Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

eshoo.house.gov

244 pointstemp8964565 comments

I’m deeply concerned about disinformation, it’s a major problem. Politics has always had spin, and many issues are complex and it can be easy to state things too emphatically to press your case. Accusations of lying are everyday in politics. But recently flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people has become normalised. It’s a serious threat.

This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it though. We cannot ever allow government to control what can or cannot be said, outside narrow limits such as incitement to violence. Making the case for the truth will just have to be done the hard way.

Fortunately it looks like this is only 2 congresscritters, not “House Democrats” generally. There are at least a handful of utter wing nuts on both party benches so last put this in perspective.

The main problem with social media services is algorithms that drive engagement by turning people’s feeds into an ever more extreme echo chamber. Whether it’s lefties being zombified into SJW snowflakes deplatforming people on campuses, or Qannnon turning people into alt right political flat earthers. That’s what they need to address, picking and choosing opinions to block is a fig leaf move that’s more likely to backfire than improve anything. It’s a hard problem though. What do we do about these engagement algorithms? I’ve no clue.

> This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it though. We cannot ever allow government to control what can or cannot be said

Can you please point me to a proposal for government to control what can or cannot be said?

Not a speculation about what might, in the future, be proposed based on what some people fear based on the questions in these letters, but an actual concrete proposal?

Otherwise, I don't see how “This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it” follows from “We cannot ever allow...” since the only possible thing “this” can refer to doesn't, at all, involve the thing we “cannot ever allow”.

Are you not able to see the implicit threat in this letter?

> outside narrow limits such as incitement to violence

Why can’t those narrow limits include “flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people?” Sure it’s a very human definition but it’s one with built-in limits on its scope. You can’t use it to ban wrongthink because it has to be from people who know that they’re lying.

> turning people’s feeds into an ever more extreme echo chamber

So yes but also this is done voluntarily. Those algorithms are keying on to the fact that I do not want specific kinds of content. If given the option I’ll even explicitly make my preferences known — I’ve blocked probably a thousand subreddits just to make my /r/all tolerable; Twitter is only usable if you confine yourself to niches. It’s #general or barrens chat that’s the cesspool of nonstop screaming.

Who determines what is true and what's a lie? Why do you trust them to make the right call?

Precisely -- and let's be clear here: the disinformation being discussed here breaks down along partisan lines.

We can barely get republicans and democrats to agree on a budget, what makes anyone think that they could reasonably come to an agreement on objective standards of truth in media? Let alone a process by which those standards are enforced? This is way, wayyyyy outside the realm of reality.

I agree with your point, though I think your example is a bit flawed: I think it's reasonable to disagree on what should be in a budget; there's no one "correct" budget where all other budgets are wrong.

On the other side, facts are facts. Assuming you actually have all the facts (which often we don't), there is only a single truth.

There's not only the issue of incomplete information, there's the issue of salience. There are an infinite number of true statements. Which ones do you focus on? Which ones are the right ones to focus on? You can detect bias in reporting not only based on what is said, but about what is not even mentioned.

The new york times won't run a story sympathetic to liberal individuals pushing back against the excesses of critical race theory. Fox news won't report on how even though there were anomalies in the election, none justified stopping the transfer of power to the Biden administration. Both are bullshit.

What people call a “fact” for these purposes is a lot broader than what epistemologically qualifies as a “fact.” You can see this with a lot of “fact checking” websites. The second item on the fact-check.org website is whether reduced wind power caused the Texas electrical outages: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/02/wind-turbines-didnt-cause-...

The percentage drop in window power megawatts is a “fact.” What “caused” the Texas power outage is a multi-variable system analysis that produces a conclusion, not a fact, under certain specified assumptions. (This is obvious to an engineer: the NTSB spends months investigating what “caused” a plane crash, and issues a report with conclusions, not facts. The notion that some journalist can in a day or two perform a similar analysis on a complex system like a power grid, and report the result as a “fact” blinks reality.)

Yes, the "fact-checkers" we already have should give us a hint at what "lie-checkers" would do.

Then don’t have them. Having lie checkers on the internet is a moronic idea. This rule is to stop organized coordinated disinformation campaigns. It’s to take down sites who’s whole purpose is to literally make up news stories, present them as fact, and spread them on social media.

It was mean sarcastic. In case you haven't figured out how awful the fact-checkers are.

An no, if you ban "disinformation" you ban free speech. There is no way to figure out if a flat earther publishes something for disinformation purpose or if he really believes what he writes. Disinformation is best frighted by debunking it, not by removing it. Most people have heard form the flat earth but most dont believe it. Because they can inform themself. That's how it should be. No need to "save" everyone trough authoritarian measures. The risk here is way higher than having to deal with some forever flat earther.

> Disinformation is best frighted by debunking it

I used to believe that as well. Then we did real world practical experiments over the last decade. It's clear most people don't give a shit about informing themselves and will readily believe just about anything.

Not saying the solution is regulating what can / cannot be said, but this idea that free speech is the ultimate thing isn't working when you have groups that can spend troves of cash making their disinformation legitimate enough for the masses.

Both you and i probably believe at least one, maybe more of those things, by the way. It's not all outlandish nonsense, sometimes it's reasonable enough to believe at first glance and you don't bother looking it up afterwards.

I accept this as unavoidable reality. The only way to fight this problem is education. I'm not worried much about the fact that everyone "believes" some stuff that is actually not true. This is and was the case for all time humans where alive. In time where people had the opportunity to debate the different "truths" humanity made progress. In times or societies where this was not possible progress was slow. we dont need and will never get the absolute truth. but wee need freedom to search for it. there is no guarantee that we will find it and even the opinion of the majority can be wrong and often is but it will self-correct as long as pointing out the wrong is allowed. There will always come a time where the wrong becomes obvious to the majority. Pointing out the wrong will be disinformation if the people who decide are in the wrong. We can not have that risk.

So back to the start. You cant have an authority who decide. whats right or wrong has to be proofed/debunked. And it can not be removed afterwards as this would invalidate the debunking. This is a slow and inefficient process we should probably focus on making it better because it works, it just does not work as good and as fast as the modern world would require. The shortcut "solutions" however will most likely not work at all and potentially case more harm than good.

I fully agree with you that education is the ultimate solution, but in the mean time, wtf do we do about the entities that have wealth and power, and are able to influence millions of people on just about whatever the fuck they want?

What do we do when the things they choose to influence the population on are no longer just "the rich getting richer" but become actual existential threats? When they get dictators elected, make climate change worse, endanger lives by producing healthcare misinformation, etc?

Does it matter that, over the long term, there are more idealistic freedom of speech ideals if we don't live long enough to even get to the long term?

I dont know a solution to solve this all either. But I'm worried we make it worse with bad solutions.

Certainly you dont want to give these powerful people the tools to become more powerfully by implementing an authoritarian system against disinformation. Its rather obvious that if these powerful people can not circumvent that system they will become the system. If they can manipulate millions they sure can manipulate or replace the few "decision makers" too. Now you have powerful people spreading disinformation who also have the power to remove any critics simply by labeling it disinformation.

Wait no. That’s not how this works. There’s no determination of fact. It doesn’t matter whether what you said is true or false — this isn’t a rule against being wrong. It’s a rule against someone speaking something they know and believe a priori to be false with the intent to mislead people.

Like it’s literally the same ideas as fraud but applied to misinformation. If you believe that climate change is a hoax then you’re fine, tell the world. But if you make up a study and data “disproving” climate change and then circulate it in Facebook then you’re not.

Unless you have a mind-reading device, there is no way to be sure what somebody believes.

> Unless you have a mind-reading device, there is no way to be sure what somebody believes.

In general, we are comfortable doing this in at least some contexts. The legal system in almost every case attempts to ascertain intention to satisfy the mens rea of a criminal act. They don't have mind reading devices, but they do have expert witnesses such as psychologists and doctors, and testimony.

> It’s a rule against someone speaking something they know and believe a priori to be false with the intent to mislead people.

If one doesn’t believe in the Holocaust, yet publishes erudite webpages with the intent to mislead others (at least from his POV) into thinking it really happened, would that be a problem?

If yes, you are consistent, albeit a bit crazy.

If no, your rule reduces, once again, to a focus on the falsity of the communication as opposed to the writers intent.

It would be a problem! I don’t think people would care as much because it’s the same as stealing a balloon on free balloon day but you still have a guilty mind and had the intent to deceive people regardless of your success at it.

It becomes a bigger issue if the evidence on the site is made up but I won’t assume that.

I don’t understand this. Can you give an example where the truth is some how elusive or difficult to obtain?

Human knowledge is pretty advanced and accessible.

Even if there would be a simple way to define "lying" in this context and a simple 100% effective way to proof it. It would only shift the problem not solve it. You can already "lie" under oath if you formulate something as opinion if there is nothing that contradicts your statement, its that simple. If people can be sentenced for the writing words online if they intentionally lied that just puts a target on normal people an make professional writers team up with lawyers to avoid ever writing anything that could be deemed a lie. That solve no problem at all. People find a way to tell you that the earth is flat anyway. Putting wrong speaking closer to wrongdoings is a very dangerous idea in general. we should want more speak not less and we get that if speech is tolerated.

The "inciting violence" thing is already very very close to breaking the concept of free speech. And it can also be defeated simply by linguistic tricks. "Kill the ...." would incite violence but "I think we should kill the ..." expresses an opinion. Also this very example here used the same words as something that in fact could incites violence but clearly my post isn't. Now do we really want an AI to detect de difference? Or maybe real human? Moderators who are almost certainly not qualified to judge because a content moderator isn't a judge and should not be.

> But recently flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people has become normalised. It’s a serious threat.

It's literally propaganda. A Russian tactic called the firehose of falsehoods.

The trick is making the truth politically related, so the real truth doesn't matter anymore.

And people can just say it's a "x" opinion to dismiss it. It's unfortunately pretty effective as we've seen...

Propaganda is not an inherently russian technique and that fact that you believe so implies you are a victim of anti russian propaganda.

The firehose of falsehood is propaganda sure, but it's principles were consciously and deliberately developed by the USSR as a particular propaganda technique. It's partly based on the rhetorical strategies used by Lenin. One of his (Russian) biographers called him the godfather of post-truth politics.

I explicitly mention firehose of falsehoods.

I didn't say that propaganda is solely Russian. But that technique is closely aligned to Russian propaganda which we can all "admire" in the open ( eg. rt)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood#:~:tex....

Please, don't change subjects. The technique used by T. Is most similar to what i mentioned. You haven't given any source to discredit that.

The violent attack on the capitol was the result of fake news media without anyone ever inciting violence. They simply need to repeat over and over that the election was stolen and that caused the violence and people died.

Incorrectly yelling Fire in a crowded theater is illegal and no one is inciting violence in that situation either. There are many commonalities between broadcasting fake news for profit and propaganda, and incorrectly yelling fire in a crowd. Both end up resulting in public safety hazards.

It is a difficult problem to deal with because there is always the possibility of corruption and a reduction in genuine free speech when there is regulation involved. But it is a problem that has to be solved.

It is also no longer social media only, it is Fox, OANN, NewsMax, Sinclair, etc that are increasingly filling up air time with lies solely to make a buck.

> But it is a problem that has to be solved.

Do you think the solution should come from the government? It seems implied here but just checking.

Do you have any other options? I don’t care who solves it, but when a company is run for the intent to produce propaganda it’s pointless to ask them to self regulate.

There is always the option to let the issue sort itself out. To allow space and time for a solution to emerge.

We should be careful not to fall into action bias. E.g. the thought that we need to do something, anything, since that can lead to counterproductive solutions.

I've begun to look at information problems like this not too differently than viruses of thought. Right now these viruses are running rampant because we've never had to deal with anything like them before on such a wide scale. It seems perfectly possible to me that over time we will develop social standards that immunize us from these viruses. More and more people will begin to disregard clickbait, outrage-inducing headlines, etc. They will simply become less salient the more and more we experience them.

Reframing the question at hand around this metaphor: What would an effective vaccine look like for these thought viruses? I'm not at all sure, but I can't imagine any kind of partisan response that would work, since these viruses infect left and right alike, and many people will bend over backwards to argue otherwise. Until we can face that fact honestly, I don't see how we could even begin to have a productive conversation about a solution.

So in other words no, but you don’t think it’s a long term problem?

I honestly think your fath in humanity is refreshing. Personally, I think this is just reversion to the mean where simply lying was historically the most common response.

> I honestly think your fath in humanity is refreshing. Personally, I think this is just reversion to the mean where simply lying was historically the most common response.

Its your faith in humanity that's "refreshing" if you think giving the people with the guns the power to police speech is the proper solution.

Don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t suggest government regulation of speech.

Though I will admit debate rules where each side gets equal time back to back to be somewhat humorous. That’s mostly my love of chaos and the spectacle of such an idea.

Apologies, didn't mean to put words in your mouth, but that's how I interpreted the following:

dnissley: "Do you think the solution should come from the government? It seems implied here but just checking."

Retric: "Do you have any other options?"

Odd, I was initially thinking in terms of a non governmental organization to regulate the terms Reporter and News much like how Doctor is a protected. But, that doesn’t seem viable.

The medical monopoly is more expansive than that. It regulates not just the use of the terms but the practice of medicine itself. And those rules are backed by the force of the government. If that’s what you’re suggesting for journalism, it’s even worse. It ultimately has the backing of government, but without the political accountability.

That’s one of many issues, however the peanut butter vs peanut spread line feels like a useful benchmark.

You could call your a current events organization and say anything or call yourself a News organization and be held to some standard. That IMO avoids limitations on free speech as the body of the message is what’s important not the label of such a method. As you say using government force to require organizations to change their name is distasteful.

However, coming up with a new term like whizphish that currently has no meaning but could gain meaning in this context should avoid stepping on any toes while achieving similar goals. LEED Platinum certified doesn’t directly have government backing, but a building falsely claiming such is simple fraud.

>Reframing the question at hand around this metaphor: What would an effective vaccine look like for these thought viruses? I'm not at all sure, but I can't imagine any kind of partisan response that would work, since these viruses infect left and right alike, and many people will bend over backwards to argue otherwise. Until we can face that fact honestly, I don't see how we could even begin to have a productive conversation about a solution.

Actually, there are effective ways to identify the credibility of information. From the well known CRAAP.[0] test to "lateral reading"[1] and a host of related [2][3][4][5] methods to clarify the credibility of online (or offline, for that matter) material. There are even curricula[6] that addresses these issues.

And no, none of these methods are partisan. Rather, they give the reader tools to help them determine the validity and credibility of information.

That many folks don't do so is definitely a problem. One of the less involved methods is "lateral reading" as described in [1]. I heartily recommend it, as well as other methods.

[0] https://researchguides.ben.edu/source-evaluation

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-a...

[2] https://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides...

[3] https://paperpile.com/g/find-credible-sources/

[4] https://libanswers.tcl.edu/faq/6286

[5] https://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm

[6] https://www.schrockguide.net/critical-evaluation.html

They're not partisan, no, but as you kind of allude to ("many folks don't do so") a prerequisite for using them properly is a certain ideological flexibility that is... less common these days. If someone is ideologically possessed, they will use these tools to skewer outgroup ideas but not apply them to ingroup ideas. As the letters in this very post demonstrate even our congress people can't apply them to their own thinking!

And as far as a governing apparatus, I'm not sure these tools really help provide the structure needed to declare any given piece of media misinformation or not.

> If someone is ideologically possessed, they will use these tools to skewer outgroup ideas but not apply them to ingroup ideas.

Not just that, but ideologically-possessed people will flat-out reject a truth-finding methodology that results in conflicts with their worldview.

There's no point in giving someone the tools to find the truth if they're so wedded to their "truth" that evidence will not make them change their minds.

>There's no point in giving someone the tools to find the truth if they're so wedded to their "truth" that evidence will not make them change their minds.

Are you making the argument that because some folks won't use them, such tools/methods are useless?

Perhaps useless in the sense that those who need them the most will either refuse to use them or misuse them.

Going further... I think it might be fair to say that those tools just don't scale.

>Perhaps useless in the sense that those who need them the most will either refuse to use them or misuse them.

I'd argue that such tools are valuable to everyone, even those who have no interest in verifying the credibility or veracity of information sources.

As the old saw goes, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Or both more snarkily and (IMHO) more accurately, "you can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can't make him think."

>Going further... I think it might be fair to say that those tools just don't scale.

I'm not sure what your mean by "scale" in this context.

Determining for oneself the credibility/veracity of information or an information source is (and should be, IMHO) inherently an individual pursuit.

>And as far as a governing apparatus, I'm not sure these tools really help provide the structure needed to declare any given piece of media misinformation or not.

If my post came across as suggesting that the methods I linked to should be used in some sort of [quasi]-governmental way to determine what is "good" or "bad" information, then I apologize.

My focus was strictly on answering GP's question[0] on an individual basis:

"What would an effective vaccine look like for these thought viruses?"

I was also trying to imply that there are already ways to "separate the wheat from the chaff" that are quite well-known and well thought out.

But they are just tools. And what use someone (doesn't) makes with such tools is up to them.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244080

> Reframing the question at hand around this metaphor: What would an effective vaccine look like for these thought viruses?

Well, if stopping disinformation is too hard for various reasons, maybe we can focus on the problem from the other direction: we need to find ways for accurate information to be easier to find and to verify.

If you think of misinformation more like a bacteria, then one of the common causes of bacterial infections is that the regular good bacteria have been wiped out for one reason or another. Antibiotics might help, or they might make the problem worse.

I do think we have some serious institutional problems that are preventing the usual sources of accurate information from operating effectively. News that's become overtly partisan, and an economic model that selects for the most sensational headlines. Scientific research findings that aren't reproducible. Universities becoming increasingly run like profit-focused corporations, and too expensive for many to attend due to lack of public funding. Misinformation is always a problem even in the best of times, but it can also fill the void when there's a lack of accurate information.

I don't know what the solution is. I tend towards more distributed models of information sharing that have fewer institutional gatekeepers declaring who the experts are, but I don't know exactly what that looks like, or how to do that in a way that tends towards more credibility rather than less.

In my previous comment, I am roughly equating incorrectly yelling fire in a crowded theater with broadcasting fake news to millions of people.

If there were a way to clearly differentiate between free speech and fake news, then yes, I would support legal ramifications for spreading blatant intentional fake news created solely as profitable propaganda that causes harm, and treating that as intentionally lying about fire in a crowd.

I don't know what the best organization or process for setting that up would be. After a certain number of complaints, can we transparently look into the owners of the news media, their revenue streams, their involvement with foreign governments, to determine whether a company is a legitimate news source or not? Can we get non-profits and media-freedom watchdogs involved to ensure fairness? Can we get the fairness doctrine running again? I don't see why not.

The violent attack on the capitol was the result of the sitting President of the United States claiming the election was stolen and telling them to march on the capitol.

That is decidedly not a social media thing.

Social media gave him the mob, but it was a man with a podium that incited the action.

> The violent attack on the capitol was the result of the sitting President of the United States claiming the election was stolen and telling them to march on the capitol.

If true, this would be much more convincing with a direct quotation and a source, rather than your interpretation.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolutio...

> we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

> I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-s...

> Incorrectly yelling Fire in a crowded theater is illegal

No it's not. See Brandenburg v. Ohio.

It was made more specific in Brandenburg v. Ohio but it was not overturned. ie, if someone is falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater which is "speech brigaded with action" then it is a situation where a person could be prosecuted for speech. They used that very example.

Edit:

People can read it themselves: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/395/444

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

Fire in a crowded theater is specifically mentioned as the sort of case in which a person could be prosecuted for speech.

Why was this downvoted? garg is quite plainly correct:

> The example usually given by those who would punish speech is the case of one who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theatre.

> This is, however, a classic case where speech is brigaded with action. [...] They are indeed inseparable and a prosecution can be launched for the overt acts actually caused.

> Apart from rare instances of that kind, speech is, I think, immune from prosecution.

This couldn't be more explicit in saying that falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre is a prosecutable offense. (As long as an injury occurred.)

And "speech brigaded with action" would still have to pass the muster of being "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action". One would have to prove a criminal element (almost always a mens rea) in addition to such speech rather than holding the presumption that the words themselves carry a distinguishing factor among other things. You're right to say it's prosecutable (although technically anything is prosecutable), however what you appear to allude to (and I could be wrong in assuming that of your claim) is that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is prima facie unprotected speech. If so, then that hasn't been true since the Brandenburg test was instituted.

Meanwhile the left dominated media was a major enflamer of the violence of BLM and Antifa.

Take the politics out of it — unaccountable, unquestioned mass communication is almost always bad.

Mass media needs the fairness doctrine back to take the carnival show out of the news. Social media is no exception.

The current model basically neuters editorial discretion and creates a “Team A” vs “Team B” environment that is bad for everyone. These problems started in niche mediums like talk radio and eventually locked in because it’s an easy way to make money. The problem is it’s a race to the bottom, and outlets like OANN, RT, etc are really self-sustaining propaganda outlets. The NY Post has an editorial voice but their news product isn’t fiction.

On the internet, if you give Facebook, Google, etc rules, they will develop algorithms to comply. IMO, regulation in the space would improve the quality of engagement and make them money. P&G won’t buy ads associated with flat earth people, and they pay more than the gold coin, prostate pills, crazy pillow people, etc.

The First Amendment forbids any such legislation.

And thank god for it.

We should probably thank the _humans_ that wrote it.

Per Thomas Jefferson the "unalienable rights" guaranteed by the US Constitution are God-given, and cannot be suspended or set aside by other humans.

But they can be added to? Either it's a human document you can amend or it's an immutable religious text.

The unalienable rights are in the declaration of independence. The bill of rights are like human made restrictions on government which attempt protect the unalienable rights (correct me if I am wrong).

Per Thomas Jefferson, people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," which has different nuances than "God-given." And it was in the Declaration of Independence as someone else said, only thematically connected to the Constitution.

If you want to cite the Declaration, you should probably quote that entire passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It absolutely does not do any such thing. Speech can be well-regulated, just like other constitutional rights. Your right to speak does not mandate a megaphone.

What I described was the law from the 1930s until the 1980s. Our predecessors saw what happened in fascist and communist states and wisely took measures to avoid that.

I'd like a cite for Speech can be well-regulated.

First Ammendment caselaw is a little muddled, however, content regulation falls between strict scrutiny and per se invalid depending on which way the wind is blowing. See eg. Simon & Shuster v. NY (invalidating Son of Sam law). See also, RAV (invalidating hate speech law).

What measures?

I think there's a legitimate difference whether the Fairness Doctrine was imposed as a condition of licensing the use of a limited, public resource (frequency spectrum allocation) or as an attempt to regulate freedom of the speech or press.

Because of the way it was implemented, I believe it was a condition of the use of public spectrum, not a regulation on speech broadly.

> Speech can be well-regulated, just like other constitutional rights

Broadly, the opinion of SCOTUS has been that speech cannot be regulated outside of very particular circumstances, and those circumstances have, in general, been shrinking over time (from undefined to "clear and present danger" to "imminent lawless action" to clarify that "imminent lawless action" really means right now, and not just relatively soon)

The Fairness Doctrine isn't a regulation on speech, it's a regulation on use of government licensed airwaves.

