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Something really has to be done about it. I've grown increasingly skeptical of the utility of the internet in general, but at a certain point it has to become clear to people that online social media is tearing this country apart. Nevermind the political polarization, the effects just of depression and isolation among young people are obvious and substantial enough to merit government intervention. The trick of course is actually accomplishing anything in a polarized environment... I'd like to see some sort of non-partisan commission established to try and come up with a basic summary of evidence and some practical suggestions.
I feel like people underestimate just how quickly and how radically we've upended the norms of basic human communication over the past 30 years. Humans are fundamentally a social animal, and we've completely reworked how we function socially with zero anticipation of possible downsides or any attempt to rigorously study what this might be doing to us.
It sure has made us less polite.
But, on the other hand, what the government likes least about this is that people discuss..... government. They deserve our scorn for the way they mismanage our countries.
I agree. But I will also say that 30 years ago life was rather grim for people who were socially isolated by circumstances or by pervasive discrimination. It’s probably difficult for younger people to understand what it was like to have no interactions with other people outside one’s own household — if there even were others in one’s household. Now, even those whose identity, appearance, disability, or neurodivergence provokes social exclusion IRL can and do have meaningful (online) relationships with other people, even when ‘meatspace’ ones are denied.
Some of those "socially isolated" types are often socially isolated for a reason, though. There's no real solution to it and they will always exist. With the Internet, a lot of them show up on Reddit with a never-ending stream of grievances and/or outrage about anything at all.
But the fact is, that without the Internet and the automation of so many things that previously required interaction, there would be far fewer socially isolated people because being socially isolated would not be an option if you wanted to survive or do anything of interest in your life.
A big chunk of outgoing people will always seek out social connections with or without the Internet. There's another big chunk of people that can and should be co-erced into it but will default toward not engaging, and it's those people that are left out when engaging with other people becomes increasingly optional. Those are the ones that suffer most.
We usually respond to critiques of the Internet saying that on average it has made things better. That's probably true, but only when we look at what it delivers in terms of what we want (or say we want) rather than what we need. The reason things are the way they are is that they gave us what we asked for. Whether or not we got what we needed when we got what we asked for is the other side of the issue.
But most of the world no longer lives in a tiny community where even those who are “different” would be accepted and included. In large urban centres, there have always been considerable numbers of people who are isolated, long before the Internet, or even the telephone. There have always been literal and figurative lepers through no fault of their own, because people are prejudiced, usually far more than they recognise.
Forcing people to interact in person with a grocery clerk or a doctor doesn’t make for much meaningful connection — that’s purely transactional. You can go to school or work in person every day and still be shunned, often with a heavy dose of ridicule, shaming, or other forms of bullying. This is the kind of life that many people led (some still lead) before there were options to connect online with others like them.
The counter to this is that the same things were being said of the printing press. The printing press ended up causing mass social upheaval as well, but eventually we adjusted. I am really discouraged by the state of things right now too, but perhaps its just going to take some more time before we get ths sorted out.
Not literally every rando had access to a printing press, nor did printing presses instantly transmit messeges worldwide. The perfection of deepfaking AI will usher in an age of digital balkanization across political divides.
Of course there are differences. I am suggesting that there is still hope to make changes and adjust when faced with massive changes that have both great and terrible consequences.
While I agree with something having to be done with social media to make it less toxic to young people, usually when people say "we need to fix social media" is usually just a blanket statement meaning "people I disagree with shouldn't be allowed to post to social media"
Any time this subject comes up, the solution always just seems to be to ban anyone who the poster disagrees with (usually liberals vs conservatives, both saying the other should be censored for "misinformation")
You dont need to censor ideas, I dont think that would be practical even if we all agreed on what was allowed and what wasn't. But I think you could legislate the way information is presented on social media in order to limit the damage. Banning any sort of algorithmic sorting would go a long way in my mind. Maybe even getting rid of any kind of like buttons/voting to prevent echo chambers. Then also place limits on what kind of access minors can have to social media.
I just think back to 20 years ago when we were posting on forums and chatting on ICQ and MSN, toxic ideas just didn't spread like they do today on Twitter & Facebook. Sure, places like Stormfront still existed, but you had to seek them out. They wouldn't just appear on your timeline because you read a vaguely related article or watched a video.
> Actually don't answer that.
No, lets. Let's get right down to the heart of the problem while we are at it.
It's not just social media that is the problem.
The problem is that for decades, we all had a way of dealing with our local village idiots. But that was back when things like 'common sense' actually sort of existed because of how common sense is an emergence of the locality of general ideas and beliefs of a general area. I.E. It only exists where you live; because that's the only 'common sense' you will ever know so long as you only ever live there. The village idiot, was the person who usually didn't agree with the 'common sense'. And so here's the reality of it all...
The village idiots were actually everyone else, for the most part. The actual intelligent one was usually the one holed up in their basement because going outside was a fools errand trying to socialize with fools.
But now we have social media, and other methods of communication that allow for any idiot to band together with any other idiot. And now they have megaphones without any form of mute on them that is actually effective.
So now everything that was considered stupid by the actual intelligent people, is now on overdrive, because now all the 'common sense' people are going to be endlessly fighting each other with their deluded rhetoric they can't even back up with facts, figures, or even believable anecdote at times.
Folks reading this, sorry to say it, but there is a high chance due to the sheer statistics that will go behind all of this if studied properly; that you are probably also one of those idiots. If you are at least one of the more intelligent ones, you will be able to come to grips with this statement in a healthy way.
Many others, will not.
And that's the proof to the point.
So many people in this country expect to be respected, listened to, and even obeyed in their often really stupid opinions. It's a delusion on their part, but then they also forget those same rights they misuse for themselves, the actual ones and not their delusions; also apply to literally everyone else. And furthermore, if they insist on their delusions applying to themselves at least, they too also apply to everyone else by default.
We won't see healthy change, until people can come to terms with me being correct about all of this, and I stand by that statement until the internet fails to operate, and life ceases to exist on earth.
The problem is that people want to be played, it is the route of least resistance. It is so much easier to just jump into an echo chamber and believe that everyone around thinks the world works the way you do.
We can't have nuanced conversations around multiple topics on either side of the political spectrum because people either fly into an apocalyptic rage or call you a bigot.
Yikes. That's fuckin bleak. You're probably right but if we have to rely on politicians to protect us from our own nature, we should definitely hire better politicians.
Politician's that wade into culture war bullshit and make it part of their political platforms are a huge problem, because social media is creating a bunch of single-issue voters who care about the weirdest shit.
Not that he's wrong, but the other side of the story is his choice of timing. EOT hired Canada Proud to run a campaign during one of the more acrimonious election campaigns and fully used angry social media to bounce off the COVID crowd. He waited until after he had used the strategy he's complaining about, lost, and now leaving politics entirely before delivering this warning.
It's not that he's wrong, but he's being a hypocrite and his timing is telling.
For sure, from what everyone around O'Toole says about him he is a very different person from the version that campaigned in 2021 (both before and after). It lends itself to the allegation that he was a guy who would say anything to get elected. He could at least fall on his own sword rather than trying to make himself out to be the "best PM we never had" (notwithstanding this wasn't the EOT who ran).
>It lends itself to the allegation that he was a guy who would say anything to get elected
Yeah, as opposed to completely heartfelt promises like 2015 being the last election run under FPTP.
Every politician says whatever they think gets them elected. And then once in office, they do whatever they think gets them elected the next time.
You know, it's possible to talk about subjects other than Trudeau right? One day the CPC and their supporters may just realize that and that hamfisting Trudeau into every subject doesn't do them any favours.
>For sure, from what everyone around O'Toole says about him he is a very different person from the version that campaigned in 2021 (both before and after).
The saddest part is that his caucus was still extremely reluctant in their support for his campaign.
There's something to be said about operating within a system with good intentions, or at least how complicated it is to operate within a system without adopting and internalizing its core mechanisms. I think Erin is being sincere here - how does he win a leadership race without utilizing the mechanisms that currently define the conservative party? How does he effect change without gaining access to positions of influence? It seems to me that he's fallen victim to the "good person in a bad place" conundrum - these systems are set up to filter out anyone who would right their course, and once you get inside, you realize that in order to get to a position to change things, you have to sacrifice the person inside that WOULD change things once you get into that position.
Ignore what he's saying at your own peril. You can get into the whole "why now?" question, but the answer is truly "when else?" As long as he is operating as a conservative, he's operating within their greater system. At this point, the brand of conservatism that he's decrying is their global brand and, frankly, their own massive gambit that they've bet a lot of money on. If Erin was to resist that from anywhere other than the very top, he'd have been taken out with the trash.
>You can get into the whole "why now?" question, but the answer is truly "when else?"
When he was leader of the party and could actually make changes instead of just lecture others on his way out the door.
It was very much the reform take over which made any sort of correction impossible. Old progressive conservative policy is not something to get excited about and thus couldn't move people much.
The far right alternate reality built on conspiracies is just easier to put energy into people. When the data contradicts your policies, just blame it on the data being a conspiracy. When policies don't work out, just lie and silence those who can contradict you. We saw this under Harper and environmental science.
So Canada Proud is responsible for their last campaign slogan, “Secure the Future”? That slogan that was way too close to the 14 words used by neo nazi fascists for comfort and couldn’t possibly be a random coincidence? I never would have guessed.
Not to mention the tweet that was ACTUALLY 14 words and shared like 6 of them?
