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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
And stupid people will continue to be stupid.
> I basically think there's no solution.
Agreed.