The harms of social media are understated. I live in Brazil. Social media was one of the main reasons of the election of our president, Bolsonaro. Now we have more than 130.000 deaths from coronavirus, the Amazon and Pantanal are burning, our institutions are crumbling. My fellow software developers aren't just make some far way teenagers depressed. This is is real harm in the real world.
Most systems won’t change overnight because of the guy on top. What makes you so sure Brazil would have done better with the opposing party candidate as president?
Maybe the problem lies in a supposedly chronically underfunded healthcare system, by a number of previous administrations? This would then reflect, in an electoral democracy, of the citizenry’s misplaced priorities.
It has nothing to do with what nation they are - but an uncomfortable conclusion that the problem is in the voter base is self evident for elections.
1. Bolesaro is a fascist and only terrible people would support him. If supporters of genocidal fascists are terrible people the who is?
2. He won the election.
3. A plurality of votes is needed to win the election.
QED the voting plurality are terrible people. I said nothing of other nations by baseline and thought it was abundantly clear that it was a lesson of experience that assuming that a large number of your voting countrymen aren't terrible people is sadly a mistake.
What's mean about it? Brazilian voters are simply reaping what they sowed - "social media" has nothing to do with it. It's called living in a democracy.
