Hacker News Reader

Comment by dandare | Hacker News Reader

Now think about all the conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be truth. MK ULTRA, Dark Alliance, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, COINTELPRO, PRISM, you name it. Would these be banned ("fact checked") from YouTube, Facebook or Twitter under these new rules?

On the other hand, there is a clear evidence that authoritarian regimes (Russia) are weaponizing social media, using troll farms, puppet accounts and fake news, to disrupt democracies by sowing discord, uncertainty and doubt and radicalise any and all opinion spectrums. I would be surprised if the Russian trolls did not actively work to promote and decry Covid conspiracies at the same time.

What is the correct solution here, that I don't know. No approach is flawless and there will always be collateral damage.

View on HN

> there is a clear evidence that authoritarian regimes

United States, say it with me, United States

My country suffered a literal coup as a consequence of US meddling in our internal affairs and hijacking our media, newspapers, radio, against the national interest and democratic values of the nation spreading literal fake news

I'll let you guess which country I am talking about, because heaven knows there's not only one

You reap what you sow

Sure nobody denies this but "you deserve it therefore stop complaining" is not really an argument, more like shutting down the point entirely.

Sure nobody denies this but "you deserve it therefore stop complaining" is not really an argument, more like shutting down the point entirely. I agree with you that the sanctimonious outrage over the attempted, but laughable election interference is quite tone deaf.

> United States, say it with me, United States

Murrica ... Mur-ri-ca ... MURRICA!

Just wait until the CIA is considered the foreign affairs authority, and all information that disagrees with them is considered misinformation.

The US government will be able to engage in as many coups as they want and Google and Facebook will help make sure nobody ever knows.

That already happened, basically. Anyone who talks about the CIA in anything but a positive light is a "conspiracy theorist" (their words). It's a criminal organization that has perpetrated an endless list of crimes against humanity, sponsored by the American taxpayer and undocumented money from terror campaigns. Now they have a happy little venture capital firm that invests in new tech, like google and facebook. What do you suppose the ROI is for those investments?

Please actually just state the country.

We're too concerned with edge cases to justify the absolute nightmare we are in with regards to information. For every "true" conspiracy theory there are millions of junk ones - of course some will be partially correct.

We are so afraid of losing "one correct idea" that we allow orders of magnitude more bad ones to flourish and drown out good ideas anyway.

Dealing with foreign powers abusing the system would be easy if the current administration didn't benefit from it.

> We are so afraid of losing "one correct idea" that we allow orders of magnitude more bad ones to flourish and drown out good ideas anyway.

The price we’re paying is not just that one correct idea. We’re giving up debate. That is expensive.

The large amounts of misinformation also threatens debate, does it not? Most misinformation and conspiracy theories are not looking for proper debate and often times result to logical fallacies and falsehoods to prove their point. Thus, proper debate is drowned out.

By and large I don't think debate is threatened. We have to draw a pragmatic line somewhere, otherwise we will waste time debating if the earth is flat and the endless amount of absurd ideas. Ultimately, we've already debated many of these ideals, if not explicitly.

I don't know if conspiracies do that much harm to debate. They're quite the fringe topic. Misinformation, yes, but classifying misinformation (in its not-so-obvious forms) is a hard problem. So while I agree there needs to be a line, I also think that in enforcing a ban on misinformation we will necessarily end up limiting debate. The line should stay at something like inciting violence.

How much time do you have? There are endless amounts conspiracy theories, often times discussed by people who don't have any clue. Society NEEDS a way to cut through the chaff and noise, or eventually it'll collapse in on itself, and someone wins (typically the one with better information.)

> The line should stay at something like inciting violence.

The government line should definitely stay there. But private corporations should be free to push any agenda that they like.

You forget that not all conspiracy theories are equal. A democracy could survive hundreds of bullshit conspiracy theories for decades, but suppress the next COINTELPRO and your democracy may be dead in five years.

Don't forget Epstein! "US media and political elites are engaging in a child sex trafficking ring" was (still is?) a conspiracy theory for years, if not decades.

> What is the correct solution here

Pull the plug on the mega-services. Take down FB for example, physically destroy the data centers.

> What is the correct solution here, that I don't know.

I know, ban what is fundamentally rooted in bullshit. Homeopathy, "all and every vaccine is bad", "these essential oils will cure your cancer", "5G causes corona", "earth is flat".

Done, there's no collateral damage, but helluva lot less lying.

> ban what is fundamentally rooted in bullshit

A noble sentiment, but the problem lies in who gets to decide what is and what isn't bullshit.

Some things aren't decidable.

Clowncore published a humorous music video titled Earth is Flat but renamed it to Earth because the algorithm can't detect humor, YouTube had un-recommended the original video and put a big info box next to it, insisting that the earth is not flat.

Do you think that 5G causes mass surveillance?

Well, it enables a greater proliferation of 'smart' devices with greater bandwidth, so yes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com