Is your position that organized disinformation campaigns, from any and all sources, should not be quelled?

Is that a rhetorical question?

No, but I have a slight hangover from speaking with a Russian friend in the EU who does not believe that there is any "truth." That could be coloring my comments here.

Understood. The people that are the most vocal around this whole 'post truth' thing are as a rule part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Usually it boils down to 'don't trust the government, don't trust your eyes, don't trust the media and don't trust your friends', but here is a link to a shady website with a bunch of ridiculous stuff that you should definitely trust. Very boring, really.

> Very boring, really.

Indeed. But even worse, it is also exhausting.

Meta: This post was removed from the HN feed entirely. Not just bumped off the frontpage, as I have seen before. From frontpage to oblivion. Would love to know the admin logic there.

Now it is flagged, but it was removed from the feed prior to that by admins.

I know, I know, first rule of fight club. But to quote Cicero, what's the point of fake internet points if you can't use them?

Less boring: you are speaking as if you necessarily have an accurate read on the situation, when actually you are heavily speculating, necessarily.

There's a reason propaganda and misinformation works so well on all citizens, "smart" or "dumb": the "advanced" skills needed to cut through it are not taught in our culture, in the era we find ourselves in, so these skills are largely nonexistent in the wild.

This could be changed, as literacy rates and many other things were back when we cared about such things.

Not the parent, but that is my position.

"Quelled" implies an extremely uncomfortable level of centralized power. Of course, any individual user should be able to opt in and out of sources at will.

Platform owners have an extreme amount of power.

For example, this post was on the front page, then suddenly an admin broke known HN rules and just removed it from the feed entirely.

I have never seen this occur before. Later it was flagged, but an admin matching pg's temperament just yanked it to begin with.

After some thought, I do understand that "quelled" was maybe the wrong English word to use.

Maybe, "the amplification minimized."

"quelled"? how?

If you think a story is bullshite, you should be free to say so. If you disagree, likewise. So many things that have been characterized as "organized disinformation campaigns" over the last 3 years turned out to be individuals expressing opinions; the organization and the lies were on the other side of those conflicts.

Where do we put advertising in this? Does Red bull give you wings or cancer? Should someone be allowed to pay others to propagate a message stating one, but not the other?

(edited to try to increase clarity)

> If you think that's what it is, you should be free to say so. If you disagree, likewise.

If somebody creates a media platform, do they not have responsibility as to how that platform is used?

I believe that they do.

Let's take the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. Should FB be off the hook for expanding into a country where they had no language skills to enforce their own moderation rules?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934

> "quelled"? how?

There are all sorts of moderation tools. For example, Community Notes on twitter.