So the government will now decide which media sources the public is allowed to consume.
That'll end well.
That'll end well.
I know a cynic will say "well thats what media does!" but no, it doesn't. Not at the level that the current breed of fake news and propaganda is doing. Exaggeration and taking things out of context are one thing (and in some cases nearly as bad), but totally inventing stories about people and using that to manipulate people is awful. I don't think "outlawing" it is the right way to go about it but there has to be a label that says "This is not a reputable organization" so that people that don't know better don't stumble in there and not know the difference and end up ready to shoot up a pizza place to save some imaginary children.
What has go to with this though is a totally open algorithm for declaring something fake news, essentially a non-partisan fact-checked breakdown of exactly how some source was declared to be "fake" and maybe some other automated metrics.
Granted, this will not catch the people who desperately want to believe the fake news or who already believe it, it is just to keep more gullible people from stumbling into the trap. Just like Chrome warns you when a cert isn't valid, why not say "hey you are leaving the beaten path of facts, proceed at your own risk". I'm not saying its up to google but search engines are a logical choice, but it has to be done transparently and there has to be an appeals process in case it was a mistake.
Why is "soft-dishonesty" okay but "hard-dishonesty" unacceptable? Your argument is predicated on that being true, but it's an assumption.
What's more insidious, someone who lies to your face or someone who's acting like your friend but lying behind your back?
What has go to with this though is a totally open algorithm for declaring something fake news, essentially a non-partisan fact-checked breakdown of exactly how some source was declared to be "fake" and maybe some other automated metrics.
Humans have to build this, which means human bias is inherent in it. I don't think you have any idea how difficult this kind of event classification is. Political science struggles to do it years after the fact.
Yes? That's kind of one of the founding principles of liberal democracy. It was a good idea in 1791, and it's still a good idea today.
The left is flipping its shit about "fake news" these days, but even in the US they've gone through far worse eras in terms of news reliability. The fact that you used to have gatekeepers who were more or less honest is an artifact of the startup costs of the television and newspaper industries, not some nirvanal state that has collapsed into darkness.
Seriously, go take a look at some of the shit pamphleteers were up to in the 1800s. The state of affairs today is nothing.
Democracy can survive people lying. It can't survive granting the government the ability to determine which "facts" the people are allowed to believe.
No, it's an ugly consequence of the principle that probably can't be disentangled from it.
Actually, it was a result of treating things like the airwaves as a public trust and imposing stuff like the Fairness Doctrine.
This only holds assuming we have time to work things out naturally - unfortunately that is not the case at least in the context of climate change to ignore all other issues. Of course if you drink the fake-news coolaid you'll debate that climate change is happening or that its not man-made or wherever the goal-post has been moved to today. Hey everyone's opinion is the same though right? Your fact is my fiction!
We're not talking the esoterics of democratic theory, we're talking the basic ability to educate people well enough to make decisions affecting the survival of our species as we know it. To me its very similar to taking no action on climate change because the market will eventually handle it. It all assumes sufficient stability for sufficient time and that may not be a safe assumption anymore.
I never suggested the government specifically take action to say who can say what, but that doesn't mean that there can't be an open ranking system used by search engines and social media to people from accidentally falling into fake news through a ad that looks like a link from a more reputable location.
Sure, why not? It's pretty much the state of things as they always have been, ever since mass media became a thing. Not that there weren't any downsides, to this approach. Buch the point is that the "cure" in this case would be much worse than the disease.
I'm surprised actually that someone like Angie -- who not too long ago live in a system where a centralized authority determined, on a daily basis, and with absolute power of discretion which news items were considered "real", legitimate, and newsworthy; and which ones were "fake" -- doesn't immediately and instinctively see how ludicrous such countermeasures are, and how easily (and inevitably) they will be abused.
Now it's like people don't know what the truth is, and they don't really care. It's slowly corroded the foundation of democracy, that being people making decisions based on the available facts. If they're being told that Muslims or Jews are the problem on such a constant basis they might be forced to believe it due to peer pressure.
I'm not sure laws can fix this. This is a systemic problem.
I guess it's just too bad that no one ever thought of some alternative to pure democracy, like electing a handful of trusted individuals to do the work as a full-time job and represent our interests. We could call it a "Republic" or something.
Too bad nobody ever thought of that.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is Hamilton's argument for having Electors cast the actual ballots for President without necessarily being beholden to how their state voted.
>Hamilton viewed the system as superior to direct popular election. First, he recognized, the "sense of the people should operate in the choice", and would through the election of the electors to the Electoral College. Second, the electors would be:
> "men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."
>Such men would be "most likely to have the information and discernment" to make a good choice, and avoid the election of anyone "not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68#Hamilton.27s...
Democracy only functions properly when the electorate is well informed, that is being fed a steady diet of actual facts, figures, and editorial that puts it in perspective without heavily distorting the truth. Whatever form your democracy takes, "Republic" or otherwise, it depends on meaningful discussion and debate, not the current climate where one side refuses to engage with the other, or facts in general.
There are many different lenses to view the world through, but it's like these major media outlets aren't even interested in our world and instead create one that fits their views, then pretend to live in it.
"Millions of illegals voting" is just one example of this.
Similarly with fake news, people are not being defrauded out of their money, but the deed itself is no less fraudulent.
Ignore any real or alleged connections to recent events, just focus on these questions, as a thought experiment.
>Ignore any real or alleged connections to recent events
Please.
And there are plenty of ways to counter foreign propaganda, but a democracy needs to trust its citizens to discern the truth for themselves.
And it confirms that this is all about winning at any cost. Yep, sounds about right.
You're right, we should be leery about government regulations, but false information is a problem.
I mean: isn't it extremely interesting that we are now walking backwards to this point starting with "due to a lack of this kind of censorship, we allowed a very conservative person to get into office"; it is almost like this is being taken as an "opportunity" to get liberal people who otherwise would balk at this idea to get on board because now it is supposedly on their side and is couched in terms they agree with. I wonder if there are people who noticed this whole thing as their opening to finally broach the subject with Western civilization :/.
For censorship it is the government that decides what to censor. But for the fake news, it is mainly the fact self-organized checking groups and the news media's job, and the government is not directly involved. One popular fact checking group has a name that literally translates into "rumor shredder": http://www.guokr.com/group/40/
Of course those that are found to be guilty of spreading false information are punishable by law, which is handled in the court and enforced by the police. But that's an entirely different process with very different parties involved as compared to censorship.
In short, censorship works at the government level and is enforced by the ISPs directly, whereas stopping fake news works at the level of self-organized groups and the case goes through the court system.
Only the ones are subjected to the "censorship" may not like it. I am pretty sure what's going on in Chinese is also happening with CIA, FBI, MI6, etc. Ordinary people won't say that they do not like them, because it does not concern their interests and whatever operations that do can be justified as national security measures or national interest. But if you, however, do not like whatever CIA, etc are doing, then of course you wouldn't like what China is doing either.
Did you see NBC's post-debate fact check?
Trump said Clinton “acid washed” her private email server. She didn’t. She used an app called Bleachbit, not a corrosive chemical.
...
http://heavy.com/news/2016/10/nbc-fact-check-trump-clinton-a...
(I don't know how good this site is, it was just the first Google result).
The end result (as well as this is meant), is that news and media organizations now effectively need a government stamp of approval.
You can see where that could go wrong. Funny it should happen in Germany of all places...
Even worse, citizens are incentivized to disregard critical thinking. Oh, this hasn't been banned...it must be true.