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Comment by bcherny | Hacker News Reader

This piece makes the case that the only way traditional media can hold powerful people accountable is by being the arbiters of their distribution, by controlling who gets published and how their story is told. The way things used to be before the internet.

It’s a good thing this is not the case anymore. Big media is essential for democracy, but controlling distribution is not democratic.

Big media has two options now. Either:

1. They can learn to use social media better, so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump.

2. They can ask social media companies to artificially boost distribution for Big News.

The other option that the article seems to imply — going back to a world where Big media is the arbiter of distribution — isn’t going to happen. Social media (and the internet) are here to stay.

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Big media is essential for democracy? Democracy literally predates the printing press.

Yeah, that’s been the thinking at least since Lippmann’s time.

If you only vote on local issues, you don’t need media to inform you since you can see it first hand. But as soon as the average citizen is expected to keep up with state, national, intl politics you need a media capable of informing them.

What's even more interesting is that Lippman proposed a separate entity which was meant to inform the media!

Before the printing press, you constructed your own media by hiring people to proclaim your message. "Criers" of various sorts predate democracy.

That doesn't fit the role of media in this discussion. A crucial element is their (relative) independence. Parties to an issue that have full control over the distribution of their message is what the article is holding up as the _threat_ to traditional media (ie Elon Musk's "crier" is @elonmusk).

>Democracy literally predates the printing press.

Not in any form we'd recognize as modern democracy.

I agree that we need a new way to fulfill the same function that control over distribution used to accomplish. But the nuclear bomb is here to stay, too. That doesn't mean its invention was necessarily a positive development.

Also, and hopefully you already know this and didn't intend to imply otherwise, but social media is just one way of using the internet.

Which means that there's a third option: learning to use the internet better, in a less harmful and destructive way. And "Big Media" are obviously not the only group of people with access to that third option.

edit: also, "so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump" is a very very low bar. that account now reaches zero people.

Why so much blind faith in the algo amplification systems Social Media companies have cooked up?

People have accepted the like/click/upvote reward/amplification systems that surround us as if they are some well thought out foundation on top of which everything else has to be built.

Once some country decides to ban algo amplification of all content, all the castles in the sky being built and debated will break. Who thinks that wont happen?

Expanding on (1) with few more ideas.

- Use social media personalities to present and spread news

- Informecials as a medium

- Run adwords

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