This is one of many, many reasons why western countries and social media companies should not normalise censorship re-branded like "fighting disinformation".
I don't support any censorship at all for any topics even those that deeply offend me.
The only exception would be actual death threats and things that are illegal to do.
So people like this will say sentences like “censorship is wrong” but implicit in the sentence for them is “censorship of correct and/or my information is wrong” because the sentence in their mind must be concretely about something like “correct information”. There’s no way for them to easily think the thought “censorship is wrong in the abstract.”
This also feels related to being able to use “veil of ignorance” type reasoning. I don’t think they know how to imagine being not only a different person, but an unknown person.
I also don’t think they know how to imagine being wrong in some sense, not in the epistemic humility sense (although, yes, that too, much of the time), but in the “suppose I’m just deeply confused about everything, how would I want to be treated? How might I recover?”
I think all these are bottlenecked on a mental abstraction ceiling, and I think all these things work together to contribute to the effects you noted.
Well, or they have a more nuanced view than "censorship no" or "censorship yes"
For example, I support laws preventing stores from selling 3 watt LED bulbs in packages claiming they're 5 watt LED bulbs; or selling generic LED bulbs in packages claiming they're Phillips bulbs. Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech.
Must I support all censorship, because I support this one bit of censorship?
It is the case that unless you are a polymath with copious amount of time and money, you will never be able to accumulate sufficient information to make fully educated decisions in a world truly devoid of censorship.
By fully educated I mean starting from the bottom up and going all the way through to reach a conclusion.
This means that every single resource you will use has to be verified, all experiments need to be conducted and evaluated.
If we don’t censor anything, then there is no point in books because editors are censoring information there.
What’s the point of journals and publications without a review process to filter out the garbage?
You could very well be a reasonable person, but without censorship to varying degrees your capacity filter garbage is hindered by simply not knowing anything to a reasonable degree of certainty exactly because no form of censorship exists. Thus your capacity to limit information based on prior knowledge is hindered as there is not an authority of any kind that you may trust exactly because there is no way to measure quality of one’s speech outside the scrutiny it passes through through established channels and authorities that already have a reputation and we may trust.
The reason we do censorship is because not all speech is benevolent, useful, or true. People will abuse the absence of censorship to attack “unwanted” people, to push lies, to misrepresent information, and to push an agenda instead of letting facts do the talking.
Why is it difficult for facts to do the talking?
> Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."[1][2]
Now, the more bullshit that floats the more bullshit propagates and thus the less true information exists, eventually suffocating us in information garbage.
If you wish to see this in action, look into antivax groups convinced that vaccinated individuals will start dropping like flies within the next $LATEST_GOALPOST.
Or, take a look at how long it took me to explain why absolute absence of censorship simply does not work just from a view of having a consistent world model and having nobody to trust and no way of doing so.
One could extend my comment to include damage done to people or entities intentionally or otherwise. Notice how Musk pivoted out of absolute free speech when advertisers left?
Of course that is a ridiculous scenario, as are most straw man arguments.
And the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" trope was original made in support to argue for censorship of speech opposing the draft during WWI so if anything it's an example for why we should absolutely defend free speech even if there are seeming arguments to restrict it. The better solution to prevent stampedes in crowded spaces is to have safety regulation requiring adequate exits and occupancy limits, which we do have. Movie theaters are also not public spaces so they can easily ban people for causing a disturbance.
The latency on information coming from a newspaper or even TV news is limited to how rapidly those sources can vet the information before publishing it, and then the latency of the publication method. If someone wants to use those avenues to spread misinformation, they have to do a lot of legwork to make the lie sound plausible enough that the publisher will put the effort into publishing it.
What's the legwork for someone planning to spread misinformation via twitter? How long does it take "for new facts to emerge" that address the misgivings incredulous consumers hold? The power of social media is that the real truth can emerge very quickly, regardless of what the powers that be want. But the threat of social media is that there's basically no organic way to prevent abuse of that power.
Others are right that the line between misinformation and difference of opinion is often quite narrow. But I don't believe there is no difference, and every society must choose and hold its line, according to its own values.
The poster's point was pretty simple: there is some speech which doesn't deserve to be fully protected to the highest possible level. Untrue commercial speech like false advertising is pretty much in that category. This is why we allow attorneys-general to bring cases against false advertisers, for example.
