Reading that article makes me want to sign up for a subscription to my local newspaper.
I know this will come across as very ironic or funny because it is, but the things I have read and heard from conservative or right wing media sources since the election have been very eye opening for me. Eye opening in that it was clear to me, with what little political science know how I have, that Biden was going to be our next president on the morning of November 4. The trendlines were clear. But rather than deal with the obvious facts, right wing media chose to indulge conspiratorial fantasies instead, much like the left did after 2016. It’s gotten to the point where I just can’t even listen or read certain sources now. I can’t stand it.
The deeper you dive into the state and county level results, the more you see the same patterns in state after state which confirms what exit polls also showed: that President Trump increased his share of the vote with ethnic minorities, in particular Hispanics in Florida and Texas, while losing ground with educated whites and with white men all over the country. That’s counterintuitive of course, but the important thing is there is no way that result could have been planned. Nobody conspired to steal the election. The election was just strange. I believe the only county in Pennsylvania where Trump’s margin improved was in Philadelphia. Philadelphia.
Christian faith is not bound up in how you see election results, so I’ve not said much on the subject, seeing how passionate people have been about alleged fraud. But now that the capitol was invaded and people are dead, it can’t be said that this kind of disinformation is harmless. It was no less harmless when leftists spread conspiracy theories about Bush and 9/11, or about cops out to hunt black men.
After taking a trip on the Trump train, I’m now off it. I’m beginning to come back around to the same sort of very qualified and skeptical trust I had in the news media back when Obama was president.
Back to the subject of the thread: the threat of misinformation is real, and the tech giants are doing what they are doing now for particular reasons, probably mostly out of fear of regulation. Personally, I think the best answer to bad speech is more speech. I find the actions of Twitter and Facebook troubling, but I also understand the context for why they are doing what they’re doing. It’s motivated partially by animus toward people like us and also just because everyone is spooked by what happened on Jan. 6. The left is not going to let this crisis go to waste, but as we get further away from the capitol event and people calm down a little, I wonder if the purges won’t let up a bit? Could this just be a temporary round of overreaction?