Seems like it'd run a bit further than the invention of the internet then, right? Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is scathing of the move to ad supported newspapers way back in the past, leading to the rise of companies like News Corp.

> is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives.

You know how one sausage is made. But every factory is filthy just like yours.

I work with "the establishment". It has the wrong incentives too, just different ones.

I think investigative journalism is still pretty good. It just takes a whole lot of time to produce.

It’s kind of interesting that this occurs that at the same time tech leaders are basically telling us, we don’t need institutions, look we have ai instead of universities, tech will solve all of your problems. I don’t actually think there’s a conspiracy here, but like, instead of journalists raising the standards of tech, tech lowered the standards of journalists, and made us all sensationalist microbloggers.

And yet I wonder with the acceptance of tech and the downfall of institutions… isn’t one of the things people are nostalgic for or made the past so great was basically institutions?

I read a good editorial recently by George Potter about how advertising is good because it allows news orgs "pay their own way" and helps keep the press free.

[dead]

The establishment? That sounds so 20th. century to my ears.

> this a power problem and not really a people problem

It’s an education and channel incentive problem. Our kids’ literacy is crashing [1]. And most Americans get their news through channels that are incentivised by selling ads.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-s...

I wouldn't undersell the harms of general conspiracy theories. Most of them become more harmful the more people believe in them and the social media that I see has a tendency to spread the more harmful types of conspiracy theories (medical or political misinformation I see all the time on the internet now).

The conspiracy fans seem rather disinterested in conspiracies that are obviously happening, like people bribing government officials.

They seem to prefer implausible conspiracies, or where there is some ambiguity, such as documents that aren't public.

The wackiest conspiracy theories are probably the ones most promoted by the establishment since they taint all the plausible theories.

"Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds" (Charles Mackay, 1852)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm

Not a new phenomena, but rather a reminder of what civilizations often offer. =3

This is the Hillbilly Elegy hypothesis. I used to buy it. I’m now less convinced. There is a hateful streak in America driven, in part, by reduced attention spans, literacy and ad-powered algorithms. When those folks get better off, they don’t become less hateful. (I’d love to see evidence to the contrary.)

> If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy

Do you really think you’ll be treated better in a quasi-monarchy?

The YouTuber Milo Rossi [1], who debunks archaeological conspiracy theories (and makes educational content about archaeology) likes to say (paraphrasing slightly) "you don't need to make up conspiracy theories to be mad at the government, you can be mad at the actual government for what they actually do." Institutions/"the establishment" deserve skepticism but that skepticism has to be grounded in the real world and in evidence you can actually acquire. Not in supposition about a nebulous "they" pulling the strings. Conspiracy theories rapidly devolve into something entirely unfalsifiable.

A key smell test is: Does receiving pushback or counter evidence strengthen your conviction that you are correct? If so, you're going down a dangerous path. You're painting yourself into a corner where you will have a lot of trouble changing your mind, even if you're wrong.

The "main stream media" is the worst source, except for most of the other ones. It's not valuable because it is gospel - it's plain to see that the media is fallible. It's valuable because it adheres to any standard of evidence whatsoever while producing content at scale. It's like what people sometimes say about Wikipedia, it's the best place to begin your research but it doesn't have to end there.

[1] https://youtube.com/@miniminuteman773

>they definitely aren't working hand in hand with intelligence agencies and corporations.

And definitely neither are any of the "alternative" sources you think are telling you the real truth.