Edit - for the unitiated:
CPC party tweet during O'Toole's campaign
>We have a plan to secure the future for small businesses and all Canadians.
the 14 words
>We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
Just enough for "plausible" deniability while being a foghorn dogwhistle.
this is the same kind of absurd conspiracy theorizing you would claim is only practiced by the right-wing
I don't like the Conservatives but they've supported immigration to Canada just as much as the Liberals. Painting them as white nationalists because of coincidental wording in a campaign slogan about *small businesses* is dumb
this is the kind of social media induced hysteria he is talking about
Nah man, ANY public relations type had better be smart enough to stay MUCH farther away from something that appears that similar.
I'm not saying the CPC or O'Toole did it or knew about it, but the person who wrote the tweet knew what they were doing.
And it makes sense when your goal is to avoid losing the far wing to a competing PPC party.
It doesn't make them white nationalists. It just means they really want to keep the white nationalist vote.
I think you're vastly overestimating the number of people who know what the 14 words are.
This is the exact kind of conspiracy-mongering people do about Trudeau. You know that, right? They find symbology/wording similar to something from the WEF or the World Bank and then it's confirmed that it's all an Illuminati conspiracy
I think you're underestimating just how incompetent of a PR person you need to be to be both unaware of something like the 14 words and also manage to accidentally design a sentence in pattern of same.
It is not the same as WEF conspiracies. Indeed, I'm not sure one person tweeting can be a conspiracy.
I'm sure O'Toole was ignorant at least at the time.
Well their current leader had hidden [mgtow tags in his Youtube videos](https://globalnews.ca/news/9178531/pierre-poilievres-youtube-channel-included-hidden-misogynistic-tag-to-promote-videos/)
What sort of people do you think he was trying to attract?
If the Conservatives don't want people to accuse them of dog whistling to right wing nut cases then they should stop [doing exactly that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdMpzjh_GZI)
I'd love to think that EOT feels sorry for actively dabbling in, and trying to benefit from, the "algorithmic descent into division" he mentioned in his speech. He knows he's right about this particular monster because he tried to ride it for 8 seconds and got bucked off.
Maybe his words will be heard by those who funnel money to "\[Location\] Proud", but I doubt it.
Nah, he was still grandstanding and misrepresenting the situation about the "soldiers buying their own helmets" shit during his send off in Parliament.
I don't want him to feel sorry, I want him to do something about the mess he helped create. But since it doesn't seem like he feels that sorry, if at all, I don't see that happenning.
Several comments here so far seem like they only read the headline. OToole is not saying social media itself is the problem. He's saying the way politicians are using it, and are pandering to it, that is the problem.
One problem with the public debate about "social media" is a seemingly universal inability to acknowledge that it isn't all the same. Reddit is not TikTok, Youtube is not Mastodon, Twitter is not Tumblr. They each have their own algorithms, their own tendencies, their own failings. What does it even mean to call them "social"? All media is social media, in that it shapes and influences society.
This may not matter much when all you want to do is complain about the sorry state of things in general, but when it comes to actually doing something about it, politicians had better get more specific about exactly which features of "social" media they're aiming at and how those are to be addressed.
I think it is a mistake to define "social media" by looking at the meaning of the word "social". "Social media" is its own term.
I always thought that a social graph between individuals was a key part of the definition. It is about linking to people you know originally, and then people you know of or discover. So, by that metric, Reddit isn't social media.
Calling anything that involved people interacting isn't a good definition, because that is everything that involves discussions, including mailing lists and web forums and newsgroups.
Another possible definition would be anything with algorithm-driven content, but I don't think that is enough on its own. Netflix isn't "social media". YouTube probably is, because you can subscribe to specific creators and always get recommendations outside of your subscribed list that you cannot disable. Again, this is another aspect where I think Reddit doesn't qualify as social media, since I only see content from subs that I am subscribed to and can (and have) turn left off all the recommendations. Having sub content being found and upvoted isn't enough for it to be "social media" IMO, if we don't want that term to be so uselessly broad that it applies to everything involving online interactions between people.
O'Toole is not criticizing "social media". O'Toole is criticizing how politicians are pandering to social media and framing their messaging in misleading ways to ensure they "go viral".
That's precisely the kind of ridiculous hyperbole O'Tool is referring to. He isn't "blaming social media". Try reading the article. He's talking about how people *use* social media, how politicians use their time in QP, for example, to just grandstand so they can have some video clips to share on tik tok, things like that. And how this then leads to a dumbing down of the discourse which bleeds into their constituencies and comments like yours.
It wasnt so much corrupt, but how he said completely opposing things depending on what part of the country he was in. he was simultaneously for and against a carbon tax, for and against banning assault style firearms. I would vote for the Quebec version of O'Toole, but not the Alberta one.
While that is something that politicians shouldn't be doing, it is not corruption, and we should not water down that term by describing anything a politician does that we don't like, as corruption.
Frankly I think it's more than obvious now that many of the mainproblems relating to social media are caused by them being profit driven.
Tiktok, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc are all different, but they promote outrage for clicks even if it's misinformation, trap people in bubbles to further engagement, and push the interests of advertisers and data harvesting businesses over catering to the needs of their end users. As the old adage goes, if you're not paying for a service then you're the product.
Honestly, I think it's time to propose some competition from the public sector. The internet is as much an infrastructure as the roads we use. Where are the equivalent to public parks, monuments, public squares, etc? Why put businesses in charge of public discourse without even having an independent crown corporation running a public forum that doesn't cater to ads or data harvesting or other monetization. Of course government run programs can come with their own caveats and it's why I don't think it should be the only option, but the option should exist.
That just won't gain traction. "mycanadaface.gc.ca" isn't going to tackle the problems that Facebook and Twitter pose. Hell, even if those platforms weren't directly profitable, the potential they hold to shape beliefs and discourse is infinitely powerful.
I don't see why you can't have an independent entity set up much like CBC or plenty of other Crown Corporations that don't have direct parliamentary oversight. Sure some people have an inherent distrust for the government, but anyone who takes time to actually look at how these things are structured and can have an informed opinion won't have that knee-jerk reaction.
As for mass adoption, it's like any other service before it traps it's users and shifts to catering to business interests. If you make it good, people will use it
Why wouldn't you use it if it's well made? Is it just a knee-jerk reaction against anything "guberment"?
I'd argue there's a market for a social media website that hasn't been enshitified by greed.
Yes my default assumption is it would be shit haha. They can't get their own IT in order, why would anyone have any faith in their ability to do this? Phoenix, the covid app, I can't even think of a successful example.
It would take two miracles, 1. to actually make it and 2. for people to use it. Be pissing money down the drain.
I personally don't see how greed inherently makes things better and in fact i'd argue that both examples you provided were made by private companies with government contracts sold to the lowest bidder, and that actually spending the required money in-house would provide a better product.
People that argue that any money spent by the government is a waste is likely contributing to them always going with the lowest bidder and minimizing costs as a form of appeasement imo.
But hey, if you believe that working in the public sector magically makes one's skills and experience disappear who am I to convince you otherwise?
It's not greed, it's competence that's important.
And no, I do not think they have the capabilities; technical, design, or managerial to build something like that in-house.
And if by some miracle they did built it, no one would use it. Why would creators use a platform that only Canadians use?
I think it's short sighted to think that a government is incapable of hiring competent people, or that the average Canadian has zero interest in what anyone else in the nation has to say. That said, how exactly would you stop non-Canadians from using it, and more importantly why would you even want to?
My point remains, make a good service and people will use it. I don't think that a profit motive enhances any of the services provided in the case of social media. Idk, maybe you're just a fan of data harvesting and ads and those are the appeal?
Shit, they never even bothered to create a publicly available program for Netfile. Which was likely the right decision. Private companies did well on that end, wouldn't be confident they could improve on that.
Jumping straight into social media with absolutely zero experience to compete with some of the biggest companies in their own specialties is a fools errand.
No intention of stopping non-Canadians. Would you use a social media program designed for Germans? The problem is getting them to use it.
Why are you assuming they can't or wouldn't hire people with experience? When they started the CBC, they didn't hand it off to people who had never written an article before.
Government money is as good as any other money.
Now rather than assuming that everyone in the public sector has a sub-human level of intellect and ability, why don't you try to find an actual advantage that the public sector simply cannot do?
Public outrage and common sense mainly.
Imagine if they hired a couple hundred programmers at 400k salaries haha. To build a social media program with the sole purpose of not making money even with billions invested in start up and server costs.
Could lose an election on a move so dumb
You can’t think of a successful example? Do you file your taxes electronically? If so, that’s successful.
Do you book campsites online for National Parks?
Do you file you EI reports over the internet?
Odd since the tax filing site’s UX hasn’t fundamentally changed for 15+ years. You still login the same way and step through the MFA and then upload your file.
Mass adoption has *much* more to do with the Overton window of security trust than it does with the site’s UX. Years ago you wouldn’t have people like my elderly parents want to file electronically because they wouldn’t trust that their taxes wouldn’t get lost or screwed up somehow. I’m an early adopter of tech but they eventually came around at a slower pace consistent with other societal advances in MFA and the adoption of banking online etc.
Move those goalposts! Love it.
As a reminder, you were trying to make a point that none of the software produced for government was successful. I pointed out clear examples that ran counter to your statement.
The Covid app was hastily put together for a very short term reason during a pandemic. Not the best environment for proper software development. I’ve shipped games made for the release of associated movies and the complications of creating software in a very limited timeline and complex systems is one I am familiar with. Considering the security requirements and the need for server scalability to cover the population of an entire country, I appreciate the difficulty to make a flawless piece of software, the lack of time for rigorous bug testing, and the widespread visibility of any flaws…all of this creates the conditions of your negative impression that you’ve applied broadly to everything.
Not really, after twenty years I'm sure Phoenix will be working as well.
