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I think a deeper dive on this is The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri [1] which argues, in short, that people have been enabled by the internet (which he calls the infosphere) and that mobilization via the internet has created extreme turbulence for systems of authority (which are still needed despite their existing issues). The people enabled by the internet have no way to rule, and in many examples do not wish to rule, but only want to dismantle the status quo without any meaningful replacement or solution leaving everyone in a vacuum of nihilism which is highly corrosive to liberal democracy.
By esyir 2025-12-303:20 I'd say that the internet has also strongly lowered the barriers to external propaganda and influence, which is another major factor here. When you've got a huge swarm of "people" with no stake, or even a negative stake in your country, that's a naturally destabilizing factor
By spencerflem 2025-12-2922:384 reply I genuinely don’t get how anyone could feel anything other than nihilism with regards to American democracy
By spencerflem 2025-12-3015:421 reply When the courts stole the election in 2000? The forty years where the only two options were slightly different flavors of Reagan?
By tim333 2025-12-3118:01 Carter to Bill Clinton seemed ok.
By AndrewKemendo 2025-12-304:521 reply But that was always the case for first nations and black Americans.
There has literally never been a good time in America for either group.
By spencerflem 2025-12-305:15 Don’t think we disagree
By Mountain_Skies 2025-12-301:223 reply Yes, it's shocking how common the belief is now that democracy means a person's preferred candidate always wins. Anyone else winning is the death of democracy. The mental gymnastics some people will go through to promote this view can border on mania.
By spencerflem 2025-12-301:23 I have zero preferred candidates and likely never will
By arvid-lind 2025-12-303:21 I think it's at least partially because we can't agree on what terms like "democracy" and "fascism" mean anymore, and that doesn't seem like it's going to get any better. Things like diplomacy, bipartisanship, and cooperation can't compete with conflict and aggression in the algorithms. What do we expect will be guiding future generations of voters' opinions and decisions on this kind of stuff?
By brewtide 2025-12-301:59 "just because you are offended doesn't mean you are right".
It's the modern day way. Perhaps the online filter bubbles over the past... Long while... Have finally shown their long term real world impacts.
By IlikeKitties 2025-12-300:38 I'll add European gerontocracy to that list. Nihilism becomes the obvious and only solution.
By barishnamazov 2025-12-2922:401 reply The author missed the mark on the financial barriers to entry. He predicted that the shift from text to broadband/multimedia would make politics "more expensive" and raise entry barriers because video is costly to produce.
In reality, the cost of video production dropped to near-zero (smartphones, TikTok, YouTube). However, he was right about the outcome. The "entry barrier" isn't the cost of the camera, it's the cost of the algorithmic optimization and the "strategies to draw attention" in an information glut. The rich didn't win because video is expensive; they won because virality is gameable with resources. Credits where due, he indeed called out this potential for "international manipulation of domestic politics" well before the major scandals of the 2016 era.
By iamnothere 2025-12-300:33 The rich won in America before the Revolution. The Revolution was led by rich men who wanted to set their own tax policy, workhouses and vagrancy laws were used to control the poor in early America, union busting and violent strike breaking began in the late 1800s, inequality has soared since the 70s. The only time you could say that the rich were really on the back foot was from the Great Depression to the end of the gold standard, after which we entered the era of unlimited currency expansion (currency which somehow always finds its way into the pockets of rich men). Media in the 90s was controlled by a handful of companies who consolidated further as soon as the government stopped enforcing rules about concentration.
In other words, the present day is just business as usual.
I am against this growing notion that the internet is creating a unique situation where the average person is more oppressed than ever. It enables both good and bad things, and yes we really need to pay attention to the bad things. But it’s still a tool that can be used for engagement in the democratic process, for speech, for small scale commerce, and for communication.
This needs to be stated because those who oppose the good aspects of the internet are fully prepared to hijack anti-internet sentiment in the name of protecting the public. “Locking down” the internet will do nothing to improve the situation of ordinary people. Quite the opposite in fact.
By rickydroll 2025-12-2922:581 reply The internet discourse is like handing a megaphone to an angry drunk.
By iamnothere 2025-12-2923:471 reply If you read history, this is simply public discourse in general. (Often literally.)
If you’re opposed to the difficult and often irrational voices of the public, you’re in fact opposed to democracy.
By petermcneeley 2025-12-2923:591 reply What about the difficult and often irrational voices of the elite?
By iamnothere 2025-12-300:03 I don’t know, what about them?
