In Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" he proposes a distant alternate-history future where a priest-like cult of technical experts set themselves up to do effective human-aided Google searches which were necessary because the Internet was full of machine-generated disinformation.
I genuinely thought this was an implausible, hokey premise when I read the book in 2008.
I felt similarly about Orson Scott Card's plot in "Ender's Game" where two teenagers influence global political trends by posting a lot on social media (and I'm not the only one who thought this was silly: https://xkcd.com/635/ ). Then a bunch of Macedonian teenagers proved it worked in 2016.
I'm really sorry, but I think I had a little bit of trouble understanding your question.
In your first reply, you quoted me saying the phrase "Then a bunch of Macedonian teenagers..." and asked "is this a commonly accepted fact?". You then said "I literally had not heard this before now."
I apologize for not asking you what you meant by the word "this" in either of those two places where it was used, and I agree that it can be difficult to have a conversation if two people don't agree about what they're talking about.
It sounds like you were confused by my answer because you weren't sure what question I was trying to answer.
I suppose I should say that my original point is that:
The notion that teenagers could successfully influence global political trends by posting a lot on social media seemed far-fetched in the 1985 novel "Ender's Game". Indeed, Randall Munroe in 2009 seemed to think so, when satirized that novel's storyline in a webcomic suggesting that this notion was far-fetched.
My first claim is that this notion seemed considerably more likely after the events of 2016, specifically the part where Macedonian teenagers successfully influenced global political trends by posting a lot on social media. Their behavior, including their influence on political trends and their profligate posting, was well documented in news coverage including CNN, Wired, NBC, and BBC reporting.
To the specific claim that their influence was not merely profitable but also successful I'd suggest as evidence NBC's analysis that "The challenge of engaging readers on social media is one familiar to most journalists. They have a formidable opponent in Dimitri and his peers; analysis by BuzzFeed after the election showed that fake news websites actually performed better than conventional press and television", and the linked primary-source information ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fa... ) showing that among the most twenty popular news stories engaged with by Facebook users, from August 2016 to election day 2016, more engagement was had with "fake" articles promoted by people including these Macedonian teenagers than with "real" news. This included several million engagements with "fake news" falsely claiming that the Pope had endorsed the President; that WikiLeaks had confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS; that per federal law, Clinton was disqualified from holding any federal office; and that an FBI agent involved in investigating Clinton had been killed in a murder-suicide.
My second claim is that the news that Macedonian teenagers were involved in the fake-news fracas of 2016 is fairly mainstream knowledge, meant to answer your question about whether "this" is a "commonly accepted fact". I would cite the same news coverage as evidence that "this" (Macedonian teenagers were involved in spreading fake news in 2016) is indeed a "commonly accepted fact" (although I would say rather a story which has been reported with large amounts of evidence; I would set a pretty high standard for proving a fact).
Do you feel like you sufficiently understand my claim and its evidence or is there an area where you are confused? I am happy to discuss further, although perhaps we should have this conversation in person as I have clearly had some difficulty understanding your responses.
I tried a few times to explain how Ender's Game was different as they got into "moderated political debates in the higher class nets", but...it's not. We had the 2016 Presidential Debate.
I genuinely thought this was an implausible, hokey premise when I read the book in 2008.
I felt similarly about Orson Scott Card's plot in "Ender's Game" where two teenagers influence global political trends by posting a lot on social media (and I'm not the only one who thought this was silly: https://xkcd.com/635/ ). Then a bunch of Macedonian teenagers proved it worked in 2016.
It is very difficult to predict the future.