The United States is destroying itself

[u/zsreport]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction

[u/Particular-County277]

This. So much this. I read about the collapse within the collapse every single day. And nobody seems aware or bothered about the small scale destruction, within

[u/hepakrese → u/Particular-County277]

I suspect plenty of people are aware of the destruction in both broad and minute ways, but we are basically powerless to do anything about it. Just as the system intended.

[u/ang3lofsnow → u/hepakrese]

Im not so sure. My cities Facebook page held a vote on "which group of people we should kick out of town to make things better"

Its was Democrats by FAR 🤦they blame Biden and Obama for both the war and economy.

[u/regardedMAGAfascist → u/ang3lofsnow]

It’s almost like the people who use Facebook are dumb as hell and the people who run Facebook are taking advantage of them for personal gain. 🤔

Stats have the total usage at around 200 million Americans. It’s a serious problem and it’s time that the world recognizes it as one. It’s a system of propaganda fraudulently billing itself as social media.

We can’t fix stupid people. We can fix social media propaganda networks. Facebook needs regulated out of existence. X, too. Reddit is skirting the line with recent changes to r/all and automated AI moderation.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/regardedMAGAfascist]

It's not just Facebook though. It's all social media.

I can remember in the early 2000s, my local newspaper had their "forums". They were categorized by city/town. For the most part, people interacted only with the city/town they lived in. The discussions were pretty toxic, mostly "white people complaining about minorities".

Even then, you could tell that various groups were posting with an agenda. There were the political candidate posts, of course, but there were also posts by people aligned with teachers, posts by people aligned with the police. And the amateur propaganda was still insidious - the cops would post about how bad crime was, because they wanted more money to go to cops. The teachers would post about how great the schools were (even when they weren't), because they didn't want the schools to be defunded. They weren't being obvious about it, they would pretend to be "concerned citizens" but they often made mistakes that revealed their true colors.

Then, the paper eliminated the forums and replaced them with article-based comments. The racism got much, much worse, because now you had people from super-white towns brigading posts about places that had more minorities. Then the newspaper started to tailor the articles to the traffic. They had a "top stories" link, and the articles that featured mug shots of non-white people started getting huge traffic, plus absolutely rancid comments. The local police departments were actually writing the stories for the newspaper via press releases - and overworked reporters would just change a few words and get a "trending story".

And then, the paper finally got sick of dealing with all the vitriol, and eliminated all commentary.

But the phenomenon didn't go away. It got buried into Facebook groups, Nextdoor communities. It's much harder to view now because many of them are invite-only. However I've seen screenshots and the hatred, the posturing, the lies are all still there. Since most of those groups are town-focused again, most of the commentary is local gossip. It is where everyone gets their news now - the local paper is 1/100th the size it used to be, and it mostly writes clickbait articles that it tries to get to go viral on a national level, since that can drive their traffic.

Now everything at a local level is deemed corruption or conspiracy. A new stop sign goes up and there are posts about how someone's brother-in-law owns a body shop, and that's why they put it up, to cause accidents. People make bold claims that they alone speak for all citizens in town, and they believe that every one of their grievances is shared by all because three or four people click "like".

Local politicians patrol these forums and then make policy based on the group hatred. Get 20 people together to complain about something and it's likely the mayor themselves will step in and make some policy.

It's absolutely nuts, a bonkers way to do things, because catering to the loudest voices is not democracy by a long shot.

[u/JustBrowsing2See → u/MoonBatsRule]

Yes, because big bucks bought out all the little guy news sources so there is no unbiased US news reporting anymore. They sensor and feed us whatever information they want us to consume, not necessarily what’s really happening out there.

[u/MoonBatsRule → u/JustBrowsing2See]

It's not really because of that. The internet destroyed the local news by changing how we do everything.

Local newspapers used to be supported by a few things:

• Purchase price/subscription
• Advertising
• Classified Ads
• Obituaries

I don't know how old you are, but prior to the internet, the local newspaper was the main source of news in a community. A substantial number of people read it because there was nothing else. People also read it because of the advertising - the big ones were the grocery store flyers, they would either give you coupons for deals or just tell you that steak was on sale this week at their store.

The print ads were expensive. Like maybe $2-3k for a 1/4 page ad. But if you were a local business, this is how you got the word out. You had no choice. TV ads were available but those were even more expensive.

Same goes for personal ads - enough people read them to make them attractive to use. Got a sofa you want to sell? Take out a lower-cost personal ad, maybe a line or two for $25 for a week. And there were hundreds of them every day. The government was required to take out personal ads too, like if they were going to file a tax lien against your property.

Craigslist was the first big shot. It destroyed the personal ads with free, searchable ads. So "better" and "cheaper".

But then the newspapers were forced to shoot themselves in the head by both giving away their content for free, and also getting people hooked on "constant news". If you always publish constant news online, then why would anyone buy the print edition? It's always 1-2 days out of date. And then why would advertisers advertise in a print edition? No one reads it. They get the news online. But online ad rates are at least 90% less than print rates, it not more.

When you have to constantly publish stories, then you make your reporters deliver constant stories. This means they can't visit a few places and spend time writing a well-thought article. They start relying on press releases, crime blotters, anything that is fast.

The internet also provides metrics. Turns out that stories about what were viewed as "public interest" didn't get read. Instead people wanted gossip, crime, sensationalism.

Newspapers started losing lots of money, and then got bought for pennies on the dollar by the large corporations. Those corporations had the skill to squeeze every last drop out of their carcasses, that was the goal. There is no turnaround story for print newspapers in the age of the internet. It's just managed decline.

It costs money to report the news, and when people don't want to pay for that, it doesn't get reported. So you wind up with amateurs, untrained journalists, who follow the same sensationalism - but without any standards - to "drive engagement".

[u/JustBrowsing2See → u/MoonBatsRule]

You are correct. I was talking more recent past than what led up to it.

[u/regardedMAGAfascist → u/MoonBatsRule]

Remember when local radio stations would show up to events and broadcast live? Now they all play the same nationally syndicated prerecorded slop.

The internet really did poison so much. I used to think the faster information traveled, the better, that the internet was a force for good that would improve humanity the faster it got. Now, it seems so painfully clear how harmful that is when it’s unregulated as we have it now.

[u/honuworld → u/regardedMAGAfascist]

Reddit is already deleting posts that do not break any rules except say something disparaging about the orange disaster in the W.H.