@misjavanlaatum
> Let's definitely not underestimate the role big tech plays in this
Indeed, and as Farrell says in the piece I linked, it's not just a problem of mis/disinformation; unfacts presented as facts. Those platforms feed our subconscious worldbuilding heuristics a persistent false sense of the world, against which factual claims are evaluated, and everyone is being fed a subtly different false sense. Eroding our capacity for social consensus-finding.
As I recall from reading the US constitution (many years ago now), the manner in which members of congress and electoral college electors are chosen is entirely up to the state. There is no legal requirement that they be conducted by elections at all. This was left there to allow slave-owning states to hold elections in which slaves were disenfranchised and kept to allow states to disenfranchise voters at a whim by making felons ineligible to vote.
But this could also be used in a positive way. For example, there is nothing stopping a state from passing a law that says that, if a federal agent comes within a 500 M radius of a polling station, for any purpose except to cast a vote and leave, then all votes cast in that polling station for any candidate from the same party as the current holder of the presidency, are discarded. And if this happens more than, say, fifty times in a single election, all candidates from that party are disqualified from the ballot. Such a law would effectively say that any attempt at election tampering or intimidation by the executive branch automatically causes the party in control of that branch to lose the election statewide.
@inthehands What will it take for Americans to overthrow this fascist regime?
There is no question what is happening. It’s a coup. In broad daylight. 🤷♂️
@gimulnautti @inthehands it would be a coup if nobody wanted it. Don't forget that a sizable portion of the population is completely ok with this 😕
@misjavanlaatum
> don't forget that m a sizable portion of the population is completely ok with this
I'm not convinced of that. Most USAmericans have been marinating in a stew of nonsense on DataFarming platforms for more than a decade, breaking down our ability to do collective sense-making;
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis
I suspect what people are ok with is a world that has been pulled over their eyes to blind them from the truth, to paraphrase Morpheus in The Matrix.
@strypey @gimulnautti @inthehands yeah, you make a good point. Let's definitely not underestimate the role big tech plays in this...
@misjavanlaatum
> Let's definitely not underestimate the role big tech plays in this
Indeed, and as Farrell says in the piece I linked, it's not just a problem of mis/disinformation; unfacts presented as facts. Those platforms feed our subconscious worldbuilding heuristics a persistent false sense of the world, against which factual claims are evaluated, and everyone is being fed a subtly different false sense. Eroding our capacity for social consensus-finding.
(1/?)
Me:
> eroding our capacity for social consensus-finding
This got me thinking about why the word 'moderator' describes the curator of a communication channel.
There's a habit to mentally substitute 'censor' when we think about that role, even for those who approve of it. But the work of moderation isn't primarily about deciding whether this or that post/ user account is welcome in the channel. That's a means to an end.
@trochee
That is the correct reaction, yes.
Also, this guy makes Pontius Pilate look like a mensch
