Carole Cadwalladr has been banging on for a year now about how Facebook – with useful assists from Twitter and other social media firms – has been gutting our democracy. The problem is that there’s a basic delusion at the centre of the argument itself. Democracy isn’t what Cadwalladr seems to think it is, some method of getting to an answer she approves of. Rather, it’s the inchoate mass of us, the Demos, deciding what we’d like to happen.
This this Ted talk goes rather off piste:
The problem being, from her accompanying article, this:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I did tell them that they had facilitated multiple crimes in the EU referendum. That as things stood, I didn’t think it was possible to have free and fair elections ever again. That liberal democracy was broken. And they had broke it.[/perfectpullquote]Consider what her central contention is. That a political party is able to advertise only to those who might change their minds breaks democracy.
That is indeed her central contention. All the rest of it is wibble. That one party or side spent 1% over the permissible budget, or that some Russian dropped £10,000 into the conversation, these don’t break democracy. Nor even does the idea that the 1% overspend was a result of following the strictures and advice of the Electoral Commission.
No, the horror is that those predisposed to maybe vote fascist can be sent ads asking them to perhaps vote fascist. So too Leave, Remain, socialist, Green and all the other possible variations. Political advertising has become more efficient, that’s what she’s complaining about. And democracy just isn’t such a fragile flower that it will be broken by that.
If it were then we’d have to ban political advertising through any specific channel. Like, you know, an ad that runs in the Observer and is aimed at persuading soft left voters to do something. An ad different from that which runs in the Telegraph asking crustier conservatives to do something else.
This is the real problem with Cadwalladr’s contention. Forget all the – many – errors in her assertions and all that. Just consider the central contention. Being able to advertise to subgroups of voters breaks democracy. It’s a delusion, isn’t it?
Tim Worstall. There are indeed issues with Carole Cadwalladr’s piece but for you to so blatantly and knowingly misrepresent her central contention makes you look like you don’t have a real argument to those who actually read your piece in it’s entirety. (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you’re bright enough to know you strawmanned her central point). Her central point, which you missed worse than Kathy Newman on her best day, was obviously that for a political party to be unaccountable and be able to break voting laws by hiding payments in obscure Carribean bank… Read more »
Who is it wasted an afternoon or evening listening to a Ted Talk?
I’ve just run off a batch of leaflets to go to people likely to vote in 10 days. You mean I have to chuck them away and replace them with three times as many leaflets that also have to go to people who are likely to *not* vote in 10 days’ time?
You can smell the cat piss through the screen.
What breaks democracy is when the losers don’t give up, don’t accept the result. Willing handover of power being just as important as voting.
Delusion or just sour grapes? Either way in respect of Brexit her complaint is ludicrous, the result of the plebiscite was the result of a bottom up anti-establishment democratic movement. If anything it proves that social media and electronic communications in general can, especially if unregulated and uncensored, strengthen democracy. Individuals from all walks of life now can share their thoughts and ideas, an opportunity that has never existed before.