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Topic: Internet and Democracy (Read 22504 times) |
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Gadsubone
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #25 on: Nov 21st, 2013, 3:49am » |
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Democracy is not just about granting freedoms; it is also about accepting ... More often than not, the internet allows us to skirt these ...The internet is a place of great personal freedom, where people can place their views and do what they wish with much less chance of getting called out for what they say or do
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goodRiddler
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #26 on: Nov 21st, 2013, 11:32pm » |
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The internet in itself is good for democracy, but it can be used to hurt democracy.
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EdwardSmith
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #28 on: Jul 7th, 2014, 10:50pm » |
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The internet lets you understand other peoples point of view.
It brings together different cultures and lets them talk together without war.
So I think it is democratic..
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towr
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #29 on: Jul 8th, 2014, 9:00am » |
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on Jul 7th, 2014, 10:50pm, EdwardSmith wrote:| The internet lets you understand other peoples point of view. |
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In theory.
In practice, it lets you find people that already share your point of view, and lets you avoid people that have a different one.
And it doesn't help that google and the like create filter bubble that even makes it more difficult to escape that effect.
[e]fixed typos[/e]
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| « Last Edit: Jul 13th, 2014, 10:04pm by towr » |
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Grimbal
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #30 on: Jul 12th, 2014, 5:57am » |
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on Jul 8th, 2014, 9:00am, towr wrote:| In practice, it let's you find people that already share your point of view, and let's you avoid people that have a different one. |
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Hm... so you disagree with him? 
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towr
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #31 on: Jul 14th, 2014, 9:20am » |
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on Jul 12th, 2014, 5:57am, Grimbal wrote:| Hm... so you disagree with him? |
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Yes.
But just because the internet would let me avoid him, doesn't mean it forces me to.
And there's a very good chance I share more points of view with Edward than with a random person on the internet. Certainly more than with a person I'd meet on a fundamentalist Christian site, or a conspiracy theory blog, or some alternative "medicine" website.
I don't think the people there would be much inclined to help me understand them anyway, that would require them to accept that skepticism of their beliefs is a valid position.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 14th, 2014, 9:40am by towr » |
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EdwardSmith
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #32 on: Jul 14th, 2014, 10:46am » |
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I agree that we would probably not visit sites that do not share our points of view, but they are there anyway and the internet has a less biased view than newspapers or tv.
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towr
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #33 on: Jul 14th, 2014, 11:30am » |
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The internet has a vast range of very biased views; you can't just average them out and say that makes the whole less biased. And even if the extremes did somehow balance (which is a question in itself), there's still the issue that people don't make a balanced selection from what's on offer. It's like how people could get a balanced meal from the supermarket, but many come home with mostly junk food.
Another reason I don't think the internet (to the extent people partake of it) is less biased than newspapers or TV is that newspapers and TV are mass-market media, they have to appeal to a lot of people at once. This is not true on the internet, where anyone can vent or seek out views that are as extreme in any direction they desire. TV/newspapers can't really afford such extremism, because they'd lose too many viewers/readers; they have to be popular to be profitable.
Although, admittedly, there's a difference between newspapers/TV here (in the Netherlands) and, say, the US. (From what I can tell over here.) What I see of Fox news does seem pretty extreme to me (but then, I do almost exclusively see it through the goggles of "the Daily Show" and "the Colbert report", so that's hardly a balanced view of Fox News (I'd hope) ).
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EdwardSmith
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #34 on: Jul 16th, 2014, 2:37pm » |
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Dont be fooled.
The news is not the news. It is the version of the news of the powers that be.
We are told just enough so that we can be controlled.
The internet however has become too large to control and it allows you enough information to read between the lines.
Newspapers are only good for crosswords and sport.
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JiNbOtAk
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #35 on: Jul 16th, 2014, 10:04pm » |
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Admit it, the first thing that we searched for when we started using the internet was porn.
Just had to put that in, lest we forget how important porn internet is in our life. 
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towr
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #36 on: Jul 16th, 2014, 11:30pm » |
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on Jul 16th, 2014, 2:37pm, EdwardSmith wrote:Always good advise.
But bear in mind people fool themselves more often than others do.
Quote:| The news is not the news. It is the version of the news of the powers that be. |
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In a free, capitalist society it's the version of the news that people will pay to read (or pay to put advertisement next to). They're powers that are, I suppose, but not typically the political powers one considers when one speaks of the powers that be. And there's invariable a choice of different slants of news, liberal, conservative, even paranoid and nutcase (just like on the internet).
In less free societies, like China, the government does control the newspapers, but they also control the internet. So you're still not better off there.
And of course, facebook recently, quite embarrassingly, revealed how they manipulate the "news" they propagate from one friend to another (they've always done that, but not always for science, which apparently is worse). And it's not just them.
Your window on the internet is being manipulated; if you think it's objective you're fooling yourself. On the internet you're a commodity, and you're being pushed around to get the most value out of you. Sure, you can try to resist it, but you can't escape the effect, you can only believe you do. That's the "great" thing about the internet, you can believe everything you want,. whether it's true or not, and find people and "evidence" to support it.
On the internet, the "news" is whatever you want it to be.
As long as you avoid the loudest voices, which are of course, typically, the same ones as in the real world, because money talks.
Quote:We are told just enough so that we can be controlled.
The internet however has become too large to control and it allows you enough information to read between the lines. |
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If you believe that, you've been told just enough to be controlled.
It's an illusion to think that the amount of information matters much; it's more a problem than anything else because people can't read, let alone evaluate, it all. It's people's access to the information that matters. And that invariable goes through a few big names like google, bing (haha, just kidding), facebook etc. Control them and you control the vast majority of what people see. That's how China can easily control what their population sees of the internet: make everything that's objectionable hard enough to find that people don't bother.
Quote:| Newspapers are only good for crosswords and sport. |
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That's ridiculous.
They're also good for lining bird cages and house-training puppies.
But seriously, it comes across a bit paranoid. While there's a definite slant to the news, newspapers don't invent or cover up natural disasters, wars, etc. And manipulation of the news applies mainly to the news where the "powers that be" (readers,advertisers) have a vested interest in, which is just a selection of topics, and usually only a few facets of each topic.
And none of those problems go away by moving online, which adds its own problems rather than solve any the mass media have.
The only reason news on the internet might seem more objective is because it "happens to" correspond to what you believe -- because that's what you seek out.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 16th, 2014, 11:30pm by towr » |
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Grimbal
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #37 on: Jul 18th, 2014, 3:08pm » |
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on Jul 16th, 2014, 10:04pm, JiNbOtAk wrote:| Admit it, the first thing that we searched for when we started using the internet was porn. |
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In my case, internet was still in ASCII. Not very exciting.
My first encounter with internet is when I wanted to erase a file and instead of "rm", I typed "rn".
Back to the point. It seems to me the Internet is moving from a model where people communicate with each other towards a model where people communicate with web sites.
Instead of exchanging videos, people upload them to youtube. Other people then download them.
Instead of asking a friend when they look for a good restaurant, they ask Siri.
We might end up all tethered to a super AI that responds in a way to confirm our believs. Or, worse, an AI that responds in a way to make us believe what the AI's owners want us to believe. That tells us where to eat, where to go on holidays, and who is the candidate we should elect.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 18th, 2014, 3:19pm by Grimbal » |
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movie4fun
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Re: Internet and Democracy
« Reply #38 on: Aug 18th, 2014, 6:50pm » |
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ofcorse more to freedom than democracy.
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