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That’s why uncensored social media like Mastodon, Lemmy and the wider Fediverse is so valuable, as we can get direct reports from the people around, without being filtered or censored by anyone.
I’d say the whole free software culture is about breaking free from the confines of large companies and whoever owns the communication platforms. They usually aren’t motivated by freedom and what their “users” want/need. Free software has been around since the 80s? The Fediverse is available for us, too. I’d say people who like freedom have some opportunities to enjoy it.
It doesn’t really replace proper journalism, though. For example all of the local news about my city and area sadly aren’t shared on any free platform. But it works alright for some other topics like IT news.
uncensored social media like
Facebook!
Yeah, it cuts both ways.
Facebook isn’t uncensored
There used to be laws in place that prevented this, but our government is far too corrupt and were paid off to do away with them via the 1996 telecommunications act, which did several good things, but opened the doors wide open to allow conglomerations the go ahead to buy and own many more news outlets and communications outlets across the country.
And Citizens United
And as an alternative people migrate towards social media that’s owned by even less, even larger companies and filled with false, emotional clickbait and algorithms that want you to stay within your dedicated filter bubble.
You see, corporate monopolies are different than the state because
They are actually much different, as the state owes you an accounting of what it does and the people decide who to vote into control of it.
Corporate monopolies are ran like fascist states.
Till you realize that you actually only have 2-3 realistic voting options in every country and that these candidates are funded and promoted by said corporate monopolies. This is in fact a necessary prerequisite for a successful election campaign. Not to mention the revolving door.
Different roles, same people.
How many voting options do you have for CEO of Xitter?
What is the point of this question? My critique of the current state of “democracy” is about how undemocratic it is and why this is not a good thing and that it should be more democratic. I’m not advocating for even less democracy, I’m advocating for more. It’s not either this oligarchy we are living in, or corporatism
Corporate entities are typically their own fascist state. The boss says how it goes. Employees typically have little input.
During COVID I had an employee that complained about masks because they were undemocratic. I reminded them that the employees do not vote on policy.
The state and the press is owned by the same small group of people.
This is why it’s so important to support independent news outlets. E.g. Kyiv Independent in Ukraine or Zetland in Denmark. I’m fine paying for independent journalism that’s really well made. But not for copy-pasted propaganda.
If you don’t pay to get your news, someone else does, and that someone might not have the same interests as you do.
Support media initiatives that are funded exclusively by the people, not by the state or the oligarchs.
Ssshhhh… No more observation, only sleep.
Yes, we’re all “free” to CONSUME
Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you! -Bill Hicks
Always intended, I’m guessing. As soon as Ben Franklin realized the power to sway public opinion he must have known.
He wasn’t a stupid person.
Brought to you by Pfizer
No, its called free and open because you can blog about damned near anything without getting thrown out of a window. Some small time blogs get big views so no, your premise has no merit.
Hard disagree my friend.
A small time blog is hardly journalism. You won’t see Joe’s blog as a reference for the news at 11.
There’s a shitload of blogs out there, and even if they’re trying to be the “news”, it’s 99% opinion based “reporting” on blogs.
It’s hard to compare someone’s personally owned blog with someone like Fox News, which has publications (websites, and blog-like content) as well as TV channels and webcast videos, both audio and video content available in every location where people consume news.
Unless it’s the largest blog to ever exist, it likely won’t hold a candle to the media giants that run most news organizations.
I get what you’re saying here friend, but no.
I agree about regular news, but a niche subset of this are blogs by academics, which straddle the line between academic writing work and news. I’m thinking of stuff like https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ , a blog with multiple authors, but I am most familiar with Andrew German. They have a blogroll with many other examples.
A specific example of what I mean is that a while back, there was a big hub-bub about the shocking discovery of potentially arsenic based life. Turns out that this revelation was based on shoddy science and a dash of non-academic press picking up the exciting headline. A pretty thorough debunking was done on Rosie Redfield’s blog, where the quality of the scientific analysis is good, but is more opinionated than you’d typically find in a published paper(which can be good in some scenarios). This led to a bizarre situation where later news retrospectives of the hype did actually rely on Redfield’s blog as a reference.
Of course, this is still incredibly niche, and I think this subsection of blogs only end up like this because of the informal peer review networks that you get when a bunch of scientists make blogs, but I find it cool and interesting nonetheless.
Six perspectives is a bit better than one. And that’s only counting mainstream media, there’s plenty of good independent journalism.
