Facebook’s role in Brexit, and the threat to democracy

ted.com

8 pointskayza4 comments

I find the subtext of all of these articles and complaints somewhat irritating, even if I am politically aligned along the same "side".

If people vote for this or that populist, then they must have been tricked. If they were better informed, they would surely vote for The Economist-style liberal centrist status quo, right? Sad to see that democracy is dead and that these voters are completely wrong about their own lives, eh?

What's really broken is all the allegedly smart people reading the Economist, which regularly tells us capitalism is still great no worries, who then can't figure out why people keep voting for populists.

Arguing that power should be distributed and the people’s vote respected isn’t a route to personal power or success.

Instead we get the pitch: “the people were misled and it’s all X’s fault, vote for me to curb X’s power”. Presently, X is facebook or twitter. It used to be Republicans.

It‘s interesting that this video can’t be found in full on YouTube. Why do you think that is?

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