Free speech cannot be sacrificed to strike fake news
thehill.com
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Don't get me wrong, I find all the calls for somebody to do something (i.e. restrict free speech) equally troublesome.
I basically think there's no solution. Liars gonna lie.
And stupid people will continue to be stupid.
> I basically think there's no solution.
Agreed.
Which is unfortunate given that Democracy works a whole lot better with a (correctly) informed public.
Without a redesign of some core parts of the system, no amount of money can be thrown at the problem to solve this issue.
The National Enquirer isn't piped into our smartphones all day long, mixed in with notes from friends, repeated on local TV news stations, and broadcast over FM radio. They've never put the money into figuring out how to manipulate people into consuming their content as often as possible.
As the whole anti-vaccination problem has clearly shown, people aren't equipped to sort out fact from fiction all on their own, despite (or maybe because of...) living in the most information-rich society in human history.
However, a large enough group of ill-informed people is sufficient to force social change or even incite violence and stoke the fires of xenophobic hatred. So it is a problem that needs to be addressed; it's wrong and morally lazy for intellectuals to lean back and say, "well, free speech, and people will sort themselves out anyway." There is an imperative here to resolve this new problem our society has.
2) How exactly did 'Varcht' demonstrate that "people aren't equipped to sort out fact from fiction"? Do you disagree that vaccines have both benefits and risks? I thought he made a good point.
FWIW, this is a variant of a debate tactic known as "just asking questions" (on rationalwiki) or the "loaded question" (wikipedia). I won't accuse ~Varcht of doing this intentionally, because I don't know them well enough to assume bad faith, but the end result is the same: the question, appearing innocent enough, is based on false premises and derails the conversation.
It's especially common coming from people who have been misinformed on some controversial subject and have developed vague doubts towards established science on that subject, but don't have a sufficient library of information at-hand to argue directly. Instead, they just try to raise the same doubts in others. Their conversations follow the form, "Okay, but what if...?"
It works because people in civilized forums don't want to be seen as unkind towards people asking innocent-looking questions. For instance, here we are being distracted by ~Varcht's 1-in-100 question, but the patently false statement they started with is being ignored.
To bring this back to the subject of the thread, ~Varcht unintentionally -- I assume -- made themselves an excellent example of a victim of the modern problems of misinformation. I would wager that they don't regularly read the National Enquirer, and probably wouldn't believe most or any of the stuff in one, but here they are to raise the spectre of the dangers of vaccination -- a popular belief, I would add, that kills people, especially young children.
So that we don't let ourselves become too emotionally detached from the consequences people suffer from this pandemic of misinformation, here's a reminder of what infant whooping cough looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3oZrMGDMMw
> If your goal is persuasion, I think it's better to engage rather than resorting to sarcastic responses of "Good job, HN".
Sometimes persuasion is a reasonable goal. Other times, bad ideas should be mercilessly mocked before they have an opportunity to germinate in fertile ground. You were around here then, do you remember what HN's attitude towards established science was shortly after the CRU email compromise?
But yeah, I could've left that last part off.
But I can't -- and shouldn't -- be dispassionate all the time, either.
> Your comments are usually excellent, but I thought this one fell short.
Thanks, and fair 'nuff.
All the time Facebook shows me "[My mother] likes [News Outlet]" and then shows me stories from that news outlet. That is a recommendation from my mom, or at least Facebook would have you believe so.
None of those things were implied in my comment, or a subtext in it, or a conscious or subconscious component of it, or even statements I would typically agree with.
But, if you prefer to approach this from, "this guy disagreed with me and said something I don't like, so I bet that means he likes other things I don't like, so I'm going to accuse him of that", then ... well, okay. Go on dismissing the modern problems with widespread misinformation as exactly comparable to the National Enquirer, I suppose.
Other people are having a more serious discussion about the subject though and you'll be missing out.
The question with fake news becomes: what is the damage that this type of speech causes to the public? This is a really difficult question to answer, especially since we're only starting to notice the effects on our political system. If this damage is too great, there would be justification to restrict it in the public interest.
Of course, the people who end up making these determinations may also have conflicting political incentives, which makes this a very delicate situation to tackle in as broken of a political environment as we have in the US.
For example, guns are not allowed in post offices for a substantial governmental reason.
[1] https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig (Fully Sourced in Description)
Free speech is the ability to express any opinion or idea, anti-government opinions included. This is why online posts and various non-verbal actions (like burning a flag) are protected under The First Amendment, even though nothing is being physically said. Additionally this is why threatening violence towards somebody isn’t protected: a threat of violence isn’t an opinion or an idea.
