> Do you understand that millions of normal people send these GIFs to each other in WhatsApp groups and private messages?
Of course, it could be organic. I shortened my text a bit so it's not explicitly mentioned anymore, but I still wrote about "engagement algorithms".
It doesn't need to be a political influence dial at Meta's HQ.
Regardless of whether there is intentional influence by the platform, or the platform intransparently favors other actors who in turn use the platform, it's a problem. Even when the platforms just do it for simple financial reasons or political opportunism.
On HN, people are usually quick to lament to damaging effects of engagement optimization on public discourse.
I thought mentioning that I cannot judge whether Lula is a corrupt president (I assume that's what's meant by "criminal") is enough to make clear that I am not arguing for silencing opinions.
What I would like to see is addressing Social Media's role in weaponizing outrage advertisement using slander, and also, platforms getting away with not making transparent how they weight political advertisement in elections.
In my opinion, electoral advertisement should be regulated, and it is regulated, in many countries. This does not prevent you from sending memes on WhatsApp, it might prevent a platform from suggesting political memes to you when you did not explicitly seek out partisan content.
Regarding the rest:
Lula has been imprisoned because of corruption, Bolsonaro has been imprisoned because of his coup attempt.
Seems hard to argue about that in one-sided way, and I'm not gonna make any explicit stance here, I am not from Brazil.
It seems impossible to assess whether one of the two is in fact not guilty of the crimes they were charged for. What I did notice though were the election fraud claims, and consensus seemed to be that they are false.
The coup attempt also seems to be undisputed.
The EU has sought out trade deals with Brazil, which was more easily possible with Lula, AFAIK.
I'm not gonna defend everything (sry, not "anything") the EU does here either.
My point was how the public deals with election fraud claims and coups.
And it does seem strange to normalize those openly, even 5 years after the capitol storm.
---
But, to be clear: I am not interested in advocating for Lula in Brazil, that's a Brazil problem and I don't know enough to have an opinion on this. Maybe a gut feeling, but it's easy to get rid of that by reading from the other side (e.g. about corruption, crime rates etc).
That was hopefully not something I said in my initial comment either, because viewing politics as a football match is not healthy, and Germany has its own problems which are more relevant to me - and yet, German politics would still not be something I want to comment about extensively here.
I only wanted to comment on the role of Social Media in political elections. The fact that coup attempts are now so openly normalized in many countries considered democratic (US, Turkey, Brazil)... might seem odd to me, but that's more of an "illusion of stability" thing I guess.
Of course, it could be organic. I shortened my text a bit so it's not explicitly mentioned anymore, but I still wrote about "engagement algorithms".
It doesn't need to be a political influence dial at Meta's HQ.
Regardless of whether there is intentional influence by the platform, or the platform intransparently favors other actors who in turn use the platform, it's a problem. Even when the platforms just do it for simple financial reasons or political opportunism.
On HN, people are usually quick to lament to damaging effects of engagement optimization on public discourse.
I thought mentioning that I cannot judge whether Lula is a corrupt president (I assume that's what's meant by "criminal") is enough to make clear that I am not arguing for silencing opinions.
What I would like to see is addressing Social Media's role in weaponizing outrage advertisement using slander, and also, platforms getting away with not making transparent how they weight political advertisement in elections.
In my opinion, electoral advertisement should be regulated, and it is regulated, in many countries. This does not prevent you from sending memes on WhatsApp, it might prevent a platform from suggesting political memes to you when you did not explicitly seek out partisan content.
Regarding the rest:
Lula has been imprisoned because of corruption, Bolsonaro has been imprisoned because of his coup attempt.
Seems hard to argue about that in one-sided way, and I'm not gonna make any explicit stance here, I am not from Brazil.
It seems impossible to assess whether one of the two is in fact not guilty of the crimes they were charged for. What I did notice though were the election fraud claims, and consensus seemed to be that they are false. The coup attempt also seems to be undisputed.
The EU has sought out trade deals with Brazil, which was more easily possible with Lula, AFAIK.
I'm not gonna defend everything (sry, not "anything") the EU does here either.
My point was how the public deals with election fraud claims and coups.
And it does seem strange to normalize those openly, even 5 years after the capitol storm.
---
But, to be clear: I am not interested in advocating for Lula in Brazil, that's a Brazil problem and I don't know enough to have an opinion on this. Maybe a gut feeling, but it's easy to get rid of that by reading from the other side (e.g. about corruption, crime rates etc).
That was hopefully not something I said in my initial comment either, because viewing politics as a football match is not healthy, and Germany has its own problems which are more relevant to me - and yet, German politics would still not be something I want to comment about extensively here.
I only wanted to comment on the role of Social Media in political elections. The fact that coup attempts are now so openly normalized in many countries considered democratic (US, Turkey, Brazil)... might seem odd to me, but that's more of an "illusion of stability" thing I guess.