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Comment by acchow | Hacker News Reader

If you want to avoid a delusional world view, I think targeted social media is probably what you want to avoid.

Maybe if TikTok could only serve content sorted by newest, or if you get a direct link URL from someone else.

Exactly this. There is quite a bit of hubris to thinking to that you can consume the media of a propaganda state and be intentional about understanding what is and is not propaganda. It works because it’s subtle. And it works at individual, population, and network levels. So even of you identify and maintain the noble truth, you will have no one in your network to meaningfully corroborate it.

The "beauty" of the plausible deniability in these systems is the hidden reward mechanisms that are in place: you can get a whole country to kick themselves in the groin if the algorithm rewards it and people think they can monetize the attention.

I'm personally quite interested in propaganda and TikTok let's you see both American leftist/rightist propaganda, European leftist/rightist propaganda and pro-Russian/pro-Chinese propaganda. Now there's a lot more on Palestine and Israel obviously. On Reddit it's largely leftist American, although the European right has had a recent resurgence due to refugees.

Weird hobby, I know, but it is actually a great place to look at all the different ways propaganda is done. Everyone is doing it..

These days all news channels send paper sites are doing the government propaganda, even nyt, wp.

Yes, propaganda will always exist. With traditional media (assuming you have cookies and tracking disabled) you are the on that decides what propaganda (which articles) to consume.

With social media like TikTok, they decide what propaganda to feed you.

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