Trump Hacked the Media Right Before Our Eyes
Let’s get one thing straight: I am not a fan of Facebook. I’m confident that social media is a cancer on our private lives and a source of derangement in our politics. I take it for granted that the tech barons are acquiring the power to tilt elections, and that they’ll be happy to play handmaidens to tyrants soft and hard so long as they can monetize our data. I take a certain mordant pleasure in watching Mark Zuckerberg and his minions scapegoated for the political failures of late-Obama-era liberalism.
But the liberal establishment’s fixation on Facebook’s 2016 sins — first the transmission of fake news and now the exploitation of its data by the Trump campaign or its appendages — still feels like a classic example of blaming something new because it’s new when it’s the old thing that mattered more. Or of blaming something new because you thought that “new” meant “good,” that the use of social-media data by campaigns would always help tech-savvy liberals and not their troglodytic rivals — and the shock of discovering otherwise obscures the more important role that older forms of media played in making the Trump era a reality.
No doubt all the activity on Facebook and the apparent use of Facebook’s data had some impact, somewhere, on Trump’s surprise victory. But the media format that really made him president, the one whose weaknesses and perversities and polarizing tendencies he brilliantly exploited, wasn’t Zuckerberg’s unreal kingdom; it wasn’t even the Twitter platform where Trump struts and frets and rages daily. It was that old pre-internet standby, broadcast and cable television, and especially TV news.
Start with the fake news that laid the foundation for Trump’s presidential campaign — not the sort that circulates under clickbait headlines in your Facebook feed, but the sort broadcast in prime time by NBC, under the label of reality TV. Yes, as media sophisticates we’re all supposed to know that “reality” means “fake,” but in the beginning nobody marketed “The Apprentice” that way; across most of its run you saw a much-bankrupted real estate tycoon portrayed, week after week and season after season, as a titan of industry, the for-serious greatest businessman in the world.
Where did so many people originally get the idea that Trump was the right guy to fix our manifestly broken government? Not from Russian bots or targeted social media ad buys, but from a prime-time show that sold itself as real, and sold him as a business genius. Forget unhappy blue collar heartlanders; forget white nationalists and birthers: The core Trump demographic might just have been Republicans who watched “The Apprentice,” who bought the fake news that his television program and its network sponsors gladly sold them.
That was step one in the Trump hack of television media. Step two was the use of his celebrity to turn news channels into infomercials for his campaign. Yes, his fame also boosted him on social media, but there you can partially blame algorithms and the unwisdom of crowds; with television news there were actual human beings, charged with exercising news judgment and inclined to posture as civic-minded actors when it suits them, making the decision to hand day after day of free coverage to Donald Trump’s rallies, outrages, feuds and personal attacks.
Nothing that Cambridge Analytica did to help the Trump campaign target swing voters (and there’s reason to think it didn’t do as much as it claimed) had anything remotely like the impact of this #alwaysTrump tsunami, which probably added up to more than $2 billion in effective advertising for his campaign during the primary season, a flood that drowned all of his rivals’ pathetic tens of millions. And as cynical as I believe the lords of Silicon Valley to be, the more important cynicism in 2016 belonged to those television execs who were fine with enabling the wild Trumpian takeover of the G.O.P., because after all Republicans deserved it and Hillary was sure to beat him in the end.
Except that she didn’t beat him, in part because he also exploited the polarization that cable news, in particular, is designed to feed. In 2016 this polarization didn’t just mean that Fox became steadily more pro-Trump as he dispatched his G.O.P. rivals; it also meant that a network like CNN, which thrives on Team Red vs. Team Blue conflict, felt compelled to turn airtime over to Trump surrogates like Jeffrey Lord and Corey Lewandowski and Kayleigh McEnany because their regular stable of conservative commentators (I was one of them) simply wasn’t pro-Trump enough.
The depth and breadth of Trump skepticism among right-wing pundits was a pretty solid indicator of his unfitness for high office. But especially once he won the nomination this skepticism was often filtered out of cable coverage, because the important thing was to maintain the partisan shouting-match model. This in turn encouraged a sense that this was just a typical right-versus-left election, in which you should vote for Trump if you usually voted for Republicans … and in the end that’s what most G.O.P. voters did.
My own CNN experiences were positive; I admire the many fine journalists who work in television news. But it was clear enough being in that orbit in 2016, as it should be clear to anyone who watched Trump’s larger relationship to his television coverage, that the business model of our news channels both assumes and heightens polarization, and that it was ripe for exploitation by a demagogue who was also a celebrity.