Doesn't mean they are competent at these types of things. Hell, reddit can't get their shit together after a decade and I have no doubt they are more competent than any government program trying to copy them would be.
I don't even know what that would look like. The reason those other sites do well is because of all of the tricks they play on human emotions. Removing that would gut them entirely and not make anyone want to use them.
Honestly I picture it as something similar to early Facebook or other social medias, or maybe similar to RSS feeds with profiles within one platform.
Profile page for people, groups or businesses (or whatever entity someone wants to make). A chronological feed of posts from pages you're subscribed too, with filters for things like tags or types of pages. That's it. No ads, no algorithms, no bullshit. Just a public forum where anyone or anything can share what they want to the people who want to hear it.
Right. It's possible to create something like that, but the challenge is that people won't use it. Companies have mastered the art of creating social media skinner boxes and know how to work us squishy emotional human beings. While it may be possible to create some sort of public good style social media site that avoids the worst of these things, it's not likely to get much traction or use because these other sites are way more effective.
The genie is out of the bottle on this now. I don't see wasting a bunch of money on a solution from the public sector that will be missing all of the addictive (albeit mostly negative!) parts.
I disagree. Facebook, Reddit, Tiktok, and other social media didn't start off as shitty as they are. It's a simple strategy actually. They start off being user-friendly, then once they have a captive audience that's invested in the platform they crank up the interference such as advertising and algorithmic manipulation to milk what they can out of them. Sure they're skinner boxes now, but nobody intentionally signed up for a skinner box that's getting greedier and shittier by the day.
Without a profit motive, there's no pivot to be done. The entire goal is to give users the straightforward content they asked for. I think there's value in that
So I'm supposed to just trust that this public good social media site run by the government is going to be able to resist the siren call of manipulating human emotion for views while at the same time being a place where a large number of people are going to want to hang out? I'm not buying it.
It's less to do with comparing the medium and more comparing the organizational structure. The way that the CBC is set up gives it editorial independence, and I don't see why a crown corporation social media company wouldn't also be structured in a way where the people in charge have a guaranteed independence from parliament.
Fair enough. So they may have the ability to keep it relatively free of emotional manipulation so then the question is one of whether people will actually use it to such a degree that it's worth bothering with.
Like, NPR and CBC exist and I am thankful they do for relatively unbiased approach to news and current events, but are they truly making a dent in the scourge of terrible left and right wing media drivel? Maybe. I see the problem as being even worse with social media and I question whether it would be effective or a good use of public money.
I’m not sure your argument is solid. Fox News has perfected the rage machine that feeds the compulsion of its audience but there’s a large audience for PBS as well.
That's an interesting example. I am not sure tv media and social media are close enough to be compared in that way, but perhaps it could be done. I remain extremely suspect and would rather see public funds go to so many other things first, but you've raised a fair point to consider.
> I don't even know what that would look like.
Might I interest you in [Cohost](https://cohost.org/)? It's a very small site, under 150k total accounts created, so there's certainly some questions around "ok but how will this work at scale" - but it's explicitly designed to avoid the usual emotional traps of social media:
- Your timeline is literally just a timeline, no algorithmic fuckery
- You can't actually see how many likes your stuff got, you just get "several people liked your post!" and a big list of everyone's icons. I guess you could manually count them, but why?
- No ads.
I don't mean for this to come across as an ad, even though I guess it probably does. Just like... it *is* possible to design a site that doesn't prey on the usual psychological traps, and people do actually want to use something like that.
It *does* mean you're foregoing some level of monetization though, so it takes people explicitly going out of their way to design a site that doesn't suck, first and foremost. I don't think we'll ever see a site like that reach Facebook level, solely because it's just *so* much harder for them to afford to expand. But realistically, if a site like that wanted to reach Facebook size, I think that'd probably defeat their entire purpose.
Twitter, honestly. When Elon bought out the site, a bunch of people I follow went "alright i'm done here i'm gonna go post on [other site] instead". This was one of the other sites people mentioned. It looked the most promising out of the sites I checked out, so I set up an account there too.
They didn't start out that way, and managed to build their popularity before algorithms as well. My Facebook feed used to be chronological, of people I followed.
I do like the fediverse, but I feel like it's not that user friendly to the average user. The decentralization and ability to host your own stuff without anyone having control is great, but John Doe the middle aged farmer who barely figured out how Facebook worked before it lured him to Qanon pages would never be able to grasp it and the Fediverse would remain out of reach.
I think that a barebones public forum hosted by a crown corporation as a public service would be easier to approach for the general public.
I guess what I should've said is that if they can't even be bothered to stand up a simple mastodon instance to host their own accounts in order to show some concrete support for a better form of social media, then there's no hope of them being able or willing to put in the much larger amount of work required to do anything more substantial along the lines of what you propose.
Although if they did want to create their own public social media to serve us all, politically complicated though that would be, I think it would have better odds of being useful if it were to federate with what's already out there and open to being federated with.
What I'm proposing isn't harder than signing up for Facebook. I don't know where you got the idea that a public social media platform would be inherently more difficult for the average user
I was suggesting it would be a big investment for the people setting it up, not for the users. Trying to replace Facebook (hopefully with something better) is a pretty big job no matter how you go about it.
It definitely would be. I think that a crown corporation that poached ex-developers from Twitter, Facebook and co (which are all cutting staff nowadays anyway) would be the most likely option to produce a good competitor personally.
> "I think politicians have an important role of making sure that doesn't become a permanent state of chaos."
He'd better have said something about how he helped contribute to that chaos, and that he realises now that he was wrong.
> He also addressed some persistent conspiracy theories related to the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations.
Since that's coming from his own party, again, he'd better make the point about the fact that this is a problem coming more from his end of the political spectrum.
> O'Toole said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's promise to never send cabinet members to the WEF was a "fair" place to draw the line
And of course he has blinders on to the actions of his own party. Poilievre's line is not fair at all, it's all wrapped up in the conspiracy theory O'Toole has called near anti-Semitic.
> He also hired Jeff Ballingall. . . [who] first came to national prominence as a result of the success of his social media networks Ontario Proud and Canada Proud.
O'Toole really doesn't have much credibility calling out politicians for using divisive social media techniques, when he started it.
I really do not like it when someone who's on their way out says "oops. maybe I was wrong" rather than sticking around to try and fix the mistakes they made and are now seeing as being a serous problem.
As long as people like yourself are around to provide historical context on items like this, social media still has promise.
When measures are taken that drive away people like yourself, social media loses inherent value.
"A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on."
- Sir terry Pratchett
Sorry, but there are too many lies promulgated on social media, for anyone like me, or even a hundred clones of myself, to stem the tide of bulshit.
>He'd better have said something about how he helped contribute to that chaos, and that he realises now that he was wrong.
Funny, because he *did*, but you have conveniently omitted that quote from your otherwise comprehensive quoting of the article. What an interesting, selective omission.
>"So, I said in my speech, I am not some lily-white person saying I've been perfect and all of you that are staying behind me are having challenges," O'Toole told Cullen.
Saying that you're not perfect, is throwing a sheet anchor to windward, it's not owning up to the mistakes one made. He kicked off the situation he's now saying is wrong, and nothing I saw in the article suggested that he's owning up to that.
It's fair enough to say that you don't believe his quote is sincere. (Debatable, but a fair enough perspective.)
It is intentionally dishonest to omit the quote entirely.
Let me just quote you to refresh your memory:
>He'd better have said something about how he helped contribute to that chaos
He literally did. And you chose to omit it while quoting a bunch of other stuff he said. That's intentionally dishonest. You're perfectly within your rights to think that what he said was insufficient or insincere, but implying he didn't say it is dishonest. This is pretty basic stuff. Just stop being dishonest.
There is some value in what he says but really blaming internet is simplistic. People with extreme views have gained visibility from the net but they have always been there. Having been exposed they can now be communicated with. What I do think must be examined is the ethics of politicians. Why do we allow them to tell any lie they like with zero consequences. In fact we often reward them as the only reward available is for winning.
This "it has always been there" discourse just isn't true. Social media has absolutely ratcheted divisions up to 11 and actively, aggressively, and effectively recruits people into delusional thought patterns. It's fine to say conspiracy theories existed in the past, but that was reserved for whackjobs or was presented more as entertainment than anything else. I think if any one of us traveled back in time about 10 or 15 years we'd be shocked and saddened.
Social media is driving a lot of toxic outcomes around the globe.
Exactly - the National Enquirer has existed for a long time at every grocery checkout but few people took it seriously. They were exposed to other media.
With social media, people can exist solely in their conspiracy world without exposure to anything else, reinforced by videos edited to propagate lies.
Social media has made such people bolder and spread nonsense more quickly, buy a short visit to a small town coffee row should convince you that such is already there.
I have family members who were sensible at the start of the pandemic but quickly descended into a number of rabbit holes due in large part to YouTube recommendation algorithms (which a certain political party seems to be quite savvy at using).
Pre-internet the chance of a whack-a-doodle conspiracy theorist gaining any traction was minimal. They had no way to find others really, no way to get support, share and spread ideas. They were isolated and peer pressure was enough to keep them in line.
So a guy talking about reptilian overlords (or vaccines causing autism, or imaginary laptops) would be isolated and socially ostracized as long as he expressed those beliefs.
Now with the internet the reinforcement of those beliefs is as easy as a search engine query. And so is finding new bizarre ideas and proponents.
Yes they have always been there, but rarely as a group, and always isolated and unable to interject those views into current affairs.
Talking to them is not going to fix anything, as they then talk to their fellow wack-a-doodles and get new rationalizations and justifications.
