Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation
theverge.com
theverge.com
We need to protect people from information and ideas we don't agree with.
Freedom of speech is not just about speech, its about ideas. Nobody should ever be deemed the arbiter of truth. Not Facebook, not the government, not anyone. Decentralize the social networks. Let everyone speak, even the bad people.
Realize that you actually make the problem worse by suppressing information, even bad information. Making information "forbidden" makes it that much more appealing to people, enhancing the us-vs-them tribal mentality. Especially when its a reasonable opinion or idea with some merit. Suddenly it sounds like suppression of the truth.
Having liars with big pockets broadcast lies (propaganda) works very effectively, no "black market suppression of the truth" is needed to weaponize bad ideas.
The root problem with modern discourse and social media is subtle, unforced siloing of communication within subgroups, so that there's not enough subgroup-bridging discussion. Overton windows shrink until subgroup-bridging discussion is mostly impossible. That all happens without any active censorship.
That's because there's more harm-promoting speech, and more incoherent lies, from the right? Saying there should be equal treatment of left and right speech regardless of the content is nonsense.
I was also quite surprised to hear that my community wants to take away rights from black people, which I heard in a radio ad not so long ago.
The left has its equal share of hobgoblins.
Have you checked this? What's their opinion on, for example, Black Lives matter?
That you can seriously entertain Republicans would remove black freedoms if not for Black Lives Matter just turned this thread into one where you can rant away without my participation.
I'm learning to walk away from hate.
This comment is the text version of that cartoon where the dog sits in the room where everything is on fire thinking "this is fine."
I'm assuming you are liberal. Go read Popehat's views on blasphemy laws. He's liberal.
On the other end we have the open town square where the loudest speakers and richest will overpower all other voices until none can hear anything and chaos pours forth.
From both we see people flee into isolated subgroups with perfect echo chamber where the oppressed be free from the loud and censors, with the eventual result of polarization where those outside turns in their eyes into less and less human. From there hate and violence ensures and we go back and ask our self, did we want the censors or loudest to rule.
I also think you're a bit too naive. Without proper governance look at what is happening in america. America from the outside believes climate change is a hoax because republicans are bought. No one is willing to go against the establishment and make laws to stop this when they're clearly INCORRECT ideas that are being pushed to the masses misinforming people.
Besides it only takes a marginally more more skilled speaker to get the same result and say nothing at all that can be stated as a direct lie.
I'm not taking a position on your larger post but this is a bit of a cliche I'd politely suggest you stop using. There are numerous historical examples of the successful suppression of information and the impact of said suppression frequently helps the suppressor in exactly the way they intend.
With the internet you can't have an Albigensian genocide.
The combined cultural knowledge of every tribe in the world would fit on one hard drive.
This is another euphemism for hearing ideas you disagree with. You choose who to friend/follow/read. Occasionally those people will say things you don't agree with.
> you don’t know what information to trust
Just because someone landed a job at [fill in traditional media outlet] does not make them more trustworthy. You're simply being exposed to the reality that their bullshit is just as much bullshit as everything else.
It's very simple - anyone can assert anything, thus each individual must take it upon themselves to be skeptical of the assertion, or blindly agree with it.
The real problem you're getting at here is that many people are dumb, and may be made to believe anything.
If these people became skeptical or were simply deleted from reality, such bots would have no value.
Was this Russia?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/15/faceboo...
Verified by multiple sources. "Facebook said it had found and removed roughly 1.5 billion fake accounts" surely doesn't suggest they're all literally Russian, or bots, but they sure were fake and spreading propaganda.
The most important thing is to get off Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, etc, find some independent news sites you like, and be very skeptical.
Except for you and your comment, right?
I think the second needs to be a condition of public office. You deliberately lie, or show a pattern of not giving a shit about the truth, pack your bags and get a private sector job.
Conversely and perversely, the varied institutions of public office seem to protect politicians' speech. This seems deeply wrong.
And obviously this seems partisan at the moment because there's currrently a 200lb orangutan as POTUS who can't keep his story straight about anything... But this is a standard we should all want, for all out politicians, worldwide.