FYI: the "well-regulated" of 2A refers to a concept more along the lines of "well oiled" than what we term "government regulation" today.

And yet the Fairness Doctrine was the rule for 38 years, and the US Supreme Court agreed it was within the purview of the FCC to do so.

It's not about free speech, it's about what's broadcast over public airwaves.

But that was only in the context of radio broadcasting, where there is a scarcity of frequencies. Even while it was active, the Fairness Doctrine never applied to cable television: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ronald-reagan-fairness-doc...

https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/

"Since cable’s infrastructure is privately owned and cable channels can, in theory, be endlessly multiplied, the FCC does not put public interest requirements on that medium."

In the context of cable news and journalism on the internet (basically infinite supply), there's no version of the Fairness Doctrine that would hold up.

> Mass media needs the fairness doctrine back to take the carnival show out of the news. Social media is no exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine ("The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented.").

I would love to see MSNBC airing opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. They could have someone on to explain that Obama was putting undocumented immigrant children in cages, defend Hobby Lobby, etc.

> * I would love to see MSNBC airing opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.*

ME TOO.

Something that drives me nuts about the current political climate is that some people are so sure of their views on seemingly every hot topic. I think this is because of a complete lack of discussion of any opposing viewpoints, which I believe is fundamental to actually understanding an issue. If you refuse to consider why people think differently, how can you possibly engage with them? Isn't the goal of any sort of political activism to get more people to vote the way you do?

Unfortunately I don't think it would work out very well, given the current media machinery. I find cable news completely ridiculous as a whole, but the rare cases where they do bring in someone to discuss an opposing viewpoint are really something. (one that comes to mind was Fox having a "union leader" on sporting a full track suit, big cigar, and several giant rings on his hands like he was a Sopranos character.)

> Isn't the goal of any sort of political activism to get more people to vote the way you do?

yes, but not THINK. The last thing activism wants is for people to think and consider the alternative.

What a cynic way to look at things. Anti-war activists in the 60s didn't want people to think? Pro-democracy protests Warsaw Pact countries, in Hong-Kong? Anti-capitalist activists today, even vegan activists?

Go to a group of BLM or antifa activist protest and tell them you voted for Trump, see how that works out for you. Not all activists do not want you to think, but that doesnt change the fact that the majority are against it.

If you go to an anti-X protest and proclaim you voted for X how can you reasonably expect not to be told to fuck off?

That is precisely the problem. The expectation is abnormal (for the modern age and standpoint of Enlightenment values) and harmful.

Look beyond the proverbial horizon of contemporary America, and see that in civilised societies, the appropriate response would be tolerance at the very least, possibly an exchange of minds in the form of inquiry or discussion.

It’s ridiculous for the very least response for all ideas to be tolerance when there are some ideas that shouldn’t be tolerated at all. For example racism , by any means, shouldn’t be tolerated. Activists against racism shouldn’t be expected to tolerate the very thing their advocating against.

This is shifting the goalpost/improper generalisation, did you notice? Grand³-parent was about going "to a group of BLM or antifa activist protest and tell them you voted for Trump".

> Mass media needs the fairness doctrine back

Commercial mass media.

If you want to operate as a non-profit, do what you like.

But if you make >$x in profit on a regulated channel (radio, tv, streaming audio or video, or platform of same), then you have fairness requirements to satisfy.

Write it in safe harbor terms. If you do one of x, y, or z, then you gain protection for all of your content.

Where x might be "ensure your feed algorithms mix content according to physically local norms." y might be "produce educational content without a clear position, about an issue of interest to the public." Etc.

> outlets like OANN, RT, etc are really self-sustaining propaganda outlets

Absolutely. They're the "news" realization of the same system social media companies have optimized for.

If the system of rules you have in place incentivizes sewer creatures, change the system. Don't waste time trying to play whack-a-mole on evolutionarily fit species created by your environment.

"That’s what they need to address, picking and choosing opinions to block is a fig leaf move that’s more likely to backfire than improve anything."

Counter point - before social media that is exactly how it worked for the last 100 years. Newspapers, radio stations and tv stations were picking and choosing opinions to block.

This entire problem is actually being caused by the total removal of editorial discretion from sane people.

I have no problem with platform owners editorialising. Well I do in some sense, if it's done in a shitty way, but that's an opinion and shouldn't be legislated.

Editorialising on a publishing platform you own is a right I'd not like to see infringed on. It's a matter for free citizens to decide. If the public disagree with the editorialising, they can use another platform. It's freedom all round. It's not ideal, but the alternatives are worse.

The letter complains about Fox and OANN's partisan and inflammatory rhetoric, with supporting citations to sources on the left who trade heavily in partisan and inflammatory rhetoric. Just three citations in you get to Karen Attiah, Washington Post's Global Opinions Editor: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/29/karen-attia...

> “White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s,’ and not calling for revenge,” Ms. Attiah tweeted to her 185,000 followers Sunday evening.

> “Non, je ne regrette rien,” she wrote in another tweet, making it clear she had no regrets.

Regarding misinformation, Rachel Maddow has suffered no negative consequences for jumping on every Trump-related conspiracy theory to pop up in the last four years: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-rachel-maddow-is-on-the-co...

> From there, the floodgates opened. “Commentary television is not news,” snapped David Cay Johnston of the New York Times, himself just days removed from saying on Democracy Now! that “I think [Trump] is a Russian agent.”

> He added: “Rachel Maddow in particular has certainly pushed the Mueller matter,” doing so in conjunction with “the facts at the time.” However, he said, her work was “driven by the commercial values of television.”

It's fair to say that Maddow has an opinion show, not a news show. But that distinction doesn't seem to matter to the Congresspeople who wrote the letter here--they suggest censoring Fox News, which accurately reported the election results and Supreme Court developments. The conspiracy theories, such as they were, came from some of the opinion hosts.

Make no mistake. Whether it's "inflammatory" speech or "misinformation"--these rules will not be applied even-handedly. Such rules are not even amenable to even-handed application.

>I don't really care what inflammatory things people post in their free time. But make no mistake that there will be double standards in how these rules will be applied.

This seems like a red herring though? These letters are talking about the statements that news sources make as official outlets, to which you're comparing statements an individual makes (presumably) on her own time. I don't deny that there's a potential for double standards here, but I think you would have to show that misinformation in the Washington Post is comparable to misinformation on OANN or Newsmax to show that one is being applied in this instance.

Honestly, this isn't any more helpful than responding "citation needed" to someone asserting that man-made causes will accelerate climate change. The inevitability of the abuse of political power is not something that has to be debated over and over again in every thread.

>The inevitability of the abuse of political power is not something that has to be debated over and over again in every thread.

I don't contest this, what I contest is the idea that there is comparable misinformation on both sides. rayiner has since updated his post with some examples that he thinks constitute misinformation by news sources themselves, but before the only example given was the tweets from the Washington Times link.

I responded about the future because the quote you disagreed said "there will be", and I think the general tone of discussion here is around the potential future for abuse. We've seen notable comments by Democratic voters who are legitimately afraid of what their party will become. In this context, I'm not sure if current comparisons of misinformation are very relevant.

Having explained my thinking, I'll make sure to respectfully engage with yours. I do see the point about both sides not being equal in misinformation. But I think that a lot of the apparent difference comes from bias. There are several liberal narratives that are as baseless as anything in QAnon, and others that are partially factually accurate but framed in very misleading ways. But as these are accepted and promulgated in mainstream media, they are not considered fringe misinformation. I think there may still be greater fault on the "right" in misinformation, but it's not nearly as large as it appears to people in a liberal bubble, and, moreover, that disparity can shift overnight. I don't really want to derail this into a debate about those political narratives, so I probably have to leave it at that.

I agree that the potential for future abuse of a power to regulate misinformation is high. That does not necessarily mean that it outweighs the current value, but I think reasonable people can disagree about this and I think it’s a debate we should be having, given the events of 1/6.

I don’t want to get into an argument about which side is worse here or whether they’re equivalent. Suffice it to say, we have different perspectives and I don’t think discussing that is enlightening here.

Thank you for the respectful discussion. I feel like I understand your position a lot more clearly now.

what I contest is the idea that there is comparable misinformation on both sides

I don't see that we need to even consider the question of parity. Saying that one side or another is worse, and therefore requires special attention, is wrong: it's false that only the worst offender should be policed.

All sides should be subject to the same rules, whether they're doing it a lot or just a little. My personal philosophy is that for all sides, the remedy is to encourage more information to shine light on the falsehoods, rather than trying to gag any ideas.

>All sides should be subject to the same rules, whether they're doing it a lot or just a little.

Sure, absolutely.

>Saying that one side or another is worse, and therefore requires special attention, is wrong: it's false that only the worst offender should be policed.

This is not my position, I just disagree that the "left-wing" media outlets that rayiner identified are materially engaged in misinformation in the same way that the outlets identified in these letters are.

But I also don't really want to litigate this question, as it's a recipe for a flame war.

>My personal philosophy is that for all sides, the remedy is to encourage more information to shine light on the falsehoods, rather than trying to gag any ideas.

In general I agree, but we're in a state of exception right now. Since 1/6, certain ideas have now proved themselves to be dangerous to (small-d) democratic rule. I don't think this is an easy question to answer, or I would be giving the easy answer, instead of asking the question: what actions are legitimate in this instance to preserve democracy, and do they include regulating the speech of institutions which reject majority rule? Karl Popper has an answer here, but I'm a pretty strict constitutionalist and a strong believer in freedom of speech, so I can't unreservedly suggest the government should intervene.

What exactly are those ideas?

That a legitimate election was manipulated by powerful people to install the loser, and that the people who voted for the other guy need to stand up for what’s right and defend the “real” America.

I absolutely agree there is a distinction in general. However, I don't think that distinction applies to the Twitter posts of a blue-checkmark journalist. The news outlets themselves are heavily involved in Twitter, and Attiah prominently advertises her Washington Post affiliation on her Twitter account.

Her affiliation with a prominent media company is why she has a blue checkmark: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...

> Notable Your account must represent or otherwise be associated with a prominently recognized individual or brand, in line with the notability criteria described below.

> News organizations and journalists: Any official accounts of qualifying news organizations, as well individual accounts of journalists employed by qualifying organizations may be verified, if the account is public (does not have protected Tweets) and refers directly to the name and official URL of the qualifying organization and otherwise meets the criteria laid out in this policy

> While I agree there is a distinction, I don't think that distinction applies to the Twitter posts of a journalist.

We can disagree on this, but it's absolutely a question of current debate and not something that is settled. Some journalists believe themselves to have freedom on Twitter that they do not have in their columns. Some have been fired for assuming as such. Others have not.

> Whether it's "inflammatory" speech or "misinformation"--these rules will not be applied even-handedly.

When one source of disinformation has a contribution to negative outcomes, It's going to draw more scrutiny. As long as that happens regardless of content-origin, it's the kind of even-handedness that I'd hope for.

You mention Maddow, and, while I don't watch her, If her show's content possibly contributed to a putsch, I'd hope that someone would look into it.

Media has been full of crazy for decades now and authorities typically look the other way until some significant event occurs. January 6th was very significant, and if Fox/oann/newsmax had a role in it, I'd like to know. Bringing up Maddow and other opinion sources seem like whataboutism here.

MSNBC is just as partisan and loose with the truth as fox news, but with a centrist liberal perspective. CNN seems slightly better, but they have a lot of questionable reporting and analysis as well.

I think the magnitude of the lies on the Fox side is far larger than those on the CNBC side.

Magnitude matters in this case and painting them with "both sides" arguments is a huge disservice.

MSNBC has a history of misinformation contributing to the highly polarized environment today.

Here is a video showing how MSNBC purposefully cropped footage of an armed protester at an Obama townhall to hide his race (he was black), and used the clip to immediately launch into a discussion claiming that town hall protesters were motivated by racism. Soon after that media cycle my peers in college started assuming that most criticism of Obama is motivated by racism. These kinds of attitudes directly contributed to the current culture war of bad faith ostracism and tribalism.

https://youtu.be/fvBQDHqdCck?t=130

Remember, a left wing activist also took violent action and shot up Congressmen at a baseball field. The argument of a "sufficient level" of misinformation and/or butterfly-effect-violence can be used to justify arbitrary intimidation and censorship against any outlet.

I'm not suggesting MSNBC is not guilty of this. Look at the sheer volume of lies and misinformation on the Fox News network. There is just no comparison.

> think the magnitude of the lies on the Fox side is far larger than those on the CNBC side.

It’s not a scaler. There is the overt-ness of the lie, as well as the significance of the lie. Fox gives air to some significant and bald-faced lies. MSNBC gives air to a lot of misconceptions that are monumental in scope but less bald-faced. On the flip side, the journalism side of Fox stood up to the bald-faced lie about the election. Nobody at MSNBC never stands up to the less bald-faced misconceptions aired on that network.

With respect to elections. Trump made up a big lie about one election that Fox’s news side pushed back on, and which some opinion commenters face air too. MSNBC has given air to less bold lies about election integrity ever since 2000. How many people know from watching left-leaning media that 7 of 9 justices, with two Democrats agreeing with five Republicans, thought the Florida recount was unconstitutional?

In other examples, look at COVID response. Do you think people watching CNN have an accurate idea of where US COVID deaths stands in comparison to similar countries?

I don't watch MSNBC (or any TV news for that matter), but I'm curious how their reporting has changed since Biden was sworn in. It's easier to report facts that 'speak truth to power' when your bias is opposed to who currently holds power.

Biden has delayed, compromised on, or walked back nearly every campaign promise he made. Has MSNBC been calling out these discrepancies between campaign rhetoric and implementation? I would be surprised if they were making substantive criticism of the Biden administration.

What Ever Happened to Daniel Dale? CNN Fact-Checker Has Disappeared From Air Post-Trump

https://www.mediaite.com/news/what-ever-happened-to-daniel-d...

Since joining CNN in June of 2019, Dale has appeared or been mentioned on the network more than once every other day on average, according to the Internet Archive.

That exposure dropped sharply after November 4, and according to the TV Eyes media monitoring database, since President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, Dale has only appeared on the network once. And that appearance, last Friday, was to fact-check Donald Trump’s lawyers.

The Biden administration has been in power for a month. I think you are being a bit hyperbolic about its failure and lack of criticism by msnbc. Which campaign promises have been rolled back if I can ask?

$2000 checks, ending kids in cages, $15 minimum wage, $50k student loan forgiveness

One important question related to this is if a news org doesn't cover a valid story? Is that lying by omission? Probably not, but from an audience standpoint is there really a difference?

>The letter complains about Fox and OANN's partisan and inflammatory rhetoric,

>they suggest censoring Fox News, which accurately reported the election results and Supreme Court developments. The conspiracy theories, such as they were, came from some of the opinion hosts.

It's hard to believe we're at this point, but Fox is on a different level from OANN. You can find counterpoints on Fox News. OANN/Breitbart/the Mercer family media empire are a new, more vicious and fantasy-driven right-populism.

If the right would keep its own house in order, you'd see less appetite for restrictions on the left. You need a boogeyman to sell this kind of thing. I can see your WaPo editor (in the private sector) and raise you plenty of Republican Congressmembers posing with rifles and Lindsey Graham trying to employ Brad Raffensperger. The worst left-wing "counterpart" is probably Maxine Waters's mean words.

What’s wrong with posing with rifles in response to a President that’s making noise about gun control?

I wasn't quite specific. I meant the Congressmembers who include guns in their video chat office while in remote sessions, in an environment where open-carrying reactionaries have threatened and/or forcibly entered legislative offices in Oregon, Idaho and of course DC.

It's a threat of violence, particularly coming from legislators who have been reluctant to condemn said reactionaries, and it kind of looks like a wink-and-nudge endorsement.

> It's fair to say that Maddow has an opinion show, not a news show.

With many of these shows is they are a bit of 'looks like a duck quacks like a duck'. By that I mean the format and the presentation look as if they are not opinion but possibly fact and/or news. This can be manipulated by both the format, graphics, presentation of 'experts' and so on.

CNN does this as well with some opinion shows, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett. Many people will take them as authoritative typically because it's a professional presentation on a 'major' network. Most when I have spot watched do not even present an opposing or counter view a topic being discussed. And they often present a well credentialed person to support the pov they are taking.

> It's fair to say that Maddow has an opinion show, not a news show.

The general format (it is varied from occasionally) is a commentary/interview show that uses news stories, generally presented as straight news and to journalistic standards, to provide context for the interviews and commentary.

> these rules

Who has proposed rules?

Is anyone finding this terrifying? When did democrafts, the party I vote for, become the people calling for tight censorship in every sector? Weren't the last people to make this move (more more ineffectively, thankfully) the Christian right? Is there something we can do to stand up for speech?

Democrats were proponents of free speech when Republicans controlled the media, culture, and institutions. Increasingly, the media, culture, and institutions are controlled by progressive Democrats (and I think there is a growing schism between liberals and progressives on this front), and traditional liberal ideas of the free exchange of information have no more value.

Which is exactly why no matter where you land politically, you should be 100% in favor of fighting for free speech for yourself and the other side.

This human has read his history.

I think there’s a disconnect here. Does free speech have to include someone knowingly purposely spreading misinformation with the intent to deceive people? Or someone speaking with the explicit intent to harm another person?

Because I think nobody should be able to silence your thoughts, ideas or opinions but those things don’t encompass all speech.

Yes, it does, because who decides what is harmful or what is wrong? There is no freedom in speech if there is an authority deciding whether it is harmful. That is restructured speech, not free speech.

A few decades ago homosexuality was a mental illness, global cooling was going to kill us all soon, and a healthy diet was a pyramid based on eating a ton of grains. Do you want to live in a world where people arguing against those points of view were prosecuted for "knowing purposely spreading misinformation?" Because that's the world you are advocating.

I feel like we're arguing past one another. This is not about dissenting opinions or someone holding unorthodox views. This is about someone knowingly purposefully making stuff up, presenting it as fact, and spreading it around with the intent to deceive people.

I'm not saying this should a tool to enable internet censors. This should be used to go after the networks of people people producing this garbage. Unless you operate a website or blog where you are literally making stuff up and spreading it around as fact then this doesn't affect you in the slightest.

A lot of good examples of this surfaced when people were talking about what bathrooms trans people should use. It was an entirely manufactured controversy where no-name fly-by-night "news" sites would publish completely fictional stories about sexual assault cases to try and sway public opinion. I, and you, should be equally as mad at someone making up news stories trying to sway public opinion the other way.

You're right, it's not about opinions and who can say what. The issue we're arguing past one another, and the real important one, is who do you trust do decide that. The other guy seems to believe it's possible to have some government that is a benevolent determiner of truth vs propaganda, where I believe the other guy is painfully naive.

I've noticed that there is a common belief amongst Democrats and Progressives that people are duped into holding conservative viewpoints because of Fox News. Whenever I have asked people on the left why they think Republicans and Conservatives believe what they believe, the conversation always includes references to Fox News and the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. So in that sense I can understand why so many Democrats want Fox News dismantled.

I agree that many people think that, but it gets the chronology precisely backwards. CNN has been on the air since 1980. Fox News didn't even exist until 1996, and didn't become popular until 2000. Fox News is a response to media bias,[1] not the other way around.

[1] And by "bias" I don't necessarily mean open bias. CNN wasn't partisan in the 1990s like it is today. But it still provided news filtered through a liberal ideology. For example, 71% of republicans say religion "does more good than harm in American society" versus 44% of democrats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/republicans.... If you limit the analysis to white Democrats (the people who run newsrooms) the disparity is even starker: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/23/religiously... ("Religiously, nonwhite Democrats are more similar to Republicans than to white Democrats").

Do you think that someone who believes religion is an negative force in society, maybe jokes about religious people to friends after work will report on COVID-related church closings the same way as someone who believes religious practice is important to societal health? Even if they are acting utterly in good faith, their ideology can't help but influence their choice of stories, the gloss they put on developments, etc.

The truth is, we don't know the causality. Nobody has a good explanation of what makes an otherwise normal, intelligent person believe Q-anon, for example. We have some ham-fisted theories about how Hitler riled his country to exterminate Jews, but it's not really a nuanced enough explanation to say when/if something like it could happen again [nor assure us it won't].

I'd like to pretend that we're all rational agents, but I know that there are certain "emotional backdoors" that people like Hitler have exploited in the past to get people to do horrible things against everybody's interest.

For those of us who live in a country controlled by the will of the majority, obviously the education of the average person is a priority.

If the shoe was on other foot, and I had a mainstream news channel that had 40% of the population angry and believing demonstrably false things (e.g. Aliens were running the country and I could point out the aliens for you), and I was hinting/insinuating a revolution was necessary, how hard would you defend my cable TV show?

[Edit - Lol, I know I've got a pretty solid argument when nobody can answer the question but only give a pouty downvote]

>Nobody has a good explanation of what makes an otherwise normal, intelligent person believe Q-anon, for example.

It's easily explainable, on the contrary, it was an intelligence psyop using half-truths that was setup to perform the two fold-function of honeypotting and distracting the "conspiracy theorists" who might look into the Trump admin and understand it's real dark underbelly, which is completely different from the one the MSM pushed for four years, and then to be used as most limited hangout psyops are; as a tool to discredit genuine conspiracies as crazy by association.

So now people like you who are probably fairly intelligent, but probably not keeping up with the underlying truths in the "half-truths" side of the phenomenon that was Q, can easily just discredit those who believe it as uneducated (usually the nicest term used), without understanding how they got there, and that you also lack education, at least in that department.

So thats the sort of high level overview, but I can give you a few examples about how psyops manipulate otherwise intelligent people to buy into that sort of thing.

1. Hope and belief: After the war, I ended up becoming an atheist and started to notice in my studies on that topic, more specifically in conversations with old christian friends, that much of their belief system stemmed not from the truth of the matter, but from the hope it gave them. Further, from the need for hope, and need for belief it provided. Q-Anon exposes to some limited degree that the elites are up to some very shady shit, and then said: "Don't worry, it's being taken care of! Trump is a good guy, antiestablishment revolutionary who is going to take them down from the inside, and drain the swamp!" And for a certain amount of intelligent people who know the elite are indeed up to nefarious things, that's so tempting to want to believe! Having been on the Q-board from more or less day one, I do want to make a point that the first few months were full of very original and deep "bread" (research postings), by the more intelligent from the conspiracy and chan community. After a few months when the game became increasingly obvious to those people, but as it gained more noteriety and more normies showed up, the demographics shifted noticeably, primarily towards the religious right... a group who have already demonstrated their ability to suspend critical thinking when it comes to belief. The vast majority if not all of the people (besides the q psyop group themselves) that did the best work left knowning what the intent was (this was max a few months into the forced switchover to 8chan)

2. Real truths: I'll just come out and say what most of it really is: the multi-national, multi-intelligence agency compromise operations are completely out of control, and target most if not all high level politicians and businessmen. There is a myriad of evidence, buth deductive and inductive, to support this claim. Epstein was just a disposable middle manager in a blackmail network, for example. When analyzing this issue it quickly gets to the darker stuff people don't want to think about or talk about. My usual summary of how it works is that the order of operations for compromise/control go like this; idealogical - at a lower level , say a freshman state congressperson, having idealogical alignment is enough to get them to do what is wanted, no real overt control need be exerted, but lets go to the next level; bribery. This is standard congressional fare. Lunches, parties, pac donations, kickbacks of various kinds to both the campaign and to causes the campaign wants pushed, cushy jobs and kickbacks for relatives and friends of the congressperson, etc. All mostly legal, with a few outliers like Jack Abramoff pushing the edges of that level. What happens when you get a congress person who doesn't play ball though? This is where you start to run into the higher levels, such as pure blackmail. Cameras are setup, and it starts with the after-after-party, usually just drugs at first. Then it's hookers. Then it's underage hookers... and it gets worse. Human trafficking, and worse. If for some reason the rare person with integrety survives all this, that is when the threats begin (and they are not empty!). This is all true stuff. But no one is actually doing anything about it, because most of the people in a position to do so are already compromised are at the very least afraid.

