Collapse

The hijackers, Democrats and Republicans alike, have acted as if the idea that self-government depends on people being able to count on independent providers of information is a quaint relic and that the new media channels present new opportunities that creative political operatives must seize.

As a result, the news and information ecosystem that is so important to a functioning democracy and civil society has suffered a double whammy. First, as we have seen, the social media platforms’ recommendation engines have promoted misinformation and disinformation. Second, we have now seen how programmatic advertising has provided financial suppo

depend on an accurate apprehension of the context

There is a sort of magic that we are losing. If you introduce viewers to your private life, you lose the magic of distance that is core to charisma, this stardust you can never touch. There is a difference between being a godlike character and the illusion of a guy you can have a beer with. The sheer amount of access makes it less exciting.

It is this slackening that thinkers like Jodi Dean, Slavoj Žižek, Mark Andrejevic, Byung-Chul Han and others have warned of as a decline of the symbolic: a malfunctioning of socially sanctioned language, a sagging of meaning and norms.

Think of the story of the death of truth as the story of two pernicious algorithms. One, unleashed by Section 230, allowed the social media platforms to recommend the content, however divisive or false, most likely to attract attention. The second set of algorithms are operated by what have become multibillion-dollar businesses you probably have ne

Intuitionism and the rejection of evidence and expertise are especially compatible with conservative populism.

A common argument for not regulating speech is that “good” speech will defeat “bad” speech. But that will not happen if the fight is fixed to give the “bad” speech so much more voice.