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Comment by MrJohz | Hacker News Reader

> Information is proliferating and is more accessible, but a huge amount of that information is lies and manipulation I'm not sure that really counts as knowledge.

I don't think that's any different to any other period of time when communication was suddenly able to expand. Gutenberg's press didn't come with an automatic lie detector that meant the printed word could only contain true facts and nothing else. Instead, it was mainly used for pamphlets and other campaigning propaganda - some of which surely had some truth to it, but much of which was partially or fully fabricated.

I think you are romanticising the past's approach to the written word here. It has always been possible to completely rewrite history, if you're willing to put the work in, and totalitarian regimes have had no issues in convincing their populations to burn their own books if necessary.

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it has never been easier to poison the well of knowledge at the scale possible today. the internet enabled instantaneous dissemination whatever version of reality tickles your fancy. the effort required is also minimal.

This has never been possible in the past.

The same was true of the printing press, though, at least in comparison to the communication of the previous era. It enabled lies and propaganda to be spread far quicker than ever before, and by people of every rank in society, with (comparatively) minimal effort. And yet, despite this, we think of Gutenberg's invention as one of the most important tools of the modern era for bringing about societal change and enabling people to speak the truth.

Is there something materially different here with the internet? Are we now entering an era of too much free speech? Is it now too easy for us to communicate with each other? And if so, what's the cutoff? What arbitrary barrier would we need to put in place to make the internet more like the printing press and safe to use again?

> Is there something materially different here with the internet?

Yes. There are effectively no hard copies. It is possible to change the historical record of any non-printed material to suit your particular needs like never before.

You can think of this as a world beyond Orwell's or Bradbury's wildest nightmares.

On the other hand, it is now easier than ever to make copies of materials that we see. Famously, the internet never forgets, and even the smallest mistakes or slip-ups are retained in perpetuity, as long as someone is interested enough in keeping hold of the original copies. And there are a lot of organisations that are very interested in keeping hold of original copies.

I would argue that the opposite is true: it is now harder than ever to change the historical record, which is why we now talk about hypernormality and post-truth, where even if there is evidence for something, people will still lie and claim the opposite and be believed. We live with an abundance of evidence, and yet the Orwellian ability for people in charge to tell you one thing one day, and another thing the next, has never been stronger.

And I think you're again making the mistake of thinking of the printing press as a device for printing books or other materials designed to be long-lasting and valuable. In practice, the printing press brought about a revolution of flyers and pamphlets - ephemeral documents that were distributed one day and then abandoned the next. These things should change freely, and many never entered the historical record at all.

This is why I think archive sites will be attacked by the powers that would like information to disappear when they want it to.

Perhaps they'll use a warped interpretation of copyright law to do it, or maybe something even more draconian like censorship laws with a punishment for publishing banned information.

Could they do it, technically? Not unless they controlled the entire world's networks, including those of countries with competing aims. Would that stop them from trying? As we've seen with the endless attacks on end to end encryption, I'm sure they'd give it a shot.

I don't think it's possible, though. Or at least, I think it's harder now than ever before. The internet isn't completely decentralised, but it's at least spread out enough that it's seriously difficult to shut down any one part of it, at least without being willing to take some serious authoritarian measures. Look at how difficult it's been for the most influential media companies in the world to fight piracy, for example.

I genuinely think our society is one of the most censorship-resistant societies in history. This comes with its own problems (how do you deal with media that genuinely is harmful, like calls to violence or plots to abuse children?) but I think this is the tradeoff that one has to make when dealing with censorship and liberty. The more you make it difficult for the authorities to shut down good speech, the more difficult it becomes to protect against harmful speech.

> On the other hand, it is now easier than ever to make copies of materials that we see.

Is it? I feel it's the other way around. For example, just 10 years ago, there were no apps that forbid me from taking screenshots. Copying CDs and DVDs was comparably easy, even for normal folks. How do I copy a Netflix episode again?

I meant "now" in that sentence to refer to the internet era in general, in comparison with other technological leaps. But still, these protections are usually very limited, and fairly easy to circumvent. Most people I know might not be able to convince their laptop to let them screenshot Netflix, but they do normally know how to find pirated copies of the TV show they want to watch. Paying for the convenience of Netflix might still be worth it for them, but the ability to step beyond that should that convenience disappear is definitely there.

I agree with that first sentence, but I think the trend matters more than the average over a few decades.

Also, you said "On the other hand, it is now easier than ever to make copies of materials that we see." - now you seem to be talking about finding a copy. But those are two very different things.

I'd like to think I'm not. In the past, at least there was an original "hard copy" - and any regime wanting to rewrite history would have to meticulously either eradicate any prints, or - as happened in the Eastern Bloc - they would have to physically rewrite history. Pages from books were lifted out, edited to suit the needs of the narrative, and then meticulously put back.

With online-only records any hard copies will be incidental. The source-of-truth for any record has always been online, and can be retroactively edited with much less fanfare. Incidentally, it will also be much easier to flood the world with the updated narrative.

Hell, we have Musk publicly advocating to edit old online material to suit the new, "more desirable" narrative.

The material difference with the Internet is ROI. If you're going to attack your enemies, the ROI of a troll farm is thousands of times higher than that of a standing army and a conventional military campaign. The ROI of an AI-powered automated troll farm is even higher.

The result is a kind of anti-literacy. Most people can read the words, comparatively few people are media-literate enough to filter truth from lies with any reliability. So the current media landscape is unusually poisonous. It's mostly vested interests lying to you and trying to manipulate you, through ads, troll farms, and mainstream media.

The fix would be AI filtering of content. Right now there's no chance whatsoever of that working accurately, but it's possible in principle to counteract the rise of AI disinformation with AI critiques of it.

Among all of the other revolutionary changes promised by AI, that possibility has flown under the radar. But it would be a political and economic showstopper if implemented, because everyone would suddenly be seeing authoritative, accurate news and analysis - like old-school fairness doctrine journalism, but better because it could presented at a level that matched the reader, while also allowing questions.

Ironically Grok was doing something like this for a while, until it... wasn't any more.

Everyone says this… but everyone also complains about access to eyeballs. Posting is cheap, getting people to see it is not cheap or easy, and getting harder.

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