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Facebook Says It Can't Guarantee Social Media is Good For Democracy (reuters.com)
Facebook said on Monday that it could offer no assurance that social media was on balance good for democracy, but noted that it was trying what it could to stop alleged meddling in elections by Russia or anyone else. From a report: The sharing of false or misleading headlines on social media has become a global issue, after accusations that Russia tried to influence votes in the United States, Britain and France. Moscow denies the allegations.
Facebook, the largest social network with more than 2 billion users, addressed social media's role in democracy in blog posts from a Harvard University professor, Cass Sunstein, and from an employee working on the subject. "I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can't," Samidh Chakrabarti, a Facebook product manager, wrote in his post. Facebook, he added, has a "moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil and trustworthy as possible."
Facebook, the largest social network with more than 2 billion users, addressed social media's role in democracy in blog posts from a Harvard University professor, Cass Sunstein, and from an employee working on the subject. "I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can't," Samidh Chakrabarti, a Facebook product manager, wrote in his post. Facebook, he added, has a "moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil and trustworthy as possible."
Is the translation of the title.
Aiding and abetting the enemy is treason.
How cute that they admit that they just _have_ to do it, because otherwise, they don't make any money.
One wallows in Mediocrity.
People have the capacity and agency to double check sources for sensational claims, including "fake news." While it might set certain censorship standards based on market demand, we don't need an authoritarian government demanding censorship because things that offend their sensibilities were said. This goes for both liberal groups that want "fake news" censored, and for the "there are only 2 gender" social conservatives that get mad whenever some teenager makes up pronouns.
What is this? It looks like news, and it comes from a business that has reported on news in the past... Can slashdot guarantee this is actually news, please?
The candidate who talked about CREATING JOBS won
The candidate who talked about "being nicer to Chicks with Dicks" lost.
Empirical evidence suggests it is bad for a lot more than just that. But the unfortunate takeaway is that this is only the case because of deficiencies of character in the participants.
So who all of a sudden gets to decide of FB, et al are "good for democracy". As an informed, educated and interested citizenry, that is OUR job.
How about you require everyone to pass a basic intelligence evaluation before you can get on social media.
You know, like the little sign at the roller coast measuring height before riding?
"You much be this smart and capable of critical thinking before you can use Facebook."
Hell, let's just extrapolate this to the greater internet, sure would make things nice again, more like the early days.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
concerted campaign to discredit non-Trump candidates and promote Trump.
No, this shit started with the entire media (both wings, Fox, MSNBC, et al) working together to smear, minimize, and discredit all non-Trump candidates in the GOP primary. Fox, because, well, they're Fox; the rest because they thought Trump would be an easy win for Hillary in the general. Next time, don't "help" pick the GOP front-runner if you really don't want that person to win.
Its a good thing, and about time, that Facebook finally makes a clear distinction between entertainment and news. Everyone needs a hand sometimes, and if Facebook can help steer people back to "news", it would be better for everyone. Facebook never should have been in the "news" business to start with, news feeds were dangerous territory to move into. They are right to make the distinction and help people move along.
The lines are so blurred due to the awful news cycles of cable news, that well meaning, smart people are arguing what they believe to be "the truth". Unfortunaly its all true in the sense that sure, someone else opened their mouth today and said something they believe to be right and it got reported by another layer of people trying to do the same.
Bad information ingested by the masses, consumed as the truth can lead well meaning individuals down the wrong path. Without a common set of facts, a healthy discussion of the issues and how to solve them can not be had.
All I hear are people arguing about hearsay and opinion, and which reporter got it right.
--
It's a bird, It's a plane!
Maybe having the unwashed masses be involved in every single decision the gov makes turns it into a popularity contest and strips actual merit from ideas anyway, and facebook is just the latest doing exactly that?
Shut down Facebook and do something useful.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
In that case, Long Live Facebook. And peaceful societies.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Does Facebook know of somewhere democracy is practiced? Or maybe it means that social media acts to prevent any movement towards democracy.
Like Gandhi's reaction when asked by a patronizing British journalist what he thought of Western civilization.
