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Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

nytimes.com

151–160 of 236 posts

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#151
post #133
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US that would require a constitutional amendment to alter the First Amendment. The chances of that happening are infinitesimally small compared to companies being shamed into doing that "right thing" through public pressure.

Until quite recently the FCC had a "fairness doctrine" requiring broadcasters to treat politics evenhandedly. That seems far harder to reconcile with the First Amendment than a "no faked propaganda videos" rule. The Supreme Court explicitly said it was OK. The US has truth-in-advertising laws, which forbid advertisers to make certain kinds of deceptive claims. I'm not sure whether the Supreme Court has explicitly con…

The FCC rules were conditions of broadcast licences, and fairness in advertising laws relate to the prohibition of committing fraud. Neither of those are particularly relevant to concerns around free speech.

Political propaganda on the other hand is entirely protected by the first amendment. The term propaganda covers nearly all forms of political speech.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#152
The correct way to counter disinformation is with information. This does assume a sufficiently aware populace able to process its own confirmation bias (which is actually a learnable skill). Sometimes it takes incrementally more information and that's okay.

Widespread availability of high quality media capture and technologies such as facial manipulation will inevitably lead to a future with many, many unverifiable snippets that go viral. This video is unique in that verification is possible, but the future will likely hold far more unverifiable content than otherwise. It is more positive to expect that humans will gain the ability to balance disinformation in the face of further information than to expect that benign dictators will censor perfect knowledge into cognisance.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#153
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The algorithm is probably the biggest element of it, they are already deciding what you are going to see and what you'll not see, so they put themself in the position of being a lot like an editor. On top of that a phone call and an sms are 1 to few (mostly 1 to 1), facebook posts are 1 to many, this makes the damage exponentially greater...

Yeah, but a personal Wordpress website also is 1-to-many. Where will this end?

But you’re criminally responsible if you use your personal Wordpress site to host illegal content, or use it to facilitate a crime. Facebook would say they aren’t criminally responsible for how their users use their site, because they’re just a common carrier. However they also want to exert a huge amount of editorial control over the content, which could be described as having your cake and eating it too.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#154
post #29

I don't fully understand why people think Facebook should be policing content, yet no-one thinks the phone company should delete SMS messages that are spreading misinformation, or the postal service should destroy false mail etc. It it because Facebook makes it much easier to share something with a wide audience? Is it because "the algorithm" means Facebook has more responsibility than if it were a simple chronologic…

People aren't calling for FB to start policing their content, they've been doing that since forever. FB has never been a neutral platform.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#155
post #103

I'm very uncomfortable with the current trend of trying to get big tech to self police. They'll never get it right because of moving goal posts and moreover I don't want a private company to have that power in shaping social discourse. If we as a society deem that type of content to be improper and that it should not be allowed on such platforms, then let's make that explicit from a legal perspective and regulate the…

Well, many believe that "big tech" (social networks and search engine, I'd say) have essentially replaced traditional news networks. I don't have a clear opinion on this yet, but if that's the case, it makes sense to regulate "big tech" in the same manner as traditional news.

In the us, tv news is regulated because it is using public frequencies.

Newspapers publish lies and propaganda all the time. Ref any supermarket checkout magazine.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#157
post #47
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a very strong defense thanks to the CDA and DMCA act which these large tech platforms wrote. They wrote themselves blanket immunity for nearly any type of content, in any type of context. https://www.copyrightcontentplatforms.com/2019/03/the-scope-...

Facebook and Google didn't even exist when CDA and DMCA were passed.

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Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#158
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a different video. The one Trump retweeted is undoctored footage of Pelosi stumbling over words, because she actually does that.

It’s amazing how hard it is to get someone to believe something counter to their baseline assumption. People “know” Trump spread the video, even though it’s simple irrefutable fact that he did not. The media is often responsible for amplifying and distorting an act to the point where the original act and actor are indistinguishable. Kind of exactly like what happened in the doctored video. This is perhaps an incredib…

>IMO the media does this against Trump pervasively and highly effectively, to the point where it is nearly impossible to distinguish what Trump may have actually said, forget about what he meant.

>I’d say the Charlottesville comments are probably the most famous example of this.

Could you explain why this is an example?

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#159

I'm very uncomfortable with the current trend of trying to get big tech to self police. They'll never get it right because of moving goal posts and moreover I don't want a private company to have that power in shaping social discourse. If we as a society deem that type of content to be improper and that it should not be allowed on such platforms, then let's make that explicit from a legal perspective and regulate the…

> I don't want a private company to have that power in shaping social discourse.

They already have that power - they've had it for a while. All that's being debated is how they should use it.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#160

I'm very uncomfortable with the current trend of trying to get big tech to self police. They'll never get it right because of moving goal posts and moreover I don't want a private company to have that power in shaping social discourse. If we as a society deem that type of content to be improper and that it should not be allowed on such platforms, then let's make that explicit from a legal perspective and regulate the…

if it was a Disney movie being shared they would be all over it. It would be down in minutes
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