This is Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy

Only takes me one minute and thirty six seconds to convince anyone I meet of this point: "This is Extremely Dangerous to our Democracy" - ▶ this video

Same here. I thought it was so obvious and then called out publicly and exposed. It doesn’t matter. I think that as long as the right people in the media are greased it doesn't enter the mass consciousness. If you look at the mass media, you will see that the actors on the news will show emotions around certain subjects, they will make a grind or a disgusted face while talking about a problem at a company or a political movement. That is what change people mind when repeated many times. This video (from a shadow banned account) show how the media talk with one voice. ▶ this video

Something I noticed after I watched an episode of Stoic Finance[1] about a possible "impending crash of the Chinese economy" is that YouTube started recommending about a dozen "independent" channels. I put the word independent in air quotes because they all have near-identical looking title cards with the similar fonts, some variant of the phrasing "The collapse has begun!", and the same-ish content. Different presenters, different channels, same message. Over and over. And over. Reminds me of the "This is Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy" clip that edited together dozens of apparently independent local news channels saying the same script, verbatim.[2] You've got to wonder if there's someone with deep pockets trying to influence public opinion on China? Or is it just the same thing as the "local" news channels, where a bunch of YouTubers have been "bought" by a corporation that send them material to read? I would love to know if anyone on Hacker News knows something about this kind of thing... [1] In case you're interested: link ...and some copy-cats clips I recommend opening in a private tab unless you want to be inundated with even more clones: link link link link [2] Entertaining and terrifying: ▶ this video

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. (in case someone missed this, it's incredible: ▶ this video )

All together, everyone! ▶ this video "This sharing of biased and false news has become all to common on social media" ... say the individual talking heads, all paid by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates 193 TV stations in the USA, covering 40% of US households. You'd be mad to think that consolidated control of information, the endgame of "mainstream" media, is of benefit to society. "Mainstream" media is financed either directly by very rich individuals, who then use their control of the thing they own (even just by controlling its hiring policies, to give like-minded people a voice) to spam their own agenda on the populace, or a generic money-making enterprise that then deals with less-affluent people who want to spam the populace (advertisers).

Right that would be extremely dangerous to our democracy[1] Only the TV and mainstream media are allowed to manipulate opinions. [1] ▶ this video

Phrasing seems a bit orchestrated, and seems like it's meant to get you to give up because it's happening no matter what. That video with "and this is dangerous to our democracy" comes to mind. Edit: Found it ▶ this video

> The firehose of falsehood, also known as firehosing, is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (like news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency. An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin. ▶ this video

> Local news has a better hit ratio, but it’s still like 5% maybe at best on any given day. ▶ this video Local news isn't immune either.

▶ this video edit: To add more color: "local news" is increasingly not local anymore. The video I linked to is a collection of "local" stations that are owned by Sinclair reading from the same script rather literally.

> This video (from a shadow banned account) show how the media talk with one voice. ▶ this video That was that Sinclair media thing. The fact that they have independent teams serving many smaller markets gave it away. If (say) CNN were to do the same thing, they could probably reach an even bigger audience with one guy reading the script, which can't be exposed with a supercut.

The consolidation of media, ongoing for decades, has created concentrations of power that leave the entire media system vulnerable to people like Elon Musk. Twitter and Facebook are two particularly dense concentrations of power, but the general problem goes back a century at least and it's a problem with media generally, not specific to technology. Sinclair Broadcast Group ( ▶ this video ) and William Randolph Hearst come to mind particularly.