Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by roenxi 29 days ago
But to just inject a little optimism - the problem was substantially bigger before the internet. Previously it was possible to coordinate the astroturfing across the entire media landscape. Nowadays it is much harder because anyone can get information out to the world - at least in theory.
1 comments
BiteCode_dev 29 days ago
I think the opposite. Automation and scale made it possible to cheaply influence way more people. Information bubbles mean people are more convinced than ever.

Before you had one big influencer, usually the state, manipulating the news of your country. The alternative players were more trustworthy, because they had to if they wanted to keep credibility.

Now, any big company can buy a narrative when they need one. No reputation matters. No memory. No consequences for the long run.

It's literally pay to play.

link
grog454 29 days ago
> Information bubbles mean people are more convinced than ever.

And therefore critical thinking is more important than ever. That isn't intrinsically a problem, but it is a problem for people that lack it.

link
roenxi 29 days ago
> Before you had one big influencer, usually the state, manipulating the news of your country. The alternative players were more trustworthy, because they had to if they wanted to keep credibility.

There isn't much in the way of evidence that is true. What we discovered when the internet came around is that the major players in the public sphere are generally low-credibility and just keep repeating that they are credible over and over again. As more diverse alternatives appear with the internet that narrative has been struggling. The new replacements have proven to be low-quality and a lot better than what they are overtaking.

The US discourse is a fascinating example of this where the traditional narrative setters may have gone legitimately crazy trying to rationalise how they're part of the reasonable and credible crowd and they just got rolled by Trump screaming that they were liars and that Mexico was going to pay for a border wall. That's what US voters thought looked like a better bet than these traditionally credible alternatives.

link