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Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

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Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#121

Post by unknown_apostle »

bovermyer wrote: post #74
unknown_apostle wrote: post #66

So is this really fundamentally different from the plans in EU and Germany? https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/call-appl... It's a dangerous illusion of modernity that you can just pick up a "high quality" newspaper or watch the news and understand what is happening in the world. Or even in your own region. One possible advantage of the total chaos of internet news is that the noise becomes so strong…

I wanted to clarify. Are you saying that drowning out reliable journalism with intentional disinformation on social media is a GOOD thing? If so... why?

No, it's worse: I doubt the existence of reliable journalism :)

Reading 20-year old "quality" news magazines makes me think so. Numerous personal experiences make me think so. Ads in quality newspapers and their subtle or not so subtle political affiliations make me think so.

Reality is extremely complex. Journalists, even when they are honest, neutral, capable and of good will, struggle with it. Especially when they try to come up with a polished story. I know this is the case for unimportant events happening nearby, so I assume it's especially true for complex, confusing situations in very different parts of the world.

Getting confused by reading totally different accounts of the same event, is what makes me smarter. Because this confusion accurately reflects reality. Getting confused happens to me way more often while reading the internet (or when talking to real people) than when reading The Economist.

For the record: I'm not condoning intentional disinformation. And I do want to know about important events.

Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#122

Post by bergoid »

orf wrote: post #70
bergoid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress someone is forbidden" Prohibitions like this one are overly broad and smother a lot of legitimate discussion. Exceptions to free speech used to be limited to things like: * Don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. * Don't call for violence. If we broaden the scope to any speech someone, somewhere might take offense to,…

> If these kind of "hate speech" laws existed in England in the 19th century These laws not only existed, they where far more stringent, prosecution far easier and the punishment far more severe. Try going back then and discussing the king/queen in a negative way. And yet, his book was still published. And in any case, he didn't say it to be threatening or abusive, so that's moot. > A stark warning that this concern…

> These laws not only existed, they where far more stringent, prosecution far easier and the punishment far more severe. Try going back then and discussing the king/queen in a negative way.

True.

> And yet, his book was still published.

Because the subject of his book wasn't covered by these laws.

> And in any case, he didn't say it to be threatening or abusive, so that's moot.

Neither did Damore. He still got fired.

> The HR policies of an American company (a country where in a lot of states you can be fired for any/no reason at all) is neither here nor there in a discussion about the UK's definition of hate crime, where that definition needs to be proven in a court of law to a jury of your peers at a trial.

These HR policies are a sign of the times. The fashion of suppressing rational speech & thought in a misguided attempt to "protect" the minority-du-jour will eventually creep upwards into the laws of countries, as has already happened in Canada:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_to_amend_the_Canadian_H...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_103

Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#123

Post by unknown_apostle »

soundwave106 wrote: post #119
unknown_apostle wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[balance] fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, media pluralism, and the right of citizens to diverse and reliable information" Typical EU-style communication. The word "balance" conjures up images of health, reason, yoga classes and whole grain breakfasts. But in the end, it still represents a worldview of enlightened apparatchiks vs idiotic plebes. Why does there need to be a "balancing act" betwee…

It's more, I suppose, the idea that multiple sources of information should be supported ("pluralism"). There is no such thing as an unbiased news source, so it is best in the long run for multiple sources of news to exist, each with their own viewpoint. It is easier to obtain a more informed opinion if one makes the effort to escape single-viewpoint media. Furthermore, by highlighting "freedom of information", there…

Well, it'll be hard to let you know when that happens.

I can tell you this. We have multiple sources of news. Much more than ever existed before the internet came to our homes. I don't see how the EC can improve on this situation.

"a signal of intent to keep a degree of openness". How about a simple statement "the EC is not well-suited to determine whether fake news is a problem and, if so, how to deal with it". But I guess you'd need an ancient and strong tradition of popular democracy and hard-won constitutionalism to make such statements.

Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#124

Post by unknown_apostle »

IIIr3228 wrote: post #97
benchaney wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s saying there is to reliable journalism, and that shattering the illusion that there is is a good thing.

It's not a good thing. You risk committing a false equivalence. Saying there is no 100% reliable journalism is technically accurate, as all news organizations make mistakes and are subject to biases. But some news is more reliable than others: Reuters is not Breitbart.

True, a news agency like Reuters aims to be a neutral observer whereas a polemical site like Breitbart wants to influence politics. Reuters succeeds to the extent that it sticks to transmitting basic facts to newsrooms around the world. Which is already very hard to get right.

