437
submitted 7 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

There’s a tendency in this heated political climate to simply reject people who are saying false things and to write off conspiracy theorists writ large.

But as the US approaches the third straight election in which misinformation — and the fight against it — is expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what’s driving people who don’t believe in US elections.

I talked to O’Sullivan about the documentary, in which he has some frank and disarming talks with people about what has shaken their belief in the US. But he paints an alarming picture about the rise of fringe movements in the country.

Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for length, is below:

WOLF: What were you trying to accomplish with this project?

O’SULLIVAN: So much of mainstream American politics now is being infected and affected by what is happening on what was once considered the real fringes — fringe platforms, fringe personalities.

And I think really what we want to do in this show is illustrate how these personalities may be pushing falsehoods, but they’re no longer fringe. This is all happening right now. And it is having a big effect on our democracy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] orclev@lemmy.world 48 points 7 months ago

I feel like the Internet has gone through three distinct phases. The first phase was primarily driven by individuals and a small handful of businesses. Content was highly limited, but generally positive. Lots of niche communities formed and most things had a very amateur feel to them, but everything was new and interesting.

The second phase was the rise of big corporations and the almighty ad. This was the first arms race between ad tech and ad blockers and gave us such evils as the pop up and pop under. A lot of the early charm of the internet was lost here. Everything started to become much more polished and commercialized, but we also saw a rapid expansion of content and functionality. This phase was heavily driven by corporations, and most of the early individual content was killed at this time.

The last and current phase is the social media phase. It's kind of a hybrid of the previous two. We have individuals generating most content again, but it's controlled, filtered, channeled, and exploited for commercial gain by the corporations. This has somehow lead to things being worse as corporations discovered that catering to people's worst impulses is the most profitable decision.

[-] Haus@kbin.social 38 points 7 months ago

You're forgetting the pre-Web internet: 99% students & academics. It was largely awesome. When you did get trolled, it was by someone who could spell and form a cohesive argument.

[-] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 months ago

Yup I was there at the edge of that (about a year before Mosaic released on a Mac).

Aol added usenet in 93 and we got on a lot of college servers, also with FTP, gopher and a little later, Hotline. So much warez and shareware games! I was in 8th grade then, had a 14.4 modem and life was pretty great.

[-] stringere@leminal.space 3 points 6 months ago

Commander Keen nostalgia intensifies

[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[-] thisorthatorwhatever@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Many neo-nazis used the BBS system to find each other. The funding model of direct email and such, that is used today, could probably be traced back to the early 1990s BBS forums. Scummy people have a way of finding each other.

[-] snekerpimp@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

The current phase is equivalent to reality tv. Made with people you don’t have to pay much, if all, and run by faceless corporations.

[-] HubertManne@kbin.social 8 points 7 months ago

honestly im talking a bit further back pre www when it was basically education institutions.

[-] Jakdracula@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago
[-] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 6 months ago

True story: I made a Gopher implementation that sits on top of Apache. When I first met my wife, this happened to come up in conversation, and they mentioned that being from Minnesota, they used Gopher a lot in school. I thus married the first woman who came along who knew what Gopher was.

[-] HubertManne@kbin.social 2 points 7 months ago

I honestly never got the hang of gopher. usually looked for an appropriate alt newsgroup.

[-] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago

Usenet and FTP were how we did it. Then we found Hotline in highschool (we had a Mac and a modem back then), and found some pretty sick servers to grab 3D software and games.

[-] aniki@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah OP is missing the whole pre-www era. I was on the internet with a modem and a BBS account long before browsers were a thing.

[-] blargerer@kbin.social 2 points 7 months ago

I'm not quite old enough to remember that first phase you are talking about, but I'm well old enough to remember the other two, and frankly, during them I don't think the independent niche communities really ever went anywhere. But they are really dying or dead now, and it was discord that killed them.

this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
437 points (97.2% liked)

News

23376 readers
2071 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS