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> Yes, it sounds like it's close to the (legitimate) bogeyman of government intruding on it's citizens for nefarious control reasons.

It is literally the bogeyman of the government, not close to. And I'm not sure why you draw the distinction between public and private speech. Public speech is the most important form of speech and the first thing to be attacked by authoritarian governments.

Declaring that only the government can decide what is safe for us to see is the most authoritarian thing I can think of. To think that because "bullies" and "authoritarians" would try and convince people in the marketplace of ideas constitutes a threat to democracy so we must expel free speech, and therefore democracy itself, in order to protect democracy is some really twisted thinking.

Once you have removed free speech you ARE the authoritarian bully. And in what sense is someone an authoritarian because they are trying to convince you using free speech? Would you consider me an authoritarian because I support free speech?

When Facebook was a friends feed pre-2014 something and not a rage feed none of this was a problem.

This is just adding a blackbox filtering the output of another black box.

A democratic discussion does not need "truth filters". The proposition is insane.

> When Facebook was a friends feed pre-2014 something and not a rage feed none of this was a problem.

2014 is significant, as it is 1 year after the IRA went online in early 2013 and Cambridge Analytica was also in operation. The new techniques they unleashed haven't gone away and there are copycats all over the place.

I see no solution short of a massive education campaign for every person in society as to what the human brain flaws are in regard to favoring mythological media patterns. A history of humanity favoring nonsense and falsehoods, a map to the weak spots in the human brain. Machine thinking has been doing sorting the output of social media for a long time now on media platforms, and 'trending' has proven for a decade to be a race to the bottom of exploiting flaws in both the hardware of the human mind and our lacking education on faults in chasing false signals.

I dont think Cam. Analytica is related to this. I firmly remember it as some code change at Facebooks side as they wanted to monetize groups (sponsored posts). It was not possible to "go viral" on Facebook anymore in a natural way. They capped it somehow. I worked at a newspaper at the time and the change was very clear.

At about the same time these "Bod Dylan has died" fake click baits raged at Facebook, and somehow they stopped. It is probably also related.

> A democratic discussion does not need "truth filters". The proposition is insane.

This assumes universal good faith. The reality is that there's a war against actual democratic discussions, and that bad actors are currently arming themselves with AI-powered weapons which will exponentially amplify their ability to harm and ultimately destroy legitimate discourse.

To choose not to defend democratic discussion is akin to having a country without a military.

No it does not assume good faith.

No. You are sliding down a slippery slope without any thoughts about the parameters of what you’re doing.

If you don’t make explicit the parameters and extent of what is allowable there will be no end to the thing. A little water boarding is always helpful too, but there must be limits. The limits must be decided on by society without being influenced (propagandized) into supporting tyranny that nullified their civil rights.

> Yes, observing publicly broadcast posts for signs of deliberately posted disinformation (and ignorantly reposted/amplified misinformation) is an excellent idea, since this is a primary vector for enemies, especially authoritarian states to implement asymmetric warfare, falsely motivating a population to fight against itself.

It’s also the primary vector authoritarian states use to oppress their own citizens.

And the primary way they justify this vector is by saying it’s to defend against foreign disinformation.

Alternatively, they could regulate ownership of media as the US used to do. That would prevent centralized algorithms from accidentally amplifying foreign propaganda (and prevent foreign controlled algorithms from intentionally amplifying it).

Doing that would infringe on the freedoms of a few dozen plutocrats though, so instead we get universal surveillance.

> Yes, observing publicly broadcast posts for signs of deliberately posted disinformation (and ignorantly reposted/amplified misinformation) is an excellent idea, since this is a primary vector for enemies, especially authoritarian states to implement asymmetric warfare, falsely motivating a population to fight against itself.

Like when the entire George W Bush administration lied about Iraq, with enthusiastic amplification by the vast majority of news outlets, and an entire campaign to suppress anti-war dissent?

> Yes, it sounds like it's close to the (legitimate) bogeyman of government intruding on it's citizens for nefarious control reasons. But these are public posts - intentionally posted publicly to persuade others — not private communications.

You should look up COINTELPRO [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

In a world where the people trust their government to serve them and look after their interests such a system could work.

Until then, no.