Just to be clear, I think you have to be allowed to say this stuff, I just think that ends at the point where you're a public official. You can still say it, but you'll lose your job.
They are one of many, albeit facebook being on the more influential side, platforms through which misinformation is spread. And of course education is the main handle to push to stop spreading of misinformation. But facebook earned I don't know how much money on this and they tried to minimise the problem out of monetary concerns.
We thought the Internet would bring prosperity and an explosion of knowledge growth. And it surely did. But it also connected millions of less educated people who never knew that there were so many others out there - because they never read what they believed in the newspapers. And now they know that many others share their views. Again, education is at the core of a solution to this misinformation crisis. So maybe call the structural problems the burning embers and facebook the accelerant.
The quality of our collegiate has been much displaced by the rise of the true-believing college administrator with authority to suppress unorthodox curriculum and research.
Facebook ALSO gives this cancer a platform.
They know full well that their proposed solutions won't work a bit, but instead make them richer along the way. But the less educated people don't know that, they are being abused and mislead. I am not against conservative people and also not against people with different views. We live in a plural society and that is a good thing. It becomes a problem when some of those people can't tell the difference between truth and lie.
Also, every major player of every political fight knows, and has tools to "play to their advantage", it's not like some bad vs good fairytale.
And if you are against all major players then you may want to consider that it is exactly yours opinion which eventually will be censored if the idea about mandatory purging of "bad information" wins.
I'm sorry to say, but there's no evidence it's true. Formally more educated, and formally less educated belong to different social tribes, and react to different information stimulants, and that's all. Advertising industry successfully pushes peoples choices of all sorts of education.
Also, I believe your idea of authoritarianism is not wholly correct. I was born, and raised in a real dictatorship which provided free tuition (probably, at least partially because it makes a great influence, and control apparatus once nationalized) as well as cheap health, and communal services. In fact, all left dictatorships did/do it to some extent to have an ideological selling point. Also, dictatorships often care less about one's voting pattern, because they can count it properly. What do they always care about? Information. They all restrict freedom of speech.
Really??? Most "educated" people are proud of their indoctrination. They frame it and put it on their wall and resume
Using scare quotes and imolicitly asserting that most of what goes by as education is actually indoctrination without argument as if it was an established, uncontroversial fact is not a substantive contribution to the discussion, though it is a good way of signalling a particular tribal affiliation.
Perhaps we should create camps that educate these people on political issues.
There should be a rule for discussion: take what people say at face value, or don't participate. Nothing good comes from "reading between the lines", it's just an exercise in projecting your own issues on other people.
No I don’t think it does have to be - plain speaking is generally better.
Facebook's board knows exactly what it is doing. Are they going to take a hit from their shareholders given the choice? No.
> We thought the Internet would bring prosperity and an explosion of knowledge growth
Yes, but the movement also came with a mandate, that information and services should be free. That severly restricts the business models available. I dont think consumers can solve the problem easily. They are caught in behavior-modifying algorithms. The problem is a new business model needs to be created.
What proof do you have of this assertion? There are at least two reasons to be suspicious of the argument.
1.) It's self-serving. Many people who make it are themselves highly educated. It's a short step to advocating rule by philosopher kings, which has a very checkered history. [1]
2.) It seems easy to contradict. For example, one of the most effective ways to assess any political argument is to know who is funding it. It's hard to see how anyone can make informed decisions without such information. Level of education seems to be irrelevant here.
It's also worth noting while the authors of the American Constitution were big fans of education, they put more faith in mechanisms like separation of powers and representative government to anchor the political system. In fact one of Madison's arguments in favor of education was to "multiply the educated individuals from among whom the people may elect a due portion of their public Agents of every description." [2] That's quite different from saying that everyone must have these qualities in equal measure.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_king
[2] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35....
It seems like an unfair comparison to make, yet I see "educated" people do it a lot and have started taking anyone who does this less seriously. What I can't understand is how one reconciles the idea that "education is the solution" with "educated people keep saying dumb shit." Or even worse, some educated people are simply okay with dishonesty.
