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Comment by tchaffee | Hacker News Reader

That's a fair point. However I think blaming media lacks evidence. If media were a primary cause rather than simply reporting on underlying frustration then I would expect even more revolutions as media becomes more widespread. That didn't happen with radio as far as I'm aware. Maybe it happened in some very oppressed areas with social media. But I think it would be very easy to confuse causation with reverse causation.

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Afaik, media before French revolution were not just reporting on existing frustrations. They were massively political, contained tons of completely made up lies for the sake of being sold or pushing agenda. There was no or not much expectation of objectivity or impartiality the way we project on media now.

I do not mean to claim they were reason for the revolution, but more that the media as we know them now are basically tame compared to a lot that was written in the past.

It takes more then just unhappiness and anger for revolution to happen anyway. The necessary condition is that the state must be weak and unable to suppress the threat to itself. You can hold people in arbitrary bad conditions for infinitely long time if you have enough power. And they won't do revolution, because you will make it impossible.

The parent claim is that polarization is so bad right now because of social media and the digital media. If the press is more tame now, wouldn't that result is in less polarization?

I don't know. First of all, social media are not the press. Press overall being tame does not mean all of it is tame. Alex Jones is not a press, but he is media and definitely drives some of the polarization.

Which leads to, polarization is not symmetrical. Some groups of society move toward extreme much faster then others.

Also, we do have less polarization then France had before French revolution.

Agreed - all good points. As far as comparing now to before the French Revolution though I hear an awful lot of folks threatening civil war these days in the US. I would never have predicted Jan 6th a decade ago.

I kind of think the warning signs are almost always only accurately seen in hindsight.

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