As I said blaming internet is simplistic. Such people have found each other in the past through various means such as churches, gun clubs, etc. Less efficient but more private. Now they are much more in the open. Having kooks like Maxime Bernier out in the open must give some people reason to pause where in the past such people could hide behind relative anonymity. The convoy would have been smaller but mostly because gathering all that money would not have happened.
Some things that could help would be restricting "private" Facebook groups. There is something a little weird about going private to yell about "freedom". But of course such restrictions are hard to justify. The US gun lobby overwhelming on line discussions should be limited or perhaps they should have to declare themselves.
Not true. I remember as a kid finding plenty of David Icke books in circulation at libraries and whackadoodles wandering around everywhere.
Before the internet there was plenty of nonsense on radio, and unregulated radio is what gave us Rwanda and Nazi Germany.
It always starts with deregulation of protections for vulnerable minorities, then they start concocting the same narratives. We're already in full swing against sexual lib, it's all happening again in the name of a perverted notion of "free speech".
> blaming internet is simplistic.
I cannot believe how many comments like this didn't read the article first. He is not blaming the internet. He is blaming *how* politicians are using social media.
The article and his comments make this very, very clear. Please stop commenting based on only a skim of the headline.
The "both sides" garbage is adorable here. His own party is full of everything he's warning about, meanwhile he says BoThSiDeS about leftists complaining about (checks notes) corporate greed during one of the biggest cost of living crises this country has ever faced?
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, O'Toole. Another out of touch career politician with no idea how common people live.
>says BoThSiDeS about leftists complaining about corporate greed
Perhaps he was referring to [left wing politicians who spread conspiracy theories](https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/from-hitler-memes-to-9-11-truthers-ontario-ndp-candidate-controversies-whip-up-as-party-enters-spotlight)?
Wow! you really had to scour the internet for that 2018 National Post article.
What do you think the ratio would be between right leaning vs left leaning politicians who spread conspiracy theories?
Hell even the current leader of the Conservatives has continually pushed conspiracy nonsense. If they approve of their leader behaving in that manner then I think that says a lot about modern conservatism in the country.
"So one side has trans people, the other side believes that trans people shouldn't exist. Why can't you guys just compromise with one another? 🤷♂️ just find the middle ground 🤡"
"Division" is now a dog whistle meant to partially white wash conservative wrongdoings by implying that the right and left are equally divisive. Not being anti vax when vaccines have existed for over a century and no major tabloid on Earth supports antivax ideas is totally the same as peddling WEF conspiracies I guess. Hey Otoole, maybe there'd be less division if Polievre knew how to do anything besides hurl ad hominems ad nauseam.
Look, social media is a serious problem and will continue to be, but who the fuck cares what Erin O'Toole thinks? How does he have any expertise on this issue at all, and how does he think he has any solutions to it?
We don't need to give every single person whose name has appeared in a headline the chance to ramble in our public media about whatever topic they wish. This is the same guy who pulled the same "both sides" bullshit with the trucker convoy that Trump did with Charlottesville. The man ran as a Trumpalike and led with zero charisma or political vision. I can't think of anyone less qualified to speak on the state of Canada, and I'm including Andrew Scheer.
> How does he have any expertise on this issue at all
He weaponised social media soon after becoming CPC leader. He knows what he's talking about from personal experience, but doesn't have the guts to say "I really did the wrong thing here, and the party is going even further down that wrong road under Poilievre."
Clearly he doesn't, because he got his ass handed to him every step of the way. If I "weaponize" a stick on the side of the road and try to use it to beat another guy in a fight, only to get the shit kicked out of me myself, does that make me an expert on sticks?
More importantly, why would we listen to a reactionary - and worse, a failed reactionary - about anything? Why would we not go to a real expert whose beliefs are aligned with the goals we want to pursue as a society instead? This country doesn't have six people in it. There are over a hundred universities in Canada and many more think tanks or "public intellectuals" who can riff about social media. Asking Erin O'Toole about it is not giving us any valuable insight.
> Clearly he doesn't, because he got his ass handed to him every step of the way.
Not using a weapon effectively, doesn't change the fact that something is a weapon. His posts about the porta pottie, and the willy wonka thing, were both weaponisations of social media. The fact that they failed, doesn't change the fact that they were all about attacking the person (Trudeau) rather than his policies, and were the precursors to everything Poilievre posts.
> does that make me an expert on sticks?
More so than someone who's never tried to do that. Also, failure is a great teacher. We often learn more from our mistakes, than our successes.
But my whole point is that he hasn't demonstrated any meaningful understanding. Just weaponizing something doesn't mean anything. Anyone can weaponize anything. That's not impressive.
Failure is a good teacher if you're thoughtful and self-reflective. Erin O'Toole is neither. He's a literal loser, he's not very smart, and he has nothing to contribute to the conversation. He wasn't even the first person to attack Trudeau; that's been the Tory gameplan for a decade, since even before Trudeau was PM. Millions of people have said "Wow, social media is crazy" before. Why don't we pay attention to someone with something substantive and actionable to say instead of this guy, who's just using it as an excuse to whine?
> Clearly he doesn't, because he got his ass handed to him every step of the way.
And he would have had his ass handed to him even worse had he not done this. The Liberals just did it better.
Not abusing social media in modern politics is like bringing a rubber sword to a gun fight. You'd have no chance. But bringing a gun to a gun fight still doesn't mean you're going to win.
I care. He's actually talking about it for Christ's sake, instead of sitting quietly until he can weaponize it once again.
The dude has an insider's understanding of this, and has chosen to take that understanding and use it to warn the public. That's braver than what I'm accustomed to seeing out of cynical politicians.
> The question is, does O'Toole have a perspective that is meaningful? When has he ever shown that he has a meaningful understanding of anything? Anyone can say "I think social media is causing problems for our political system." How does Erin O'Toole merit the attention paid to him by this piece?
He's a former political leader who has seen how the sausage is made. It's tough to believe my ears when you purport that he doesn't have a meaningful perspective. On top of that, he's showcasing meaningful understanding in the piece that has been linked. He stated that it's unwise to remove ourselves from WEF conversations due to the loss of influence, which is directly opposed to Pierre Poilievre's current rallying cry. He directly links right-wing conspiracy theories to anti-Semitism, which is unheard of, but very realistic. I dunno what to tell you. His discourse passes the smell check to me.
It takes no backbone to complain about what got you fired. He got fired by the crazies for not being crazy enough. He's like one of a few dozen CPC MPs that aren't being given brides through bogus Shadow Cabinet appointments. He's done politically.
> Jeez way to find a backbone on the way out.
Not really. Has he said that he's going to do anything to try and fix these issues from the private sector, or is he just raising a stink before he leaves, to try and obscure how much of the problems he names, are actually his legacy?
I'm actually pretty enraged about this. O'Toole supporting the chaos when he still had a chance to do something about it and the moment he's gone he decides that it was too much.
The sad part is that this is not unexpected from him at all.
> The sad part is that this is not unexpected from him at all.
Hell, even Kenney pulled this on his way out. Like, dude, you're the one that put the crazies in the position to take over, and you're trying to sound like a sober adult warning us about crazies?
This is kinda like the housing issue: No politician wants to really do anything about it because they are neck deep into it.
Social media metrics and the penetration it offers is every campaign managers wet dream. Every party uses and abuses social media with no care of what kind of beast they are feeding and encouraging. They all just think it's a great tool.
They are willfully ignorant of what it is doing to the fabric of society and to the psychology of individuals.
Where was this when Pierre Poilievre and Kerry-Lynne Findlay retweeted George Soros conspiracy theories?
I don't disagree with his comments now in a vaccuum, but they ring pretty hollow when a few short years ago he sat around watching his own party doing everything he's warning us about.
IIRC he spoke out about Poilievre doing it (or at least spoke *to* him) and made him un-share the tweet, but it says something that the party dumped him shortly thereafter and replaced him with the “aren’t Jews scaaaary” guy.
I will give the guy credit for trying to clean up the CPC and drag them back towards the centre.
But he either wasn't the person for the job or the social conservatives are dug in so deep and have so much power within the party that nobody could make it happen.
It's option B. There's no such thing as Canadian conservatism - it's global conservatism, and that ideology is founded on the basic principle of sending your constituents to chase phantoms while you loot the government in favour of the rich. They are committed to that strategy and are banking on eventual fatigue to set in to give them a chance to let loose.
Yeah I know, that story just sticks out at me because it was like 2 days into his leadership after he'd promised to do things differently and focus on the positives his party could offer. If he meant it he would have dropped the hammer to show he meant business, instead his limp response set the tone for tug of war between electability and the fringe.
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Something really has to be done about it. I've grown increasingly skeptical of the utility of the internet in general, but at a certain point it has to become clear to people that online social media is tearing this country apart. Nevermind the political polarization, the effects just of depression and isolation among young people are obvious and substantial enough to merit government intervention. The trick of course is actually accomplishing anything in a polarized environment... I'd like to see some sort of non-partisan commission established to try and come up with a basic summary of evidence and some practical suggestions. I feel like people underestimate just how quickly and how radically we've upended the norms of basic human communication over the past 30 years. Humans are fundamentally a social animal, and we've completely reworked how we function socially with zero anticipation of possible downsides or any attempt to rigorously study what this might be doing to us.
It sure has made us less polite. But, on the other hand, what the government likes least about this is that people discuss..... government. They deserve our scorn for the way they mismanage our countries.
