LogFAQs > #978858038

CRON posted...

Smartphones and broadband internet access became affordable in the late '00s-early '10s and suddenly millions and millions of Americans with no media literacy or knowledge of politics became easy targets for misinformation and propaganda campaigns.

The seeds were planted with 24-hour news cycles and post-9/11 paranoia but as awful as it sounds, too many people were given too much access to the internet, on devices that are too affordable and too easy to use.

This is the correct answer. There are many factors at play when talking about why the USA is so divided right now, but this is the big one.

To add to it, the profit incentive of capitalism drives people to become bad-faith actors. When that happens on a mass scale and it's automated in digital spaces by software, it accelerates the pace at which we find cracks in our current social system. Machines are trained to find the path of least resistance toward profit, and that has caused our society to change at a much more rapid and unconsidered pace than what we're capable of dealing with.