[clickety_clack]

Why? It’s not clear to me that the motives of a small group of people paying to control the news that I see are better than the motives of a variety of companies trying to get me to buy razor blades and Jeeps. At least in the latter case I know that “big razor” cares about selling razor blades. Who knows what big donors are trying to get me to think.

[cathyreisenwitz]

The incentives are perverse. It's not just about selling razors, but about getting attention. From Enlightenment 2.0: "You can blame the media, but obviously the media is just a part of a much broader trend. The problem is that, in the competition for attention, being rude (or vulgar) is a way of getting noticed. In order for it to work, however, you need to be ruder than everyone else. Everyone else, of course, is not about to stand idly by and let you steal all the attention. They will respond in kind. The result is a classic race to the bottom, where the level of rudeness gets steadily ratcheted up over time."

Algorithms in particular are problematic. And drive most new traffic to news websites.

Noah Smith:

"There is a growing body of careful research establishing causal links between social media and political polarization and extremism. But simply looking at the trend lines is enough to realize how much American society broke in the 2010s when everyone got a smartphone, Twitter, and Facebook. The 2010s are when perceptions of race relations in America fell off a cliff; when people began to perceive much more discrimination against themselves, despite declining discrimination in offline society; when progressives in particular became depressed en masse and started to experience mental health issues on an astonishing scale; and when young Americans started losing trust in their institutions at a rapid rate."

[frm88]

American society broke

fell off a cliff

discrimination against themselves

depressed en masse

mental health issues on an astonishing scale

institutions at a rapid rate

All in one paragraph. I don't even know this author, but the breathless panic induction makes sure, I'll avoid him in the future.

[strongpigeon]

To add to this, I would assume that advertisers are more diverse and numerous than donors are, therefore reducing the influence any single one of them can have.