Usually the remedy is monetary damages, but injunctive relief is also available.
I can easily maintain that this is sensible and reasonable without "arresting people for showing a 3 watt bulb they claim to be 5 watts."
This is a really strange perspective. Advertising is only advertising once the advertised product is sold? A billboard is simultaneously an advertisement and not an advertisement depending on whether the observer has purchased the advertised item?
Not the GP but no, I'm not fine with arresting people over light bulbs. I am totally cool with arresting them for fraud if it meets that standard. I am also cool with the business being fined or otherwise sanctioned for false advertisement. The product is beside the point. The deception is what the punishment is intended to address.
If you show off your car you are indeed, by definition advertising it.
I know that's not the definition youre referring to, but the word does mean to call attention to, especially in a boastful or ostentatious manner.
But anyway, it's still advertising because the car has the manufacturers badges, it's just not first order commercial advertising.
I just can't anymore with HN. Who are these people who are redefining common terms to suit their own views?
No one has claimed anything about advertising without the intent to sell. Indeed, that's been everyone's point since this bit of the thread started with michaelt's comment. Commercial speech is an area were most people agree that some constraints are useful. Hence it was used as an example of why censorship is nuanced not binary. People have different standards for what's reasonable and what's not, but only the most die hard free speech advocates would not have a standard at all.
You have frequently taken examples that are clearly in the advertising with intent to sell context and treated them as if they apply in a non-commercial context. This is how we get to you accusing people of being OK with arresting people over light bulbs when they're actually saying they're OK with laws against fraudulent advertising.
If you are selling or intending to sell something, and you choose to have it mediated by the government, whether or not you’re allowed to falsely advertise something has nothing to do with freedom of speech. We aren’t agreeing that censorship is allowed. Censorship isn’t voluntary.
Why can I not decide “if it would result in people dying, speech can be restricted?”
I mean, if you told me I could only restrict one of these, then surely I would pick the second anyways.
It is hard to discern any moral content here, and I suspect there is none.
My car (not for sale) has a nuclear reactor and can travel through time.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/advertising-...
Counter-example:
> What can my company do if a competitor is running an ad that I think is deceptive?
> Explore your legal options under federal and state statutes that protect businesses from unfair competition. For example, the Lanham Act gives companies the right to sue their competitors for making deceptive claims in ads.
> Are advertising agencies subject to the FTC Act?
> Yes. In addition to the advertiser, the advertising agency also may be held legally responsible for misleading claims in ads. Advertising agencies have a duty to make an independent check on the information used to substantiate ad claims. They may not rely on an advertiser's assurance that the claims are substantiated.
I don't see anything about false advertising requiring a sale.
viewer goes and tosses out all their presumably-cancer causing products, never purchases Febreze
I'm not sure where I stand on the matter personally.
Like, taking the constant social turmoil in America as an example: anything people dislike they call disinformation/fake news, but are equally guilty and okay with of spreading and allowing the same behaviour if it furthers their agenda. Or they will at least be more lenient to their side of the arguments indulging in it, since it aligns with their biases.
I've seen this happen from both right wing and left wing members one Twitter and on Reddit. I personally don't use these platforms, but I've seen various threads with insane amounts of hypocrisy.
There's so many nuance and unresolved problems.
Like, how do we know truth isn't what's being censored?
How can we even tell in this day and age when the truth is? It's often diluted with some hidden agenda. Either political or corporate (or oftentimes both). I can't sit for hours fact checking everything I read from different sources. I have a job, and I also don't want to spend all my free time on it. But on the other hand it's also topic I care about (just not THAT much I guess?). Who to trust?
And I feel like this "the ones in power control what's true" generally feels like a slippery slope.
I also hate that I'm beginning to sound like a crazy tinfoil-wearing person.
Idk, humans are complicated. Social media in its current iteration was a mistake, since it created platforms for some very dangerous and narcissistic people
"Hello, this is just a reminder that your voting station will be open between 5 pm and 9 pm in (somewhere where it's not actually located), please remember to vote!"
"Hello, if you would like a free ride to your voting station, please text us 'YES', and wait at (location) between X and Y pm (Nobody will show up)."