Yes? So long as the comparison is based on actual facts, both about the fascists and the present day?
I thought it was not okay eight and sixteen years ago, and it still looks to be not okay today, or not an argument with any intellectual weight to it. But "educated" people sure like it.
Sheesh, this is centuries long rinse-repeat with press, radio, TV ...
You do get that, but more better advertising, and incidental worldview shaping, is what you get that really matters.
Nobody cares because they're more interested in their team winning, by whatever means necessary, than being charitable.
> who recently stepped down from his role as Chief Security Officer
... But couldn't make that argument or be effective in that capacity while employed. That is why we need something like codetermination - so that, completely internally, workers can have influence on what to produce, how to produce, and where to produce it.
I'd say that few people have a reason to care about the truth at all at this level. Take natural world: people will believe whatever bullshit someone sells to them, because unless you're a scientist or engineer in a field that requires you to be right, the lie has zero first-order impact on your life.
What people do want to do in general is to be likable, feel accepted in the groups they belong to, and feel OK with themselves. If a belief helps facilitate that, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.
I'd say at least half of the problem is that most of the information people need to vote well - even for their own interest - has little first-order impact on their lives. I.e. it's an artifact of specialization. Because when you look even at those uneducated people, in the areas of life they deal with daily, they turn out to be pretty smart and have accurate beliefs.
There's a substantial alternative medicine / anti-vax movement where believing this bullshit will have real negative consequenses for people's health.
I'm inclined to agree with you on this point.
But I wonder why/how the group feels so passionate about these first order impacts and coordinate acts and values, if the individuals see little first-order impacts on their lives (and are just acting socially as you describe)
Somehow the group is perceiving effects differently than individuals then
But are they?
I believe they aren't experiencing them at all either. There may be some thought leaders (possibly leading more formal organizations) that benefit directly, e.g. through getting rules changed to what they like, or getting sales of their books up. But the larger group is created out of voluntary, ad-hoc associations, and has an associated group with opposite goals, with which it jockeys for position.
I increasingly think most of politics these days is ingroup/outgroup behaviour that's allowed to grow (Internet in particular is a very good growth medium), amplify, and is exploited by various individuals for fame/money (take a side, sell books) and power (take a side, get votes). Nowhere present is a factor pressuring groups or individuals to be correct.
1) Some people have a very simplistic view of their values. "More of value $V good, less value $V bad. $controversial-option-X increases $V, therefore good." They do not think through it enough to realize when the option they're supporting is actually detrimental to $V long-term, or to other values they hold dear. Or the option may even be detrimental to value $V directly, but in an non-obvious way (e.g. via second-order effects).
2) Groups can and do behave in self-destructive ways. Scott Alexander discussed at length[0] the cases where groups have to choose between being either ineffective, or so annoying that they create their own opposition.
3) There are cases where group's thought leaders only ostensibly profess some honourable value, but in reality use it as a cover to pursue different goals, often causing damage to the value they hide behind.
(Yes, I have particular examples for all those points from recent controversies, but I won't name them here to avoid completely derailing this thread.)
--
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
Again, consider that many of these folks are doing so from a rational choice, which is to defeat the other side - they understand it to be a zero-sum contest. You can either win or lose, your choice.
E.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism
Seems to me, honestly, like a fair hypothesis for our tribal behavior. Moreso, to be honest, than the majority of people "understanding it to be a zero-sum contest".
Do you think that's too cynical?
I think the reasons are more multivariate than a single psychological principle. But yes, in-groupism is a component I do think. But that is a component against the backdrop of societal and geographical sorting among a whole set of preferences and values e.g. (can predict a lot more about you if you are blue or red because we've all sorted ourselves) as an example of another component.
* Fight partisanship/polarization. Not sure how to do this. But taking a big step back and trying to discuss things without labels would be a good start. And who knows... maybe a different voting system to encourage more parties to exist? There's a lot to do here.
* Fight corruption. The U.S. system is corrupt. Corrupt leaders thrive on partisanship.