It’s also clear — as the economists Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro wrote in these pages late last year — that among older white Americans, the core demographic where first the primaries and then the general election were decided, television still far outstrips the internet as the most important source of news. And indeed, the three economists noted, for all the talk about Breitbart’s influence and Russian meddling and dark web advertising, Trump only improved on Mitt Romney’s showing among Americans who don’t use the internet, and he “actually lost support among internet-using voters.” In a sense, you could argue, all those tweets mattered mainly because they kept being quoted on TV.
Which is not to say that the current freakout over Facebook doesn’t make a certain kind of sense. Beyond the psychological satisfaction of weaving the often-genuinely-sinister side of Silicon Valley into stolen-election theories, there’s a strategic wisdom to the center-left establishment’s focus on the internet.
What Trump did will be hard for a future demagogue to imitate: The generations who get their information from newscasts are dying out, the web is taking over at an accelerating pace and in the long run there is more to be gained in going after Mark Zuckerberg than in pillorying Jeff Zucker. And pillorying Fox’s hosts only helps their brand: the big tech companies regard themselves as part of the liberal cultural complex, so they’re vulnerable to progressive bullying and shaming; not so Sean Hannity, whose stalwart support for Trump was and remains vastly more important than any online stratagem.
In the end, as Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote recently for National Review, one implicit goal of the Facebook freakout is to ensure that “conservatives and populists will not be allowed to use the same tools as Democrats and liberals again, or at least not use them effectively.” If the trauma of Trump’s victory turns social-media gatekeepers into more aggressive and self-conscious stewards of the liberal consensus, the current freakout will have more than served its political purpose.
But like the television channels whose programming choices did far more than Facebook to make Donald Trump president, it won’t have served the truth.
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An interesting take on this whole thing....I don't agree with all his conclusions, but it is a different, and far more honest look at what happened. I find this quote to be pretty funny:
"In the end, as Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote recently for National Review, one implicit goal of the Facebook freakout is to ensure that “conservatives and populists will not be allowed to use the same tools as Democrats and liberals again, or at least not use them effectively.”
The right can't use the same tools as the left and win! It's just not right......
I find the "poutrage" a bit overboard and funny in a weird kind of way. Panties in a bunch because a company used a social network to gather info in by putting supposed surveys and polls out for people to react to............and they did. And some info was gotten about their habits etc. while online. This is used EVERY DAMNED DAY to an extent by a LOT of tech people and advertisers. Do a search for say a new mattress on your computer. Shop around a bit and make a decision maybe later and close your tab. Next time you sign on to your home page, note the ads that pop up. All of a sudden you have ads for mattress sales. Your browse history was "compromised" and someone used it to see your interests. Just like the analytic company did. Google does a sort of takeoff of this in their search engine FOR advertisers. You can pay a certain amount (depending on the topic and how bad you want to be "seen" at the top) on a per click basis and you pay for those clicks done by those searching for your particular product. The higher you want to appear, the more per click you pay them to "move you up" the list. Along with this, you get an analysis from Google showing geographic location, what website they may have been on and saw your ad prior to clicking on it, all the way down to their ISP. Did you ever wonder how concrete those privacy policies that HARDLY ANYONE ACTUALLY READS really are? Yeah, me too.
While I don't necessarily like it, people have got to realize that World Wide Web means just that. You are subject to all kind of shit that you are probably not aware of and you take a chance with every email and browser click you execute.
PHEW. sorry for the rant............
Agreed. Companies do this to market what you want to you-by targeting things that interest you. It is really nothing new. If you want to have some real fun, go on somoene else's computer and shop for inflatable sax toys, then close the browser........I mean, I have no idea...er....if that would actually work....or.....ah....nevermind......
There is an ad at the top of this page at this very moment for a specialty tool I was shopping for three hours ago. It happens everyday but the thing that's really disturbing is that the ad subject will go away after a couple days but it will pop back up randomly in a month or two.
I've experience hat. After I've done an online search for a product I want to buy-- or even search fo rit on Amazon-- for the next few days or more ads for that product and similar ones mysteriously appear on my screen-- and those ad appears on different sites I land on during the course of a day.
But its even more insidious than that--- it even happens in "brick and mortar" stores:
'Aisles Have Eyes' Warns That Brick-And-Mortar Stores Are Watching You
We've become accustomed to the idea that when we shop online, retailers are collecting information about us. But you might not realize how much information is being collected about you in some of the stores you shop in.
