Google, Yahoo, etc -- political polarization

[highnote]

Here is a quick video on how the internet contributes to political polarization and hurts democracy:

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[boxcar]

Here is a quick video on how the internet contributes to political polarization and hurts democracy:

I thought the cornerstone to democracy was the free exchange of ideas and political philosophy. Perhaps you can explain to me what I'm missing.

Or do you suggest that we should become a totalitarian state wherein no political polarization is tolerated?

Boxcar

[highnote]

I thought the cornerstone to democracy was the free exchange of ideas and political philosophy. Perhaps you can explain to me what I'm missing.

Or do you suggest that we should become a totalitarian state wherein no political polarization is tolerated?

Boxcar

Did you watch the video? I thought the presenter made a pretty clear case and my experience has been the same as the presenters.

[ArlJim78]

google, facebook,huffington wapo, nyt, yahoo news, everyone he mentioned is pushing a progressive agenda. this isn't polarization its indoctrination or censorship, it's Orwellian. i figured out long ago that google was burying conservative ideas and blogs. they wanted to control the agenda, promote their ideas, like they do in the schools.
you can use the internet to get an array of viewpoints, but you have to go get them. you can't wait for it to be served up to you because you're going to get the sanitized progressive viewpoints only from "the gatekeepers"
if you want a good laugh, read yahoo news for a week or so. lol
its like it was written and desiminated directly from the Obama administration.
they are always running stories with headlines like "Can Romney recover from latest stumbles?", or "Mounting concerns over Romney's Libya statement"

the scary thing is that yahoo news is I believe the number one source of news on the net. this stuff is a big problem, but don't get you hopes up that these guys are going to adjust the algorithms in such a way that it no longer pushes their agenda. not going to happen.

[DJofSD]

Lots of issues to respond to from the video. But not enough time at present.

Propaganda takes on many forms. Filtering and personalizing is one of those forms. Given a library which has unflitered contents, a complete collection, nothing, not one item left out, if the catalog only shows items of a particular perspective/bias/opinion/point of view and not containing any of the rest then you have being fed propaganda.

Lesson number one: don't outsource your thinking to some search engine or other presence on the internet. Learn to think for yourself.

Lesson number two: don't rely on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or any of the other social web sites.

[Tom]

Lesson number three - you should try to be smarter than the internet.

[johnhannibalsmith]

...the scary thing is that yahoo news is I believe the number one source of news on the net....

The really inspiring thing - from someone that goes through Yahoo! News almost top to bottom daily - when you read the comments at the bottom of the articles, the vast majority don't read like an indoctrinated liberal perspective and many, many, many repeatedly bemoan the bias at Yahoo! Every time I read a blatantly pro-Obama article on a blatantly pro-Obama platform, I'm always astounded at the overwhelmingly contrarian reaction from commenters.

[ArlJim78]

here are a sample of the current headlines under politics on Yahoonews

- Spain quip adds to Romneys foreign policy trouble.
- Obama and Democrats raise record funds, polls hold steady
- Robert Gibbs -Mitt Romney has taken the battle straight to Sesame Street
- Axlerod, Republicans rooting for a bad economy.


there is never ever anything positive about a Republican or Romney, and never anything negative about Obama.

[ArlJim78]

The really inspiring thing - from someone that goes through Yahoo! News almost top to bottom daily - when you read the comments at the bottom of the articles, the vast majority don't read like an indoctrinated liberal perspective and many, many, many repeatedly bemoan the bias at Yahoo! Every time I read a blatantly pro-Obama article on a blatantly pro-Obama platform, I'm always astounded at the overwhelmingly contrarian reaction from commenters.
hahaha, some of those comments are mine!!
When I'm bored I jump on there and let them have it.

[boxcar]

Did you watch the video? I thought the presenter made a pretty clear case and my experience has been the same as the presenters.

And lesson number 4: Be thankful we still live in a free society wherein a free flow of ideas can be read, heard and discussed and that the internet itself hasn't [yet] been "fundamentally transformed"!

Boxcar

[Tom]

The rhetoric will escalate now that Romney pulled Obama's pants down on live TV. The SNL writers have been spotted in the MSNBC parking lot.:D

[highnote]

there is never ever anything positive about a Republican or Romney, and never anything negative about Obama.

I have noticed the same thing. Huff Post is the worst. You have to go out of your way to find "Right" leaning news.

The speaker in the video makes a good point about newspaper editors being self-policing (that's not the term he used, but it was something to that effect). What he means is that newspaper editors learned to present both points of view -- left and right -- even if the newspaper is biased, in general, one way or the other.

For example, my hometown newspaper is conservative, but they will publish syndicated columnists who are from the left or right.

One of my favorite agricultural newspapers is called "The Farm and Dairy". They lean right, but I have read editorials in their paper that support Obamacare. I called up the author of the pro-Obamacare article and ask him how it was that his column ended up in a conservative publication. He said that he submitted it to a syndicator and that newspapers who subscribe to the syndication service will oftentimes publish articles from all political perspectives.

Huff Post will not post anything from the "Right". So newspapers have evolved to be much better at presenting a broad spectrum of views. Human's still do a better job than computers at making moral decisions.

[Valuist]

Twitter is the ultimate in personalized news. But YOU, the user, control who you follow.

Yahoo News is the worst of all. I have SBC Global as my ISP, so the email is thru Yahoo. I have to log on to Yahoo to get to my email and it is the most liberal biased of any of them.

[GameTheory]

The speaker in the video makes a good point about newspaper editors being self-policing (that's not the term he used, but it was something to that effect). What he means is that newspaper editors learned to present both points of view -- left and right -- even if the newspaper is biased, in general, one way or the other.Only on the op-ed page. Doesn't make up for the incredible slant of the "news" coverage. Actually, what it doesn't make up for is the refusal to admit it. Everything is a bit slanted or a lot slanted -- fine, just admit it. For instance, the New York Times claims its news coverage is objective, but it is not. It is dripping, saturated with left bias in the headlines, the choice of stories, in practically every paragraph. Again, fine, just admit it, but they won't. What's funny is that EVERYBODY knows it -- nobody thinks the NYT is anywhere near objective, so they just make themselves look silly and further undermine their credibility by pretending they are.

[Valuist]

Yahoo News has to be up there as being one of the worst sources of news. It's completely comical how biased they are politically.

But today they ventured outside politics to show their ignorance is versatile.
Today's gift was "rapper dies of accidental overdose". We find out some rapper had high levels of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol in his system. What possibly could go wrong?

[Tom]

Not an accident - natural selection.
The species is stronger today.

[azeri98]

The mainstream media is conducting Republican ideal suppression, including social media and internet search engines