http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-share...

> Lazonick discusses how we evolved from a society in which corporate interests were largely aligned with those of broader public purpose into a state where crony capitalism, accounting fraud, and corporate predation are predominant characteristics.

On the contrary, aligning anyone's interests with those of the broader public is often against the natural state of things. There are many ways for groups of people, whether they're corporations or marauding bands of knights, to benefit at the expense of the broader public. In fact, straightforward theft, fraud, violence, oppression, slavery, monopolization, deception, sabotage, and other anti-competitive practices are historically among the easiest and most common ways to profit.

"Businesses thriving by creating value for everyone" is not a natural system. The only reason capitalism works at all is because we have a strong government that enforces laws and regulations to make most alternative forms of profit illegal. So of course we should expect an arms race, where businesses attempt to find loopholes where they can profit without creating value. The monetary incentives are too high for people not to try.

Nature doesn't love us, that's why we've spent so long killing it and getting away from it.

The major difference is a tiny company interacts with other companies largely the same way individuals do. Large companies have far more complex relationships.

So is avoiding ecological collapse e.g. by depleting all natural resources. Yet, for each actor individually, person or company, there are higher incentives to harvest from the commons. This is a called 'tragedy of the commons'. Most popular economic strategies and certainly most corporations act in their own interest.

In the case of Facebook and fake news, that means doing whatever yields more advertising revenue.

So the article you link to strengthens the point of the parent that facebook is not in business for the public good but for private interests that are strongly at odds with public interests.

This is a complex question and there are no easy answers.

What precisely is the question?

In the "food" and "drug" cases, the state does this because large corporations have far more resources available to be applied to the goal of fooling people into consuming something that might be harmful to them, than people have available to figure out they were fooled.

The "news" case, though sometimes being similar to that, is also often very different: private individuals can be sources of news, news is often delivered without cost to the reader, and even news that is sourced from commercial institutions often reaches the majority of its readers through redistribution, without attribution, by private individuals (e.g. word of mouth; posting paraphrases on Facebook; etc.)

So, leaving alone whether the same principle could apply to "news" (or whether it's consistently trumped by free speech concerns, etc.), the implementation of such a policy would be quite different, perhaps different enough as to make it unfeasible. That is a complex question.

Also the USA would not exist if it were not for fake news. It was the arrival of printing presses in Boston which allowed political groups to create fake news to inflame the revolution[1], so it's not always clear fake news is a bad thing (I'm English but I think the creation of democratic America is one of the greatest common goods the world has seen, though i'm sure we can debate that).

[1] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_History_of_the_Uni...

Yes! We could call it the Department of Truth, seeing as we don't have government ministries in the US.

The treatment for misinformation and disinformation is genuine, accurate information.

Censorship and regulation of information is absolutely the wrong way to handle it. If you ever grant any government the power to be final arbiter over what truth is, you deserve what will surely happen to you next.

^The mantra of every authoritarian dictatorship. If the people lack the information to manage their own well-being, it is our job to inform them, not subjugate them.

Subjugate: to make someone or something subordinate.

Does your statement not fit the definition? Forcing someone out of their inalienable rights because they don't pass an arbitrarily dictated exam is to make them subordinates or untermensch. Epistocracy was a common method used to prevent blacks from voting in the southern United States.

What about the people who get to determine what the test questions are? Are they not by default held at a higher standard than the rest of the population?

The question is this: Do you support fake news or do you support the construction of a censorship apparatus? For me, there is a very easy answer.

At the same time, it's also clear that fake news is being used to justify all sorts of political things that are leading to intensified divisions and hatred (on /both/ ends of the spectrum) which is leading society down a different slippery slope, but one that's slippery all the same.

I'm not sure what you mean by bringing up a hypothetical "censorship apparatus that allows only fake news" -- my contention is that you cannot "beat" fake news without a censorship apparatus. Of course you can have a "good" censorship apparatus that only allows things you believe are good and true or you could have a "bad" one that only allows fake news. I'm sure yours would be very, very good indeed. But I think it's much better not to play that game at all.

I think you are viewing censorship apparatus as on a good -> bad spectrum. There is also the spectrum of the scale of censorship. For example: HRC's "sex ring" (obviously false facts misrepresented as the truth) is fake news that should be suppressed. But on the flip side, we obviously don't want a USSR-style control of the press, where the wrong word/opinion can land you in the gulag.

You seem to think that because any kind of censorship apparatus can be subverted for nefarious means, you should have no censorship apparatus at all. But I'll counter that that in itself is a form of intellectual laziness: Should we not explore the possibility of building a decentralized apparatus with appropriate checks and balances, that keeps the bare minimum of "fake news" out of general circulation? The answer may be no, but we should at least explore it.

You're right, I do see censorship as categorically a bad thing and not worth exploring. I think if you did manage to create some sort of light-touch, objective, fact-based system of fake news suppression it'd be hijacked by ideologues faster than you could believe. But that's a place we can agree to disagree.

