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Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#41

Post by basch »

shiado wrote: post #18

The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

An algorithmically sorted feed separating signal from noise will ALWAYS have to make the choice of what to show. If there are 10k stories, and the average person only scrolls through 1k stories, thats 9k stories it chooses to suppress.

There is a difference between delisting stories completely, and removing stories in private messages, but once you talk about the feed itself, the provider is going to be writing some kind of editorial engine, that prefers stories that have more engagement, while at the same time trying to not uprank trash, spam, clickbait, and other types of bs that float to the top.

Spam has already crossed the line, where near everybody, in universal agreement, is ok with their email provider blanket censoring the bulk of it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#43

Post by the8472 »

lisper wrote: post #37
shiado wrote: post #18

The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

No. Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is fl…

You did not really show that "doing something" is better than inaction (see politician's fallacy). For example for a long time reddit was very hands-off at the global level and left moderation to the indiviual subreddits and in my opinion that worked fine for most. Sure, there were some very disagreeable ones, but you still had to deliberately enter them to see their content.

Division of labor does not necessarily mean total centralization.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#44

Post by javagram »

s5300 wrote: post #30
corty wrote: post #15

Even if I were to condone censorship, I do think that in any case announcements by the government are special. Trump's form may be off, it might not look official, but absent other more formal press releases etc., this is as official as it gets. And such announcements do need to reach the citizens of the affected nation/state/area, because they do directly influence people's lives, health, the society and the state.…

" if the announcement were too provocative/evil/illegal, there are ways in a democracy to hold the wrongdoer responsible." Are there really though? Perhaps there are said to be, but can you give me an example of this supposed system working?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e...

An unbroken history of being held every 4 years even in the midst of a civil war and WW2.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#45

Post by jupp0r »

shiado wrote: post #18

The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

These networks have all sorts of arbitrary rules. If you wanted to share your favorite porn video with your friends, that would be taken down (not fact checked, thankfully). There are also other guidelines mainly to prevent harm in the real world.

You can argue that you don’t like these rules and that everybody should be free to share their favorite videos, that people should be free to post anti vax information. There are plenty of platforms besides Facebook that you can go to (I recommend 4chan for the true freedom of speech experience). Those platforms might not be where the users are though.

What you are arguing, however, is that some people on Facebook should be exempt to the general rules of the platform and that applying rules to them in the same way it’s applied to others is censorship.

edit: typo

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#46

Post by devado »

lisper wrote: post #37
shiado wrote: post #18

The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

No. Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is fl…

No.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. It's better to train society and individuals to take what is out there and teach them how to process it than to institutionalize them to trust "experts". Even today, before you take medical decisions, you have to trust your own instincts on what is the best for you. Yeah, those so called experts, won't make the right decisions.

Handing over arbitration of truth is an extremely foolish idea. We might as well have dictatorship and let "elders" decide for us and give up on democracy. Doing _something_ is not a virtue by itself, it has to be meaningful and many times you just have to pause and do _nothing_.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#47

Post by lisper »

the8472 wrote: post #43
lisper wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is fl…

You did not really show that "doing something" is better than inaction (see politician's fallacy). For example for a long time reddit was very hands-off at the global level and left moderation to the indiviual subreddits and in my opinion that worked fine for most. Sure, there were some very disagreeable ones, but you still had to deliberately enter them to see their content. Division of labor does not necessarily me…

I didn't say it did. All I'm saying is that advocating for it does not necessarily mean that you hate democracy.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#48

Post by mrits »

dilippkumar wrote: post #26

> Zuckerberg should take note. Yes, it’s crazy for one person to have such massive control over what people say online. But like it or not, our system gives leaders of huge corporations massive power. In his total control of Facebook, he must be the arbiter—of harm. We must demand that he perform that role in the best possible way, minimizing the toxic speech posted by his customers, whether they are peons or preside…

Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#49

Post by s5300 »

javagram wrote: post #44
s5300 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" if the announcement were too provocative/evil/illegal, there are ways in a democracy to hold the wrongdoer responsible." Are there really though? Perhaps there are said to be, but can you give me an example of this supposed system working?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e... An unbroken history of being held every 4 years even in the midst of a civil war and WW2.

This is... A terrible example. Do you know what gerrymandering and the electoral college is?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#50

Post by Bhilai »

So commentators who are saying that Facebook should not be responsible for the veracity of posts made by powerful politicians or rich advertisers on Facebook, can you please explain how users of Facebook should differentiate between truth, falsehoods or purposeful twisting of facts? Genuine question.
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