As Alexis de Tocqueville said, over 150 years ago, "As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
He also said the only thing that would save the fragile democratic experiment would be public institution (the town hall meetings) where people could honestly and openly share ideas and opinions. So instead of town halls we have data silos where /r/conservative bans everyone who questions the party line, and chapo islands where at least I don't hate everyone
To expand on your point, this is highly profitable for advertisers and probably useful for three-letter agencies (CIA, NSA) to have people in highly "segregated" web forums where they only hear from like-minded people and are not challenged on their views, and where the mainstream/default forums (FB, Twitter) are pretty much only state-approved content and censor any meaningful discussion or criticism. It is really a loss to not have town halls or some type of open forum for debate. But then again, critical thinking isn't really a part of the K-12 educational system and is certainly not encouraged here in the US for adults either.
As Alexis de Tocqueville said, over 150 years ago, "As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
Source: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/alexis_de_tocqueville_153755
Explains this perfectly.
He also said the only thing that would save the fragile democratic experiment would be public institution (the town hall meetings) where people could honestly and openly share ideas and opinions. So instead of town halls we have data silos where /r/conservative bans everyone who questions the party line, and chapo islands where at least I don't hate everyone
To expand on your point, this is highly profitable for advertisers and probably useful for three-letter agencies (CIA, NSA) to have people in highly "segregated" web forums where they only hear from like-minded people and are not challenged on their views, and where the mainstream/default forums (FB, Twitter) are pretty much only state-approved content and censor any meaningful discussion or criticism. It is really a loss to not have town halls or some type of open forum for debate. But then again, critical thinking isn't really a part of the K-12 educational system and is certainly not encouraged here in the US for adults either.