To ask you all to do this…

[Slightlyboredandseverlyconfused]

I know I am unreasonable to ask strangers to do anything at all, but I am going to stick my neck on the chopping board and ask you all to please please consider…

going directly to the source rather than rely on media (papers, Facebook, Twitter etc) when you are choosing who to vote for in the next election.

Each party will have their own manifesto that you can look at. A lot will be ‘spin’ but there will be an indication of the direction of travel.

If you see headlines that sway you, read to the end and fact check anything sensational or worrying. If you read about or see things that this politician or that politician has said that seem outrageous or contentious, try and find the footage yourself - in context the words might have a different meaning and be less (or even more) contentious or outrageous.

The only way we can maintain a true democracy (and a say in how we live) is if we actively seek out our own information and check how reliable and unbiased the source is. We can’t rely on ‘what comes to us’ to give us the full picture.

We are in the most unstable and precarious position we have been in my 50 years on the planet and we need a government that will help us to deal with the stormy times ahead.

This article talks about why this will be so important and is what spurred me on to create this thread.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67518511

I think a lot of people are sleeping on this and going to get a massive wake up call if they haven’t already. Artificial intelligence is on an exponential curve right now and things are happening way faster than people think are possible. Comparisons are being made to atom bombs and their discovery but this is much much more dangerous. All our structures in society are built with security that never took AI into account just think all the ways you can convince another person you are who you are gone now. When you see videos/photos now don’t tell yourself “I can always tell” you won’t be able to anymore. Scams already have started using software that only needs to hear 3 seconds of someone’s voice to replicate it. People need to be advised to start thinking of measures to make sure who you think your are speaking to is them, think code words etc. They only found out months after releasing gpt 4 that the same function that allows someone to ask the AI to make a meal using the ingredients in my fridge can also be used to see what ingredients in your garage can make nerve gas(this functionality exists right now in got 4 with the right prompt). The creation of fire, the wheel, the combustion engine all major changes to society but AI is in a league of its own hopefully whichever company hits the singularity first we better prey their intentions are good because they will be essentially a god on earth.

I think it would be a bit weird to only read the advertising put out by the “source”. How would that give you any understanding at all?

I am not suggesting people only do that. I’m suggesting people don’t just wait and see what comes to them but actively seek out, firstly information from the source. Then fact check things and investigate things that seem OTT or sensational.

Most people don’t have time to do the digging though so reading each party manifesto gives you the overall sense of the ‘direction of travel’ and will be equally biased and ‘spun’, which is at least better than just whatever your social algorithm sends you, what Joe Blogs moans about in the pub or what headlines you see when you pass the newspapers in the supermarket.

It’s petrifying.

Thing is, some of us will choose not to vote for a party (because we can't stand them cough Tories cough) and for me, where I live it's a Tory majority by a long way. That leaves me with either Lib Dem or Labour as choices, Lib Dem have polled higher in the past. I will swing to whichever party gives a higher chance of booting the Tories out. I don't care at all about any of the rest of it, frankly.

However if you are in a marginal seat then obviously you need to be careful and read around thoroughly. I won't say 'do your research' because that's not research.

I wonder what source you used to come to your conclusions about how people gain knowledge and draw conclusions?

It would give you an understanding of what the party was actually proposing.

Well you'd think, but apparently that's all anyone ever does any more. Which is why Brexit happened and why we have a shit self serving Government that despises a good many of the people who voted for them.

I'd go one further OP. I wouldn't allow anyone to vote until they'd listened to enough episodes of BBC Radio 4's More or Less podcast to understand that the headline is almost always misleading.

People making decisions that affect the running of the country based on headlines and fake or biased social media don't deserve the privilege of a vote.

"To ask you all to do this…"

Anyone who posts with such a vaguebook type is an automatic YABU

Sounds a lot like if you don't vote for who I want then you don't deserve to vote....

I will be voting tactically based on the most likely party to boot the tories out.

Not at all. I'd be quite happy for people to use their democratic vote according to their preference, if they actually understood what they were voting for.

So when you have Brexit voting pensioners who live in Spain and want less immigration they can't complain when their life is made harder as an immigrant. They voted for it.

Or when people complain that goods and services from the EU become more expensive or unavailable. That's what they voted for.

Same and the same for all of my friends that have spoken about it

Meh, what's the point of even voting. Labour are shit, every single time they say that they don't agree with the tories, but won't reverse anything. Well that's alright then

If you've seen/read about any of the Covid Enquiry then I don't see how you can say Labour are as bad.
Lying under oath, funnelling hundreds of millions of pounds to their mates.
Also putting dodgy Russians and strange women in the HOL and selling the HS2 land out of spite.

There is a fascinating (and off the topic of this thread) debate to be had about the extent to which outcomes of voting may be reasonably foreseen - but any attempt to force people to "inform" themselves as a condition of voting seems doomed to have precisely the effect it seeks to avoid - because there are very few ultimately unbiased sources. Martin Lewis was particularly sound on this in the run up to the Brexit vote - he pointed out that almost everything about it was impossible to predict, so clamouring for "the facts" about what would happen was pointless as it was unknowable.

My God.

This is chilling.

I have been happily lapping all this up - chatting to Bing for months.

Even helped trained some voice AI when I did some work with Clickworker years ago.

It's like one of those dystopian sci-fi movies.

Re-read my post. Could be ambiguous.

What I meant was I am getting quite worried about AI myself these days. It's terrifying really.

I agree that newspapers largely distort facts.

They are owned by billionaires who don't want Labour in as it would directly affect their pockets and their influence in number 10 would be removed.

This election is going to be dirty and the Tories are going to go in hard and nasty, probably paying Russian Bot factories to smear and spread lies again (they did this with Boris' campaign) and the papers will think nothing of printing blatant untruths for an outcome they deem favourable to them.

If you want truth, Byline Times is your best bet.

Oh the irony, a post about making sure what you read isn't tainted with bias then several right wing bashing posts 😂

I vote for the local candidate that does the most for my area. One area I lived in (I've moved a lot) the only candidate that did anything for the local area was the Tory guy, so he got my vote. The last area I lived in had an amazing Labour candidate, so he got my vote. I currently live in an area where Green, Lib Dem and Tory all have decent candidates that care about the area, so I will read carefully and decide. A tactical vote would be LibDem.

😂 fair enough.

Yeah. I think that’s what a lot of people might do this time around. I guess if you are just ignoring all information bar the local pols then at least that’s an even amount of no information rather than misinformation heavily weighted in one direction or designed to create division.

I guess that’s another way of taking misinformation out of the decision making - you are likely to have seen first hand any significant changes locally.

I guess the downside is that what happens nationally and internationally has a huge impact on what life is like locally. Our guy gets in because he’s a local and keeps us on the map in Parliament but he has voted for some things that, in my view, are going to screw us all over. He doesn’t get my vote for that reason.