LogFAQs > #985053886

HighSeraph posted...

I don't know where you get this premise that the internet is to blame when propaganda networks on television have existed before its widespread use.

This is also true. Unhinged newsletters in the 70s, talk radio in the 80s/90s and post-9/11 paranoia-fueled cable news in the 00s played their part, but unregulated online platforms on affordable smartphones opened the floodgates ten times higher. I can only speak from personal experience but out of all of the right-wing people I've personally come across, the vast majority of them were borderline NPC-tier morons before they started absorbing propaganda off social media. It's even worse now since large swaths of Gen Z have even less media literacy than the generations before them.

The big problem now is how do you combat propaganda and misinformation when all of our communications media is centralized and controlled by the 1%? There's no way we can go back in any sense of the word and it's impossible to teach people media literacy and how to point out propaganda anymore.