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Manufactured consensus on x.com

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Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#61

Post by kridsdale3 »

jampa wrote: post #59
mrdoops wrote: post #20

Manufactured consensus is everywhere there is enough attention to incentivize such an effort. The worst by far is Reddit.

I've been using Reddit for 12 years. After the API fiasco, the quality dropped a lot. Most popular subreddits are now astroturfed, where every week there is a crusade against something (First it was for banning Twitter, now it is against banning AI Art). Even in regular posts, Reddit has been a hive mind lately. If you scroll through the comments, most of them will have the same opinion over and over, with comments t…

I've been there for 17 (!) years, and I could have written pretty much the same message as you since around 2012. Dennis Kucinich was a huge campaign!

But I agree, since the API thing, it has sucked HARD.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#64

Post by krapp »

ty6853 wrote: post #54
cmdli wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the few days following the election, there was a flood of conservative posters all over the place. After about a week, they all disappeared and Reddit returned to its usual politics. I think the difference you are seeing is an atypical amount of conservatism, not the other way around. Most people who voted for Harris still do not think that the lack of a primary was the issue.

Probably not, but as someone who didn't vote for either major party, nor am I a conservative, it was glaringly obvious that ramming through without lube someone who totally dive-bombed the prior primary might have avoided a sanity check to filter primary issues.

The strongest candidate for either party to field would be an incumbent President, especially one who has already beaten the other party's frontrunner. They have the advantage of celebrity, a record and the bully pulpit. The second strongest candidate would logically be an incumbent Vice President.

The Democratic Party may have been a shitshow but Harris was the best possible option once Biden was no longer in contention. And the margin between her and Trump turned out to be slim, so a Harris win wouldn't have been impossible.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#65

Post by ethagknight »

cmdli wrote: post #42
ty6853 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most glaring example of this was how reddit did a total 180 before/after the election. Before the election questioning putting a candidate in without a primary was sacrilege. Afterwards it was a popularly supported reason for the loss. It was like watching an inflated balloon of propaganda deflate.

In the few days following the election, there was a flood of conservative posters all over the place. After about a week, they all disappeared and Reddit returned to its usual politics. I think the difference you are seeing is an atypical amount of conservatism, not the other way around. Most people who voted for Harris still do not think that the lack of a primary was the issue.

Ive noticed very clearly a material change even on this site, where a comment with a conservative viewpoint would get downvoted into oblivion, and now I seem to see far more diversified opinions. Which is great, I want that.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#66

Post by seadan83 »

ethagknight wrote: post #47
mrdoops wrote: post #20

Manufactured consensus is everywhere there is enough attention to incentivize such an effort. The worst by far is Reddit.

Manufactured consensus is literally the name of the game for the big news networks. News is/was paid vast sums by the government to tell a certain story. That is Manufactured Consensus. Some countries do a better job making the news seem like a separate arm from the government. The entire point is to direct the populace. That is not the core focus of X, even though it is entirely susceptible to it, and will be encoun…

Outside of PBS, do you have evidence for this claim: "News is/was paid vast sums by the government to tell a certain story"?

> Alternative views definitely have reach.

Yes, but are we in a 1984 situation where that reach is managed behind the scenes. Reach, but perhaps not too much reach. With respect to the chart, how do we know that Twitter users are not largely partitioned? How representative is the fact you saw something compared to other "communities" on X?

All the while, even if you saw a 'dissenting' chart, the fact the chart exists is direct evidence to the power of a subtle shadow-ban effect. It's not about tears and whining, it's that a single act by 'powerful' accounts can control who gets visibility, and who does not. The point is that it is not you, the community that controls what is popular, but it is the powerful accounts that do. That is the issue.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#67

Post by like_any_other »

cmdli wrote: post #42
ty6853 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most glaring example of this was how reddit did a total 180 before/after the election. Before the election questioning putting a candidate in without a primary was sacrilege. Afterwards it was a popularly supported reason for the loss. It was like watching an inflated balloon of propaganda deflate.

In the few days following the election, there was a flood of conservative posters all over the place. After about a week, they all disappeared and Reddit returned to its usual politics. I think the difference you are seeing is an atypical amount of conservatism, not the other way around. Most people who voted for Harris still do not think that the lack of a primary was the issue.

'Disappeared' of course means that they were banned.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#68

Post by seadan83 »

dismalaf wrote: post #58
RankingMember wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The far-left denies the Holocaust? On what grounds?

It's usually some mental gymnastics related to Israel, Gaza, etc... Because many Muslims deny the holocaust, much of the far-left has co-opted that rhetoric. It's super visible on TikTok, for example. Edit - some comments below this seem to doubt. Just go on TikTok to politically charged posts about Palestine. This whole thread is about social media. Not holocaust denial on the mainstream left, specifically the far-l…

Sounds like sampling bias TBH. The 'far-left' and the 'twitter-left' (or the tik-tok left) are not all quite the same thing either. I don't think you can draw much conclusions about people outside of a platform based on either Twitter or TikTok.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#69

Post by alabastervlog »

ty6853 wrote: post #24
mrdoops wrote: post #20

Manufactured consensus is everywhere there is enough attention to incentivize such an effort. The worst by far is Reddit.

The most glaring example of this was how reddit did a total 180 before/after the election. Before the election questioning putting a candidate in without a primary was sacrilege. Afterwards it was a popularly supported reason for the loss. It was like watching an inflated balloon of propaganda deflate.

That's bizarre. Putting her at the top of the ticket was very clearly the better of two bad options (it was too late for the better options, by the time the call was made).

There exist people who think Biden had a better shot and replacing him with Harris was a mistake? Did they not look at his approval ratings earlier that year, then look up what that's historically meant for presidential re-elections? Dude was gonna lose, and by the time of the replacement he was likely gonna get crushed. The replacement probably helped down-ballot races, given how badly Bien was likely to perform, so was a good idea even though she lost.

Like, yes, it was per se bad but people blaming that for the defeat is... confusing to me.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#70

Post by Philpax »

fouc wrote: post #5

Reading that I couldn't help but think there's parallels to HN. At least HN tries to be transparent about "the algorithm", and it's essentially a dumb algorithm compared to what X/FB/etc use.

Is it that transparent? I did not know about the vast majority of the items on this list until I encountered it: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
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