"Hello, we have a great offer for auto insurance, blah, blah, blah."
"Hello, just a reminder, millions of trustworthy people believe that <opposition candidate> was responsible for <something untrue and horrible>. This isn't slander, because we are just strongly implying it in this robocall. Also, they live at XY address, and won't someone rid is of this meddlesome priest?"
"Hello, all the doctors are lying to you, buy our snake oil wellness supplements, instead. They are supplements, not drugs, we don't answer to the FDA."
"Hello, let's go down to sixth and Broadway next Tuesday, and make some noise/put the fear of God into <group>"
"<Ethnic minority group> is burning this country's forests down using space lasers."
"Hello, please be aware that it's illegal to discuss your salary with your coworkers."
A few of them are plain-old voter suppression, and ~50% of the time, people in power find them incredibly convenient.
You don't see them very often, because in most free countries, trying any of them is an incredibly serious offence.
The overarching point still stands. That people being in favor of censoring "disinformation" (ie speech by private individuals) in certain instances but not others is an inconsistent stance that carries a distinct appearance of partisanship.
Lots of these seem reprehensible, but totally within a reasonable space of legitimate free speech. Barring the cases with calls for imminent harm (e.g. turbulent priests and such), it seems that there's a big risk in trying to draw a legal line here.
In your polling station example, for instance, that has some clear negative impact. If I instead said "The library will be closed for the next month", is that protected though? What if I say "Arby's will be giving out free sandwiches from noon to two o'clock tomorrow"? All of these statements have negative impact.
The rationale for more extensive free speech is that it is expected that individuals have the right to hear what others are saying, and evaluating how bogus those are.
To be clear, some censorship is absolutely accepted in society today (e.g. libel laws, imminent threats, marketplace standards, etc), but the fear of an ill-defined line that can be shifted to suit political winds seems like a very reasonable one.
As for the rest, you're free to make whatever lies you want about others. Free speech doesn't allow you to initiate force against others so I'm not particularly concerned with any of it. We have gun rights to deal with people that try to enter your house or attack you over your skin colour and space laser accusations.
This is a terrible analogy, and evidence that the people who claim we can't protect all speech have no idea what "free speech" actually is.
Hint: no, it's not fraud.
This is you fundamentally misunderstanding what is meant by "speech". The statement itself is not illegal. The act of misrepresenting the transaction being agreed to is what's illegal.
A specific act that involves many components, only one of which happens to be speech, has been made illegal. The speech component itself has not.
There are certain situations where speech itself is restricted. This is not one of them though.
Saying these bulbs have 5 when they have three is a lie but shouldn't be censored. Selling someone 3 but saying it is 5 is fraud. Selling/buying have different laws and standards.
Think about what makes you consider "threatening speech" a "force": presumably it has nothing to do with particle physics... is it perhaps that the act of speech itself causes people to adopt behaviours they wouldn't normally adopt? ie.: that it can carry some coercive weight? That it can be used to exploit/endanger vulnerable people in some circumstances?
Speech may be a very very weak force in most (or even "nearly all", just for the sake of argument) circumstances, but there are tons of examples of speech being a powerful force, causing large social and historical shifts. There are both positive and negative examples of this.
Almost all "contemporary reasonable censorship in functioning liberal democracies" are attempts to prevent people from exploiting the vulnerability of others: speech that causes people to make *patently insane and irrational* medical decisions, for example. Really stupid things like fake cancer cures, and suggestions to drink bleach. And typically, for proponents of censorship, there is a whole spectrum of acceptability as well: the more it's a grey zone, the less the censorship is acceptable. When the censorship clearly and obviously only constrains the actions of malicious actors, and clearly and obviously protects vulnerable people, it's seen as a win. This is always highly contextual, and limited by the extent of scientific knowledge.
A common theme is that censorship to protect those in power (the government) is bad, and censorship to protect those who have the least amount of power is... well, not great (it's definitely always better if it's not needed), but not bad in the same way.
So if our thing du jure wasn't misinformation, I'm sure they'd just claim they're using their powers to combat hate speech or whatever else is culturally okay. If there's really nothing available, there's always "we need to protect the children from predators who are trying to abuse this dire situation". In the end, it doesn't matter if you're in power. Your tribe will always be with you, no matter the reason you're giving, and the opposition will be silenced.
