Can confirm

There is a fundamental difference between traditional media, such as news sites, newspapers, and magazines, and social media, meta, Twitter (X), and so on: Social media platforms do not produce content, but merely host content created by their users.

Although traditional media also earned only a relatively small portion of their profits from subscriptions (around 30-40% from people who paid for the content), the business model of social media is even more ad-driven.

Social media companies earn almost all of their revenue exclusively from ads and PR (public relations, i.e., influencing public opinion — what used to be called propaganda).

What I mean is that meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp…) or any other major social media company even gets paid to promote content provided by someone else.

In traditional media, this was called an advertorial – the only difference is that these hidden advertisements are now even more hidden because they no longer have to be labeled as such (this was required by law for traditional media, but is very easy to circumvent due to the way social media works).

Edit: in other words: if you have the funds, you could run whatever viewpoint you like on social media - but you have to deliver your own content or your own content creator aka influencer (maybe they provide even a copywriter or a face to go with it idk - but that’s extra for sure).

You don’t follow politics?

What I mean by this analogy is that democratic states face a massive problem because voters no longer receive decent information, as they mostly get their news from social media. But these sites do not operate according to the logic of traditional journalism (at least halfway researched stories based on a at least somewhat comprehensible standard concerning truth - quality journalists usually go for “both sides of the medallion”).

Social media works completely differently: it’s not about the value of the information, but just about clicks – and it doesn’t matter whether stories that are sold as “news” actually have any truth to it at all. I mean, you may remember the presidential debate in which Drump was convinced that foreigners eat pets — which, of course, is not true, it’s of course ridiculous, but that orange moron still has fallen victim to social media misinformation (newsflash: he is even US president now).

As a voter, you have no control over how or where your fellow citizens get their information. Unfortunately, they now get it primarily on social media, where not the truth matters but just how you sell your viewpoint - even if it is absolutely ridiculous. That’s why someone like Drump gets away with all his lies – he has simply created his own reality in which what he says is, strangely enough, the truth for his followers.

Yes, they do, but they don’t pay for it; they even get paid for this content.

In this analogy, I am simply implying that you have no choice in who you are assigned to.

Replace that with “state” and you know what I mean.

Unfortunately, Showerthoughts has a character limit. But in essence, the billionaires that own the major social media outlets are only reinforcing the kind of terrible game that best suits their profit-hungry agenda. I mean, it’s not like they would produce any content themselves – that would be the logic of legacy media and far too expensive, therefore not profitable enough in the age of social media.

How about arresting the actual criminals for a change?

Donde esta la biblioteca?
Me llamo T-Bone, la araña discoteca
Discoteca, muñeca, la biblioteca
Es en bigote grande, perro, manteca

Yea, Boiii - source

I hope that doesn’t sound too pessimistic. I wouldn’t say all is lost, especially since there are definitely positive developments, of which the Fediverse is just one example among many.

Overall, however, I fear that technology alone will not change society, since it is always embedded into society itselfs and therefore functions according to its inherent logic.

So in Western countries, I unfortunately have little hope for the “mainstream internet” with its ruthless platform economy, because real change for the better would either require meaningful antitrust regulations or has to be forced by the consumers themselves —both seems highly unlikely, as the past 20 years have clearly shown in my opinion: Today, there are even more and even more powerful global monopolies, while people just won’t stop to buy their stuff at Amazon because it is usually a little cheaper and so convenient that hardly anyone is willing to even consider all the comparable offers that do exist.

The same seems to be true of the media: fewer, but even more powerful conglomerates with significantly greater reach than before and platforms that can pretty much do whatever they want without losing too many users (x obviously censoring many viewpoints and run by a open fascist, reddit killed it’s API as if it wasn’t important so on and so forth).

In short, I fear that unregulated turbo-capitalism has done to the internet what it always does once monopolies have formed: Enshitification.

And this “enshitification” of our most important media channels is now showing it’s ugly face in all the negative impacts on most democracies worldwide. I mean democracy only works with free discourse, the willingness to compromise, and reasonably informed voters. Unfortunately all of this contradicts the logic of today’s so-called social media—at least when it comes to the few major platforms with their own political agendas and their greed for profit.

It’s almost like a large-scale social experiment, with the result that there seem to be many profoundly evil people whose malicious beliefs are artificially pushed by billionaire “gatekeepers” to a point where they can appear socially acceptable, a few good people who have less and less say due to social media logic and content overload, and a large majority who just stand by and watch civilization go down the drain because they’re too lazy to change their habits and just rely on someone else to fix this mess, if they even recognize the problem in the first place.

In this context, I think the definition of public opinion established by political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann back in the 1980s is once again highly relevant:

“Public opinion is the opinion dominant in public which can be expressed without risk of social isolation.”

The spiral of silence : public opinion, our social skin (1984)

Noelle-Neumann emphasized that public opinion is not just any opinion, but specifically those views that are visible, vocal, and supported by the majority, making them safe to express in public. This ties closely to her “Spiral of Silence” theory, where individuals may refrain from expressing minority views due to fear of social isolation.

