Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump | Hacker News Reader

Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump

washingtonpost.com

10 pointsnippoo5 comments

Cool, let's legalize censorship then. Let's have one specific group of people determine what is true, whoever they may be, and set the parameters of what may be talked about. Criticizing that group should be the first to be censored.

Look, there's lots of problems with Trump, QAnon and other groups. Open, honest, fair discussions are what's going to squash them and organically strip membership. Censorship won't solve it. Never has in history. Never will. You're only enraging those fires more. This isn't becoming a slippery slope. It's going to be an avalanche. Just because you may agree right now with those who have the power, doesn't mean you should give them a blank check of power. The past decade of politician and political party worship isn't healthy in general. They're all flawed humans, no matter what lip service they may pay. Add in there's a "clear enemy" for both sides to use as an excuse to gain more power and strip away freedoms... but hey, I'm just an asshole that likes reading history books for fun. What in the hell can past authoritarian rises of power teach us?

> Censorship won't solve it. Never has in history. Never will.

As long as you consider the Trump ban "censorship", it appears that it did, in fact, improve matters at least once. To wit: the article you're responding to.

Before the internet, it was infinitely more difficult to reach an audience. People weren't "banned" or "censored" or "canceled". They just were not published nor broadcast. If you insisted, you could maybe ditto a few hundred copies of your 'zine[0]. You can still do so today.

And yet, democracy thrived. It was the time people came up the idea of history "bending towards justice". Something that seems laughably naive today.

> Open, honest, fair discussions are what's going to squash them and organically strip membership."

That statement is just obviously disproven by very recent history and current reality. QAnon isn't caused by some media failure to prove that George Soros isn't actually harvesting children's brains. It's mass psychosis not connected to reality. To use a non-Trump example: Holocaust denial isn't caused by a lack of relevant information.

[0]: Those hand-driven duplicators are where the term. "crank" originated, which shows their spiritual connection to today's chaos.

The article is single sourced from a PR company without showing their data by utilizing an emotionally charged subject to fuel people's confirmation bias and sell their services to companies to protect brands from misinformation. Lesser articles have been called out on HN... why not this one?

I never liked trump and especially hated him after his speech right before the Capitol riot that incited that national embarrassment. I really want to see those bastards that paraded the confederate flag inside the Capitol rot in prison for every and all charges that apply. However, I won't agree to make him a proverbial martyr either. That'll just fan those flames some more. I want to see the stupidity end entirely, not just publicly.

If all it took was to boot him from social media, then that would make him some damned smart evil genius all these years, dont you think? Or, and here's my theory, he's a guy with good entertainment skills and knows how to pick out disenfranchised groups and spin them in his favor. All this disinformation also comes from it being "secret knowledge" or "things THEY dont want you to know". Any form of suppression only gives that mentality a dangerous positive feedback loop.

Look, if you think open, honest discussions are a bad thing, then theres nothing here. Every line about logical fallacies, discourse and spreading of knowledge is bunk and a waste of time. A centralized, authoritative group is the only practical alternative. Deciding what is factual without the need for further discussion or testing, because they did all the leg work and we dont need to see the data or counter points. Multiple sources with multiple viewpoints stating their case is a failed concept.

I just think it's funny that everyone woke up that big tech has too much power. Now their PR companies are trying to spin it to show they should have even more power. And people are going to agree with it because of wanting to hate. Gotta love it.

In response to the holocaust denial line. Yea, there are holocaust deniers. Not a single one is told to shut up anymore in the last few decades. Their arguments are heard, then they are shot down through fair discourse. Anyone who witnesses these arguments can easily see who is right and who is wrong. Hasn't really been much of an issue since then. Sure there are a few idiots, but they're ignored by individual choice, not by systemic suppression.

"Open, honest, fair discussions are what's going to squash them and organically strip membership."

I'm going to go with Hitchen's Razor on that claim.

I think you're trying to stretch a point here, use the term censorship when that's not quite called for. You're trying to say x is equivalent with y, and readers are supposed to realise that this makes x bad.

When you do that, you run the risk that readers instead think that y is good. In this case, that they might think Trump etc. have learned to exploit and misuse freedom of speech such that the practical result is an overdose of misinformation, worse than censorship. "So yes, he's right, let's legalise censorship."

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