"I think it would be a very good idea".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
But you only think this is true because the public discourse you were privy to was itself manipulated by people entirely focused on amplifying exactly the right half-truths that would manipulate people like you into making the wrong choice.
The problem is the people on Facebook and in society. You know the ones; the university students using free speech to call for an end to free speech. the people who believe in a flat Earth, the creationists, the people who promote Paltrow and GOOP, the people who listen to and worship Dr. Oz and Deepak Chopra.
The problem is the stupid, ignorant, and gullible people.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
How about you require everyone to pass a basic intelligence evaluation before you can vote.
FTFY?
The problem isn't social media. Or even most of the people.
The real problem are people like you who don't know how elitist you sound, or worse, don't really care. Oh, I am sure you don't want a basic intelligence test to vote, because that would eliminate a few voting blocks that the Democrats actually depend upon.
Fake News isn't a new problem, it is just one that the Elites used for a long time, and now that anyone can "publish" anything the effect by the elite media is being nullified by other forms of fake news and a few sources of legitimate news.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
All the news they want YOU to know.
Oh, I am sure you don't want a basic intelligence test to vote, because that would eliminate a few voting blocks that the Democrats actually depend upon.
Funny, I was thinking that about Republicans.
Frankly I fail to see the intelligence of anyone who commits themselves to one party or the other. They are directly claiming that party allegiance is more important than critical thinking during elections.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Just read Thucydides or Plato to figure that one out. Democracy is might makes right; he who has the most guns "wins."
https://mises.org/library/introduction-democracy-god-failed
nope.
tht's why public education and a free press are essential for a functional democracy.
Actually, ideally...I wish we could. Or at least restrict voting to those who pay actual taxes, so as to make sure that everyone that votes has some "skin in the game".
But doing so, could really lead to a slippery slope.
I'd be happy just making sure people are of some level of intelligence to be on social media, or even the greater internet.
Not meaning to sound elitist, but if you've ever spent ANY amount of time working directly with the general public, you quickly come to realize that 95% of them are fucked in the head, and you wonder if they are actually worth all the oxygen they are processing.
But I digress.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The browser-based game Kingdom of Loathing requires that you pass a very simple grammar / punctuation test before you are allowed to use their chat system. It works surprisingly well...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well yeah, when the population is largely composed of gullible idiots that believe anything they read online.
encourage people to think critically
And when top educators, advisors to presidents, suggest that critical thinking is the reason that we're in the mess we are today andthat perhaps consensus building is a better way to go?
Given how far astray critical thinking has often taken us, maybe it’s time to embrace the Millennial Generation’s approach and see if it leads to even better results than the preferred methods of older generations.
-- Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President Al Gore. and Director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
Not meaning to sound elitist, but if you've ever spent ANY amount of time working directly with the general public, you quickly come to realize that 95% of them are fucked in the head, and you wonder if they are actually worth all the oxygen they are processing.
I'm more concerned with the amount of CO2 they're expelling.
It's not good for democracy and it is not good for society.
L'Idiot
Sure, FB can't guarantee it or other social media is good for democracy, but it would be a great start if they and other players like Google/Youtube were to curtail curating your feed for the sole purpose of keeping your eyes on the screen as long as possible.
It has already been proven the FB feeds posts, news, etc. that align with the political ideology it "thinks" you hold. This creates a hyper-echo chamber where people no longer are exposed to dissenting ideas and become inured with their beliefs being endlessly reinforced instead of challenged.
Facebook's behavior actively discourages civil discourse all in the name of advertising revenue.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
Problem is democracy can offer people free public education and a free press, but it can't force them to take it. That would violate the core tenet of democracy - that the people be free to decide for themselves what's important. And if as you claim these things are essential for a functional democracy, but the people don't want these things, then you've just proven that democracy is untenable.
I really don't think the media is liberal or conservative. They just want conflict and Trump generates conflict so they cover it non-stop. Even with what they know now about how much of a problem they created they still can't stop themselves from doing it.
If Fox loses too many of its viewers because they have died of old age they will switch to something else in order to keep making money. They don't really care about being conservative.
At the core I see the media companies as thriving on conflict. If aliens invaded Earth and we were kicking their asses then the media companies would give the aliens weapons and teach them how to use the weapons in order to make covering the conflict more interesting.