What Q did was exploit that these things really happen, by creating a false narrative that tended to only focus on the democrats participation in this system (both parties are completely compromised in this way, anybody remember Dennis Hastert?), and then pretended to offer a (false) hope by saying Trump was an anti-establishment savior, despite his many connections to this very system! For example, his mentor Roy Cohn was a CIA and Lansky-gang (who blackmailed Hoover) connected pedo-blackmailer very much in the vein of Epstein! Then creating other false narratives to distance the more obvious connections between him and that world (for example, pushing the narrative that he didn't like Epstein because of his pedo-tendencies, but in reality their spat was over a real-estate deal that went sour, and had nothing to do with Trump having a higher moral compass (laugh) than Epstein). Then taking all these things and promising there was always some action going to be taken around the corner, next week, next month, next year, stay tuned, etc... and none of it ever materialized.

So for a people who find so much value in the need for hope and belief, mixing real truths with half-lies and then pretending something would be done was a recipe made in heaven for the people behind Qanon. The media, who didn't want to address any of this just lied through their teeth about the Russian narrative, created a reinforcement mechanism that they weren't to be trusted, which pushed even more "normies" over into Q-territory.

Now, as you see the push for censorship and castigation of all things Q-anon, remember all nuggets of truth inside the half-truths are going to be thrown out baby and bathwater style... and I argue that this was the main intention all along (along with the cries of "domestic terrorism" being used to push all kinds of horrible things). Cass Sunsteins cognitive infiltration system is at play and is the modern evolution of COINTELPRO.

PS. For just one example in a myriad, look up the Dutroux Affair, aka Belgiums X-Files sometime, if you think that darker stuff isn't true/doesn't happen. (warning, not for the faint of heart)

I appreciate the detail of your response. It provides food for thought that I had not considered.

You've misquoted the survey, inverting the result. Republicans think religion does more good than harm at that rate, and the other way around for the other guys.

That it was a typo is clear enough from the rest of your comment.

CNN isn't partisan though, they are just sensationalists.

Like I think you could treat Ron Johnson like a jackass and not be partisan, and they don't even do that, they act like he is a straight shooter and play out the kayfabe.

Thanks corrected.

I believe you've transposed "harm" and "good" in your quote. The linked Pew article lists the question as "Do more good than harm."

>When did democrafts, the party I vote for, become the people calling for tight censorship in every sector?

When Trump got elected and it broke people's brains. At that point, everything became permissible in order to fight Trump. Now that Trump is gone, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Since Trump, the Democratic establishment has effectively captured Mainstream Media, Big Tech and Social Media (with Academia being already firmly in the Democratic tent). Mainstream media and Big Tech isn't even pretending to be objective anymore. There is now an incestuous pipeline between executive leadership in those institutions and the Democratic establishment. And I say 'establishment' because it isn't just the Conservatives, Republicans and Libertarians that are getting censored. I don't like the anti-war, anti-American, class-focused Left, but those groups also get targeted, as are Progressives that focus on class (as opposed to cultural) issues.

>Weren't the last people to make this move (more more ineffectively, thankfully) the Christian right?

Apt analogy. This is the 'Christian Evangelical Right' from the 90s, with similar level of puritanism ... and with the backing of media companies and big tech. So much much worse.

I can't help but think 'puritanism' is a personality trait and there has always been a sizable portion of the American public dedicated to policing the thoughts and behavior of others. The underlying ideology may have changed, but the archetype sure hasn't. Maybe the so-called SJWs of today would have been Temperance activists 100 years ago.

It's an authoritarian personality type which exists on both the left and the right. It's remarkable that when we look at the many personality subtraits of authoritarian types on the left and the right, they align extremely closely with one another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

Someone sent me this article which is quite interesting: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-...

> Shedding its specifically Northern mainline Protestant cultural attributes, a version of Social Gospel Protestantism has mutated into the secular religion of wokeness, the orthodoxy of the universities and the increasingly important nonprofit sector. Its converts include many of the affluent white secular children and grandchildren of members of mainline Protestant denominations like the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists, which are hemorrhaging membership to the category of religious “nones.”

> When Trump got elected

Gamergate pre-dates Trump, and was the exact same mentality, which you can probably trace back to the 1970's if not before.

The dirty secret of American hyperpartisan battle is that the two parties in the US are fundamentally identical where it counts: pro-surveillance, authoritarian war machines.

And don't forget pro-corporate, which has been historically the norm, to the point of overthrowing other governments to protect crop yields / revenue.

There was a study that came out a few years ago, and I can't find it, but the point was that any laws passed that the general citizenry want were purely incidental. All the laws passed over the last 20 years or so directly benefited corporate and special interest groups.

Another person described the spectrum of the various forms of democracy as a highway. The went on to describe the two US political parties as the two parallel lines dividing the highway.

/rant

> When did democrafts, the party I vote for

Probably around the same time as it became socially unacceptable not to vote for them? Note how you had to qualify yourself as a democrat voter as some kind of proof point of the validity of your claims?

~75 million people voted for Donald Trump - it is hardly socially unacceptable to vote for a republican and you have a secret vote anyway.

> it is hardly socially unacceptable to vote for a republican and you have a secret vote anyway.

Those two things are not in conflict with each other: a sizable percentage of Trump voters may have been counting on the fact that they could secretly vote in order to protect themselves and even their jobs.

It seems that, today, some vocal people arguing for censorship immediately assume that anyone on the side of free speech and liberal thought is secretly a Trump apologist.

> Those two things are not in conflict with each other: a sizable percentage of Trump voters may have been counting on the fact that they could secretly vote in order to protect themselves and even their jobs.

Black people have lost their jobs for years for being black (See, Kaepernick.) many mad about this post didn't care then. It's all fake, using free speech to coverup blatantly partisan items.

They can't actually be on the side of free speech and be a Trump apologist. He was extremely anti-media, one of the most anti-press presidents we have had.

Kaepernick did not lose his job for being black.

You can be pro free-speech and anti-media for the same reason you can be capitalist and anti-corporation.

For the most part, it is socially unacceptable to vote Republican if you live in a large US city, and it is socially unacceptable to vote Democrat if you live in a rural area.

I've never seen any evidence that it's "socially unacceptable" in any meaningful sense of the term to vote Democrat in a rural area. Where are you getting this?

It's just an extension of how rural vs urban societies handle people doing weird stuff they don't like.

If someone's doing something dumb and weird in a well off rural area nobody cares as long as they aren't actively negatively affecting people. Like maybe people will talk behind your back and think you're an idiot but that's about it.

If someone's doing something dumb and weird somewhere densely populated and wealthy people pour over the bylaws, call whoever they can to harass you and generally try to force you to stop by making your life miserable.

If someone's doing something dumb and weird somewhere poor, regardless of urban vs rural, nobody gives a crap because people have bigger problems.

Anecdote:

My son's soccer team from the city decided they wanted to make a statement against racism and kneel for the national anthem before games. At one of the suburban/rural schools, they were vehemently booed and yelled at by the parents and supporters of the other team.

(And the decision to kneel was made after a game the previous season against a different rural high school where my son's team mates were racially abused during the game.)

That’s not booing for voting, that’s about making a divisive political statement on a freaking kid soccer game. When you bring your activism into non-political contexts, don’t get surprised when people don’t like it.

So you’re saying it’s socially unacceptable?

In some contexts, yes. A kid's soccer game is a place to hang out together and have fun, not to relitigate the major point of social disagreement of the day. If some kids from some other school behaved in an improper manner, deal with this problem directly, instead of taking your grievance out on unrelated community whose only crime is also being rural, so surely must be bunch of evil racists.

They kneeled before every game. They weren’t singling out any specific community.

And the school pushed as hard as it could to have the original incidents addressed (the same school has been reported for other similar incidents previously) and the league did not impose any consequences.

I live in a Trump precinct in Maryland and if I said I supported Biden nobody would blink. If I went down to DC and said I voted for Trump people would look at me like I grew a second head.

Honestly, that's fair.

If you're convinced fascism has arrived in America, you'll excuse any means necessary to topple the dictator and to prevent a reoccurrence. The issue is in doing so, they've become the tyrannical force they propose to oppose.

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." — Harry S. Truman

Not only that, but the people gladly handing over more and more power to the government now that Trump is out will be in for a terrible surprise when they learn that someday someone like Trump might win another election and will assume those additional powers.

I like your quote. It inspired me to share another.

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To be frank, the democrats have been directly calling for increasing amounts of censorship for years... In 2016-2018 it was slow at first: de-platforming people, refusing to let conservatives on media, etc.

Since, 2018-2020 has been almost a militant level of censorship being pushed.

There's a boatload of examples, but generally I recommend trying to join / visit different communities. While the right has been targeted to an extreme you can still see their points of view on gab.com or patriots.win pretty much uncensored.

Agreed. Fortunately this appears to be only two house members sending this. If McNerney or Eshoo are your representatives, it might be a good idea to reach out and make your case.

Long-time democrat here. I am terrified of what my party is becoming!

I'm more critical of my own party because I hold them to a higher standard. I'm getting very disillusioned with them at this point. All the behaviors I decried of the right so many years ago are now in full swing on the left side. The difference now is the consolidatation of control and power makes it an even greater threat. I fear a point of no return.

Same boat. People tell me, “but Trump is worse.” I didn’t realize that was the bar.

Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people. Never the hands of authorities whether those be government or corporate.

Why must fight all censorship. Because once you allow "a thing" to be censored, it becomes possible to censor "any thing".

Things in the past which were labeled misinformation and would have been suppressed for even longer (or forever) under current social attitudes of censoring anything that might make us feel bad.

  - Leaded gasoline poisoning all of the country.
  - Tobacco is addicting and gives you cancer.
  - Agent Orange caused US military health problems.
  - PTSD is a mental health issue (denied since at least WWI).

Remember all the power/leeway you give to the "left" (or right) will also be misused when the "right" (or left) take power again.

It's so far been in the hands of the courts, and like you said, they don't determine what's free speech based on whether something makes us feel bad.

Per bhupy, their specific criteria is whether the speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".

If the misinformation on certain media outlets is considered by the courts to have incited the insurrection , then it may not be considered free speech.

> If the misinformation on certain media outlets is considered by the courts to have incited the insurrection , then it may not be considered free speech.

The legal standard for "inciting or producing imminent lawless action" is given by Brandenburg v. Ohio. In that case, which upheld speech openly advocating for violence against specific groups to be protected speech. It overturned an Ohio law that had been directed against communists who "advocated the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform." Brandenburg was a 9-0 Warren court decision.

Courts will not uphold anything that has been said about the election as outside the boundaries of free speech, under Brandenburg.

It is, but I'm not certain the courts will interpret it the same way when applied to a large media corporation making many statements over a long period of time.

Like rayiner said, the courts have been protective of media corporation's free speech, but those were cases involving defamation or intentional infliction of emotional distress, not an insurrection with the intent to detain and possibly murder elected officials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

Both of those cases were unanimous decisions upholding free speech. Moreover, they were civil, not criminal cases.

They were, and they addressed parody and defamation, which I'm guessing wouldn't apply to a case, civil or criminal, about whether media corporations incited an insurrection.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-escalates-pressure...

> If the misinformation on certain media outlets is considered by the courts to have incited the insurrection

The courts will not consider it to be incitement. If you think the courts even might, you are woefully deficient in your understanding of case law. A key word in the Brandenburg standard is "imminent", and that makes the Brandenburg bar very high. Taking a crowd of antisemites to a Jewish neighborhood and telling them antisemitic creeds and how all Jews need to die doesn't meet that bar--but pointing to a Jew and saying "there's a Jew, get him" does.

Thinking SCOTUS might take a narrower view of free speech than its established precedent holds is not a winning bet. I'm not aware of a single case in my lifetime where SCOTUS ruled for more government restriction of speech rather than less, and this approach means taking a broader view of free speech than perhaps most people are willing to stomach (e.g., Citizens United).

"The People" believe whatever information has been promoted the most. To claim that we should do nothing to stop malevolent organizations from radicalizing vulnerable citizens is reckless. To lay the blame on individuals to fight this is victim-blaming. We need to battle this industrialized con artistry with whatever power we have - including police, courts, and laws.

Throwing up our hands because "censorship bad!" is sick and wrong.

Yes but we have made the judiciary the judge of what goes further than free speech, not the legislative.

And that is key.

PREEMPTIVE censorship is always a mistake because it only relies on power ideologies.

Exactly, the current strain of Conservative "thought" is to attack all forms of authority in order to muddle the truth and introduce doubt that any subject is knowable or provable. Allowing misinformation to spread serves that goal nicely and all they have to do is sit back and do nothing.

Their entire goal is to create a society where their gut opinions are just as good as knowledge from experts, because experts hurt their feelings (e.g. the Conservative reaction to the 1619 Project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_Commission).

> Exactly, the current strain of Conservative "thought" is to attack all forms of authority in order to muddle the truth and introduce doubt that any subject is knowable or provable.

Which is kind of a weird whiplash, because it was not all that long ago that that was the standard attack of the Right against the “postmodern” Left.

This is a strikingly illiberal stance. Attacking free speech is precisely the opposite of what civil liberties has traditionally all been about.

Why is it worth protecting speech that is knowingly false and inflammatory? Think about the paradox of tolerance. True free speech is under threat by the torrent of misinformation and from the constant assault on the very idea of expertise. We as a society have to be active agents to counter misinformation, we can't just sit by and hope it works itself out in "the marketplace of ideas" because that's not how misinformation functions. This is not a new problem, but the internet gives it a new scale which we have yet to reckon with.

>Why is it worth protecting speech that is knowingly false and inflammatory?

Because absurd opinion like "the earth goes round the sun" and "there's nothing wrong with being gay" were once "knowingly false and inflammatory" according to the overwhelming majority of people.

>Because absurd opinion like "the earth goes round the sun" and "there's nothing wrong with being gay" were once "knowingly false and inflammatory" according to the overwhelming majority of people.

... therefore we need to keep protecting the speech of people who still believe the world is flat and that homosexuality is an affront to God just in case?

No, I'm sorry, that's an appeal to emotion disguised as rationality. We don't need to keep knowingly false, disproven and regressive ideas around any more than we need to keep arguing the merits of miasma theory, phrenology or the luminiferous aether. To say otherwise is to claim that truth cannot exist, merit cannot be measured and all ideas are equally valid... a premise already discredited by the value judgement made by your argument.

Who is 'we'? I don't wish to be included in 'we' and I prefer that the group of 'we' not be in charge of much of anything.

Does the concept of a collective confuse you?

As long as someone can adequately explain who the collective is, and what they perceive legitimizes their ability to make decisions for others.

Isn't this venturing into Borg territory?

Ironically, you were censored (flagged) in following posts while arguing for censorship. Further, in your example, the people are clearly the problem. They need to learn how to fact check and educate themselves. Victim blaming is OKAY when people make themselves the victim by their inaction.

> The People" believe whatever information has been promoted the most. To claim that we should do nothing to stop malevolent organizations from radicalizing vulnerable citizens is reckless. To lay the blame on individuals to fight this is victim-blaming. We need to battle this industrialized con artistry with whatever power we have - including police, courts, and laws.

This is exactly what conservatives said in response to people promoting liberal ideas. Violent left-wing events in the 1970s (e.g. courthouse shootings) could easily have been used as a pretext for massive speech suppression. 9/11 and cries about the radicalization of Muslims through jihadist materials online could have been used the same way. Luckily none of that happened.

Exactly! It is a powerful tool that works and conservatives wield it well while the cringing libs are all "But if we use effective techniques doesn't that make us as bad as them?" No, it doesn't - it just them the pathetic failures they are.

Good and wise people don't bring knives to gunfights.

Hard disagree. We can censor, for example, child pornography, bomb-building tutorials, and revenge porn. I'm not going to fight against censoring them on the grounds that allowing them to be censored will allow anything else to be censored too.

>Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people

You disagree with letting censorship be decided on democratically?

The thing about democracy is that there are so many levels of government - and quite literally any decision made by a democratically elected government can be condemned as undemocratic (Because some other layer of government - or better yet, a Joe on the street - does not agree with it.)

This is how you get people shouting about how a democratically elected president, who was given, by a democratically elected congress, powers to operate a regulatory department, is acting undemocratic-ally [1], when he appoints someone those people don't like to head that department.

What those people forget is that in a democracy, you can't in good faith cherrypick outcomes as 'undemocratic'. You can only ensure that the process for making changes is democratic. If the people you elect decided to turn your country into a police state, well, that sucks, but that's a democratic decision that they've made - and as long as you can vote them out, it can be democratically reversed. Prohibition was reversed, after all, communist witch hunts eventually ended, it's no longer illegal to ride in a train car while black, people in the US are no longer jailed for writing pro-German newspaper articles, and we no longer round up entire ethnic groups, and concentrate them in a camp (Which are all hallmarks of a police state. They are no longer present in our society, thanks in part to a democratic process. Other hallmarks still are, but if enough people care, we'll eventually get around to them.)

[1] Despite neither the constitution, the law that brought that department into existence, the judiciary, nor years of precedent requiring that the department must be ran by an elected official, or that the department's every decision [2] must be voted on by Congress.

[2] As it turns out, it's quite democratic for an elected official to defer decision-making to an un-elected underling. That's fine. What makes this democratic, is that you can punish the elected official, if the underling behaves poorly, by voting them out. As long as all power flows from an elected office, this thing works. What is not fine is if the un-elected underling is not appointed, or fire-able by an elected office, or by an agent of an elected office. That's where the difference between democratic, and undemocratic lies.

> democracy

> democratically elected president

That's not really what I was talking about.

Incorrect. We can __prosecute__ against those who break the law. We __must not__ censor, because that is the slippery slope; all the more so when it is done without judicial oversight in an adversarial review system.

That is a distinction without a difference. You are talking about the mechanics of censorship.

It isn't. There are two differences.

The first is that prosecutions are retrospective. If something is true and you can't stop anyone from saying it, only punish them after, then people who are willing to sacrifice their freedom for the truth can't be silenced. There is also less incentive to punish them because the cat is already out of the bag, and people are more willing to push back against a prosecution for speaking a truth that they've seen survive an adversarial public debate.

The second is that prosecutions happen in courts bound (in the US) by the First Amendment, and the prosecution fails if the defendant was engaged in protected speech. Facebook or Comcast/MSNBC (note: the same company) deciding what constitutes "misinformation" with no accountability for over-censoring is not that.

If I understand correctly, you're claiming that we __must not__ censor child pornography? Isn't prosecution a form of censorship anyways? I think what you're saying is a textbook example of a slippery slope fallacy.

Following the law is a slippery slope? I’m pretty sure the parent is saying that because child pornography is explicitly illegal, it can (and should) be censored.

I believe this is the same logic being used to sensor covid deniers, false cures, and fraudulent election crackpots like our last president.

The latter type of lie incites people to insurrection and riles up violence, the other two cause people to do things that may kill themselves or others.

Last time I checked no court of law had convicted the former President of any criminal offense. So, no, I don’t see how that logic was used to censor him.

Same for false cures to diseases, nobody imprisons pseudoscience witch doctors for recommending vitamins to cure cancer. (Maybe if they claimed to be a medical doctor?) If that were so, I know of a half dozen people in Boulder that would’ve been in jail by now. Certainly no court had convicted any of these people of a crime prior to censorship.

So, as far as I can tell, these people had been censored without having committed (or at least convicted of) a crime.

He got off on a technicality. Even many of those that voted not to convict said that they thought he was guilty. They just didn't think they could convict a non-sitting president.

False cures for diseases, yes, people absolutely go to jail or receive massive fines. Sometimes on charges of fraud, sometimes on charges of endangerment. If your fake cure doesn't actually do harm (and is just useless) then you can usually get away with it. A quick google search will show you multiple stories about criminal charges for fake covid cures.

Agreed. If something is explicitly illegal, then that’s grounds for censorship. If something isn’t explicitly illegal, then it shouldn’t be censored. The First Amendment in the US provides for nearly limitless free speech, with very few exceptions. That’s how we should police speech online.

> child pornography, bomb-building tutorials, and revenge porn

None of these things are misinformation.

Technically true, but try building a bomb from one of those tutorials

I have as a teenager made acetone peroxide and ammonium nitrate pipe bombs from instructions printed at the library. They worked ;)

See, even these descriptions which you presumably think are clear distinctions are not objective categories of information.

Do drawings count? How about deepfakes? Pyrotechnic display textbooks?

You're going to need a judge, and that judge is going to wield power.

For all of those, they passed a law which has to stand up to judicial scrutiny.

Leaning on a company to eliminate speech is censorship without review.

edit: removed extra word

Except the items you cite are done on a fringe. Almost half of America is conservative, hardly some fringe.

Can you explain this a bit more? At least for the first two, that information was disseminated by government bans or government-mandated labeling. I am not as familiar with Agent Orange but it was first studied by the New Jersey Agent Orange Commission in 1980 and found to be toxic — it helped lead to the Agent Orange Act. PTSD was first recognized by the APA in 1980 as well. These are all positions of authority making these decisions and claims.

I guess I am just confused what your point is here. Can you explain how the voices of the people were involved in the above examples?

I believe the OP's point was that those things (Agent orange, tobacco <> cancer, etc) which our society almost universally agree upon were once, themselves, targeted by dis/misinformation campaigns.

And that if we are to allow censorship, we are allowing the potential for disinformation campaigns.

IMO, the flaws in this argument are that it assumes a disinformation campaign is something the censor entity is controlling (specifically the US military, in the Agent Orange example). It also assumes disinformation is the only tactic available to a bad actor to manipulate the public.

To the spirit of the OP's point, though, I think we need to be wary of any corporation pledging to make the world a safer place by monitoring our communications.

Of course the situation is not binary; there are things that should be censored. I would like our law enforcement to use any tool at their disposal to stop human trafficking. Murder is not cool, AT&T should help LE look into those as well. Politician Y is trolling the internet with lies; we actually have a toolset for that and it's called journalism. Understanding that journalism/media is actually part of the problem here doesn't mean AT&T can do a better job.

