[beedeebeedee]

> Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see".

Fox News. The folks who voted trump watch only Fox News, which has crafted an alternative and immersive world view that appears coherent if you only watch Fox News and reject conflicting information as lies.

[AnimalMuppet]

There are more people who voted for Trump than there are people who only watch Fox News. So maybe you ought to re-consider the GP's point.

[intended]

The OP is correct though. If the issue is that their statement is weak when its being reduced to just Fox News subscribers, then sure.

However the issue is about the kind of information ecosystems that drive polarization and misinformation.

Disinfo and misinformation campaigns target right wing / conservative viewers more than they do left wing / liberals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07942-8

But I can point to research and articles till the cows come home. The fact is that people reject everything negative about Trump and fill in the blanks with whatever they want to believe.

We’re basically playing whose line is it anyway

[throwaway817472]

Who is defining what is misinformation? It would be easy to reframe such that the opposite can be just as “true, “ depending on your perspective. For example: Trump turned out not to be working with Russia, despite the media and politicians constantly saying they had evidence. Trump started zero wars, despite fear mongering that he would start World War 3. He ended the tensions with North Korea, despite pundits saying diplomacy doesn’t work with dictators. Arguably all of that was misinformation, so one could argue the opposite of what you said is also true. Whomever defines “misinformation” can make that statement with full confidence and be correct in their own mind every time.

[intended]

This is my domain of work, so - Me. If that’s not good enough you can look at the research paper I linked.

If you haven’t looked at the article - this is directly in the summary:

> sers who were pro-Trump/conservative also shared far more links to various sets of low-quality news sites—even when news quality was determined by politically balanced groups of laypeople, or groups of only Republican laypeople—and had higher estimated likelihoods of being bots

If you want more - The original fake news, the Romanian ad farm sites, had greater success and traction when they targeted conservative viewers.

To save us both trouble - this is not some cockamamie argument about crud like “he who defines it can be correct.”,or conflation of bad reporting and hyperbole.

This is straight up conservatives being the victims and consistent targets of mis and disinformation.

I also know that this will have 0 impact on changing minds. I know it wont.

That said, I do hope we can agree that people deserve respect for their efforts to understand a topic, subject or field of work. Do read the article, and when I say that conservative / republican information diets are more vulnerable and exposed to low quality information and conspiracy theories, I’d appreciate the honor of at least having your opinion on the abstract and matter of the paper.

[throwaway817472]

I don’t disagree with your points, as they tend to align with my personal experience. Given that most of the people I interact with are conservative, I can’t really compare to the sources used by progressives, but I suspect it would consist more of links to mainstream media. Jumping on a plane, so won’t be able to respond quickly, but I will read the article you linked.

My point wasn’t necessarily that conservatives aren’t exposed to more misinformation, but rather that misinformation is very difficult to define, since the general public lacks so much information. Very few people actually know the truth. Many people fill in the gaps with their biases and then believe they’ve consumed “the truth.” Without an objective view of all facts, it’s difficult to ascertain the truth, therefore it’s also difficult to ascertain what is misinformation.

[intended]

Thank you, I will come back and engage with your response.

[nixdev]

The "fine people" and "drinking bleach" hoaxes objectively showed us what side of yesterday's election is for the large part egregiously gullible.

[shadowgovt]

Less hoaxes and more the least-charitable interpretation of what he said. It's easy to find the exact quotes, in video, with context---different people disagree on what those statements from him mean.

Trump tends to talk in word-salad. It makes it very possible for two reasonable individuals to reach different conclusions about what was communicated.