The best opinion is the one formed with the most information. If learning something new about the facts of the case changes someone's reaction to it, it is probably for the better.

If this were not the case, democracies would work best when the public was not taught to read. :-) Can we really argue that the public is too stupid to be trusted with the ability to communicate? If that is the idea we should admit, at least, that what is being considered inverts every principle of the free world.

The best opinion is formed from complete information. More information is strictly harmful if it’s driven by one-sided bad faith distribution networks.

Having a foreign government control the narratives that reach mass audiences is not at all the same as trusting the public with the ability to communicate.

Maybe it would help if we distilled the abstract ideas ("foreign influence on the narrative ") to the specific event (current administration wanted to hide the human cost of Israeli tactics / the existence of a spoiler candidate).

I think you missed some important details salient to understanding the conflict in Gaza.

Imagine how you would feel if the administration was more Saudi-aligned and wanted to shut down HN because you were doing too good a job of sharing those details! I support all the truth getting out.

Ok great. Could you share the _whole truth_ then please? Could you discuss rocket attacks from Hezbollah? Massive tunnel networks and arms networks? Funding, military training, and arms coordination from Iran? The geopolitical implications of a weak Israel? The complicated connections with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

You’re just spouting one cherry picked narrative of an incredibly messy situation.

It's ironic that you would talk about the whole truth, while not mentioning the rocket attacks on Hezbollah, or who exactly built those tunnel networks or supplied those arms. The geopolitical implications of Israel's existence at all. How Israel got there in the first place. At least you called it "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" though, rather than "America's proxy invasion of Russia in Ukraine"

Like the fact it's been continuously invaded and mass-murdered by Israel since Israel began? They call it "mowing the lawn". You mow the lawn periodically so the grass doesn't get too tall.

Hamas already has control of Gaza, and if there's any chance of it seizing control of the West Bank, bombing Gaza will not prevent it from doing so.

Bombing people indiscriminately tends to cause them to oppose you and support the people who are most credibly able to stop you - regardless of anything you do. So it was inevitable that support for Israel would plummet and for Hamas would rise, once people learned about the situation.

TikTok only had a hand in this to the extent that it helped Western citizens bypass Western soft censorship and learn about the situation sooner.

Notice that if TikTok was spreading a false or one-sided view of the situation, Israeli and Western government could have effectively countered it by providing an even more complete information with even more evidence, but they did not. This in itself is weak evidence that there isn't a more complete view to provide.

But most Americans didn't want Hamas to rule Palestine ever from the beginning. It's not as if they went mask off last year only. The entire root of the conflict is that all of Palestine basically is not sovereign. Us deciding who rules Palestine just makes that issue worse.

And yet 93% of Hamas’ funding comes from Iran.

I don’t believe we should determine who rules Palestine. But I also don’t believe we should allow a hostile state to just bankroll effective seizure of Palestine and the military intimidation of Israel.

It’s frankly insanity to tell Israel to be chill while a hostile nation, which is posturing a potential nuclear attack, is actively funding a large and growing base of terrorist operations next door.

Palestine is a proxy battleground of many foreign actors. Reducing it to a conflict that is just Israel vs. Palestine is bullshit

So, if we don't determine who rules Palestine, how do we remove the currently in power party and also any future parties if they happen to be insufficiently homegrown to our standards (the funding aspect)?

The entire conflict is that Israel believes their safety necessitates that Palestine not be sovereign because they believe a sovereign Palestine will try to take back the land it lost whether in Israel itself or the various illegal encroachments over the years. Palestine on the other hand is not going to accept Israeli sovereignty over it. And thus the conflict. However many or few foreign actors are involved doesn't change the root of the conflict.

They believe that because Iran is in fact funding military conflict.

It is messy geopolitics. There are dire consequences to sitting back and doing nothing. It’s a prisoners dilemma with large moral negative externalities to playing.