That is also why one presidential candidate never really get very far ahead of the other one. The media companies will bring up all the negative things they can find on whoever is ahead so they can make the race close and then disclaim any responsibility for it.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
1. Oh no, anonymous trolls!
2. Ok, require real names.
3. Many don't like that, especially in an era of zero tolerance social get you fired lemming ostracism.
4. Many move to anonymous fora.
5. State-sponsored trolls flood said fora convincing people of misleading ideas or outright lies.
It isn't an issue of free speech so much as not knowing who is manipulating you.
Hence "Hillary wants to literally start a war with Russia!" gets pushed by Russian state actors over and over, to cause the failure of a candidate who will continue to apply sanctions to their leadership because of lack of democracy and a free press there, and a disturbingly Nazi Germany-like invasion of a sovereign country to "protect" the Russians living there.
This continued pressure would be favored by most Americans, especially those who lived through the Cold War or earlier.
We don't need to ease sanctions on such a country's leaders so they will open up development to the West in a tit for tat.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Elitism
Aristocratism
Yeah sure thing buddy, because having The Rich decide everything for everyone else has worked so goddamned fucking well for people since the dawn of human civilization.
Power corrupts proportionally; absolute power corrupts absolutely
(the former) Soviet Union; Russia; China; North Korea; just to name a few. How well has that worked out for the Average Citizen, hmm? How about this: Go dig up and resurrect Marie Antoinette and ask her how well that seemed to work out, okay?
If you're so goddamned concerned about the so-called 'unwashed masses', then how about we get them better educational opportunities so they make (by your apparently skewed standards) more informed choices at the ballot box?
I can only speak for myself, though I know I'm far from alone when I say: I'd rather put up with the potential abuses to our system of government, than put up with The Few enforcing their will on The Many.
Oh and yes by the way I am mad and I am ranting because your comment pissed me off. Deal with it.
To be fair about it: I'll lay 50% of the blame on 'social media' itself, and the other 50% on the people who flock to social media, the former for providing a platform with such a high potential for abuse, and the latter for abusing it in one way or another, or for catering to the social media-abusers. But this is not to say that 'social media' shouldn't just go the way of the dinosaurs.
Well it's a good thing we invented republics then.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I proffered a reason that I believed fit the data, but I have to admit your reason is as good as mine.
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill
Not really. If you care about one of the "litmus test" issues, then you are likely to vote along party lines. If one of your most important issues involves either side of the "gun control" or "abortion" debate then you will likely vote along party lines. The thinking is that you are better off with a fool that will vote the way that you want rather than an intelligent person who will vote against the issues that you care about.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Facebook reflects the people using it and is a symptom of society's problems, not a cause. Anyone who thinks killing Facebook will change the way people interact and share ideas online, does not understand society. They want easy scapegoat targets, to avoid the work of actually try to understand difficult social problems.
Maybe having the unwashed masses be involved in every single decision the gov makes turns it into a popularity contest and strips actual merit from ideas anyway, and facebook is just the latest doing exactly that?
More like Wikipedia democracy... whoever has an ax to grind or agenda to run and know all the rules and processes overwhelms the majority by persistence. A direct democracy has to be balanced so you ask people to decide on a reasonable number of issues because you can't have 300 million paying attention to everything that happens in every sub-committee. Hell, I hear even Congressmen who have politics as a full time job don't have time for that. That and getting people to balance out the budget, if they want to spend money one place they have to cut it somewhere else or get a majority to cut total taxes. It could be done - more reasonably than today anyway - but why would the duopoly you have change the system? It's either team red or team blue but they know that after 8+/-4 years the grass will look greener on the other side.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There ottabee a rule: "if there is new communications technology, there will be abuse of it."
Unfortunately for you and me, we are living in a period of communications upheavals: Twitter and FB of course, but also smart phones, web pages, news aggregators, etc.
Zuckerberg is merely an opportunistic profiteer unencumbered by ethical concerns. An OPUE for short. He is truly an outlaw: he is operating in an area where there are no laws as yet.
This illustrates an interesting point. It's not the position that determine the intelligence of a person but rather how they rationalize that position.