I know about at least three major points:
* Russia always blame other party of the crimes it about to commit. It ties the enemy and allies into the "you did, no your did" kind of arguments. This also helps to push all sorts of fake narratives into the enemy population. We witness this over and over.
* It is a power play. Russian people enjoy very much the fact that their officials can say and do whatever they want, and the world can do nothing. This gives Russians true joy (as witnessed first hand). It also demoralises enemy heavily, because instead of pointing to the obvious crime, "not everything is so clear" now.
* It cements alternative history. For example, children in school all over Russia will learn about the current events based on the "official" alternative reasoning.
You're very right about the historical narrative as an internal component. Connecting current conflicts to WW2 will make people fall in line much more quickly than saying "it's about natural resources that were mistakenly buried on the wrong side of the border and also we want a land connection to Crimea". Much like Americans will always invoke freedom because it's part of their national identity and people are less likely to question why they're invading Iraq if you mention it. Russia being threatened by fascist forces in the West is a continuation of the existing historical narrative and neatly ties into it.
It's definitely a much better PR strategy than Germany had in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom where our secretary of defense prominently said that Germany's security was being defended at the hindu kush. It's makes sense in abstraction ("we need to confront those who disregard human rights even if they're 5000 km away") but it's not concrete and it didn't increase support for the war at all.
The anti nazi propaganda is not only for foreign ears, but for domestic consumption as well. "Us against the world, who is out to get us. All current problems stem at its root from the blow dealt to us during the Great Patriotic War."
The spread of wrong information has always been overwhelming. This is nothing new, nor is it (imho) more irritating now than is was 20 years ago. And if the history books are accurate on how bad it was 100 years ago ... This is not what's destroying democracies.
This has happened because 'western countries and social media companies ... normalise censorship re-branded [as] "fighting disinformation"'.
They've literally shown the rest of the world how to do this.
What reasonable viewpoints do you perceive are being deleted and accused of being disinformation?
Stuff like /r/shitredditsays exist/existed to point out reddit being misogynistic, and capitalism is the name of the game for all the large subreddits.
I don't think you'll find a large subreddit that is actually leftist. It's just centered on what the population thinks, both for overall trends and for the reddit user base.
This doesn't match US politics because US politics don't match popular opinion, driven instead by the arbitrary layout of states and congressional districts
I mean...the day Musk took over Twitter, lots of comments here were calling for twitter.com to be kicked off the internet...
You are making two mistakes here: the simplest one is thinking that the winner of the argument is whoever has the last word. This is very frequently not the case, as any troll could tell you. Often, the power move is to get opponents mad and then move on, leaving them impotently fuming about how terrible that person is.
You're also identifying with the larger group at the societal/species level, which is valid, but is also a way of ignoring problems in the here and now. It's like zooming out from a bloody battlefield to look at the earth in space. With an extraplanetary perspective, Earth looks so beautiful and peaceful...but that doesn't help a single person who is impacted by the bloody battle.
This is contradictory. Not every reader is going to "stay in the end" to learn what's really true. The past few years have given plenty of evidence for that.
And that's where authoritarian regimes get you. People usually aren't that invested in a conversation, or in disproving firehose of falsehoods style comments placed by people incentivized monetarily to make sure the correct opinion stays in the end. If the platform has rating system they also generate accounts to manipulate it for the same purpose.
How do you define a lie? Please be precise. What source of truth is used to evaluate possible lies, and who gets to make the final determination? What level of confidence is required? Does intent matter? Does a statement count as a lie if it is factually correct, or at least not provably incorrect, but still potentially misleading or lacking relevant context?
However that is not a new development in our biology, we've always been that way. It's just that we're exploiting those aspects of ourselves more and more. Weaponising it to extract as much profit as possible.
You could go another way, I guess, and say that capitalism is the root cause as "profit at any cost" allows the justification of these actions.
As long as humans have the free will to engage with whatever content they choose, there is a natural human reaction to engage with lies. Therefore, the idea that truth eventually wins out over lies is inherently flawed. It isn't the fault of capitalism or algorithms. The problem is human nature doesn't respond properly to bad speech. We can't change human nature, so the only option left is stopping bad speech.
