The Perils of the Democratisation of the Internet and the Rise of the "Expert" Commentator
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,690MI6 Agent
This is something I have noticed since the prophetic year of 2020 and the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in particular. It has continued unabated into 2023 and will no doubt most likely stretch out until the crack of doom given the ever increasing information technology revolution that is still ongoing. To sum it up in a simple phrase, it would be "Everyone's an expert nowadays." The democratisation of the rollout of the internet worldwide, the advent of smartphones we can hold in the palm of our hands and the dissemination of information via the relatively new phenomenon of social media have all combined top create a perfect storm of misinformation, "expert" opinion, wildcat conspiracy theories, AI fakery etc. I know that the Internet is largely still governed by the law of the jungle and that despite new legislation like the Online Safety Act 2023 in the UK and the existing defamation laws there is still a problem with anonymous people sharing disinformation, propaganda and the purest libel worldwide. It's very difficult for individual sties, social media companies etc. to govern and police everything that is posted, shared and uploaded to the internet, to say nothing of the nefarious activities on the Dark Web. I think we have arrived in this unenvious position of the writ of the internet run wild due to the democratising effects of internet accessibility even in the farthest corners of the globe. The internet is a great Leveller and that can be both a blessing and a curse. There are pros and cons, just like anything else.
In the UK context the Iraq War of 2003, the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the MPs' Expenses Scandal of 2009, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, Partygate, the rise of ring-wing populism and 40-year-high inflation and a cost of living crisis have no doubt all played a part in stripping away respect and faith in politicians, institutions, the monarchy, the Establishment and elites, the world of finance, medicine and so on. It's all part of a slow drift in society from perhaps the time of the Profumo Scandal in 1963 onwards that has seen as increasingly dangerous cynicism and world-weariness with authority figures and the mainstream media which is increasingly viewed as their puppet and official mouthpiece a la Joseph Goebbels' control of the press in Nazi Germany. Did the rot of public distrust in the UK Government perhaps even set in earlier than that during the Suez Crisis of 1956? In 2023 in the UK, as one recent example, the mass speculation about the disappearance of the tragic Nicola Bulley and all the various true crime documentary inspired theories about her "murder", "kidnap" and other unfounded and malicious rumours perfectly illustrates where we are nowadays in terms of the democratisation of news delivery. We have seen a shift away from traditional formerly trusted media sources like the BBC or ITV and a move towards TikTok etc. and influencers and commentators on social media, particularly amongst the young. You could say that Dr Google and his ilk cures all ills or at least "he" gives that false impression...
So what do we think of these musings of mine? Do you agreed, disagree or are you indifferent to the seemingly inevitable decline towards a lowest common denominator form of the internet?
Comments
It's currently unregulated, mostly. The effect of the internet is not unlike the Guggenheim (sp?) printing press in medieval times, it gives everyone a way in, just as the English language did in the 15h century, previously it was French and Latin, the preserves of the upper classes of well educated or rich. That coincided however with the decimation or more of the English population due to the Black Death, which contributed to greater power among the peasantry for those who survived, as labour was scarce and wages had to go up. That's not happening now, one really gets the sense the UK Govt and others are trying to run the population down and keep wages down too.
I don't think our current democracy model can keep pace. It's like the Freedom of Information Act - people can get to find out how they're being screwed by the State a lot better than previously, but then find State operatives are unaccountable so it's even more galling. It is odd, how the internet changes things - you can just find some stuff out very easily whereas when I was growing up, you really couldn't. It had to be word of mouth. Feel you saw a James Bond spoof with David Niven in? You either knew it or you didn't. Maybe you imagined it.
But then with that in mind there has to be another level of mystery - like what happened to Madeline McCann, the missing kid in Portugal, or the weapons inspector David Kelly, or a whole load of other stuff. The internet solves one problem and gnaws away at another, often with false assumptions and trails, allied to the sense that the State certainly isn't telling the truth about all and can't really be trusted.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I guess this places a larger responsibility on the individual to check who the experts (or "experts") are and fact-check their claims.
Napoleon Plural said:
the Guggenheim (sp?) printing press in medieval times
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I believe the correct spelling of Guggenheim is Gutenberg.
There are a lot of articles in online newspapers nowadays that begin with - “I’m an expert on…” - these are 100% guaranteed to be best avoided.
Comedian Stewart Lee succinctly satirises the online "expert" commentator:
It's a Brave New World. AI will soon be the new "expert" commentator:
As referenced in the OP, the Nicola Bulley case earlier this year and the "TikTok frenzy" that ensued from it helped to crystallise some of my thoughts on the evolution of the internet in this modern day and age. Both it and the Covid-19 pandemic that preceded it really saw the rise of the internet/armchair "expert" who more often than not rushed in where angels would've feared to tread:
Here is just one example of the dangerous kind of clickbait posing as a real BBC News web link that comes up when I sign out of my Outlook email account. The discerning will see that it's not a BBC News link at all but it's designed to look like one and is a cynical attempt, right down to the presumably fake comments section, to get people to try to invest their money in a scam website:
https://janshareb.com/swggy.php?camp_id=71165&clickid=00969cc44c934a4eb2a9b418a45845f0&creative_id=1022711569&eng_click=00969cc44c934a4eb2a9b418a45845f0&eng_source=241060&eng_subid=null&key=0k0yc1lsx8vzi3w1xy6y&pixel=237700&website=241060&widget=241060