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Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

reuters.com

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Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#101

Post by malka »

ulfw wrote: post #63
diveanon wrote: post #53

Why am I not surprised that it is Singapore doing this. That country is an authoritarian nanny state disguised as Disney Land. I have visited many times and have lots of friends there. Nobody cares about freedom of the press because they are well paid and comfortable. They have truly figured out how to placate the masses.

It's interesting to see people in the west often lauding Singapore for that and vilifying China if they do the same.

yeah, putting people in concentration camp because of their religion does not seem to buy them much credit.

Weird.

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#102

Post by 75dvtwin »

phs318u wrote: post #58
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should people be allowed to say and write lies in a "real" democracy? Yes. In democracy, the public are the arbiters of truth. Particularly political truth. Free speech doesn’t mean consequence-free speech. Cooling-down periods, mandatory preservation and disclosure requirements, et cetera are both prudent and commonplace. Court-supervised anti-fraud statute, which punishes for the harm done by the lie, not the spe…

> In democracy, the public are the arbiters of truth. Particularly political truth. Sadly, they are increasingly the arbiters of scientific truth. Part of me keeps expecting to hear some senator calling for the repeal of the law of gravity.

Perhaps that's because scientists had abused, the public trust in the not too distant past?

(that includes paper publishes as well authors).

I am interested however to learn/understand opinions of how to make the situation better.

For example, updating insensitive model that would include critical reviews of published work, independent confirmation of published work, and so on.

There could be a bias-adjustment model where if heavy majority of the government or business grants are looking for a particular 'answer' within a given subject-area, there need to be a counter-balance model (that, again, incentivizes a plausible discourse)

Today's intensives model for academia, appears to give lot of weight to # of papers being published.

In the areas where statistical significance of experiments/observations (rather than provable theoretical result) plays an important role -- this particular measure of 'one's academic achievement', could be responsible for the 'trust issues'

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#103

Post by distances »

irjustin wrote: post #99
RavlaAlvar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely asking. Do most of the population believe Singapore’s authoritarian government would stay benevolent??

As an US expat living in SG, I would say yes. Singapore is the first place where I actually began to question whether democracy was the absolute way. Democracy was how I was raised. Overall, I still believe it is the way long term, but what can you do when you have a single, unified government that cares for its people is simply amazing. Safest in the world, hands down. This can be felt in every day life. I hold tabl…

Is the safety and honesty embedded in the culture now? That's how Nordic countries keep things straight -- not by police force, and they're indeed some of the leanest police forces in the world. I'm basically wondering if you could change Singapore to a Nordic style democracy and keep the upsides you speak of just by the force of culture?

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#104

Post by archibaldJ »

RavlaAlvar wrote: post #92
qeng-ho wrote: post #88

I'm Singaporean, and completely not surprised to see this appear on HN. As with many places, the situation in my country is a bit more nuanced than a simple "the ruling party has ruled the country since 1965". Civilisation is the surrender of varying degrees of civil liberty for security and safety, and over here we definitely surrender more degrees of civil liberty for the safety and security of our streets. As anot…

Genuinely asking. Do most of the population believe Singapore’s authoritarian government would stay benevolent??

Whether a system would stay benevolent (say, to a particular class of people, etc) depends a lot on what's good for the economy. And people under the system have a general grasp of that too. This is why you have things like countercultures.

I would say the contemporary West's emphasis on authoritarianism is probably doing more harm than good. First of all the emphasis doesn't make things better - authoritarian would continue to be authoritarian whether you put the emphasis on their authoritarian nature or not. Secondly, it's pretty much a heresy suppression situation [1] here, or a (conscious or subconscious) distraction strategy embedded in the mode of thinking if you will, both of which are ironically what authoritarianism is best at i.e. suppression and distraction. Ultimately there is some form of authoritarianism existing in every system. You just have to look deep enough. Of course, some systems enjoy more democracy and a higher degree of freedom than the others, while some enjoy more achievements in KPI. But by emphasising on a system's authoritarian nature you are painting yourself a much simpler picture about the world here as if it is authoritarian v.s. the people, when things are so much more complicated than that.

It's very unfortunate that comment like this one is getting downvotes on HN.

