This is why powerful people have been striving to capture social media networks. Why Musk bought twitter, it's why Russia has blocked the internet, why China has a firewall.

It's doesn't matter if reporters are reporting your propaganda, somehow you need people to think those stories are important.

Social media suggests an organic and wildly democratic way of doing this and I think it scares some powerful people to death.

They have been mostly successful retaining control.

But, at the same time I see reason for hope. The fact that Russia has basically decided that it just can't deal with people having access to the internet anymore means that even the deeply propaganda filled and regulated internet was *still* having a destabilizing impact on the centralization of information and ideas.

This also applies to US media. And there was a time when many would scoff at this comparison. But I think people see what's happening to networks and they get it.

The nightmare of the powerful is a media landscape that is entirely organic. Where what is news is decided in the way that ants make decisions, every ant makes her own choice and the decisions are emergent.

Emergent editorial control.

So, it's important to me what articles you choose to share and what you have to say about them. It's helpful when you explain who the big actors in your local news are, who you identify, how you identify them.

I do still think there is a role for pundits, but now all pundits are freelance.

This is why so much money and power focused on Joe Rogan. He's essentially a kind of pundit and the hope is that here is one place where it's possible to centrally control what is and isn't "the news" -- but, even Rogan faces backlash if he can't keep it feeling authentic.

Sometimes my liberal friends say it makes them sad that in the US we don't all watch NBC and CBS news hour anymore. The chaos is scary.

I understand what my liberal friends are sad about when they are nostalgic about the media centralization of the past, but they are forgetting the way that massive lies were propagated and never questioned in that environment.

It is true that when Dan Rather did the news some things we see today would never fly... but I have spent my whole adult life unlearning the lies about US history that kind of news propagated.

We each must take some responsibility and 'Tell the news' ourselves.

@futurebird

As an outsider watching, the number of people who seem to believe they can "fix" things by just voting the dems in again is utterly horrifying. The sheer lack of awareness is unfathomable.

It's nearly as bad in Canada when it comes right down to it. Just quieter and with less gestapo. Trump's bullshit ignited an instant push of nationalism which meant people voted for anyone the liberals (Can) shoved down their throat and most of them don't even realize who he is and what he's doing. We will sure feel it when we suddenly need to protest and realize that corporations have more human rights than we do now.

People don't want to be aware of the machine they are inside of. Things don't just suddenly happen like a light switch turned on and off. That's the stuff of fairytales. It's the desperate symptom of societal arrested development and mindlessness to try to believe that they do.

@RobotDiver @futurebird

What's worse is the people who refuse to use the democrats as a pathway to fixing things.

BTW, I've never heard anyone say "all we have to do is get the D's back in and it will all be okay". Admittedly I don't have a super-diverse set of people I discuss politics with, but I'm beginning to wonder if such people actually exist.

@jztusk @RobotDiver @futurebird

As somebody who spent nearly 4 decades working in local government, I really do want to hit people over the head with a 2x4 when they say the two parties are the same. By their actions, they are so far apart that they’re not even on the same planet. When Democrats are in power (and they are very rarely unfettered) things actually can progress. When the Republicans are in power, the best you can ever hope for is indifference.

@KanaMauna @jztusk @futurebird

Not once did I say the two parties were the same, but as a disabled person with very few spoons I don't have time or energy to explain the perils of neoliberalism to anyone these days.

Suffice to say, the sleeping on concrete wrapped in space blankets without adequate food or health care, the corporatization of the US prison system, the separation of children from their families, the loss of their documents, the cages, all came pre Trump. The lack of checks and balances to protect the most vulnerable from having their basic human rights revoked - pre Trump. He's just a villain who turned the volume up on a pre existing system.

What looks like progress, can sometimes be standing too close to the wall to see the horizon while wearing comfortable shoes, but same as it ever was. Thanks for the threat of violence.

@RobotDiver @KanaMauna @jztusk

I do think there is a foundational and important difference between Democrats and Republicans. They are not as far apart on matter of policy, but they do relate to holding power differently.

Democrats believe in elections, so much so that they will let Republicans win even when they have the power to stop them. They believe in norms. You can't eat norms but I still think it matters.

At least with Democrats you can effectively fight them within the system.