"Biden warns about conspiracies flourishing in the US: 'The rest of the world's wondering about us'"
The rest of the world? Hell, I'm in the US, and I wonder wtf is going on, and how are we going to fix this?
We could start by regulating the word "News" and lay down a set of criteria that has to be met. Maybe have a license specifically for News and hold the bearer of said license to a higher standard of conduct because of the influence their broadcast has. Maybe figure a way to require all information being disseminated be substantiated. It may require that sources be disclosed. We've seen how "many people have said" is a bullshit line that too many people buy into without a thought. Maybe when a show that calls itself "News" or even indirectly suggests itself to be News spreads verifiable lies, we should heavily fine and threaten the broadcast license of the outlet as well as heavily fine the person who actually spoke the lies. If it's a repeat offense, perhaps the liar should be jailed.
I know it sounds like a first amendment thing, but if yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not protected speech on the grounds that its false and will reasonably lead to unnecessary harm, then using your national media platform to spread verifiable lies should also not be protected and subject to punishment.
Should be in dunk tank.
Conspiracies are flourishing because we're constantly being lied to or whiplashed by those in charge and we have no power. If people live in a system where any real self-determination is out of their hands, then of course they'll feel someone else is in charge. They'll feel like their world is being controlled by a puppet master. We spent the last year being told one thing in the media and by politicians, while they did another. We had to stay inside and wear masks because that was supposedly the only possible way forward. Then all the wealthy people went to parties and ate at restaurants and could do what they wanted. People aren't stupid and they noticed. It created a shit load of valid distrust in authority.
We also can't do anything about the way our country is won. If we're to go to war, it won't be the average voter who has anything to say about it. We had no say in response to covid. We didn't avoid real lockdowns because chuds protested. We avoided lockdown for the same reasons those protests got boosted in the media. The business interests wanted the country to remain open. They're fine with chuds getting laughed at on national TV over buying grass seed during a pandemic, as long as it's part of the conversation. The media buys directly into it because it's spectacle and that makes the silly shit right on par with real opinions.
Not to mention that Democrats indulged conspiracy theories throughout Trump's term. r/politics is one to talk about pushing conspiracies. They were fine with it then but of course they don't view it as a conspiracy. They lack the self-awareness to consider that conspiracy people they disagree with might be just like them. The same way an r/politics person was obsessed with Lev Parnas and all these intricate 13D chess moves there are people who feel the same way about JFK or 9/11.
The more these people fight to have conspiracy theorists censored and alienated and possibly arrested, the more it's just going to validate the idea that everyone is against them. Trying to make snopes the arbiter of facts and facebook the internet police is going to make it worse. Media platforms can't be good if they're not democratic and they can't be democratic if they're privately owned. All you end up with is state-backed private companies with extreme amounts of power and are removed by what laughable market forces might exist to keep them in check.
I’ve paid a lot of attention to the platforms that launch and try to democratize news sourcing and they’re all defeated by the fact that citizen journalists don’t have the time or money to supply all this information. At the end of the day everyone in the information chain needs to eat. Material conditions etc.
I would personally love to spend 5-10 hours of my week attending local meetings and reporting on the occurrences. I just super do not have the time or the money
It may require that sources be disclosed.
Russiagate is canceled.
I still can’t believe that’s what he looks like
Edit: I looked up the claim that the person in that picture is Zenz. The source? Adrian Zenz
I wonder what percentage of redditors have any idea at all how reporting the news actually works. Do they really not understand that anonymous sources are the mother's milk of reporting?
Everything western libs accuse AES countries of is a projection of what they want to do themselves or what they are already doing themselves.
This idea fucking owns. Give all the licensed reporters blue checks just like they have on Twitter. That will stop the erosion of the Liberal epistemology right in its tracks!
Every site should checkmarks. That way the checkmarks could be a sort of anti-Pinocchios thing.
Lib 1: "Jim Serious is my favorite reporter. He's a double check mark."
Lib 2: "I like Dakota Pretentious. She's a triple."
Lib 3: "Mike Neo-Lib is a quintuple. I follow all of his social."
Lib1 & Lib 2: "O-M-G we're gonna do that too!"
Later on it's discovered that Neo-Lib gets paid six figures a year by the CIA and the checkmark system is fully-controlled by big oil, big pharma, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, all other complexes, etc. The libs just ignore all of that. He's their biggest fave.
