>There's plenty of historical precedent where the US democracy worked.
And at least as many where it didn't.
>Recently SOPA and PIPA were close to passing. A lot of people in the tech community raised hell, and the bills went down in flames.
Haha, no. A lot of big companies put their lobby dollars behind a position and that position got adopted. No one in the US government cares about a bunch of blog posts, email or online surveys.
> etc. can have big effects, but in the end the voters know a lot about lying, duplicity, manipulation, etc. I believe that the Internet will be helping
No they don't! And even if they did, I'm not sure they can stop it (in the same way that knowing you're taking a placebo won't alter its effectiveness). It's getting more and more documented about just how effective marketing can be.
Some have gone so far as to ban certain kinds of advertising [1].
>it seems to have helped a lot with SOPA and PIPA and to have gotten the Snowden efforts front and center.
What? Outside of sites like HN, pretty much no one cares about Snowden. The mainstream press was already over him the next day.
>Once a politician gives a speech, then due to YouTube the politician can't assume that the voters will easily forget.
Except they do forget, and sites like political compass help them forget by trying to look official but producing padded stats. You can probably find every one of Obama's speeches on youtube yet there are still people who claim he hasn't broken any big promises.
And at least as many where it didn't.
>Recently SOPA and PIPA were close to passing. A lot of people in the tech community raised hell, and the bills went down in flames.
Haha, no. A lot of big companies put their lobby dollars behind a position and that position got adopted. No one in the US government cares about a bunch of blog posts, email or online surveys.
> etc. can have big effects, but in the end the voters know a lot about lying, duplicity, manipulation, etc. I believe that the Internet will be helping
No they don't! And even if they did, I'm not sure they can stop it (in the same way that knowing you're taking a placebo won't alter its effectiveness). It's getting more and more documented about just how effective marketing can be.
Some have gone so far as to ban certain kinds of advertising [1].
>it seems to have helped a lot with SOPA and PIPA and to have gotten the Snowden efforts front and center.
What? Outside of sites like HN, pretty much no one cares about Snowden. The mainstream press was already over him the next day.
>Once a politician gives a speech, then due to YouTube the politician can't assume that the voters will easily forget.
Except they do forget, and sites like political compass help them forget by trying to look official but producing padded stats. You can probably find every one of Obama's speeches on youtube yet there are still people who claim he hasn't broken any big promises.
[1] http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/ban-on-adverti...