Comment by weinzierl

This has been my experience and it is what people are reporting from red note.

In comparison to instagram I have found it far easier to explore, for instance, black women making leftist political critiques of Harris engaged in long conversations with black women who were actively supporting Harris.

Similarly, it has been much easier to find discussions about Palestine, labor rights, indigenous US culture, and numerous other topics.

I think those conversations are probably find-able on Ig or Yt, but I have had much more difficult time with those platforms. It's been hard for me to find much engaging content that is close enough to my (admittedly anarchistic) political and cultural views that the conversation changes what I think in useful ways, so I avoid that work on things like FB. These platforms do suck for doing anything other than keeping up with pictures of my nieces.

My feeling is that in general the TT algo doesn't really care about US politics so it just shows me engaging content, whatever that might be for me.

People here can call that "addictive", but in doing so it quickly discards any agency for people who have any actual political disagreements with the radically centrist US political mainstream.

I am used to that flippant dismissal- Allen Dulles would have rather believed in mind control than believe that US military personal who encountered Koreans were swayed by genuine empathy for a legitimate political-economic position.

By contrast, my feeling is that various other governments don't really care what folks in other countries think about the world so as long as it's not objectively porn or gore they just let conversations happen.

That is, of course, quite dangerous if your power relies on maintaining narrative consistency for the population you rule- that's why China and other authoritarian folks do things like limit what can happen on social media in their countries...

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somenameforme 4 days ago

The whole concept that one's views can be changed by what they were compelled to watch is what leads to the circus of absurdity in modern times. The fact that the media, corporations, and political establishment will all aggressively repeat a statement only to be rebuffed by the public at large seems to have no affect on their insistence on believing in this nonsense.
If it were true than the countless nations which turned to extreme censorship and propaganda to try to maintain themselves would be still standing. Instead, they invariably lose the faith of their people who simply stop believing anything (or supporting their own government) and at that point their collapse is already imminent - even if it might only happen decades later. See: Soviet Union.
Or for some predictive power - once China's economy reaches its twilight years where you have to juke the books and redefine exactly how things are measured just to keep eeking out that 1 or 2% growth per year, their entire political system will collapse. People would be happy being ruled by a group of authoritarian mutated frogs who demanded you ribbit in loyalty 6 times a day, so long as their economy and society was booming from the average person's perspective. It's only when things slow down that people start looking more critically at the systems they live under.

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- forgotoldacc 3 days ago
  
  A large part of the effectiveness of the media is normal people think they don't know this.
  Media has absolutely wised up to the fact that contrarian attitudes are common amongst Americans. These companies know that if they repeat something nonstop and make it as obnoxious as possible, a large number of people will quickly adopt the opposite viewpoint. That's the desired result.
  Reverse psychology is something elementary school kids learn about and use to torment others or do their bidding. It doesn't end in elementary school.
  
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  somenameforme 3 days ago
  
  This is nonsense. The media constantly runs overt level 0 propaganda that directly furthers the interests of the US political establishment. It's certainly not some secret 5d chess ploy to turn everybody into jaded anti-establishment types.
  Even more so because once you do realize how silly things are (on both sides of the aisle) your favorite media outlet quickly becomes NOTA.
  
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- quesera 4 days ago
  
  I have no idea how you can believe that media does not affect a person's beliefs.
  The evidence is all around you.
  
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  somenameforme 3 days ago
  
  You miss the direction of causality. People, especially in modern times, are attracted to media that 'identifies' with their worldview. So you end up with a viewership that matches the ideology of the medium. But it's not because the medium 'converted' anybody.
  Or consider things like the USSR where the government strictly controlled all media, there was no media, and even entry/exit from the country was strictly (and generally ideologically) controlled. If media affected people, you'd have had a country of mindless drones of the system. But it was anything but. One of my favorite jokes from the time is, "Why do we have two newspapers, "The Truth" and "The News"? Well that's because there's no truth in The News, and no news in The Truth!" And indeed once they started allowing some degree of expression, it was basically all anti-establishment, leading to some notably great Soviet music from the 80s-90s that parallels the 60s-70s in the US.
  I do think media can have an influence on things people know nothing about, but even that comes with an asterisk. War propaganda is the obvious example. Each time we go invade somewhere, or enjoin a conflict, there's a propaganda blitzkrieg about it being the most just action ever against the most evil guy ever. And it does usually work, at first, because people know nothing whatsoever about the conflict. But then over time people begin to learn more and formulate their own views and learn more about the conflicts and opinion starts to shift, even if the media continues the propaganda party 24/7.
  And in cases where people already have preformed opinions, this is completely futile from day 0. The obvious example in recent times would be the media effort to try to paint Israel's actions as positively as possible. People simply didn't buy it, because they already had their opinions and so the media propaganda was mostly completely ineffective.
  
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  scarecrowbob 3 days ago
  
  I don't think anyone doesn't believe media impacts how people think.
  I do think that you have toan incredibly reductive view of belief formation to think that simply showing someone a series of short videos is enough to change how they think about the world.
  There's a whole dialect in our existence within language, but most folks I know think that they are the sole authors of their beliefs while other folks are entirely a product of whatever happens to be in front of them. It's very reminiscent of the Fundamental Attribution fallacy...
  
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  quesera 3 days ago
  
  Well-executed propaganda does not need to attempt direct change in thought.
  It sows ideas that are net-beneficial to the propagandist. Leans into the ones that get traction. Manipulates the conversation. Provides simplistic (but advantageous) refutations of more complex (but more true) criticisms.
  This is Psych 101 material here. Not at all complicated. You just need to think on a wider horizon and a longer time frame. Stereotypically, this is a cultural weakness of US Americans. Certainly of its leaders. Other cultures have contrasting reputations, some of which appears to be earned.
  
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