Meet the Lobbyist Next Door
wired.com
wired.com
What this means is that statements from individuals and organizations about real-world events can't really be trusted unless they include links to the data their claims are based on, and are also transparent about how that data was analyzed and interpreted.
Anecdotally, HN is the last social media I am hanging onto at this point since I did notice a spike in clear propaganda from individuals on Nextdoor and Linkedin.
edit: FWIW, I regularly see people disclose their association if it seems relevant ( "shameless plug" is perfectly acceptable for example ).
edit2: I thought a little more about what you wrote and I disagreed with Linkedin/Nextdoor posts before, but the last thing that kinda turned me off is a clearly political message that you could tell was written in the most divisive way possible to drive 'engagement'. And short online trek later, it turns out, the same person posted the same thing on their other social accounts. Since it is genuinely harder to tell what is a genuine conversation, I just opted to stop it altogether. HN has its issues, but at least I can typically expect someone to make me hesitate based on their arguments.
"To be clear, if you're opposed to student debt forgiveness, you're not advocating for 'fiscal responsibility'.
You're just an asshole."
I'm assuming that this trend is just influencers noticing what gets a lot of engagement lately, but they're all copying it so well that it almost feels like they're being coordinated. It's uncanny.
You're just out of touch.
I think I am going to start using it in the grandiloquent tone and cadence of Matt Berry.
"selling out" -> ironically embracing brands -> unironically embracing brands
And then, my view:
I used to hold on to this idea of authenticity tightly. Everything I saw I was suspicious of. "Who is paying you to say that? Is this an endorsement? What ideology comes with this message? Who would benefit from me believing this?" But the volume of messages is too vast, and at some point I accept myself under someone's "illusion". Who cares? We (as a society) have moved past the question of commodity fetishism; complaining about it is no longer critique, it's just annoying. "--Yes. And?" We've been writing about the collapse of the "sacred" since at least the 80s.
Overall, it's interesting but not unique so I ask - why this one? They aren't huge -- 400 total campaigns, targeting "nano" and "micro" influencers: why them?