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Comment by loriverkutya | Hacker News Reader

Seem like the movie Don't look up has a more realistic script than I would have imagined.

Just like how the movie Contagion was a prophetic look at the most recent pandemic.

I really wish we could turn back the clocks to a time when crackpot voices were not artificially amplified by social media.

It would be great to understand (and perhaps everyone else has figured this out already) how much of this stuff is just bad people responding to incentives created by social media design for anger and how much is directed (at least at some level) by interests (e.g. oil or whatever) that want to see the issue fuzzed up.

If it's mainly the design of social media then how do we hold these folks to account for the damage?

indeed, like when the experts were all telling us that we shouldnt use masks, as they dont work, and then they swapped and told us to wear them, only to be filmed not doing it themselves.

Or when the mainstream media couldnt emphasize enough how covid was only of a concern to countries without any healthcare, to then flipflop entirely.

Cant we just make them all unable to reach an audience?

A friend of mine is a (retired) MD/MPH who was asked in February '20 to be on some task force or another. I congratulated him, but he said turned it down. I was kinda shocked and asked why.

"Imagine you're the captain of the Titanic, and one of your men tells you that you've just struck an iceberg. Naturally, you sound the alarm, call for help, and immediately get everyone into the lifeboats (which you have plenty of), right?"

Recognizing the rhetorical move, I smiled and waited for his continuation.

"Of course not! You tell them everything is fine, that your Best and Brightest are working the problem, announce that drinks are on the White Star Line tonight, and strike up the band. Then you pray like hell that you can fix the problem before the ship sinks and everyone dies. No, thanks. I'm too old for that."

Media consolidation means most local and national news are controlled by a few people, this was happening in past few years as well in USA, and the number of people touting conspiracies and snake oil treatments (Geraldo etc) on Fox or formerly shows like Oprah sometimes predate social media. This along with social media was powderkeg in hindsight.

The only way to counter bad speech is with more good speech, not to silence the crackpots. Silencing them makes it way worse. If their bad speech is artificially amplified then so too should your good speech be artificially amplified.

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