> that it would be open and really big.
I think that was the aspiration, but nobody realized there were so many people who thought 5G caused corona (and similar lack of thought process) until it was too late.
I think that was the aspiration, but nobody realized there were so many people who thought 5G caused corona (and similar lack of thought process) until it was too late.
With that said, what's the problem with people having ideas that seem crazy and baseless? Does it really harm you at all if someone else believes 5G causes covid? And does it harm you enough to say that their speech should be limited rather than free?
Interesting point of view/source of internal tension there.
There are historical examples of why trusting the mob goes poorly, but keeping that on the table fundamentally ruins the point of a democratic society. Its all well and good to say we need an educated populace, but the system should offer the public a chance to live up to the ideal rather than guard against their failure.
I would far rather restrict their right to vote than their right to speak. If they're sufficiently influential, that also means that everyone's vote who doesn't fall for their charm is worth just that much more.
I'm very opposed to limiting either, the US is already more restrictive with regards to both voting rights and speech than I'm comfortable with. I'd be very worried about gating voter rights to some kind of checklist of thought, removing Coting access from those deemed to be unworthy of casting a vote based on what they think or say.
But hey, those people won greatly, who can and want.
literally nobody thought this, perhaps except a handful of oddballs. If you want to make your case for describing the state of the internet, please avoid nonsense exaggerations like this.
oddballs, i agree. but a dangerous group of oddballs.
> Across Britain, more than 30 acts of arson and vandalism have taken place against wireless towers and other telecom gear this month, according to police reports and a telecom trade group. In roughly 80 other incidents in the country, telecom technicians have been harassed on the job.
that is not a small number, we discuss smaller things on HN. And these are only the cases that have manifested in to arson or harassment, so includes zero couch conspiracy theorists.
So not literally nobody?
It was a small minority, but there were (and are) absolutely people who believed this. They also usually explain it poorly, I think their idea really is that 5G radio signals caused disease but it gets morphed into a claim that 5G somehow created the virus that caused the disease.
Well it seems relevant because the comment I replied to was minimizing the number of people who thought 5G may have caused covid to a miniscule number of people. I raised my experience because I only know a small number of people and did in fact know someone in real life who believed this and sent me plenty of links and whitepapers making the same claims.
Is my anecdotal experience statistically significant? Absolutely not. But I also hesitate to believe that the number of people who bought into the idea was so small as to effectively not exist.
Regardless of the often overused WWII analogies, how would banning voter rights work in your example of QAnon and the Republican Party? Would you want to see anyone believing QAnon conspiracies banned from voting, even if you are correct that the ideology has taken over much of the Republican Party? I'm not sure that banning most voters in one of two parties we have would go over well, nor would it leave us with a democracy or much of an election process.
Some of the core beliefs underpinning Nazism were based on bizarre occultism and antisemitic conspiracy theories. I suppose people simply ignored or brushed off what they didn't like, much as they do with QAnon politicians today.
> Regardless of the often overused WWII analogies, how would banning voter rights work in your example of QAnon and the Republican Party?
I never said anything about banning voters. I was just lamenting how easily the crazies can coalesce and gather power these days. Don't know what the solution is. Maybe we're just doomed.
My understanding of the history of how the Nazi Party took power is a bit different than what you're describing, curious what you may have seen that I haven't. My understanding is that the party was always based on racist ideology but that it only went antisemitic in the 30s around the time Hitler gained power.
Sorry again about the voting question, that's very confusing when I got the context wrong here!
Ultimately all we can do is trust that the system is designed to withstand. If we don't think the system can work without breaking our own rules to "do the right thing" then what are we really doing? As long as people can speak their minds and hash out disagreements in public we're all better off. When ideas that may end up being dangerous are forced to stay behind closed doors we really have a problem.
At least in the US though, speech is protected specifically from government censorship. Facebook can censor whatever they want, but the government can't take part in it at all. Historically, American culture has stood strongly behind free speech and we're very uncomfortable with the idea of punishing a person for what they say. Once you act on an idea that's a different story, but we have laws that already cover that.
It sounds to me like you should lower your caffeine intake. Nobody sober-minded watching that on TV should have felt scared; it was obviously a mob of clowns goofing around, not an insurrectionist army.
> and also confused as to how anyone pushing through barriers and doors were going through without being shot.
Because it was obvious to everyone that it was just a mob of clowns goofing around, not an insurrectionist army. The tiny minority that got violent and probed too far got violently dealt with though.
> Historically, American culture has stood strongly behind free speech and we're very uncomfortable with the idea of punishing a person for what they say.
One funny thing to tie this with is that Congress is literally "the People's House". It would be a very American interpretation of things to say that anyone should have the right to protest at/in the Capitol. Those Congress critters shouldn't have run away and hid as if they're dictators holing up in the bunker when the peasant have surrounded the royal palace; they should have met the non-violent rioters and talked with them. Their job is to represent those people that are angry out there!
And, optically, that would have been a win-win for all of us: either they bravely diffuse the situation and get respect OR they get assaulted, in which case the "OMG INSURRECTIONIST" rhetoric would prove to be actually warranted.
Oh, also, another deeply American valence is revolution. Take for that what you will. ;D
What would have happened if they got into Congressional chambers? Or got their hands on congressmen? PR the VP? We simply don't know.
It wasn't caffeine that scared me. It was the potential for a civil war. That seems outlandish now that we know was Jan 7th looked like. But honestly, can you say it wouldn't have happened should they have reached Pence or Pelosi?
I don't like either of those politicians, or government in general. But its a for agile house of cards, and a mob of people forcing their way into the capital building while all of Congress is in session is a terrible sign. I don't know how you write that off as a clown show, and I don't know what tipped you off to that being a clown show rather than something potentially more serious. Maybe I just missed it.
Storming pizza parlors.
Protesting election results in violent and extreme ways.
Coalesced crazy is dangerous, full stop. Stupid ideas being dragged out into the sunlight used to work but these folk are being fed nothing but crazy by the algorithms of social media, so it stopped working.
The solution is regulation of social media.
Regulating social media isn't a solution, and definitely not the solution. For one thing, if the state officially took a role in regulating speech on social media they would be bound by constitutional powers.
You could actually see censorship on social media sites decrease when they are required to respect individuals' rights to free speech and protection from government censorship. Why do you think they currently do it quietly and behind closed doors? As long as the government isn't openly censoring us on social media the censorship isn't unconstitutional. As soon as its government regulated we will see supreme court rulings likely deciding that the government censoring speech online is unconstitutional and a violation of the first amendment.