Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic. Disclaimer: these are opinions.

We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a world where articles could be retracted or condemned, particularly by even more mainstream outlets (because there is a spectrum from tabloid journalism to "respectable"). With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election.

I realize that I used a ton of loaded terms here. That reflects a couple of opinions that I hold: that there is value in institutions, that truth is a social construct, that maintaining order in people's lives has intrinsic value. Folks are free to disagree, but please be clear about whether it's with the premise or the conclusion.

I agree. Fabricating damaging information on the eve of an election is easier than ever, and impossible to correct. Allowing propagation of such fabrications is to be complicit with the bad actors responsible.

Disinformation could be tolerated if we, as a society, have the time and means to determine its veracity. But with the ticking clock of an election, disinformation is too easy.

Some countries have laws prohibiting any political news stories in the run-up to an election for precisely this reason.

So, what do you suppose? Prohibition of political news stories leading up to an election?

Have you heard of an October surprise?

"On October 20, 1880, shortly before the 1880 presidential election, a forged letter was published purportedly written by James A. Garfield voicing support for Chinese immigration to the United States. At the time, most white Americans opposed Chinese immigration and both presidential candidates were in favor of immigration restrictions.[3]"

And a list of many more.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise

> So, what do you suppose? Prohibition of political news stories leading up to an election?

That's exactly what I propose, precisely because October surprises are not in the best interest of democracy.

Many countries [1] prohibit all political news stories during their election cycle. An added benefit of this policy would be to limit the length of the election cycle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence

Election silence is unenforceable and becomes muddy in the era of the internet - with elections in USA, who do you sue if UK news outlet runs with some story? Who has jurisdiction? Besides, reporting news itself is usually still allowed as long as it is not political agitation ("Biden did something bad" is ok, "vote Trump" is not). I've been tempted to test this by posting agitation to Facebook from the USA (Poland still has election silence) or showing up with slogans to the polling stations (you can still vote when abroad in a few places set up by consulates), but I still like to visit my family from time to time.

If you're worried about the interests of democracy then I would think freedom of speech would be important.

And the majority of the prohibitions in the list are a very short time frame from 24-48 hours.

That just moves the date, because responses hit that deadline.

Without your proposed law: Stuff shows up 2 weeks before the election.

With a 10-week blackout: Stuff shows up 12 weeks before the election. (2 weeks before the blackout)

this is a good point, but I would not be surprised if the more recently someone hears a piece of information, the more impactful it is on their decisions. I would attribute this to not only individuals memory but also the amount of distractions within the 10 weeks (in your example) that would take away peoples focus.

Just an inclination, not sure how much of this would be supported by the literature if there is any

> Allowing propagation of such fabrications is to be complicit with the bad actors responsible.

Years of "sources says" later disproved. Russia this, Russia that. And it's only now that we should stop propagation of unverified stories?

It’s completely correctable. If fb/Twitter wanted to, they could track every person who saw a piece of “wrong” information, and plaster the retraction in front of their face.

I'd argue that, if anything, that would make some people more certain that it was true

The truth is not a social construct. Either Hunter Biden received that "thanks for the meeting with your father" email or he didn't.

Importance is a social construct. If that email is what it puports to be, then whether it is important is a point of view.

The media don't (mis)lead us by telling us lies, they do so by deciding which parts of the truth are important enough to tell us.

You can argue about facts all day, but I would argue that "truth" ends up being something more. Innocence or guilt, vindication on the history books, really any assignment of a quality is done by a collection of people, and the results apply with the bubble of people who have agreed to no longer question what is agreed upon as true.

I promise I could argue all day about whether your initial simple statement was true or not. What does received mean? What did the email say, and did it actually mean what you paraphrase? You'd probably view it as bad faith (and you'd be right), but that faith already implies the exact social consensus I'm taking about.

The accepted narrative is a social construct, and most people's understanding of the truth is closer to a narrative than a series of facts.

Our understanding of the truth of things we read online is a social construct. Whether or not Hunter Biden received an email isn’t something ordinary readers like us will ever know, having no direct access to any of the evidence. At best we can read accounts written by others and decide whether they seem plausible.

Even our understanding of Hunter Biden’s existence is a social construct to most of us, since we have never met him and never will. (It’s much easier to make the call on that one, though, based on pictures and it being undisputed.)

The email didn't say "thanks for the meeting with your father"; it thanked Hunter for "inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father", wording that leaves it ambiguous whether the meeting had already occurred or was in the future. This is important because, even if it is authentic, it does not necessarily contradict Biden's claim that (according to his schedules) no such meeting occurred.

