Re:Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reig...
by joe_the_user on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:04PM
(#24794693)
I too started the Internet in the 90s and I was post 20 then.
I also have seen "weaponized trolling" in the last ten years that seems to make the world a good deal worse. The way climate change denial has gotten legs from combination of the average person's poor thinking and the particular dynamics of electronic communication. I see bots on my FB feed activating now, pushing propaganda that makes me chuckle but certainly push some morons to actions.
Putting aside the point that Twitter/FB own the medium. Someone is going to manage any given medium. Is "throttling" censorship? Because the NY Post story never was made unavailable, it was just throttled, it just slowed down, slowed down enough that the rebuttal was made available at the same rate as the original story.
There are junctures where "free speech" can't really be a criteria - Oliver Wendel Holmes' "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is the epitome of such examples (and these can be misused, in fact Holmes' made his example to misuse it, justifying repression against those who oppose WWI). Is spread viral false news on the eve of an election in the "fire" or the "freedom" category? Honestly, throttling seems like a good compromise if we're looking for the simple free availability of information. But when information is the coordination, activation and/or manipulation of people at scale, talking about freedom stops meaning a lot.
Suppose there's a fire, and a hurricane, and an epidemic and an economic crisis and different things shouted will save some people and trample other people. What category is "shouting" "you don't need a mask, come shop before I go bankrupt"? Etc.
I also have seen "weaponized trolling" in the last ten years that seems to make the world a good deal worse. The way climate change denial has gotten legs from combination of the average person's poor thinking and the particular dynamics of electronic communication. I see bots on my FB feed activating now, pushing propaganda that makes me chuckle but certainly push some morons to actions.
Putting aside the point that Twitter/FB own the medium. Someone is going to manage any given medium. Is "throttling" censorship? Because the NY Post story never was made unavailable, it was just throttled, it just slowed down, slowed down enough that the rebuttal was made available at the same rate as the original story.
There are junctures where "free speech" can't really be a criteria - Oliver Wendel Holmes' "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is the epitome of such examples (and these can be misused, in fact Holmes' made his example to misuse it, justifying repression against those who oppose WWI). Is spread viral false news on the eve of an election in the "fire" or the "freedom" category? Honestly, throttling seems like a good compromise if we're looking for the simple free availability of information. But when information is the coordination, activation and/or manipulation of people at scale, talking about freedom stops meaning a lot.
Suppose there's a fire, and a hurricane, and an epidemic and an economic crisis and different things shouted will save some people and trample other people. What category is "shouting" "you don't need a mask, come shop before I go bankrupt"? Etc.