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Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

economist.com

251–254 of 254 posts

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is clearly imperialism pure and simple. The US uses its financial stronghold on internet companies to essentially dictate what is allowed or not in public discuss. You don't need to be very smart to see that Google, FB, Twitter are bound to US norms and regulations (and its surveillance state) and give very little thought to what other countries need/want. If you think this is normal, just think again.

This is more serious on AppStore / Google Play / Kindle. American companies effectively censor worldwide expression.

Censorship? Surely not! Isn't the USA the land of the free? Freedom of speech and all that?

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#252
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine corporate policy of SF or Menlo Park sets what people in Mumbai or Seoul can discuss regarding SARS-Cov-2? The thing is, for most countries, having the US policy has been far more liberal than what's allowed to be discussed locally. And the set of things you can discuss on social media is far broader than what you can get into the local media discussion. Having SF set policy has (mostly) been amazin…

tbf the anti-"woke" movement in the UK is the decades old British "political correctness gone mad" meme with an imported name.

I think it has a lot more support than "political correctness gone mad", but maybe that's because I'm older now, and I'm 100% anti-woke.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#253

The rest of the world should be aggressively promoting their culture, values and language, just like the US. Japan is doing a very good job of that with the proliferation of weebs, but others are not. Europe barely exports any culture or media - especially in their own languages. Most things EU are regionally locked and if they aren't, they are behind paywalls or accessible through American networks. Were I to try an…

Don't you have access to satellite TV? For instance ASTRA is full of international TV channels. And in the past, shortwave radio was the equivalent, you could receive radio stations from (nearly) all over the world.

I'm honestly surprised that it's still a thing. TV hasn't been part of my subscriptions, household or connection (no TV cables in the house) for more than a decade. I don't know a single person over the age of 60 with a TV subscription or connection.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#254

It's not a recent phenomena - it's been happening since WWII. The weirdest part is - the stronger someone is influenced by American political culture, the more they'll tell you about how awful America is.

> It's not a recent phenomena - it's been happening since WWII. Yes, they don't seem to understand their point. QAnon/BLM would always have made it out pre internet, just it would have taken years. Things now are quick. Even early internet ie 2000-2010 it was much slower. The turbocharge really is how quickly it changes and mutates. The feedback loop is what's different.

QAnon wouldn't made it out because it was so stupid that at pre-internet pace the whole thing would have blown over before it got exported to other countries.

Even BLM might not have a chance. In that case you don't even have to guess. You can see to what degree previous black protest were important because BLM is just latest occurrence of something that happened in USA multiple times already.

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