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Comment by e40 | Hacker News Reader

As an American, this says more about the American people than it does about a single loser.

Anyone here who spends time around their aging parents and their friends sees what shows up on their phones. The image of an 70+ year old man poolside scrolling through IG reels seeing ragebait about democratic cities is burned into my brain. I wouldn't stand a chance against it either.

I truly believe we're here because of Facebook.

I got a FB message from an older relative urging me to vote for the President's party so we could all get the $5000 checks he promised.

The craziest thing is he promised this the last time in some form and these people just … forgot

The crazier thing to me is how the press reports stories like this, it's framed purely as reported speech, with zero analysis on likelihood, or legality of such inducements.

There's a statement about reporters having to look through their own windows when reporting on someone who claims it is raining.

A large part of the voters are gullible idiots who don’t understand when they vote against their own interests. Add a personality cult in the mix and this explains the current situation we’re in.

> A large part of the voters are gullible idiots who don’t understand when they vote against their own interests.

Asserted without proof.

You're describing a couple members of my family except... they don't use any Facebook products. Humans have been surrounding themselves with people that parrot their beliefs for generations; the internet just made it easier for fringe beliefs to reach critical mass.

If it not Facebook, it would be some other medium. What's the alternative, prevent people from talking to each other unsupervised?

My parents and inlaws are all in their late 70s/early 80s. Facebook is an amplifier for the cohort in question...it's an addictive product experience delivered to an audience without lifelong training in how to spot memes vs sincerity, ragebait vs news, and now, AI vs reality.

I think the "it's Facebook" crowd are people who either weren't around for or don't remember before then. I don't remember before the "It's fox news" time but I now suspect there was probably something before that too.

I think a lot of it has to do with the young and idealistic clashing against the old and jaded and both groups yelling at strawmen of each other.

> but I now suspect there was probably something before that too.

"It's shortwave radio"

> I truly believe we're here because of Facebook.

"Fox news has done to our parents what they thought gangsta rap would do to us". This applies to Facebook as well. I wish they would have stayed in their "I don't know how to use the computer" phase.

I would add Fox News in tandem with Facebook, but otherwise, yes. One is the spigot, the other is the hose.

My mom is 76 and absolutely believes the most pressing issues are trans high school swimmers and illegal voting and the biases of the Kennedy Center.

Sure, I have my opinions on those but I’m not saying as a society we aren’t allowed to debate those issues. I’m saying that in some news sources, they’re pure ragebait and completely drown out much more pressing and existential topics we should be solving. They’re simple distraction tactics and a continuation of the culture wars from the 80s and 90s.

There are issues that animate the left that are similarly trivial and en vogue.

How important is it right now to a very vocal group of people that you attach the word genocide to gaza?

Democratic institutional norms and a system relying on informed citizenry will always face new obstacles, but technology companies, particularly social media, adtech analytics, decline in established journalism have done so much damage and contributed to more conspiracy theories. Makes me feel even more icky about firms a16z pouring tons of money into things that undermine these norms… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416055

I think as a species we were destined to invent The Algorithm regardless.

Facebook (and social media in general) just accelerated cultural issues that were already there.

The right has seen Democrats (and "leftists" in general) as communists and degenerates for nearly a century. Literally nothing about Trump or Trumpism is new, it just wasn't normalized. There was a consensus reality around politics and culture that had to be maintained which no longer does.

Yes! Trump is just the symptom of a much more serious disease. Far too many Americans are unable to distinguish propaganda from journalism, unable to critically evaluate the information they receive, where it comes from and who it actually benefits.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Jefferson, 1816.

> Far too many Americans

This is neither a particularly contemporary problem nor an American one.

Yes, see AfD in Germany, Vox in Spain, …

The American elite, specifically. The American people in general don't have much say in the matter anymore.

Somebody has to pull the lever in the voting booth.

In the aggregate people are easily manipulated. We've known this since Freud. With mass media and the Citizens United decision, the elite have a much easier time pushing through their agenda. Obviously there is a lot more going on that can't be easily expressed in a brief forum comment, but it's just not true that the electorate is simply morally corrupt.

As far as I'm aware, regular Americans outnumber American elites and only have one vote each regardless. The people elected Trump, not the elites.

Even if the elites are the only ones funding political campaigns, we expected more from regular Americans to vote on facts, rather than ads.

That is a high expectation of people being driven by predictable human emotions, lacking the ability to think critically through everything in front of them.

The real issue of our media landscape (information feeds controlled by the elite), probably could have been nipped in the bud some years ago but it may be a little too late for that.

The most important thing any country can do in this time is break up media conglomerates and broad function internet companies.

The problem is greatly exacerbated by two-party system. If there was a solid third or fourth choice, then at least people wouldn't be given two bad (in their opinion) choices. Many people don't vote at all, being disillusioned with the voting system.

Can we do something about it? The winner-takes-all Electoral College certainly contributes to two-party system [1] and to narrow margins [2]. There are two states who don't do winner-takes-all (Maine and Nebraska), and we can force all states to split their electoral votes.

[1] https://www2.law.temple.edu/lppp/electoral-college-two-party...

[2] https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/108/3/727/11948...

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