Lets of course also not forget the biggest one, COVID.

COVID was fake news, until it wasn't. Previous weeks (months?) were spent suppressing warnings about it.

I specifically remember being banned for saying that people should wear face coverings. In February I tried saying that people should think twice before taking the subway or going to Lunar New Year.

January 2020, there was overwhelming evidence that something bad was coming, even though independent and citizen journalists didn't know the exact scope of it.

But their narrative was that COVID may exist but it isn't dangerous, and wearing a mask is alarmist and probably sinophobic racist Russian propaganda; continue having public gatherings and stop asking questions.

Within 48 hours, big tech decided that the truth is that we had always been at war with Eurasia and that anyone who had any doubts about lockdown strategy was basically a white supremacist and needed to be censored with extreme prejudice.

In my mind, that should have been it. After so many lives lost, that is when we should have decided that corporate america should not set up a de-facto ministry of truth, but I guess most people don't agree with me.

To be fair, that wasn’t “corporate America”, that was the Minister of Unhealth, usually called the Surgeon General:

"Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!"

https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-1...

The tweet made no sense: if you’re a member of the public, COVID cleverly renders masks ineffective, so leave them for healthcare providers where COVID magically can’t bypass the masks?

The only things more annoying than pretending COVID could discriminate by profession were (a) the additional six to nine months of pretending it wasn’t airborne, and (b) company annoyance with remote work and individual boredom with staying home overriding caution even as the spread hits rates not seen since March/April 2020.

And this is where Corporate America comes in — they are by and large refusing to acknowledge the revision in guidance around it being airborne, since this would require more investment to make safe the butts-in-seats management preferred by non-practitioners in middle and senior levels of firms.

> I specifically remember being banned for saying that people should wear face coverings.

May I ask: what was the venue? HN?

I generally agree with your overall point here.

> Things in the past which were labeled misinformation

I know that item-level thinking like this is necessary to gain emotional traction with people, but this issue is just so obvious at a systems-level.

the idea that we, right now the instant youre reading this, have discovered 100% of what there is to learn and 0% of what we know is wrong is so painfully, horrifically, obviously stupid (we've had computers for thirty years now, we're probably good for ETERNITY, right?). we both WANT and NEED a mechanism for dissenters and disinformation. misinformation is combat with MORE discussion, not less!

scientific consensus is not arrived at when every scientific paper says the same thing. this is a fundamentally wrong view of science and also reality. on any given topic, the corpus includes opposing conclusions. eventually we figure out why and discern the underlying principles.

to say anything but this is to make the existential case that people are not to be trusted with their own free will.

> misinformation is combat with MORE discussion, not less!

I wholeheartedly agree, but how do you get the other side to listen?

The saying goes something like "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

I have heard this expression rephrased as "Logic is useless against those who reject it".

However, in my experience, both sides are logical, they just start from different axioms.

This is my experience as well, but I've also noticed that both sides do not adhere to their base axioms with the same tenacity, and the issues can be a spectrum of adherence to their claimed base beliefs.

It basically doesn’t matter if you get the other side to listen or not. Open and free discussion is out there for those who want to partake. There will always be zealots who choose not to.

Censoring opposition in order to be heard more loudly doesn’t work. In an IRL discussion, if you start talking over someone forcing them to stop talking, they’re going to shut down and never listen to anything you have to say.

It matters very much when that other side has the control of your government.

Luckily that changes every 4 or 8 years.

> How do you get the other side to listen?

Pretend you think like them, and make arguments that go against that thinking. Unfortunately, the way the media exists today this never happens, and both sides just attack strawmen in ways that get people to click their headlines and listen to their talking heads.

I think it's disingenuous to paint the entire "other side" as unreasonable, but I may be misinterpreting what you mean by "other side" here. There will always be unreasonable people, and I don't have a solution for them. However, I think _a lot_ of people are very tired of being demonized for disagreeing. Not every republican is a rabid tea partier, and not every democrat supports antifa.

> I think it's disingenuous to paint the entire "other side" as unreasonable, but I may be misinterpreting what you mean by "other side" here. There will always be unreasonable people, and I don't have a solution for them. However, I think _a lot_ of people are very tired of being demonized for disagreeing. Not every republican is a rabid tea partier, and not every democrat supports antifa.

There's a lot of fundamental issues that are just not limited to "rabid tea partiers", global warming and the pandemic/masks just to pick two.

> Pretend you think like them, and make arguments that go against that thinking.

Both sides have attacked the trustworthiness of the other. You can't convince someone of something when they think you're lying, or will lie and dissemble to get what you want, and nothing you say can be taken at face value because it's all a con to get some other goal which you claim to not want.

There has been such a concerted effort to so malign the other side that's it's less about clear communication than it is trust. It's got more in common with soldiers inpast wars being encouraged to use terms like krauts, gooks and chinks and those being used as stereotypes to explain the behavior and motivations of the other side than anything else, IMO.

The purpose isn’t to get “the other side to listen.” Its to get moderate to listen, and to make sure the other side feels heard. That procedural aspect of free speech is at least as important, if not more so, than the truth-finding aspect of free speech.

> I wholeheartedly agree, but how do you get the other side to listen?

Re-education camps seem to be the go-to solution for many totalitarian regimes.

I’m not being a smart-ass... the desire some have for others to agree with them can itself be a pernicious thing.

Maybe "agreement" isn't what I meant as the goal - only progress. Fair point to address that they're not equal.

Assume good intentions, respect them as individuals, and listen to what they have to say even if you disagree.

These are basic tenants of productive debate.

Sometimes. I know people who only care to maximize for themselves and their immediate tribe, and could not care less what happens to others not useful for them.

It is naive to play the game as if others aren't interested in capturing an outsized share of the winnings. And obviously they're not going to officially state their motives.

I'm not convinced any other strategy of discourse is a winning one. Competing disinformation campaigns are a race to the bottom where everyone looses. Also, sometimes people simply want different things.

I completely agree with these points - but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying what do you do when your partner in debate completely ignores all of those things, but has equal say in the outcomes?

Agree to disagree, vote on it, and sometimes loose. Part of being in a democracy is that sometimes you dont get what you want, even when you are sure you are right.

Change can be slow, even for good ideas. If you have faith in humanity and democracy, then you believe good ideas will prevail in the end. There were US abolitionists in 1770 and the civil rights movement ended in 1970.

And when the problems require solutions in decades and not centuries to be agreed on? What then?

I used to have a lot more faith in our democracy but I can't help but feel lately like something has fundamentally changed, and the system is just catching up to that. What changed? I have no idea, but something feels _different_ from before.

I think that is a tough question. If the pace of democratic change is too slow, there aren't a lot of options. Essentially strip people of their voting rights and install a undemocratic government.

I hear your concern, but I think that the biggest change is that people have become accustomed to immediate change and more cynical overall. Democracies don't make sense unless you believe that people are good and correct ideas will ultimately prevail.

> I wholeheartedly agree, but how do you get the other side to listen?

The only way is to stop preaching and listen to them. Really listen. This is how Daryl Davis converted the KKK according to his own accounts?

There is also a problem with approaching this type of dialog as one side vs. the other. People are all over the spectrum with their opinions on various issues. You might have a disagreement on one particular issue, but it's likely that you also have some common ground on other things. Use that to relate to people and try to influence their thinking to your point of view. It's not a war where you are trying to destroy "the other side".

For me, a good start would be to provide evidence that people have had their minds changed because information gets discussed more. E.g. you could demonstrate that the qanon phenomenon became less popular, not more, after it began getting wide media attention. (Unfortunately in this instance the opposite is the case. You have an uphill battle ahead trying to demonstrate your position empirically.)

Q is a really interesting conspiracy theory to bring up. It seems to be at the other end of the "valley" of conspiracy theories - it's almost like the most brazenly unbelievable ones are the ones that somehow gain the most traction.

It combined several long running conspiracy theories into one. Because they had been around for so long individually, combining them somehow made them more believable. Connecting seemingly disparate dots together added credibility because it explained everything conspiracy theorists believed.

>> misinformation is combat with MORE discussion, not less!

> I wholeheartedly agree, but how do you get the other side to listen?

I don’t think there’s any winning some people over.

My mother had a very problematic stat about police violence and racism last summer. I was able prove it wrong by getting the real stat in five seconds with a Google search. The source is well known and reputable. She refused to stop clinging to her source.

> misinformation is combat with MORE discussion, not less!

The problem with that idea is that it takes more effort to debunk a lie than to tell one. It also takes more effort to absorb a debunking than a lie. That's why disinformation works.

Here's an example: JFK ate babies occasionally, and the media hushed it up. Oswald was actually a secret high-level CIA operative, and was so outraged by this that he assassinated JFK for it.

It took me two seconds to write that. How much effort would it take you to debunk it?

It's just not practical to put all the burden of combating misinformation on each individual's shoulders. It's also necessary to stop the spread of misinformation. That doesn't need to be done by a central authority, but people who've been convinced by a lie will perceive that as "censorship" by one.

> scientific consensus is not arrived at when every scientific paper says the same thing. this is a fundamentally wrong view of science and also reality. on any given topic, the corpus includes opposing conclusions. eventually we figure out why and discern the underlying principles.

Scientific consensus is also not arrived at by publishing literally every crackpot idea, and answering each with "more discussion." Science has several mechanisms for "censoring" bullshit and misinformation (e.g. peer review), and it couldn't function without it. "More discussion" is saved for cases where those mechanisms failed.

Your example actually tells something. Nobody would believe your JFK baby eating story. It is easy to write a fake story, but it is not easy to have lots of people believe your fake story. "Misinformation" can spread because they seem plausible to enough people, not because they are "bullshit" like your example.

The problem with your calling this example out, is that people will believe this stuff if down the rabbit hole enough.

Jan 20th Biden and Harris were supposed to be arrested and their pedo evidence was suppose to be shown to all, along with evidence of election fraud.

The next one is what March 7th?

A lot of people think an ancient all powerful being will re-appear and lift up adherents on high, and punish "bad" non believers.

> It is easy to write a fake story, but it is not easy to have lots of people believe your fake story.

I thought so too before Pizzagate, Q-Anon....

Perhaps a better example: Jewish people are telling you the earth is round so that way they can distract you from the fact they're kidnapping children and drinking their blood.

A fantastic video on the topic of difficult to debunk, but easy to produce content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44.

I wish you were right, but you are not. It is very easy to have lots of people believe a fake story.

QAnon conspiracy theories are incoherent and absurd yet are embraced by thousands and cause needless harm to many.

> "Misinformation" can spread because they seem plausible to enough people

Conspiracy theories are only believed by those who already mistrust the target. If there's a lot of conspiracies revolving around something/someone, you have a trust problem.

How about Jewish space lasers?

> Scientific consensus also not arrived at by publishing literally every crackpot idea, and answering each with "more discussion." Science has several mechanisms for "censoring" bullshit and misinformation (e.g. peer review), and it couldn't function without it.

What counts as a "crackpot idea?" We don't have to dabble in hypotheticals about JFK eating babies. We have real examples from current political events that show we're not talking about "slippery slopes" here. We have rolled down the slope with stunning speed.

In March 2020, the Surgeon General suggested that wearing masks was effective to prevent spread of COVID was a crackpot idea: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/485332-surgeon-general... ("Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus[.]").

10 months later, the Surgeon General is calling that same assertion a "myth": https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/13189727242078986... ("There is a currently circulating MYTH suggesting masks don’t work to prevent spread of COVID-19.").

I have a degree in aerospace engineering--I totally get that scientific understanding evolves. But it doesn't evolve like that. The truth is that the Surgeon General's March 2020 statement was ill-advised and overly-certain, and so was the October 2020 statement. Whether masks are effective at limiting the spread of COVID is quite uncertain. Mask-wearing rates vary quite dramatically between countries with similar COVID death rates: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/08/face-off.... By June 2020, the U.S. had mask-wearing rates of 75%. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were under 20%. Out of those, Sweden and the U.S. have death rates (per population) 5-10 times higher than Denmark and Norway.

Despite that uncertainty, I think most people worried about "misinformation" would use mask-denialism as a motivating example for why restrictions are needed. So what are the restrictionists really advocating for here?

> The issue is actually pretty uncertain, and government bodies are making categorical statements for political reasons

I think it's more complicated than just politics, as I was saying elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26139732), public health officials advised against mask-wearing for general public initially for a very particular reason (possible shortages for medical frontline workers). As far as public healthy policy is concerned, where you cannot pass a certain threshold of complexity in communicating best practices to grandmas around the nation, masks work is a good enough message and it stands on pretty solid science: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.31.20166116v...

And it was damned foolish to say "masks don't work" if what they wanted the public to understand was "please leave surgical and N95 masks for healthcare workers. We are exploring the effectiveness of cloth masks".

THAT would have been honesty, it would have explained the reason they didn't want the general public using masks, and it would have hinted at an alternative while not directly confirming masks work (or don't work).

NOT TO MENTION that the CDC probably could have asked South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, or any other country where mask usage was common, "How well do masks work?" and been pointed at a few relevant studies, right? But no, they make a very fishy statement to the public claiming masks don't work for normal people.

/rant Sorry. You hit a nerve. Pretty frustrated that the CDC would throw away its credibility like that.

> It took me two seconds to write that. How much effort would it take you to debunk it?

How long would it take you to establish enough credibility to be able to make an accusation like that and have people actually take your word for it? There might be a few nutters out there who are so predisposed to hate JFK that they'll believe anything negative about him, but most people - even those who dislike him - would rightfully question such an outlandish statement made by someone with no credentials.

Dishonest people retain credibility when their supporters are trapped in echo chambers designed to keep the truth out. Censorship is a powerful tool for establishing and maintaining echo chambers. We need to fight echo chambers, not promote censorship.

> How long would it take you to establish enough credibility to be able to make an accusation like that and have people actually take your word for it?

Keep this in mind: Q is literally some dude on 4chan/8chan with a tripcode.

> There might be a few nutters out there who are so predisposed to hate JFK that they'll believe anything negative about him, but most people - even those who dislike him - would rightfully question such an outlandish statement made by someone with no credentials.

I make no claim that my example lie is a good example of misinformation/disinformation. It was only meant to show the asymmetry of effort implicit in "more discussion."

The key thing about getting a lie to stick is to hitting the right emotional buttons with it. And it's so easy broadcast lies nowadays that you can even discover those buttons stochastically, by just throwing random lies out there and seeing what sticks.

Furthermore, if your goal is not to convince anyone of anything in particular, but to just to gum up a society (which is the goal of disinformation, properly understood), you don't event need to find particular lies with a broad appeal across society. You just need enough lies that enough people fall for one or two.

I believe it is reasonable to speculate that QAnon members are generally trapped in extreme, right-wing echo chambers. Echo chambers enable people to retain undeserved credibility.

> I believe it is reasonable to speculate that QAnon members are generally trapped in extreme, right-wing echo chambers. Echo chambers enable people to retain undeserved credibility.

That's not true, for instance:

https://www.startribune.com/conspiracy-theories-of-qanon-fin...

> Conspiracy theories of QAnon find fertile ground in an unexpected place – the yoga world

> QAnon's conspiracy theories have taken root among yogis and other adherents of natural medicine.

I'm not sure how that demonstrates QAnon members are not generally trapped in right-wing echo chambers. Are yoga practitioners exempt from right-wing echo chambers?

> I'm not sure how that demonstrates QAnon members are not generally trapped in right-wing echo chambers. Are yoga practitioners exempt from right-wing echo chambers?

I suppose a significant number of yoga teachers/influencers could be secret dittoheads, but the idea kind of beggars belief.

One of the interesting things about QAnon is that it offered on-ramps to groups outside the stereotype of people would go for such a theory (e.g. "save the children"). People in right-wing echo chambers were definitely more susceptible, but it's a mistake to be reassured by that.

Also, particular echo chambers aren't some kind of primordial entity. They start all the time and they often grow. So even if something like QAnon requires one, that just means there's one more step.

Are yoga practitioners usually liberal? Is that a thing? My perception has always been that yoga communities tend to attract those interested in "alternative medicine", a group which certainly has its own share of echo chambers. Given the apparent ideologically-insular nature of both groups, I'm not surprised that there would be overlap between the them.

Echo chambers are not a new phenomena, but they have certainly become more powerful with the rise of the internet. Never before have we been so easily able to surround ourselves with groups of like-minded individuals. But what I find even more concerning are algorithmically-driven content feeds which are tailored to suite the preferences of each individual user.

Algorithmically-driven, tailored content feeds basically automate the creation of echo chambers. It all sounds well and good to the user - after all, they get access to more of the type of content they prefer. However, those feeds almost inevitably learn to always provide the user exclusively with content that reinforces their preexisting ideas and opinions. They'll eagerly spread things like QAnon if it results in increased user engagement.

I don't think there's anything particularly special about QAnon compared to any other politically-charged conspiracy group. I think they just got lucky and once they passed a certain threshold of popularity, the algorithms did what they do best.

So you'd like to make lying illegal...? I have an amendment to show you, it's actually the very first one!

I agree with this:

> Never the hands of authorities whether those be government or corporate.

But I'm not sure about this:

> Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people.

It's definitely a very difficult problem. I like to think that I personally can distinguish decently well between information and mis/dis-information, but I look around and see plenty of people who simply cannot. And I could also be wrong about myself. The pandemic itself has at least had the effect of showing me that I can't always figure out what's true by intuition.

So I guess I believe that people in general are not good at making the distinction. We're too emotional. I'm inclined to say that a digital solution has the best chance of defeating this digital problem. A computer for President, I guess.

People certainly aren't perfect about judging the validity of information, but the danger is just too great to have a corporation and especially a government decide what's valid information.

I am in complete agreement.

If you don't trust your fellow citizens to discern misinformation from truth, you don't trust them to vote.

I don't, do you? It's the slipperiest slope around, however. For instance:

In my state there was an executive order from the governor allowing mask mandates, but polling places were specifically excluded, because you simply cannot disallow people from voting.

Another very difficult problem. How can you enforce voter education without enabling voter suppression? I don't have an answer. I'm mainly here to point out that problems are hard.

That doesn't follow.

I would still rather have voting citizens trying to discern the truth (and hope for some wisdom of the crowds), rather than have the agents of misinformation permanently in charge.

"Leaded gasoline poisoning all of the [world]." FTFY

Garbage in, garbage out.

Solution is real simple: share your data, cite your sources, sign your name.

Without provenance, accountability, transparency, it doesn't matter who is judging.

The problem is there's a non-trivial amount of people who consider their ignorance equal to your research, your facts, your studies, your anything.

That isn't a problem unless you're discussing something where anonymity is key - or it wouldn't be if the internet didn't make anonymity the rule by default. Anonymity is really great for private citizens, but people trying to spread information need to be held to a higher standard since their words shouldn't be preemptively censored but must be held to account after the fact.

Oh also, taking away anonymity is quite dangerous as well - there isn't an easy answer here.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that taking away anonymity fixes the problem. We have very prominent politicians who are driving entire political campaigns around this strategy of ignoring all fact.

I honestly think that prominent politicians wouldn't have any willingness to adopt this insane level of misinformation if there wasn't such a general societal acceptance of it.

The people in congress that believe in jewish space lasers didn't get elected because everyone around them thought they were crazy conspiracy theorists.

Adding the option of authentic speech merely broadens the Marketplace of Ideas. No one could curtail inauthentic speech; no point in even trying.

aka Authentic speech. Anything less is gossip, or worse.

One can only guess at the motives of Freedom Speeches™ partisans who conflate trolls, bots and sockpuppets with IRL people.

We either allow foreign influence to undo our democracy or we allow current and future governments to suppress our democracy.

We should isolate western internet lines from russia/china/israel and any cooperating countries that are apart of these significant bot campaigns that generate fake news targeting our elections.

We're still at war, and information is the weapons of that war. We are currently allowing fascist governments to take advantage of the inherent flaws to democracy - belief and choice.

Eliminate the foreign influence, and you will still have a corrupt system filled with fascist information. At the same time you will have undermined American companies since every other country will wonder when they're next.

I know it's easy to blame the other, but democracy rots from within.

Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people. Never the hands of authorities whether those be government or corporate.

The government is the people, no? In any case, by the time the country elects a majority federal politicians who are all unified in spreading the same misinformation, we were in trouble long before that...

Also, if you think these letters represent censorship, I think you should take a look at the definition of that word. At best, you're crying wolf and at worst, you're spreading misinformation yourself.

Is anyone else confused at how this is legal? I have no expertise in law, but my understanding is that the Supreme Court has agreed with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama that.

> Racial discrimination in state-operated schools is barred by the Constitution and "[i]t is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish." Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 267 F. Supp. 458, 475-476 (MD Ala. 1967).

Isn't this promoting a private person to accomplish what the federal government is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish? And wouldn't this also apply to the federal government as well as states?

https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108851/norwood-v-harri...

There was nothing about race in this entire document.

Ignore the part about race.

Court precedents are about the legal principals. When the supreme court rules on forth amendment matters in a murder case, the precedent also applies to drug cases.

Yes, Greenwald pointed out the same thing in a recent article:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-escalates-pressure...

Edit: Another article just went up about exactly this.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/house-democrats-targeting-r...

Yes that's were I originally saw the reference

>Is anyone else confused at how this is legal? I

They can't legally force the companies to comply and they know that but it doesn't matter. This is a threat: "If you don't do what we tell you to do, we'll make your life miserable". If the companies don't willingly comply, then they can launch a FUD PR campaign through activist non-profits orgs and claim that these companies are hosting hate speech. Too cynical?

Not sure why you're being downvoted. That's precisely how it works.

Wouldn't you say that thinly-veiled threats encourage a behaviour?

They don't have to be nearly that indirect; they are, after all, members of congress. They have broad power to advocate for and pass all sorts of legislation if their demands are not met, to drag C-suite executives in for testimony, and to confer with and oversee executive-branch regulators and bureaucrats.

It's often "better" for congress to get "voluntary" cooperation. Not just because it does an end-run around constitutional limits on powers, but also because it launders government action through ostensibly-private actors. Note well that this letter is not addressed to Fox News, but to an important business partner. There's recent history of this strategy, Operation Choke Point did this sort of thing with banks.

I'm not confused as to how it's legal. I'm quite sure it's not. However, it seems to me that except in rare cases, no matter the color of the tie worn by the politician, nominal legality is not an impediment. There's an ideological opponent out there who must be publicly punished for his wrongness as an example to anyone else who might dare be wrong, and while the Constitution forbids various explicit means of doing so, there are myriad implicit ways of approaching the same goal.

It's a letter to AT&T that encourages them to do something about Fox and OANN. I'd say sure, do something about them, but let's also look inward.

There was a lot of misinformation abound after the Capitol Riots that was simply there to stir up Democrats and a lot of this information was very racially angled. Though Democrats play up the death of the Capital police officer now, their constituents were absolutely promoting conspiracy theories about the Capitol police doing nothing or the FBI intentionally not showing up. I won't begin to assess why conspiracy theories were abound when literal conspiracy theorists were invading the Capital, that's probably worth its own discussion. Put these concepts (racialized rhetoric and anti-police conspiracy theories) together and it's no wonder why the country broke for another day or two.

