this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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Social media harms democracy by spreading rumors, survey shows (www.reuters.com)
submitted 2 days ago by Mustachius_Grumpius@thelemmy.club to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Rumors have been spreading for a millennium, and democracy has been okay in the sense that democracy has only been a thing relatively recently. Social media didn't exist 1,000 years ago as a means to spread rumors at scale to hundreds of millions of people.

Something that was said decades ago is that every village used to have an idiot. Now every idiot has a village.

And even more so now, the efforts of one person to sway public opinion can push lies to hundreds of millions of people, which is something that has been impossible up till now.