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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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