Bad actors are returning to old-school methods of sowing chaos
niemanlab.org
niemanlab.org
Every power since civilization wields its power and pushes its own propaganda. Misinformation and censorship fall under this umbrella. If you honestly think the MSN, social media, tech giants, large donors, or even the current government are worth revolting over, this message is for you.
Any routing of power will be temporary and follow with quick usurpation by the next most powerful. I'm sorry to say, there is no quick solution to power coalescing, and you and I are not the next most powerful. There is only the steady march of technology, capital, and laws that equalize and distribute power which will lead to any sort of widely shared power equilibrium.
Stop pointing blame at this or that company, this or that politician or party, and build something lasting. The game is played with power, and none of us have enough to make a worthwhile difference sorry to say. Something lasting could be spreading good will, developing a piece of software, making a scientific discovery, educating yourself or others, or even building capital for some end. Slowly and steadily pluck the reins of power from the few to the many. I don't know what a truly equally distributed system of power will look like, but I believe it's the only end worth fighting for. Maybe you have to align yourself with current powers to get there, but wielding the power should never be the end.
If this diatribe seems out of place, it's because you aren't seeing all the terrible takes that were filling this thread in the first hour. But who am I to say.
This article talks about misinformation and then recommends journalists be part of the solution. Isn't poor journalism exactly how we got here?
An armed uprising is an absolutely terrible idea, it should be an absolute last resort in a world that’s basically fallen apart. Living in a strong and stable democracy is a privilege and the foundation on which all real wealth is built, both civic and material.
Imagine being such a weak-minded person that you believe in the existence of "harmful information". It's not even necessarily untrue or wrong, it's just "harmful". Harmful to whom? The people who own the media? Propagandists? This redefinition of the word "harm" is typical Newspeak bullshit.
Here's some harmful information for you: you're going to lose this war, because you're trying to impose censorship on people, and we hate it. We hate your patronizing attitude, your view that people are dumb and can't handle contrasting opinions about the world. People will build systems to route around this, to escape from your walled garden of comfortable verified propaganda.
It's a shame, but not a surprise, that COVID is being used as an excuse to shove all this control down people's throats. 9/11 was used as an excuse to shove the Patriot Act and other freedom-resticting laws into place that did not prevent any terrorism or make anything better (except for people with make-work TSA jobs). I get the feeling that Nieman Lab's members like many others were just waiting for some excuse to push even more draconian censorship mechanisms onto social media. 20 years from now, no doubt, some other big catastrophe will be used as an excuse to restrict things further.
You think you're doing a good thing, but you're just an apparatchik, just an agent of propagandists and moneyed interests, and it's obvious.
With that said, I think Trump crossed a big, big line yesterday. I agree with actions taken on his accounts yesterday, but not the larger muzzling of (admittedly often misguided or even heinous) speech in the broader context.
If you post something that disagrees with the mainstream take on COVID you can be banned from social media or at least have some banner text added to your post. Little by little, your right to post things you want is being eroded; it starts with "hate speech" and proceeds through to "misinformation" which, of course, is anything the gatekeepers say it is.
Of course it's going to look like it's being done reasonably to start with; they're not dummies. It's always done in some way such that it's hard to disagree with, until eventually everyone who is capable of disagreeing has been silenced.
> Sure lockdowns and such are being ordered but once the vaccination is completed those won't be continued.
God, I hope so. I really do still think there's a chance of returning to something that seems normalish. NZ seems to be managing. But the precedent is set: we have people pushing the narrative that "misinformation kills people" and therefore gatekeepers need to be in charge of what people can say.
One thing I think is interesting is sewerage testing.
I'd like to know more. Can we find if a person is in a city through sewerage?
They will be making the testing stations more granular as we speak.
I also think it's exciting we might wipe out many diseases through sewerage testing. It just sucks we are become a single cell in a large organism called government.
It's like cameras inside garbage trucks. It starts off at one thing and progresses.
Sewer testing started with drugs. Last I checked only China had used it for an actual bust. The rest were for monitoring.
Covid testing is following the different strains, so not just the existence but which strain.
No claim this is a great source, but it seems viable. Remember DNA is traceable from family as well -
"it was mentioned that one of the techniques available to determine if bin Laden was in the compound was “analyzing local sewage for genetic markers.” "