* Stop emotionally framing things. An article frames something with lots of emotion? I'd be wary that they're telling you how to feel so you don't worry about what they're trying to achieve (what to think, or just views for money)
* Reject online advertising. Online advertising equates views with money. The more inflammatory something is, the more money it brings in. Be equally wary of any micro-transactional news / article service.
True. But many people do not check sources and do not want sources. The more sources you link, the more likely your message is ignored or downvoted or considered spam. Some comment section tools even refuse posts with too many links.
The EU fights against sources.
Macron vows to tighten media control because 'fake news threatens democracy' https://www.rt.com/news/414945-macron-france-fake-news-law/
Senator Demands More censorship From Facebook & Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goNDSUZsQ1c&t=181
Out-of-control censorship machines removed my article warning of out-of-control censorship machines https://juliareda.eu/2018/08/censorship-machines-gonna-censo...
> Fight partisanship/polarization.
This is what every party/camp is fighting for. Maximize the own party/camp, minimize the party/camp of the others.
I agree that much could and should be done. E.g. voting with paper ballots every 4 years like centuries ago should be replaced by secure online voting that gives decision power to every citizen at any time for any political decision.
> Fight corruption.
At least in the USA, voting for Democrats or Republicans is voting for corruption. Corruption is a sign of quality for US voters. The more connected with the industry and the more money for campaigns, the better and stronger and more real and more competent the party appears to voters. Too few US people vote for the poor unknown parties with no coverage by the mainstream media that calls itself the reasonable truthful trustworthy non-fringe mainstream media.
> Stop emotionally framing things.
I doubt that this is a solution. E.g. too many US Americans do not care about their evil actions in the world. Maybe they know about them but they do not care enough. The US military is considered as a trustworthy glorious organisation instead of a tool of and for evil persons to promote death and misery worldwide.
Recent example after decades of war crimes:
- Yemen: Tackling the world’s largest humanitarian crisis https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020232
- Pompeo Backed Yemen War For Weapon Sales Profit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azx90nHiIeg
US Americans refuse to remove misery and poverty even in their own country.
UN Head: US Has 'Morally Wrong' Healthcare System Because Of Corruption https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrCu9dt9JpI
Although US Americans might care, they still behave as if they did not.
Fox Viewers Overwhelmingly Approve Med4All By 73% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX5GSClA8z4&t=349
CNN’s Jake Tapper Caught Lying About Med4All - Lies Again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1jZNepTx80&t=35
> Reject online advertising.
I do not think that lack of money improves communication and reporting. Survival and work requires money. Money is received either by random advertising or by direct sponsorship by companies or by an existing paying loyal audience with a certain world view or by a revolution of the economic system that guarantees economic human rights and safety for all.
E.g. the Yugoslav war lies and the Iraq war lies and Libya war lies or Syria war lies and Russia "war" lies promoted by certain governments that where published by all "serious" mainstream media to justify and promote war; the worst of all crimes. Every war is a war crime.
Hague Tribunal Exonerates Slobodan Milosevic Again https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/07/hague-trib...
KOSOVO German 2008 documentary-It began with a lie PART 1of5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_scokGJga8c
Judgment! 1/3 - The Bosnian 'Death Camp' Accusation: An Expose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xox7TR11evI
The Iraq War - TOTAL LIES and TOTAL PROOF - Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNFDXSKh17I
What is happening as been happening all along, for years. The now difference is who is doing the influencing; for what ends; and yes the how has changed but that's not really what's causing the friction.
For Stamos to suggest more people need to think for themselves, that more need to question authority more, sounds naive, at best. That is the last thing the powers that be will allow. They're fine with misinformation, they just want to sure it's their's and no one elses.
The irony is this latest "scandle" will ultimately be solved with less individual free thought, not more. It will be a psychological / emotional / intellectual nanny state. No human neuro activity too small to micro manage.
Yeah, it sounds extreme. But so would The Patriot Act pre 9-11. So would Ed Snowden before we knew about Ed Snowden. Both of these were met with barely a shrug of the shoulders. There's nothing to be fixed from Congress' pov everything is as it should be. It just needs a slight bit of adjusting.
