Social media has become a direct threat to democracy
I know it&#x27;s popular to bash social media for everything that&#x27;s wrong in politics but there is an important omission from all these articles that are completely ignored but actually renders most of the claims and especially the claim about the threat to democracy completely false.<p><i>1. Echo Chamber</i>
Echo Chambers are nothing new in fact we used to live in much bigger echo chambers than we do today. Your choice of newspaper or tv-channels, i.e. one-way channels are actually the real echo chambers.<p><i>2 Spread of fake or misleading information (AKA Fake News)</i>
This is another one that is greatly misunderstood. Most misleading information is not done for political reasons but for clicks. They are extraordinary headlines made to get people to click. It&#x27;s spam more than anything made to squeeze some advertising dollars out of you not actually change your mind on something. The idea that spreading fake or misleading information somehow is a product of social media is simply incorrect. And compared to how things used to be with people mostly getting their information from their one newspaper or tv-channel today every claim is scrutinized by everyone. Nothing gets to stand unchallenged very long.<p><i>3. Conflation of popularity with legitimacy</i>
The argument about population is a household stable in most marketing and advertising. There is literally nothing new under the sun there. However, when it comes to being a threat to democracy this makes no sense and looks to me like a completely made up claim.<p><i>4. Political manipulation</i>
Once again nothing new here political manipulation is an old an trusted tool for winning elections.<p><i>5. Manipulation, micro-targeting and behavior change</i>
Yet Hillary won the popular vote. So in other words, not a very effective tool. We are way better off than the days when cigarette industry would put out their own manipulative material or suppress materials. I see no evidence it&#x27;s being effective neither a threat to democracy.<p><i>6. Intolerance, exclusion and hate speech</i>
Hillary ran large parts of the campaign on identity politics, she won the popular vote. Hate speech and intolerance is a problem but it has nothing to do with social media and isn&#x27;t a threat to democracy any more than political correctness is.<p>Now some will say. <i>&quot;Well, the problem is the scale with which this can be done.&quot;</i> But here is the thing though. You will not be able to put out a lie for very long until it actually becomes debunked. You will not be able to put out a claim until someone has another perspective on that claim. There are hordes of people all waiting for someone to be wrong on the internet and share with the rest of the world.<p>In other words, social networks are self-correcting which makes them a tool to be used by everyone and as a net benefit to democracy, not just those who used to have access to the one way channels like tv, radio and newspapers.<p>Last but not least. This looks more like a piece of informercial than an actual serious analysis of threats to democracy.