Due to social media, literally anyone with internet access and a loud voice has been able to get attention for any crackpot political opinion.
Nah, it’s worse than just giving everyone a voice. That wouldn’t be too bad.
The really bad part is that they figured out about more extreme/controversial/negative voices tend to draw more engagement, more time spent on platform, and therefore more ad views. Facebook and the rest didn’t just give the worst of us a voice – they amplified the voices of the worst of us, far more than for normal people, all in the name of squeezing just a little bit more profit out of the system.
Nicely summed up. One more point though: “Using the propaganda model…news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings)”.
That’s more like a widely known fact.
Fragile egos of “powerful” men
I think the internet has made it possible for everyone to see that the corporate media has been lying to our faces for decades.
So everyone’s opinion is against democracy?
Facebook made money bending “opinions”.