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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 1st, 2022

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  • You wouldn’t, because you are (presumably) knowledgeable about the current AI trend and somewhat aware of political biases of the creators of these products.

    Well, more because I’m knowledgeable enough about machine learning to know it’s only as good as its dataset, and knowledgeable enough about mass media and the internet to know how atrocious ‘common sense’ often is. But yes, you’re right about me speaking from a level of familiarity which I shouldn’t consider typical.

    People have been strangely trusting of chat bots since ELIZA in the 1960s. My country is lucky enough to teach a small amount of bias and media literacy skills through education and some of the state broadcaster’s programs (it’s not how it sounds, I swear!), and when I look over to places like large chunks of the US, I’m reminded that basic media literacy isn’t even very common, let alone universal.



  • How do you solve the problem that half the country can’t even be bothered to participate once every four years?

    I assume you’re talking about the US electoral system?? That’s very different.

    but how would we get people to engage with such a system?

    By empowering them.

    Consider how the current electoral system disempowers people:

    1. Some people literally cannot vote or risk jeopardizing their job taking the day off, others face voter suppression tactics

    2. The FPTP system (esp. spoiler effect) and the present political circumstances mean that there are really only two viable options for political parties for most people, so many feel that neither option represents them, let alone their individual positions on policy

    3. Politics is widely considered to be corrupt and break electoral promises regularly. There is little faith in either party to represent voters

    But, in a system where you are able to represent yourself at will, engagement is actually rewarding and meaningful. It won’t magically make everyone care, but direct democracy alongside voter rights reform would likely make more people think it’s worth polling.




  • To be fair, you can’t say they’re wrong.

    Most of them are. Some of them are even plain old factually wrong, not just condescending or exaggerating.

    It’s important to understand that many of these instances were raised by people who didn’t like reddit’s widespread US-defaultism (including people claiming reddit is left-of-center because it swings Democrat) and its tolerance of bigots and trolls. Now if someone wants to set up their own instances to clone reddit and keep all the bad parts, sure, all we can really do is ignore them or get ignored by them. But when those people complain that this is “a bunch of 14 year olds” with “vote bots” or a “political echo chamber”, that’s just plain old ignorant, or shocked that they’re suddenly in a place with a different culture and struggling to believe it’s mostly just normal nerdy people like reddit is.