Blowing bubbles

I'd missed Amol Rajan's BBC online piece General election 2019: Five lessons from the 'social media' election until reading pugnazious's comment about it at B-BBC. It's quite something:

No two Twitter users have the same experience, because all follow different people. But I think Piers Morgan was correct to say "Twitter loses another election" last night, though perhaps for more complex reasons than he implied. [ed - Nice attempt to appear intellectually superior to Piers there, Amol!] 

What he and others believe is that Twitter has a liberal bias, and that it can too often be a chat room for the metropolitan elite. That is my experience too, despite my best and constant attempts to follow people outside - and I use the phrase after long consideration - the London media bubble. [ed - Well done, you, Amol! You're my hero!] If Twitter does seem like it's dominated by journalists from Remain-ish titles, or Corbyn supporters, well, both had a bad night. 

The main reason that Twitter had a bad election, however, is that it continues to be a handmaiden to appalling abuse and the proliferation of fake news. [ed - The BBCs crusade against social media is gathering pace]. As a stream, Twitter is great for real-time updates. But so much of what you see is digital sewage, with trolls directing unconscionable abuse at innocent or vulnerable people, and a detection and reporting system that is wholly inadequate. 

Moreover, when the Conservative Party press account re-branded itself a fact-checking service early in the campaign - a dystopian tactic that was repeated last night - it is striking that it took to Twitter to, in effect, disseminate confusion. Sadly, it is a matter of fact in 2019 that the British party of government looks to Twitter to dupe people.

I don't know what happened "last night" (hopefully something similar to what happened last time), but that earlier Twitter "re-brand" by the Conservative Party press account as an 'independent' fact-checking service during one TV debate - which caused such a furore on Twitter and on the BBC - was. to my mind, very clearly not an attempt "to dupe people".

It was, I think very clearly a joke - the Conservative Party sending up self-appointed 'reality checkers' - such as the BBC's Reality Check...

...trolling them, as it were...

...the way they later trolled Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis & Co. with that funny 'Brexit, Actually' video.

Ordinary voters, however stupid the London media bubble might consider them, wouldn't have been "duped" by those tweets - especially as most people never go anywhere near political Twitter! -  and people like Amol are, I think,  massively underestimating most voters' intelligence (and sense of humour). And "dystopian", frankly, is worthy of the ever-hyperbolic Norman Smith and, even more  frankly, downright silly - and biased.

His attempts to escape the bubble he describes have clearly gone nowhere near far enough.

Stop spreading the nonsense, Amol. We're leaving on 31 January. We're going to make a brand new start of it, BBC, BBC.