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Comment by samsonradu | Hacker News Reader

There have been a lot of speculation and finger pointing at social media platforms for influencing high-level decisions. What I'd like to ask the elders here on HN is: Wasn't this always the case? Were elections in the 70s 80s all fair and fact-based? Were not political parties using information to their advantage and for pushing their own agenda?

Because to me it seems that only the tools have changed, rest is pretty much played by the same book.

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I believe the one major change has been about trust in institutions. It used to be that census, or unemployment data was, for the purposes of political discussions, assumed to be accurate.

Now, unemployment data was so-so-fake just before the election, and the-best-numbers-ever just after the elections, although they changed only marginally. This sort of bad-faith argument will lead to a complete breakdown of civil society if continued.

This may just be a symptom of polarisation, though: Republicans (and yes, it's almost exclusively Republicans, so far) can only get away with it because their voters have staked their identity on their team's success, and are willing to go to such extremes to protect it. Yes, democrats have similarly absorbed politics into their sense of identity, and it may just be luck that they ended up getting reality as their playground.

> I believe the one major change has been about trust in institutions. It used to be that census, or unemployment data was, for the purposes of political discussions, assumed to be accurate.

First question that comes to my mind is How can you tell? I assume it was even harder back then to get your hands on real data. What was stopping the political elites back then to mangle the unemployment data when needed?

There weren't that many traditional news outlets in the past, and those that publish flagrant lies tend to get a reputation for this ( not that that ever stopped some of them ). Nowadays, I barely recognise half of the sources I see material forwarded from, which allows a range of much more extreme opinions / alt facts to be shared with the world without any real requirement for self regulation ( obviously, this is a contentious point, but I do feel things are a lot worse in this regard now ).

Over in the UK, a fairly large percentage of the traditional news outlets available published flagrant lies on a regular basis and still remained extremely popular despite a reputation for the same. Like the Daily Mail, every tabloid in existence, every free paper in existence and arguably a decent percentage of local ones.

And that hasn't changed much since. I mean, the Daily Mail (if Wikipedia is accurate here) was the most popular paper in the world in 1902.

Either way, I suspect the sources the British public have access to haven't exactly gotten much worse (or better) since then.

I think it helps the liars if they get everyone else using their bullshit lingo. Why say "alt fact" when you mean "lie"? The only effect it has is to give them credibility and remove some of yours. The article does the same. I'm trying to get at the general point of not using the enemy's made up language and playing into their hands rather than any one specific use of the term. The English language has plenty of terms for lies and liars. Let's call a liar a liar and stop empowering them.

But is the scale important? The difference between a sledge hammer and a jackhammer mounted to heavy machinery are pretty astounding. Tools advancing can drastically change outcomes regardless of the objectives of old versus new tools being the same.

I'd imagine with the advent of Facebook etc it's enabled targeting on a much more macro level.

I agree...joseph atwill's book CAESAR'S MESSIAH claims that the new testament bible is propaganda from the flavian dynasty aimed at jews in order to pacify them.

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