But a lot of what also passes for quality journalism involves not news agencies but newspapers and magazines. I consider a lot of these to be just more sneaky versions of Breitbart. They are more subtle, use more sophisticated language, have specific formatting and typesetting, have a longer history and they mix up their activism with a broad spectrum of neutral news. (I'm mostly familiar with the press in my own country so it's hard to give widely recognizable examples.)

And of course, then there's publications like The Economist. In my very personal opinion, even though they may be "honest" in their intentions, they still end up giving their readers an illusion of understanding. You don't really know what happens in Iraq or Syria or China from reading the Economist. But it's so well written that you might end up believing you do.

Anyhow, I see enough reasons not to trust anyone who wants to use this fake news scare to punish their competition or to herd the population to the "proper" sources of information.

The untamed internet, when used properly as a source of information, will just give a snapshot of bewilderingly diverse points of view. Which is still not much, but so much better than the best polished story written by the best journalists.

Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#125

Post by tehlike »

fixermark wrote: post #117
shiven wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is. It is very much a technical problem. Technology has not yet provided a super-fast, truly decentralized, perfectly uncensorable “Internet for All” solution. If we had that, a lot of this discussion would be moot. Someone in Dalat could teach Vietnamese to any number of foreigners, without any adversary being the wiser. Anyone in China could read up on Tiannenmen Square or the “Free Tibet” movement wit…

The scenario you're describing is unlikely to be deliverable. Any system sufficiently user-friendly to be accessible to the bulk of the global populace is also user-friendly to government authority. Because inevitably, passwords get misplaced and authentication / authorization tokens get forgotten or stolen, and then the average user needs an authority to turn to to re-establish their connection to the network.

Don't get it. I have been giving example of a "chat app" that's e2e encrypted. If it's easy to use, but solid to do proper e2e, government cannot do anything. Especially if messages also can "disappear" after a day. Government stops you, inspect your phone, cannot find anything. At least there is some reasonable doubt. Granted, if oppressive government has a reasonable doubt about you, you might have hard time otherwise, but that won't scale to large populations.

Similarly, if internet was designed with privacy in mind, things would have been different. If your favorite news site were available through tor, and you were using nontracking browser, you'd probably be fine.

Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#126

Post by nailer »

IIIr3228 wrote: post #100
nailer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines reliable journalism? I'm liberal but CNN's had issued a massive amount of retractions for their Russia stories, still has the fake fish feeding article up, the Guardian had to retract their 'unarmed' front page story about the drug dealer with the gun in his car. Making shit up is commonplace, yet media censors inevitably only want to target Breitbart and right sources. It's a plain as day transparent…

The Guardian isn't perfect, but you can't seriously compare it to Breitbart, which intentionally distorts facts on a regular basis, and goes out of it's way to sensationalize and offend. Would the guardian be caught dead printing these? https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/17/breitbart-news-... Or have they peddled lies as big as these ones? https://www.snopes.com/climatology-fraud-global-warming/ https://www.sn…

Well yes, the cited Mark Duggan example is pretty damning, but there's Olivia Solon'a recent White Helmet article (which simply presents other secondary sources as if it was primary evidence) and the bizarre 'no such thing as false rape allegations' editorial, which as we've seen is false twice in merely the last two weeks.

Re: Vietnam Deploys Cyber Warriors to Fight ‘Wrongful Views'

#127

Post by nailer »

rgbrenner wrote: post #96
nailer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines reliable journalism? I'm liberal but CNN's had issued a massive amount of retractions for their Russia stories, still has the fake fish feeding article up, the Guardian had to retract their 'unarmed' front page story about the drug dealer with the gun in his car. Making shit up is commonplace, yet media censors inevitably only want to target Breitbart and right sources. It's a plain as day transparent…

Journalists are just people. Reliable journalism occurs when those people try their best to provide accurate information, and when they make a mistake they correct it. That's it. You can't expect perfection from people.

I don't think anyone is looking for perfection, simply not creating a narrative one knows to be false.

The CNN fish feeding story was deliberately created by zooming film at the point the Japanese leader dumped their fish food, then zooming out again to show Trump dumping his, then writing text to support the fake narrative.

The Mark Duggan 'unarmed' headline was immediately followed by a story which revealed the suspect was armed.

The retracted CNN Russia stuff might have simply have been gross incompetence though so your point does apply there.

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