The internet is destroying existing power structures, and giving control to alternative media sources/platforms/whatever that people are starting to trust more than the 'mainstream' ones.
So all the hand wringing and fake news paranoia and what not feels like a desparate, last ditch attempt by those who did well before to try and cram the internet/social media genie back into the bottle before they're made irrelevant.
Does this potentially lead to authoritarianism and what not? Possibly, but the answer isn't to try and shut down freedom of speeech/independent media/any thought outside of an ever narrowing acceptable boundary, but to ask why these views are on the rise and deal with the real causes.
Yes. But not only sources of info but __more importantly__ ways for people to organize into groups. I'm not talking about protests and such but getting shit done. Traditionally, this was the role of gov and other power structures. Yes, there are now viable - and likely more effective - alternatives to such traditions.
To your point, this explains all the divisiveness. Things are being taken to extremes (by the DNC, Mainstream Media, GOP and their associated Big Inc partners) in order to maintain a belief that they need to exist and continue to hold so much power. The show also serves as a distraction.
Something has to give. But I feel history says it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Exactly. The powers want censorship, the powers want to narrow the overton window and create a society that can't think for itself. It is not beneficial for them to have a society that actually knows what's going on.
What if the voters choose an outcome you just don't happen to like? Is that all of a sudden undemocratic?
The Constitutional Republic is designed to protect the rights and freedoms of the individual via the Constitution and bill of rights. If by Democracy one is referring solely to majority rule, then protection against individual rights and freedom are lost.
The U.S. should fear the latter, not the former.
Saying "the US isn't a democracy, it's a constitutional republic", is like saying "Garfield isn't a cat, he's a cartoon and a vertebrate". None of these things are mutually exclusive.
Democracy: government where political power ultimately comes from the popular vote. The opposite of democracy is autocracy.
Republic: government where the state belongs to the people and is run for their benefit. The opposite of republic is monarchy.
Constitutional: government with ground rules for how the levers of power work that nobody is allowed to break. The opposite of constitutional government is absolute government.
You can have government on any of these axes. Being a constitutional republic doesn't preclude being a democracy. Contrast the United States and North Korea. Both are constitutional republics (fundamental law, no monarch), but one is democratic (all votes matter), and the other is autocratic (only one vote matters).
Democracy does NOT mean "absolute rule by a mere majority". Republicans lie and weasel to try to get people to think this so that they can say that democracy is bad and we should accept minority rule instead (aka, autocracy)
Monarchy: yes king
Republic: no king
Democracy: yes votes
Autocracy: no votes
Constitutional: yes constitution
Absolute: no constitution
You can have these in any combination.
Consider holding a referendum that specified nobody who hadn't yet been born as of the referendum date would ever be allowed to vote.
It's a purposefully silly example (HN isn't for political debates!) but broadly, it's a democratically made self determination that reduces or precludes the ability to make democratic decisions in the future.
That’s like saying we have to give up on capitalism because people can commit fraud. Targeted electoral misinformation is a fixable problem.
The analogy breaks down when you realize the claim to legitimacy of the US government rests on the sovereignty of the voter.
The correct approach is to allow all legal content and let healthy debate reveal what's true and false in the course of time, organically, and without centralized and fallible oversight.
Stamos' piece in the Washington Post and statements elsewhere are vague, weird and poorly thought-out assertions which demand we accept Russiagate and WikiLeaks source attribution positions favoured by US intel agencies in full, and then only obsess over a very narrow set of concerns.
Analytically-minded technologists are still asking what magical GRU-election-swinging manipulations were just out of the grasp of the multi-billion dollar domestic presidential campaign industry, and why for instance the revelation of corruption within the DNC was the damaging issue, rather than the corruption itself. Stamos says major media 'rewarded the hackers' by reporting truth, and in The Verge's lazy retelling they transmute even this truth into 'misinformation'. It's low quality discussion and debate all around.
If an establishment paper broke the DNC corruption story first and naturally refused to disclose sources, or received them anonymously and so was unable to disclose them, what then?
