My point here is not to chide, but to note the system of incentives that keeps money flowing to authoritarians. They’re winning by making less ethical decisions easy and responsible alternatives difficult if not impossible. This isn’t just a consumer and social media problem; so much of mainstream journalism today is motivated by professional respectability — which doesn’t necessarily mean lying, but taking the path of least resistance: avoiding certain topics or language because they sound “partisan” or “alarmist,” and other acts of performative neutrality such as platforming well-dressed white nationalists and elevating bogus narratives from the extremists’ cinematic universe.
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