There are similarities with those past struggles, but the differences are significant.

We cannot simply hand-wave some of them away as "the struggles every new medium faces."

Printed materials were still pretty gate-kept. Sure, anybody could spend a modest sum and get a bunch of roughly-printed pamphlets printed up. You could walk around London and hand them out. People did, and I suppose some of these ideas got traction. And some of those ideas were even good.

That was still a lot of money and effort, and it was still a lot of work to establish some kind of credibility so that your ideas might actually gain acceptance. Otherwise you were just a crazy person handing out pamphlets along with all of the other crazy people.

Today, you can post insane and dangerous COVID-19 falsehoods to half of the freaking world via YouTube or Facebook and your message is indistinguishable from ideas presented by people who actually know what they're talking about.

The gatekeeping America used to have was... not great. Network television's self-censorship was often stodgy, at best. But you didn't have absolute fucking lunatics screaming about chemtrails and Bill Gate's 5G microchip mind-control scheme racking up literally millions of followers. That is a PROBLEM.

If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now. We need long-term solutions (education) as well as short-term ones (so we don't have the loonies electing other loonies who actually get to steer the most powerful militaries on the planet)

"But you didn't have absolute fucking lunatics screaming about chemtrails and Bill Gate's 5G microchip mind-control scheme racking up literally millions of followers. That is a PROBLEM."

This article is about blocking a story by the NY Post. It may be true or may be false, but it already passed the traditional gatekeepers.

    This article is about blocking a story by the NY Post. 
    It may be true or may be false, but it already passed 
    the traditional gatekeepers.

It passed a gatekeeper, and was refuted by others. And if you're describing the NY Post as a "traditional gatekeeper", you're not familiar with the NY Post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Style

It represents roughly the midpoint between a serious journalistic operation and the National Enquirer.

In the distant past of 2007, the National Enquirer broke a sex scandal involving democratic politician John Edwards which often is thought to have played a major role in the 2008 dem primaries.

Should factually accurate information that matters to people be rejected or hidden because of style? Who gets to decide the correct style? Would you apply the same standards to alternately aligned publications of questionable style, like WaPo/HuffPo?

Almost all of the stories in the National Enquirer are factually correct. You might not like the subject matter but they are journalists.

The National Enquirer is listed at the edge between "Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info" (2nd lowest category) and "Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info" (lowest category).

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2...

The National Enquirier is NOT a reputable journalistic outlet.

The argument that Twitter or FB need to restrict/block content is based on the idea that Twitter/FB built readership for "lunatics" in the first place.

Bu that argument doesn't apply here for two reasons:

1. The NY Post has existed in some form for 200 years, and has built its own reader base.

2. Twitter blocked even direct messages.

The NY Post is old (founded by Alexander Hamilton!) but in recent decades has truly evolved into a gleefully trashy and conservatively opinionated newspaper, having been run by Rupert Murdoch for some time.

I completely fail to see how their rights are somehow being impinged here. They have their own mini-media empire and are part of a larger media empire.

How... exactly are they being stifled and why is Twitter obligated to amplify their voice?

I would certainly agree that this does fall afoul of Section 230, which I think was a great foundation but could use some serious rethinking.

Just because it passed the bar at NY Post doesn't mean it passes the bar at Twitter.

That's the crux of it. There is surprise that Twitter even has a "bar". People used to think of Twitter in one way, and now Twitter's actions have encouraged people to think of Twitter in a different way.

So twitter is not an impartial conduit - instead it is editorial and opinionated, and should face legal accountability for it's views as such, in the same way as newspapers?

According to Section 230, probably yes.

But I don't think Section 230 is adequate to the task.

You realize, of course, that even HN is strongly moderated? The mods kill a lot of stories here. And HN is a better place for it.

By your logic, HN should now be liable for anything that anybody posts. Is that what you want? Does that seem like it's in anybody's best interests?

NY Post is a tabloid/rag with a pretty bad reputation

and even their reporters didn't want to publish it

https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-hunter...

> The New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said.

> Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

...

> Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings. Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.

> Today, you can [print] insane and dangerous ... falsehoods and your message is indistinguishable from ideas presented by people who actually know what they're talking about.

I bet the response of the Catholic clergy to the printing press was probably pretty similar to this statement. And the ideas of the reformation were certainly far more dangerous than any chemtrail conspiracy.

Chemtrail conspiracy theories are... pretty insignficant. If your goal is to eradicate all conspiratorial wrongthink of this magnitude or greater, you are going to run into ~a lot~ of problems. Epstein memes are very popular.

A few things wrong with your rebuttal.

One, nobody is taking away your right to say or think things. This is about Twitter's obligation (or lack thereof) to broadcast your thoughts to others.

They are not burning you at the stake like a vengeful Catholic church during the Inquisition or outlawing your thoughts like "wrongthink" in 1984.

Two, the printing press analogy is highly flawed. Twitter is like the owner of one specific printing press, not some entity that controls all printing presses. If you owned a printing press, would you want to be obligated to print things you find factually and harmful?

I assume you'd certainly want the freedom to turn down printing jobs. Or do only certain freedoms matter?

> If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now.

Even in the long term, how are you going to produce this more educated populace? Or rather, who are you going to entrust with the task? The same educational establishment that produced the current populace?