So, we're talking about government regulation of speech. And that already exists, for good reason. Incitement to violence, threats of violence, defamation, child pornography are all instances of it.

All of those regulations exist because the damage done to society by these forms of speech has been deemed outweighing the benefits to society that would result from inclusion of it.

If that is true for fake news is arguable. I happen to believe it is, you seem to think the right to speech outweighs the damage.

But I'm not sure if that's what we're talking about here. Are you arguing that the value of being able to have fake speech outweighs the damage it does, or are you arguing that all forms of speech, including the currently outlawed ones, should be free and no restrictions whatsoever should apply?

Related, the question of a "censorship apparatus" is also open to interpretation - we're settling current restrictions mostly through courts & law enforcement. I would guess the answer if you consider that a censorship apparatus is influenced by what you think about current speech regulations.

Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

I think suppression of public communication by a monopoly corporation like Facebook does count here. And to be clear, yes, I am arguing that the value of being able to have fake speech outweighs the damage it does. As soon as you begin on the mission to suppress "fake" speech, you have to elevate some person or institution to the role of deciding what is fake and what is real, and that's far too much power to give to anyone. That power must remain with the individual, as imperfect as we all may be.

And even there, we have made that determination e.g. for speech inciting violence. That's a fairly well-defined case, so I assume that's why we all agreed we're OK with that.

As a thought experiment - or, really, to help me understand - what if we declared "fake news" as "intentionally wrong in substantial facts" and had a very clear definition of substantial, and what counts as intent?

Second thought experiment: What if you could still say whatever you wanted, but "fake news" simply wouldn't be content that's promoted into people's streams? Is that still censorship? After all, you can still say whatever you want - but individuals won't have to hear you when they haven't consented?

(I happen to believe that the core issue isn't the fact that there are fake news, but the fact that the various social media ranking algorithms violate consent by injecting things they deem interesting. I.e. it's not about speech, per se - it's about the fact that the platforms allow third parties to inject themselves into conversations unasked)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is not a definition of censorship. Nice try, though.

Regarding your first thought experiment, we already have that in the form of libel law. If you have standing to show that you are harmed by what is said and can show it to be intentionally and substantially wrong, you have a good case. Who brings the suit against general purveyors of fake news in your thought experiment? The United States Government?

The bigger problem is that when you move beyond the trivial, the dumb garbage that some people believe because it suits their biases and they don't care to find the truth, you quickly get into territory where people simply cannot agree on the facts. I believe that the truth can only be arrived at in an environment that allows free inquiry and open discussion. If you really think that the truth is a clean thing, and can't name at least a half dozen "open questions" in current world affairs, then you are not paying attention.

As for the definition of censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

First sentence: "In general, censorship in the United States, which involves the suppression of speech or public communication, raises issues of freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution". I apologize if my short-hand of "first amendment definition" was misleading - it's not defined in the 1st, but the 1st is definitely the basis of legal handling of censorship.

So now we have two competing wikipedia definitions. Looking at the National Coalition Against Censorship, the first amendment still seems relevant: http://ncac.org/resource/what-is-censorship

I think the case can be made, at least, that there are different definitions of censorship, none obviously invalid.

"If you really think that the truth is a clean thing"

In many cases, no. In many other cases, yes. There are things that are verifiably true or false. I'm not interested - for the purposes of discussing fake news - with the open questions. But for the purpose of experiment #1, I am interested in verifiable falsehoods. The dumb garbage. What if the government could and would sue for that? (N.B.: It's a thought experiment. I'm not advocating for that approach)

I also still think that experiment #2 leads in a better direction. Falsehoods will always exist, but there's nothing that says we need to make it easier to propagate them, under your or my definition.

One reason I want separate the easily proven falsehoods is that the people who fall for that stuff are not very persuadable anyway, and the damage to the body politic is not very great, and I think that the real goal of the censorship crusaders is to shut down competing worldviews.

Being sued or prosecuted by your government for "propagating falsehoods" would be awful obviously. What else is there to do with that thought experiment than to recoil and place it in the bad outcomes bin?

The thing about recommender systems really is an interesting question and a legitimate gray area but I'm personally not interested in pursuing it at the moment. In fact I'm going to stop replying to this thread, but if you think theres a way to incorporate some sort of unbiased veracity estimate into such a system, by all means go for it.

volume, perhaps.

> Do you support fake news or do you support the construction of a censorship apparatus?

in one sense, there isn't really any difference.

To your second point, that's just nonsense.

I do think that's a big part of it. However, there is some aura of authenticity that comes from social media postings that link to official looking sites. Not for people that are somewhat internet savvy, but there is a group that's being somewhat fooled in way they weren't in the past.

having grown up in small towns, no fudd i knew had a computer, much less an aol account. (and this was in the era of aol discs clogging the mail system.)

