<story><title>Statement from Mark Zuckerberg</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/login/web/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skissane</author><text>&amp;gt; And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a point I&amp;#x27;ve made myself before, and I think there is some truth to it. Social media can&amp;#x27;t explain the high and increasing degree of US political polarisation, because other countries (including other English-speaking countries) consume social media about as much and yet have less polarisation, and don&amp;#x27;t show the same degree of increase in it either. The real explanation must lie in other aspects of US culture, or the US political system</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kumarvvr</author><text>That is because most other countries have multi party systems.&lt;p&gt;The polarization is still there, but spread thin amongst various factions.&lt;p&gt;In the US, people are shoehorned into R or D.&lt;p&gt;Edit : I would also like to point out that the OP is a bit confused between cause and effect. In the US, the effect is deep polarization. However, the &lt;i&gt;cause&lt;/i&gt; is the power of mass communication, especially misinformation and blatant lies, that FB enables and does not bother to control. The cause is common to all the countries in the world, the effect varies due to various other factors, one of them being the presence of a multi-party system.&lt;p&gt;Take the example of India. FB has a large and active user base. However, India being a chaos of various identities, cultures, regions, languages, etc, divisions in society are less pronounced as there are a large number of players (politically, regionally, locally, etc)&lt;p&gt;Other than that, the &lt;i&gt;effect&lt;/i&gt; of FB in Europe is also less visible due to the same reason. Every EU country has mostly multi party systems, leading to spreading thin of the hate and focus.</text></comment>
<story><title>Statement from Mark Zuckerberg</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/login/web/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skissane</author><text>&amp;gt; And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a point I&amp;#x27;ve made myself before, and I think there is some truth to it. Social media can&amp;#x27;t explain the high and increasing degree of US political polarisation, because other countries (including other English-speaking countries) consume social media about as much and yet have less polarisation, and don&amp;#x27;t show the same degree of increase in it either. The real explanation must lie in other aspects of US culture, or the US political system</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fighterpilot</author><text>Not sure if I fully agree with that argument. With the US being a superpower, the stakes are high and this invites unique foreign influence via social media. That foreign influence could be state coordinated or just come from regular people who have an emotional stake in US politics. I&amp;#x27;ve seen it myself, outside of the US people are more concerned about US politics than their own and engage with it on social media which only adds to the pile of insanity. Also, because of limited bandwidth, only a small handful of topics tend to monopolize, and as such they are usually US topics.</text></comment>