Is Stamos and the 'Fake News Defense' movement saying we need to end all anonymously-sourced journalism? All investigative journalism? Any journalism which is damaging to key political, corporate and intelligence individuals and entities within the US? Because surely there's a risk that type of journalism may have been aided in some as-yet-unknown way by hostile foreign actors.
How could you definitively prove it was not?
Why not go even deeper into the 'fake news / foreign agents' madness:
Imagine the GRU want the US polity to over-react and implement a draconian press censorship reality 'immune from foreign influence'. In this scenario an even-more-untouchable political / corporate / intelligence class arises and - immune from scandals, consequence and the disinfecting power of transparency - is allowed to ossify in a cesspool of increased corruption and incompetence - weakening the state from the center.
Perhaps we can just go full-circle to this as a public establishment conspiracy theory and have Stamos and intel agencies agreeing that free speech as an inviolable principle is the best defence against whatever bogeyman is in fashion.
No, absolutely not Alex.
The fact that these massive tech monopolies are so powerful that it's now just taken for granted that they are pseudo-governmental entities should be a wake up call for everyone. It's high time we start talking about anti-trust and the breakup of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and maybe others. This is completely unacceptable.
Our laws are woefully out of date, they were written when the only foreseeable damage from companies this large and powerful was pricing abuse. The damage they have caused is far more extensive and severe than that, we need new laws and aggressive anit-trust/anti-monopoly stances to undo this damage, hopefully before it becomes too late to stop them at all.
The fact that we've let online speech fall in to a narrow set of patterns defined by companies that are larger than some governments is completely ridiculous.
We need platforms that are controlled by users. And no, we don't need to wait for them before we kill the centralized data miners either. We survived before Facebook, we'll survive without it.
The current political climate has no shortage of well-educated people on both sides who have been doing more damage than good the last 40 years.
It goes something like this: take a large human population doing something, like working at Division X. Take a multivariate problem. Abstract out an aggregate statistic along one variable. Report that one data point, generalize, then assume some correlation-causation magic. Manage to make that number better.
This causes a lot of the pain and suffering we see in large companies. People are working and managing to a number that's supposed to mean one thing, but it doesn't. (Whatever metric you manage, they'll game). And it happens over and over again.
Worst thing about it? The smarter you are, generally, the more difficult it is to see yourself engaging in this anti-pattern. Sure, it's easy to spot others. But for some reason, it's nothing you'd ever fall for.
It's the way our brains are supposed to work. Guess the "right enough" answer from lots of noisy, inconsistent input.
Intelligence and education are not magic fairy dust that prevent us from being human. They may make it easier to describe what's happening in general terms, but they don't upgrade us to Human 2.0 or anything.
It’s hubris to think any group can be the objective gatekeeper of truth unless they’re just reporting demonstrable facts like ball scores or weather.
In my experience, it's about something else. Something more fundamental.
That's the point though. You can't escape these things.
There’s evidence that awareness of biases makes one more susceptible to them, and that intelligence is also correlated with a higher susceptibility to bias. Intelligence and education give us tools to strengthen the form of our argument, and that enables us to better hang on to bias.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-peop...
Also, giving people evidence that disproves their core beliefs tends to strengthen those beliefs, until a certain tipping point, so incomplete education may actually be worse than no education.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/
Fixing misinformation is a hard problem. It’s not just a matter of getting people into contact with facts.
We should make Manufacturing Consent and The People's History of The United States mandatory reading for high school students, but that would probably change too many minds against our own system as kids would know how things really work, and how history really happened instead of the wishy-washy 'everything wasn't that bad!' crap they teach in grade school.
It's a bit sad many champions of democracy are realizing they can't handle real dissent. They seem more comfortable with control, limits and useless debates on media structures and platforms they can influence and control than the kind of actual dissent provided by Assange, Snowden and the wider platform of the Internet that allows people to freely exchange ideas.
Let's take it to the extreme, if citizens elect an flat earther or an extremist running on hate then its not a problem with democracy but a reflection of deeper problems with your society and education system.