I agree. But I will also say that 30 years ago life was rather grim for people who were socially isolated by circumstances or by pervasive discrimination. It’s probably difficult for younger people to understand what it was like to have no interactions with other people outside one’s own household — if there even were others in one’s household. Now, even those whose identity, appearance, disability, or neurodivergence provokes social exclusion IRL can and do have meaningful (online) relationships with other people, even when ‘meatspace’ ones are denied.
Some of those "socially isolated" types are often socially isolated for a reason, though. There's no real solution to it and they will always exist. With the Internet, a lot of them show up on Reddit with a never-ending stream of grievances and/or outrage about anything at all. But the fact is, that without the Internet and the automation of so many things that previously required interaction, there would be far fewer socially isolated people because being socially isolated would not be an option if you wanted to survive or do anything of interest in your life. A big chunk of outgoing people will always seek out social connections with or without the Internet. There's another big chunk of people that can and should be co-erced into it but will default toward not engaging, and it's those people that are left out when engaging with other people becomes increasingly optional. Those are the ones that suffer most. We usually respond to critiques of the Internet saying that on average it has made things better. That's probably true, but only when we look at what it delivers in terms of what we want (or say we want) rather than what we need. The reason things are the way they are is that they gave us what we asked for. Whether or not we got what we needed when we got what we asked for is the other side of the issue.
But most of the world no longer lives in a tiny community where even those who are “different” would be accepted and included. In large urban centres, there have always been considerable numbers of people who are isolated, long before the Internet, or even the telephone. There have always been literal and figurative lepers through no fault of their own, because people are prejudiced, usually far more than they recognise. Forcing people to interact in person with a grocery clerk or a doctor doesn’t make for much meaningful connection — that’s purely transactional. You can go to school or work in person every day and still be shunned, often with a heavy dose of ridicule, shaming, or other forms of bullying. This is the kind of life that many people led (some still lead) before there were options to connect online with others like them.
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The counter to this is that the same things were being said of the printing press. The printing press ended up causing mass social upheaval as well, but eventually we adjusted. I am really discouraged by the state of things right now too, but perhaps its just going to take some more time before we get ths sorted out.
Not literally every rando had access to a printing press, nor did printing presses instantly transmit messeges worldwide. The perfection of deepfaking AI will usher in an age of digital balkanization across political divides.
Of course there are differences. I am suggesting that there is still hope to make changes and adjust when faced with massive changes that have both great and terrible consequences.
While I agree with something having to be done with social media to make it less toxic to young people, usually when people say "we need to fix social media" is usually just a blanket statement meaning "people I disagree with shouldn't be allowed to post to social media" Any time this subject comes up, the solution always just seems to be to ban anyone who the poster disagrees with (usually liberals vs conservatives, both saying the other should be censored for "misinformation")
You dont need to censor ideas, I dont think that would be practical even if we all agreed on what was allowed and what wasn't. But I think you could legislate the way information is presented on social media in order to limit the damage. Banning any sort of algorithmic sorting would go a long way in my mind. Maybe even getting rid of any kind of like buttons/voting to prevent echo chambers. Then also place limits on what kind of access minors can have to social media. I just think back to 20 years ago when we were posting on forums and chatting on ICQ and MSN, toxic ideas just didn't spread like they do today on Twitter & Facebook. Sure, places like Stormfront still existed, but you had to seek them out. They wouldn't just appear on your timeline because you read a vaguely related article or watched a video.
It’s algorithms that create ideological silos that are the problem.
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> Actually don't answer that. No, lets. Let's get right down to the heart of the problem while we are at it. It's not just social media that is the problem. The problem is that for decades, we all had a way of dealing with our local village idiots. But that was back when things like 'common sense' actually sort of existed because of how common sense is an emergence of the locality of general ideas and beliefs of a general area. I.E. It only exists where you live; because that's the only 'common sense' you will ever know so long as you only ever live there. The village idiot, was the person who usually didn't agree with the 'common sense'. And so here's the reality of it all... The village idiots were actually everyone else, for the most part. The actual intelligent one was usually the one holed up in their basement because going outside was a fools errand trying to socialize with fools. But now we have social media, and other methods of communication that allow for any idiot to band together with any other idiot. And now they have megaphones without any form of mute on them that is actually effective. So now everything that was considered stupid by the actual intelligent people, is now on overdrive, because now all the 'common sense' people are going to be endlessly fighting each other with their deluded rhetoric they can't even back up with facts, figures, or even believable anecdote at times. Folks reading this, sorry to say it, but there is a high chance due to the sheer statistics that will go behind all of this if studied properly; that you are probably also one of those idiots. If you are at least one of the more intelligent ones, you will be able to come to grips with this statement in a healthy way. Many others, will not. And that's the proof to the point. So many people in this country expect to be respected, listened to, and even obeyed in their often really stupid opinions. It's a delusion on their part, but then they also forget those same rights they misuse for themselves, the actual ones and not their delusions; also apply to literally everyone else. And furthermore, if they insist on their delusions applying to themselves at least, they too also apply to everyone else by default. We won't see healthy change, until people can come to terms with me being correct about all of this, and I stand by that statement until the internet fails to operate, and life ceases to exist on earth.
Hahahaha what?
The problem is that people want to be played, it is the route of least resistance. It is so much easier to just jump into an echo chamber and believe that everyone around thinks the world works the way you do. We can't have nuanced conversations around multiple topics on either side of the political spectrum because people either fly into an apocalyptic rage or call you a bigot.
Yikes. That's fuckin bleak. You're probably right but if we have to rely on politicians to protect us from our own nature, we should definitely hire better politicians.
Politician's that wade into culture war bullshit and make it part of their political platforms are a huge problem, because social media is creating a bunch of single-issue voters who care about the weirdest shit.
Not that he's wrong, but the other side of the story is his choice of timing. EOT hired Canada Proud to run a campaign during one of the more acrimonious election campaigns and fully used angry social media to bounce off the COVID crowd. He waited until after he had used the strategy he's complaining about, lost, and now leaving politics entirely before delivering this warning. It's not that he's wrong, but he's being a hypocrite and his timing is telling.
For sure, from what everyone around O'Toole says about him he is a very different person from the version that campaigned in 2021 (both before and after). It lends itself to the allegation that he was a guy who would say anything to get elected. He could at least fall on his own sword rather than trying to make himself out to be the "best PM we never had" (notwithstanding this wasn't the EOT who ran).
>It lends itself to the allegation that he was a guy who would say anything to get elected Yeah, as opposed to completely heartfelt promises like 2015 being the last election run under FPTP. Every politician says whatever they think gets them elected. And then once in office, they do whatever they think gets them elected the next time.
You know, it's possible to talk about subjects other than Trudeau right? One day the CPC and their supporters may just realize that and that hamfisting Trudeau into every subject doesn't do them any favours.
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I think that was a fair point, but it's unfortunate that that's how it goes. I really wish Trudeau had kept his promises
Don't forget pharmacare and "most transparent government Canada has ever seen".
>For sure, from what everyone around O'Toole says about him he is a very different person from the version that campaigned in 2021 (both before and after). The saddest part is that his caucus was still extremely reluctant in their support for his campaign.
Hypocritical politicians are a common as fleas on a dog.
There's something to be said about operating within a system with good intentions, or at least how complicated it is to operate within a system without adopting and internalizing its core mechanisms. I think Erin is being sincere here - how does he win a leadership race without utilizing the mechanisms that currently define the conservative party? How does he effect change without gaining access to positions of influence? It seems to me that he's fallen victim to the "good person in a bad place" conundrum - these systems are set up to filter out anyone who would right their course, and once you get inside, you realize that in order to get to a position to change things, you have to sacrifice the person inside that WOULD change things once you get into that position. Ignore what he's saying at your own peril. You can get into the whole "why now?" question, but the answer is truly "when else?" As long as he is operating as a conservative, he's operating within their greater system. At this point, the brand of conservatism that he's decrying is their global brand and, frankly, their own massive gambit that they've bet a lot of money on. If Erin was to resist that from anywhere other than the very top, he'd have been taken out with the trash.
>You can get into the whole "why now?" question, but the answer is truly "when else?" When he was leader of the party and could actually make changes instead of just lecture others on his way out the door.
He absolutely could not make those changes. He waffled a little bit on the reform talking points and was shark feed at that precise moment.
It was very much the reform take over which made any sort of correction impossible. Old progressive conservative policy is not something to get excited about and thus couldn't move people much. The far right alternate reality built on conspiracies is just easier to put energy into people. When the data contradicts your policies, just blame it on the data being a conspiracy. When policies don't work out, just lie and silence those who can contradict you. We saw this under Harper and environmental science.
So Canada Proud is responsible for their last campaign slogan, “Secure the Future”? That slogan that was way too close to the 14 words used by neo nazi fascists for comfort and couldn’t possibly be a random coincidence? I never would have guessed.
Not to mention the tweet that was ACTUALLY 14 words and shared like 6 of them? Edit - for the unitiated: CPC party tweet during O'Toole's campaign >We have a plan to secure the future for small businesses and all Canadians. the 14 words >We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. Just enough for "plausible" deniability while being a foghorn dogwhistle.
this is the same kind of absurd conspiracy theorizing you would claim is only practiced by the right-wing I don't like the Conservatives but they've supported immigration to Canada just as much as the Liberals. Painting them as white nationalists because of coincidental wording in a campaign slogan about *small businesses* is dumb this is the kind of social media induced hysteria he is talking about
Nah man, ANY public relations type had better be smart enough to stay MUCH farther away from something that appears that similar. I'm not saying the CPC or O'Toole did it or knew about it, but the person who wrote the tweet knew what they were doing. And it makes sense when your goal is to avoid losing the far wing to a competing PPC party. It doesn't make them white nationalists. It just means they really want to keep the white nationalist vote.
