How We Broke Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tobiasrose/empathy-to-democracy-b7f04ab57eee <comment><USER2> One other contributor (and I hear this often repeated but rarely substantiated) was 24 news. There's only so many facts to present (and facts are difficult to find and vet). To fill the extra time they focused more on pundits and opinions. Since this was now a majority of the content each side got stronger and more polarized. I still think this has a stronger effect than people realize because not everyone uses computers.

I try to do what they recommend and it's tough to listen to both sides. They start with the basis you're already supporting them so they skip the "foundation" of their argument and the content generally is lies and condescension for the other (to be clear, I'm talking about both sides).

<comment><USER3> I don't believe the issue is an actual dearth of facts. The reality is (and presumably always will be) there are far too many facts to report them all, particularly in an entertaining way.

Editors must make a selection of which facts are relevant and interesting enough to make it into... whatever it is they're editing. When that's political news, that selection bias becomes more important. And in today's age, it can be so extreme that both sides are operating with inconsistent perspectives. Not because someone is lying or misleading.

/Then you add lying and misleading and the whole thing is a dumpster fire.

<comment><USER2> Yes, there's more raw data there, but it's not always useful until it's aggregated and analyzed. Not everyone has time to sift through raw CSPAN footage or census data (I try). People (myself included) rely on sources for that. If some breaking news is happening, spotty raw data from the front lines can be really misleading about what's actually happening. You can also see the money draining out of traditional long-form reporting (and polls).

These outlets more and more rely on rhetoric, opinions, and emotions instead of facts.

I think part of it is that incentives are misaligned. I didn't want to throw shade on one side, but the Les Moonves quote, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." I think in addition to a news businesses focusing on being the best and financially successful, there's focus in politics where the only goal for each side is on winning instead of being right or living up to some ideals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the humans have been dividing themselves up into tribes for a long time. While technology isn't completely blameless, Technology does provide another avenue where humans establish and patrol boundaries via social cues. And those cues can maybe be magnified by tech and exploited by political parties on both sides.

I found this podcast particularly interesting (though maybe not 100% correct), but it discusses interesting urban/rural social and cultural boundaries. And I think it's fairly perceptive in the observation that completely unrelated political issues are bound together simply because they happened to fall on different sides of that cultural divide. I think that divide had formed long before the internet and certainly social media.

It was also recorded just before the election which additionally makes for some prophetic elements.

Cracked Podcast #148 [http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump- country/](http://www.earwolf.com/episode/trump-country/)

<comment><USER5> I completely agree. Humans will be humans and we will always have tribes. And that's okay. What needs to change is modern voting systems to accomadte the growing fractions of views. Such as, The Alternative Vote (Instant Run-off) [1] Also, The Cracked podcast is so fantastic!

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My first thought after election day was that Brandolini's Law had been successfully weaponized, and that Firaxis should get busy adding it to the tech tree in Civ 6.

Sam Biddle wrote an article[1] in The Intercept recently where he uses a phrase that would be a great name for this new tech:"Internet-Augmented Ignorance"

The clickbait phenomenon appears to be a much bigger problem today than it did a week ago. A week ago, I thought of it as a mere annoyance. Now I fear it is an existential threat – especially in light of Zuckerberg's take:

 _" I think the idea that fake news on Facebook—of which it's a very small amount of the content—influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea."_

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging- you-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/facebook-im-begging-you-please- make-yourself-better/)

<comment><USER7> _" Sam Biddle wrote an article [on] the clickbait phenomenon"_

Well, leave it to the experts.

<comment><USER6> The article that I linked to may be one that not everybody agrees with, but it is a well-written and thoughtful article that isn't anywhere near the clickbait-farm model.

If the problem were merely that people selectively shared thoughtful but biased articles within their own information bubble, the problem would not be so severe.

The clickbait problem, in contrast, is that people share – within milliseconds - articles that are designed merely to siphon money from that dopamine hit, with no good-faith effort to even make any sense whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The U.S. may appear to be a broken democracy to most but it is a functional constitutional republic. This was was the purposeful intent of the founders to safeguard the sovereign interests of the individual states.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's funny how leftists think that democracy is "broken" because they favourite candidate has lost democratic elections :) The truth is exactly the opposite: the fact that candidate so despised by elites, media, lobbysts has won with votes of common people is a sign that the democracy is working better than ever.

<comment><USER10> More people voted for Hillary than Trump. This is the second time in 16 years that a candidate has received the popular vote but lost the election. It didn't happen once in the 20th century. The system is in fact broken at this point, thanks to voting rights suppression, gerrymandering, and the sheer madness that is the Electoral College. Even Trump himself in his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday said he would prefer a system in which the popular vote determined the winner, even after his victory.

<comment><USER11> I agree that the system needs to change, but you should also take into consideration that the purpose of the electoral college is to prop up the power of smaller states that don't have large populations, as minority opinions are important too. How people vote is partially a reflection of who the campaigns addressed. Because it's the electoral college that counts, candidates campaign to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to address the popular vote. This would mean less focus on swing states and more focus on addressing the population overall.

Trump winning while losing the popular vote is the system working as intended, but we can definitely debate whether those intentions were good and if the reasons for the system still apply today. The political situation is very different now from when the electoral college was implemented. As it stands, it's entirely up to the states to change the laws binding their electors to the state popular vote. Eleven have already signed on to National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which would bind their electors to the national popular vote if enough states sign on.

<comment><USER12> _If the popular vote won the presidency, campaigns would adjust their strategy to address the popular vote._

Exactly, these complaints are based on an unknowable counterfactual, that if the rules of the game were total votes, a Trump campaign based on them wouldn't have won. All we know is that if you change the rules of the game after it's been played, Hillary "won".

Plus states generally don't count absentee ballots unless they could change election results (which wouldn't necessarily be for the presidential race), so we're only talking about votes _counted_ , not votes _cast_. And absentee ballots strongly break Republican, like 2/3rds to 1/3rd from one source I just read.

<comment><USER13> There's a certain bit of irony in your critique including an incorrect and unsourced rumor that has been making its way around social media.

In case it isn't clear, yes, all ballots are counted in every election. Even absentee ballots. The idea that they're not counted is ludicrous.

[https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/appendix/faq](https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/appendix/faq)

<comment><USER12> While it may be an "unsourced rumor that has been making its way around social media.", it's also something I learned _years_ ago, it's a simple and very obvious economy measure.

And whatever that Official Federal Government FAQ might say to, for example, encourage people to vote absentee, it has no bearing on the facts on the ground. The rules of which are, for Presidental elections, the sole prerogative of each state's legislature.

<comment><USER13> The fact that you learned it years ago doesn't change whether it's an unsourced rumor. Every single state certifies their ballot totals and every single state counts each vote. I challenge you to find a single state where their policy is to only count absentees in close races.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this analysis completely ignores the fact that reddit.com is the 8th largest website in the united states and a primary source of news for large portions of its users. And I'm sure that pretty much every reddit user ever can attest that multiple viewpoints on political issues were HEAVILY debated and often led to flamewars.

just saying that this is direct evidence against the article's conclusions.

[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com)

<comment><USER15> A flamewar is not a real connection of opposing sides that lets each understand the other, it's a progressive back-and-forth of increasingly simplified versions of the other's position until both sides hate each other more than when they started. It's still a part of the echo chamber phenomenon; just because there are people who hate each other shouting at each other, doesn't mean the inherent structure of the medium won't make each more rigid in their views.

<comment><USER16> I'm hoping that platforms like Pol.is can lead to a better future: [https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan- da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq](https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan- da7570d372b5#.qpentztrq)</comment></comment></comment>