The root of this problem is that MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, and virtually all the mainstream media has lost all credibility in the eyes of conservatives and independents (only 32% of Americans trust the media, coincidentally aligning with the dyed in the wool alt left crowd who have no knowledge of history and "think" with their emotions). http://news.gallup.com/poll/19...
This has occurred for a simple reason. Traditional constitutional journalism necessary for democracy targeted one simple principle: find the truth no mater what it was and follow it no matter where it led. Throughout history journalists have achieved this with varying degrees of success. However, the modern alt left infested main stream media now has the motto: "Change the world." They have divested all semblance of independence, fair reporting or pursuit of the truth instead choosing to only report stories and/or slant stories (i.e. lie by omission) that further their world view and political candidates. This is not some grand conspiracy, but rather an organic result of the alt left fascist cesspool that is the college campuses in the US where the next generation of journalists are spoon fed the alt left propaganda.
The democracy has recognized and is rejecting this poisoned fruit and is in the process of finding new avenues to get accurate news that covers the entire set of facts including historical background and objective facts. In the 1990s we saw the explosion of talk radio, then Fox news, then citizen journalists online, and now Facebook and more broadly online sources.
There have always been propaganda stories during elections, it is up to the individual voter, more than ever, to find the truth and sources that are trustworthy. The Democrats last election cycle ran Hillary Clinton, and most people knew exactly who and what she was (a grasping, lying, cheating, back stabbing politician lawyer who only wants power and money, in that order; don't believe me, ask the Bernie Sanders supporters). You could have run a false story that she ate babies for dinner every night to stay young and most conservatives would believe it because she has been in the public eye for 20 years and has extremely high negatives with conservatives and those who actually pay attention to politics.
The fact is that Russia and China try to meddle in US elections every time to varying degrees of success (the Chinese successfully funneled millions into Bill Clinton's campaign and no one said boo until he gave them ICBM guidance technology, Ted Kennedy tried to work with the Russians to get Reagan out of office, etc. etc.) https://www.dailywire.com/news...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I agree - huge swaths of both republicans and democrats (or conservatives and liberals, or whatever labels you want to use) would be eliminated from the voting pool.
From What Americans don't know about the constitution:
A public opinion poll conducted during the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution in 1987 found that most Americans were woefully ill-informed about the content and meaning of the document. Only a bare majority knew that the purpose of the Constitution was to create a federal government and define its powers. Nearly half believed that the Constitution contains Karl Marx's phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That's really interesting! I'll have to look it up.
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media should adopt that system... the first one to do it could bill itself as some sort of elite social media. That would be fantastic.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I assume you're talking about Fox, because I saw no attempts to discredit Bush, Rubio, or even Cruz during the primaries, and Fox was the only one I avoided. In fact, most candidates were pumped up as that guy that will finally beat Trump only to... uh, not beat trump.
One or two got bad press, but, for example, in Carson's case, the bad press was a combination of him doing comical things like staying in the wings after he'd been called to a debate, and writing a book about his past knifing people.
Outside of the news, Bush I recall being portrayed as a punching bag by Trump on SNL, but the others were for the most part not treated any worse than, say, Clinton... although Clinton's coverage was pretty negative.
On that note, did you see the NYT's coverage of Clinton? They leapt on pretty much every ludicrous allegation made about Clinton, no matter how ridiculous.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
As a QA professional, the problem with TFS is that "good" is not defined? You can't test for a condition that is not defined. I find these sort of statements all the time in technical requirements, and it always ends in a conversation with the author where I repeatedly explain that I can't write a test that goes "if (condition > good) { pass} else {fail}"
If the article is to mean anything "good" has to first be defined. The interesting part is that the definition of "good" will expose a lot of the biases held by Facebook leaders.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I agree - we need better education; but I also agree that not everyone should be able to vote. Why should we let people who don't even understand our constitution decide who gets to lead us? I posted this above: What Americans Don't Know About the Constitution, in a poll (granted an old one) "... Nearly half believed that the Constitution contains Karl Marx's phrase 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.'"
