@Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club
2026-10-04 09:22 UTC
Replies (7)
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@boatswain@infosec.pub 2026-10-05 05:31
That’s a bad headline, Reuters. Surveys don’t show how things work; they show what people think. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if it was true that social media was bad for democracy, but this isn’t enough to say that’s the case.
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@InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 2026-10-04 23:34
It spreads blatant lies. Not all rumors are lies, though.
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@LewdLemon@sh.itjust.works 2026-10-04 20:57
Oh, it “harms democracy”, doesn’t it? How about this headline: social media fuels a genocide by spreading rumors, Myanmar finds. But alas, that was 2017 and only brown people getting harmed in some far-away place, so it’s old news and nothing to hold Facebook accountable for, eh?
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@dhork@lemmy.world 2026-10-04 09:50
It’s more than just spreading rumors. Rumors have been spread for millenia, and democracy made it through OK. The difference is that the social media companies have a much broader reach than any sort of media congglamerate that came before it, and value engagement and attention above everything else. They understand that rumors generate attention, and their algorithmic feeds are designed to put whatever will generate more engagement in front of you. I wonder how much damage media titans like Hearst would have done today if they built their empires now, on top of social media feeds, instead of in print 125 years ago…
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@rumimevlevi@sh.itjust.works 2026-10-04 12:28
Not more than lobbies and billionaires
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@ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2026-10-05 07:17
And the biggest lie they spread is that social media is good for democracy.
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@it_depends_man@lemmy.world 2026-10-04 09:26
No source linked, so that’s just a rumor spread by reuters.