The great problem of our current media situation seems to be that these public opinions are increasingly artificially constructed since they just seem like majority opinions, even if they are not, because they get pushed so hard by the influential crooks controlling major parts of the Internet (social media and search engine monopolies and so on).

So I think today’s web has become almost the opposite of what early Internet utopians had in mind.

Well, he’s not an intelligent person, so…

I wish you all the best!

If you still have to play the one-country-versus-the-other card, I can’t help much. However, the facts are clear: minorities are already being unlawfully persecuted in the US and it’s obvious that it’s going to get worse. So what are you trying to say with this comment?

Of course I agree with you when it comes to making concessions to the culture in which you live. I mean, it is of course completely unacceptable if you are not prepared to recognize the self-evident rights of women, for example (and of course the rights of those who do not feel they belong to any of the usual genders).

Where we seem to differ a bit, however, is that I don’t think much of national concepts. Please don’t misunderstand, I am of course well aware that I enjoy privileges as a German citizen and I am also aware of the rich culture of our sphere and appreciate it very much - all that made me who I am. It’s just that I’m not proud of my home country as an abstract concept - I never felt the need to. And I think that does more harm than good.

Take for example the AfD in Germany or MAGA or any other political movement that explicitly embraces national concepts of origin: These people always invoke some imaginary notion of the noble people, you know, in case of the Germans, the concept of the poets and thinkers and so on, but none of this intolerant, misanthropic bunch have even an ounce of what they claim about themselves - they are complete idiots, many even monsters, and I think, these very people are the downfall of culture. They will do just as the Nazis under Hitler already did, systematically killing the poets and thinkers.

Again, please do not misunderstand: I also know Swiss culture well - I lived there for five years and am grateful for that wonderful time. I just value personal relationships and openly lived, shared culture much more than the prescribed preservation of traditions and the like (I experienced that in Switzerland as well and it was great!).

In short: I think culture is a living thing that changes. That’s why I’m happy when people abide by the law, especially the Constitution, which demands tolerance in Germany as well as in Switzerland.

I don’t think any other adaptation or even assimilation is necessary beyond that - except, of course, that you have to be prepared to participate in society, as you say, which of course requires learning the national language.

But apart from that, I think everyone should live as they please, as long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s lives.

There may be a difference between Germany and Switzerland these days. We in Germany seem to be much more divided, and especially in East Germany there seems to be a conviction that we should go back to Nazism - I firmly reject that because it’s not culture, but inhumanity and anti-culture with reference to the achievements of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with all this, but would turn in their graves if they knew for what evil purposes they were being instrumentalized.

Please excuse this long, surely superfluous rant. It’s just that, as a German, lately I have to be ashamed of what some of my compatriots are demanding with false reference to our culture. It’s probably a bit different in Switzerland, although you also have some people like that in the ranks of the SVP and elsewhere.

Yes, indeed. I hope they’ve also brought back Spencer Nilsen, Masato Nishimura, Attila Dobos and András Magyari, who were responsible for the OSTs for the old Ecco games - they’re all great!

It depends on where you live. In all major German cities, multiculturalism is the name of the game, which very much adds to the charm imo. But it’s true, unfortunately that’s not the case everywhere.

And yes, that’s also absolutely right: there are a lot of open jobs in Germany that can only be filled by foreign workers. Also true: there is no discrimination or even persecution of any groups by the state, as is the case in the States these days. Of course, not everything is perfect in Germany - far from it, but at least our constitution applies - and it’s a good one.

Unfortunately, I can’t say anything about Iceland. But in Germany, where I come from, skilled workers are urgently needed. It’s a whole spectrum of jobs: from hospitality to elderly care to engineering to physicians to pretty much all IT jobs (and many more).

There really is a shortage of workers in a wide variety of areas, which makes it all the more incomprehensible to me that we also have a MAGA-like party, the AfD, which constantly rails against foreigners. However, they are despised by everyone in even halfway larger cities and don’t play a role there. Significantly, this party is particularly popular in eastern Germany, especially in rural areas where there are hardly any foreigners. It’s really absurd, but I’m afraid morons like these can be found in all rural areas around the wold.

Of course, I don’t want to make any false promises and unfortunately I have to say that there are a lot of intolerant assholes in Germany too (the AfD, a darn Nazi-Party was at 20% in the last election and I’m afraid that they will get even more in the next one). But there are also a lot of nice, open-minded people and, as I said, a lot of open jobs. Maybe you’ll find something with us.

I would be delighted. That much is certain, even if it’s not worth much.

What’s more, the AfD clientele is probably either not interested in foreign policy at all or so deep in their world of misinformation that they don’t even know how disastrous Trump’s policies in the US are.

Even if they did know, they probably wouldn’t want to believe that it will be the same fatal mix of blatant incompetence and outright corruption with the AfD if they ever come to power.

I think these voters are so delusional that they have to experience the catastrophe first-hand to realize that they have been deceived - and even then, some still don’t want to believe it.

I don’t think we are safe and we probably never will be.

I hope everything works out and keep my fingers crossed for you!