> To your second point, that's just nonsense.

"fake news" is censorship through displacement and delegitimization.

censorship is "fake news" by virtue of providing incomplete or distorted information (eg, lies of omission).

If the only way to remain objective about the populace is to remove one's self from public, that includes making a living off others. Those (other) people who are to become your cattle, your cash crop, your money tree. Then MarkZ has become the anti-theses of objectionable and to top it off I really don't follow his line of thought, except as far to see it's all about his little cash crop of humans.

And then the real fun begins for us

Well, the opposite is true as well, and more likely I think: By removing yourself from public, you lose any true bearing on what it's like to be a member of the populace. How can you be objective about something you don't understand? How can you be objective about a society you have no real understanding of?

I am unaware of a service which really aggregates multiple view points in a fair way because such a thing is impossible.

I can link you to a few longer form journalism papers/magazines, but any conservative would decry them as biased.

We could link to some traditionally conservative outlets, but they'd be decried as neo-conservative, out of date and biased.

As offensive as it might be to you, in society and news, opinion is all there is.

"But facts MATTER" you might retort, but no, they don't. Only opinions about facts matter.

Because what power does a fact have if it's not accepted as true? None. What power does a falsehood have if it's accepted as true? All of it.

There is no fair and rational way to separate opinion and fact.

After a fifteen years of using news aggregators, RSS aggregators, aggreagtors like memeorandum.com and polurls.com, and social aggregators like digg, then reddit, and social media services, I have not found what you want.

I have thought about making it, and I have ideas on how liberals and conservatives can use a single website to organize the news into strands and voice their opinions on the validity of that organization WITHOUT the normal animosity and viciousness that is normal, but I've never sat down to really create it.

For instance, lets say Trump creates an executive order demanding that a wall between Mexico and the US be built by 2018. Both the right, and the left, will write thousands upon thousands of articles about how this will be great for the country, and terrible for the country. The truth like most things, may lie somewhere in between the extremes. Your news aggregator would allow you to read articles about the wall, as written by both conservatives, and liberals.

Then, you'd at LEAST be reading the differing opinions. The problem is, I doubt many people would want a service like this. Like it or not, human beings seem to enjoy the comfort of their solidified beliefs. It's far easier to digest your right wing, or left wing news, rather than digesting BOTH. People don't really want to change.

See, the thing is, people aggressively self-bubble so if you natively show them both sides, they will stop using your service.

There may be a minority of less-political and more-rational folks who want that, but I've discovered trying to get people to use polurls.com that people don't want side by side.

If you do side by side, you create cognitive dissonance when "their side" "appears" "wrong", and the easiest way to solve that cognitive dissonance is to close the tab and not return.

>Then, you'd at LEAST be reading the differing opinions. The problem is, I doubt many people would want a service like this. Like it or not, human beings seem to enjoy the comfort of their solidified beliefs. It's far easier to digest your right wing, or left wing news, rather than digesting BOTH. People don't really want to change.

Exactly, which is why I envision a system of silos where you can have your biased lunch and eat it too, but whose tools allow us to measure opinion and biases, and which can attempt to bring down some of the barriers between bubbles through a variety of surfacing techniques.

Give people what they want and the tools to classify THEIR bubble, and in the process, keep other bubbles and ideas just on their edges, visible in the periphery...

Combatting cognitive dissonance self-preservation is a problem worth solving though, ugh.

Says I'm liberal, I may get articles that criticize Trump's immigration plan, and the articles would show how well received the plan is to the right.

I don't work for them, I've just found their published lists useful.

You could also do it as a debate where two respectable, well-informed and well spoken people debate following strict rules. Pretty much the opposite of a US Presidential debate. Without it being a live debate, both would have time to give their statements plenty of thought and consideration. They could then take the time to make sure it is well written.

I would love to hear how others are tackling the difficult job of being informed in this particularly contentious time

Given any particular topic, people typically want is to know what to do about something, or at least (it's lazier cousin) how to feel about it. Ideally, we would all individually start at raw data and end on drawing our own conclusions about how to feel about issues. The vast majority of us rely on some type of 'packaging' stage where raw facts get bundled in an easier to understand manner i.e. news orgs.

This is the mechanism that modern media has really thrown a wrench into. We've achieved a level where we can go from start to finish, turn that firehose of data directly into emotions without any need for thought. The old speed bumps: rational discourse, verification have not been able to scale in the same way.

In the short term, you're right. In the long term, you aren't. The long view is that people will get tired of reactionary content, and as that happens the credibility and utility of Facebook as a platform will drop, as will its profits. Since Mark has control of Facebook, he has the advantage of being able to operate on long time horizons (and has demonstrated his ability and willingness to do that). So he (and Facebook) have every incentive to fix this issue, and it seems like they're working hard to try and get it done.

a) Depends on your country

b) Even if it's not, it's highly immoral.