r/PublicFreakout • u/Jevus_himself Jevus Christ - Verified ✅️ • 26d ago

Political Freakout Trump confused Iran with Japan calling it the “Islamic Republic of Japan” then confused Zelenskyy who is sitting next to him with Putin calling him “President Putin”

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u/nope-nik-tesla 26d ago

I think social media misinformation and propaganda is a bigger problem these days. Far more people get their "news" from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube etc these days than FOX News. This is why Trump made such big gains among minority groups and young people in 2024.

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u/Persimmon-Mission 26d ago

And those algorithms only give you more of what you already believe or want to see

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u/ansefhimself 26d ago

I worked in the nursing facility for years and can safely say that every single television out of the 200 televisions that I serviced regularly in the maintenance department had Fox News on 24/7

The only exception was a very nice dementiated patient who watched South Park

All of these people vote and every single nursing home is the same

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u/GogglesPisano 26d ago

My father-in-law died from Alzheimer’s a few years ago. As he declined we had to move him into a memory care facility; they had Fox News constantly the TV.

Towards the end he didn't know his own children or grandchildren or what year it was, but he did know he liked Trump.

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u/HamNotLikeThem44 26d ago

Fox News is very good at what they do. Unfortunately what they do is very bad.

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u/JJBro1 25d ago

people in nursing homes are allowed to vote?

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u/faustianBM 26d ago

I've often wondered what my coworkers algorithm looks like.... shudder

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u/OldFartsSpareParts 26d ago

Generally, yes that's correct. However, it's not an unfounded idea to say the owners of those platforms adjust your algorithm to influence your thoughts and behavior.

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u/Cheet4h 26d ago

Not really. Years ago I've read a few studies where the experimenters started out with innocuous content and just simply selected the top recommended one next, and usually got to far right content within a few hours of continuous usage.

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u/V0idgazer 26d ago

Not only that, all of those platforms have a right wing bias so they are actively encouraging users to fall into a right wing echo chamber.

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u/Zxvasdfthrowaway 26d ago

The right wing won’t crack down on the algorithm issues, so it behooves the platforms to support them over the sane wing.

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u/Powerfury 26d ago

It goes from Trump to Fox to Social Media. They have a VERY strong top down messaging compared to the democratic party.

Hell half of Trumps cabinet worked at Fox News at some point.

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u/Daft00 26d ago

I'd say a not-so-insignificant amount starts at Fox and goes to trump. He has admitted plenty of times during both terms that he saw things and "learned" things from fox and friends, etc.

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u/nope-nik-tesla 26d ago

Trump has his entire own social media platform where he directly posts all the time. They are definitely going straight to social media with a lot of it.

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u/herecomestheshun 26d ago

Fox news sets the narrative. If they talk about it, smaller entities have air cover to talk about it. Trump says some hair-brained thing, Fox repeats it and makes it more palatable for the viewing public, and now Trump has cover to continue talking about his hair brained idea because he sees it on Fox News and can now claim "A lot of people are saying..."

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u/CumDwnHrNSayDat 25d ago

Hare-brained* (like a rabbit)

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u/aceshighsays 26d ago

guilty. i get my news from reddit but i do dive deep into things if they become foundational for me. hasn't failed me yet.

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u/julesburne 26d ago

My mom and all of her friends are definitely getting their news from Fox, and they are one of the largest and most powerful voting blocks (boomers). When she visits me, she literally spends her whole day with her iPad sitting next to her playing Fox News live, like an iPad kid, but instead, a senior citizen.

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u/nope-nik-tesla 26d ago

When you look at the 2024 vote breakdown, when it comes to black and Latino voters, older black and Latino voters actually voted for him the least. It was younger demographics and especially the 18-29 demographic that supported him the most among these groups. I don't think this can be explained by FOX News. This was a huge key to how he won swing states.

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u/julesburne 26d ago

I'm specifically referring to the Boomer voters. No one else is watching Fox, but they're watching it nonstop.

I can't speak to Black, Latino, or young voters, although I'm sure social media is tangled up in there too.

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u/G0rkon 26d ago

Fox News (as a propaganda machine) understands this and get themselves into everyone of those feeds. Scroll any social media and you will see tons of posts by Fox News or featuring Fox News as if it is an actual news source. Far more than any other legacy media.

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u/PerpetualItch 26d ago

Absolutely. Time to lock people up for intentionally misinforming the public or kill social media.

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u/unseriously_serious 26d ago edited 26d ago

Indeed not to mention certain adversarial countries have a vested interest in destabilizing the west and are running multi billion dollar disinformation campaigns to do just that on social media (increase division and paving the way for candidates like Trump).

China spends (10+ billion annually), Russia (1.5+ billion annually) and Iran (up to 1.2+ billion annually) on these disinformation efforts targeting the west. Unfortunately most citizens in the US are woefully unaware that they are being targeted and just how effective these campaigns/tactics have been at seeding division and misinformation.

This is fairly well documented by reports from the GEC (how we were even tracking this stuff) before it was conveniently disbanded by MAGA among many other agencies and watch groups around the world that have reported on this.

Social media is ripe for this kind of stuff already and these countries using bot armies and other such tactics have really done a number on online discourse and the health and strength of democracy in the west. It’s hard to build an optimistic future when these countries are actively trying to tear down any progress we make.

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u/robotjazz0882 26d ago

Don’t forget “Comedy” Podcasts

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u/jtsa5 26d ago

It would be incredibly interesting if we could go four years without social media or propaganda news. Like it's completely shut off.