[quotemstr]

Every single one of these "internet is a threat to our democracy" takes is really about a few things, none of which is a threat to democracy.

1) Hand-wringing about information disintermediation: previously, institutional gatekeepers filtered information and interpreted it for the public. Now, the public sees raw information and forms its own judgements.

2) Social media has cut revenue streams for the sorts of organizations that bleat non-stop about how social media is a thread.

3) Weakening of ability of the institutional class to censor defectors and promulgators of inconvenient facts, which disaffected former censors call "disinformation".

Far from being a threat to "democracy", the internet is the best thing that's ever happened to it. Social media and the internet more broadly have enabled an unprecedented increase in breadth and depth of public participation in the marketplace of ideas. Those who don't like the result never liked democracy.

It's exhausting, this ceaseless cacophony of high-minded bullshit. I'm sick and tired of hearing people exclaim that the internet is a danger to "democracy" when, really, the problem is that the internet produces democratic outcomes they don't like.

[techblueberry]

> Hand-wringing about information disintermediation: previously, institutional gatekeepers filtered information and interpreted it for the public. Now, the public sees raw information and forms its own judgements.

I mean is the information raw really? How raw was #metoo or would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. The internet is super-curated. There’s like super obscure intellectual woke all over x/twitter; The opposite of raw, that’s what people like about it! Raw would be a _substantial_ improvement over the like bizarrely curated shit we have everywhere now.