Misinformation, propaganda, fake news are as old as human society and used by all countries and special interests, and can be addressed well outside the fundamental structures of democracy, free speech, dissent and free press.
I think the platform shapes the debate. A crowd with megaphones will never be as good at decision-making as a jury. The websites we use are the platform (even if it's the same people in the crowd as the jury).
The "megaphone platforms" (twitter/facebook) are very invigorating in the short-term but will inevitably drive people away. The next step is for a platform to be built that promotes and rewards the systematic advancement of filtering ideas (downvoting/upvoting being the most basic form of this).
To a large extent, HN is superior to twitter because of this. Wikipedia is also a shining example of platform. This attention toward facebook is unwarranted, the platform will kill itself in 7 years.
The important thing is building a new platform that incentivizes productive contribution rather than self-promotion or controversiality.
no. that is the first line of defense. realistically, it is the only line.
silly corporate attempts to prune information are the last line -- the line that nobody should depend on or expect to even exist.
Here's an article of all the platforms political ad policies (from June 2018) for advertisers.
https://marketingland.com/the-big-list-of-political-ad-polic...
Most ad policies have been updated to stop foreign paid political ads. And the FEC and states have laws on allowed content.
But paid ads are one thing. Fake accounts posting lies and mis-information are another.
IDK. I just sat through 4 - 6 weeks of political ads (here in central NJ) and it was difficult to tell fact from fiction. To say nothing of the fact most did not disclose even their declared party. As for the super PAC ads. Those were more twisted informion with the source being far from transparent - not even a URL.
Point being. Same lies as always. Same misinfo as always. None of it done by Russians.
Let's not be naive. The system is optimized for bad info from bad actors. The difference is, the actors are not our (so called) representatives.
Cuts out a lot of the bullshit.
They don’t need to censor. They need to stop curating.
I started digging into things I had taken for granted such as Breibart being this racist place that only does fake news, Ben Shapiro probably was pretty extreme because he was alt right etc, Milo was a racist homophobe, Bannon was a white supremacist etc.
It ended up being a 6-month journey where I actually sat down and listened to what they had to say, which luckily is now possible because of the long interview formats that's been popping up on youtube like Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin etc.
And I must say that while I am still pro-abortion, pro gets married to whomever you want etc. I have a much better appreciation for what people I disagree with actually are saying and I can listen to it and actually argue without shaming them simply for being on the "wrong side". None of those people were the moral monsters I would normally read about whenever the alt-right was described. They were mostly people who actually could argue for their positions, positions I didn't always agree with but at least now understood better.
I have personally experienced now being shamed and people trying to go after my business simply because of some of my comments, even on HN.
The real danger of misinformation is the one we create for ourselves when we listen to what others say and interpret that.
I like the term strong-manning instead of straw-manning i.e. trying to position the argument of whoever you are debating in the strongest possible position rather than trying to go after their morals as the first thing.
In other words, most misinformation is the way we interpret things ourselves, not what was said or meant.
I would encourage you anyone to try just once in their life to take the "other sides" arguments seriously, hear them out and then figure out what exactly you disagree with them about and whether it's actually as much as you think when all comes to all.
The pompousness and shaming has to end in order for us all to come together.
Blaming everything on this false spectre of "misinformation" is nonsense. It's a veiled attempt to treat everyone who disagree with you as stupid.
Divisiveness is the number one enemy to personal freedom and free societies.
Having watched a bunch of these videos, I actually feel more confident in my disagreement with certain political figures - for example, John Bolton - having heard them out and better understood their position. Of course, I'm also more sympathetic to some people and positions that I didn't fully understand before.
So convincing your followers that your "opponents" are racist, communist, etc is apparently proving to be the best way to win in a connected society. I say that because that's what the winners on both ends are engaging in, and are winning.
AIPAC, "America's Pro-Israel Lobby", isn't worth a mention. Israel apparently does nothing that needs to be dealt with.
Are you Americans on this forum grateful that people like Mr Stamos decide for you which countries should have influence?