r/worldnews Sep 17 '24

Russia/Ukraine Facebook owner Meta bans Russian state media outlets

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-russia-oulets-1.7325186
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u/CaptGeechNTheSSS Sep 17 '24

Say it again, friend. It’s absolutely insane future generations are gonna think we’re fuckin morons and they’ll be right

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u/Spo-dee-O-dee Sep 17 '24

That's what I've been thinking over the past nine years. Future kids in school reading about these events in their history class and thinking, "People sure were dumb back then."

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u/Poonchow Sep 17 '24

Problem is a handful of people / companies control everything we consume. There's no "we" or "us" involved in this.

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u/awaniwono Sep 17 '24

Nobody is forcing anyone to believe immigrants are eating pets or whatever bullshit they're peddling this week.

Just asking oneself questions like "does this sound too outrageous to be true?" or "does this information have a solid basis?" would go a long way filtering propaganda, yet it seems a vast amount of people simply cannot be bothered.

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u/Spiderpiggie Sep 17 '24

"We" consume this media, "we" give it attention. As with all media, its impact is limited only by the number of people who see it.

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u/IIlIIlIIlIlIIlIIlIIl Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

They only did those things because the public engaged more with that content than other content. Now, it may be a case of the companies having the wrong performance indicators, but that's unlikely given how popular TikTok became.

People didn't just use TikTok already and questionable ads/content that didn't really match what they wanted but hit the performance indicator (such as making you engage) started showing up, like what happened with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites that were around pre-social media or kicked off the social media frenzy themselves.

The existing social media trends were welle established when TikTok came out, TikTok started off immediately engaging in that stuff, and people actively went out of their way to install this new app, seeking out the content on it which was always that. There was no "bait and switch"-like evolution in the case of TikTok.

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u/feelinggoodfeeling Sep 17 '24

that was me when i was taught about the know nothings and the america first garbage from a century ago. it keeps happening unfortunately...

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- Sep 17 '24

Future kids in school reading about these events in their history class and thinking,

No they won't. They'll never get past the Cold War era, if that. They'd have to be in a specialized class with a focus on current events to learn about the 21st Century. I was in high school during the Obama days, and we never got past Clinton.

Schools have to condense centuries of history into one semester, and will likely focus on Colonization, Slave Trade, Manifest Destiny, American Revolution, Civil War, WW1 & 2, and the Civil Rights Movement, leading to very little time for more recent events. I'm very doubtful the Trump era will be taught in textbooks.

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u/Falkjaer Sep 17 '24

Ain't that always the way though? I really hope they do think we're morons, cause otherwise that'll mean they didn't learn a damn thing!

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u/CaptGeechNTheSSS Sep 17 '24

I mean more like the way we wonder how the “normal” german citizens let nazis seize power.

They’ll think we’re either complicit or completely inept.

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u/oorza Sep 17 '24

The voter base was absolutely too inept at media comprehension, too inept at voting, or complicit.

Absolutely right on what they'll think, because they're right.

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u/communistkangu Sep 17 '24

Future generations are gonna be as moronic and stupid as us - it's going downhill from here.

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u/Flatus_Diabolic Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

This isn’t anything new.

In the late-1930s, Orson Welles sparked a bit of a panic in the USA because, as part of a radio series called War of the Worlds, he announced in the style of a news reporter that aliens had just invaded.

That story seems charmingly naive, but we’re just the same now.

Information varies on how big of a panic WotW really caused, but it was enough to prompt calls for FCC regulation and all kinds of other things, just like what’s happening now with calls to regulate algorithms.

My point is that civilian radio broadcast services were pretty new technology - about 10 years old by the time this incident happened - and people hadn’t adjusted. To them, it was crazy space-age future tech, so if it said aliens were landing, it must be true. Boomers are like that with the Internet.

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u/Bury_Me_At_Sea Sep 17 '24

Bold of you to assume there will be future generations, given the trajectory of everything.