Must see TED talk - social media advertising and politics

[Jimbatron]

If you watch one TED talk this year, make sure it is this one.

 

 

Regardless of your nationality or politics, never trust online advertising on social media if you see scare stories being promoted when it's time to vote. You don't know who is funding it, and it's currently hard for authorities to even spot what individuals are seeing, much less track and take down blatant lies. Always be sure of the source before you trust information. Do you own research and cross reference before jumping to conclusions.

Edited April 20, 2019 by Jimbatron

[Guest]

Very interesting video, personally I'm not into British politics and I didn't know that the 2016 referendum was influenced by ads on social medias. I heard about the "Cambridge Analytica scandal", but I've never really understood what it was.

Recently I've been in Ireland and, from what I've seen, they're going pretty good with the EU and the Euro! Dublin is full of young people who go there for studying, there are lots of tech companies, public transports seem to work great: I mean, from a tourist perspective it seems that Ireland's going well, and I noticed it not just in big cities like Dublin or Cork, but also in the countryside. I've also been one day in Northern Ireland, in Belfast precisely, and there I saw lots of people there were upset about Brexit and wanted to join the Repubblic of Ireland... But there were also groups of people who are happy to be part of the UK. From what I've understood the political scenario in Northern Ireland is a bit of a mess and now it seems like the New IRA (that probably killed the reporter in Londonderry) is back in action.

But there's one thing I understood clearly: both Ireland and Northern Ireland don't want Brexit to happen.

 

And speaking about missinformation, Nigel Farage after the Brexit vote said this to an English reporter:

- Nigel: "UK is the first country to leave the EU, and I think other countries will follow us in the future."

- Reporter: "Which country do you think it will be the next?"

- Nigel: "I think it'll be Italy, just look at the Mediterrean problem and their economy."

I have the fear that Nigel is right. Recently we had a lot of fake news regarding the EU, people generally are not that happy to talk about Europe because they think EU destroyed our economy and brang an invasion from North Africa. Basically we're experiencing the same things that happened in the UK: immigration, economical crisis, sovereignity and poor mid-class. But Italy is not as solid as UK, plus we're in the Eurozone and a possible Italexit would completely destroy our fragile economy considering that we'd have to go back to Lira again... But explain that to old people who don't even know what inflation rates are!

The immigration story is partially true BTW, Malta, Italy and Greece need help from all the EU for the immigration problem. But when it comes to the economic crisis, I think it's mostly our fault because of mistakes made in the past. We devalueted Lira a lot in the '70, '80 and '90 (so of course we had a disadvantageous rate exchange with Euro) and, before the EU, some people were used to retire at the age of 35-40, basically long-term politics were unknown! And now we're paying the consequences.

Here in Italy fake news generally talk about immigration and economy which are our 2 biggest problems at the moment, in a month there'll be the EU Elections and people may be manipolated just like the video says. And all these fake news are just rising the EU skepticism level...

 

With that said, I don't want to turn this discussion into a political thread, I just wanted to analyze how this video represents the reality we live in. Social medias in general are changing the society and people's ideas, fake news are a serious problem that is very hard to solve. Doing researches on the source of the news is always the best thing to do, but the average user doesn't have time (or doesn't want) to look if the article he's reading is true or false... Sharing it is way more easier and requires less time!