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by squigz 246 days ago
> Yes, and yes. As way of example, I’m familiar with a particular subreddit which is used to promote far-right ideology in a specific country. They do it by grabbing news from anywhere in the world in which an immigrant has done anything “wrong”, no matter how small, and use it to stoke xenophobia in the subreddit’s country. They are making it seem these events are more prevalent than they really are, when they aren’t even happening in that country. It is a transparent tactic which nonetheless works.

This isn't a symptom of global news dissemination though, it's a result of people being shitty and needing to grasp at any thread to justify their shitty position. Whether most of our news comes from local sources or not will not stop that. They'll just go seek out those local sources.
1 comments
latexr 246 days ago
> This isn't a symptom of

It is only made possible by, which is the point. And that was a single example of the harm, TV news play much of the same stories.

Avoid taking a too narrow view of the argument. Don’t get stuck on a single part you can think of, steel man and engage with the macro point being made.

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squigz 246 days ago
> It is only made possible by

Well... no, it's not only possible this way, as I just tried to point out. With or without global news programs, with or without addictive news feeds, those people will still act that way and go to great lengths to find reasons to justify it.

I did not engage with other bits because I do not generally disagree with you: watching too much news is a problem, highly addictive news feeds are a problem. I just do not believe those problems are the source of every issue we face, particularly racism - and I don't believe that solving those problems would solve those issues in any impactful way.

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latexr 246 days ago
> I just do not believe those problems are the source of every issue we face

No one is arguing that. Even the original commenter said:

> This is partly the reason

Partly. But they are a reason.

> and I don't believe that solving those problems would solve those issues in any impactful way.

There is no single factor which is the cause and can be solved. There are a bunch of partial factors which cause the issue. Fixing any of them would help.

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