[schoen]

There is a theory that some skeptics of tech optimism have advanced for a while, that governments like Internet freedom and widespread availability of ICTs in rival nations because it either (1) makes people there hate and fear each other, or (2) makes them easier to propagandize.

In this account the U.S. State Department's Internet Freedom Agenda (which many of my friends and colleagues have been directly funded by) is about destabilizing other countries, while Russian or Chinese spies in turn relish American Internet freedoms because they can stir up conflicts here.

I have never endorsed this view but I've run into forms of it again and again and again. Adjacent to it is the idea that some of our prior social harmony was due to a more controlled or at least more homogeneous media landscape.

[mrexcess]

I definitely buy into the “monoculture” argument a bit. When hundreds of millions of people are all voraciously consuming the same very limited cultural messaging - three TV stations, a handful of movie studios, a handful of major book publishers - there is bound to be a leveling of interpersonal expectations that will be absent in a more fragmented culture.

That’s not some kind of crypto denunciation against cosmopolitan diversity, but it is what it is and I do think there’s a there, there.

[Nasrudith]

That idea sounds like it is a Freudian slip of sorts of an authoritarian mind. Basically, involuntary ideological tells from patterns of their thinking that slip through into their speech. The sorts of things which would give a spy away.

The idea you mentioned is the mark of an authoritarian who considers expressed dissent a sign of weakness instead of a crucible for the strength of ideas. That they literally cannot conceive of a purpose of it other than propaganda or division because they see democracy as inherently a weakness and they think that a 'strong man' is needed to create unity.

It is a similar tell to bigots who cite 'homogeneous society means' as being inherently socially cohesive or responsible for low crime because they cannot comprehend a cohesion based on something other than ethnic unity.

Or reflexive deceivers promising to 'restore a sense of trust' because the thought of being trustworthy even never comes to mind as something to promise as a lie. I have seen that one in officials in response to corruption or abuse scandals far too many times. A cousin to that is expressing fear of 'turning into a low trust society' where they promise parades of horribles to try to poison the well against people rightfully distrusting them.

[Terr_]

Related, and visible in cable not-news: "If you don't believe in my correct religion, then there is nothing is stopping you from murdering people!"

[pocksuppet]

ICTs?

("Information and Communication Technology" does not make sense here)

[nerdsniper]

ICT is correct. It’s the economic bucket that Facebook, Google, etc are categorized under for export accounting. “Social Media” would have worked in its placed.”

[aleph_minus_one]

> ICTs?

I think "Information and communications technology (ICT)":

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Information_and_c...

[vrganj]

You can see this playing out right now, with X spreading holocaust denial and all sorts of corrosive messages in Europe, with it's owner being actively hostile to European institutions and the US government actively guarding it from consequences.

[schoen]

Which part of my comment do you relate this to?

[saghm]

Usage of the internet to sow dissent among citizens of a government by a power that's at odds with said government, presumably