Man, this comment thread is really harshing my buzz.
So many folks here seem real eager to hype their systems and methods for ensuring all this oh-so easily identifiable misinformation has no route to most, which when implemented would stop this huge threat to our civilization. Typing up their clever ideas, full of good intentions (not being sarcastic, my default presumption is you all mean well), each author implicitly assumes their superiority over the masses who are so easily duped into believing awful and dangerous mistruths based on a few headlines boosted on Twitter. The mindset, stripped of all the complications and rhetoric and real positive intent, boils down to this: "These poor fools are completely lost, already in a world of hurt, and their naivety threatens all we hold dear, and so we must protect them from themselves."
Already in this thread, all the usual quibbles & arguments for & against this particular form of censorship are being studiously re-litigated. I feel strongly enough to write internet comments about very few issues and my feelings in favour of free speech fundamentalism are making it difficult to stay out of the fray. But I will restrain myself--not because it's a bad thing to do, but just because the ROI on everyone's time is so low, considering the tiny likelihood that all these words spilled out here will change even one mind.
Instead, I will ask a question that thus far has not been raised, and that I think is fundamental to this issue:
Q: What problems are we trying to solve here?
It seems that somewhere in the recent past (if I had to ballpark it, I'd say this all began to rise sometime around 8 Nov 2016) basically everyone in society came to the agreement that misinformation is running rampant, so rampant it may be the #2 item trafficked on the web, King Porn secure in his crown. Not only do we all seem to agree that misinformation is everywhere, but we all seem to also agree that this misinformation's impact is a massive threat to our society--the camel's legs are shaking under the strain, and Zuck's machine just keeps throwing straw.
This seems quite bizarre to me. Can someone here who's proposed one of these Democracy Protection Apparatuses tell me what it is y'all're trying to fix?
Make no mistake--I am quite aware that basically every public communications channel, not just the web but every channel, is under pressure from a constant flood of messaging aimed at literally changing minds, changing what and how we all think about this concern or that. I am quite well apprised of how the anti-vaxxers spread their wild, unbelievable propaganda, leveraging facebook moms' groups and instagram knitting forums to spread their evil & subversive messages. I know all about how the wily Ruskies have become the world's greatest social media influencers imaginable, who can take a shoestring budget that couldn't cover a major campaign's one day hotel spend and swing the most important election on earth.
Of course, as with the printing press and radio and television and fax machines and even pagers, I completely believe, based on solid evidence, that power factions attempt to leverage all broadly-adopted comms channels to their own selfish ends. I'm not denying that.
But can anyone here clearly identify what problem is right now such a huge concern that we should cheer on a corporation--one that wields power over our lives like no other ever has--as it unilaterally decides what we can and cannot here?
I mean, Susan's big reason here has been laid out explicitly: The 'rony pandemic is of such great concern that our ears should be blocked off from any sound that doesn't emanate from Official Authority, in this case, the WHO, an organization which five months ago nobody cared about at all and now everyone knows is about as credible as The National Enquirer (todo: insert BatBoy joke).
I mean, to me it is clearly obvious that accepting censorship is a huge risk. I'm not crazy, I don't think there should be literally zero restriction on free speech. The world would be a mess of scams were fraud permissible, for instance. But the risks censorship brings are huge and asymmetric--only us little people suffer when the surveillance and enforcement mechanisms censorship requires are abused. The wealthy and connected will always have more access to information than we do. When the abuse happens, it will always be to their benefit, because they either are the censors themselves or they control the censors. As we stand to lose the most when censorship is abused, we should have an extremely high bar for any justification for it. (Just think about that phrase, "dangerous information," for a second--we're not talking nuclear launch codes, we're talking questioning public policy, this is what Susan thinks is dangerous. Clearly she thinks very little of us.)
Censorship is power. Actually, censorship is the root of the power hierarchy. It's the most important tool in the shed, as a tractor is to a farmer so is censorship to Team Elite.
They want to control our minds. And many people in here are cheering them on.