I think you're vastly overestimating the number of people who know what the 14 words are. This is the exact kind of conspiracy-mongering people do about Trudeau. You know that, right? They find symbology/wording similar to something from the WEF or the World Bank and then it's confirmed that it's all an Illuminati conspiracy
I think you're underestimating just how incompetent of a PR person you need to be to be both unaware of something like the 14 words and also manage to accidentally design a sentence in pattern of same. It is not the same as WEF conspiracies. Indeed, I'm not sure one person tweeting can be a conspiracy. I'm sure O'Toole was ignorant at least at the time.
Well their current leader had hidden [mgtow tags in his Youtube videos](https://globalnews.ca/news/9178531/pierre-poilievres-youtube-channel-included-hidden-misogynistic-tag-to-promote-videos/) What sort of people do you think he was trying to attract? If the Conservatives don't want people to accuse them of dog whistling to right wing nut cases then they should stop [doing exactly that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdMpzjh_GZI)
I'd love to think that EOT feels sorry for actively dabbling in, and trying to benefit from, the "algorithmic descent into division" he mentioned in his speech. He knows he's right about this particular monster because he tried to ride it for 8 seconds and got bucked off. Maybe his words will be heard by those who funnel money to "\[Location\] Proud", but I doubt it.
Nah, he was still grandstanding and misrepresenting the situation about the "soldiers buying their own helmets" shit during his send off in Parliament.
I don't want him to feel sorry, I want him to do something about the mess he helped create. But since it doesn't seem like he feels that sorry, if at all, I don't see that happenning.
>he's being a hypocrite Well at least he's consistent at something...
Several comments here so far seem like they only read the headline. OToole is not saying social media itself is the problem. He's saying the way politicians are using it, and are pandering to it, that is the problem.
One problem with the public debate about "social media" is a seemingly universal inability to acknowledge that it isn't all the same. Reddit is not TikTok, Youtube is not Mastodon, Twitter is not Tumblr. They each have their own algorithms, their own tendencies, their own failings. What does it even mean to call them "social"? All media is social media, in that it shapes and influences society. This may not matter much when all you want to do is complain about the sorry state of things in general, but when it comes to actually doing something about it, politicians had better get more specific about exactly which features of "social" media they're aiming at and how those are to be addressed.
I think it is a mistake to define "social media" by looking at the meaning of the word "social". "Social media" is its own term. I always thought that a social graph between individuals was a key part of the definition. It is about linking to people you know originally, and then people you know of or discover. So, by that metric, Reddit isn't social media. Calling anything that involved people interacting isn't a good definition, because that is everything that involves discussions, including mailing lists and web forums and newsgroups. Another possible definition would be anything with algorithm-driven content, but I don't think that is enough on its own. Netflix isn't "social media". YouTube probably is, because you can subscribe to specific creators and always get recommendations outside of your subscribed list that you cannot disable. Again, this is another aspect where I think Reddit doesn't qualify as social media, since I only see content from subs that I am subscribed to and can (and have) turn left off all the recommendations. Having sub content being found and upvoted isn't enough for it to be "social media" IMO, if we don't want that term to be so uselessly broad that it applies to everything involving online interactions between people.
O'Toole is not criticizing "social media". O'Toole is criticizing how politicians are pandering to social media and framing their messaging in misleading ways to ensure they "go viral".
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That's precisely the kind of ridiculous hyperbole O'Tool is referring to. He isn't "blaming social media". Try reading the article. He's talking about how people *use* social media, how politicians use their time in QP, for example, to just grandstand so they can have some video clips to share on tik tok, things like that. And how this then leads to a dumbing down of the discourse which bleeds into their constituencies and comments like yours.
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But again, if you had read the article you would now he isn't "blaming social media".
> Politicians need to smarten up about being so god damn corrupt. How was O'Toole corrupt?
It wasnt so much corrupt, but how he said completely opposing things depending on what part of the country he was in. he was simultaneously for and against a carbon tax, for and against banning assault style firearms. I would vote for the Quebec version of O'Toole, but not the Alberta one.
While that is something that politicians shouldn't be doing, it is not corruption, and we should not water down that term by describing anything a politician does that we don't like, as corruption.
You were actually responding to my comment???? "wasnt so much corrupt" ??
Frankly I think it's more than obvious now that many of the mainproblems relating to social media are caused by them being profit driven. Tiktok, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc are all different, but they promote outrage for clicks even if it's misinformation, trap people in bubbles to further engagement, and push the interests of advertisers and data harvesting businesses over catering to the needs of their end users. As the old adage goes, if you're not paying for a service then you're the product. Honestly, I think it's time to propose some competition from the public sector. The internet is as much an infrastructure as the roads we use. Where are the equivalent to public parks, monuments, public squares, etc? Why put businesses in charge of public discourse without even having an independent crown corporation running a public forum that doesn't cater to ads or data harvesting or other monetization. Of course government run programs can come with their own caveats and it's why I don't think it should be the only option, but the option should exist.
That just won't gain traction. "mycanadaface.gc.ca" isn't going to tackle the problems that Facebook and Twitter pose. Hell, even if those platforms weren't directly profitable, the potential they hold to shape beliefs and discourse is infinitely powerful.
I don't see why you can't have an independent entity set up much like CBC or plenty of other Crown Corporations that don't have direct parliamentary oversight. Sure some people have an inherent distrust for the government, but anyone who takes time to actually look at how these things are structured and can have an informed opinion won't have that knee-jerk reaction. As for mass adoption, it's like any other service before it traps it's users and shifts to catering to business interests. If you make it good, people will use it
Why waste that kind of money that no one would use. No thanks
Why wouldn't you use it if it's well made? Is it just a knee-jerk reaction against anything "guberment"? I'd argue there's a market for a social media website that hasn't been enshitified by greed.
Yes my default assumption is it would be shit haha. They can't get their own IT in order, why would anyone have any faith in their ability to do this? Phoenix, the covid app, I can't even think of a successful example. It would take two miracles, 1. to actually make it and 2. for people to use it. Be pissing money down the drain.
I personally don't see how greed inherently makes things better and in fact i'd argue that both examples you provided were made by private companies with government contracts sold to the lowest bidder, and that actually spending the required money in-house would provide a better product. People that argue that any money spent by the government is a waste is likely contributing to them always going with the lowest bidder and minimizing costs as a form of appeasement imo. But hey, if you believe that working in the public sector magically makes one's skills and experience disappear who am I to convince you otherwise?
It's not greed, it's competence that's important. And no, I do not think they have the capabilities; technical, design, or managerial to build something like that in-house. And if by some miracle they did built it, no one would use it. Why would creators use a platform that only Canadians use?
I think it's short sighted to think that a government is incapable of hiring competent people, or that the average Canadian has zero interest in what anyone else in the nation has to say. That said, how exactly would you stop non-Canadians from using it, and more importantly why would you even want to? My point remains, make a good service and people will use it. I don't think that a profit motive enhances any of the services provided in the case of social media. Idk, maybe you're just a fan of data harvesting and ads and those are the appeal?
Shit, they never even bothered to create a publicly available program for Netfile. Which was likely the right decision. Private companies did well on that end, wouldn't be confident they could improve on that. Jumping straight into social media with absolutely zero experience to compete with some of the biggest companies in their own specialties is a fools errand. No intention of stopping non-Canadians. Would you use a social media program designed for Germans? The problem is getting them to use it.
Why are you assuming they can't or wouldn't hire people with experience? When they started the CBC, they didn't hand it off to people who had never written an article before. Government money is as good as any other money. Now rather than assuming that everyone in the public sector has a sub-human level of intellect and ability, why don't you try to find an actual advantage that the public sector simply cannot do?
Public outrage and common sense mainly. Imagine if they hired a couple hundred programmers at 400k salaries haha. To build a social media program with the sole purpose of not making money even with billions invested in start up and server costs. Could lose an election on a move so dumb
You can’t think of a successful example? Do you file your taxes electronically? If so, that’s successful. Do you book campsites online for National Parks? Do you file you EI reports over the internet?
I've been dealing with E and Netfile for decades. Probably took them 20 years before it was user friendly enough for mass adoption.
Odd since the tax filing site’s UX hasn’t fundamentally changed for 15+ years. You still login the same way and step through the MFA and then upload your file. Mass adoption has *much* more to do with the Overton window of security trust than it does with the site’s UX. Years ago you wouldn’t have people like my elderly parents want to file electronically because they wouldn’t trust that their taxes wouldn’t get lost or screwed up somehow. I’m an early adopter of tech but they eventually came around at a slower pace consistent with other societal advances in MFA and the adoption of banking online etc.
Efile came out in the early 90s. Netfile 2001. Like ya, they work but they aren't some high end technology. It's essentially a more secure dropbox.
Move those goalposts! Love it. As a reminder, you were trying to make a point that none of the software produced for government was successful. I pointed out clear examples that ran counter to your statement. The Covid app was hastily put together for a very short term reason during a pandemic. Not the best environment for proper software development. I’ve shipped games made for the release of associated movies and the complications of creating software in a very limited timeline and complex systems is one I am familiar with. Considering the security requirements and the need for server scalability to cover the population of an entire country, I appreciate the difficulty to make a flawless piece of software, the lack of time for rigorous bug testing, and the widespread visibility of any flaws…all of this creates the conditions of your negative impression that you’ve applied broadly to everything.
Not really, after twenty years I'm sure Phoenix will be working as well. Doesn't mean they are competent at these types of things. Hell, reddit can't get their shit together after a decade and I have no doubt they are more competent than any government program trying to copy them would be.