If you give people two history books, one with actual history and one with interesting conspiracy theories sprinkled throughout, most people are going to find the one with the conspiracies more interesting. Stopping people from photocopying the book will help slow the spread of the false information in the book, but it does nothing to stop the underlying problem that people are writing fake history books.
You cannot prevent lies or deception, that's not within the realm of what we're capable of. Don't let good be the enemy of perfect.
[edit] Sorry, to directly reply: I'm unsure what it is that you would prefer happen? Nothing? It's just the done thing?
I think we need to change the way we think about free speech. We already have laws that restrict free speech when that speech it defrauds or defames an individual. We need more general laws when it is society at large that is defrauded or defamed.
Would you be looking at criminalising lies and the spreading of them, even without knowing its a lie? If so, how many people would be prosecuted? If not, how will it help?
>Would you be looking at criminalising lies and the spreading of them, even without knowing its a lie?
I don't know what you mean by this. We don't know whether a potentially defamatory statement is a lie or not until there is a trial. This would be no different. We don't need a Federal Truth Commission or anything. American society already seems satisfied letting a jury decide what is or is not a lie today.
Requiring a trial to do anything about a lie on social media would mean that there would be no change. By the time the trial comes, the lie is old news and there is some new conspiracy taking grip.
That would be, essentially, meaningless. Not in any way, shape, or form preventative.
We should change our laws to allow for more restrictions on purposeful lies that damage society. We shouldn't allow ExxonMobil to spend decades researching carbon emissions while knowingly lying about the conclusions of that research to the public. They should face repercussions for that as well as the people who knowingly spread that misinformation. I think that would be more effective than what you seem to be proposing which appears to be either limitations on recommendation algorithms or ad supported content.
Experience. We've also basically seen in it in the pandemia all over the world happening in the last years. Though, this was a bit of an extreme situation for everyone.
> In my experience exposure to more viewpoints, even flawed ones, increases understanding and helps critical thinking.
Simple exposure is only helpful if the people are able to handle it, and willing to invest the time, and the one delivering it has no bad intention. The ones where it will not work, are left as the victims of this strategy. Maybe they will find their way after a long painful process. But then the harm is done.
You mean the pandemic where alternative viewpoints were systematically suppressed in the western world?
The world is not made up of Spock-like rationalists, and although most people are capable of rationality, many social settings are not conducive to it. Look at stampede disasters: every year people die because panic breaks out among a crowd in a constricted space and people start to operate on instinct instead of thought.
There's also an element of individual freedom involved here. If you choose to keep climbing into the boxing ring and then trying to have a reasoned discussion and failing, perhaps you are the one making poor choices. That doesn't necessarily mean that outlawing boxing rings or otherwise regulating who can participate when and how is either a good or workable solution.
Most people aren't interested in changing their minds.
When people say thing like "other people aren't interested in changing their minds" what they really mean is "other people didn't find my arguments convincing".
You trying to rationalize this as "other people didn't find the arguments convincing" is a meta version of this. A deliberate ignorance of this cognitive bias even when given documentation of its existence.
1. https://jamesclear.com/why-facts-dont-change-minds
2. https://today.uconn.edu/2022/08/cognitive-biases-and-brain-b...
3. https://research.com/education/why-facts-dont-change-our-min...
You don't know that.
Completely untenable analogy. Why people say is that the solution is more speech is due to the antecedent concept of the marketplace of ideas and that, by and large, ideas are sifted via free speech and the good ones last while the bad ones die. You cannot have this sorting process in a system that stifles free speech.
If you want to attack free speech absolutism, at least attack Mill's axioms, not some made-up poorly-formed straw man of an analogy.
I am really not seeing this.
This might be the core of it then, because while I generally agree with the idea of Free Speech in the abstract, I don't think that it's been having good outcomes for society in the era of the cultic milieu, and I think that has to do with this 'marketplace' idea not really holding water. (Maybe I just don't want to admit that my sense of what makes a "good idea" is wrong, and the success of eg Qanon as a meme means that I should just change my thinking and accept it as a winning meme and therefore a Good Idea.)
Kind of like Churchill's famous quote about democracy: "it's the worst form of government, except from all the others that have been tried."