If you want to clean up Fox and OANN, I'm down, but let's make sure you're cleaning up all the grass roots sources of your constituents misinformation too.

Would you be able to give specific examples of left-focused misinformation on the capitol riots, that is specific news articles from "trusted partisan" sources (CNN, etc) containing unsupported conspiracy theories?

The fire extinguisher attack turned out to be BS.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/capitol-police-officers-...

Does that meet the standard for being an unverified conspiracy theory? It seems that the story came from a source they were keeping anonymous (fairly conventional in journalism, especially when reporting things in real time) and was promptly updated as more news came in.

It's worth noting that there is fairly extensive video of an unhelmeted officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher thrown during a brawl. I don't know if that officer has been identified as Sicknick or not, but that particular event (an officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher) did happen. Separately, we know Sicknick did physically engage with the rioters, as the official US Capitol Police statement cited in the article you linked said "Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty."

So, _a_ fire extinguisher attack did happen (among many other attacks on officers during the riot). An officer did die as a result of injuries sustained during the riot. An anonymous source linked those two events, a link which now appears to have been incorrect. News sites which covered the events in question have effectively released retractions and calls to wait for more evidence.

What more would you want them to do? They can only report on the facts as known at the time, and release updates if those later change. Both of those things were done.

This is an entirely different situation from Fox and OANN alleging massive conspiracies and voter fraud and continuing to hold that position for political reasons despite a lack of evidence.

There is plenty of evidence of voting irregularities. An irregularity only becomes fraud when it was done with criminal intent.

The overarching issue with normalization of censorship is that it becomes difficult to tell when evidence does not exist and when it does exist but was censored.

https://hereistheevidence.com/

That website is not a quality source of information. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it as questionable, low quality, and far to the right: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/here-is-the-evidence/

Mediabiasfactcheck.com Claims that hereistheevidence.com is "low quality", because it links to "low quality" sources. But Mediabiasfactcheck has links to those same sources, so by it's own argument Mediabiasfactcheck is "low quality".

Please don't take the above argument too seriously, my point is that so many of the fact check orgs are riddled with logical fallacies. In this case we have guilt by association, ad hominem, argument from authority, and appeal to motive.

I think a fact check system that did not rely on logical fallacy would be quite useful, however I have yet to find one.

All of the "evidence" here is from sources like the Washington Examiner and "The RF angle" Are you kidding me?

If you want real evidence of "irregularities" look elsewhere, its certainly not here.

You’ll be hard pressed to find a media organization that actually bothered to investigate things instead of immediately claiming Trump’s allegations were false.

Personally, I think that’s the primary reason the riot happened.

There's plenty of evidence/public court rulings which thoroughly debunk these claims.

Why should I believe anything that supports trump. He said "we have the virus under control." Yea, let's believe his cronies. Give me a break.

The update clearly shows that a “fact” was not reported and what was reported was a rumor that could not be verified because it was in no way ever true. I’d expect sober reporting to stick to assertions with real documentation or multiple unrelated attestations of direct knowledge. I’d also expect that a news outlet would treat assertions made by police or any organization as objectively often false and always self-interested. As it stands it is all click-bait manure and the retractions are just legal CYA.

That's a long conclusion to make.

The statement that it had not been determined that blunt force trauma specifically caused Officer Sicknick's death doesn't make the attack BS - there's video footage of him being hit with one. And dying within 24 hours from a hemorrhagic stroke is definitely not enough to rule out the proximal impact of fire extinguishers and other implements used to beat him.

"there's video footage of him being hit with one."

You should forward that video footage to law enforcement right away, because they don't even have it. I'll even cite CNN, because I assume you believe they are trustworthy.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/brian-sicknick-charg...

"Investigators are struggling to build a federal murder case regarding fallen US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol during last month's insurrection. Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries, law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said. "

"According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true."

Oh, comprehension.

> evidence that could prove someone caused his death

> have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries

Neither of these things say "he did not die as a result of injuries sustained in the riots".

> "According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true."

No, the ME, who is yet to release finalized verdict, stated that the officer did not die "from blunt force trauma".

> that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher

Well no. He wasn't. He died the next day in hospital.

From a hemorrhagic stroke. Which could have been caused or exacerbated by non-lethal beating.

You literally commented that there is video of the officer being struck by a fire extinguisher.

“The statement that it had not been determined that blunt force trauma specifically caused Officer Sicknick's death doesn't make the attack BS - there's video footage of him being hit with one.”

Does the word “one” not refer to a fire extinguisher? Did I fail to comprehend your claim?

Assuming the video you refer to does show the fire extinguisher attack, then law enforcement needs your help. Investigators are trying to find out if the officer was attacked and who did it. Please share the video with them instead of arguing with me on the internet!

https://nypost.com/2021/01/11/video-shows-capitol-rioter-hit...

Right there. With a nice big red circle around him.

Since you said: "The statement that it had not been determined that blunt force trauma specifically caused Officer Sicknick's death doesn't make the attack BS - there's video footage of him being hit with one."

"him" must unambiguously mean Officer Sicknick according to you.

From your source.

"It’s unclear if the cop who was plunked was Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, 42."

Oh, comprehension.

Also, the article you cite is over a month old and much newer information is now available. Including the statement that:

"Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries, law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said."

But who knows. Maybe investigators have never heard of the NY Post. Make sure you send them a link to that article and video ASAP! You really cracked the case!

The "five people died!!" narrative.

Three of them were just people dying because walking around while not in the best of health. One was an unarmed woman shot in the neck by police.

So really.. the rioters can only have rightfully been the cause of one death of someone not involved in the riot or protest.

Greenwald has a good write up regarding left-focused misinformation. Fire extinguisher, zip ties, firearms, etc.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...

This article doesn't disprove much.

Being "pro-trump" doesn't make the death not count. 3 of the five died because of the protests - it doesn't matter which side. You can argue that a stroke/heart attack may not have happened in a non-high pressure environment.

We don't need any more evidence than the mountains of video of people storming the capital. It's bad enough as is, it could have been far, far worse.

The difference between someone dying because of a stroke and someone dying because they were bludgeoned to death with a blunt object over the course of several minutes while thousands of people stood idly by is stark.

Getting bludgeoned can cause strokes, among various other more and less pressing medical issues.

It's still murder when the victim dies in the hospital instead of at the scene.

Yes this is true, but apparently he wasn't actually bludgeoned with anything although it was widely reported that he was. The current theory is chemical agents had something to do with it (like pepper or bear spray).

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/brian-sicknick-charg...

>According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.

We've got lots of video of people being bludgeoned that day while thousands of people either stood by or encouraged it. It seems like the specifics of the injuries and their consequences is actually the silly thing to be arguing about.

Of course - but that just makes a bad thing worse.

The capital riots were bad. No amount of far right-wing sugar coating is going to change that.

It's much more gray than your presenting. There were numerous LEOs amongst the rioters, and many of the early videos people were seeing were cops taking selfies with rioters and cops standing to one side as the rioters walked in. Meanwhile the white House was slow footing any kind of response. The extent of the Capitol police resistance want really clear until things had settled down.

This intimidation is veiled as thinly as the skin of those in Congress.

The misinformation and disinformation that is excreted from Fox, NewsMax, etc. is not nearly as repugnant as lawmakers who demand an explanation from private companies as to why they don't shield the innocent ears of voters from the specific version of sanitized truth that they'd prefer.

The first amendment forbids Congress from restricting free speech by law. It doesn't forbid "pressure" of this sort. But it's worth noting that the authors of the first amendment engaged in campaigns that made today's "disinformation" look like a children's sticker book.[1]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/08/20/the-dirtie...

"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel."

Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?

Yes.

Extremely

It pretty much is and is a chilling attempt at limiting speech. Free press, is free press. CNN and MSNBC both spread their share of misinformation. You need to be able to watch multiple news sources with different takes in a free society, to determine whose wrong or whose omitting key facts in an attempt to frame the news.

When you think people disagree with you because they are evil, any action is justfiable (internally).

It's even worse when you think people are evil simply because they disagree with you!

You should see how upset people were when you told them you think Trump is a great president. At my last job, the IT admin was so upset that he told me that he will not do any of my incidents.

No discussion what so ever.

That's unfortunate that he chose to respond that way.

I might disagree with you on Trump but I think we probably have far more in common than we disagree on. I don't know how anyone thinks we're going to solve our real problems if we can't have constructive conversations about where we agree and disagree, and how we can both compromise to work toward what is probably a shared goal.

I believe most Americans have the same basic goals: good health, prosperity, security, and strong community. Most of where we disagree is around how to achieve those goals. Unfortunately, too many people get caught up in the "how" and that it makes it so much harder to get anything done.

There's nothing more just than vengeance.

“Vengeance is at the core of many of the world's most enduring and moronic conflicts.”

— http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=275

It may be. The key is whether the misinformation present directed others to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation.

CNN/MSNBC may also have misinformation, but their misinformation may not be in the same class, specifically something that could motivate some subset of their viewers to commit insurrection by attempting to detain and possibly murder elected representatives.

In either case, it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

Edited based on feedback.

> To me, it could also be the modern day version of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation.

That legal argument has been overturned precisely because it has no real limiting principle: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

While it's not the best, people are familiar with it. The replacement is certainly more accurate.

In this case, is the misinformation present directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action?

"Incitement" and "imminent lawless action" are extremely narrow compared to what people are talking about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

Even openly advocating violence is protected by the first amendment under the Supreme Court's Brandenburg decision.

They are narrowly interpreted as it relates to individuals, but I'm not sure that same interpretation would be applied to media outlets.

In terms of liability, as a property owner I have a much lower standards for care, custody, and control of an empty piece of property I have with a no trespassing sign than a corporation has for a sports stadium they run. I'm not certain that the standards for free speech by an individual in a single instance would be the same as the standards for a large media corporation across multiple instances.

How narrowly the court interprets "incitement" and "imminent lawless action" may be a function of the entity making them. An individual who is making political speech could say something that is considered protected, while a large corporation saying the same thing repeatedly, in a different context, may not be protected in the same way.

While the Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on incitement in the context of media outlets, it's clear from cases like New York Times v. Sullivan and Hustler Magazine v. Falwell that the Supreme Court is extremely protective of speech by media outlets.

They are, in civil cases involving defamation and parody. I don't think a case involving any of the media outlets who are spreading misinformation about the election that could be related to federal crimes would be based on either of those.

> In this case, is the misinformation present directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action?

We have several Supreme Court decisions that can help answer this question. First of all, misinformation was established to be protected speech in NYTimes vs Sullivan, where the SCOTUS unanimously found that the New York Times was within its rights to publish an advertisement containing factual inaccuracies[1].

Brandenburg v Ohio (also unanimous[2]) explicitly established the "imminent lawless action" test as overriding the "clear and present danger" test; which was further reinforced by Hess v Indiana in which the court found that Hess's words were protected by the First Amendment because his speech amounted to "nothing more than the advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time"; i.e. failing the "imminence" portion of the "imminent lawless action" test [3].

> While it's not the best, people are familiar with it. The replacement is certainly more accurate.

The entire point is that what people are familiar with is incorrect and should no longer be considered a valid argument. In fact, the irony of this logic is that one could argue that advocating for limiting speech by falsely citing an overturned precedent as currently relevant is itself misinformation that can be legally regulated even under the First Amendment; we would both agree that that is nonsense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hess_v._Indiana

We do, for individuals, in specific situations. Like I stated in my comment above, I'm not certain those would apply in this case.

The New York Times vs Sullivan precedent pretty specifically addressed that issue: organizations (like the NYT) are protected by the First Amendment.

Also, just taking a step back, the Constitution makes no mention of a difference between individuals and groups. If you and I were to group together to advocate for something, our rights to advocate for that thing don't magically disappear.

In fact, by this logic, we don't actually have a free press, because journalistic outlets aren't individuals, they are organizations that the Constitution doesn't protect.

The New York Times vs Sullivan precedent does, in terms of defamation. That may not apply in other situations, specifically in federal crimes.

The Constitution may not differentiate between individuals and other entities, but the courts have differentiated between them. They may not in this case, but I wouldn't assume they would either.

They also differentiate based on other facts, which may differentiate any future cases. We definitely have freedom of the press, as it relates to defamation, and parody, but the precedent established in those cases may not apply to a case involving criminal acts.

> The Constitution may not differentiate between individuals and other entities, but the courts have differentiated between them.

When? To my knowledge, there are no major landmark decisions which hold that an association of individuals may be treated differently from individuals; especially as it relates to the First Amendment. We even have a precedent in Citizens United v FEC which reinforces the consistency between individuals and organizations under First Amendment jurisprudence.

> We definitely have freedom of the press, as it relates to defamation, and parody, but the precedent established in those cases may not apply to a case involving criminal acts.

The established cases also include criminal acts, as was the case when the Ku Klux Klan advocated for (criminal) violence. The courts have held that even advocating for illegal acts at some time in the future is protected (Hess).

There's nothing I know of that applies to the First Amendment, but there are many examples where individuals and organizations, or even organizations in different levels of government, are held to different standards under the law. The standards for HOAs versus local government is a good example. Some states require that HOAs enforce code equally, but will permit local government to enforce it unequally because local government has relatively limited resources.

The court may consider a media corporation to be identical to an individual in terms of First Amendment cases, but I wouldn't be certain about that.

The established cases do include criminal acts, but those were challenged based on the unconstitutionality of state law, and were in different crcumstances. If DT were charged with inciting a riot by the District of Columbia, then Hess is great precedent, but I don't think it would be great in a government case against a media corporation. The government likely wouldn't bring criminal charges against a specific individual either, which changes things. If they seek monetary damages and an injunction, or even just an injunction, the precedent used in Hess may not apply.

> There's nothing I know of that applies to the First Amendment

Citizens United. It ruled that a law banning corporations (and other kinds of associations such as non-profits and labor unions) from making campaign contributions was an unconstitutional abrogation of their First Amendment rights.

When people fulminate against the idea of corporate personhood, what they're really fulminating against is the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights. Which should tell you just how likely SCOTUS is to distinguish between private individuals and corporations when it comes to First Amendment rights: not at all.

I'm not so sure about that. There's a big difference between whether corporations have a first amendment rights and can make campaign contributions and whether their speech is protected in the same ways as the speech of individuals.

To be fair, even individual speech may or may not be protected depending on the circumstances, so corporate speech may also not be protected in certain circumstances even if SCOTUS always treats speech by individuals and by corporations the same.

The New York Times is a corporation with a government-granted charter that grants it things like limited liability. It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights.

And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press. Given our microkernel government, institutions like the New York Times are better seen as part of the de facto government than independent organizations speaking truth to power - eg marketing the Iraq war. This relationship is easier to see with say Equifax than NYT, but the dynamic is similar.

Important to remember that corporations, like all groups, have no mouths, no hands, and cannot act.

All corporate actions, all corporate speech, is carried out by individual humans. Group rights are individual human rights, as groups have no brain and cannot act.

Except that there is a distinction between an individual performing an action of their own volition, and an individual performing an action to obtain income. The first represents the true will of the individual, while the latter only requires their desire to have a roof over their head.

And as I said, the entity of the NYT is afforded protections that individuals are not. If individual rights are supremely important to the individuals making up the NYT, the individuals involved are still free to act outside of their corporate shell.

New York Times employees are employed at-will. We're not talking about minimum wage workers publishing content under duress here, we're talking about journalists and editors who generally join organizations they believe in.

Tucker Carlson doesn't go on air and say the things he says because he's forced to, he does it because he wants to.

Full disclosure: my wife works for the New York Times.

So your wife never complains that work is pushing her to do something that she does not want to do, and she's bargaining with management to try to do the right thing? And the transaction costs to her quitting and finding a new job are zero? IMO "at will" is only 99% correct, and the integral of its remainder builds up into some gross misbehavior.

My wife has never been forced to publish anything against her will. That being said, she has disagreed with the editorial decisions of the paper on a number of occasions. This is not at odds with the freedom of association; every single organization is comprised of individuals that don't always agree with one another, but work together to overcome their disagreements. Nowhere has there ever been a guarantee that the freedom of association presupposes that every individual has the freedom to confer the exact same set of opinions to everyone in their association. Importantly, my wife doesn't feel like she's entitled to the power to censure other journalists or employees in her company. I know that I don't have the power to do that in my own company, nor should I.

There's disagreement within every group, that doesn't render the concept of free association invalid. The Catholic Church has its disagreements, but that doesn't mean that they lose the freedom to congregate because they're somehow no longer a bona fide association on account of that internal disagreement. The Democratic Party has its disagreements (heaven knows), the Republican Party is essentially at war with itself, the Libertarian Party can never agree on what it stands for because it's a motley crew of weirdos. None of this matters, they are all protected by the First Amendment, as associations. Whether they are traded on the NYSE, or they are 501(c)4 non-profit corporations, or they are just an amateur club, they are protected by the same First Amendment, and are subject to the same narrow limits on speech established by Brandenburg v Ohio (and all other relevant precedents).

Obviously the transaction cost to quitting and finding a new job is not zero; the Constitution's protection of the freedom of association has no guarantees on what the transaction cost to associate are. Just like free speech, you're free to say whatever you want, but you're not entitled to a free platform; promulgating speech costs money. You're free to keep and bear arms, but you're not entitled to a free rifle; guns cost money.

Associations are more than capable of gross misbehavior; but in manners related specifically to the publishing of speech and expression, they enjoy outsized protection, at least in the United States.

>> The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention.

> I'm not sure what this sentence means.

I really should have said the implication of the Chinese Room thought experiment - intelligence arises from the constructive behavior of systems, distinct from their mechanical execution. As a (presumed) homo sapien, you should be interested in maintaining the existence of our own species versus entities that could subjugate us.

You keep asserting that organizations are no different from individuals, while completely ignoring every way I've pointed out how organizations differ from individuals. So I don't see how it's particularly productive to continue - you've seemingly made up your mind that desirable small-scale behavior implies desirable large-scale behavior by construction, and ignoring emergent behavior that arises out of scale.

> You keep asserting that organizations are no different from individuals, while completely ignoring every way I've pointed out how organizations differ from individuals.

I'm asserting that organizations are no different from individuals in the eyes of the law. That's what we're talking about here. The law explicitly protects the freedom to associate, and has no point of view on what the size of a valid association should be.

> you've seemingly made up your mind that desirable small-scale behavior implies desirable large-scale behavior by construction, and ignoring emergent behavior that arises out of scale.

If you go back and read my comments, I've not once made any prescriptions of what is "desirable" or what "should" be; I am strictly making descriptive statements about what currently "is" based on the (very accessible) text of the Constitution and the relevant precedents. You might be correct that large-scale group behavior is somehow undesirable — I don't have an opinion about that and might even agree with you! My point is that it doesn't matter, under the law. A group of 10 is protected the same way a group of 1000 or 10,000,000 are. As it currently stands, if you or I were a part of an organization, neither you nor I have any entitlement over how that organization chooses to officially express itself to the public, unless that organization explicitly empowered us to be able to do so.

If you think that the law should afford us the power to prevent the organization that we are a part of from expressing itself (even if we are in the minority within that organization) or if you think that the law should have carve-outs for different sized groups, that's a separate argument and discussion, and your best course of action there is to amend the US Constitution. We are currently talking about the legal merits of the Federal Legislature intimidating or hypothetically legislating news outlets for the content of their published speech under the status quo of the US Constitution.

> If you go back and read my comments, I've not once made any prescriptions of what is "desirable" or what "should" be; I am strictly making descriptive statements about what currently "is"

When talking about ideals and values, the wider context is what should be. Explaining the current law and its current application is straightforward, and isn't particularly worthwhile without a larger point. I don't see where your comments disclaim that you're only describing the current legal interpretation as opposed to physical reality or how things ought to be, which means that you're advocating for the status quo.

But sure, taking your comments as pure factual description of the legal situation - thanks for explaining the rationale leading to part of the problem of corporate entities becoming emergently unaccountable to us humans. If you'd care to discuss the problems with this, please go back and read my previous comments in their intended framework.

> which means that you're advocating for the status quo

I’m actually not advocating for anything. I'm using this conversation to understand what you're advocating for so that I can form my own opinion about what I should believe.

Looking back at this conversation, you said "I agree that we don't actually have a free press". It's clear from this conversation that you understand that in the status quo, we actually do have a free press, it's just that you find the implications of that to be undesirable; and you've made your best case for why that is.

My goal is to get you to be up front about the ramifications of your own proposal by admitting on the public record that you don't think that we ought to have a "free press". That helps me not only understand the implications of your proposal but also establish that you actually do believe in what you're advocating for despite the implications (the honesty is refreshing). It also allows me to understand what it really means to deviate from the status quo. In that regard, this was an illuminating exchange.

To the extent that I'm advocating for anything, it's that if you want to make any fundamental changes to the nature of press freedom in the US, the best way to do that is via the Constitutional Amendment process, and not by Legislative bullying. Even if one were to agree with the ends for which you are advocating (not saying that I do), I definitely disagree with the current means of achieving them.

> you said "I agree that we don't actually have a free press". It's clear from this conversation that you understand that in the status quo, we actually do have a free press

No, the status quo is to assert that we have a free press, as a tenet of our national beliefs. But looking at the actual governance of the US, much of the power structure resides outside of the de jure government. And that de facto government owns or supports most of the press.

> My goal is to get you to be up front about the ramifications of your own proposal

I've proposed nothing. I'm disputing assertions that backstop the status quo, chiefly that corporations should be viewed as plain groups of regular individuals coming together by voluntary association.

Regarding speech, a straightforward proposal one could create from this is that corporations' speech would be regulated as a condition of their government-approved incorporation (and groups of individuals would be free to avoid this by not incorporating). But I'm not proposing this, because I think the motivation behind this problem-narrative is mostly power coalescing, and an inevitable reaction to the fracturing of institutional authority.

Rather I'm making the general argument to point out that the interests of individuals are distinct from this battle of corporate versus government power - both "sides" are steamrollers to individually held rights. My own favored proposal is to move to Free p2p comms and leave both arms of the incumbent structure in the dust.

> It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights.

Nobody is arguing that the New York Times is some ad-hoc group of individuals; it certainly has its structure. The argument is that the same principles that afford an ad-hoc group of individuals the freedom of association (and expression) is what also affords a structured corporation like the New York Times the same protections. This isn't conjecture, it's the philosophy behind the landmark decisions of New York Times Co vs Sullivan, as well as Citizens United vs FEC (Citizens United was a 501(c)4 non-profit corporation).

At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes and advertisements it chooses to sell are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.

If you and I want to join together and start a corporation for the purpose of advancing an issue, the First Amendment prohibits the government from enacting any law that may abridge that.

> And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press.

The Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press (NYT v Sullivan, Hustler Magazine v Falwell), group-speech (Citizens United), hate speech (Brandenburg) and even violent speech (Hess v Indiana). If that doesn't register as "press freedom", then I may as well lobby for legislation outlawing comments like yours on account of being misinformation.

