I am strongly anti-Trump and pro truth and reasonably pro Jack Dorsey and don’t disagree with anything you say except — I’m not sure why Jack Dorsey should get to decide what’s true just because he invented a social media platform
The question of "Who gets to decide the truth" is extremely tiring to refute - someone has always had the authoritative voice is determining what's true and what's not. You're shifting the burden of truth from one source to the other until there is no one you can trust.
Statement: Foo is Bar. [1]
[1] Source Baz.
You then need to argue, why does Baz gets to decide what's true or not? This goes on ad-infinitum.
By asking "Who gets to decide the truth", you're essentially saying "Why should I trust anyone?" and by that logic "I cannot trust anyone, so everything must be false." The society's fabric is based on trust in institutions. Whether it is government, an independent news source or whatever.
I guess I am more concerned about people harping on "Well, I don't trust APNews, why do they get to decide on truth." One can go down a conspiratorial path pretty quickly when theyve already made up their mind to not trust anyone or trust their favorite source that supports their arguments and emotional state.
What you need to know
- Voter fraud of any type is incredibly rare in the US, according to The Associated Press and Reuters
- US officials say the 2020 US election will be more secure than the 2016 US presidential election
- US officials confirm that foreign governments are trying to influence the US election, but that foreign governments' interference is mostly relegated to launching misinformation campaigns
- Experts say US elections are 'resilient'
It's really bad. Laughably bad. It might only confirms your biases if you already believe that the allegations are false, but if you haven't formed an opinion yet - I assure you, no one is ever going to be convinced by this. A lot of people are now treating those factcheckers as a complete joke that cannot be taken seriously. But I don't know, this is just what I noticed by observing this entire thing, make of it what you will.
Would you really teach your children "trust the New York Times and whatever the government says"? When both said Iraq had WMDs, did you believe them? In a perfect world we could all look at the source material (photos, videos, data, etc.) ourselves to figure out reality and there would be uncensorable platforms for individuals to call out corruption and reach the masses. This was the original promise of the internet and social media! Sadly the authoritarian left is insistent on defining "reality" and relishes censoring dissenting facts or opinions. Facebook and Twitter wields their "fact checking" and censorship on a might-is-right basis, which disenfranchises 50% of the population and is seriously incendiary to civil discourse.
If you think about the world where 80% of the people are religious, who throw away evidence in favor of faith; you're in for a dark future.
And it's important to have humility about being right about everything. You don't have to go back far to find folks on the left excited about the prospects for Venezuela. Now, it's possible to find scapegoats, but it does explain some of the right-wing perspective on fake news. If the left and the media had to see a country basically collapse to call the Venezuelan government problematic, what do you call the reporting and debate points before that? "Factual" doesn't cut it.
If I’m presented evidence from someone that has routinely lied to me, called me names, destroyed my career, and shipped my job prospects overseas, I’m not believing a single word they say.
Vaccine efficacy according to FDA says it’s 90%. ~~~~> Authority.
Paper published by FDA shows data ~~~~> Evidence.
Right?
Who wrote the paper and who collected the data? Some authority.
Biden voted for the Iraq War and 70 million people just installed him as President so we can go back to the glorious way things were before. Certainly the billionaire elites, deep state, globalists, big tech, pro war Democrats and Republicans, big business (which loves infinite cheap labor), China - they're all thrilled with where this goes next.
I wonder if all the people cheering for Biden (including the Europeans) will be offering apologies when Biden & Co. start the next round of wars, as we return to the ways things were pre-Trump. Biden's brain is jello, so somebody else is going to be steering the ship the next few years until he steps down for health reasons to set up Harris to run for re-election in 2024 running as the incumbent. Zero chance Biden's health holds up against the rigors of the job given how much he has collapsed mentally in the past four years (the stress of the job will make it that much worse).
As an American, I'm increasingly interested in leaving the country. Not specifically because of Trump or Biden, but because of everything, the general direction of the country, the imploding culture, the partisan venom, the fiscal disaster, the superpower globalism (including the war machine), the disastrous immigration policies. The US is fundamentally broken and will not be repaired, it's only going to get worse as real authoritarianism rises on both sides (socialism and fascism, both of which require extreme political violence, a small taste of which we've just recently been getting). The future of the US is Brazil, with more money. Canada is looking very nice (sane immigration policies, national selfishness regarding their priorities, no war machine, spending allocated effectively (the US spends more of its economy on its mediocre welfare state than Canada does and gets a lot less for it), a stable culture, and national civility).
Literally every source you will use, your own argument will falsify it.
As far as better information, diversity in viewpoint in journalistic within organizations will help. News that starts within a bubble is probably more distorted.
The social media problem is harder, but giving users ultimate control on how to filter fake news is important. Otherwise, social media companies should express editorial positions and advertise editorial services as a core part of their offerings, then consumers and content creators would have clear signals about biases in how information is curated on their platforms.
I do agree with you on one thing - I don't think we should blindly trust Twitter. I am arguing that before censorship, they need to provide a solid source of truth.
He just decided that these particular lies are too unreasonable for him to help spread them.
It's a little bit naive to think that the truth is easily discerned by any individual, it's always a matter of shades.
'Stole the Election' can mean many different things in many different contexts, not literally election fraud.
I detest Donald Trump and don't much like Jack Dorsey, but he should not be in a position to arbiter the truth.
I'm very thankful he censored Trump on the eve of the election, not thankful he banned the Post, and very worried about the future.
We probably need regulations over this.
The free speech people have to come to terms with the fact that the big mediums have always been filtered, and it only takes one insane president to start a civil war, that the truth among the plebes is 'Whatever their Ideologue Says' and so there needs to be credibility in the system.
The anti-Trump crowd who are happy with the censoring need to realize how dangerous of a game this is.
Twitter and FB need to set up a completely independent public board, with established guidelines and public oversight to manage these things..
That's the fundamental misalignment of understanding in this era: he doesn't. He gets to decide what his platform hosts and how he spins it. The determiner of truth is, as it has always been, the audience.
Ultimately, Twitter censors things it doesn't think are healthy for its platform. I think that's within its rights, but I don't think it's by any means objective.
A social media platform is a publisher, if it encourages news to be disseminated through its networks then it should be held to the same scrutiny.
Some might cry - well this is impossible! I can tweet anything and a stranger can share it, how can I cope with that volume etc... well, then you have to choose:
if you want to be a broadcaster, then you must obey the law and not broadcast propaganda or blatant falsehoods.
If you do not want to censor or edit, then you must stop being a broadcaster, that is you must limit the reach of that material, so that a person may only communicate it to their friend and not further in the same way as an ordinary conversation in person, by telephone, or text message would work.