Your first amendment rights were not violated if Facebook censors you.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
[1] https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2010/08/free-speech-cali...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-29/how-to-ta...
What's interesting is how the same argument for allowing more discrimination would be laughed off the stage as completely meritless and bigoted. But the situation is exactly the same! Organizations are allowed to discriminate against protected classes when it's a bona fide occupational qualification or the organization is a private club, so surely there's long precedent for allowing discrimination in specified circumstances?
Somehow almost everyone sees how this argument is totaly facile in the context of discrimination, yet it gets trotted out over and over when suggesting further restrictions on freedom of speech.
[1]: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
good grief... you should shout this from the rafters. thanks for sharing.
Or in other words, I hope people realise it could well be their political enemies that decide what's classed as fake news and what isn't. Wonder how many people would change their mind about backing a crackdown on the concept if they realised it could be the current administration making the decision?
This seems super related to the lack of a decent way to pay for one-off articles and the need to show ads. If there were a medium between adware and a $10/month subscription, I firmly believe the articles would bulk up again. Gaming for page views necessarily trends towards zero content per page view. Competing for money itself would lead to some sort of qualitative difference in content--a huge win for consumers.
Agreed. As they always have since humans or our ancestors first stood to gain from deception. You'll never stop it.
But I think the solution may still come from market forces. Not as in tech companies inventing showy systems for flagging and muting fake news. But I think people are slowly becoming smarter news consumers, more skeptical about what they take as fact. Who hasn’t become smarter about filtering out BS in the last two years?
The problem for Trump and Fox with all their “fake news” tirades is that you can’t partially open people’s minds to skepticism. Once they begin questioning one news source, they begin developing general critical reasoning ability. Tribalism may keep them defending their bad news source for some time, but as they continue to tear apart other sources, they will become increasingly unable to turn a blind eye to their own. In the long run, Fox making accusations of fake news will cannibalize their own fake news. Whether that happens in the next 8 years or on a longer horizon? Who knows…
They really, really, really aren't. Look at the polls.
> Once they begin questioning one news source, they begin developing general critical reasoning ability
They don't question news sources. They write off anything that doesn't contribute to their happy little world (or very unhappy little world, whichever).
I think this is being very generous to the idea of skepticism. Skepticism is a very difficult thing to learn properly, and more or less being a skeptic of modern media seems to be more heavily related to dismissing any information which contradicts you own paradigm of the world in favor of a more simplistic model that works for you. Dismissing all media except for "the one true source" is really no better than exposing yourself to all of it and believing it blindly. It's just substituting one absolute truth for another. I honestly don't think that what Fox does will cannibalize their own bad reporting; it will only strengthen it, because unless one is actively seeking to question the truths they hold dear, they will never really take the time to validate what they already "know". It's a very humbling thing to accept that what you know may be based on bad information, and to live in a constant fantasy since it's more convenient.
I hope we will grow past this, but right now we're still working on learning to sort the vast amount of information we're exposed to daily.
Only hand cranked printing press manufactured leaflets should be allowed. Freedom of the press should be banned for all other mediums.
... and in case you're wondering, yes, this is a metaphor for another on-going debate and an apt one.
Threatening violence or slander has nothing to do with the first amendment.
Projectile weapons have been improving throughout history, it’s silly to assume the Founders weren’t well aware of that. I mean, there were medieval weapons that were pretty devastating by even today’s standards and the first amendment makes no mention of that. These were enlightenment thinkers well versed in the history of governments and technological progress.
The 2nd amendment is a principle meant to transcend all time and cultures. The people have a fundamental right to defend their rights.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The 2nd amendment was written when muskets were state of the art and assaukt weapons like AR-15s were almost beyond belief.
The internet gives the average person the ability to mass disseminate information. If you want to try and use that as a metaphor then we should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction.
Well, there is no definition for the term "assault weapon", and semi-automatic (edit: not semi-automatic, but self-cocking repeating, similar operation and results) weapons were well known (and not that far away from being popularized) by the time the second amendment was drafted, and by the people who were drafting it. "Arms" also encompassed things like cannons and explosive charges, which could be fitted freely to ships/properties and stored (though the latter could create a tort, if you don't take necessary precautions) by private persons, as proven in case law.
It also applied to bladed, blunt, or more unconventional arms. The word "arms" is used instead of "muskets" because the right being protected is the right of the people to own arms sufficient to feasibly defend themselves (or, with a militia, defend their community), and to do so unmolested.
