Actually I could care less about politics if you really want to know. ;O) I just enjoy the debating here, and do follow my expressed opinions , but I'm not entirely into politics Lock Stock & Barrel in my non-internet life.
Ahh touche. I could care less about politics. But American politics is odd to me. Because the divide is so very wide and both parties are rather extreme. Our main parties would translate into "center left" and "center right" when translated into American politics. So American debate kind of fascinates me, but it's also often an even bigger circus than my country's politics. I think the most anyone actually cared about politics in my country was the recent SSM postal vote. But I suspect it was almost more of a sort of purge rather than a debate held in good faith.
I much more enjoy talking and debating about religion and the philosophical side of things, pretty much the Forte of the Forum , but being politics right now are at the forefront of people's interest, I have no problem swinging the old Bushido sword in the political forums each opportunity that arises that strikes my fancy.
Fair enough. I share your preference.
Some people could reasonably argue that the left is the viewpoint of most people in the country, hence a reason why most of the hits on the internet are left leaning .
Maybe.
I could agree with that, but the fact that the search terms themselves keep steering left and much more difficult finding hits that support the right diminishes the former in my opinion, and leads me to ascertain that the algorithms themselves are structured in favor of the left. It certainly comes across that way from my personal experience so far on various media sites and like that we are considered a divided nation with about half Pro left in various capacity , and half pro right in various capacity. That would lead me to think search term hits would be pretty much even.
That hasn't been my experience. But then again, I'm not American. So maybe that changes things, I don't know.
I do recall watching a lot of otherwise rational (if caustic) so called YouTube skeptics morph into Anti Feminists who then teamed up with the Alt Right. Though I think many have since largely severed ties with the movement. They seemed pretty liberal before all the catfighting, so they probably became disenfranchised by the more emboldened right rhetoric that cropped up. I dunno. But like I said, due to those early subs, I was sort of "grandfathered" into very right leaning YouTube content. I'm very liberal, (though center left in Americanstan speak) so I just assumed that I was supposed to listen to the other side. But the algorithms offered less and less counterpoints. So I ended up having to look for myself. And I realized that the divide had seemingly increased. Also that I was internalizing too much of the rhetoric, because I went in with the wrong frame of mind. It was a game to me. So I wasn't being my normal "I need to immediately google this thing someone told me to see if it's true or if there's alternative info" self. To my everlasting shame.
That's not to say I didn't see unfortunate, as you Americans would dub it, "Leftist bullying tactics." I actually did. In the affectionately dubbed BookTube, which I would say is left leaning (but more introverted, because book nerds) there were some very unfortunate drama. Nothing world changing, or anything. But there were certain controversies that made me say, wait what?
But I suspect it was just a bunch of young adults being a little too enthusiastic to call out "problematic" books or users.
Like one of my fave BookTubers Steve. Who was essentially harassed due to a comment he made about "fake reader girls." Which was a bit tone deaf, to be sure. But after watching him a little more, I think it was more of a "probably should have worded my opinion better" kind of deals. Because he seems very open minded, if a little curmudgeonly. The Carve the Mark "controversy" was so baffling, a very progressive BookTuber stepped in to tell "the mob" to calm the f down. And even ended up reading the book, just to see what the hell got everyone in such a silly tizzy. That was popcorn worthy garbage entertainment, if ever there was. Because in Australia, the controversy was more "wow, look at all these Americans overreact to this book lol"
Silly innocuous nonsense, to be sure. But entertaining on the train commute if you have nothing else to do.
It's probably a reason why there are so many references with Fox News for the right and CNN news for the left. It's not hard to ascertain that there are algorithms in both favoring each political position respectively.
Okay, this I am genuinely curious about. Are Fox News and CNN like actual news stations? I mean obviously you guys would have a standard generic nightly news or whatever.
But like over here, we have the generic nightly news.
And then it branches off into "News and information Programs." And you can tell which side of the political fence each program falls on. But apart from some news reading, it's not really the same as the literal nightly news. Like A Current Affair is obviously more sensationalist and honestly easily trolled. 4 Corners is the same but with a more professional veneer. And probably not as sensationalist, at least at times. The Project is more of a panel discussing news events, with I guess to you guys, "obvious liberal bias."
But these shows are not necessarily treated the same way an actual news program is. They're more like sub categories. Because there is more debate and more I guess political bias in each. Whereas the nightly news is very neutrally telling the audience that a thing happened.
So is it the same with Fox News and CNN?
(Also, doesn't Disney now own Fox News essentially?)
