498
AI Could Be the Most Effective Tool for Dismantling Democracy Ever Invented
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Nope. I'd still say social media/social media algorithms.
Imagine if social media didn't exist (beyond small, tight-knit communities like forums about [topic], or BBS communities), but all these AI tools still did.
Susan creates an AI generated image of illegal immigrants punching toddlers, then puts it on her "news" blog full of other AI content generated to push an agenda.
Who would see it? How would it spread? Maybe a few people she knows. It'd be pretty localised, and she'd be quickly known locally as a crank. She'd likely run out of steam and give up with the whole endeavour.
Add social media to the mix, and all of a sudden she has tens of thousands of eyes on her, which brings more and more. People argue against it, and that entrenches the other side even more. News media sees the amount of attention it gets and they feel they have to report, and the whole thing keeps growing. Wealthy people who can benefit from the bullshit start funding it and it continues to grow still.
You don't need AI to do this, it just makes it even easier. You do need social media to do this. The whole model simply wouldn't work without it.
This has been going on for a lot longer than we've had LLMs everywhere.
Half of it wouldn't even work if the news media would do their job and filter out crap like that instead of being lazy and reporting what is going on on social media.
One week the whole US news cycle was dominated by "Cheungus posted an AI pic of Trump on truth social".... I mean... I get that the presidency was at times considered dignified in the modern era so it's something of a "vibe shift", but the media has to have a better eye for bullshit than that. The indicators unfortunately are that it's going to continue this slide as well because news rooms are conglomerating, slashing resources, and getting left in the dust by slanted podcasts and YouTube videos.
Some of it is their own fault. People watching the local news full of social media AI slop are behaving somewhat understandably by turning off the TV and going straight to the trough instead of watching live as the news becomes even more of a shitty reaction video.
They also shouldn’t report on the horse race. They should report on issues.
Reporting on elections is always disappointing.
something something lamestream media!
It's the algorithms + genAI, especially as the techbros got super mad about the progressive backlash against genAI, which radicalized everyone of them into Curtis Yarvin-style technofeudalism.
While I generally agree and consider this insightful, it behooves us to remember the (actual, 1930s) Nazis did it with newspapers, radio and rallies (... in a cave, with a box of scraps).
Social media, at least the mainstream stuff like Myspace was the start of the downfall. I don't think random forums really were the thing that caused everything to go sideways, but they were the precursor. Facebook has ruined things for generations to come.