I think I'm wrong in calling them semi-automatic then, but there is little practical difference between DA revolvers and semi-automatic firearms, except that one has a chamber for each cartridge. The Kalthoff mechanism is a bit more confusing with these definitions, since it uses a single chamber, but has separate magazines for charge and bullet, but reloads, cocks, and fires through a single manual action. I should probably have said self-cocking repeaters.
I am not sure why everyone believes this, because it is completely untrue.
During the time that the constitution was written, 30 round semi automatic assault rifles had existed for around ~100 years.
Yes they did. Really.
Check out the Kalthoff repeater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalthoff_repeater
It was an up to 30 round semi automatic assault rifle, invented in the 1600s.
Now, it wasn't used a whole lot, because it was fairly expensive and also wasn't mass produced (Although it WAS actually used in a couple conflicts, by specialized forces!). But to claim that such things were "almost beyond belief" is ridiculous.
That's not comparable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookson_repeater
I didn't know about those weapons and they're impressive (though very rare). But, there's still a huge leap between a Kalthoff/Cookson repeater and an AR-15. According to that weapon's manufacturer, an AR-15 has a 30 round magazine and can shoot 45 rounds a minute up to 1/3 of a mile!
The modern day bullets are the things that have caused the massive increase in accuracy, energy, and range.
And I guess, also decreasing prices, and reliability.
It is perhaps possible to make a reasoned argument around THAT, but the arguments around guns rarely reach the point beyond "ban the guns that look scary".
I'd argue that the same kind of logic should apply to weapons like the AR-15. An accessible, reliable, fully dangerous weapon like the AR-15 is so far beyond the 'arms' of the 1790s that the right to bear it could be infringed.
A gun in the hands of a qualified, reasonable person is a legitimate means of self defence, but I can't think of why that should apply to something like an AR-15, which is built to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Qualified, reasonable people have many, better options to protect themselves from the threats they'd reasonably face that can't so easily be perverted by deranged fucks.
If AR-15 style weapons, which use .223 cartridges, were banned, that would still leave sporting rifles, which use the larger and more powerful .308 cartridge. That cartridge was the size used in the battle rifles of the WWI / WWII era that were standard before the evolution of the assault rifle. (Assault rifles have smaller cartridges because the range and power of the standard battle rifle cartridge was found to be unnecessary and the smaller cartridges allowed soldiers to carry a larger quantity.)
Given that, it's hard to see how an AR-15 ban is anything other than a cosmetic ban.
The 2nd amendment is a principle, not a law. It’s a universal, in time and space, foundation upon which we base our laws. The Founders were well aware of this and it actually was their intention.
These were highly educated enlightenment thinkers, to assume they didn’t foresee weapon innovation is just silly.
If I understand correctly, the legal controversy behind the 2nd amendment has more to do with the bit about "well regulated militias" than with gun technology.
Second amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary [predicate] .... the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
Your analogy kind of fails and also isn’t really related to the article, TBH.
You can use a printing press to inform thousands and thousands of people a day easily.
Get rid of the 2nd amendment!
The first amendment says nothing about “fake” or “real” news even though there was plenty of fake news in those days. I could argue fake news started the French Revolution.
We are so so much better off now than the 3 networks is all you get days.
Somebody in N.Y. decided what important to me, not me.
When i wanted a sports score or tomorrows weather I had to listen to 30 minutes of news.
As I get older I want to consume Far Less news.... And I can now pick and chose. A much better place than the 1960s or 70s
Was it better when the government or the church decided what people were allowed to know?
When there was one media outlet in a certain medium, like in the UK when there was originally only one TV network in existence?
I mean, even the days when it was just newspapers didn't necessarily have an informed populace or people open to other views. It had people who read the same tabloid for decades and got stories that would likely make Breitbart jealous.
Fake news may be a hot topic nowadays, but at the end of the day, it's really just a byproduct of anyone being able to become a publisher, and it's probably better that's the case than that one or two organisations can dictate what's newsworthy and what isn't.
Further, there was a pretty big stigma associated with buying tabloids, but today you can indulge without anyone having any idea what you’re looking at.
Traditionally the source of information could be monitored at least in well run countries. However, when anyone can make his/her views visible to the whole world and make emphatic claims with false logic, it is going to be hard to prevent people from believing them.
