Roberto Saviano on Trump's victory: Social networks have killed democracy
2024-11-06 15:25:36
TiranaPost
By Roberto Saviano/ Without social media rules, no democracy is possible anymore. Allowing the attention span to be reduced to 8 seconds, allowing the news to explode to the most ridiculous surface, giving space, center and authority to any non-entity with a handful of followers (often bought, i.e. boosted)... all experts of everything (omniologists) have destroyed democracy. Political debate shifted to social media is the executioner of democracy. Yes, of course the responsibility for Trump's victory cannot be given to social media alone; the left has failed everywhere, in projects, in strategy, in the election of their leaders, and in the ignorance to stop the excessive power of big technology that leads us to believe that the needs of the 1% are also those of the remaining 99%, who do not even have the resources for treatment. Is it not the fault of social media, but the way it is used? Lie! As McLuhan says, anyone who believes that technology is neutral is a "technological idiot." And the content on social networks - even our posts - are like meat that a thief shakes at a guard dog to get inside the house.
Here the only objective is to make you stay as long as possible, get data and sell it for advertising. It doesn't matter if it's about underwear, shoes, Ukraine or poetry. Anyone who believes - me the first fool - that there is more to it than that is deluding themselves by feeding a country that has no other purpose than to get its consumers to consume fast, badly and engage in the worst of possible. New social networks should be born, new rules should be established, transparency should be established. Social media and the unregulated web have allowed Trump... The Twitter channel (now X), Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have been left unregulated, without European competitors. Was it the best television? No, but different. The best newspapers? No, always according to interest, but abandonment by readers was possible and the line controllable. Abandonment has already occurred almost entirely. Who reads newspapers anymore? In social media, in these horrible social networks you are stuck and unaware of how they work. What are we left with? Blowing up social media? Change them? And how? From the Italian suburbs, then?
