I think there’s an issue across political spectrums in social media and the media generally. We need to step away from the right is wrong and the left is warm and fuzzy correct. Tying oneself to any (political). Ideology, unquestionably is dangerous. Social media wins through engagement. What better way than to manipulate people into sides who will react predictably. The more people are engaged the more advertising revenue they will make, the algorithms are specifically set to make you engage and get angry. The two tribes will emerge and off they go, getting angry and stressed and earning the shareholders cash.
We need to really start pushing back on the shit we are spoon fed, look at the state of “entertainment” look at the music being pushed, the programmes we are told are a “must watch”. Look at the reaction to anyone who shows any intellect.
People just don’t think critically anymore. I’m an admin/moderator on a number of Facebook groups- some have several thousand members so you can’t know every one on there. Yet you can see patterns emerging. Over the last few weeks across a number of groups new members or inactive ones started posting derogatory comments about a certain group whose members were potentially members of that Facebook group. Similar posts also hit wider social media.. Although careful not to be specific it was clear to those who saw the pattern across a number of platforms this was a coordinated attack with antisemitic undertones. Yet if you just saw one example of these posts you would think it was an innocent discussion. Largely the protagonists of this had links to the left and the Catholic Church.
You have Zuckerberg on the left Musk on the right. Neither hold great views. Zuckerberg allows misogyny to reign supreme and shuts done anyone who doesn’t agree with his questionable views. At least Musk doesn’t do this. It’s no different to the catholic v Protestant churches in the 16th century.
How we combat this is through educating ourselves, learn to listen to those with different views to your one. Learn to formulate decent debating skills based on knowledge (actual knowledge not shitty soundbites). Think critically, if you can’t agrue both sides of an argument- you don’t understand it well enough, you don’t have to believe in the alternative argument you just need to see that it’s a possibility for someone to logically believe. People need to stop buying into prepackaged morality and values and not be afraid to reject arguments that “their tribe” makes.
We need less politicised and more rounded education. We need to carefully think about what our kids are being taught.
We need to stop throwing around words like racism, sexism, transphobic etc to stop important debates. - chances are the people who start doing this, care little about the victims of the injustices these words actually represent.
Every single one of us is manipulated by social media/media we need to start educating ourselves and become wiser to how and when this is being done.