But even if you can produce your more educated populace, you still have the problem that the Russian trolls aren't going to stand still. They're going to be better, too, by then.

    Or rather, who are you going to entrust with the task? 
    The same educational establishment that produced the 
    current populace?T

Ideally, education teaches critical thinking, not a specific indoctrination.

Education, obviously, often falls short of this ideal and you don't necessarily need formal education to be a critical thinker.

I do think that's pretty achievable. When I went through school in the 80s and 90s we weren't exactly devoid of this sort of thing.

Absurd ideas like chemtrails and flat-eartherism don't last very long in the face of the slightest hint of critical thinking.

    But even if you can produce your more educated populace,
    you still have the problem that the Russian trolls aren't
    going to stand still. They're going to be better, too, by
    then.

I certainly don't disagree, but doing a better job of critical thinking certainly seems like a reasonable first step no matter what else we do.

> The same educational establishment that produced the current populace?

Yes, them, but with adequate funding and a return of Civics and Home Ec required for all students.

How much funding is adequate? I'm so sick of hearing that throwing more money at X is our only solution. Per capita education spending has gone up significantly in the past 30 years.

Enough to pay teachers an enviable wage, so that the job is desirable and competitive, even in poor neighborhoods (not just the schools with good test scores). Funding education reduces crime, homelessness, poverty... it's not a magic bullet and you don't just get there by throwing money at the problem, but with good policy and adequate funding, education is just about the biggest payoff investments that we can make as a society.

First fix the leaking bucket .. remove the incentives for stupidity and uselessness and timewasting distractions that are rampant in western society.

Then, money you spend on education will get a ROI instead of being skimmed off the top.

> remove the incentives for stupidity and uselessness and timewasting distractions that are rampant in western society.

Kind of an awkward take... this conversation is literally taking place on social media.

Do you have a concrete proposal for how to accomplish that goal?

Personally I actually get value from HN, there's plenty that is informative and useful here and I consider HN a discussion forum. Social media is more what I would term fb where the main point is about the social connections, instead of the discussion and learning the discussion implies, in my opinion.

As for concrete proposals .. it's a massive topic, and full of interdependent systems and feedback loops and it might be hubris if anyone says 'heres a single concrete proposal to address it all'.. but here's some thoughts more on identifying issues to address in the context of schools, and aligning the results of schooling to learning.

A natural process of learning, especially for children, is to copy an image/role model/idol and learn through imagining themselves as that role model.

What are the social aspirations, or role models, that children usually idolise in our current schools and society? Film stars, sports stars, super models, instagram 'influences' which are usually just models ..

Common themes amongst these: glamourous lives, big money, social capital.

Another common theme is accomplishment in those fields does not have a linear relationship to hard work, to learning, and to the cultivation of knowledge.

Instead it's about coolness, social gaming, and largely about genetic lottery of beauty or sporting ability - yes some hard work but that's not going to get you far without these other pre-requisites.

It's also about luck, so rewards are not linearly related to effort, thus the payoff for effort is very uncertain.

Actually accomplishment in those fields is mostly a winner takes all market environment, so most people can never find success, and the majority of people who realise that they can't ever succeed to their aspirations give up putting in effort, it's a cause of apathy.

So the mainstream kids who idolise mainstream 'stars' aren't incentivised to learn and apply themselves mentally, they are incentivised to try to be cool, play social games, preen themselves for physical beauty, and hope to heck they are lucky .. and the vast majority has to face the unhappy reality they will never be stars.

That's a problem. What if their role models were Einstein who had a talent for imagining and discovering interesting things about the world, even as he worked a mundane job as a clerk (in the patent office). What if social capital for the mainstream classes was accrued to people who worked hard and made sensible decisions and created useful things, instead of to playing social gaming and trying to look beautiful/rich/make other people jealous and 'influence'.

So I don't have a concrete proposal, or the 'answers', but (I think) at least this is asking some of the right questions!

How do you imagine such an educated population occurs when you conflat Freedom of Thought with Freedom of Speech?

If you don't like certain ideas being distributed then who made you the boss of ideas?

Without a free exchange of ideas, you can not have a educated population, you only get programmed automotons.

What is the end goal of this argument? That everything is great now?

Hardly. Things are a mess. But if your solution involves having (or making) "better people", your solution likely won't work in the real world.

Right, it's vastly preferred to have qualified people lying to everyone about WMD's in Iraq or the Gulf of Tonkin.

Very flawed comparison. The government lying to you is one thing. The government has literal life and death control over you and others. There is only one government and we can't easily choose another.

These things are not true about Twitter. You can go post on your own Mastodon instance or the Daily Stormer or the Fox News comment section if Twitter is too restrictive for your liking.

Also, do you recognize the irony/insanity of complaining about this on Hacker News, a strongly-moderated platform? HN's centralized moderation is far more stringent.

I believe the consequences of professional, expert misinformation -- half a million civilian casualties -- pales in comparison to the amateur hour on Twitter. I'm referring to New York Times reporting in the lead up to the Iraq war, which was later found to be purposeful fraud, and played a huge role in juicing the public for war.

You don't need to look very far to find other examples.