this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Not remotely surprised.
I dabble in conversational AI for work, and am currently studying its capabilities for thankfully (imo at least) positive and beneficial interactions with a customer base.
I've been telling friends and family recently that for a fairly small amount of money and time investment, I am fairly certain a highly motivated individual could influence at a minimum a local election. Given that, I imagine it would be very easy for Nations or political parties to easily manipulate individuals on a much larger scale, that IMO nearly everything on the Internet should be suspect at this point, and Reddit is atop that list.
This isn’t even a theoretical question. We saw it live in the last us elections. Fox News, TikTok, WaPo etc. are owned by right wing media and sane washed trump. It was a group effort. You need to be suspicious not only of the internet but of tv and newspapers too. Old school media isn’t safe either. It never really was.
But I think the root cause is that people don’t have the time to really dig deep to get to the truth, and they want entertainment not be told about the doom and gloom of the actual future (like climate change, loss of the middle class etc).
I think it's more that most people don't want to see views that don't align with their own or challenge their current ones. There are those of us who are naturally curious. Who want to know how things work, why things are, what the latest real information is. That does require that research and digging. It can get exhausting if you don't enjoy that. If it isn't for you, then you just don't want things to clash with what you "know" now. Others will also not want to admit they were wrong. They'll push back and look for places that agree with them.
People are afraid to question their belief systems because it will create an identity crisis, and most people can’t psychologically deal with it. So it’s all self preservation.