As for the Churchill quote, the reason that democracy has those qualities is because it inherently involves compromise. An uncompromising philosophy like "more speech is always better" is quite a different thing. We need a new rallying cry to replace the meme of free speech, probably something to do with the notion of signal:noise ratios, but it's beyond me to invent such a meme.
But it's the same with free speech: you said it yourself, there's a lot of noise, that's the compromise. You don't know what the "one true Good Opinion is" until you hear from everyone, and that might include racists or nazis or whatever. I don't really think technology has anything to do with it. In fact, the printing press probably made a much larger impact on speech than the internet did (and we got through that just fine).
The other nice aspect of attribution is that there is a factual answer to "who is speaking". I don't need to evaluate the merits to your speech in order to understand who is speaking. In today's world it may not be easy/possible to know the specific answer to "who is speaking", but by observing any speech I know that there must have been _someone_ speaking.
As for how to get to a world with attribution... not so sure what the options are that don't suffer a lot of the same problems. But it at least seems like an approach that doesn't require authoritative assessment of the underlying speech itself to yield societal benefits.
The solution is not as simple as 'more speech' because we are dealing with a historically unprecedented volume of amplified and recorded speech at scale, so things like signal:noise ratio become very important. Simplistic responses like yours suggest an unwillingness or inability to engage with the complexity of the issue.
A simple example of why you're wrong is that it's easy for an actor with access to an echo chamber to launch a viral cascade by modeling outrage over some made-up or minor issue to boost engagement. Fans of the actor share it out of agreement, amusement, or for the pleasure of owning their opponents, while opponents of the actor either deride or argue. The actor gets to appear in the day's trends, gain new followers/subscribers, boosting influence and financial intake.
But there's also a more subtle transfer of wealth, not so obviously measurable by the metrics of the social media platform. The actor spends 1-5 minutes composing their message, like you spend only a short period to select and repost your cliched response. The time that other people spend replying takes at least as long and often longer. So while the actor may have invested 5 minutes out of their 24 hour day in amplifying their own profile, by saying something deliberately controversial, they've caused others to put in significantly more time to responding.
Here, that's not such a big deal because HN discussions are not that complex and people have time to read and consider every comment in a thread they're interested in - so your claim has some validity. But on large social media platforms, the scope is radically different. A provocative tweet can generate thousands of negative replies, so that an investment of 5 minutes by the provocative actor can cause people to collectively put hundreds of hours into their responses, which unconscious social labor serves to amplify the provocateur. There are lots of influencers who have this down to a system and do it on an almost daily basis. It's essentially a theft of time - a little from their fans, a lot from their anti-fans, with that time being converted into engagement and increased reach.
This is why your reflex response is wrong. Bad speech can be designed to yield more speech that amplifies the original bad message for fun and profit. Your concept of reasoned debate only functions in forums where there are some leveling factors like equal time allocations or legal procedures for the allocation of time. Here on HN and on many small forums, that function is done by moderators (who can ban intentionally disruptive users or manage anti-spam filters) and to some extent by users (whose expressed preferences have direct weight like downvotes or flags, and indirect weight by their long-term community participation making them familiar to each other). On big platforms, the calculus is completely different and your model of reasoned debate breaks down.
When you ask, "How should governments fight disinformation," what you're really asking is, "How can governments deny their citizens the right to choose what information they read, watch or listen to." When it's phrased like that, it's not so appealing, is it?
that means no. Do you want to remove _every_ moderation made by companies/governments in all online forums, including HN?
I support private forums being able to moderate. I oppose governments having that same power.
Block only speech is actually illegal by the laws of the country. It's not their job to decide what is true and false.
That's the point - they can post what they like, and I don't have to look at it.
Using censorship to fight disinformation just means we’ve picked some group of people that get to decide what the “truth” is.
Don't.
The answer is we decide what is disinformation through our institutions and the value we place on them. Your and I's opinion on certain matters should never weigh remotely as much as an expert's on a particular topic unless we are such experts.
We ought to measure the value of one's speech through the scrutiny it has to go through to be published at trusted channels.
The public square is not in and of itself a trusted channel so I doubt you are talking about the same thing as the person you responded to.
Well, I don’t.
Such platforms should probably not be permitted to promote in a general and unrestricted sense the content of particular speakers that make use of them. That's no better than clandestine government propaganda. An obvious wolf in sheep's clothing.