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Taiwan has found a way to use a carefully designed social network constructively.
As stated in the Tyee,
Taiwan Is Crowdsourcing an Everybody-Wins Democracy
They had to do something. In 2014,
Opponents to the bill felt not just defeated, but invisible. The government had promised to listen to their concerns, but simply hadn't done so, rushing the bill onto the parliament floor. They had the votes; they could get it through. So that evening, protesters scaled the fence, kicked the door open and streamed onto the floor of Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan.
Sound familiar from recent history?
Well, the government found a way to listen.
They set up vTaiwan, a social network where prominence is given to posts that further concord instead of discord. And they're using it to craft proposals for legislation. Anyone can contribute.
The article doesn't state how the social network determines which posts promote consensus. I'd like to know.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 13 2021, @01:46AM
"4chan, 8chan, QAnon"
These have fairly shallow reach. Quantitatively no where near as much damage as the MSM. Some nuts are a statistical inenvitability. However the reason that nothing real ever gets discussed, (which is what makes people resort to fringe groups to begin with) is because generations of people have been indoctrinated into to thinking the broadcast media (a simplex communication) is normal. Today this is far from true.
What changed from 20 years ago to today, was that communications became full duplex over long distances. So now people ask questions, and the boomers on the hill have this broadcast era mentality where they think that they can get away with refusing to engage the public on real topics because "where else are they going to get information?". The public has a higher expectation of engagement now. The fringes are successful because congress failed to recognize the totality of its current role.
Of course, they mostly seem to believe their own legend. So it couldn't possibly be their failure. /s
Which is why they will respond by trying to crack down on civil rights, instead of realizing that they need to ease off, and become more engaged, and more transparent.