Yes they are, they've done it for all of modern civilization. People in power telling us what to think doesn't end well.

The issue is social media and the speed and scale of information without identity or verification. That's not going to be solved by curation.

"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on", that old adage.

But social has supercharged the whole affair, as you say, in speed and scale. Curation cannot solve it, but can it have some role in moderating it? What other tools do we have to throttle the damage? Do we need to axe social media entirely?

The root issue is trust. All curation does is move the "trust" requirement from the poster to the curator, but it doesn't solve for it. In fact, it arguably makes it worse since it concentrates power and reduces inputs.

I think social media needs to reform along our naturally developed behaviors. Small communities with some proximity and a measured flow of information. The instant global stimulus with anonymous accounts is clearly making us lose our minds.

Do you propose Twitter does no curation then?

Is it a question of where do we draw the line, or whether there should be a line?

I dont think instant global interaction at this scale with such ephemeral bits of data and complete anonymity works at all. My proposal would be for small regional communities with some connection and identity between participants. Similar to how offline social interactions have always worked.

I don't see how Twitter could change into that though at this point.

This is the exact same language totalitarian states use.

People in power tend to curate content so as to consolidate and improve their power, not to make average people's lives better.

> The average person isn’t capable enough to judge information for themselves; we need people in power to curate what is seen.

I hope this is just missing the sarcasm tag?

So here's a fun thought experiment: If that proposition ("The average person isn’t capable enough to judge information for themselves") were true, what would be the correct way to structure a society to maximize the quality-of-life for people in that society?

Preserving inalienable rights or ignoring them?

"Inalienable rights" is too broad a concept to have an either/or answer to that question. Choose some specific rights and choose to preserve them if they're inalienable.

I'll start: I see nothing in the inalienable right to life incompatible with structuring a society that can maximize quality of life for its citizens who, on average, aren’t capable enough to judge information for themselves.

Where your argument fails is assuming that the average citizen isn't a capable judge of information.

Edit: Furthermore, your argument also denies the average citizen their right to life by denying their capacity to decide their own quality of life.

You assign the average citizen a capacity of a child.

It's not an argument; it's a thought experiment. From three posts up:

"""If that proposition ("The average person isn’t capable enough to judge information for themselves") were true..."""

I'm interested in exploring the logical consequences of assuming that point, not arguing the truth of the point.

I've generally heard quality-of-life listed under the inalienable right to pursuit of happiness, not the inalienable right to life, i.e. "What's the point of living if you can't ever be happy". But, yes, let's preserve that one as inalienable too. How do we structure a society to preserve those rights if we assume "The average person isn’t capable enough to judge information for themselves?" What does that do to their ability to both enunciate what makes them happy and make the correct decisions to pursue that which makes them happy successfully?

Ah, my apology. Have at it.

Sarcasm for me, but I know some believe it.

People are able to judge information they encounter. The problem is when there is so much information, that the amount of time it takes to get to a piece of information that is worthwhile to evaluate has long surpassed the amount of time people have to evaluate the information. So good info never even makes its way to them.

The number of replies that are failing to understand that you're being sarcastic is slowly convincing me your statement is unironically true.

Ha.

I believe it is a function of the medium. Text is so interesting in that how you feel affects how you read and interpret it.

A good example is the line ‘I never said she took the money’

Depending on which words or sets of words you emphasize when saying it out loud, you can get a dozen different meanings out of the sentence. I.e. compressing human communication into text is more lossy than people recognize.

It becomes self perpetuating. If you feel angry, you will read people’s written word as snarky and you will get into a fighting mood. If you internally sing the communication from someone who is obviously trying to troll or be mean, it actually becomes quite hilarious and it will lift your mood (this is advice I give to people some times).

No thank you.