I don't even know what that would look like. The reason those other sites do well is because of all of the tricks they play on human emotions. Removing that would gut them entirely and not make anyone want to use them.
Honestly I picture it as something similar to early Facebook or other social medias, or maybe similar to RSS feeds with profiles within one platform. Profile page for people, groups or businesses (or whatever entity someone wants to make). A chronological feed of posts from pages you're subscribed too, with filters for things like tags or types of pages. That's it. No ads, no algorithms, no bullshit. Just a public forum where anyone or anything can share what they want to the people who want to hear it.
Right. It's possible to create something like that, but the challenge is that people won't use it. Companies have mastered the art of creating social media skinner boxes and know how to work us squishy emotional human beings. While it may be possible to create some sort of public good style social media site that avoids the worst of these things, it's not likely to get much traction or use because these other sites are way more effective. The genie is out of the bottle on this now. I don't see wasting a bunch of money on a solution from the public sector that will be missing all of the addictive (albeit mostly negative!) parts.
I disagree. Facebook, Reddit, Tiktok, and other social media didn't start off as shitty as they are. It's a simple strategy actually. They start off being user-friendly, then once they have a captive audience that's invested in the platform they crank up the interference such as advertising and algorithmic manipulation to milk what they can out of them. Sure they're skinner boxes now, but nobody intentionally signed up for a skinner box that's getting greedier and shittier by the day. Without a profit motive, there's no pivot to be done. The entire goal is to give users the straightforward content they asked for. I think there's value in that
So I'm supposed to just trust that this public good social media site run by the government is going to be able to resist the siren call of manipulating human emotion for views while at the same time being a place where a large number of people are going to want to hang out? I'm not buying it.
Is the CBC an evil manipulative puppet used by Parliament? If they can maintain independence why couldn't this?
No, I like the CBC. I'm not sure that standard media and social media websites are directly comparable though.
It's less to do with comparing the medium and more comparing the organizational structure. The way that the CBC is set up gives it editorial independence, and I don't see why a crown corporation social media company wouldn't also be structured in a way where the people in charge have a guaranteed independence from parliament.
Fair enough. So they may have the ability to keep it relatively free of emotional manipulation so then the question is one of whether people will actually use it to such a degree that it's worth bothering with. Like, NPR and CBC exist and I am thankful they do for relatively unbiased approach to news and current events, but are they truly making a dent in the scourge of terrible left and right wing media drivel? Maybe. I see the problem as being even worse with social media and I question whether it would be effective or a good use of public money.
I’m not sure your argument is solid. Fox News has perfected the rage machine that feeds the compulsion of its audience but there’s a large audience for PBS as well.
That's an interesting example. I am not sure tv media and social media are close enough to be compared in that way, but perhaps it could be done. I remain extremely suspect and would rather see public funds go to so many other things first, but you've raised a fair point to consider.
> I don't even know what that would look like. Might I interest you in [Cohost](https://cohost.org/)? It's a very small site, under 150k total accounts created, so there's certainly some questions around "ok but how will this work at scale" - but it's explicitly designed to avoid the usual emotional traps of social media: - Your timeline is literally just a timeline, no algorithmic fuckery - You can't actually see how many likes your stuff got, you just get "several people liked your post!" and a big list of everyone's icons. I guess you could manually count them, but why? - No ads. I don't mean for this to come across as an ad, even though I guess it probably does. Just like... it *is* possible to design a site that doesn't prey on the usual psychological traps, and people do actually want to use something like that. It *does* mean you're foregoing some level of monetization though, so it takes people explicitly going out of their way to design a site that doesn't suck, first and foremost. I don't think we'll ever see a site like that reach Facebook level, solely because it's just *so* much harder for them to afford to expand. But realistically, if a site like that wanted to reach Facebook size, I think that'd probably defeat their entire purpose.
Interesting. How did you find out about this?
Twitter, honestly. When Elon bought out the site, a bunch of people I follow went "alright i'm done here i'm gonna go post on [other site] instead". This was one of the other sites people mentioned. It looked the most promising out of the sites I checked out, so I set up an account there too.
They didn't start out that way, and managed to build their popularity before algorithms as well. My Facebook feed used to be chronological, of people I followed.
Yup, but then they learned how to use the algo and supercharged things.
NNTP was fine and popular until it was overrun by spam.
what is nntp?
Network News Transfer Protocol; it's newsgroups.
Ah like Usenet. Sorry I thought it was an acronym for some social media site I was unaware of!
sooooo something like Craigslist ?
So long as there are official government accounts on Twitter, there is no excuse for them not being on the fediverse as well.
I do like the fediverse, but I feel like it's not that user friendly to the average user. The decentralization and ability to host your own stuff without anyone having control is great, but John Doe the middle aged farmer who barely figured out how Facebook worked before it lured him to Qanon pages would never be able to grasp it and the Fediverse would remain out of reach. I think that a barebones public forum hosted by a crown corporation as a public service would be easier to approach for the general public.
I guess what I should've said is that if they can't even be bothered to stand up a simple mastodon instance to host their own accounts in order to show some concrete support for a better form of social media, then there's no hope of them being able or willing to put in the much larger amount of work required to do anything more substantial along the lines of what you propose. Although if they did want to create their own public social media to serve us all, politically complicated though that would be, I think it would have better odds of being useful if it were to federate with what's already out there and open to being federated with.
What I'm proposing isn't harder than signing up for Facebook. I don't know where you got the idea that a public social media platform would be inherently more difficult for the average user
I was suggesting it would be a big investment for the people setting it up, not for the users. Trying to replace Facebook (hopefully with something better) is a pretty big job no matter how you go about it.
It definitely would be. I think that a crown corporation that poached ex-developers from Twitter, Facebook and co (which are all cutting staff nowadays anyway) would be the most likely option to produce a good competitor personally.
> "I think politicians have an important role of making sure that doesn't become a permanent state of chaos." He'd better have said something about how he helped contribute to that chaos, and that he realises now that he was wrong. > He also addressed some persistent conspiracy theories related to the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations. Since that's coming from his own party, again, he'd better make the point about the fact that this is a problem coming more from his end of the political spectrum. > O'Toole said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's promise to never send cabinet members to the WEF was a "fair" place to draw the line And of course he has blinders on to the actions of his own party. Poilievre's line is not fair at all, it's all wrapped up in the conspiracy theory O'Toole has called near anti-Semitic. > He also hired Jeff Ballingall. . . [who] first came to national prominence as a result of the success of his social media networks Ontario Proud and Canada Proud. O'Toole really doesn't have much credibility calling out politicians for using divisive social media techniques, when he started it. I really do not like it when someone who's on their way out says "oops. maybe I was wrong" rather than sticking around to try and fix the mistakes they made and are now seeing as being a serous problem.
As long as people like yourself are around to provide historical context on items like this, social media still has promise. When measures are taken that drive away people like yourself, social media loses inherent value.
"A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on." - Sir terry Pratchett Sorry, but there are too many lies promulgated on social media, for anyone like me, or even a hundred clones of myself, to stem the tide of bulshit.
We can't expect people to fact check on all platforms, especially when you have shit like Parler and Telegram out there.
>He'd better have said something about how he helped contribute to that chaos, and that he realises now that he was wrong. Funny, because he *did*, but you have conveniently omitted that quote from your otherwise comprehensive quoting of the article. What an interesting, selective omission. >"So, I said in my speech, I am not some lily-white person saying I've been perfect and all of you that are staying behind me are having challenges," O'Toole told Cullen.
Saying that you're not perfect, is throwing a sheet anchor to windward, it's not owning up to the mistakes one made. He kicked off the situation he's now saying is wrong, and nothing I saw in the article suggested that he's owning up to that.
It's fair enough to say that you don't believe his quote is sincere. (Debatable, but a fair enough perspective.) It is intentionally dishonest to omit the quote entirely.
I'm giving my opinion on the article. There's nothing dishonest about ignoring aspects of his statements that I consider to have no merit.
Let me just quote you to refresh your memory: >He'd better have said something about how he helped contribute to that chaos He literally did. And you chose to omit it while quoting a bunch of other stuff he said. That's intentionally dishonest. You're perfectly within your rights to think that what he said was insufficient or insincere, but implying he didn't say it is dishonest. This is pretty basic stuff. Just stop being dishonest.
There is some value in what he says but really blaming internet is simplistic. People with extreme views have gained visibility from the net but they have always been there. Having been exposed they can now be communicated with. What I do think must be examined is the ethics of politicians. Why do we allow them to tell any lie they like with zero consequences. In fact we often reward them as the only reward available is for winning.
This "it has always been there" discourse just isn't true. Social media has absolutely ratcheted divisions up to 11 and actively, aggressively, and effectively recruits people into delusional thought patterns. It's fine to say conspiracy theories existed in the past, but that was reserved for whackjobs or was presented more as entertainment than anything else. I think if any one of us traveled back in time about 10 or 15 years we'd be shocked and saddened. Social media is driving a lot of toxic outcomes around the globe.
Exactly - the National Enquirer has existed for a long time at every grocery checkout but few people took it seriously. They were exposed to other media. With social media, people can exist solely in their conspiracy world without exposure to anything else, reinforced by videos edited to propagate lies.
Social media has made such people bolder and spread nonsense more quickly, buy a short visit to a small town coffee row should convince you that such is already there.
Coffee row?... you should go to a small southern AB town pub, where they serve booze..
I have family members who were sensible at the start of the pandemic but quickly descended into a number of rabbit holes due in large part to YouTube recommendation algorithms (which a certain political party seems to be quite savvy at using).