My guest Joseph Turow says we're on the cusp of a retailing era that is adding an entirely new level of routine surveillance, like the ability for the retailer to know when you've walked into the store and then track where you are within it and what merchandise you've been handling - not to prevent you from shoplifting, but to get a profile of who you are as a consumer. Your profile may affect the price you are charged at checkout. (cont'd)
Google collects all kinds of data on you and then stores it for future use. That's why I use Bing, which probably does the same thing. I stay far away from social media...get enough nonsense on liberal echo chambers like this one.
Additionally, there is not nor will there be an Amazon Echo, Alexa or whatever else in my house. I don't need that much help and can find info if I need to. I don't care to plant a listening device into my own home......
Except of course for one "minor" point which you inadvertently neglected to mention. Unless I'm wrong, it would appear that you use The Newstalkers . . . occasionally?
Definition of Social Media:
Forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)
Oops.
Both do, but Bing offers many more Conservative views than Google so we can make better assessments. Please look into Duck Duck Go. It doesn't track us.
I curtailed my use of Google years ago and now use DDG and Bing.
Well that makes perfect sense. If you don't like something a particular site does-- switch to using a different site-- one that does exactly the same thing!
"I’m confident that social media is a cancer on our private lives and a source of derangement in our politics."
YEP, YEP, YEP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FuckYOUberg doesn't give a shit, or Facebook wouldn't be in the conundrum FuckYOUberg is saying he agree's to fix.....or is willing to be regulated more......AGAIN !
"But the media format that really made him president, the one whose weaknesses and perversities and polarizing tendencies he brilliantly exploited, wasn’t Zuckerberg’s unreal kingdom; it wasn’t even the Twitter platform where Trump struts and frets and rages daily. It was that old pre-internet standby, broadcast and cable television, and especially TV news."
Yep, Yep, Yep !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One of the other cost's of Social Media is that we have lots of people that now consider themselves experts on everything form intracacies of the federal budget process, to the ins and outs of investigations to brain surgery.......just look around this place.
Scary ain't it.
"Common Sense" just doesn't exist anymore.
And for the Douchebags.............
" common sense. .... good sense , c an be described as "the knack for seeing things as they really are , and doing things a s they ought to be done."
Problem most folks have is the ..... "As it REALLY is" ...... part.
Sugar and spice and everything nice doesn't exist.
An important point!
And that's one of the things about Social Media that really annoys me-- every time I log on to this site (NT) I see so many comments by people who think they are experts...on just about anything and everything.
Of course most people do have a lot of knowledge about some subjects-- but more often than not people spout forth nonsense about topics they know nothing about! (More often than not what they think they know is not factual, but instead consists entirely of "Alternative Facts" that they read somewhere on the Internet).
Sugar and spice and everything nice doesn't exist.
Are you saying that these things I've listed below don't actually exist-- and never did? That they are mere Fig Newtons of my imagination?
Just for starters: AMACs photos, Buzz's first person photo-essays on China as well as his numerous articles on classic films and great photographers, my posts on things like Old Time Arcade Games & the 4 part series on the MBTI personality test , Perrie's posts on a fascinating variety of non-political subjects (from cats to American history and more), Dowser's numerous articles on family heirlooms and other things from her family (going back for generations) ; ; ;
And then there's Bob Nelson's thought provoking articles on a wide variety of subjects, TiG's posts on various subjects that raise the possibility of more people here beginning to thinking logically (heh), Kavika's articles giving us great insights about American Indians, Spikegary's initiation of a wonderful discussion where numerous people here shared insights about who they are....
(And my apologies to several others here whom at this moment I forgot to mention).
But, you do know this.......
There are, of course, both negative and positive things on social media sites such as NT-- just as there are everywhere in life. And I am certainly a big critic of the negative aspects of the Internet.
But IMO a large part of how people experience the world depends upon how they choose to see it. There's an old saying:
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
According to the media....THE MANY....see it through the caterpillars eyes.
Excellent quote!
And oh how true....
They're all nice....but not Sugary or Spicy .
When did it?
The problem with "common sense" is that it is not really all that common.
When I was growing up anyway. People knew how to say "NO", and MEANT it, and folks knew, before it wasn't popular. Neighbors used to watch out for others kids, and let the parents know when their kid did wrong....and the parents THANKED THEM" for telling them, instead of yelling at the neighbor for intruding.
Times have changed for sure.
I believe the problem is that "common sense" never really existed to begin with.
We live in a chaotic world and try to make sense of the events around us.
