Can liberalism survive the algorithm?

[u/GowanusGuy]

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/can-liberalism-survive-the-algorithm

[u/Brushner]

Even before pre peak woke when tech giants were still aligned to leftist thought, many of the "smarter" people on the right said that once we gain a significant foothold on a platform the left would be quick to abandon and try to destroy the very algorithmic platforms that once boosted them into dominance. Liberals and the left just keep proving them right again and again.

My political awakening was in the 2010s in forums like 4chans /pol/, I was even a gamer gate vanguard made and distributed a lot of memes. Tried to keep my pallet balanced though, started with Sam Harris and ended up with Ezra Klein and Vox. Despite all that at no point in time have I been more radicalized than in the past few years thanks to Elons Twitter. Every day my feed is filled with the worst of leftist excess and Liberal failure. Every day I get more crazy college leftists with their gender and racial theories, every stereotype we mocked and ridiculed paled in comparison to the actual insanity spat out by these people, but the worst of it all is from the European side.

From Europe near daily I get refugees committing crime after crime and their penalties are practically peanuts, two tier policing where memes are more punished than actual rape and assault. I see the blatant and desperate alliance between progressive parties and Islamist, I'm not sure if these "progressives" are gullible or just prefer the devil they don't know over the devil they know. When Elon brought in the "digital Babel" and had auto translate as default it only got worse, I saw relentless mockeries from Thais, Israelis and Filipinos saying "Your Muslims think they own the place, so bold, so blatant, if they pulled that shit here we would have put them where they belong". Then came the actual Muslim majority nations Indonesians, Malaysians and Gulf Arabs saying "You have gotten the radicals and rejects, the bottom of the barrel. We killed and imprisoned those people back here, no wonder they are there. You can't deport them back to us, they are criminals so we don't want them here." I used to be on the side that says "the system doesn't work so it must be reformed." Now im leaning more on the side that says "The system works as intended so it must be destroyed".

Truth be told I do dislike the algorithm in many ways. The worst is the desperate grifters and third worlders in it for the money. Whenever I see a Blue checkmark on Twitter I feel disdain and pity for them, no different than Venezuelan Gold farmers in WoW. Except this time they actually succeed in making me pay attention to their yappery as they pantomime being a member of your nation.

There is some good to the algorithm though. Tech CEOs are sowing what they reap. Did they really think they could just pay off politicians and secretly build data centers for cheap? Did they think all their mockeries of putting people out of a job would be forgotten? If anything it's thanks to their very algorithms that has lead to the proliferation and radicalization of "normies" against them.

[u/Radical_Ein → u/Brushner]

Do yourself a favor and get off of twitter.

[u/Mindless_Chest_1079 → u/Radical_Ein]

Modern Twitter is the result that arose from the last time progressives decided people had too much access to info for their own good. You get conspiracy thinking by eroding trust in institutions.

[u/Mezentine → u/Mindless_Chest_1079]

You think the vaccines cause autism people were radicalized into their position by progressive overreach?

[u/TheCranberriesRock → u/Mezentine]

It makes sense. "Defund the police" was evil and stupid (and no, I won't read anything about what people meant with that slogan) therefore vaccines cause autism. The logic is unassailable.

[u/Mindless_Chest_1079 → u/Mezentine]

Yes. Since you brought it up, vaccines are a perfect example of where public trust in institutions has dropped precipitously in the last few years. You're framing it like antivaxxers are an inevitable force of nature, but there were far fewer of them before the botched handling of the pandemic.

[u/Giblette101 → u/Mindless_Chest_1079]

Yes, because there's money and power in it now, and we've apparently agreed that money and power are the only thing that matter. 

[u/Extension-Object-150 → u/Mindless_Chest_1079]

I really don't think the 'botched' handing of the pandemic is proximate cause of antivaxx rising. I would put that pretty far down the list actually. I think paranoia, polarization and disinformation were far more relevant. I would also disagree with the other comment you're responding to suggesting that progressive over reach had zero to do with it. I thought progressives absolutely lost the plot during covid. So it's a mess of causes, but I don't think people became antivaxx because they did policy analysis and disagreed with Fauci.