Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

I have quite literally no idea what the correct answer is, and I reckon anyone who claims to have an easy answer is lying, because the landscape is fundamentally different to anything we've seen before.

Twitter is both a public forum and a private enterprise. The decisions it makes—not just in terms of moderation, but in terms of structure and incentive—substantially affect the spread of mis/disinformation. Is it the responsibility of the platform to prevent its abuse to that end? Or is it essential for it to remain entirely neutral? How does that work across different legal, social, and political environments? How does that apply differently to democratically-elected leaders? What constitutes harassment or targeted abuse? What counts as impersonation or parody?

It feels like it's going to be a fairly unpleasant period while we figure that all out.

View on HN

>The decisions it makes—not just in terms of moderation, but in terms of structure and incentive—substantially affect the spread of mis/disinformation.

If we can't trust individuals to digest information themselves, what are we doing?

I find the premise troubling. People can disagree and interpret events differently. Without that, there's very little to discuss.

> If we can't trust individuals to digest information themselves, what are we doing?

We're realizing that it's no longer as simple as "people should just know better", because the forces they're up against are armed with all the latest psychological tricks to induce belief even in people who /do/ know better.

People have been lying to and manipulating others since the beginning of recorded history. Even mythological figures exhibited deceptive behavior. The Pulitzer prize is named for the creator of "yellow journalism". There's nothing new here.

This reads as "this time is different", an appeal to special circumstances without addressing the crux of the issue, subjectivity & diversity of opinion.

In practical terms this requires "fact checkers" supposedly impartial arbiters of objective truth. We can disagree on philosophy and the nature of man, but this premise is a non-starter for me.

I don't see how this time is _not_ different.

In addition to the bad actors (these are the same throughout time) themselves, they now have capabilities that _are_ different:

- They can be heard at will be heard by millions to billions of people

- They can track in real time whether their messaging is working, and adjust it for maximum effect using everything we've learned about human psychology in the last century

- They can target their messaging at scale, varying it to match what will work best for a given narrowly-defined demographic

- They can do all of this with an iteration cycle of hours, instead of days or weeks

Where is the historical parallel that invalidates the premise?

Advances in technology do not address the underlying philosophical or moral premises. The pushback against the Gutenberg press was argued along similar lines. Technocrats appear to be the new priestly class.

Narrowly focusing on technological minutiae deliberately misses the point.

I remember when the rallying cry of opensrc and hacker culture was: "information wants to be free". Shameless political FUD is the same parlor trick played again and again. Disappointing to see it getting so much play here.

If you're opening the door for invites to prove a negative, then perhaps you can prove that your rationale isn't misinformation? In terms of real politik, it buttresses authoritarian "fact check" narratives.

We disagree and that's not only healthy and normal, but the entire point. We should be able to disagree without characterizing arguments or subjective observations as misinformation deviating from an authority's concept of "objective truth".

Much like the global economy made morality an infinitely complex problem (thanks The Good Place), the global Internet made digesting information equally as complex.

We don't equip people to do it through our education systems in America. What we're doing is sending millions of people out into the world, wholly unprepared to navigate it successfully, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation.

I don't personally blame Twitter. This is such a gigantic problem, that pinning it to a single source is just understating what's happening. If America wants to survive another 100 years, it will have to find a way to fix its "lack of critical thinking skills" problem in a way that flips the statistics, which is more or less impossible, without swift and decisive action to make large changes to how we educate our children.

>We don't equip people to do it through our education systems in America.

Does the largely state run education system have an incentive to create critical thinkers?

Institutions trend towards group think. Credentials are granted by authorities. I'm not sure we can get there using the tools at hand.

Yes, the state has an incentive to create critical thinkers, the incentive is just obfuscated substantially from the average decision maker in "the state".

I don't believe so. The state by its nature wants to find equilibrium like practically every other system. One of the paths of least resistance is the manipulation of the public into an unthinking, docile, and generally inert individual. This makes everything much more predictable and controllable, which brings it closer to equilibrium.

You could intuit this sort of outcome, perhaps, from a reading of "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Humans don't really do well with probability, we want definitive binary outcomes that aren't reliant on probability. We want a quiet, well defined day to day. Politicians want the same thing (alongside a disproportionately large allotment of control and wealth in return). Want though, is the difficulty, because the reality is that the underpinnings of practically all human functions and the world in itself are fairly chaotic.

I think you're under the impression it's a noble goal in the name of progress, but [genuine] progress is disruptive in every field. That disruption breaks the equilibrium, and makes the quiet day a rather loud lifetime.

"May you live in interesting times."

The state is people. There is no difference between "the state" and "its people". If its people are manipulated, the state is manipulated itself.

The state wants compliance as much as the people want compliance, which is certainly one incentive, but it exists in parallel with other, competing incentives.

"The state" doesn't exist as an independent thinking body. I don't think it's healthy to treat it like it does.

I do agree though, the incentives are hidden, non-obvious. Progress is incentivized because it helps the state, and it helps the state because it helps the people.

I disagree with your premise. There has been a stratification of interests since the 70's which has isolated the state and has homogenized the state's interest with that of the elite echelon, they've intermingled to the point where they should be more accurately called the ruling class. Of course the body of the state as a whole is a different discussion, but the mind is what drives it forwards and is certainly interested, singularly, in maintaining current momentum and directionality over utilitarian or technological developments.

There is no correct answer. There is only answer that you want and what you can do is to fight for your answer to become the outcome.

That being said I prefer twitter to be as hands off as possible when dealing with this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com