[1]: http://paulgraham.com/nov.html

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#105

Post by ponyfleisch »

paulmooreparks wrote: post #97
robomartin wrote: post #47

I have a lateral question about Singapore. Everything I have read about the country says that it is one of the best in the world for business and, in particular, startups. Yet some of the commentary here leads me to believe there's a dark side to the reality of this nation. Anyone with first hand knowledge care to comment on this? I am puzzled because it so happens we might have to do some business in Singapore and a…

I've been living and working in Singapore for two years now, coming from the United States. I'm a libertarian who finds politics and economics in the US to be horribly broken, and while in principle I don't agree with authoritarianism or planned economies, I'm also of the mind that one cannot apply a single concept of government to every culture. That's a colonial mindset. America's liberal tradition came from many,…

I've met quite a few libertarians in Singapore but i continue to be puzzled by why someone with libertarian leanings would choose to live here.

Can you explain why it appeals to you? Do the low taxes make up for the limitations on personal liberty?

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#106

Post by ShorsHammer »

pirsquare wrote: post #76
ShorsHammer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that Singapore's elections are faked? And the results invalid?

Singaporean here - I don't think they are faked. It's just that we don't have strong opposition party. Many opposition parties here spent majority of their time complaining every single decision the government makes instead of making actual contribution to the society.

Sometimes SNG expat here. Why exactly do you think that is?

Surely there is enough highly talented, smart people to have a crack at a political office that's been held for decades and of course an enthusiastic young generation who have lived under this system perhaps interested in a change? It's a country with one of the highest average IQ's on Earth and I'm always intrigued by the statement "no viable opposition". There's definitely a viable everything else in the nation, wondering why politics is so different. It's an amazing place to live from my Australian perspective.

I'd argue that everyone couldn't care less given the history and are fine with the system as exists. Which seems to backed up by a lot of elections.

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#107

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

distances wrote: post #103
irjustin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an US expat living in SG, I would say yes. Singapore is the first place where I actually began to question whether democracy was the absolute way. Democracy was how I was raised. Overall, I still believe it is the way long term, but what can you do when you have a single, unified government that cares for its people is simply amazing. Safest in the world, hands down. This can be felt in every day life. I hold tabl…

Is the safety and honesty embedded in the culture now? That's how Nordic countries keep things straight -- not by police force, and they're indeed some of the leanest police forces in the world. I'm basically wondering if you could change Singapore to a Nordic style democracy and keep the upsides you speak of just by the force of culture?

Singapore has lot more underlying tensions than a Nordic country: massive wealth inequality, different races with different languages and religions, a huge barely-human migrant worker underclass, etc. The ruling party uses this as an convenient excuse to justify everything they do, but there's a grain of truth to it as well.

That said, yes, I think safety and honesty are fairly embedded. Yesterday, the case of somebody trying to bribe a condo rentacop to overlook their (illegal) AirBnB guest made the news: the guard refused the $50, reported the bribery attempt to the police, and the offender was sent to jail for a week:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/pacific-mansi...

In most neighboring countries, if this kind of thing made headlines, the news would have nothing else.

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#108

Post by bigpumpkin »

RavlaAlvar wrote: post #92
qeng-ho wrote: post #88

I'm Singaporean, and completely not surprised to see this appear on HN. As with many places, the situation in my country is a bit more nuanced than a simple "the ruling party has ruled the country since 1965". Civilisation is the surrender of varying degrees of civil liberty for security and safety, and over here we definitely surrender more degrees of civil liberty for the safety and security of our streets. As anot…

Genuinely asking. Do most of the population believe Singapore’s authoritarian government would stay benevolent??

Singapore's biggest challenge isn't whether its political system is "Democratic" or "Authoritarian", because such dichotomies are not terribly revealing about the peculiar situation Singapore is in geopolitically. The biggest challenge, rather, is whether it can continue to thrive in a rules based, international global trade regime.

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#109

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

kbcool wrote: post #64
_2d30 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure Singapore's government falls under a military dictatorship by any means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Singapore

When the dictatorship controls the military you can pretty safely say they're a military dictatorship.

No, it's a military dictatorship when the military controls the country, which is fairly obviously not the case in Singapore.

Re: Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law

#110

Post by mendelmaleh »

Barrin92 wrote: post #83
michaelmrose wrote: post #2

It's unconscionable to subordinate US companies and Australian citizens to a feckless foreign power. If Singapore why not every other nation on earth?

It's actually perfectly reasonable to subject American companies to the laws of nations they operate in unless you're suggesting they ought to act in imperial fashion and ignore the law of sovereign nations. It goes without saying that the same is, of course, true for foreign companies in the US.

How do you define 'operating in' for a web service? I would suggest they are operating on the internet, out of the US, therefore bound only to US law. Having the service accessible worldwide shouldn't make you subject to everyone's laws.
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