this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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China is one giant echo chamber. I think what they mean is "echo chambers that disagree with state approved propaganda".
Every country/social group is its own echo chamber. The problem they address is real.
America will never address the issue, preferring to believe that it is "part of a democracy". It is not. Democracy requires people who are presented both sides of every argument then concluding by themselves
Democracy also means allowing the people to form and discuss their ideas, on their own terms, whether sane or stupid. Not because that's necessarily best, but because that's democracy - authority belongs to the people not to their government.
The responsibility to lead and guide people's ideas, in a democracy, does not lie in the strict control of government, it lies elsewhere. Where that elsewhere is, of course, everyone will argue differently. But not, I think, in governmental control.
Slightly different.
The US has a "maga" echochamber in rural areas, but in cities, its not really an echochamber. Cities tend to lean left, but there's no homogenous hivemind opinion. People will have different opinions.
There are pro-choice and anti-abortion protesters all the time.
There are pro-gun and anti-gun people.
Some people support Biden, some support trump, some support Bernie.
There are pro-israel people, there are pro-palestine people.
In China, its almost impossible to find one news article criticizing the central government, especially not at the Paramount leader at the time (such as Xi Jingping).
I mean, people discuss it behind closed doors, but no one is trash talking Xi in public.
Perhaps the largest difference is that in classrooms, kids actually discuss things in social studies / history classes. There would be an open debate about pro-gun or anti-gun, pro- death penalty or anti- death penalty.
These are not the type of discussions that happen in Chinese classrooms. Granted, I left when I was young in like grade 1-2, but my older brother who was in like grade 7-8 never knew about Tianamen, was always taught pro-CCP stuff. This might be why he has trust issues and constantly fears the government and believes wild conspiracy theories. I mean, imagine one of the biggest events in your country just deleted from history books, its only natural for someone to become skeptical of every authority once your trust have been betrayed.
Not to the extent that China is. They do not have freedom of speech nor freedom of the press. That said, I would love to see legislation addressing this problem globally, and also legislation about all of the data mining.
This argument is a stray one; while it is clear that China itself is a giant, state-controlled chamber, China recognizes that IT platforms and algorithms facilitates the creation of chambers that can be very biased.
America is not even willing to look into that seriously, falsely equating money (from investors and advertisers) with freedom, resulting in systems that are designed to milk attention of the public at the risk of undermining America itself.
With Trump retaliating against the press and Musk owning X, the freedom of speech is taking a nice hit.