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Comment by gcatalfamo | Hacker News Reader

Does Snowden really think that the canonical man on the street is here waiting to be advised on this topic?

The people who were influenced the most by fake news are those who probably don't even feel there exists a fake news issue.

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There are a lot of people just on the verge of being convinced, who consume mainstream media and probably know a little about Snowden and look up to him as an authority figure on the same level as any other "tech/science" personality (Elon Musk, Neil deGrass Tyson, ...), who will be convinced by his position and then influence the more naive/ignorant people around them.

Politics is never black and white.

> The people who were influenced the most by fake news are those who probably don't even feel there exists a fake news issue.

Which points the way towards the question of whether some people ever really want to know the truth about stuff they already decided is important to them, for whatever reason.

That last line is the kicker. People are ignorant to the truth and|or simply refuse to believe it for whatever reason.

Saying "for whatever reason" is giving up on trying to understand what is happening. The reason might be anger, might be disenfranchisement, might even be that "they are stupid". But those things have solutions. Instead of just calling people ignorant and giving up it is much more fruitful to try to find why they disagree and talk to them. I know how frustrating it can be to talk to an "ignorant zealot" (anywhere on the political spectrum), but it is just cheap and sad to give up.

leppr's comment above shows how this really matters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972521

r/politics

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