It's not wealth - it's education. It's an incentive to get educated. We're not talking about people living like they do in the favelas of Brazil (although, believe me, they have electric and water and most of them have internet and smartphones), we're talking about first world countries where even the poorest person can go into a library and read a book or look something up on the internet.
And since education is one of the primary factors in earning wealth, it's a plus all around.
Social Media, as it is now, is practically a disincentive for people to be educated, because far too many rely too much on it for information, and take whatever they read there as truth.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The problem isn't social media. Or even most of the people.
The real problem are people like you who don't know how elitist you sound, or worse, don't really care.
The problem isn't fake news; the problem is people who are fooled by fake news.
I don't want to see an "intelligence to test"; as that is way too vague.
I want to see a simple test where each voter shows that they are an adult and understand our culture of freedom, the constitution, and their fundamental responsibility as a citizen.
It's understandable if voters are mislead by fake news, but they should at least understand that lies and fake news, and propaganda exist; and show they know their job as a voter is to educate themselves diversly on the people and issues and at the polls to select whatever choice the voter decides will be best for the country.
How is that different from how it works now? Those who cares about any given issue enough just sends a fleet of lobbyists. I guess it requires more money in the current system, for lunches and fact finding and bribes^W campaign conributions?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
nope.
tht's why public education and a free press are essential for a functional democracy.
While I agree with you in principle unfortunately public education has a well documented bias towards the left. Because there is a well known bias it undermines general acceptance and also undermines the mission of educating because so much effort is wasted on PC propaganda. Stated another way - the downside to clearly favoring one side for education is that it loses broad support. The press while technically still free has been allowed to be consolidated into just a few hands - and is thus no longer free in a real sense. You can thank Bill Clinton for that one (citation below).
Citations:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/...
"If you weren't liberal when you were young, you had no heart, if you aren't conservative as you get older, you have no brains."
The facts aren't with you there. Democrats pull much larger volumes of low information voters, most criminals, most low income and welfare recipients by huge margins. Add to that their legal and illegal immigrant voting blocks who can barely speak English and all the other identity politics sub groups who make up nearly 50% of the Democrat voting block and who would fail hard on a poll test and the Dims would be SOL. It is the fundamental reason why they fear voter ID, because it takes interest, effort and intelligence to get a voter ID, and many of their voters lack two or more of those traits...
Republicans have primarily middle class voters who are much higher information (i.e. Republicans don't go around handing out gambling/food vouchers to street people and criminals in jail and a card showing the names to vote for to our constituents...) Democrats do and have done exactly that for decades.
If you had a poll test (not an IQ test, IQ testing is fairl irrelevant to level of education or knowledge of the issues and is inherently unfair; the intelligence people are born with is beyond their control, what they do with what they have is what is important here) where there were 10 random questions about the structure of the government, separation of powers, simple high school civics stuff with no cheat sheets allowed, 70% or higher score required for your vote to count, Republicans would dominate elections for the next 100 years...
Democrats have a lot of emotion and very few facts. They passionately "know" they are right. That only works in a vacuum of knowledge (AKA ignorance). When you drill down, there is no foundation below the volcano of emotions...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
they have to be EDUCATED enough to vote!
so then you gut the public school system, make sure blacks and the poor get a shit education, they don't pass the 'test' required to qualify to vote, and rich whites get to dictate their will to everyone else. Racist, elitist, bigoted. Fuck that. I'd rather have the mess we have now than live in a world where people are intentionally marginalized.
You don't need the public education system - virtually everybody has the ability to surf the internet or use public libraries and, for the record, there's more white people living in poverty in the south that blacks - sorry if the reality doesn't fit your narrative.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
My thinking is FB in one way of many, control everything you do. How is that a social network? i don't think it is.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I don't think education or status are perfect vaccines against mob thinking, either. In every historical instance of a society driving off the cliff into folly has plenty of people who should have known better egging it on.
Facebook is to bullshit as crack is to cocaine. Crack is cocaine, but packaged to provide a cheap, short-lived high. Facebook is a means of consuming a lot of bullshit by repeatedly deciding to consume just little bit more.
Just look at the basic Facebook mechanic: the like. What the easiest way to get that sweet hit of external validation? Find a group of like-minded people and express a completely conventional thought in an outrageously provocative way. And how long does that hit last? Days? Hours? Minutes?
