this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Anti-Fascism
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Wow.
Honestly, extremely impressive work digging up all that info, great work to the team.
This is what real journalism looks like.
I recall during the peak of the pandemic reading an article about how a massive amount of disinformation could be sourced to just a small collective of individual "influencers", and I wonder if we had more people like these folks fighting against disinformation/hate, how many fewer folks would've died during the pandemic :/
Hmm.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think thus is sort of a chicken and egg problem.
We can agree both are bad, but I feel like 1 begets the other. It's a demand meeting supply situation.
That is to say, the existence of the platform encourages people to step up and use it, including fascists.
And the clamoring crowd of fascists inherently means someone will go "hmm, it'd be profitable to give these people a platform..."
So as long as 1 exists, the other will materialize imo.
The only solution is stamping out and calling out both
For example, what about the advertisers associated with StoneToss, and websites the perpetuate his work's advertisers?
A lot if advertisers kick up a fuss if their adverts show up next to nazi posts. That can be an effective measure to start trusting the thumbscrews.
Unfortunately we currently have one of the largest platforms for advertising being run by a nazi sympathizer so that's really difficult to overcome.
But at least that one is slowly failing and hemorrhaging money.
Partly. I spent some time building a career to go into legacy media. And I got a few feet in before COVID (and my own demons) ended that path.
Thing is, some people just don't give a shit about being factual, they want to be first; they want to be the source; they want to be the focus. And while I have no metrics if misinformation is more concentrated in legacy media, it felt more prominent.
But legacy media is just one subgroup of how humans communicate. Misinformation isn't predicated on any system of communication, but on communication in general, and the persons within (look at the telephone game, for example).