But don’t be fooled: reality will not be where Trump wages a long campaign against Joe Biden. Trump’s battlespace will be unreality.
Confused about what’s next for Donald Trump? The reality appeared to hit him this week when the General Services Administration gave approval for the transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden to begin.
Full opinion piece on The Age.
Facebook has extended its election-time ban on election ads, itself part of a larger effort by the platform to combat misinformation.
“While multiple sources have projected a presidential winner, we still believe it’s important to help prevent confusion or abuse on our platform,” Facebook told advertisers in an email seen by Reuters. It said to expect the pause to last another month…
These efforts add to other measures undertaken by social media platforms to curb disinformation – such taking down ‘Stop the Steal’ groups on Facebook.
The reality is, a many-to-many communication platform makes political consensus nearly impossible. Even if we know the fact that Joe Biden has won the US election, far too many people can post and share alternative histories of the recent events.
The fact that Facebook sees the need to block ads reaffirms the argument for a conscious uncoupling of democratic politics from social media. The latter simply doesn’t support the former. It’s unlikely engineering is going to change that.
“Just as dirty money can be laundered through shell companies into a legal economy, concepts and so-called “narratives” that are crafted for maximum division and confusion for America can be published outside the US and laundered into the US conversation.”
Full story on The Age.
For democracy to survive the Trump era, it must be able to communicate past disruptive language and ideas.
Senator Mike Lee’s comments about ‘rank democracy’ underscore how vulnerable our shared discussed has become.
As we near the US Election Day, there is a lot to consider about the future of democracy and the notions of freedom that have gotten us to this point.
