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Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

economist.com

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Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#31

Post by Dylan16807 »

himinlomax wrote: post #24
mhoad wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly“ seems like an odd takeaway without also talking about the firehose of misinformation that is social media.

That should be a good hint to reconsider your assumption that misinformation is that big of a problem. This "fake news" nonsense has all the hallmarks of a moral panic, in line with satanic abuse of the 80s or terrorim radicalization of the 2000s. Not to say it's not an actual problem, but it seems to me to be more of an excuse for the ole' media gatekeepers to do whatever to hang onto their power.

This is a weird comment to read. I think misinformation is a big problem, and I don't blame it on fake news, which is a niche problem.

From what I've seen misinformation is usually just lies, not pretending to be news.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#32

Post by fuzzy2 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #22
mhoad wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly“ seems like an odd takeaway without also talking about the firehose of misinformation that is social media.

With internet, you have much higher chance of knowing stuff is misinformation, though. Or a chance of knowing what you were taught in school was wrong or biased (I was taught that the civil war wasn't really about slavery and that Hawaii really wanted to be part of the US without mentioning the colonialism bits, for example). Pre-internet, if your misinformation came from the state, a biased news source, or your scho…

> With internet, you have much higher chance of knowing stuff is misinformation, though.

Not really though? Remember that people still fall for the most hilariously badly made phishing mails etc. Not everyone is capable of determining whether they’re currently viewing the truth or maybe some skewed part of it or outright lies. And then there’s just so much information on the net. Do _you_ know the agenda of all the sites you visit?

I believe this isn’t something that can be fully taught either. (As in teaching a mathematical method or algorithm or whatever.) You can only try to make people aware as much as possible and hope for the best.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#33

Post by pjc50 »

netsharc wrote: post #14
baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…

At least Yeltsin's (why Elzin?) observations are probably quite accurate. But nowadays it seems like people are getting mad based on partial information (sometimes just 140 characters) or lies and misinformation. For example the paranoia against Muslims is based on incorrect perceptions of how many Muslims there are: https://www.statista.com/statistics/952909/perceptions-on-re... , and this on top of the perception t…

"Elzin" is a romanisation of Ельцин. It's not the usual one, as it leads to a different pronunciation. baybal2 appears to be (from this and previous comments) a native Russian speaker who remembers the Soviet Union.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#34

Post by baybal2 »

romanoderoma wrote: post #16
baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…

> and in fact, there are revolutions happening. it would be interesting to know who's benefiting from these revolutions it would also be interesting to understand if they really are revolutions or not I am more inclined to call them riots and I am afraid that a number of them are steered by people with very bad intentions Internet simply made propaganda easier and more effective, for the good but also for he bad p.s:…

> p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down.

I beg you thing otherwise. I spent my first 5 years of life, 1990-1995, with my mother shuttling in between a country which I would rather not name, and Russia, where my father lived until she was able to secure Russian citizenship, and a Russian birth certificate for me.

People in early nineties Russia were going crazy from all novelties they saw for the first time in their lives. Either in 1995, or in 1996, the first Western (actually South Korean) supermarket in the town was JAMPACKED with people for months after opening despite it being quite a huge warehouse store style supermarket, and very far away from the city. People were making reservations to get into it.

On the other hand, people previously in position of social prominence, affluence, and power were in a such deep shock for years on end, that some very literally died from starvation because they didn't know how the money are supposed to be earned from something that is not a government.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#36

Post by roenxi »

mhoad wrote: post #3
cujo wrote: post #2

Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…

“People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly“ seems like an odd takeaway without also talking about the firehose of misinformation that is social media.

> firehose of misinformation

Relative to what? The last decade has been devastating to the credibility of conventional news sources. With the advent of the internet, they are literally just ordinary people voicing badly thought out opinions and generating gossip.

The number of stories that turn out to be low-key hoaxes where the story was fabricated are probably the same now as they ever were, but an order of magnitude more are being caught. I'm often speechless by how badly all politicians are misrepresented when I compare reporting to actual transcripts of what was said.

I don't especially trust social media news. But people who are paid to generate news aren't about to admit nothing is going on today. And too many important media stories were just wrong.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#38

Post by netcan »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #30
netcan wrote: post #20

It's kind of ironic that people educated in social science tend to have idealistic or just legible, few factor theories about something this complex. I mean complex in the strong sense. Early theories were about "access to information unleashing a wave of democratisation. " Current theories are about foreign and domestic intelligence manipulating social media. The internet is an era. Eras have a lot going on. The way…

>>The internet is, OTOH, obviously structurally inclined to being an agent of chaos. Decentralization != chaos. On the contrary, it can be far more stable for the forces of coordination, allowing for greater production of knowledge and intelligent action. See Wikipedia.

I meant chaos in a more casual sense of "disruption of status quo." Old media was a lot less inclined to get behind any old revolution that comes along.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#39

Post by romanoderoma »

baybal2 wrote: post #23
netsharc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Yeltsin's (why Elzin?) observations are probably quite accurate. But nowadays it seems like people are getting mad based on partial information (sometimes just 140 characters) or lies and misinformation. For example the paranoia against Muslims is based on incorrect perceptions of how many Muslims there are: https://www.statista.com/statistics/952909/perceptions-on-re... , and this on top of the perception t…

The "Intellectuals" in the West think of commoners no better than CPSU members though of their "prole" chattels. I'd say common people are even better than them at making thought connections when things relate to daily life, and something obvious. I highly, highly doubt that you can make somebody truly "mad with 140 characters," Most proletarians who go on fuming these days are ones who genuinely are pissed off at so…

> but that something is not that obvious to people up on the social ladder.

I think that's a bit of simplification.

The idea that people in charge cannot understand them it's as old as modern humanity (hence 5-6 thousands years old)

I believe that a good part of that "being easily pissed" has been engineered by the same people you think are too up on the social ladder to understand.

What bothers me is that most of those who are genuinely pissed are pissed about things that don't actually matter for them.

What does it matter to the proletarians if a famous person (say an actor) says something pro or against Brexit (for example). You have your vote, you cast it and that's what really matters to your category: representation.

Have you ever read the comments below some of these tweets?

I do not think that kind of reaction is really genuine or has anything to do with the situation of working class in 2020.

I could be wrong, but I think that that kind of knee jerk reaction has been fabricated.

To make an extremely simplified example: in an episode of "the boys" (the TV show) one of the new character says to an old timer who's have more followers than her (the incumbent in the posted article) something on the line of "you have followers, I have soldiers"

People up on the social ladder are up there also because they are good at exploiting human weaknesses and aren't afraid nor ashamed of doing it for their own personal gain.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#40

Post by refurb »

baybal2 wrote: post #5
cujo wrote: post #2

Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…

I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…

This story reminds me of when the Soviets fought their way into Germany in 1945, and eventually Berlin. The Red Army soldiers saw the wealth that Germany possessed and it pissed them off even more. They thought "why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?".

The theory is that it was a contribution to the brutal treatment of Germans immediately before and after the end of the war (beyond the retribution for the German atrocities in the East).

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