Our news outlets are total trash. Not worth the toilet paper they're not printed on. Completely unfit for purpose.
Ask people where they get their news from and most under 50's will scoff at the notion of getting it from the TV or a newspaper, instead they will proudly announce they get their news from social media. Like somehow they have ditched the extremely unbiased reporting of outfits like the BBC and The Guardian for the realness and instantness of social media.
It's worth noting that this survey uncovered that only 13% of 25-34 year olds used TV for news.
It’s been an ongoing trend in the UK that the number of BBC licence fee payers is collapsing and recently announced the that half a million households cancelled their licence in the last year.
Now the BBC has once again been caught platforming hate, presumably for a ratings boost, as it’s incessant platforming of the likes of Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and Lee Anderson. Reform UK get widespread platforming on the BBC despite that they already have GB News and Talk TV to do that for them.
Lee Anderson - YouTube still.
Lee Anderson is a guy who attacks food banks, believing you can survive on 30p meals, which he couldn’t actually prove, but earnt him the nickname 30p Lee. He has also verbally attacked asylum seekers, and even footballers for taking the knee. Of all people, the BBC chose to ask him about an anti-racism demonstration, a protester getting taken to the floor, having his head kicked like a football and then stamped on and Anderson in that clip there, in that response to that act, said he should get a medal.
In the desperate search for ratings the establishment media is playing a dangerous game with its dalliances with the hard right of British politics. The more people hear and see of them, the more their ideas and policies become normalised and ingrained. If the BBC thinks that people won’t be taken by this, seeing these nonsense politicians in terms of ratings and that what they say is an irrelevance, then, well it really isn’t working. The UK is now having a summer of protests fuelled by the extreme right.
The BBC’s reputation has already been hammered because of it’s inherent bias towards the status quo and folk are fed up of it. Fed up of this so-called neutrality constantly being shoved in our face to the point they are taking their licence fees and walking.
The shame of it is that the BBC once had a good reputation. Now it is a disgraceful propaganda outlet. Britain is choosing to cancel the BBC and actually, it completely deserves it.
Of course the alternatives in the mainstream aren’t much better and with more and more people getting their news from social media it’s worth being aware of the dangers inherent in that.
Social media is now central to how the world communicates but it is totally unfit for purpose.
Firstly, it uses your attention to sell adverts to entice you to buy products, furthermore social platforms, with their immense stock of data, can offer companies very specific targets for their ads. Even more dangerously it can sell your data to be targeted by political organisations (Cambridge Analytica). How can demockery work under those circumstances?
Secondly, social media utilises a variety of techniques to keep you addicted to your phone. Indeed the average person will spend nearly four hours on their phone every day. The industry uses the same tricks as the betting industry to keep us hooked. They are our personal handheld slot machines. Not to mention the dopamine hit you get from every little response/like.
Thirdly, ask yourself who decides what content to show you? Answer, it is entirely based on a secret algorithm that you can't inspect or change. The AI, in seeking to produce for you tailored content, increasing locks you into echo chambers or bubbles. Places where our confirmation bias flower.
Fourthly, the mainstream social media platforms are centralised and have complete control over who can participate and who is censored. This is purported to be managing “misinformation”, and demands users to place a huge degree of trust in social media platforms. Don’t think for yourself we’ll tell you what to think. So no different than the BBC that also asks it’s readers to trust them and not think for themselves.
Lastly, the system is unfit for purpose because it is overrun with spam and bots. Like plague rats over a sinking ship half of internet traffic is supposedly composed of these bots et al.
That’s why we have to build and support alternative social media platforms. Decentralised, resistance to censorship, free of bizarre techniques to addict us, where real people not AI can express their opinions in a safe environment.
During a talk at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former vice president for user growth said;
I feel tremendous guilt… I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works…
Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook has also said;
[Social media] literally changes your relationship with society, with each other...God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains