Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by quotemstr on Friday August 10, 2018 @05:32PM
(#17736903)
The Verge isn't the first publication to make this case. It won't be the last. It's just that those making this case frequently turn into brutal dictatorships. However wrong popular ideas are, they're far less wrong than despots.
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by armchair_hunter on Friday August 10, 2018 @05:46PM
(#17736973)
And yet brutal despots like Hitler are often conspiracy theorist.
Let's look at case. Hitler and the Weimar Republic as a while bought into the "stabbed in the back" myth and believed that Jews were behind all of Germany's woes, manifesting as capitalists and communists.
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by lkrubner on Friday August 10, 2018 @04:12PM
(#17736384)
Wouldn’t it be John Stuart Mill who is wrong? I associate him with this idea (“facts can combat lies”) more than anyone. And I think nowadays a lot of free speech advocates are beholden to Mill, whether they know it or not. Many of the best known quotes regarding the importance of free speech go back to Mill.
So, I don’t think “Twitter” is the right pronoun for this headline. But I agree with the rest of the headline. Mill seems over optimistic when considering the realities of modern propaganda.
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by 18pfsmt on Friday August 10, 2018 @06:12PM
(#17737084)
I don’t really care what private companies do, and I hope people are looking for alternatives (e.g. Mastodon) as a result.
However, I am finding the authoritarians coming out from the left and the right to denounce basic human liberties in the name of the greater good very troubling. Thankfully, amending the US Constitution is very difficult.
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by krapp on Friday August 10, 2018 @06:01PM
(#17737040)
What if I told you one conspiracy being true doesn't prove all other conspiracy theories to be true? It doesn't even affect the likelihood that other conspiracy theories are true.
Conspiracy theorists should be at the forefront of "combating conspiracy theories" because, ostensibly, they should care about the truth, which most conspiracy theories are not.
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by quotemstr on Friday August 10, 2018 @07:09PM
(#17737341)
What if I told that you that while most conspiracy theories are false, giving people power to censor them would also allow them to persecute legitimate whistleblowers and investigate journalists?
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by krapp on Friday August 10, 2018 @08:01PM
(#17737537)
What if I told you that you seem to be confusing the power held by private citizens with the power held by governments, because the former when applied by a social media platform doesn't necessarily imply a slippery slope towards the latter?
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by malvosenior on Friday August 10, 2018 @04:49PM
(#17736624)
What's concerning is that Apple, Google, Facebook and Spotify can (and will!) coordinate to silence voices they don't approve of. It literally doesn't matter what that voice is because the power differential of all of those companies working together vs. pretty much anything should scare us all.
I'm also 100% sure Alex Jones has a larger audience today than the day before the censorship began, so from that perspective it was even a failure.
Re:Twitter is wrong: facts are not enough to combat conspira...
by malvosenior on Friday August 10, 2018 @05:12PM
(#17736777)
I agree it was not effective, but it's still very concerning that these companies coordinated to do this. Not every action they coordinate on will come to light like this and thus may actually be somewhat effective (think actions against regular users).
Let's look at case. Hitler and the Weimar Republic as a while bought into the "stabbed in the back" myth and believed that Jews were behind all of Germany's woes, manifesting as capitalists and communists.
So, I don’t think “Twitter” is the right pronoun for this headline. But I agree with the rest of the headline. Mill seems over optimistic when considering the realities of modern propaganda.
However, I am finding the authoritarians coming out from the left and the right to denounce basic human liberties in the name of the greater good very troubling. Thankfully, amending the US Constitution is very difficult.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-art...
Conspiracy theorists should be at the forefront of "combating conspiracy theories" because, ostensibly, they should care about the truth, which most conspiracy theories are not.
Spying has been an overt role of the NSA since the agency was publicly revealed to exist in, IIRC, the late 1950s.
I'm also 100% sure Alex Jones has a larger audience today than the day before the censorship began, so from that perspective it was even a failure.
Removing him from their list is a minor inconvenience, looks nothing like the worst acts of censorship in human history.
You know how you can find Alex Jones: google.com, duckduckgo.com
It was a superficial act. You seem to get that by labeling it a failure.