Yes, and these days someone who goes around telling people that the world is flat is less than credible. If I was a parent I would inform my children that the world is, in fact, not flat and the aforementioned person is spewing nonsense. I'm not trying to force my beliefs onto others, just want people to treat themselves and others safely.

But don't you see the problem? You suppressing flat earthers seems fine to you now... in the same way that suppressing round earthers would have seemed sensible to your ancestor back then? And can you see why it would have been wrong to suppress the initial idea that the Earth was round?

"You suppressing flat earthers seems fine to you now.."

As I read it, PP advocates for ignoring those people not suppressing them. Ignoring somebody and punishing them for what they publish is not the same.

Or perhaps more importantly, the question is who does the ignoring? The user or the platform?

Personally, I think users (and not platforms) need better to tools to selectively ignore. For example, it would be great if I could mark somebody on the social network as "unreliable source" and then all people parroting or use that source (transitively through the social graph) would be (proportionally) marked unreliable as well. And vice versa, why cannot I mark things that come from people I know personally as more reliable than things that come from some Russian troll farm (or - for the balance - American astroturfing startup)?

The user is always free to ignore bad info. It's a serious problem when the platform steps in to do the disregarding for you. That is a form of censorship.

> a ranking algorithm could be deployed to undervalue posts which lack credibility

I don't know how you can spin undervaluing something automatically in an algorithm as anything but suppressing it. And it's not 'ignoring' if the person never seem them in the first place because they've been 'undervalued' in the ranking.

That's because your interpretation of the idea is wrong. The algorithm will be only taking social graph into account.. while you (end user) will have full control on how. It's not much different from undervaluing a comment on HN.

It sounds like you’re looking for a web-of-trust. Here’s an example with trust propagation: https://gist.github.com/dionyziz/e3b296861175e0ebea4b.

Not necessarily. There is no reason why this calculation on the social graph cannot be done by a central entity on your behalf. As long as the results of the calculation are transparent, I see no problem with it.

The big problem is that organizations like FB or Google want to "own" the social graph. They won't let you (except in special cases) to play with it.

I think as a civilization we have become more scientific and as a consequence, more reluctant to accept alternate truths which are not based on science. If someone could provide proof that the world is flat then their credibility would improve. However, since that proposition defies basic science, I would first have to be skeptical.

I think you're missing the point - you shouldn't censor ideas just because they are not credible. I can dig through to find my previous list of reasons why but this is the point that both myself and the other commenter are making. It's also at the core of free speech as a principle.

Also, the idea that Western civilisation itself has gotten more scientific is both wishful, and imo would be a terrible thing if it did happen. We've just traded one appeal to authority (priests) for another (pop science promoters and journalists).

Materialism is a great way to investigate natural phenomena but I would hate to live in a society that treats it as a moral principle.