It's too hard, it's too impossible, we've decided big tech has already won, we've ceded decades of open progress in tech to moguls who don't give the fuck about us, or we're so ideological that any step to the "left" or "right" is perceived as abdicating principles of freedom.
My gp was a former-Jew (thanks anti-semites) that flew over nazi germany. My other grandfather served in Europe after that whole debacle. I feel I have as much right as anyone to say that it's bullshit going on Reddit and running into the same hateful misinformation on every thread, of "arguing" with holocaust deniers on conspiracy that think Sly Stallone kisses dolphins, use the same canards they've been suing for 2k years, and I can promise you were the first to notice my crypto-Jewishness. These same dummies love Q and have never found covid information that fit their narrative that they didn't love.
We really gonna relitigate (and lose) historical issues like the Holocaust for the next 10,000 years? We gonna sit by and whine about "principles" as people are murdered on a daily basis because of misinformation like that? That's not good enough.
What marketplace of ideas? How many serious challenges have there been to big tech by any company in the last decade? What freedom is there if you can't walk out your front door without being directly impacted by disinformation of various kinds on a daily basis?
I feel as though this may more reflect your fears than the state of the site, and I feel as though so reflexively writing off a population that already largely agree with you illumines the opposite argument--that reaction to speech is largely an overreaction, and we will, without careful consideration, largely consider any bloc to be constituted of what we fear.
I didn't call it a stronghold. There are certain subreddits that were aligned. The donald before it moved, conspiracy, conservative, etc. You ever see the greatawakening subreddit where they were acting like Trump was giving secret messages in speeches and calling for executions?
If that exists on a site with leftism as a major demographic, what does it look like elsewhere? You're making my point for me.
BTW, one of the longest-running mods of conspiracy that finally got banned has admitted that they are a Russian national. Not that this means anything, but it's interesting that a subreddit could be dominated by an individual with such strong beliefs about politics in another country.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/r-conspiracy-axolotl-peyotl-b...
To give context, I'm very much what some people would mock as an "enlightened centrist" (I felt so sad when I realized this is bad?). I think much of the "hateful mistinformation" is actually more aligned torwards the left. I can't read a thread about pitbulls or my home state without people frothing at the mouth and acting like my dog should be put down today or that my state is an ISIS stronghold.
But consitutionally? If someone is being an asshole on your property, it's your right to kick them off.
Any platform harboring content will, as a matter of course, simply through the caprice of a moderator, let slip by insane opinions--but opining that these are some growing tide and, more dangerously, representative of their moderate counterparts (a la the r/Conservative subreddit, which seems constituted of largely by-the-numbers right of centers,) seems disrespectful to all parties involved and serves only to distract from your central assertion that communicating these ideas will in some way seed wanton chaos. (Comparing the ideas directly to those that precipitated the tragedy of the Holocaust.)
Edit, as I'd written my reply to a previous version of your own: I am sympathetic to the idea that seeing these more fringe ideals is unfortunate--but the argument which I believe bears greater importance is that acting in this manner against them, striking them from the whole of our public discourse and pre-empting any who could, in some way, divine inspiration from the muck is far more deleterious to discourse. It serves all too easily as a means to silence disquiet and cast a veneer of unanimity.
However, if allowing certain discussions means also allowing other discussions, I'm not broken up if sites like reddit were to ban a subreddit like conspiracy or at least try to reshape it to something much more objective.
If the owners a property decide certain views are abhorrent, that's their right, I can't think of a valid moral or legal complaint against that - it is their property. If we lack competition that is an issue of market competitiveness more than propaganda.
So we can't really treat these two as completely separate right now. Indeed, if those schemes are allowed to go forward, the next thing you'll hear is that we can't break Facebook etc up, because doing so will limit how effectively some information can be suppressed. The more power is concentrated, the more it seeks to sustain that state of affairs, and the better it is at that - so why would we hand those companies so much power when they already are a major problem?
Thanks a ton for providing the opportunity for some discussion on this!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Jersey_City_shooting
Every day? No. But when it's 2021 and you gotta worry about getting gunned down for being a Jew?
Putin loves to use anti-Semitic rhetoric when convenient. Which is the big part of this...the stand pat and do nothing approach doesn't work when the resources of nation states can (logically) and have been behind harnessing disinformation.
The Jewish issue isn't the only issue, better examples might be the Christchurch shooting where the gunman was livestreaming on and because of 4chan.
If you get a chance check out HBO's doc about Jim Watkins and Q.
And they did - to the point where a bunch of websites with forums were blocked outright because of their hands-off policy wrt comments (usually in some particular subforum; it's a fairly common way to keep it civil elsewhere) meant that there were a bunch of posts with links to the document.
The end result is that a bunch of completely unrelated stuff was blocked in Australia outright for a while, by private companies in charge of communications acting in unison - effectively, a censorship cartel - with no political or judicial recourse, since the government was not involved in it, and the ISPs were in their right, legally speaking.
That's another part of this...you can't just say whatever you want and expect there not to be consequences.
The option that is actually better than all the proposals on the table is what we have right now. I'm not claiming it's perfect, or even good - merely better.
Aye. This would improve so many things. Critical thinking is, in fact, not an instinctual ability. It's perfectly okay to talk mathematics illiteracy, but propaganda literacy? "No, no, we can't imply that people aren't capable of thinking for themselves." We have multiple historical instances of extremely successful disinformation campaigns, and people fell for it en-masse.
