeavor) about a marketer whose ad campaign for getting a government initiative passed was failing even though they were using all the traditional methods.

Then they decided to spend ~$100 on buying fake reddit upvotes for their initiative and it received millions of views and ended up being highly successful.

It's interesting how far a little money and technological finesse can have such far reaching effects.

[tbirrell]

It's more like, letting users "legitimize" news is how you get bots screwing with everything. It may not be a problem for some, including myself since my feed is similar to how you describe yours, but network waide, it will pose an issue.

[paulsutter]

So, your feed seems fine, my feed seems fine, but somehow the electorate at large is subject to mass mind manipulations by bots?

[tbirrell]

As a technologically literate individual who takes pains to protect myself online, yes, my feed is inherently more "fine" then the general population.