> At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.

The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention. How many individual reporters at the NYT wanted to give support the Iraq war? And yet that's what the entity itself ended up doing, using their contributions.

> Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press

You totally ignored my argument. The point is that most of what constitutes de facto government in the US is actually outside of what we call "the government", and resides in corporations. Hence pointing to Equifax, which explicitly promulgates constraints on our individual behavior, and yet has escaped all sort of democratic accountability.

> The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention.

I'm not sure what this sentence means.

> > How many individual reporters at the NYT wanted to give support the Iraq war? And yet that's what the entity itself ended up doing, using their contributions.

I'm sure that individual NYT reporters disagreed with support for the Iraq War; but as a protected association, they are free to determine how they settle internal disagreements however they see fit. Every organization, group, corporation, and association has their set of internal rules, and the Constitution protects those associations specifically as it relates to speech and expression.

> Hence pointing to Equifax, which explicitly promulgates constraints on our individual behavior, and yet has escaped all sort of democratic accountability.

Not sure how Equifax is relevant. First of all, it isn't in the business of publishing speech; that's what we're talking about here. If Equifax wrote a blog post about how it should be free from legislation, it is well within its rights to do that. Second of all, if you're talking about Equifax's business practices, the user has no control over whether they interact with Equifax or not — THAT is the problem with Equifax. That's simply not true for Fox News or CNN or The New York Times where there's a direct relationship between seller and buyer. I'm not sure what Equifax has to do with any of this...

> "nothing more than the advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time"

So for this case, since there was a definite future time, it would indeed be imminent?

You can compare yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to a lot of speech, for example, speech that is against a military draft. This was the original comparison.

Luckily we (the United States) prevent our government from restricting this type of speech.

Like bhupy pointed out above, is the misinformation present directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action?

If a speech against the draft incites some subset of those who were present to insurrection, with the intent to detain and possibly murder elected officials, then it may not be protected as free speech.

How is asking Fox for viewership numbers, "a chilling attempt at limiting speech"?

Would you feel the same way if house republicans sent letters to twitter asking how many users used the #blm hashtag last summer? It seems to me that we'd get lots of headlines declaring that they were attempting to silence anyone in favor of police reform.

It's a legislative body which is trying to limit speech not through legislation but through intimidation. They could pass a law and have it struck down nearly immediately, or they could flog CEO's in public for their own amusement.

> It's a legislative body which is trying to limit speech not through legislation but through intimidation

Bingo!

When these CEO's enact new policies that censors "Right-Think", it'll be totally okay because it's not the Government limiting Free Speech - private companies are allowed to limit Free Speech, don't you see!

That isn't what "free speech" means. Free Speech means the government won't imprison or execute you. Private companies operate private services, they can kick you off for saying "bread" if they want and it's not "limiting free speech".

You see the issue here then, right?

Government cannot limit your Free Speech, for the reason I (and you) pointed out.

So... short of any alternative tools, the Government sets out to intimidate private companies into censoring on the Government's behalf.

What more... it's not "The Government" - it's a political party that happens to be in power right now and is seeking to censor the other political party through means of intimidation and coercion of private companies.

That doesn't sit very well with me.. regardless of which party is attempting to censor which.

You're deliberately mixing "Twitter bans me" with "Government imprisons me" and pretending they are the same thing so you can describe it as "private companies are allowed to limit free speech don't you see!" which is a misleading and incorrect description. You said "When these CEO's enact new policies that censors "Right-Think", it'll be totally okay because it's not the Government limiting Free Speech - private companies are allowed to limit Free Speech, don't you see!" and that is explicitly /not/ what limiting free speech means; a) that's not the Government limiting Free Speech, that's the Government doing something else, and b) a private company limiting your speech isn't a private company limiting Free Speech, it's a private company doing something else.

And Free Speech is too important for that equivocation to pass uncontested.

> "Government cannot limit your Free Speech, for the reason I (and you) pointed out."

I didn't point out a reason the Government cannot limit free speech, I pointed out that Twitter banning you is not anyone limiting Free Speech. The Government absolutely /can/ limit your Free Speech, that's why it's important and scary - of all organizations which exist only the Government can make it illegal for you to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article. Jeff Bezos cannot lock you up for writing a blog post critical of Amazon or making a credible bomb threat, but a government could (potentially) lock you up for writing a blog post critical of the government and can do so for making a credible bomb threat.

Your reason appears to be "the Government doesn't want to limit your Free Speech because it would make them look bad, so they lean on Twitter to ban people instead" - well I would far far prefer that, because having your Twitter account banned is less bad than being imprisoned, and more easily recovered from by posting somewhere else. You trying to claim this is limiting your Free Speech trivialises what it means for people in other countries to be imprisoned for being critical of the party in power (whether you call that a government or not).

> "What more... it's not "The Government" - it's a political party that happens to be in power right now"

That's what a government is.

> "and is seeking to censor the other political party through means of intimidation and coercion of private companies.

Again no; Twitter banning your account is a kind of censorship but not the same kind of censorship, even if they were paid by the President himself. You being arrested for having a Twitter account would be censorship, but it wouldn't be Twitter doing the arresting. The reason it's not (the same kind of / as bad) censorship is that you can make your own Twitter with blackjack and hookers and say "I love $politicalParty" all you like on it, and if everyone does that then Twitter fades into irrelevance. Just because Twitter is large and popular doesn't mean Twitter is obliged to provide service to everyone - subject to discrimination laws. If you phone up your local talk radio and they don't air your phonecall, that's not censorship.

Twitter banning an account at the behest of the government is absolutely censorship. Sure Twitter is free to ban me. But Twitter is free to allow me to speak without retribution from the government.

The government has no business threatening companies to silence people.

Trying to head off this response is why I added "(the same kind of / as bad) censorship". The government has no business threatening companies to silence people, but if they do threaten companies to silence people that's not the same as arresting you for criticising the government, it's not the same thing as limiting Free Speech(tm). Twitter is free to allow you to speak without retribution from the government, but compelling Twitter to let you speak, to provide you a service you aren't paying for, is another matter again.

Where the lines fall on that is up for debate, in arguments about whether large enough sites are like public services, or should be public services, whether websites are blind conduits for information or responsible for the content on them, and the fact that all that is being argued is evidence that it hasn't been settled in a dystopian way.

If I threw $10 to ICQ to delete your account that you haven't used in a decade, you could still argue "censorship! you have no business doing that!" and be correct, but any point about it being a limit on your free speech would be much much more obviously weak.

You seem to be stuffing a lot of straw men into your response. That, or you think I'm making an argument that I have yet to write.

I have no idea where Twitter came into all this, nor does it matter what people in other countries consider "Free Speech" or not.

> The Government absolutely /can/ limit your Free Speech, that's why it's important and scary - of all organizations which exist only the Government can make it illegal for you to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article.

Perhaps you are not familiar with the US Constitution and the US Government (we often forget HN is an international community) - but no, the Government here cannot make it illegal to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article.

No, the US Government (local, state, federal) cannot put you in prison for voicing opinions, no matter how unpopular they may be.

Yes, private organization can deplatform, censor, and silence any opinions they disagree with.

What we clearly have here is a case of a political party, in control of Congress, seeking a way to circumvent the US Constitution (specifically the 1st Amendment) by nakedly intimidating private organizations into enacting censorship on their behalf, to be perpetrated against said political party's political enemies.

That is flatly wrong, and should be viewed as Government attempting to censor political enemies... because that is what it is!

Straw Men be damned...

Point out the straw men, please. I think I argued against sentences you actually wrote. I introduced Twitter into all this so I could make specific examples that aren't as loaded as Amazon/Parler, because I think your position is relying on being politically loaded and falls apart easily without that component. It does matter what people in other countries think Free Speech is, because the comparison with countries where Free Speech is actually missing makes the distinction between that, and this, clear. That distinction is a point I have made at least twice and you have refused to engage with.

> "No, the US Government (local, state, federal) cannot put you in prison for voicing opinions, no matter how unpopular they may be.

I think you are trying to make the point that the US Constitution says the Government may not do that. I am trying to make the point that the Government has the power to do that, and is the only organization with the power to do that, and that they actually do do that in certain circumstances - e.g. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-teenage-isis-supporter-sentence... - imprisoned for running a pro-ISIS Twitter account. Given that the Government has the power to imprison you where private organizations don't, and that the Government will do so for certain (e.g. pro-terrorism) speeches now, it is important to make the distinction that a Congressperson asking AT&T if they intend to carry Fox News in future is different to the Government arresting a Fox News journalist, CEO, or AT&T CEO, and that the difference is large.

> "Yes, private organization can deplatform, censor, and silence any opinions they disagree with."

Yes they can, I haven't denied it. What I have said is that you can use your freedoms to start new private organizations where you can post opinions you agree with and silence opinions you disagree with, or walk about with a billboard in the town square. You have the right to speak, you don't have the right to a large audience on a popular platform. That's why private organizations deplatforming you is different even if the Government is leaning (which I don't agree they are), and the difference matters.

> "What we clearly have here is a case of a political party, in control of Congress, seeking a way to circumvent the US Constitution (specifically the 1st Amendment) by nakedly intimidating private organizations into enacting censorship on their behalf, to be perpetrated against said political party's political enemies."

No we don't clearly have that. We clearly have a couple (two) members of Congress sending a form letter to a dozen media companies asking 7 fairly trivial questions. If you're going to claim "nakedly intimidating" please point out the intimidating wording in the letter. Since there isn't any, you can't, so I predict you're not going to respond to this bit in good faith either.

> "That is flatly wrong, and should be viewed as Government attempting to censor political enemies... because that is what it is!"

I am not going to copy-paste the entire letter here, but following up on an event which happened by writing a letter asking if Roku did anything to support or stop carrying media about the event, is not flatly wrong, it's a normal and expected kind of investigation. It seems very likely that the media companies in question will send back lawerly responses saying "we do not filter content, we have a fair use policy, we were monitoring events and took (some/no) actions" and that will be all that comes of it.

Huh? How is this intimidation? It's not like spreading information to its viewers is something Fox was doing illegally or surreptitiously; it's their whole business. However many people they reached, I would think they'd be proud of the answer?

Did you read the letter that was written? It isn't the question about how many listened their were. It was the rest of the letter.

Look at the list. It's pretty much a right-wing only list.

Pretty much? The farthest left that list goes is Fox News.

Just elect some honest politicians and they'll be morally capable of fighting 'misinformation'.

Still waiting for a possible world like that to exist.

It's political censorship disguised at fact checking. If they were really concerned about "fake news", they would apply the same standards to the other side. Remember how just a couple years ago almost all of the major media outlets were pushing a conspiracy theory about "Russian Collusion"? Yet nobody is talking about shutting ABC, CBS, NBC, or MSNBC down, kicking them off cable, or banning them from the internet.

> It's political censorship disguised at fact checking. If they were really concerned about "fake news", they would apply the same standards to the other side. Remember how just a couple years ago almost all of the major media outlets were pushing a conspiracy theory about "Russian Collusion"? Yet nobody is talking about shutting ABC, CBS, NBC, or MSNBC down, kicking them off cable, or banning them from the internet.

You're misremembering. Russian collusion was an allegation that needed to be investigated because of 1) the actions of Russian intelligence agencies to influence the election in ways advantageous to Trump, and 2) weird things members of the Trump campaign did that were suspicious. However, the major media outlets only reported on that, and it didn't go on to claim that there was actual collusion.

For instance, here's the first page of results from major media outlet search for "Russian collusion" (ending the day before the Mueller report):

https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=true&endDate=20190321...

> BRIEFING Judge Doubles Down on Scrutiny of Roger Stone’s Book

> POLITICS Roger Stone’s New Instagram Post and Book Draw Scrutiny After Gag Order

> POLITICS Trump Lawyer ‘Vehemently’ Denies Russian Collusion

> POLITICS ‘Collusion Delusion’: Trump’s CPAC Speech Mocks Mueller Inquiry

> POLITICS Trump Says There Was ‘No Collusion’ With the Russians

> OPINION The Russians Were Involved. But It Wasn’t About Collusion.

> POLITICS Indictment Details Collusion Between Cyberthief and 2 Russian Spies

> OPINION How Will ‘Collusion’ Play in the Midterms?

> OPINION Can We Please Stop Talking About ‘Collusion’?

> OPINION Oh, Wait. Maybe It Was Collusion.

That last piece sounds like it's the closest to saying there was collusion, lets see what it says:

> What remains to be determined is whether the Russians also attempted to suborn members of the Trump team in an effort to gain their cooperation. This is why the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is so important.

That's not pushing a conspiracy theory.

On the other hand, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, etc. lied to the extent that they're legitimately worried about the conspiracy theories they were pushing costing them a lot of money from defamation lawsuits:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/19/business/fox-smartmatic-news-...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/05/media/lou-dobbs-fox-show-canc...

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/03/newsmax-mike-...

However, I don't fault you too much for this confusion. There are a lot of liars out there who've found a lot of success "arguing" with false equivalencies to keep their followers loyal to the cause.

The bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee report detailed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian nationals/intelligence assets.

I am surprised that they didn't ask for a list of the subscribers including SSN.

From "how many people" to "what people" there is only a single step.

And it is very very very easy to take it.

That a congressperson makes this kind of question speaks volumes about him. Unbelievable.

I know I'll be downvoted for this, but fundamentally this definition[1] includes "and forcible suppression of opposition". In what way is this letter not the first step in this direction?

I'm no fan of the previous president. Really didn't like him. But this ... this attempt at shutting down of opposition communication, is the hallmark, the signature of nascent oppression. And a slide into fascism/socialism/etc.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism

Saying that you will be downvoted guarantees it.

You are right but it is best not to mention the beast, in my opinion.

Until we confront this, without fabricating fever swamp fiction to frighten captive tribal masses, we are going to be stuck in this dystopia. Teetering on the edge of {fasc,Democratic|National social}ism who all seek to control the narrative and suppress dissent.

In what way /is/ this letter the first step in this direction?

> "But this ... this attempt at shutting down of opposition communication"

... is completely imaginary? A member of Congress writing a letter to Tyson Chicken asking what steps they took after the COVID incident of placing bets on how many workers would get infected, is not something you can reasonably turn into "this attempt at shutting down food production". It's not like these are secret backroom letters with threatening content released by whistleblowers to embarrass the senders, these letters were announced by official press release[1].

There is no attempt at shutting down of opposition communication in writing a letter that asks questions to which the media company can reply "we don't censor content". Do Anna Eshoo or Jerry McNerny have any unusual influence over funding or licensing (etc.) decisions for Cox, Alphabet, AT&T, Dish, than any other Congressperson, in a way that would make the letters carry more weight than their content suggests?

[1] https://eshoo.house.gov/media/press-releases/eshoo-mcnerney-...

"Gosh, that's only one step away from something worse" is true of literally everything anyone has ever done.

It is -very- partisan, and equivalent to poking a wasp nest with a stick.

The country is very, very divided, not just between D vs R but also progressive vs...everyone else.

I wish I had the answers(surprise, I don't), but I feel we should find some commonality, some give and take, and get on a path toward a semblance of unity. Trying to silence your opposition is what I'd call the complete opposite of that approach.

I think the only way to handle this is to stand up for common sense, and call out those attempting to use 1984 as a playbook. To shine the disinfecting light of day upon things like this. To vote the idiots who push this crap, out.

This could be making sure you primary them, recall them, or elect other persons. Seriously, allegiance to political parties is not what I am looking for in my elected reps. I want them to work on behalf of me. Not their particular party label.

The damage that the two parties fighting for political power have done to this country is ... staggering.

-> I want them to work on behalf of me.

Sorry pal, Citizens United screwed up any chances of that.

I agree it had a part in it, but its not the whole story. Its the citizens being unable to elect people not beholden to political parties, with party obligations. These obligations appear to be more important than their obligations to the people who put them there.

This isn't a Citizen's United issue as much as it is a set of political parties that have evolved to control their captive populations. Some people vote D|R precisely to stick it to the others. They don't care about representation. They care about tribalism. The parties foster and encourage that thinking. The various "news" channels have their own opinions and often align with a particular party. Which means they are in the propaganda and red meat business. Not the news business.

CU is a part of this, in terms of providing fuel for the fire, but its been going on much longer than CU, and will continue regardless of whether or not CU gets struck down going forward.

Yep, the partisanship is absolutely insane, far worse than in years past.

The problem is now moderates are getting forced to join sides - which leads to even more polarizing candidates.

Hmm - 4 years of an administration doing exactly what you're describing (silencing opposition viewpoints) and now it's all unity and kumbayah?

Your post is quite ironic.

Why do people get so defensive when 'their side' is questioned? Is your solution to forever go back and forth silencing each other because the other guys did it first?

I am not picking sides. I think it's unprofessional for the president to constantly call things like 'Fake News', but I don't remember them going to cable companies to try and get them canceled. And if they did, I oppose that just the same.

Personally, I got so sick of all news being all Trump all the time, I question any claim that media was in any way silenced.

Obama did far more to silence opposing viewpoints than Trump did. But you probably don't know about what Obama did, because his administration's intimidation and jailing of reporters worked.

How many reporters did the Trump administration throw in jail?

Do you have a cite for the Obama reference? Quick google search says it's BS. Whereas Trump did recently threaten a reporter with jail time.

Michael Hastings mysteriously exploded during the Obama Administration, maybe that's what they're referring to.

Actually, 12 years

More like sixty-some; these tactics date at least back to McCarthy and the Unamerican Activities commitee.

Worse than that, it is an attempt at intimidation. Given today's climate, it would not surprise me if it works.

Look at it this way. The capital riot on 6-Jan was planned and discussed on Youtube, facebook, and twitter. Apparently, barely a mention on Parler. Yet Parler was excoriated and deplatformed for it, and for not policing its comment sections. Yet Youtube, facebook, and twitter have faced no consequences for their ... whats the word I heard used about Parler ... complicity?

This is a dystopian future.

> This is a dystopian future

No, pretty sure it's now. This is a dystopian society we live in today.

This is disinformation.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2021/02/01/civil-war-...

https://nypost.com/2021/01/16/aoc-slams-facebooks-mark-zucke...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-blocks-qanon-accounts-c...

No, it really wasn't dis/mis information. You can't just label facts you don't like, that go against a narrative that you wish to be true, as disinformation. Twitter, Facebook, and many others do this. They specifically stifle discussion that runs counter to the narratives they wish to promote.

That's their choice as private companies. But holding them to account for this, when they claim they wish to be "fair" definitely begs the question of what their definition of "fair" is. It makes for a rather Clintonian discussion.

Parler was kicked off of AWS for violating AWS’s policies.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to tell you that YouTube and Facebook don’t use AWS.

Why were they removed from Google and Apple's app stores while Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are still available?

Twitter uses AWS for some of their stuff. Why aren't they removed for violating AWS's policies?

Do you really need an explanation of why a multibillion dollar company wasn't removed and why a fringe app was?

Why do you think it wasn't removed?

We just want people to admit that the reason was a lie

This is a silly conclusion.

If a gang member and a methodist get into a bar fight, do you think the fair thing is for the bar to ban both gang members and methodists?

No -- it is entirely reasonable to treat fringe groups that foster fringe ideas differently than large diverse groups.

Since the fringe people were on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube it seems like we should be banning them not Parler.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are a clear example of the latter group in my previous comment.

Silicon Valley has been taken over by Methodists!!! ;-)

Your analogy is incorrect though.

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Parler are all bars. The gang members (insurrectionists) went to the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube bars and got into fights. The Methodist (non-insurrectionists) went to Parler and did not get into bar fights.

According to you the solution is not to ban the bars where the bar fights took place but the place where there were no bar fights. It really makes no sense.

It was a power play. One (ideologically uniform, and quite likely coordinating) group asserting raw power over another. Because it could. And in doing so, making sure this was public and messy. As a warning to others.

Your own initial comment in this thread was about AWS kicking social media platforms off of their service. That is what I am responding to.

I don't see how we can recover and heal until the truth is admitted to. Everyone knows it to be true, but they can't admit it. Time to come clean, or continue to inflame the situation.

Facebook was regularly kicking people off for problematic comments (it certainly didn't get all of them).

That was many people's motivation for going to Parler in the first place - frustrated with what they believed being tagged as "false", frustrated with repeated bouts in Facebook Jail, etc.

There's a dichotomy that one of the major motivations for Parler uptick is because of something you imply never really ever happened on Facebook.

The question today is "how many" but the question tomorrow will be "what are their names?"

And they have that information too. Digital cable delivery means that the cable companies have a record of which channel you watch and at what time.

I think this is a slippery slope fallacy. Asking a media outlet the size of their audience is a common figure, something they include in every ad sales presentation. Its relevant to understand the reach of these messages, especially when they have direct ties to foreign adversaries such as in the case of OANN: https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-trumps-new-favorite-channe... This is not a censorship dragnet, its a wide-ranging set of inquiries to a diverse set of media (keep scrolling if you just saw the AT&T letter) in response to an attempted insurrection.

> Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?

Of course, this entire letter is published by two democratic representatives from highly liberal districts (silicon valley and stockton) who want to pander to their base. There's nothing actionable or productive about this letter.

Somehow we still have reactions in this thread on the scale of "we're on our way to a one-party state". This is just Congress doing what they do most every day (setting up for reelection)

As far as I can tell these letters were signed by only 2 members of Congress. As such the title "Letters from House Democrats" seems misleading. That title suggests to me that some substantially representative fraction of the House Democratic delegation is behind these letters. That does not appear to be the case.

Ok, we've tweaked the wording to address that. Thanks!

Is there any difference between the ~12 copies of the same letter in this PDF?

But to the point, this is chilling. The last administration started down a dangerous precedent of claiming some news sources were less entitled to their right to exist. Just because I happen to agree that the channels being targeted here are garbage doesn't mean I think we should allow the government to make that decision.

Its a press release so each representative has to have their own letter so they can distribute it as a press release. It is fairly typical.

Using the government to suppress opposing views is the very definition of tyranny. Anytime people talk about a "reset" the populace suffers.

Each letter is going to a different provider - for example, one is to AT&T, one it to Amazon.

It isn't really a precedent; from [1] "When consumers see or hear an advertisement, whether it’s on the Internet, radio or television, or anywhere else, federal law says that ad must be truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence. The FTC enforces these truth-in-advertising laws, and it applies the same standards no matter where an ad appears – in newspapers and magazines, online, in the mail, or on billboards or buses"

There already is a precedent for federal law mandating truth in information carried over media channels in specific situations. "That decision" you reference doesn't have to be a decision to drop/silence the media channel outright. The previous administration made continuous claims about fake news and media lies; if the current administration is talking about media disinformation and lies as well, that sounds like there's scope for a bi-partisan agreement[2] to hold media companies more accountable for "truth in reporting", like there are "truth in advertising" rules.

Your position doesn't have to be "I agree these channels are garbage but in the interests of avoiding Facism all media should be allowed to lie without being held to account in any way".

