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Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

Agree, it only becomes a conflict when some parties are deliberately weaponizing disinformation.

Mere ignorance is something we must unfortunately tolerate.

Active work to spread disinformation that will literally kill people - see [1] or just search for it, where a mere dozen people are responsible for 65% of the spread of disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, and are working to deliberately undermine vaccination efforts.

This isn't mere ignorance, it will get people killed. And before you say something like "well the fools that believe that idiocy deserve what they get", consider that while they may (sort of their choice), the family, friends, neighbors, first responders, and healthcare workers do not deserve to be exposed unnecessarily to those biohazards.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/06/facebook-insta...

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Every single revoking of civil liberties (e.g. censorship) has been done in the name of safety. That doesn’t make it acceptable.

If you want to combat misinformation, pick a better solution. And as I said above, censorship is pretty much impossible, both legally and technologically. It simply cannot be done.

Did you even read the article?

The ENTIRE POINT of the idea is to NOT censor anything, but to add context -- adding information, not censoring it. Letting people make their own decisions.

The problem here is that there is a massive asymmetry. This has been noticed for centuries with the maxim "A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes" (some interesting history on that at [1]).

This is because our brains are tuned to seek out novelty, and to seek out information on threats.

This enables those who want to manipulate us and especially the masses -- creating fake news and fear porn will get the attention of pretty much everyone, and anyone who is not both actively better informed at the time, and actively thinking, will be inflamed and motivated.

Voltaire pointed out that “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

The people spreading disinformation treat that as an instruction instead of a warning.

Adding this kind of contextual information seems a far better solution than censoring.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

Yes I read the article, but I was replying to your comment, not the article’s argument. I replied to that directly in another comment.

You seemed to be arguing for censorship, which is what I was replying to.

Please read more carefully

I am absolutely not arguing for censorship, especially since censorship creates it's own blowback, which is often even more helpful to the disinformation.

I am merely arguing that disinformation needs to be fought, especially actively weaponized disinformation.

It looks like this contextualization could be a very good method.

> Agree, it only becomes a conflict when some parties are deliberately weaponizing disinformation.

Agree, it only becomes a conflict when both major parties are deliberately weaponizing disinformation.

I think other commenters have warned about this. It's fairly easy to tell what political allegiances you have. Just understand that your parties spread a lot of disinformation as well. As an independent, it makes me cringe to watch liberals act like they aren't responsible for loads of disinformation, hyperbole, fear mongering, and misinformation too. Much less that it doesn't have Russian origins.

Funny how easy it is for assumptions to be wrong - I'm also IND, and I oppose disinformation from whatever side is the source, or none. IDGAF about the party.

Yes, RUS sources are the current major problem, as that 'govt' has been running an active measures campaign to undermine western democracies for close to two decades.

And those measures extend into both parties. They are specifically designed to maximize polarization, as polarization undermines democracy, and the assault on the truth makes everyone more malleable. People don't need to specifically buy into the dezinformatsiya (that's a mere bonus), the win is when people give up and say that the truth cannot be known, so disengage.

The fact is that one major party has fully bought into the active measures (and driven out those who don't go along), but the major wing of the other party is just as dependent on those measures, and that wing is also just as inclined towards authoritarianism if they get power.

The current fight is not between the parties, it is authoritarianism vs democracy.

Fighting dezinformatsiya is key to maintaining democracy and avoiding authoritarianism.

I agree with all of the above. What I'll add is that I stopped using the "at-coneervatives" talking points exclusively and started including the "wing" of liberalism that engages in similar behavior. The problem is that it's not really a wing anymore, it's pop-culture and mainstream, or at least at the beginning stages of it. If you only address conservatives, you're doing those people a favor too.

Debunkers got people killed. Facebook, Twitter, and most of the mainstream media suppressed early warnings about COVID.

Warnings that we should wear masks were called fake news and anti-Chinese racism.

And every single person I know who is smug about how ignorant other people are for not getting vaccinated ignored warnings about COVID because it wasn't on a major social media platform or cable television.

Every single person I know who needlessly wears a mask and loves showing off how smart they think they are denied that this was coming until it was far too late.

If COVID had happened in 2014, it would have been much less of a problem because people would have been able to communicate with each other.

I wish I could say that people have learned from their mistakes.

If you were wrong then, isn't it possible you are wrong now?

This post is amazing because it seems to have come from a completely different universe than the one I inhabit.

In my world people were having early concerns about COVID in January. We were getting sporadic reports from China and it was bad. Experts were saying that it was only a matter of time till it got to the US and the worst part was that we didn’t have enough stockpiles of face masks for everybody. There was advice to save masks for medics and first responders until the supply situation improved.

People were already in a panic and buying up all of the toilet paper for some reason. Then in March the cases spiked and the lockdowns came.

If you were getting a lot of misinformation then maybe you should consider your sources. If someone was lying to you in 2020 they are probably still lying to you.

Warnings that we should wear masks were called fake news

Every single person I know who needlessly wears a mask and loves showing off how smart they think they are denied that this was coming until it was far too late.

Pick a lane buddy.

> Warnings that we should wear masks were called fake news and anti-Chinese racism.

It was, and here is an additional irony: In the beginning, downplaying COVID-19 with Chinese people (especially people from Wuhan) did not go over well and was not appreciated: "This is transparent pandering. I don't care how 'not-racist' you are towards me; my family members are dying and my city is in an apocalyptic lockdown so you can shut the fuck up about how this 'isn't serious'". Maybe said more politely, but definitely thought.

C'mon, wouldn't you be angry if your granddad were in the hospital on oxygen, and everyone around you, rather than acknowledging the gravity of your situation, was instead busy making whatever self-serving noises Buzzfeed told them to? This is a total failure of empathy, it completely underestimates peoples' ability to see right through you, and it's othering.

There are lessons here:

1. You should worry about the truth or falsehood of a belief rather than the assumed political consequences of that belief.

2. You should engage with people not to demonstrate to them that you hold "good beliefs" -- this is a persistent mistake made by white liberals; they think what they profess to believe is something that matters -- but rather to work together towards shared goals.

And, at the beginning of a global pandemic, there should have been a hell of a lot of shared goals.

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