Internet is simply a unusual place. A man enters for a minute to check the weather or the consequence of the match, and comes out with the feeling that he just participated in a tiny civilian war. This time it all started with an entry in which Krzysztof Stanowski asked 1 very simple question. The question addressed to the online political activist Nicholas Wasiewicz.
Is it actual – he asked – that he exposes negative opinions on Google to companies just due to the fact that their owners have different political views.
It wasn't a complicated affair. No secret documents, no investigation commissions. It's a couple of stars on the Internet. One, two, sometimes three. adequate to make a local restaurant or a tiny car store look like a place where a waiter beats customers with a chair and a mechanic with the key to the wheels.
At least that's how today's reputation works.
The charge is simple. According to Stanowski's entry, Mikołaj Wasiewicz was to give negative assessments in Google to companies associated with people with another political views. The problem is that, if you believe this charge, it was not about the quality of services. Not cold soup. Not a crooked wheel.
It was all about politics.
And if so, we are dealing with a very modern situation. The evaluation system, which was expected to aid customers choose good services, becomes a tool for political combat. 1 star as an ideological manifesto. 2 stars as a moral sanction. 3 stars – an act of grace.
And everything happens in a place where people wrote just recently: “Pizza good, I recommend”.
Politics has long been like theater. Actors ellipse the stage, make lines, sometimes individual throws a prop. The audience claps, sometimes whistles. Nothing new.
But the net added something else to this theatre – the anticipation of tampering with the scenes.
Because online politics works like an old clock with an exposed mechanism. You can see the gears. You can see the springs. You can see who's trying to decision something mildly with his finger so the clues show a small different time.
One star here. 1 star there.
And suddenly, individual starts to wonder if this restaurant truly is so bad, or if it's just the owner's got the incorrect idea.
"Modern politics are increasingly struggling for arguments and increasingly for algorithms".
This conviction could be easy printed on a coffee mug and placed on a desk in all newsroom.
Because the communicative of online opinions is actually a communicative of something bigger. About how much political conflict has poured into average life. In the past, politics ended somewhere around parliament or a tv studio. present he can enter the car shop, bakery and kebab booth.
And everyone pretends to be normal.
Social media have 1 peculiar feature – they can turn all small thing into a symbolic match of tribes. individual will compose a comment. individual will answer. Someone's gonna put out a star. And then there's the avalanche.
Because if politics becomes a tribe fight, then all motion is simply a sign of loyalty. Even the hairdressing opinion.
Yet, most frequently people who are not politicians are involved. They're not on TV. They have no staff. They just run the company. They pay the bills. Sometimes they make a good pizza.
And abruptly they discover they're on the map of a political battle.
But to be honest – online opinions were already a unusual invention. any buy them wholesale, others lower their competitors, others compose a review 2 minutes after entering the premises. Politics has only added a fresh ingredient to this mixture.
Ideology.
So possibly it's not a fresh problem. possibly we just saw him in a sharper light.
Because in fact, the mechanics is trivial: the reputation on the net is fragile like porcelain. And all it takes is 1 click to get a scratch.
One click.
One star.
And abruptly it turns out that in the age of digital political wars the shortest way to fight an opponent does not lead through debate or through parliament.
It's just a Google opinion.
