Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

Sounds good to me. Trump should appoint a Secretary of News whose job it is to determine "fake news". How does Bannon sound to you?

Trump will be one of the best things that happened to free speech and civil liberties. President Obama was so smart and benign that many people felt comfortable giving up protections on free speech and civil liberties. It is a lot easier now to convince people for the need to protect free speech now that Trump will be in charge. These protections for free speech were created because the founders knew that you would not always get the wise and good people in charge. These protections are for when foolish and authoritarian people get into power.

This is why I think these "fake news" pushes to limit free speech are foolish. People are sharpening a very sharp knife for censorship, baring their chest, and handing it to Trump who will have the Presidency, Congress, and soon the courts. You are free to do this, but no one will be sympathetic to you when Trump stabs you in the heart by banning your speech because it is "fake news".

Let me give you something more concrete to think about. What will be your response when Trump and his EPA say that global warming is "fake" and ban all mention of of global warming as "fake news". After all, fake news is not protected speech.

This is one thing I still have a hard time understanding about people. I understand that hypocrisy and the like are baked deeply, inextricably into our DNA, but the thing is we've all witnessed this stuff happen time and again and without fail still choose to let it happen again.

People get on board with giving up power because it will work out for their team _this_time_. The thing is, it will absolutely be used against your team in the future. This has been proven time after time after time (just in recent history, not even considering the whole of human history). It will be used against you. It's not like smoking or other unhealthy behavior that will have an effect far into the future but that you can't really grasp fully...you just need to remember all of the other times it has happened in your lifetime to know what it feels like.

I have to believe most people just don't think about issues beyond a surface level.

I don't think you realize the people gave up power generations ago. It doesn't matter what the people want now or even if they want or do not want to give up power. The power was given up to the government when it was formed and forever it will stay there until the government is destroyed by violence. We've seen this over and over again and know this to be the state of things. I don't understand what pretending the people have any power left gets you. The only power the people still seem to have is the power to vote (not very powerful, IMO) and of referendums and other state initiatives. These are the powers that were given to the people in exchange for people giving up the rest of their powers (except as otherwise legislated). If you want to talk about people regaining or not giving up power, you are necessarily talking about violence and rebellion on the scale of a civil war. I don't think anyone wants either of those and even for people that do, it's likely unwise to talk about it on the Internet.

As far as free speech, the original topic of this post, IMO, it doesn't exist when people are afraid to speak out and right now, many people are terrified to silence.

There in lies the fault line, if we do "regulate free speech" (that sounds chilling, but I'm keeping an open mind), who decides what is truth and falsehood? For things like climate change and evolutionary theory, these are well established agreed on facts in the scientific community, but for current events, who can be the arbiter of truth? Certain things are clear cut at least in time("protestors were bused in"), others, not so much ("reaganomics of the 1980's was a good thing").

I still feel like our best bet is still education and to instil a sense of intellectual curiosity in people.

Even more concrete: Obama granted himself the authority to make a treaty without Senate approval. Sounded fine to most people at the time, because Congress was just "obstructing" everything anyway.

Now Trump has that power. I wonder how he'll use it?

(Aside from the obvious, which is to dismantle the Iran deal. That's bad enough, because it means our promises now only last as long as the current administration.)

Can Trump actually dismantle the Iran deal? The deal was not just between the US and Iran. It was between the US, the UK, Russia, France, China, Germany, the EU and Iran.

If the US pulls out and reimposes sanctions, will those other countries go along? Or will they continue trading with Iran, and if they do, will that provide enough trade that US sanctions won't really have much of an impact on Iran?

He can go back on anything on our side, whether it makes any sense or not. That's one of the problems with going around Congress.

I agree with you. Even setting aside the human rights angle for the sake of argument (and it should NOT be set aside), limitations on the press, of any kind, are a wickedly sharp two-edged sword and can swing back viciously on any would-be wielder.

But I don't think that's actually what we should focus on. The problem isn't that some teenage anarchist can write and post conspiracy theories for whoever wants to believe them; the problem is that, if they are sensational enough, they can travel around the world a million times and entirely outpace any counter-argument or retraction.

This is a moral harm. It harms people who are being exposed to these falsehoods and who (for one reason or another) are not in a position to accurately and skeptically judge their merit.Not to beat a dead horse, but how many Catholics voted for Trump because they thought he had the Pope's endorsement? That isn't right or fair, not for the Pope, not for Catholics who were lied to, and not for the country.

I don't think the solution is a matter of policy; I am staunchly against the formation of any sort of "ministry of truth." But I do think this is a serious societal issue that ought to be addressed at a technical, educational and sociological level. We technologists created the circumstances where this has become a problem: I believe it is incumbent upon us to think about how we can solve it in a way that respects free speech.

People should be able to say whatever they want, but we need to make sure that we haven't created an environment where objective truth can't even exist. It does, and it needs to be accessible.

> but how many Catholics voted for Trump because they thought he had the Pope's endorsement?

The Catholic press and Clergy had been condemning Clinton as unelectable because of her stances on abortion and other issues for four to five months. But nobody outside of the Catholics themselves really cared. The only news the mainstream news cared about was the flawed polling numbers.

Also the WikiLeaks emails that showed the DNC created fake Catholic front groups to try and agitate a 'Catholic Spring' sent shock waves around the entire Catholic press worldwide. It was all over at that point.

Trying to blame the Catholic vote on 'fake news' is a strawman.

The people who need to be educated about the dangers of 'fake news' are the people complaining about it. Censorship of 'fake news' is far more destructive and a threat to society and free speech then a few crappy websites that pump out tabloid nonsense for clicks. Civilization has been dealing with false and misleading print since the invention of the written word. Its nothing new and people have the faculties to understand and discount it.

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