These "let people decide" trolls are effectively correlating critical thinking skills with intelligence, and it's patently absurd. Philosophers, some of the greatest thinkers there are/were, have spent years of their lives pondering the art of critical thinking.
Mandating data interoperability between platforms seems like a good middle ground that allows diversity of moderation while reducing the monopoloatic power of large platforms.
I would say you did:
> And before anyone asks who I am to judge the best ideas, I'll answer - nobody, but I can see that factually incorrect, scientifically illiterate, conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas gain legs in the online world we've created. Often at the root of these is a profit motive.
You asked the right question (who are you to determine the truth?) but then you didn't answer it. You continued on to imply that, in fact, you are in a position to sort out what's true unlike those other, inferior people who fall for conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
> Or we can ditch bland cliches and false dichotomies and look at pragmatic steps that can be taken to, for instance, improve access to good information, improve education around critical thinking, and perhaps (as mentioned in other comments) re-examine things like automated algorithms that feed people ever more extreme content because it increases engagement levels, clicks and ad revenue.
"Improving access to good information" is usually a euphemism for some kind of censorship. As far as I'm concerned, all of these "problems" are not problems, they're justifications for controlling other people and expressions of impotent rage at the failure to control those people. I'm vaccinated and I voted for Biden but I do not understand why peope care that others decide not to get vaccinated or voted for the other guy. Part of freedom is the freedom to be wrong.
I think these are not new problems. Democracy, pluralism, free speech, trial by jury, etc are our solutions to these problems. They aren't particularly satisfying solutions because, as you said in your first post, the truth doesn't always win. Rather they're tragic compromises. But I don't see any serious suggestions about how we should improve them.
You missed that I was drawing a distinction between what is commonly thought of as the market place of ideas - in which rational discourse and honest debate enables people to learn, compare, agree and disagree, find greater truths, learn, etc etc - and the spread of misinformation based on falsehood, often perpetuated for profit.
We absolutely can, as a society, say that (for example) misinformation about vaccines, where we are dealing with matters of fact, is not on a level with actual vaccine science. This is not really up for honest debate. We can debate until the cows come home about what it means, whether any opinions should be drawn or any action taken, but motivated lies are just not on the same footing as factual information.
> "Improving access to good information" is usually a euphemism for some kind of censorship.
You assume bad faith here, again. I think there’s a lot can be done by way of giving access to scientific information in accessible ways.
> I'm vaccinated and I voted for Biden but I do not understand why peope care that others decide not to get vaccinated
Well firstly Because that decision affects more than just those individuals, and puts others (including the already vaccinated and those who cannot be vaccinated) at risk. And secondly because some of those making the decision not to vaccinate, and putting themselves at risk, have done so armed with bad information.
The nature of the problems may not be new, but the scale and severity seem to be.
Who decides what that is? Plenty of actual scientists publish papers in actual science journals that conflict with each other and with official public health advice. The whole vaccines cause autism idea came from what looked like actual vaccine science.
Knowledge isn't actually that sure. Sometimes the authorities are wrong. Remember when bread was at the bottom of the food pyramid?
> but the scale and severity seem to be.
Seem to be or actually are? Are you using "facts" or media sensationalization to form your opinion?
We truly are swimming in a world in which nothing is true. Or you are anyway.
The bizarre thing with this hoax, is that it looks like the mRNA vaccine increases swimmer motility.[1] Vaccinated folks should have no issues having babies if, for example, they need to improve their 5G reception at home.
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781360
Anyway, if you think it's so easy to do a good job censoring information, why don't you point to a single example where that worked out? Just one is sufficient. It's okay, I'll wait.
The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship is easy.
Just because it's wrong, doesn't mean nobody should believe it or be exposed to it.
But I agree with the point you are trying to make, that many people have false beliefs crucial to a societal institutions that cannot realistically be suppressed by heavy-handed censorship without also destroying meaning and satisfaction for many people, and also the society itself. And of course, holy texts often contradict themselves, yet some consider all of it true.
However, you are arguing against a strawman, since OP never claimed to have a solution, nor even that censorship was the appropriate response, not do I claim that either.
OP strongly implied that it's easy to distinguish which claims should be censored and which claims should not be censored. This is complete fantasy.
Disagree. This is what OP said, among other things: "We absolutely can, as a society, say that (for example) misinformation about vaccines, where we are dealing with matters of fact, is not on a level with actual vaccine science. This is not really up for honest debate."
> Is censorship the best way to deal with it? Probably not. But we do need to recognise this as a problem as well as getting het up about giant internet platforms deplatforming people.
> make no claims to be one of the group of enlightened ubermensch who should be able to decide for the rest. Neither do I argue that such people exist or are necessary.
Not what I said. However the idea that everyone is equally able to parse out good information from bad is absurd, and I make no claims to be one of the group of enlightened ubermensch who should be able to decide for the rest. Neither do I argue that such people exist or are necessary.
> we can be adults and let everyone get the same information and make their own choice, or we can go the other way where someone who thinks they know more than us (and you hope it's you but it doesn't have to be) gets to decide.
Or we can ditch bland cliches and false dichotomies and look at pragmatic steps that can be taken to, for instance, improve access to good information, improve education around critical thinking, and perhaps (as mentioned in other comments) re-examine things like automated algorithms that feed people ever more extreme content because it increases engagement levels, clicks and ad revenue.
But no, of course, you're right, taking any action at all is akin to fascism. Totally.