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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#891

Post by bart_spoon »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #711
sacrificedcapon wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that saudi arabia, china, russia, etc all have laws in place to hold newspaper editors responsible for printing "truth" right? > This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a hundred years. What makes you think you are a well-informed and critical thinking society? Don't most danes think alike just like most saudis, chinese, russians, etc. Don't most danes think and believ…

You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them. Not giving them a voice in the public discourse. Not taking anti-vaxxers seriously and placing them at the same level as doctors because ''both sides'' and ''free speech''. What has been proven again and again is that bad information drives out good, because it's so, so much easier to w…

> You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them.

This isn't necessarily true. I was listening to a podcast about conspiracy theories and how misinformation spreads (the name of which is failing me right now), and in one episode there were some scientists who were dealing with a particular subsegment of the conspiracy theory crowd who would make wild claims about their scientific field. Trying to blackball them or shut down their voice was often all that was required to add fuel to their fire because "obviously these scientists were trying to suppress them because they didn't want the truth getting out".

What ended up being much more effective was inviting some of the conspiracy theorists to speak at one of their scientific conferences. It ended up completely taking the air out of their claims, because none of them were willing to get up and try and defend their ludicrous theories against a bunch of trained experts.

Short of creating an iron grip on all interaction with information a la China, deplatforming people is temporary, as creating and finding a new platform is easy and simply leads to a more concentrated echo chamber for their ideology to fester in. Voat, Gab, Hatreon, 4chan, 8chan, etc. There will always be another platform that opens up in response to other platforms shutting them down. And soon instead of having the original fake news or hateful ideology in the public, you now have a distilled, more extreme version of it leaking into the public.

I don't know what the perfect solution is, but simply deplatforming people isn't going to be it. It will likely be something more like drowning out conspiratorial ideas with high volumes of truthful ones, rather than simply trying to cutoff the oxygen of the conspiracy theorists.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#892

Post by toxik »

claudiawerner wrote: post #880
claudiawerner wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has, but due to the orthodoxy of thinking in terms of the liberal conception of human rights in the US Constitution, other voices aren't listened to much - their views are different to the orthodoxy such that they are considered heretical and against liberty. It's a circular argument in the sense that because liberty and freedom are defined for the mainstream framework, any outside framework, in order to be accept…

I'm curious as to why this comment is being downvoted; if anyone could offer an explanation I'd be grateful to learn where I went wrong.

Downvoting is not being wrong, it is being disagreed with. It is a win in my book if you ruffle some feathers in your opinions, it means you’re not just restating the majority belief.

In terms of a graphical model, voting is dependent on not only opinion but also motivation. Somebody that thinks you’re wrong is more motivated to downvote than someone who thinks you’re right - one has an ax to grind, one does not.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#893

Post by bart_spoon »

aduitsis wrote: post #780
cf498 wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them. I would like a source on that. Dont take it personal, but I dont see how this is anything but tanky signaling to feel better about yourself. Here in Germany people were rather active in making sure the new far right party AFD wasnt given a platform. By now they are very close to being…

Somewhat tangential, but there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance . In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; f…

Why do people constantly evoke this these days? People quote it like its scripture. Is there supposed to be some self-evident truth in there? Because I don't see anything that counters the ideas of person you are replying to.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#894

Post by bart_spoon »

intended wrote: post #744
cf498 wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't discredit anti-vaxxers with speech. Same with flat-earthers. Same with fascists. You know what works? De-platforming them. I would like a source on that. Dont take it personal, but I dont see how this is anything but tanky signaling to feel better about yourself. Here in Germany people were rather active in making sure the new far right party AFD wasnt given a platform. By now they are very close to being…

I can source it. I worked on modding a political forum from its laissez fairs days to its current operating philosophy. Bad speech regularly frowns out signal, and in times of crisis, will overwhelm the channel with emotion. It’s easier to make vague funny one liners which reach the top of the page, drowning out that 8 page report on the telecom industry. Bashing a political candidate? Channel crusher. Once the chann…

> The banned users start forming their own sites and attacking you. Bread crumb arguments are spread to lead new users down a dark road and create more enemies.

> Eventually what works is banning all known bad actors and mention of those sites.

How do you reconcile these two? Because it seems like the first defeats the second.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#895

Post by gdy »

Kiro wrote: post #825
gdy wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be confusing lack of polically correct lies with anti-feminism and racism.

That's the thing. Danish media hates political correctness, for good and evil. It doesn't hesitate to publish numbers that indirectly fuel undemocratic narratives, even if they are true. I personally think we should be PC in those cases and think about what effects it will have on society.

"It doesn't hesitate to publish numbers that indirectly fuel undemocratic narratives, even if they are true. I personally think we should be PC in those cases and think about what effects it will have on society."

I'd love to see an example

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#896

Post by piokoch »

toxik wrote: post #792
brigandish wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. It's based in European, and more specifically, British Enlightenment thinking, the apotheosis of which (with regard to freedom of speech) is On Liberty[0] by John Stuart Mill, an Englishman. To quote: > THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrann…

This to me seems not far from ayatollahs quoting scripture to justify their positions and policies. Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years?

Where exactly ayatollahs talk about people rights and free speech? Comparing J.S. Mill to a bunch of religious maniacs is a bit far-fetched.

The fact that Mill wrote those words 200 years ago does not mean they are incorrect. We stick to the rules of Roman law in many aspects, although it was written pretty long time ago. Pythagoras formulated his theorem quite long ago too, yet we still learn it at school.

There are certain ideas that seems to be universal, that just make people lives better. People tend to challenge them and thanks to that we get goodies like Communism and Nazism.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#897

Post by btbuildem »

Suppose we applied a basic test to a potential ad: does it sell a product or a service? If yes, you can buy ad space for it. If it's "selling" a concept, idea, way of life, promotes a group, organization etc (basically, NOT selling a service or a product), it's deemed political and cannot be aired. Would that work?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#898

Post by kazagistar »

navigatesol wrote: post #813
chr1 wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the centralized body would say that to fox and not to cnn? After all if there are about 50% people thinking that fox spreads lies and 50% people thinking cnn spreads lies the decision of centralized body could go any way. It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions

One of the great ironies of the state of media in America: almost everyone agrees that Fox News is extermely biased and sometimes dishonest. Yet CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT and MSNBC are bastions of truth. I mean, just a few weeks ago ABC posted a video from a Kentucky range and claimed it was fighting in Syria[0]. Is that simply horrible journalism, or a lie? [0] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/in..…

People who pay attention know that fox news is fine and sticks to the truth (perhaps a selective truth, but still truth). It's the editorial panels that run around it and look like news that are a pile of made up lies.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#899

Post by kazagistar »

matwood wrote: post #834
akie wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not…

The problem is that a centralized body immediately becomes too powerful. The body itself would need to be limited in scope with other outside checks and balances. SCOTUS is close to one of these centralized bodies you speak of, and they purposely only deal with cases that have gone through every other avenue. And even then, they are not trying to determine truth, but only fit the verdict within the existing body of l…

I prefer giving power no secrecy to hide behind and limiting it by democratic control. I dont know why the assumption is always that a central power has to be some opaque inscrutable beurocracy.
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