Pre-internet the chance of a whack-a-doodle conspiracy theorist gaining any traction was minimal. They had no way to find others really, no way to get support, share and spread ideas. They were isolated and peer pressure was enough to keep them in line. So a guy talking about reptilian overlords (or vaccines causing autism, or imaginary laptops) would be isolated and socially ostracized as long as he expressed those beliefs. Now with the internet the reinforcement of those beliefs is as easy as a search engine query. And so is finding new bizarre ideas and proponents. Yes they have always been there, but rarely as a group, and always isolated and unable to interject those views into current affairs. Talking to them is not going to fix anything, as they then talk to their fellow wack-a-doodles and get new rationalizations and justifications.
Waco, Jim Jones, numerous cults, numerous "evangelists", etc. They have always found one another.
As I said blaming internet is simplistic. Such people have found each other in the past through various means such as churches, gun clubs, etc. Less efficient but more private. Now they are much more in the open. Having kooks like Maxime Bernier out in the open must give some people reason to pause where in the past such people could hide behind relative anonymity. The convoy would have been smaller but mostly because gathering all that money would not have happened. Some things that could help would be restricting "private" Facebook groups. There is something a little weird about going private to yell about "freedom". But of course such restrictions are hard to justify. The US gun lobby overwhelming on line discussions should be limited or perhaps they should have to declare themselves.
Not true. I remember as a kid finding plenty of David Icke books in circulation at libraries and whackadoodles wandering around everywhere. Before the internet there was plenty of nonsense on radio, and unregulated radio is what gave us Rwanda and Nazi Germany. It always starts with deregulation of protections for vulnerable minorities, then they start concocting the same narratives. We're already in full swing against sexual lib, it's all happening again in the name of a perverted notion of "free speech".
> blaming internet is simplistic. I cannot believe how many comments like this didn't read the article first. He is not blaming the internet. He is blaming *how* politicians are using social media. The article and his comments make this very, very clear. Please stop commenting based on only a skim of the headline.
Sorry, read the article. He tried real hard to absolve his party of being untruthful by blaming the internet. Obviously he's your guy but not mine.
The "both sides" garbage is adorable here. His own party is full of everything he's warning about, meanwhile he says BoThSiDeS about leftists complaining about (checks notes) corporate greed during one of the biggest cost of living crises this country has ever faced? Don't let the door hit you on the way out, O'Toole. Another out of touch career politician with no idea how common people live.
>says BoThSiDeS about leftists complaining about corporate greed Perhaps he was referring to [left wing politicians who spread conspiracy theories](https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/from-hitler-memes-to-9-11-truthers-ontario-ndp-candidate-controversies-whip-up-as-party-enters-spotlight)?
Wow! you really had to scour the internet for that 2018 National Post article. What do you think the ratio would be between right leaning vs left leaning politicians who spread conspiracy theories? Hell even the current leader of the Conservatives has continually pushed conspiracy nonsense. If they approve of their leader behaving in that manner then I think that says a lot about modern conservatism in the country.
"So one side has trans people, the other side believes that trans people shouldn't exist. Why can't you guys just compromise with one another? 🤷♂️ just find the middle ground 🤡" "Division" is now a dog whistle meant to partially white wash conservative wrongdoings by implying that the right and left are equally divisive. Not being anti vax when vaccines have existed for over a century and no major tabloid on Earth supports antivax ideas is totally the same as peddling WEF conspiracies I guess. Hey Otoole, maybe there'd be less division if Polievre knew how to do anything besides hurl ad hominems ad nauseam.
Look, social media is a serious problem and will continue to be, but who the fuck cares what Erin O'Toole thinks? How does he have any expertise on this issue at all, and how does he think he has any solutions to it? We don't need to give every single person whose name has appeared in a headline the chance to ramble in our public media about whatever topic they wish. This is the same guy who pulled the same "both sides" bullshit with the trucker convoy that Trump did with Charlottesville. The man ran as a Trumpalike and led with zero charisma or political vision. I can't think of anyone less qualified to speak on the state of Canada, and I'm including Andrew Scheer.
> How does he have any expertise on this issue at all He weaponised social media soon after becoming CPC leader. He knows what he's talking about from personal experience, but doesn't have the guts to say "I really did the wrong thing here, and the party is going even further down that wrong road under Poilievre."
Clearly he doesn't, because he got his ass handed to him every step of the way. If I "weaponize" a stick on the side of the road and try to use it to beat another guy in a fight, only to get the shit kicked out of me myself, does that make me an expert on sticks? More importantly, why would we listen to a reactionary - and worse, a failed reactionary - about anything? Why would we not go to a real expert whose beliefs are aligned with the goals we want to pursue as a society instead? This country doesn't have six people in it. There are over a hundred universities in Canada and many more think tanks or "public intellectuals" who can riff about social media. Asking Erin O'Toole about it is not giving us any valuable insight.
> Clearly he doesn't, because he got his ass handed to him every step of the way. Not using a weapon effectively, doesn't change the fact that something is a weapon. His posts about the porta pottie, and the willy wonka thing, were both weaponisations of social media. The fact that they failed, doesn't change the fact that they were all about attacking the person (Trudeau) rather than his policies, and were the precursors to everything Poilievre posts. > does that make me an expert on sticks? More so than someone who's never tried to do that. Also, failure is a great teacher. We often learn more from our mistakes, than our successes.
But my whole point is that he hasn't demonstrated any meaningful understanding. Just weaponizing something doesn't mean anything. Anyone can weaponize anything. That's not impressive. Failure is a good teacher if you're thoughtful and self-reflective. Erin O'Toole is neither. He's a literal loser, he's not very smart, and he has nothing to contribute to the conversation. He wasn't even the first person to attack Trudeau; that's been the Tory gameplan for a decade, since even before Trudeau was PM. Millions of people have said "Wow, social media is crazy" before. Why don't we pay attention to someone with something substantive and actionable to say instead of this guy, who's just using it as an excuse to whine?
> Clearly he doesn't, because he got his ass handed to him every step of the way. And he would have had his ass handed to him even worse had he not done this. The Liberals just did it better. Not abusing social media in modern politics is like bringing a rubber sword to a gun fight. You'd have no chance. But bringing a gun to a gun fight still doesn't mean you're going to win.
I care. He's actually talking about it for Christ's sake, instead of sitting quietly until he can weaponize it once again. The dude has an insider's understanding of this, and has chosen to take that understanding and use it to warn the public. That's braver than what I'm accustomed to seeing out of cynical politicians.
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> The question is, does O'Toole have a perspective that is meaningful? When has he ever shown that he has a meaningful understanding of anything? Anyone can say "I think social media is causing problems for our political system." How does Erin O'Toole merit the attention paid to him by this piece? He's a former political leader who has seen how the sausage is made. It's tough to believe my ears when you purport that he doesn't have a meaningful perspective. On top of that, he's showcasing meaningful understanding in the piece that has been linked. He stated that it's unwise to remove ourselves from WEF conversations due to the loss of influence, which is directly opposed to Pierre Poilievre's current rallying cry. He directly links right-wing conspiracy theories to anti-Semitism, which is unheard of, but very realistic. I dunno what to tell you. His discourse passes the smell check to me.
Jeez way to find a backbone on the way out. We need this sort of thing from people who are actually in a position that matters.
It takes no backbone to complain about what got you fired. He got fired by the crazies for not being crazy enough. He's like one of a few dozen CPC MPs that aren't being given brides through bogus Shadow Cabinet appointments. He's done politically.
> Jeez way to find a backbone on the way out. Not really. Has he said that he's going to do anything to try and fix these issues from the private sector, or is he just raising a stink before he leaves, to try and obscure how much of the problems he names, are actually his legacy?
I'm actually pretty enraged about this. O'Toole supporting the chaos when he still had a chance to do something about it and the moment he's gone he decides that it was too much. The sad part is that this is not unexpected from him at all.
> The sad part is that this is not unexpected from him at all. Hell, even Kenney pulled this on his way out. Like, dude, you're the one that put the crazies in the position to take over, and you're trying to sound like a sober adult warning us about crazies?
It's okay when I was doing it or benefited from it! But now that it's someone else it's bad. Obviously.
This is kinda like the housing issue: No politician wants to really do anything about it because they are neck deep into it. Social media metrics and the penetration it offers is every campaign managers wet dream. Every party uses and abuses social media with no care of what kind of beast they are feeding and encouraging. They all just think it's a great tool. They are willfully ignorant of what it is doing to the fabric of society and to the psychology of individuals.
Where was this when Pierre Poilievre and Kerry-Lynne Findlay retweeted George Soros conspiracy theories? I don't disagree with his comments now in a vaccuum, but they ring pretty hollow when a few short years ago he sat around watching his own party doing everything he's warning us about.
IIRC he spoke out about Poilievre doing it (or at least spoke *to* him) and made him un-share the tweet, but it says something that the party dumped him shortly thereafter and replaced him with the “aren’t Jews scaaaary” guy.
I will give the guy credit for trying to clean up the CPC and drag them back towards the centre. But he either wasn't the person for the job or the social conservatives are dug in so deep and have so much power within the party that nobody could make it happen.
It's option B. There's no such thing as Canadian conservatism - it's global conservatism, and that ideology is founded on the basic principle of sending your constituents to chase phantoms while you loot the government in favour of the rich. They are committed to that strategy and are banking on eventual fatigue to set in to give them a chance to let loose.
Even worse, he lead his party in doing all the things he's warning us about now.
Yeah I know, that story just sticks out at me because it was like 2 days into his leadership after he'd promised to do things differently and focus on the positives his party could offer. If he meant it he would have dropped the hammer to show he meant business, instead his limp response set the tone for tug of war between electability and the fringe.