I can't put my finger on it precisely, but it feels like there are outside influences radicalizing people via social media with an ultimate goal of destabilizing the United States.
Or maybe American corporations amplified American problems while chasing money like usual, and then problems present themselves based on American realities.
No need to look for external causes, although blaming external actors also aligns with American historical actions.
I think it is often coordinated but I doubt all of it is “outside influence.” It doesn’t take many extreme nazi/far right folk to make a dent and they can easily coordinate a small group to trash a subreddit to be more effective.
The oligarchs want us to fight each other, rather than fight them. Divide and conquer has never failed them. Push the culture wars to distract from the class war.
Or it's just cathartic to laugh at the king, even by the king's vassels (Guardian). Are foreign powers weaponizing US dysfunctional to undermine US society, sure. Are their collective impact remotely as effective as dysfunctional US media weaponizing said US dysunfction for views for massive domestic and international audiences, probably not. Past some point ground reality in US is doing most of the work, pressing these buttons by external forces is just filler work to pass the time. It's not even active measures to undermine US society at this point when US society is doing most of the undermining.
I think there are probably outside influences involved. But also, we've already had a civil war that predates the internet by a long shot, and I don't think we necessarily need outside influence for this to be an outcome given a lot of the incentives for radicalized viewpoints.
With such a large, expansive, and diverse population we are a country with many nations inside it. There has certainly been a long history of different viewpoints in different areas, dating back to the decades long debates over the creation of the constitution and bill of rights.
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You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why there's a murder problem in a country with a boatload of guns, lax restrictions on violent media, and a culture where infringing on someone's right to do anything can be interpreted as "totalitarian".
The “foreign influence” part is when mass shootings are a fraction of a fraction of the deaths, yet 50% of the news coverage. Media publishes sensational pieces about what consumers demand - consumer demand is increasingly driven by online discourse, which is free to manipulate easily.
The best kind of misinformation is misinformation that is true but not representative of the real situation. Have you checked our heart disease deaths? It is *factually* an issue many orders of magnitude more important to the average American. And yet…zero discussion seems to happen about it online?
And why wouldn’t there be foreign influence? It’s quite an easy checklist:
* do Russia and China have the technical capability to make social media accounts and post in English?: Yes, obviously.
* do Russia and China have any motive to drive fearful divisive narratives in the US?: Yes - we are their primary geopolitical opponent
With both of these true, to assume they’re not doing it for some reason out of kindness requires a lot of mental gymnastics.
In Germany there was a guy building homemade weapons who attempted to shoot up a Synagogue in Halle. It was all over the news. There is more frequent coverage because there are more shootings. No foreign power needed.
It doesn't take foreign influence for shocking violence to get attention. Sensational news has been a big part of mass media as long as mass media has existed.
No but foreign influence does help when any comment pointing out that there are things more important for the country to fix than mass shootings(heart disease and obesity) are immediately downvoted and mocked.
Again, it doesn't suggest anything about foreign influence for a person to disagree with you. Telling people not to worry about (increasing) spectacular violence because they're more likely to die in a car accident reads as if you're changing the subject because you don't want to talk about it.
Thats my entire point. You’re talking about something that simply does not exist. But when nearly all of the online discourse acts as if we are less safe now, it’s easy to believe that is true. Even being aware of the statistics sometimes I feel that way.
Sensationalist media has always been a thing. Yet, at the exact same time geopolitical opponents were given a direct input to the media consumed by the average American, sentiment becomes much more negative.
I wouldn't count social media as the media. I certainly see social media and political groups/movements as having foreign influence. I see the media proper as just about the money.
No, I’m telling you that sensational media is driven by demand.
Demand from consumers who interact with the internet.
Consumers who, on the internet, ONLY see upvoted comments about masa shootings and see anything talking about the more deadly issue of heart disease/obesity downvoted and mocked.