A lot of threads I saw on the Myanmar issue say Facebook should have done more. Maybe Facebook could change its algorithms to not show people aggressive stuff. Maybe they can have an option to report stuff. But what about people spreading propaganda in an exponential way, with only very few people reporting. How on earth any messaging platform will deal with that.
I think we are looking at a very painful compromise some where down the line.
People have a tendency of believing whatever they read, period. Trying to always remain skeptical and search out multiple sources and facts is hard and time consuming. Being a skeptic is also challenging from a mental/emotional standpoint, because you always have to challenge your own possibly deeply held beliefs.
This happens on both the left and right. Fox News, Washington Post, L.A. Times--they are all frequent offenders. I'm just so sick of it. Any sophisticated reader can spot this biased reporting quickly but other readers can't and are sucked in. I wish there was a strong just-the-facts movement/resurgence in reporting. I'm basically down to the Wall Street Journal in my daily reading selections.
Fox is straight up propaganda, to the point that it is ridiculous that anybody would even take them serious, they're about at the level of Russia Today. The Washington Post is more along the lines of 'manufacturing consent', and if they lie it is by omission.
Even conservatives, including some recent Fox commentators, are starting to acknowledge that with Fox’s shift from a fairly broad right-wing/Republican propaganda machine to a more specifically pro-Trump propaganda machine.
The Washington Post is as you claim, which feels dangerous. The same with the Times (and the Journal on any non-free market health policy) in the modern era - there's a lot that's left out: important context is intentionally omitted to shape the narrative or to produce an angle, which is much more malicious.
Fox News/HuffPo/Breitbart/TPM don't scare me because they're somewhere between junkfood and supermarket tabloids. It's the people who lie when they appear to tell the truth - like WSJ coverage of any single payer country - that freak me out.
Though leaving out certain facts may make the remaining facts more persuasive one way or another, the remaining facts are still, by their nature, true and open to interpretation by the viewer.
I don't know about that. The way in which Fox News now makes policy by influencing that 'audience of one' is having a real and direct impact on the world far outside of the United States.
As for malice: I think that purposefully destroying your country in order to pocket some $ is far more malicious than shaping public opinion, even though of course I would much rather have that people would really take the time to educate themselves on the various issues and that we would all follow the Swiss model of Democracy - in my opinion the only country that currently gets it right.
That's a pipe dream given the degree to which people typically wish to invest in the political process but that's the thing to strive for, even if it takes another couple of decades to get there.
And in Switzerland the media are of a fairly high quality for much the same reason: the electorate is pretty smart there and very hard to dupe.
I think the best way to combat fake news is to have trusted, respected news organizations. But now both the right and the left no longer fully trust these organizations, so people have started looking elsewhere. IMO, the only way to fix it is for these organizations to start reporting honestly to try to regain our trust---so I think fake news is going to continue to be a problem.
Disclaimer: I know that CNN/NYT/NPR/WaPo propaganda is nothing compared to Fox News/conservative media. But it was misleading enough to shatter the trust of many people, including me.
Examples?
Which story was so fake that you can't trust them anymore?
Honestly, I think people like you are a big part of the problem. OH you know that places like Breitbart are worse, but you just can't bring yourself to trust the Washington post.
Do you not see how much that sort of attitude contributes to the much bigger problem?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/17/cenk_ugyu...
In the wake of Wikileaks revealing that what CNN called a baseless conspiracy theory was actually true, this was a fun trip down memory lane.
The Sanders/Clinton controversy may be a huge issue to you but what the likes of Breitbart, Fox and so on are doing is on an entirely different scale. All this besides the fact that Clinton stood a much better chance against Trump than Bernie Sanders ever did. She even won the popular vote.
I mean, every poll at the time suggested otherwise: https://imgur.com/a/K9Rzr Additionally, Sanders is a guy who did very well with exactly the demographic that HRC lost. But I digress--
I agree that Breitbart and Fox are far worse than the rest of corporate media, and I still watch CNN/MSNBC every weekday. But I go into it with a much higher level of skepticism and the knowledge that I need to seek other sources of information if I want to know what's going on beside the corporate-friendly narrative.
The main takeaway for me is that elections are more often than not choosing the 'least bad' candidate rather than the best candidate. I personally don't think Clinton should have run at all, but I think the same about Sanders and Trump. All of them have substantial baggage and in some cases serious doubt about their qualifications and mental stability.
If those three people were the best that could be found in a country of 300+ million people then that's indicative of a much larger problem. I do think that neither Sanders nor Clinton would have fucked up to the extent that Donald Trump is currently doing. If this really will go on for almost three more years you'll be able to say you were there when America lost its place.
