Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.22-053931/https://www.ft.com/content/bbc80e1c-60a7-4f3d-a9a1-a4e68cf36912
In the past, established media organisations largely followed the same news agenda, within national boundaries. But in an increasingly borderless and splintered information environment, the old gatekeepers and norms are increasingly bypassed.
This has led to the ongoing bifurcation of publishing platforms online, including social media, into overtly right- and left-leaning spaces, where different agendas abound. As a dual citizen of X and Bluesky, there are clear differences in the topics I see on the two platforms.
Here’s another weakness of the misinformation discourse: that this is uniquely a problem on one “side”. Research finds that while America’s conservatives are on average more likely to believe false statements about climate change, liberals are more likely to believe false statements about nuclear power. Other studies of the US find those who went to college are no better judges of news veracity than those with only high school education.
I don’t highlight this to criticise any particular group. Quite the contrary. I do so to emphasise that most people — left, right, more and less educated — simply don’t interrogate every claim they encounter.
Humans are efficiency-maximisers, seeking shortcuts at every opportunity. The truth is the vast majority of us are never going to invest time fact-checking or evaluating all the information we consume. If it seems plausible and comes from a source we don’t actively distrust, that’s good enough.
Tricky. Bifurcation certainly is the right word here but claiming that both sides are equal participants doesn’t quite cut it.
I’d be willing to settle on “both sides do it, but one more than the other”. And often the motivations are quite different, e.g. hate against minorities on one side, hate against the haters on the other.
The problem in the USA is that what looks balanced (red vs blue, Republicans vs Democrats) really isn’t: it’s a huge fascist mob against everybody else.
Far-right populism does not only embrace but squeeze every drop out of (social) media influencing. We can learn something from this, but not to the point of copying their disregard of truth and ethics.
It is bifurcation because both sides are completely blind to the issues that drive them. What you’re saying suggests that you are quick to brush those issues and ignore your own. Not every MAGA / Orban / PiS or whatever voter is an evil sociopath. They might have issues that are entirely unaddressed by the other side and choose a lesser evil for them because they were taught you can rely only on yourself by all brands of neoliberalism.
That is an extremely broad statement which I can’t accept just like that, you’re going to have to back it up with sth, explain yourself.
Also, what both sides? It’s kinda obvious in the US but you now bring specifically European arguments and the European political landscape has more than two sides.
In most places with declining democracy all of the major parties are neoliberals pretending to be either conservatives or liberal left.
When conservatives vote for right wing politicians promising them to bring back the jobs they are deceived the same way as liberals voting for centrist politicians promising wealth for everyone who tries. Neither delivers on their promise so which side is really achieving anything? Maybe both are beating a drum to a war that benefits only the wealthy?