If we indulge in media overload, then our physical and mental health is likely to suffer because of our need to shape the entire world into a place where we feel safe.
Once upon a time in the good old days.....before social media?
Before social media, people were free of propaganda?
Not free of, but not the constant barrage every waking minute they are exosed to now. Everyone has some common sense, though once upon a time, we were taught how to use that common sense and build on it, if we were lucky enough ot have parents that cared enough. I learned how to shoot a gun when I was little, but instruction and by being given information on the bad things that could happen and how they could happen and how those things could be avoided. I've never shot anyone or anything I didn't intend to.
When as a kid, mom would say 'Don't put that in your mouth, because __________________________. Seems we lack some of that in htis day and age, plus there was no such ting as instantaneous gratification when we were kids-we didn't get something just because we decided in that instant we wanted somthing shiny we saw.....
have you heard of mainstream media / cable news? constant BS 24/7/365
social media has a better record by far.
I disagree because it is not what I have lived and what I have researched.
We have been exposed to propaganda via media ever since there was media.
We have been told that if we buy and use the right products, from dish soap to autos, that we will be healthy, attractive and popular.
We are a consumer nation. Our economy is based on people endlessly buying things they don't need at prices that they cannot afford.
After 9/11, Bush was asked what people needed to do to support the US. Bush said that people needed to buy cars.
In recent years, the auto industry is very concerned because the millennials don't seem as enthused about financing tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of metal that depreciates at ridiculous rates.
In the 1920s, propaganda told women that they would be equal to men if they began smoking cigarettes. This was very effective propaganda and has resulted in millions of women suffering from cigarette related diseases and wasting enormous amounts of income.
However, what is important to realize is that propaganda has effectively been used to overcome whatever "common sense" that was ever in existence.
I believe that common sense died of natural causes circa the 1970's.
In your opinion. Social Media has become far more pervasive-was pretty easy to shut off the news/change the channel, seems to be harder to escape the constant of social media, no matter where you turn.
I don't think Facebook ads won the election for Trump all by themselves, but as part of a larger picture, there is probably something there. How many voters absorbed the idea that there was something physically wrong with Hillary Clinton (beyond the flu) during that campaign. For how many of them did it subtly but meaningfully effect their vote? There is no way to ever truly know the answer to that, but I suspect it is a figure noticeably north of zero.
And yet, there was nothing wrong with Clinton, other than her flu related fatigue when she tried to enter a car one day, unfortunately for her in public view.
But it wasn't left at that in social media. No, she was dying, had brain tumors, epilepsy, AIDS, and many more , if you looked at fake news sources, many of which made their way into platforms like Facebook, and alas, The Newstalkers.
Fake news may have had a great effect on the voting, or hardly any at all. But it wasn't zero effect , and even a tiny effect may have been enough to swing the election.
hillary clinton
the 7 million obama voters who voted for trump can not be wrong.
Cheers
More than 2 million voted for Hillary Clinton. Has rump disbanded that committee yet to look for all those illegals who voted for Hillary?
How many times do you have to be told that that is irrelevant?
And that means what? She lost. Still lost.....let me check again, nope, she still lost. How did she lose?
And by the way, on my articles/seeds, please do not devolve into name calling/pet names/etc. It's a childish reaction to something you don't like
I'll do as I please.
What worries me about Zuckerberg is that with the amount of world-wide access to individuals that he controls, he could rule the world if he wanted to. China must have realized that and blocked FaceBook.
What puzzles me is that folks give up their personal information so freely, then are aghast when it ends up out in the ether. Hmmmmmm.
They want their 10 minutes of fame? I have never had a facebook account. I do know people who do. My sister-in-law tried to make driving to the store for a loaf of bread sound like having to trek through an alligator infested swamp in order to feed her family. I would say I admire her imagination except it is very tiring to be around people who cannot separate reality from fantasy on an ongoing basis.
I am an introvert who grew up in Gossip City, Arkansas. A place where people poked their nose into other people's business and made up outrageous stories about them while protecting and respecting pedophiles, rapists, wife beaters and child abusers.
Before entering grade school, I learned firsthand that people are rarely who they say they are or who other people think they are.
Never thought of my life as interesting enough as to share it with the world (though I find it interesting), sounds like we're on the same not Facebook page
I find it amazing that people will go to the linked sites and put in all kinds of personal information so they can find out what their 'Pirate Name' is or whartever. People don't think that all that informatiion is being racked and stacked-every time they answer more questions about themselces, they are handing over more pieces to the 'who are you' puzzle.