alt Hacker NewsI am convinced that the current world wide rise of (right wing ) populist movements is mainly caused by social media. By regulating like this my hope is we can reduce their spread.
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Consolidation of all kinds of media (social, print, TV, radio, etc.) is a big ingredient in this. Another ingredient is the enshitification of the net, along with the value of unfettered collection of user data.
The problem isn't that people are consuming (social) media, it's that everything is owned by so few people. We shouldn't be punished for this by having to submit to even more surveillance.
What's wrong with right wing populist movements? They come and go just like left wing populist movements. The pendulum swinging across both the political spectrums over election cycles is a thing of beauty.
Social media is just decentralised information flow. Populist movements are rising because people are finally seeing how absolutely exploited they are by the elites, because the elites no longer have complete centralised control over the flow of information.
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I'm not convinced social media is to blame. Plenty of extremist movements have arisen throughout history without social media. Politics has been bad for a long long time before social media existed.