301–310 of 371 posts
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Often times in politics, what is a "lie" is more a matter of opinion rather than fact. Who gets to be the arbiter of truth?
If only we had some sort of system, where individuals could be sued for making damaging statements. Maybe each side could present their case, and a jury of their peers could be the ultimate deciders.
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> The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice. What you're missing is that all viewpoints you'll ever see are intrinsically those of someone with the money to promote their voice. Suppose you have an idea in your head and you want to get it out there. The first thing you have to do is express t…
I don't really get your point. What you're saying is that a good message takes a lot of resources to communicate effectively. That is true regardless of whether you can use social media to promote those messages. Conversely, targeted advertisement lets you bombard people with certain inclinations with ads that nudge them to behave in a certain way. That isn't free speech, its targeted manipulation. The targeting is w…
As best I can tell, a lot of the arguments here are something along the lines of (trying to steel man): letting politicians pay for ads in order to increase their reach reduces the competition to a question of who has the most money and gives an outsized voice to them, leaving the politicians with less money unable to compete. So in order to ensure a vibrant and fair democratic process and political debate, we should…
I strongly recommend Jill Gordon's paper "John Stuart Mill and the 'Marketplace of Ideas'" (1997), which explores Mill's views and the history of their use, in depth:
https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_1...
(Paywalled, though available via Sci-Hub / Library Genesis.)
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What's your proposed solution?
My ideal would be for some external regulator to police political ads, like the FEC already does to some extent. The policies would be made in public. The regulator would work with advertising platforms to set and enforce guidelines. Another option which would avoid some of the problems is to limit how tightly a political ad could be targeted. If misinformation is included in an ad, everyone should be able to see it…
I strongly agree that adding more information to the system (like making ads metadata open) is good for the society as a whole and might lead to better decisions, as in decisions supported by better data.
I don’t agree with the regulator idea, though. How do we make this regulator strong enough to resist corruption? It’s a tough job.
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> The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice. What you're missing is that all viewpoints you'll ever see are intrinsically those of someone with the money to promote their voice. Suppose you have an idea in your head and you want to get it out there. The first thing you have to do is express t…
I don't really get your point. What you're saying is that a good message takes a lot of resources to communicate effectively. That is true regardless of whether you can use social media to promote those messages. Conversely, targeted advertisement lets you bombard people with certain inclinations with ads that nudge them to behave in a certain way. That isn't free speech, its targeted manipulation. The targeting is w…
Allow opt-in targeting by allowing classified ads, old-school newspaper and Computer Shopper style. Otherwise I think it is now pretty clear the cost is too high.
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How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theor…
There need to be (and are) reasonable exemptions to free speech, such as hate speech. If someone was targeted in an advertising campaign, and the advertisement threatened to murder them, then it would be certainly illegal. Except there's no way for anyone to police Facebook, and therefore these advertisements could thrive. Facebook's standards for advertisements may not meet the law's standards. We want free speech,…
To your point, how is there no way to police threatening messages advertised on facebook? It seems quite easy to figure out who paid for the ad if they are indeed breaking the law with threats.
The primary problem is that it's not illegal for politicians to lie to the electorate. Without solving that problem, we will always have sub-par leadership and questions about what is or is not a valid advertisement. In official capacity (under oath) it's illegal for us to lie to them. In their official capacity (under oath of office) they get to lie all day long, straight through their teeth. CEOs can't defraud thei…
We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders. Why did we think this was a good idea again? Ask China their opinion on the value of being the one to decide what is true.
Because the story arc goes like this: 1) people notice someone has gotten power 2) people notice the person is being shitty about it 3) people insist that responsibility and power go hand in hand 4) person does not rise to the challenge 5) people take the power away Making them accountable is the warning shot. Next step is divestiture.
I’ve had several occasions where a coworker in a meeting said words to the effect of “if someone offers us money we’re gonna take it.” Blurting out, “so you’re a whore then” in a staff meeting? Not okay. So I just stared. If I could stand to look at Zuck I’d be staring right now.
I once remarked to an editor (reporter) for a tech news site (appearing occasionally on HN) that a specific channel there listed itself as specifically sponsored. Their response: I'm glad to hear we're and not . (Using words beginning with 'W' and 'S' respectively for each concept.)
I was referred for a CtH position at a small company years ago where they turned out to be, to quote the old CIA line, looking for a certain moral flexibility. I declined to convert, and I also don't accept referrals from that person anymore.
I was not at all surprised to see a couple of those people end up at an online gambling company in my neighborhood a few years later. And relieved they didn't seem to recognize me.
I keep hearing there are people who went into CS entirely for the money. I have deluded myself that I hadn't met many of them. But you encounter a bunch of them in one place and it's pretty hard to ignore.
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Because the story arc goes like this: 1) people notice someone has gotten power 2) people notice the person is being shitty about it 3) people insist that responsibility and power go hand in hand 4) person does not rise to the challenge 5) people take the power away Making them accountable is the warning shot. Next step is divestiture.
How does requiring facebook to fact-check (fact according to who?) take their power away? It just gives them more power.
The question is will they percolate to the top of the priority list? Small time offenders often get away with it.
[edit:] if you ask me, which you kinda did, I think we're using a self-organizing system, where people self-select into active positions in society and then we cull the worst actors - if we can - before they get too powerful. We get enough pleasant surprises out of this arrangement that we tolerate the bad ones. Trying to plan this stuff out ahead of time? You get a boring dystopia or a scary dystopia.