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advert...

[2] lol

I suppose they mean disinfo and not misinfo?

seems like a slippery slope when one can't trust their own people to be able to distinguish between facts/non-facts, so much that one needs laws to ban certain types of content and prevent it from being seen. makes me wonder if this will not even cause further conspiracy and drive traffic to alternative (underground e.g. outlawed) information channels

pretty hard to draw a line especially in relation to satire/comedy etc. There is no point of irony/satire if it has to be labeled as such.

>I suppose they mean disinfo and not misinfo?

misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies

PDF says all of the above. Obviously the democrats are the ones who will define what's a lie. Any Americans here think it's appropriate to allow the democrat party to define what's a lie and then have it censored?

"Right-wing media outlets, like Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Fox News"

It's interesting that the democrat government is pressuring ATT to deplatform their political opponents.

>seems like a slippery slope when one can't trust their own people to be able to distinguish between facts/non-facts, so much that one needs laws to ban certain types of content and prevent it from being seen. makes me wonder if this will not even cause further conspiracy and drive traffic to alternative (underground e.g. outlawed) information channels

I have never in my life seen such a political divide in the USA. It's very much like during the Vietnam war. Afterall the USA has now been at war longer than it ever has been.

> "Obviously the democrats are the ones who will define what's a lie

How can you live through 4 years of President trump calling "fake news" and "lying media" about something at least every week, and then straight faced say "obviously the democrats are the ones who decide what's a lie"?

> "Any Americans here think it's appropriate to allow the democrat party to define what's a lie and then have it censored?"

Remember last year when Twitter fact-checked a tweet by President Trump and "In response, Trump threatened in a set of tweets Wednesday to “strongly regulate or close” down social-media platforms. He followed up by signing an executive order late Thursday that seeks to limit some of the broad liability protection social media companies have under federal law."?[1]

Yeah, any americans think it would be bad if the Democrats did this? Hopefully.

Any Republicans think it was actually bad when Republicans actually did this? People in this thread are saying that two members of Congress sending a letter is "chilling intimidation", compared to the President signing an executive order removing legal protections from social media companies?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/05/27/close-t...

> Obviously the democrats are the ones who will define what's a lie.

Obviously not, if this would happen through legislation, absent erasure of the filibuster or the inconceivable result, given the structural biases in the US electoral system, of the Democrats securing a Senate supermajority.

> Any Americans here think it's appropriate to allow the democrat party to define what's a lie and then have it censored?

I haven't seen any proposal for any political party or government apparatus to either determine what is a lie or to have it censored, or to take any other concrete action whatsoever.

I've seen an inquiry into what private parties in a regulated industry are doing, which presumably might feed back into how that industry is regulated in any of a number of ways that don't involve government determination of truth or state-directed censorship.

> It's interesting that the democrat government is pressuring ATT to deplatform their political opponents.

The “democrat government”, whatever that is, is doing no such thing. They are asking for information about AT&T has done and metrics AT&T might have about past events, not directing or suggesting any future course of action.

Meanwhile the major Democrat leaning/voting news outlets peddled russian collusion conspiracy nonsense for years and then stoked the flames of racial and anti-police violence last year. And I see we have people here clinging to misinformation and melodramatic interpretations by the major liberal news outlets on events of january 6th, and these people don't know that they are living in unreality themselves and yet want to censor their political opponents under the guises of "misinformation" and "inciting."

You may find the Mueller report enlightening, then. [1] The claims are hardly nonsense: it’s a bipartisan fact that Russians made a big effort to influence at least the 2016 election, and succeeded. [2] Rather than taking a hard stance against Russia because of this, Trump officials have been convicted related to their lies about the situation. [3] Alleging or assuming that trump knew about this and/or encouraged it is not a huge stretch given his history. [4]

You seem to be saying the entire thing is conspiracy nonsense, but the reality is that some very deeply concerning things happened. Things not just rumored about, but proven in a court of law [5], or investigated by even Republican committees [2]. Even if you assume that Trump did not specifically ask Russia to do anything (see [4] again), his response to the situation was extremely damning.

1. https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

2. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associat...

4. Trump welcomes Russia to hack Hilary at 13:30 in this video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?413263-1/donald-trump-urges-ru...

5. https://apnews.com/article/ad355d2c983e4a7c85bc17e86d8c563f

The problem is that it wasn’t evidence enough to convict Trump. It’s fine if you want to insist that Trump did in fact commit a crime (I might even agree with you) but then you can’t criticize the people saying Trump actually won the election because you’re also promoting a conspiracy without evidence.

You're calling the Mueller report a conspiracy without evidence...? Surely I misunderstood your post because that sounds way off.

> it’s a bipartisan fact that Russians made a big effort to influence at least the 2016 election

The Russian influence claims are way over exaggerated. The best evidence they found are in the order of 10k$, like ads for Facebook pages with barely any followers. There was no bombshell of anything that could have any kind of significant effects. For all we know those were armchair trolls on the Internet.

> You may find the Mueller report enlightening, then.

Have you actually read it or cherry picked the quote you like? Not only was it started on lies (one lawyer was convicted for altering documents) and concluded there was not enough to charge for illicit links between the Trump Campaign and any other Republicans, most of it is simply finding "links", like meeting for a project, with nothing about proving the content or the intent for collusion.

> Rather than taking a hard stance against Russia because of this, Trump officials have been convicted related to their lies about the situation.

Not exactly, they've all been convicted on technicalities and what was clear entrapment. The Michael Flynn is quite telling of that with how he was lured into a FBI interview at work where it was normal to talk to FBI agents, how with no representations or document he was "caught" not being factual about an event that happened years ago and how the judge sought an ex parte so he could refuse the prosecution's demand to dismiss the case.

> Alleging or assuming that trump knew about this and/or encouraged it is not a huge stretch given his history.

Confirmation bias. Not really an argument.

> https://www.c-span.org/video/?413263-1/donald-trump-urges-ru...

Why do you only take seriously the part that fits your conclusion but refuse to ignore the part where he had nothing to do with Putin? Don't expect to be taken seriously when your "damning proof" is a quote taken out of context and that the context contradicts you.

Reading the letters, they are only signed by two Democratic members of the house. They are both on the committee for communications and technology, but they only represent 2 of 28 voting representatives.

This really feels more like a publicity stunt on their part to please their constituents than some sort of concerted effort by the Democratic party, but perhaps someone with more insight on congress could enlighten me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Energy_Sub...

No, you probably have it right. House members pretty regularly do weird performative things they don't really expect to lead anywhere; it's increasingly seen as part of the job.

To determine misinformation you must first determine information.

We would need to setup some government entity to determine true information.

We could call it the "Ministry of Truth".

Unless that name is already taken?

... the cold wind blows...

If only somehow the government could determine what is true... </sarcasm>

When somebody is accused of a crime we just have to say "Guilty according to whom?" and let them go, because there's no way to know what's true. Sure the DNA says he murdered 3 children, but what are those scientists really after!

If only there were some organized system for appointed people with great track records to somehow listen to both sides of an argument and produce some sort of "judgment" at the end. But that's impossible, because only the TV box knows what's true. Alas...

>Sure the DNA says he murdered 3 children

Does it? Enough labs have shown to be unreliable in handling evidence and being able to follow correct procedures. Remember back when the bite marks showed they were the murderer, or the skull shaped showed them to be a killed, or they didn't float so they must've been a witch?

In a way you're agreeing with me. You're pointing out how hard it is to find what's true, and the obvious answer to me seems - better science.

Have the DNA sent to 3 separate labs to test blindly against a control (blind tests are a huge component of the scientific method), require consensus from all 3 labs.

Modern scientific method also was the solution to "phrenology" (skull shape).

At least I assume you're not arguing all scientific evidence in court should be inadmissible?

This is a red herring because the letter doesn't call for the legal system to determine what's true and false, it tries to pressure cable companies to drop cable channels that the ruling party doesn't like.

Regardless, the legal system does in fact make mistakes. We have the legal system because in some cases final decisions have to be made - who to imprison and who not - not because it's a perfect system. The fact that we need a system for a limited purpose doesn't imply that we should expand it's power indefinitely.

> If only somehow the government could determine what is true... </sarcasm>

You got the definition backward, Truth is what the Government says it is, not the opposite, cf. historical truth set by law in France and other European countries. Records can always be altered to fit the current narrative.

> If only somehow the government could determine what is true...

You say this in relation to a criminal trial but two things:

1. The government can not determine guilt or innocence. It determines guilt beyond a reasonable doubt which is a distinction worth considering. There is an implicit admission of uncertainty and unknowability.

2. A panel of judges determining truth is a concept that has existed historically and in fiction. It plays out exactly as you'd expect it would. The powerful control the panel and suppress all those who dissent.

Surely you haven't thought this through. Do you really want the entirety of your life to be a criminal trial where a panel of judges (or citizens) determine what you ought to think and feel?

What about lying to the feds? It's a felony. Who gets to decide was was the truth?

This section from my previous comment is relevant.

> Do you really want the entirety of your life to be a criminal trial where a panel of judges (or citizens) determine what you ought to think and feel?

I would argue against your point that "lying to the feds" is illegal. I think some cursory research into the subject would temper your opinion (at least to the point where you wouldn't consider it a "gotcha"). But I won't argue it here because it detracts from my larger point: the criminalization of all thought not arbitrated by government censors is a terrible idea and is fundamentally incompatible with the Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and common sense.

I'm old enough to remember when calling private news agencies Fake News was an assault on our Freedom of the Press.

2 parts of this are interesting to me.

The first is "House Democrats demand" - the government should not be regulating speech, even if it's false/dangerous/moronic. The letter is dumb and dangerous.

The second is "Cable providers to censor misinformation" - infrastructure providers regulating speech sounds very similar to the whole Parler deplatforming. I wonder what my own reaction would be if cable companies independently kicked off (say) OANN after the Jan 6 riot. Is the private-to-private speech regulation ok?

The government should be regulating the broadcast of false information that is blatant propaganda. Freedom of speech is not freedom to broadcast blatant lies to millions of people.

In that case, all the media would be shut down.

So, one thing that is interesting to me here is that cable companies do choose which companies to allow as channels. Like, they aren't merely a dumb pipe to access the world of television, hopefully having a disregard for what customers watch, but instead take an active role in curating their catalog to choose channels and content that will be accessible to their customer base.

Due to this, while I personally find the premise of this demand chilling, it more argues to me that cable companies almost deserve their fate here: I think it would be entirely fair to try to hold cable companies at least somewhat liable for all of the content broadcast on all of their channels.

Like, arguably, to me, this feels the same as the Section 230 controversy, but since a cable company isn't an "interactive computer service" I guess they are left out in the cold. If you really believe in Section 230, maybe you feel like it should be expanded to cover this scenario. And, if not, maybe you feel like cable companies it's catalogs of channels should either 1) do tons of fine-grained limitations and/or filtering or 2) simply not exist so that people can get their information from an actual platform (which cable companies actually already provide anyway: the Internet).

Remember when the left said they wanted to unify the country? I guess squashing all opposing viewpoints is one way to do that... Maybe they should get some help from Russia and China, I hear they have a lot of experience in dealing with 'misinformation'

Robby Soave had a good take on this

https://reason.com/2021/02/22/eshoo-mcnerney-letter-fox-news...

Worth noting that these letters are from two relatively low ranking members of the House Democratic caucus, not from anyone in leadership.

Merely useful pawns, I wonder what's they have been promised.

Worth noting that one of these members is the representative for CA-18 (Eshoo) which includes parts of silicon valley:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_18th_congressio...

It's political theater, but is still relevant and noteworthy as this kind of action pierces through the "but this isn't about the 1st Amendment because they're private companies and can de-platform anyone". Once FB, Twitter, or a cable company start censoring due to government pressure, then 1st amendment arguments are indeed applicable.

I think they would do better to solve the business model at the genesis of the issue. The Attention economy brought the conspiracy and outrage machine to each of our phones. There's an addict in my pocket. We need the political willpower to say "Yea you are a rich money making company, but a harm for X, Y reasons, and therefore this is the new regulation for companies profiting on an attention based model." There will be fallout, solutions require it, we must have courage and stop putting companies and money on a pedestal above people.

> The Attention economy brought the conspiracy and outrage machine to each of our phones.

Speaking of, just take a look around the responses to this very submission

So true. It's gonna take an external crisis to unite these states. I'm praying for vegan aliens.

I think many US americans despise the german approach to censorship of speech. Here in germany, we have not freedom speech but freedom of opinion, which makes a very crucial distinction.

There are two kinds of statements, descriptive and normative ones.

Descriptive statements explain "as is" relationships like "this door is blue" or "2 + 2 = 5". It does not matter if the statement is false or not.

Normative statements cover subjective "should be" relationships. These are opinions like "it should be 3 years parental leave" and thus protected in german law as beeing unrestricted. This is, what is needed for free public discourse and not the right to claim falsehoods.

In germany, you cant freely say that "jews are all criminals" and "the holocaust never happend". Over here, you can get penalized for public statements like these because (a) they are not opinions but wrong descriptive statements and (b) explicitly noted as beeing illegal. Whereas in the Us all speech is free (insults and such excluded ofc).

The question is, where do you draw the line. To which point can wrong descriptive public statements still be tolerated and where might they harm society or individuals? From the german perspective, this question is easy to answer and i am considering the storm of the capitol here :)

First of all, "insults" are not excluded from free speech protections in the US, except in very narrow circumstances.

Second, the distinction between normative and descriptive statements, as you define them, is not always clear-cut. As a simple example, is which bucket is "I think these doors are the same color" when said about a red and green door? What about (to use your example, but with a slight tweak), "I think all <insert group> are criminals"? Note that the "I think" was implicit in your phrasing, though maybe the implicit vs explicit distinction matters.

Third, even for statements everyone agrees are descriptive there may be widespread disagreement as to whether they are true. Example: "Donald Trump is a criminal." The US approach to this is to generally try to avoid having the government be the arbiter of truth, with some narrow exceptions for libel and the like. The German approach, as you note is different, not least due to different historical experiences. Which approach is better depends a _lot_ on circumstances and culture and norms and so forth. The German one places a lot more trust in the government not abusing it's truth-determination power than the US one does.

>Second, the distinction between normative and descriptive statements, as you define them, is not always clear-cut.

True but does not matter. Those statements, that fit into the descriptive/normative categories are the key ones of any text, the rest is either allusion or up for the courts to decide. IMO phrasing like "looks like there might be voter fraud" would not have let to the storm of the capitol.

>"I think all <insert group> are criminals"? Note that the "I think" was implicit in your phrasing

The difference of normative/descriptive statements is the same as subjective/objective ones. "I think ..." already started subjectively and can only have a descriptive component, if its backed up with a statement like "because X is ...".

>"Donald Trump is a criminal."

>The US approach to this is to generally try to avoid having the government be the arbiter of truth

But courts decide who is a criminal or not. And when such a decision is made, you could legally call Trump a criminal. Experts are frequently heard in court to distinguish it, so why not extend it? It does not have to the ministry of truth (political) but we all require the authority, that tells us the way things are, hopefully in an unbiased way.

> "I think ..." already started subjectively

But fundamentally me saying "I think the sky is blue" and "the sky is blue" are the same thing: the latter just has the "I think" implicit but clear to anyone who stops to think for a moment about what it means that _I_ am saying it. Maybe most people don't think, of course.

> But courts decide who is a criminal or not.

Sort of. The courts decided OJ Simpson is not a criminal by the legal definition. The descriptive statement "OJ Simpson committed a crime" has fairly contested truth value.

> hopefully in an unbiased way.

I guess the key is that the US approach starts out by admitting that the "unbiased way" is an unattainable fantasy and then works on routing around that problem. The real discussion here is whether the cure is worse than the disease in this case.

It feels weird to watch all this outrage, when we had four years of the president calling the media "fake news", and everybody pretty much accepted "Yeah, that's just the way he talks."

Partisanship, partisanship everywhere.

This type of messaging only exacerbates any misinformation being spread. The only impact this could have is that right wing groups will have another real world example for fresh conspiracy theories. This pushes the divide wider.

So don’t collect data on disinformation?

These letters are potentially unconstitutional actions. First amendment rights can be violated by entities other than the government. As pointed out in [1], the government can't induce a company to do something that were government to do it would be illegal:

It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-...

Edited for grammar and unnecessary qualifiers.

> These letters are are bordering on potentially unconstitutional actions.

“bordering on potentially X” is a very misleading way to say “not even arguably X”.

But that's really all it says.

Thanks. I removed the unnecessary 'bordering on'. The intent was to say they're unconstitutional in my view.

This appears to be a letter from just two House members (the Democratic majority has 221) --- Eshoo, whose district includes the south bay area, and McNerny, from Stockton.

The best part about your observation (this is less than 1% of the Democrats in the House) are the (currently top, highly-piled-on) comments with people clutching their pearls and wondering how The Democrats--as a collective--strayed so far into Orwellian territory.

It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether those commenters are being genuine, or are just grossly incapable of critical thinking.

It's too late to do anything about it now, but it's for this reason that we have a general norm against these kinds of stories on HN --- this falls into the same bucket as "proposed bill" (this is far less than a proposed bill), which are virtually always off-topic on HN, as you can confirm with a quick search of 'dang comments.

The normal good thing to do with stuff like this is to flag it before it sprawls into a 500 comment thread.

It's heavy handed, but not surprising. My guess is they're trying to collect information to make a case for some sort of fine and/or injunction and/or censorship of specific instances of misinformation that may be related to the recent insurrection.

The courts have held that government can restrict free speech to further national security, so it's not novel. At the same time, proving a relationship between media corporation misinformation and the insurrection would be very difficult.

Periodically, the Supreme Court has examined whether the government can restrict speech to further the compelling interests of national security. In doing so, the Court has recognized that national security, as a governmental interest, does justify restrictions on First Amendment rights. In the landmark free press decision Near v. Minnesota (1931), the Court established a general rule against prior restraints on expression. However, the Court did note that the government could shut down a newspaper if it published military secrets: “No one would question but that a government might prevent actual obstruction to its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops.”

Nevertheless, the government must provide proof that national security interests really are in play—that is, the government cannot simply use national security as a blank check to sidestep constitutional challenges. In New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the majority of the Court rejected the government’s national security justifications for attempting to prevent the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. In his concurring opinion, Justice Hugo L. Black explained that “the word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.”

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1134/national-s...

Not sure if this qualifies as editorialization, but "Letters from [2 California] House Democrats to [Internet and Smart TV Device] Providers" is a more accurate title.

This is such a dangerous game to play.

CNN knowingly misleads the public every single day. It's effectively public knowledge if anyone cares to investigate themselves.

Going after FOX because the ruling party disagrees with them, but leaving CNN alone is the definition of authoritarian, regardless of your views. You can't single out voices.

Further, who owns CNN? (Turner Broadcasting System)

Who owns Turner Broadcasting System? (WarnerMedia)

Who owns WarnerMedia? (AT&T)

Interesting... so AT&T is being lobbied not to carry its competition, while leaving its own broadcasting alone.

Trump continually attacked the media, Trump literally said the media was the enemy of the people. He would ignore questions from other agencies, even those without bias.

Until people in their own parties start standing up for principled government it will never change.

Unsurprisingly, downvoted for stating facts once again - people are afraid to call a spade a spade.

Reading these threads has been very depressing lately, Democrats ask OANN and other _extremely_ conservative networks for information, and that's somehow an attack on the First Amendment, where as 4 years of Trump - and the rest of the Republican party - attacking anything he disagreed with as Fake News was totally cool.

Either Hacker news is being heavily astroturfed (there are many throwaway accounts participating here for example) or really that's what this community is now.

I just keep a little personal list of usernames of people who are promoting Fascism and avoid anything they are associated with.

Respectfully, I don't really see anyone saying that false accusations of fake news were cool. I'm concerned that you might be stuck in a mindset of partisan battle, where anyone who expresses concerns about this letter is declaring themselves to be on the other team from the people who wrote it.

Expressing concerns is great, and I support those comments. Reflecting on what you said, it’s true that pointing out an issue here does not imply political affiliation to either side, but it’s sorta funny how much more volume there is about this?

In terms of supporting racism, Specifically what I'm referring to are attempts to paint 1/6 as overblown or somehow was an acceptable event. Framing is really important - people here are claiming the only "real" death was "an unarmed protestor", ignoring that the person was shot attempting to break down the door to where the members of the House were actively evacuating from; and that somehow the suicides after the event or the deaths from the stress during the event don't count as real deaths.

When did CNN viewers storm the capitol in attempt to overthrow the elected government, leading to the deaths of 7 people?

There's actually a lot of clips of CNN & other reporters helping and pushing protesters into the Capital Building...

https://twitter.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/134990457311734169...

Also, only two persons died of wounds confirmed at the Capital (both protestors). The only person who was shot, was recorded by the "reporter" in the video above was egging on the police & protestors at the time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/16/sullivan-vi...

Further, regarding the "7 deaths" two additional people died from a stroke and heart attack going to the Capital.

Yes, there were then three additional fatalities in the _days_ following the event. None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way (including the officer). While facts and the evidence can change, the current facts do not support the claims being made.

Lauren Witzke is a Q Anon supporter. Do you think Q Anon supporters should be given a voice here on HN?

Also, why does it matter how many people died during the attempt to overthrow our government by far right extremists? How many deaths are acceptable? 1? 7?

> Lauren Witzke is a Q Anon supporter. Do you think Q Anon supporters should be given a voice here on HN?

Sure, I believe everyone deserves a voice? Kind of weird to say that.

Further, it's the content of the video that matters. There was nothing Q related in the tweet.

> Also, why does it matter how many people died during the attempt to overthrow our government by far right extremists? How many deaths are acceptable? 1? 7?

(1) The previous post has a video of far left extremist perpetrating the storming of the Capital.

(2) I'm not arguing any fatalities are acceptable. I'm simply pointing out the figures are inaccurate; which is important because we need to have a basis of facts to have discussions. Facts, which are currently being exaggerated for political ends.

By CNN, you mean an independent (QAnon-pushing) documentary filmmaker, who was egging on an alt-right activist? This one has been debunked.

> Yes, there were then three additional fatalities in the _days_ following the event. None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way (including the officer).

Oh, you're going to have to try harder than that. Just because there was no indication that, specifically, "blunt force trauma was the immediate cause of death of [Officer Sicknick]" doesn't mean anything close to "None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way".

CPR being performed on him. A hemorrhagic stroke within hours, a ventilator (multiple pepper sprayings), and death within 24 hours. All factors that you say "eh, coincidence" to.

Please don't post disinformation here. https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-9906367046

I agree, you should stop posting fact checkers and instead look at the government report linked in the post I linked.

The man recording the video was repeatedly on CNN/NBC/etc sharing his story... also Jade was an independent photo journalist who's clients include: CNN, NBC, etc.

https://www.jadesacker.com/about

This "fact checker" appears to be a bias journalist, I recommend checking the facts yourself. You don't need someone telling you what is real vs not, they dont' provide links in the AP article.

While I think it's fair to say they aren't "CNN journalists", they are employed by CNN as effectively contract workers.

