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1061 points danso | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.653s | source
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illuminated ◴[] No.23349385[source]
I know it is "never too late" for things like this to happen, but it's definitely late.

One of the main reasons for bad things to happen is the lack of education (which, in turn, leads to resist to change) and, therefore makes people prone to believe to unbelievable things.

Social platforms like Twitter should have long had things like "fact checking" ANY statements and should have restricting not only violence glorifying posts, but also the ones with racial or sexual discrimination and all the others .

It is late, but I like seeing it happen at least for the person with the most "glorifying" record in dividing a society.

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wpietri ◴[] No.23349435[source]
Yeah, the whole reason we have public education is that democracy requires a knowledgeable voter base. When social media companies were just starting out, I get why they weren't fretting about societal effects. But even if we go by business metrics, a collapse of democracy would probably be bad for their businesses. It's past time for social media companies to take responsibility for their negative externalities. And that definitely includes all sort of "negative information value" content.
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dpoochieni ◴[] No.23354132[source]
Public education and knowledgeable voter base in the same sentence, what a joke.
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1. Valgrim ◴[] No.23354272[source]
Maybe this is a US-specific problem? I'm not American and the public education system is actually doing a great job in most developed countries.
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2. dpoochieni ◴[] No.23354332[source]
Knowing closely two countries: USA and Mexico, I just know that people in the know and with the means to do so (top %1+) just avoid public education like the plague. (Up to high school, then it's just a matter of going to a top college.)

At some point you have to consider the history of public education and it was just a tool for controlling and repressing individual thought, give busy work to lower class kids so they stay out of trouble, don't grow up to question the system. What is usually taught there? Obey authority at all cost, getting status symbols from authority is most important (not actually learning), do not interact with people different from you (why the grade separation? shouldn't people learn at their own pace?), learn not what interests you, just follow the damn syllabus choosen by someone else, don't stand out, just memorize stuff, don't read actual primary sources, just the predigested/rehashed summary. I mean, sure there might be exceptions but it's pretty much the same everywhere

What countries you think are doing a great job and why?

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3. wpietri ◴[] No.23354799[source]
Depends a lot on where you are. I went to public school and it was a solid education. Most of the kids in my extended family are getting a public education and they're doing fine, too.

I agree it could be better, and it some places it could be a lot better. But when compared with the alternative -- no public education at all -- you'll see why it's a necessary foundation to democracy.