Facebook didn't invent getting yourself lost in an epistemic bubble; it just made it accessible to people who don't have the time to invest in joining a cult. That makes a difference.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You're not for real. Trollololol.
I would agree -- we talk alot about how facebook etc are import in all of this, but it's not like crazy people have never been put in power by a populist movement before.
The press today is full of anonymous quotes, statements taken out of context and just outright opinion. Such as you writing '...the now proven statement that Trump only does things that benefit Trump.' That's an opinion and not a very well supported one. How does ending the estate tax benefit Trump. His dad is dead and he already got an inheritance. You might say that it benefits his family and amend your idiocy to be '...the now proven statement that Trump only does things that benefit Trump and his family/friends.' But then he also lowered taxes on working families, which doesn't benefit anyone he knows. Also, how does capping the mortgage deduction help a real estate business? I would put that in the column of doing something that didn't benefit DJT.
Sorry but I think you fail and are an example of there being stupid people on both sides of the political divide.
If FB wants to get rid of fake news they need to stop spreading hearsay, rumors and opinions presented as facts.
Cause I heard from a really close friend that Mark Zuckerberg pays no taxes and hasn't for years. See what I did there? That's called 'a Hairy Read'.
We don't need Facebook to be good for democracy, and they certainly shouldn't need to prove that they are.
Even if someone can prove that Facebook is bad for democracy, that should merely inform a debate on whether that even fucking matters.
What does seem to be clear is that social media is fucking terrible for totalitarian states. Assuring those fail is a fine start towards helping democracy succeeds.
Oh, I am sure you don't want a basic intelligence test to vote, because that would eliminate a few voting blocks that the Democrats actually depend upon.
I think you'll find that stupid people will vote for candidates from both major parties in the US.
Frankly I fail to see the intelligence of anyone who commits themselves to one party or the other. They are directly claiming that party allegiance is more important than critical thinking during elections.
You know, that would be a really interesting experiment, if you could store someone's voting history without revealing it.
The more often a voter votes for the same party, the less their vote counts. The people that don't always vote the same way are going to be the ones paying attention and actually making a decision.
I bet even if people only thought this was happening, it would make people stop and think before just ticking the straight ticket box.
Ooops.... you forgot to post your idiocy anonymously.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
How smart the founding fathers were, in creating something new called a Constitutional Republic, as opposed to a "democracy", which is effect a "mob rule" mentality. By giving the people, the house of representatives, the people have a voice. The senate, until the 17th amendment was the state's voice. A democracy, is not "everyone has a voice" but emotional MOB RULE. Just think, if we had a democracy, what happened in Ferguson Missouri, would have meant the death of that police officer, since most social media has spread the lie that the "gentle giant" Michael Brown was running away from the police, hands in the air and shot in the back, when in fact he was running towards the officer after previously robbing/assaulting a clerk at a convenience store, assaulting a police office and attempting to take his weapon. No, we DO NOT want a democracy. "Social media" is just another way for "mob rule" to attempt to take hold.
No, I'm openly calling you a troll. Or perhaps you're just a garden-variety idiot, or worse: an ultra-conservative/white supremacist/libertarian, or perhaps a Dominionist.
You conviniently forgot southern rednecks in your list of inbreeding stereotypes.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
That would violate the core tenet of democracy - that the people be free to decide for themselves what's important.
The core tenet of democracy is that the people rule themselves. This has nothing to do with being free to decide for themselves what's important. For example, there are many tax measures that appear on the Oregon ballot through our initiative process, which is an example of democracy. Many of them, I believe, are completely ridiculous and some downright damaging. Many of them I do not think they are important, but my decision means nothing. Other people get to decide for me what is important, such as "is it important enough to the poor people in the state of Oregon to tax HEALTH CARE and health insurance, raising the costs for everyone, to pay for the few who need it?" I say no; tomorrow night we will find out what the people ruling themselves have to say.
And if as you claim these things are essential for a functional democracy, but the people don't want these things, then you've just proven that democracy is untenable.
