Facebook and twitter allow the manipulation and coercion to happen faster and more efficiently. We weren’t ready for that massive shift in media.
One could certainly argue that a system where leaders have a direct platform to address the people is more democratic than one that relies on media gatekeepers, but it does have its downsides.
Older Trump fans are mostly getting their info through FB now. Look at FB's top shared pages/posts. The younger ones are on spread out on FB, reddit, reddit clones.
-for most of his presidency, Fox News has echoed President Trump's viewpoint
-therefore for most of that period I'm not confident that his Twitter access has made a huge difference to outcomes (although a number of his comments have certainly been notable).
-recently though, Fox has not been entirely on board with Trump's claims that the election was rigged. They haven't denounced them as strongly as other media, but they haven't wholly endorsed them either.
-So in recent weeks, it appears to be that Trump's direct channel to his supporters via Twitter was instrumental in leading to the current situation.
It appears the majority disagree with me, but I'm not clear where.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/living-und...
CNN, NYT, Washington Post, HuffPost, Vox, Fox News turned into extremely biased sources of disinformation and blatant propaganda.
E.g. a fabricated story in The Atlantic magazine, citing anonymous sources, was repeated and amplified by all these major media hubs and then further by social media for weeks. It's like a giant wave after wave of misinformation and rumors presented as facts. The burden of evidence apparently no longer applies.
The bias is mostly on the left wing of political spectrum, but the right wing are not too far behind.
OANN/Newsmax delenda est