And no doubt CNN will cover it.
Otherwise I agree, we are living a major part of history.
> Fox News/HuffPo/Breitbart/TPM don't scare me because they're somewhere between junkfood and supermarket tabloids
and yet fox news was the most watched cable network for how long?
For context, it was the opponents of the President who coined the term. It was originally designed to discredit Pizzagate, etc. He co-opted it and turned the term against the MSM.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Where am I factually incorrect?
An accurate perspective of the reality of uniparty puts Fox News mere nanometers to the right of CNN.
Because.... somehow you think the WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch of all people, is not biased (start with [1])? Is it possible you're just selecting for the particular bias that creates the least amount of friction with your existing world view?
[1] https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/01/wall-street-jou...
Of course, they are kicking themselves for it, they could've had a field day if they found out the shooter had a muslim background.
anyone who disagrees with him or criticizes him.
> This happens on both the left and right
oh cool, "both sides".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...
Because of fake news?
I find this phenomenon kind of pleasing, intellectually tickling? I mean, like recursion.
Everyone asks why the phenomenon exists without realizing they are the sole creators. It's like a merry go round, each outlet trying to "catch" the baddies without realizing they are the problem.
The MSM and the people within are so desperate for clicks and views that they spend their whole lives hopelessly slinging bullshit, "fact checks", retractions, hyperbole, "OP-eds" which are actually propaganda disguised as opinion and every other thinkable form of garbage content aimed solely at manipulating us.
Then there's those of us who just sit quietly on the sidelines and laugh, and then we turn the talking heads off.
False. Replace "fake news" with "false advertising", and there's ample precedent for how this might be achieved. We've got laws at both state and federal levels that make deceptive or misleading claims illegal, to protect consumers; protecting consumers of news media needn't be any more problematic constitutionally.
Supreme Court jurisdiction holds that commercial speech (advertising) is less protected than other speech. This is why laws against false advertising are usually upheld while similar laws against other kinds of false speech would be ruled unconstitutional.
The good news is that the judicial branch is in favor of protecting the 1st amendment in all it's forms (press, political, religious and commercial)
Although a strong 1st amendment means that the responsibility falls on the citizen.
Caveat Emptor...In other words the the consumer of media alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of information before a accepting something as fact.
We need to do a better job of helping people think critically, I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that government regulation of Free Speech is definitely NOT the answer having fought content-based censorship in NYC.
Consider outright propaganda that does not directly harass, libel, or slander another person or group. Propaganda on the order of "1984". Harmless?
A giant news corp. convinces a large segment of the population that 2+2=5. It wreaks havoc on people's ability to do real science and engineering and sows distrust of actual expert mathematicians who know the truth. Some of these believers are politicians, instituting policies that affect you. Harmless?
Neither does the author of this piece, apparently.
> Courts cannot become fact-checkers
Why not?
Why would I believe this? It hasn't worked so far and I think there is some misplaced faith here. Perhaps the media is facing a backlash because of their basic hypocrisy in the modern era. CNN, Washington Post, NYTimes and more are quick to criticize Trump which I'm fine with, he's in a position of power and he's not handling it well, checking his power and public perception is literally the purpose of media. The problem is that the media has abdicated this same duty everywhere else where it has been convenient for them. An example is why is this criticism of Facebook so linked to Trump's election? We deserved this level of coverage years ago. Blaming this all on obviously fake news on social media sidesteps why people believe those things in the first place - conventional media has repeatedly betrayed the trust of people.
Take this recent article that was posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16642683
There is a lot of good criticism of the author in those comments, how she pre-formulated a story, repeatedly encountered suspicious roadblocks in her investigation and then because she couldn't write the perspective she wanted, dropped the story entirely. What am I supposed to call this uncritical coverage of Theranos other than Fake News?
And even there I can't exactly pin it on that journalist, it wasn't just her that encountered these things and didn't write about them, it was lots of journalists which points to a systemic issue.
All of which is a really longwinded way to say this piece made me sad because it is the 'marketplace of ideas' that led us to an era of actually fake news. Journalists like Jenny Gold are simply responding to the incentives of that marketplace. And that other journalists inside this system, like Sandeep, have no creative solutions for how to bring back real investigative journalism which questions and speaks truth to power in all it's forms and simply rely on old clichés does not bode well for the future.
Because nobody cares until something goes horribly wrong.
IT's the same reason why infrastructure spending is non-existent until a whole bunch of people start dying.