Olga Lautman: How media failed in a nutshell. Who cares about democracy, mass suffering, concentration camps, danger to

[highplainsdem]

US national security, potential arrests of politicians, activists, journalists, etc as long as ratings are good?

Link to tweet

Chuck Todd is getting a well-deserved verbal beating for this on Twitter.

Link to tweet

[Blue Owl]

1. Fuck the M$M with a giant saguaro cactus

[TomCADem]

6. How Marcos Jr weaponised social media to rewrite history and win power - A Preview for Trump Part 2

The theme of outrage I see on DU regarding why Trump won is based on an outdated understanding of where millions of Americans get their news and information, which is social media. Unlike traditional journalism, there is no vetting of stories, particularly stories that are recommended, based on accuracy. To the contrary, stories are recommended based on propensity to click, which favors outrageous, emotionally laden, conspiracy filled stories. Thus, the more outrageous and detached a candidate is, particularly when they are supported by a cult like following, the more likely misinformation will spread as was the case in Philippines.

Worse, with social media, there is no warning that indicates the social media recommendations are not based on accuracy or reliability even though you would normally believe that a recommendation would be based on accuracy. There is no disclosure regarding the ranking algorithm that social media platforms use. Indeed, many users of social media are under the assumption that social media is more reliable, because it is based on their own searches, because they do not know the basis for why certain stories are recommended and pushed.

https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/perspective/40015561

Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr’s landslide presidential election win was secured with a social media disinformation campaign that whitewashed his father’s brutally corrupt dictatorship, falsifying not only Philippine history but also his own education credentials.

* * *
To say that Marcos Jr won the presidential election by using social media as a propaganda tool is no exaggeration.

Bongbong masterminded a years-long strategic campaign on social media that has helped rebuild and polish his family’s image. Pro-Marcos propaganda has proliferated on social media – from glossy TikTok clips showing “fun times” during the Marcos era to YouTube videos declaring there was no martial law.

An official from political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica reportedly said it was approached by Marcos Jr to delete unfavourable records of the Marcos regime on social media platforms so he could gain momentum in the election.

[onecaliberal]

2. I will NEVER watch. Bought a weather radio.

Don’t give a fuck what the fascists are doing.

[tanyev]

3. Whew! Saving cable TV is a lot more important than saving democracy, amirite Chuck?

[TomCADem]

7. Inside the violent, misogynistic world of TikTok's star, Andrew Tate

The growth in misogyny and racism through social media is not an accident, but is due to a deliberate effort to leverage the algorithm to appeal to young men looking for ways to seduce and dominate women by being “an alpha male” and how to make a quick buck. Yet, progressives still think the reason why they lost is because of some random statement by Chuck Todd.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/06/andrew-tate-violent-misogynistic-world-of-tiktok-new-star

Styled as a self-help guru, offering his mostly male fans a recipe for making money, pulling girls and “escaping the matrix”, Tate has gone in a matter of months from near obscurity to one of the most talked about people in the world. In July, there were more Google searches for his name than for Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian.

His rapid surge to fame was not by chance. Evidence obtained by the Observer shows that followers of Tate are being told to flood social media with videos of him, choosing the most controversial clips in order to achieve maximum views and engagement.

The coordinated effort, involving thousands of members of Tate’s private online academy Hustler’s University and a network of copycat accounts on TikTok, has been described by experts as a “blatant attempt to manipulate the algorithm” and artificially boost his content. In less than three months, the strategy has earned him a huge following online and potentially made him millions of pounds, with 127,000 members now paying the £39 a month to join Hustler’s University community, many of them men and boys from the UK and US.

Yet despite much of the content appearing to break TikTok’s rules, which explicitly ban misogyny and copycat accounts, the platform appears to have done little to limit Tate’s spread or ban the accounts responsible. Instead, it has propelled him into the mainstream – allowing clips of him to proliferate, and actively promoting them to young users.

[highplainsdem]

8. Tate tweeted approval of Gaetz last night. Said Gaetz is "a badass." One pedophile trafficker admiring another.

[Cha]

4. omg.. Chucky Toadie Outs

himself Again.

[TomCADem]

5. Once Again. Another Commenter Fails To See That Traditional Media Is No Longer That Important

These posts themselves are an example of why Democrats and progressives lost. They fail to see that most Americans do not get their news or information from social media. Thus, by attacking traditional media, and ignoring the rapid growth of social media influencers like Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan, they just hasten the failure of media that they bemoan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/11/10/trump-voters-gen-z-memes-podcasts-joe-rogan/

President-elect Donald Trump’s road back to the White House weaved through testosterone-fueled corners of the internet, breaking from the circuit of daytime talk shows and local radio broadcasts.

Trump flexed his arms with podcasting National Football League players and chatted about aliens with YouTube wrestler Logan Paul. He served the Nelk Boys Chick-fil-A on his private jet “Trump Force One,” calling the group of YouTube pranksters a “modern-day Johnny Carson.” He riffed on surviving a July assassination attempt with the four-man comedy team behind “Flagrant,” a raunchy podcast that promises to deliver “unruly hot takes directly to your dome piece.”

The resulting memes, TikTok posts and YouTube videos landed Trump millions of views online — part of a sprawling online strategy that gave him a direct line to a giant fan base of young American men.

While many political strategists once viewed this group as liberal by default, young men between the ages of 18 and 29 swung enormously for Trump, shifting rightward by eight percentage points since 2020, according to network exit polls.