No, you've proven that some people don't want democracy, which is a very different thing. Of course, nobody has ever claimed that democracy has no flaws, either.
Frankly I fail to see the intelligence of anyone who commits themselves to one party or the other. They are directly claiming that party allegiance is more important than critical thinking during elections.
You have cause and effect reversed. Identifying oneself as part of a group because you believe as they usually do does not mean that the identification is more important than the belief. There is nothing inherent in a voter saying "I am a democrat" that means it cannot or refuses to think about issues. It comes to the wrong answer because it starts from usually invalid assumptions, but that's different.
You're using the same failed logic that is applied to Dittoheads, because the assumption is that Rush tells them what to think and controls them, when the truth is that they already think that and agree with Rush.
Do you buy that double shot latte espresso from Starbucks because you like double shot latte espresso or because Starbucks told you to?
Actually, ideally...I wish we could. Or at least restrict voting to those who pay actual taxes, so as to make sure that everyone that votes has some "skin in the game".
I have said that specifically regarding tax measures for decades. I live in a college town, so we have a large number of people who are pleaded with to vote on matters that will not have any effect at all on them in an average of two years.
For example, should the city impose a tax on cellphone service to pay for the 911 center? If you are moving away in a year anyway, why not vote 'yes' just because it sounds good, and it won't impact you in a few months anyway?
What's worse are the property tax measures being voted on by people who own no taxable property, in addition to the transients who will move out of the property they are indirectly paying taxes on through rent in a short time.
I've also talked about extending that to "sin taxes" on things like cigarettes and alkeehol. If you don't drink or smoke and won't be paying those taxes, why should you get to vote on them?
there are very clear laws about who can and cannot interact with foreign governments in an official capacity and even under what circumstances you can act in an unofficial capacity. When folks talk about treason, both legally and colloquially, this is what they mean. That's understood from context, and to suggest otherwise is at best misdirection and debating slight of hand and at worst a plain 'ole straw man argument.
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Thank God I live in a Republic and not a Democracy.
This is an ex-parrot!
> Hell, let's just extrapolate this to the greater internet, sure
> would make things nice again, more like the early days.
This idea "was extrapolated to the voting booth" in the 1960s. http://www.openculture.com/201...
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
because you're an attention whore!
Well that was easy. I like to put more thought into it, but to each his own I guess.
Russia influence failed in France, facing huge and obvious influence from french medias that backed Emmanuel Macron.
Why? The public education system can't keep people down if they want to learn on their own. Why is that a troll?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You seem to be responding to several things I didn't say....and if I click the parent of your post, it just goes to mine. Do you not understand there may be a difference between having absolutely everyone involved in every single action of gov, and gov being "the few enforcing their will on the many" - you seem to be taking dramatic liberties in assuming things I didn't say, and then extrapolating those event further. Here, I'll make it less controversial for you - I also don't think people should play Dr Google, nor do I think marketing people should get equal say on cybersecurity issues as the cybersecurity people. Take the crazy money out of it (reversing a certain recent SCOTUS ruling would help loads...) and enforcing certain things a bit better (emoluments, anyone?) and then force every bill to be public - but then back the fark off and stop pretending like congress is some sort of reality tv show for our instant entertainment 24/7.
But I didn't say that someone shouldn't identify with a party. Committng blindly is the problem.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
... check out Cambodia. F'book is flat out complicit in killing democracy in that country.
"Also, Trump and his cronies are rich enough that the mortgage deduction doesn't do them any good whatsoever, so capping it doesn't hurt them either."
So what you're saying here is that it doesn't benefit them, right? So this would invalidate your original idiocy. Thank you for playing. Have a nice day.
Committng blindly is the problem.
Doing anything blindly is most likely a problem. But you just added that word -- previously it was just "commit". Those who have committed to the Democrat party so they can vote in Democrat primaries have not indicated that they are blindly following an agenda they are being fed by their controllers. Some of them, perhaps, are, but some of them are not. The act does not prove the cause, thus you have causality reversed.
Typically the word "commit" means more than just claiming favorites. No matter, you get my point.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Well that was easy. I like to put more thought into it, but to each his own I guess.
If you think Trump "speaks it like it is," then you're not putting much thought into it.