Biden's claim is that there is no trace of the meeting in the diary, but they did mention that the meeting could have happened informally. So they didn't claim no such meeting occurred.

I am a bit puzzled that there wouldn't be a log of who comes in and out of government buildings. It should be easy to prove whether the said executives were at least in the building over that period or not.

Or better yet: Body cams for all politicians. Or camera + audio recordings of all government rooms and corridors. All encrypted, hashed and archived with a very specific and difficult to fake process that can "unseal" them.

I don't think I'm a genius or anything, but why aren't we putting really smart people on this problem and giving them plenty of funding? I constantly think we're just a few steps away from putting in a small set of technological solutions that would over time solve all our political/criminal problems.

E.g. Just imagine a world where all politicians, CEOs, major figure-heads are safely and securely recorded constantly. Think of all the ridiculous talking points and "Scandals" that would go away, be disproven, or never occur at all.

That was tried (recording the oval office for historical purposes). Then it was immediately weaponised by the political opponents and the recording system promptly removed.

Are you just adding some historical context and additional information? Or are you saying that to dismiss my idea/suggestion?

Well, I think it will result into the same consequences. It would be immediately weaponised by the political opposition and would be retired almost as soon as it was introduced.

All "things" can be weaponized to various degrees. The good has to outweigh the bad, and we can't dismiss potential solution areas because they can be weaponized to some degree or have some set of negative consequences. A lot of the things we take for granted that exist currently could just as easily have been argued-against under the banner of "can be weaponized by the political opposition". And we've seen that potential, and put various "checks and balances" in place to try to stem that possibility.

In my mind, the constructive way to proceed would be, and I'd hope that you or others would indulge me on this: How can we have a tamper-proof evidentiary record of all the conversations that politicians engage in whilst minimizing the potential of it being regularly abused/weaponized and compromising the privacy of the individuals involved?

False dichotomy

It would be if I was presenting an argument. However, I was asking out of curiosity. Their response seemed to be a criticism and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt by giving a valid alternative interpretation.

Criticism is not dismissal

Stay on topic, please.

I believe you're referring to what the Biden campaign said to Politico, that Biden could have had (in Politico's words) "some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi" but "any encounter would have been cursory". [1] The Washington Post notes that Hunter Biden did arrange for a different business partner to shake hands with Joe Biden at an existing public event, and speculates that he could have done something similar for Pozharskyi. [2] While it's only speculation, that does amount to another possible scenario where the email is accurate. But I wouldn't call such an interaction a "meeting" exactly, and it would scarcely be evidence of corruption.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bi...

Unfortunately the notion of truth or lie is often less clean cut.

For instance, when the media tell you "you can get reinfected by covid", is it a lie? As of today, there has been only 5 confirmed cases of reinfection worldwide, out of 50 millions confirmed cases. So it is technically possible but statistically insignificant. Are the media lying when they tell you it could happen to you? I think they do. But technically they don't.

Also most of the lying is lying by omission. I present you one fact but you will never hear about that other fact that completely mitigates the first (the context, or the rest of the sentence, etc). So you can say something factually correct while completely misleading your interlocutor.

> With social media, the genie is out the bottle with that initial statement, and there's no way to set the record straight anymore, let alone in two weeks before an election.

Isn't it actually easier to correct the record with social media since you can correct it immediately and reach the people immediately? Whereas with newspapers, you'd have to wait days/weeks and have to search the tiny section they reserve for corrections?

It's what made newspapers such great tools of propaganda. You push misinformation, spread it and then "retract" quietly relatively unseen.

Edit:

> If the idea that a particular professor or candidate is sexually exploitative becomes viral, can you really undo the damage?

My point is that it's easier to "unring the bell" via social media than via newspapers. We are discussing the "previous status quo" : A newspaper writes a lie. How do you "unring the bell"? You have to wait until the next time you publish - which varies depending on whether you are a daily, weekly, monthly.

Whereas in the social media era, you can just post on facebook, twitter, etc your retraction. The retraction is immediate and can be as visible as you want it to be.

What you can't stop are the conversations that continue about the topic itself, irrespective of the news story.

Wildfire also spreads much faster on the web. If the idea that a particular professor or candidate is sexually exploitative becomes viral, can you really undo the damage?

To your edit, we can rebuild cities after nuclear destruction much faster these days thanks to technology

It turns out this doesn't work. The relative prominence of the counter-information doesn't change people's first impressions.

People are still doing "but her emails" despite all the investigations into what happened. It's clear that the Hunter Biden story is an attempt to fabricate a "but his emails" narrative; there may be some facts in there, but none that impinge on Joe Biden.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com