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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

Above being more than a legal concept, it's also not really about expression, ie. the biggest value to society is not from Alexa O'Brien being able to express her thoughts and feelings, which is a minor benefit to her, but in us being able to read them and then choose the best ideas to adapt/copy/implement. The fact that you can make your (realistically, very tiny) contribution to the culture is much less important than being able to access everything created by other people.

Robin Hanson calls it "free hearing"[1]. The branding could be improved but the argument is exactly right.

We shouldn't even hide behind commentary and journalism. The source bin Laden videos should be available for us to judge. Removing them is not an act against the terrorists but against the public.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/free-hearing-not-speec...

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which is a minor benefit to her, but in us being able to read them and then choose the best ideas to adapt/copy/implement

One nitpick: it's no minor matter to Ms. O'Brien that she be able to complete her big project, and the keep the tools for doing others in future.

My more important point is that is the common case: our own freedom is important morally, but materially we benefit most from other people's freedom. Web pioneer firms are actually good examples here: they were free to build technologies that are handy for you and me even though that exposed knowledge some people would have wanted stifled.

The value of "free hearing" as a consequence of "free speech" is just one case of this and I am happy enough if the newly coined term makes the situation clearer.

[Disclaimer: I work for Google, but am obviously speaking here only for myself and not the company. Nor do I know anything about what the company plans to do about this case.]

The cynical side of me thinks that a society with no control over (certain) information is one which is more vulnerable to control by bad actors. We have more of a filtering problem than an access problem at the moment - there's too much information to support all beliefs so people are more likely to become entrenched in whatever they do believe.

It doesn't matter what your cynical side thinks. Let them be "entrenched in whatever they do believe" if that's the case. All cases of totalitarianism have been possible by "filtering", not the free flow of information.

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - MT

Thus far (and all before the internet). I consider it more likely that the next form of totalitarianism takes form in fundamentalism.

> a society with no control over (certain) information is one which is more vulnerable to control by bad actors.

Centralized (state and/or corporate) control over information is itself an incredible asset to bad actors. Goebbels et al..

Very true.

But it gets even worse when you look at lobbyists paid by corporations.

In the long run, Google will have to be split up into smaller pieces. You can't control this evil - and greedy -corporation otherwise anymore.

Unless Google can strike a mutually beneficial deal with the government. I don't think either operate in the best interests of the public.

You'll get this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwoadnWKs40

Pre-hutton BBC was good and Al Jazeera still is. It's not all Goebbels, especially when that state media has a charter that asserts its independence and commitment to objective reporting.

One major problem with state-owned centralized media, in my opinion, is that objectivity usually degrades into propaganda whenever that's seriously requested by a senior government official, e.g. in times of war. IIRC the BBC was not always forthcoming about setbacks during the early parts of WWII, for example.

It's the same with corporate media as well:

ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program

I think there is a significant difference in extent. There are certainly many cases where US corp media lays obediently in the government's lap, but there are also some crucial cases where it was majorly non-compliant - TV coverage of the Vietnam war being possibly the most significant & influential example.

>there are also some crucial cases where it was majorly non-compliant - TV coverage of the Vietnam war being possibly the most significant & influential example.

Indeed, though you'll notice that ever since the gory coverage of Vietnam the mainstream media censors war to a much higher degree because they learned TV audiences find the true images of war to be unbearable. Public support for war drops sharply when they see the mangled dead bodies of their own soldiers while they eat their TV dinners.

"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam."

-Marshall McLuhan

Non-state owned media is hardly better in this regard.

By and large I think people's desire for raw data has grown from a mistrust of the News stemming from the move away from reporting towards commentary and hidden agenda.

Once upon a Time you could mostly trust the news but these days we have "no spin zones" which are in fact entirely spin. You can no longer sit back and consume news, to get the real facts requires a great deal of effort and attention which is exhausting.

You might wish to look into the history of journalism. I've written about this before, but there really wasn't a golden age of journalism. This doesn't mean good journalism didn't exist, just that there have always been biased sources.

Head to your local library and hit the archives. From yellow journalism to papers owned by political parties, bias and dishonesty has always been a problem.

Correct, it's just more apparent in the information age, when the raw data can sometimes be found and the bias shown.

> Correct, it's just more apparent in the information age, when the raw data can sometimes be found and the bias shown.

Of course, data scientists have their political opinions as well. As do journalists deciding which data to publicize.

https://xkcd.com/882/

Anything particularly you'd point at of yours?

Oh, just comments here on HN, Slashdot, and similar. I was once a freelance journalist, so I probably should write up something more formal and better researched. I'm hoping to get some writing in during the coming winter. I have a lot to say.

I'd differ strongly with your premise. There was a golden age of journalism, though it probably peaked with Watergate. Izzy Stone has a great Day at Night interview discussing this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g

The period probably began with Lippmann's Public Opinion, though it was coverage of the Second World War that probably marked the start of the true peak. By 1980, something was already decidedly off.

I'm reading Robert McChesney who does a very good job of recapping the history in Communication Revolution.

> Once upon a Time you could mostly trust the news

Could we trust them or did we simply not have the means to fact check them and communicate the errors? Awful current affairs programs were around before the web and they were reporting some pretty dubious "facts" back then. Tabloids have been around for 100 years, maybe more.

It was a different balance. We, in effect, were in a forced trust position. Access to raw information was time consuming and expensive. If it could even be had.

Because of that, media was regulated differently. A more diverse body of media (pre-media for profit news and consolidation) as well as the fairness doctrine and a non-profit public service expectation were all strong norms and law in play.

Technical limits forced all of us, including the media, to take it more seriously.

Yes, we could trust them more than we could now, but also yes, we could not check so easily too.

Spin isn't bad. People can see spin and spin things the other way in their head.

Choosing what is important to include or what not to include is dangerous.

And side of me that studied history thinks that a society with control over (certain) information is one which is more vulnerable to control by bad actors...

Freedom always carries risks.

Yup, and intellectual feudalism is one of them, one that I hope we manage to avoid.

I believe humans are smart enough to filter and learn as they go. We are a resilient species. We will adapt and grow, it is as it always was.

Andrew Potter, when writing for Canada's National Post, recently called it the Right to Hear.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-potter-dont-be-so-fre...

The world at large is pretty complex, but participating members of a democracy often need to take simple decisions based on that complicated web of information. Society's evolution and functioning requires that we take those decisions.

In many cases it's not possible for all individuals to understand because it would very time consuming and one may not have the training to do so either. So we need the help of journalists and agencies to make sense of the world.

I agree that the availability of sources where it is reasonable, should be made to the public. But that is also not always possible, since it may, in some cases, expose the sources to danger.

A consequence of this is that since we rely on intermediaries to simplify information for us, we are vulnerable to malicious propaganda conveyed by agents disguising themselves as trusted authorities.

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