Is the bloc vote of a mass movement in the grips of memetic contagion a democratic mandate? Yes in letter, no in spirit. Electoral democracy can’t structurally distinguish between mass movements and individual franchise. Should it? I don’t know but let me try to frame it.
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Trump didn’t get 62,984,828 individual votes. He got 1 vote weighted by 62,984,828 for, and 1 vote weighted by 65,853,514 against. Bloc vs bloc. Further weighted (some say distorted) by the funhouse mirror of electoral college.
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This was arguably a new phenomenon, despite some historical precedent. It was neither like clientelistic democracy a la Jackson, nor like limited mass movements. It was closer to a 51% sibyl attack. Real humans turned into sock puppets by an idea and forged into something.
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Two metaphors come to mind: 1. grasshoppers transformed into locusts by scarcity (did you know locusts are not a separate species? They’re grasshoppers in a special state) 2. Meme pandemic. MAGA as a mind-virus that swept through the population.
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I’m happy to bothsides this argument. Bernie mob is as much locust swarm/mind virus as Trump mob. The first metaphor suggests one intervention: return to condition of plenty somehow. The second metaphor suggests another: media distancing. Two questions: Can we? Should we?
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The first intervention I am going to dismiss. “Return to plenty” is not a political choice. It’s a function of optionality created by new technology. You may not agree. Some think there’s plenty already, hoarded. Separate argument. But I’ll punt. We can’t, so should-we is moot.
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
The second intervention is interesting. We’ve learned enough in the last few years that we could. I think media distancing to flatten the curve of memetic contagion is possible. We could lower R0 of ideas like MAGA with tech. Question is: Should we?https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1247375660244320258?s=21 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Thought experiment: A different kind of constitutional convention is called, not the kind red states have been trying to engineer. One devoted to redesigning democracy to be memetic contagion resistant. What could it ask of Facebook and Twitter to protect Democracy 2.0?
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The earliest constitutional democracies had opinions about tech and media. The idea of a “free press” shaped democracy 1.0 and “press” was not an abstraction or metonymy. It referred to literal printing presses. So what is a “free social media”?
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Replying to @vgr
Putting this into a constitution is a bad idea. These things have been around 15 years, constitutions are expected to endure much longer.
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My preferred take is the "no anti-competitive practices in the marketplace of ideas" approach. It's unreasonable to apply the standard of "freedom of speech" that we apply to states.
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @vgr
No anti-competitive practices in the market place of ideas means: you can't build up your platform liberally to dominate the market and then impose illiberal norms once you've crushed the competition. Don't know if you were on a different track.
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