Jade Sacker doesn't work for CNN. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-woman-capitol-n...

Feels like you are just getting played and then propagating your problems further here.

https://www.jadesacker.com/about

Her client list includes CNN, NBC, etc.

Yes, she's an independent photographer who is often under contract with CNN, NBC, etc. Not clear if she was at the time, tbh.

That wasn't exactly my only point, the way the industry works -- CNN, NBC, etc buy content from people who go into dangerous situations. So these people are in-effect the "journalists". In her case, I don't know if she was credentialed or not, but given her lack of arrest (as far as we can tell), she likely was.

Complaining about the press being fast and loose with the facts while being fast and loose with the facts yourself is your choice.

> None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way (including the officer).

That is simply false.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/police-of...

It's also funny looking at sources that they're referencing Comcast (vox.com/NBCUniversal) to tell Comcast (Xfinity TV) to censor certain contents. There is no government.

Does anyone have any proposals for dealing with mass misinformation other that aren't censorship? I mean specific ideas, not just "people need to be more decerning"?

I ask because I don't like censorship but I feel we're approaching a point where we have censorship and democracy or we don't have democracy anymore. And I like democracy...

* information isn't glamorous, so unless we redesigned the whole media market it won't win by itself.

* educating people is noble, but it will take 80 years for the humans currently alive to be replaced by a new generation of educated people. And that's assuming a high success rate in education to spot fake news etc.

* there are very few ways to reform democracy that might improve this. We could require people to pass simple tests before they can vote, and blackout non-fact-only news for a month before elections. But I already hear how that's not much better than simply censoring fake news.

Any other ideas?

This title should be changed, it doesn't reflect the content of these letters. They do point in a concerning direction, but this is not a demand for censorship.

" 4. What steps did you take prior to, on, and following the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans? Please describe each step that you took and when it was taken.

5. Have you taken any adverse actions against a channel, including Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN, for using your platform to disseminate disinformation related directly or indirectly to the November 3, 2020 elections, the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, or COVID-19 misinformation? If yes, please describe each action, when it was taken, and the parties involved.

6. Have you ever taken any actions against a channel for using your platform to disseminate any disinformation? If yes, please describe each action and when it was taken.

7. Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV both now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why? "

Not a demand for censorship?

>Not a demand for censorship?

No, those look like questions to me. A demand for censorship would be "stop carrying these channels." Such a demand may follow after these questions are answered, but do they not constitute a demand for censorship of themselves.

and when the mafia boss says, “You have a beautiful family” he is only complimenting you.

That's not an argument.

Yes it is, but obviously, you only taking these questions at face value.

I can only read what words you put on the page, I'm not a mind reader.

"Nice channel lineup you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it."

I was hoping this was a request to carry CSPAN in HD.

While some sources are being chastised for the content they put out, it's equally damaging to negligently not put out content on other stories. Both sides are doing this pick and choose game of politics and bias.

hear about it in the hunter biden case here:https://youtu.be/ZnMMx-i971I?t=2481

What's new here? This has been a new normal for Democratic establishment over the last 4 yours. Democratic establishment essentially captured major culture institutions, specifically Mainstream Media, Big Tech and Social Media and Academia, and now they are settings their sights on internet providers and cable companies.

I think the crux of the issue is not freedom of speech, but rather determining what counts as harmful disinformation. I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed; the point of contention is precisely where we should draw the line.

The violent, seditious sentiments present in America today are a direct result of people being permitted to pander dangerous lies with no consequences, lies which have caused deaths, and will cause more. If the GOP had not been able to lie about election fraud, the Capitol attack might not have happened.

At the same time, it's hard to draw the line between a mere falsehood and a dangerous one. In hindsight we can tell that a conspiracy theory claiming that the world is controlled by a cabal of Jewish pædophiles with space lasers is dangerous, but what about when it was new? In a democracy with a variety of views, it is hard for there to be government-sanctioned truths.

Without wanting to be too cynical, it's also worth pointing out that there's lots of precedent for the government stripping minorities of their rights in the name of national security. The only difference here is that the minority being targeted happens to be White.

>I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed

Who decides what is 'disinformation' or 'misinformation'? You? The Democratic representatives? Jack Dorsey? No thanks. I think I'd like to make up my own mind.

Your politics also shine through your comment which also betrays your biases. Free speech is hard when it's speech you don't like and used by your political opponents .. isn't it.

> Who decides what is 'disinformation' or 'misinformation'? You? The Democratic representatives? Jack Dorsey? No thanks.

You are restating what I said almost word for word — but still disagreeing. Somehow. Everyone probably agrees that disinformation must be curbed; not everyone agrees on what exactly disinformation is.

You seem to think I'm biased against Republicans. This is the case. You seem to be biased against Democrats. That is the point. We have biases, and as such cannot agree on what the objective truth really is. That's why determining whether something is true, misinformation, or disinformation is hard.

Not everyone agrees that disinformation should be curbed. And the reason many people, including the authors of the US Constitution, don't agree, is that they feel the risk of false positives is far too high.

That is _because_ I have no confidence that anyone doing the curbing, including myself, will correctly identify "misinformation", I don't want such curbing to be happening, period.

>You are restating what I said almost word for word — but still disagreeing. Somehow

I can elaborate. That you've elevated disinformation as a major societal issue that needs to be solved is itself a particular partisan talking point put out by Democrats to explain Hillary's loss in 2016. Trump never had the temperament to be a good president. He should not have been voted in and Hillary was a better candidate ... but he did get voted in because millions of your fellow citizens voted him in. But he was such anathema to the core Democratic base that it became permissible to brake every norm, break every rule and right, including gaslighting and lying, just to get him.

So underneath this 'concern' of yours is not a good faith attempt to tackle this problem objectively. You want a laser focus on your political opponents while you continue to turn a blind eye to the disinformation, misinformation, gas lighting and outright lies that Democratic party, along with mainstream media (which ostensibly became the PR department for the party) and Big Tech engaged in pushing one conspiracy theory after another, week after week after week for the entire Trump presidency.

> is itself a particular partisan talking point put out by Democrats to explain Hillary's loss in 2016

...No? Trump lied far less back in 2015. The reason he won is that media gave him a platform, not that he used it to lie. Most Democrats agree with this analysis. Curbing misinformation is not a partisan issue, either: Trump spent his entire presidency railing against "fake news" and though the fast majority of his complaints were inaccurate, falsehoods are peddled by media from both sides of the aisle.

> yours is not a good faith attempt to tackle this problem objectively

Neither is yours. Taking an aggressive stance from the get-go, claiming that Democrats are as bad as Republicans when it comes to lying – none of these are markers of good faith.

My whole point is that because misinformation can't be tackled objectively, it's far harder to censor people than it seems. Because of this, censorship is not as good an idea as one might think. I do say that "If the GOP had not been able to lie about election fraud, the Capitol attack might not have happened," but I spend the rest of my comment explaining why censorship is a bad idea.

>The reason he won is that media gave him a platform, not that he used it to lie.

He won because people voted him in as per the constitution. I'm sure there are a ton of factors around the particular mechanism of his winning. The media gave him a huge platform to be sure. They didn't do it because they liked him. They did it because of ratings and as a way to mock him because it looked like he would flame out (and he almost did flame out, many times). But OK, free press is free press and he got a huge amount of it.

But to be clear, it was the Hillary campaign strategy to let Trump tank himself by shinning a bright light on what a mess he was. At one point she literally stopped taking interviews and press conferences for months [1]. So if media attention is what wins election, what the heck was she thinking?!? And if Hillary didn't want the media platform, is it really the media's fault for giving it to Trump? In hindsight, that was a bad campaign strategy. Also, had Bill Clinton never decided to visit Loretta Lynch on her plane, she never would have recused herself, and that dummy James Comey would never have made himself the face of the email investigation (another thing Hillary brought on herself) and tank her poll numbers a week before election with that ridiculous letter to Congress (if there was one thing that lost her the election, that latter was it).

>Most Democrats agree with this analysis.

I'm not sure about that. For 4 years after Trump's election, the Democratic base, the Democratic party and the former nominee attributed Trump's win to foreign interference. I think every Democrat, Hillary included, has claimed Trump is an illegitimate president, who was clearly a Russian puppet, who stole the election because of Russian disinformation. That happened. And of course, prior to 2020, the party that ALWAYS claimed election fraud was the Democratic party. Every lost election, state or federal, was because of voter intimidation, or voter suppression, or voter id laws, or some variation of that. So who actually sowed the seeds of election mistrust? Where were the calls to curb misinformation then?

But yes, I do agree that legislating away 'misinformation' is fraught with problems.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/18/hi...

>I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed

I don't agree with that. I think the problem is precisely those who think they get to decide what is and isn't disinformation and who gets to choose to curb it.

That's kind of what I'm saying, though. Disinformation is a problem, but because there is no objective arbiter of truth, curbing free speech to prevent it is impossible. Anyone who can do so (i.e. Jack Dorsey, Amazon, etc.) has immense power, and this is a bad thing.

> I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed

I think it, and the processes around it, needs to be understood.

Whether it needs to be curbed is another question; it certainly needs not to be systematically advantaged unless avoiding that would have greater adverse costs which means, when it is spreading within a regulated system like Cable TV, it definitely needs to be understood to assure that the spread is not an artifact of, or enhanced unintentionally by, the structure of regulation. Which makes it an important area of legislative inquiry even given the assumption that none of the disinformation covered is outside of the scope of protected speech.

You've successfully made the opposite side's point. You cite election-fraud misinformation as "leading to deaths", which is misinformation itself: the 5 deaths at the Capitol were 3 rioters having a heart attack, stroke, and apparently trampled; 1 rioter shot by a security person; and 1 Capitol policeman who died the next day of causes unknown to his own family still, yet erroneously trumpeted by NYT etc. as being killed by a fire extinguisher.

And, armed with this disinformation, you propose to abandon one of the core societal principles which has allowed America to succeed beyond anyone's imaginations. Now hopefully you can see why everyone's alarmed about what's going on.

Disinformation is bad, but this is of concern to me, the 1st Amendment is still the 1st Amendment; there si a good body of Laws that posed due limits to the 1st Amendment without compromising its spirit.

We should look at acts like this "letters" with more concern than disinformation itself.

This discussion does HN a disservice.

Further the comments reflect a prior, thoroughly editorialized title.

Why not just go with Chinese Style communism and have a state TV and be done with it.

I wish the democrats would focus on good governance.

You can’t swear on television, you can’t yell fire in a theater, you can’t criticise your company on your device after hours on Twitter, a gay couple can’t have a cake baked, a woman can’t even show her nipples, but that kind of censorship isn’t on the front page of hacker news...

Because what people really care about is that the media outlets that participated in a violent insurrection can continue to spew their hate and lies without consequence.

Glad that we aren't deplatforming social/media networks (modern day book burning).

Oh. Wait.

ah yes, time to appoint the glorious truth czars.

Pay attention.

This seems like a terrible idea.

> Experts have noted that the right-wing media ecosystem is “much more susceptible...to disinformation, lies, and half-truths.”

Citation from the PDF: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/o...

That book does not cite any evidence for that assertion.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

> IN THE PRECEDING three chapters we examined the propaganda feedback loop, how it forms, and how it facilitates disinformation and the manipulation of beliefs of a population. But our observations about the highly asymmetric nature of the American media environment, and the survey-based evidence we described in Chapter 2, which suggests that no more than 30 percent of the American population inhabits the insular, propaganda-rich right-wing media ecosystem, indicate that whatever one thinks of the result of the 2016 election, it could not have been purely the result of right-wing propaganda. Here, we identify two central attributes of mainstream media and professional journalism—balance and the scoop culture—that shaped election coverage, and in some cases made them particularly susceptible to being manipulated into spreading right-wing propaganda.

> As a violent mob was breaching the doors of the Capitol, Newsmax’s coverage called the scene a “sort of a romantic idea.”

That's not misinformation. That's just a dumb opinion.

> Fox News, meanwhile, has spent years spewing misinformation about American politics.

Citation from the PDF: https://www.vox.com/recode/22219026/fox-news-riot-capitol-ma...

That article is all about how Fox News has been talked for months after the election about how it "could have been stolen" (emphasis from Vox). It also speculates about Fox News's strategy going forward. That is not even close to "years spewing misinformation about American politics".

> A media watchdog found over 250 cases of COVID-19 misinformation on Fox News in just one five-day period

Citation from the PDF: https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-p...

These sorts of counting articles always rub me the wrong way. They count multiple instances of the same misinformation and tend to play fast and loose with the definition of "misinformation" to get the count as high as possible. Of the few cases cited in the article, most of them are dumb opinions and baseless conjectures.

> and economists demonstrated that Fox News had a demonstrable impact on non-compliance with public health guidelines

Citation from the PDF: https://doi.org/10.3386/w27237

From the cited study:

> Meanwhile, Fox News maintained its stance against the lockdown and SD and, in April, a “slew of Fox News opinion hosts and anchors [were] pushing back on public health experts and urging President Donald Trump to abandon its social distancing policies and reopen the economy” (Relman, 2020). Therefore, our Fox News effects arise and persist throughout a period when Fox News repeatedly broadcast anti-SD content that was contrary to the recommendations of the White House.

The study itself attributes Fox News's influence on non-compliance to their disagreements regarding lockdown and social distancing policies. The study accuses Fox News of broadcasting misinformation by virtue of sharing disagreements with the recommendations of health experts.

Maybe you could say that the authors of those sources were pushing misinformation?

> no more than 30 percent of the American population inhabits the insular, propaganda-rich right-wing media ecosystem, indicate that whatever one thinks of the result of the 2016 election, it could not have been purely the result of right-wing propaganda.

30% of the total American population could be 46% of the voting population. But this is a straw man argument, it would only take 1 counter example to disprove a statement like that, and you could certainly find a person like that.

The comment about how Fox News has not spent years spewing misinformation simply because it is only talking about "Stop the Steal" nonsense is missing the forest for the trees. You can find examples of baseless hyperbolic fearmongering on Fox News every year (and indeed every month) going back to its inception. Migrant caravans about to overrun our borders. BLM protestors setting entire cities on fire. Secret pedophiles operating out of fast food restaurants.

> The comment about how Fox News has not spent years spewing misinformation simply because it is only talking about "Stop the Steal" nonsense is missing the forest for the trees.

I rarely watch anything from Fox News, so I wouldn't know. The point is the Vox article cited in the letter does not back up the statement made. If it's as bad as you say, surely there must be a better source to cite.

Regardless of any issues with Fox News, Newsmax, or OANN, this letter was lazily written and obviously partisan. It makes many strong statements but fails to back them up with the given sources. The way it and its sources haphazardly throws around the term "misinformation" are concerning, especially when combined with the discomforting notion that telecom companies should be worried their content isn't meeting the expectations of government officials.

There are volumes written about the subject already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies#Studies...

For example:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/10/study-explore...

Then it shouldn't have been difficult for professional representatives of the House to find a good source.

House Democrats are trying to dictate what is allowed to air by wrapping it into a freedoom-fighting blanket. That's disgusting. If you want the standards to apply to someone else, apply them to yourself first.

This is just political theatre.

There is no such demand in the PDF linked.

EDIT: In case the title gets changed, it is currently "House Democrats Demand Cable Providers to Censor Misinformation [PDF]"

EDIT 2: After all the downvotes, I looked again but still am not seeing it.

Why are you being downvoted? I don’t see it either.

This is correct. There is no per-se demand, but there is a strong suggestion of expectation that these networks should be exerting some kind of pressure against the misinformation in shows they carry.

Frankly it still seems pretty ridiculous to me.

Who do you think should exert pressure against networks that broadcast misinformation and propaganda to millions of people?

If anybody, it should be the public, not the government, from the perspective of constitutional law. In an ethical sense, I'm less sure, because I feel pretty certain that the networks named in these letters are harmful to the country and harmful to democracy, but I'm unsure about the relative costs in the long-term of government intervention here. The ruling party attacking opposition media is never a good look, no matter how toxic said media is.

This is the United States - the government is the public.

That's not really the case. The government is accountable to the public, but it also has the power to conceal things from the public, and take unilateral action in the case of the executive branch.

What I mean by "the public" are individuals cooperating to boycott organizations they see as corrosive to democracy, which is the typical solution for problems like this. The government is expressly and pretty strongly forbidden from regulating speech by our constitution, which is the mechanism by which the government is accountable to the people.

I tend to disagree with the notion that this letter is chilling on free speech. There is a difference between criticism of this government and agitprop designed to undermine the system of government. The 1A is designed to prevent the former, and this letter seems pretty clearly designed to fish for that latter.

I think it's a bad letter because Congress is trying to abrogate their responsibilities and act like this is AT&T's problem, when it isn't. They need to break up the monopolies and give people the tools to hold these businesses accountable, as you said.

>There is a difference between criticism of this government and agitprop designed to undermine the system of government. The 1A is designed to prevent the former, and this letter seems pretty clearly designed to fish for that latter.

I mostly agree on the merits, but arguing this point is difficult because regardless of what the 1A was designed to do, at this point its legal interpretation has become broad enough that it's hard to imagine the government having a legitimate role in regulating speech here. The framers don't seem to have foreseen a crisis like we face.

>I think it's a bad letter because Congress is trying to abrogate their responsibilities and act like this is AT&T's problem, when it isn't. They need to break up the monopolies and give people the tools to hold these businesses accountable, as you said.

Yes, the effect that the cable companies have on the television market makes it very difficult for individuals to take effective action against these organizations. I think Congress should be investigating antitrust action against the cable companies, but these don't seem to be bad questions to asking them while they still make up a monopoly.

I agree it's tough to imagine this government having the legitimacy to deal with the crisis, if only because so many of them were complicit in creating it. The founders were pretty well-read - they were equally weary of a Caesar or Marius as they were a Charles I. New communication mediums always seem to bring an uncomfortable "breaking in" period along with them.

>This is correct. There is no per-se demand, but there is a strong suggestion of expectation that these networks should be exerting some kind of pressure against the misinformation in shows they carry.

It's kind of interesting. In 1 reading you can say there's no demand but when I read it there's multiple demands from the federal government.

It's similar to Trump and inciting violence. In 1 reading you can say Trump never incited violence but when I read Trumps' words he incited violence.

The democrat government absolutely demanded right-wing media be removed from their platform.

6. Have you ever taken any actions against a channel for using your platform to disseminate any disinformation? If yes, please describe each action and when it was taken.

7. Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV both now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why? "

Not seeing it? Really?

It's like reading a Politico fact check on a democrat.

The submitted title was "House Democrats Demand Cable Providers to Censor Misinformation [pdf]". That broke the site guidelines by editorializing. We've changed it now to something that is hopefully more accurate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.

- Madison, Federalist No. 50

We can't have people thinking those wrong thoughts! Stop them at the source.

Stepping back to a larger discussion about censorship, how exactly is "the marketplace of ideas" supposed to fight blatant falsehoods and other propaganda/misinformation? Ignoring it doesn't have the best track record so far, even Mark Twain figured out that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth even starts.

These media companies are regulated by the FCC, so media companies will now feel pressured to effectively regulate free speech on behalf of the political party in power to avoid any negative repercussions in unrelated matters.

It's disturbing that the constitution limits the government from quelling free speech so now the government is pressuring private companies to achieve what they are forbidden to do on their own.

Glenn Greenwald specifically discusses these developments in today's writeup.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/house-democrats-targeting-r...

Isn’t it funny the day after Biden was inaugurated the Covid death toll on all CNN shows in the bottom bar disappeared and all the “left” news outlets started talking less and less about the deaths and problems with Covid? Like it magically went away.

News outlets have their political alignments. All of them do. They’re all pushing a narrative.

How about we just get rid of cable news altogether? There are six companies that own all the media we consume so we should probably do something about it: https://fortune.com/longform/media-company-ownership-consoli...

Remember when republicans sent a letter to cable providers asking them how many viewers watched MSNBC for russia conspiracy theories or context-free coverage of the recent police shootings or sympathetic coverage of people burning down police stations and declaring autonomous zones or the breathless reporting about "kids in cages" and everyone thought that was totally cool?

Scary stuff, I feel like I'm slowly watching as the U.S turns into a one party state, and enforced by the government itself.

We argue about how it's okay for private companies to censor whatever they feel like, but what if it's the government pressuring them to do so? They themselves in this letter mention that 50% of Americans get their news from TV, and many American's have one choice of Cable provider, and even if they have 2 or 3, that's just 2 or 3 companies you have to pressure into delisting news sources of your choosing to make them essentially unreachable for the vast majority of the population.

The next step I feel is obviously blocking websites, again Americans only have 1 or 2 options of internet providers, and in this case they'd already have pressured them into censoring cable, so why not ask the same companies to censor the internet?

Steps like this just make me think that one side clearly doesn't plan on ever being able to lose an election again, and with actions available such as adding new states, adding 12-20 million new voters (illegal immigrants), I can see why they feel that way. Any authoritarian steps taken in democracy are usually balanced by the fact the other side could do the same when in power. If you simply never lose power, that's not an issue.

Which party is the "one party" here?

Probably the one with the presidency, house, senate, most of the media, and social media content moderation.

I just don't understand the parent post, the Democrats want MORE people to be able to vote, how is that "planning to never lose an election again"? The Republicans are the only ones who ever fight to suppress votes, most recently the attacks on absentee voting in Georgia, which are a direct result of two Democrats winning there and has absolutely nothing to do with "illegal immigrants" or election security on any level.

Which one sounds more like "planning to never lose an election again", the scheme where more people vote or the scheme where fewer people vote?

> I just don't understand the parent post, the Democrats want MORE people to be able to vote

Including dead people ? </sarcasm>

The point in question is not whether it is justified or moral single-party rule. It is whether there is a shift towards single-party dominance.

So how does "more people voting" lead to single-party dominance? I only see one party working for that goal, and it isn't the Democratic party.

> I only see one party working for that goal

I mean, that's silly — any political party would love single-party dominance.

Democrats want "more people voting" because their thesis is that most disengaged or non-voters would default Democrat. It's fine if you believe is that "more people voting is good for democracy" but it's not the reason that the Democrats are focused on getting more people ballots.

The Democrats know they have popular ideas, I fail to see how that's a sinister motive as you imply.

> We argue about how it's okay for private companies to censor whatever they feel like, but what if it's the government pressuring them to do so?

Of course, make no mistake, we're about to see plenty of legislation entrenching big tech positions !

Also, it's well-know NYT and other media conspired to sell the war against Iraq. Even though it was a different administration, the same people were in power behind the scene.

Citation to Democrats "wanting to add 12-20 million illegal immigrant voters". An outrageous claim.

Whenever you hear path to citizenship, that does entail voting.

[1]https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/16/politics/biden-immigration-le...

Outrageous, yes, but not an outrageous claim. (It's probably on the low side.) However, it is worded badly. They won't be "illegal" anymore because they will have been handed a "pathway to citizenship".

It's strange that a core part of the Democratic plan for this country is considered an "outrageous claim". That's a sign of just how strong disinformation actually is in the media.

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