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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Why is this a bad thing? Is the implicit assumption here that the electorate is primarily mindless, and that things like advertising or facebook or fake news or russian ad buying is all it takes to directly translate from dollars (or euro or rubles) to votes?

It seems to me to run counter to the democratic idea that an individual’s opinion matters. Either individuals are good at forming their own opinions from the world and voting is the practical realization of that into a government, or the electorate is an unthinking blob to be managed, as it will only vote for that for which it has been sufficiently inundated with propaganda, in which case the whole election is somewhat of a farce to begin with.

Why isn’t the will of the people (given an equal opportunity market for people to buy mass media advertising) respected more?

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Everyone is susceptible to propaganda, including you and me. Democracy is based on information, so if you mess with that information, you can most definitely have a noticeable effect. The propagandists exploit the asymmetry of resources and time between them and you. They can lie easily, they have all the time and money to craft careful lies. You don't have all the time and money and domain knowledge to figure out each and every one of their carefully crafted lies. Not to mention other more sinister tactics like tracking you, finding out your biases and using them against you with targeted propaganda campaigns.

> The propagandists exploit the asymmetry of resources and time between them and you.

And concentration of resources as happens with Social media and news channels

Sure, but isn’t that the nature of the beast? If propaganda works on everyone, and people get to vote, then what is the meaningful difference between propaganda and campaigning?

I really don’t see how this isn’t a system working as intended. Freedom of expression is freedom to spread propaganda.

Either the electorate is to be respected and their opinions held as valid regardless of their media consumption, or propaganda is too dangerous and effective and elections are just a farce. I’m not sure you can have it both ways.

> Why isn’t the will of the people (given an equal opportunity market for people to buy mass media advertising) respected more?

Because some people don’t like the implications of what the public wants. Around the west you’re seeing a dramatic shift in people becoming more conservative in certain fronts, especially on the points of immigration and nationalism. The folks who dominate the kinds of sites that write about that stuff can’t abide by that. So they have strong incentives to denounce that all as the product of sheep-like voters being influenced by propaganda.

It seems to me to run counter to the democratic idea that an individual’s opinion matters.

I would agree with you, if we wouldn't live in a day and age where facts are relative and truth is completely malleable.

While it is certainly problematic it doesn't change the fact that the fault is ultimately with the voters and their lack of critical thinking and evaluation skills which makes it effective.

The scenario is akin to computer security. Sure it is wrong for a hacker to manipulate flaws in the system enmasse but the underlying susceptibility to the bullshit is the root cause. Even if you stop that bad actor the root cause remains open to all with evil intent.

If I were to spend trillions on the worst political campaign - say "lets ban the anti-retrovials and give everyone AIDS" in a remotely sane electorate I would have essentially zero impact other than the massive reputational damage I would take. In a terrifyingly insane one where the worst casually proposed idea achieved 100% acceptance the entire populace would be dead without outside military intervention.

Fixing it is easier said than done but would involve education and deep investment in critical thinking.

What is special about this day and age? For reasons of manipulation of large numbers of people, this has always been true. He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.

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