Summary
A poll found that 88% of German voters fear foreign election interference, with Russia (45%), the US (42%), and China (26%) seen as top threats.
Concerns include deepfake disinformation and social media manipulation, with 56% believing Germany is unprepared. Elon Musk, a vocal far-right supporter, has drawn criticism for allegedly influencing German politics.
Voters also worry about the far-right AfD’s aggressive online campaigns. Many (79%) believe populists benefit most from social media.
Meanwhile, 71% support creating a new ministry to combat digital misinformation.
1984 intensifies
According to the study 37% of participants verify information before sharing it on social media.
There you have it folks.
Disinformation campaigns don’t need to be super convincing with the latest tech or elaborate fake outs, although it certainly helps. For the masses (ie election interference) it’s easy enough to to establish narratives, vibes by users simply sharing headlines to fake or manipulative reports. The people that bother to deep check and cross reference sources you typically couldn’t convince anyway. Sadly enough, most users never read beyond the head lines (75% this Facebook study estimates).
Think of your own feed: how many head lines // posts do you just scroll by w/out ever opening them? Even if you don’t share actively it still can influence the your perception of the world today and shape your mood.
Social media is eating away at the fundamentals of Democracy 🫠, change my mind!
I think part of the problem is how awful an experience it is to read articles on most websites. I get that they need advertising revenue, but the giant ads plastered all over the articles make the experience of reading them simply awful.
not gonna change your mind, you’re right.
If there are any germans out there reading this, it’s not to late to enact strong policy. America failed to do so and I fear the repercussions of not taking the threat seriously have only just begun.
the US (42%)
Cmmon, we JUST figured out how to manipulate our own votes, give us a couple years at least.
Is this fucker trying to take over every county in the world by proxy or what?
Yes.
I’m sure all of those will vote contrary to those doing the manipulation, right? -Padme
Are they considering Musk as US? If so I’ll kindly remind Germany he’s South African, he’s meddling in US politics as well, and we don’t want him either.
It’s very worrying how many countries around the world have far right fascist parties either in charge or making major waves like MAGA and AfD. The Australian government has been headed down that path for a while, and the UK isn’t too far behind them. If I recall I think there was also a far right party in France that was up to something as well recently.
Why are his hands bigger than his head?
Have you never seen something get closer to a camera?
It just seems disproportionate.
Why are his hands bigger than his head?
It’s funny. Probably because he’s like a muppet show figure IRL too, with big hands, but in a bad way.
It amused me too.
It just seems massively disproportionate. It was also supposed to be a bit funny.
It’s also funny, that you got a complete explanation of how perspective works to your previous question; which was actually like a joke question… Talking about perspective…;) (ed)
