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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#441

Post by montagg »

samatman wrote: post #380
jarpadat wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple, although it may not be obvious. There are 2 different views about "what freedom/democracy is" that are presently doing battle in america, at least among inteligentsia One, the worldview embedded into your comment, is that freedom is about the limits of discourse. Under this system, limiting discourse is inherently undemocratic, so if facebook "censor(s) things they disagree with" this is bad and w…

You're doing a poor job of explaining the first worldview. Which is okay, you've acknowledged that you have trouble understanding it. This worldview has been called the "liberal consensus". What it holds is that the power to determine a discourse is inherently against freedom is corrupting , and by allowing an authority to determine that, it will inevitably be used as a weapon. Goalposts will shift. We will, hmm, go…

I think there's a non-splippery-slope way to position the worldview you're describing that might be more palatable to the values of a worldview based on limiting discourse based on content.

I believe the hardcore freedom of speech view has a few important underlying assumptions:

1) More information is better, and shining a light on something is better than trying to selectively hide it, because eventually the real truth comes out through persistent discourse. This is only really possible with the maximum amount of information, and especially all viewpoints laid out on the table with the least amount of obstruction.

2) People are broadly able to parse out untruths, or irrelevant positioning, or anything that is of low quality, and they will not be persuaded by it. This isn't true of everyone, but it is true of enough people; that's an inherent assumption of democracy. We live (or want to live) in a free market of ideas, where ideas can compete, and the market (what people are persuaded by) will be broadly rational and land on the best position in aggregate, even if some people are persuaded by bad or malicious arguments.

3) Limiting the visibility of any information detracts from the overall quality of discourse because it robs people of the ability to improve their thinking. It negates the possibility of refutation, because the untruth is hidden. Giving people all information, including misleading information, in the long-run leads to a population that can have better discourse and evaluation of all the information thrown their way.

---

I think the above puts the ideas in the best possible light. However, I disagree with enough of these assumptions that I can't take this worldview myself. My main counter to these ideas is that, similar to (pure) free market proponents, it takes on a very idealistic view of rationality that doesn't match real behavior. In practice, people have to take shortcuts to understand things—it's inherent in human conciseness—and those shortcuts can be exploited. I don't believe this is something we can grow past on a large societal scale, because it's embedded in how we think. To improve the quality of discourse, we have to explicitly protect against these biases. There are a whole host of difficulties there, too, but I think they are more surmountable than all the downsides of allowing deliberate manipulation and misinformation to spread broadly.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#442

Post by cpeterso »

grawprog wrote: post #358
ravenstine wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. There's tons of software engineers, product designers, etc. on an ideological bent. If companies like Facebook and Netflix hire these types of people, even if they think they're on the same side, they shouldn't be surprised when their employees begin making collective demands. > I see it amongst commenters here too. What…

>so control over dangerous ideas makes sense to them This is another concept that confuses me 'dangerous ideas'. How is that different than what the church did with things like witchcraft and paganism, those were 'dangerous ideas'. What makes an idea dangerous? If there's dangerous ideas are there safe ideas? What makes an idea safe? Can you give me and example of a safe idea vs a dangerous idea? Who decides which id…

> What makes an idea dangerous?

People are drinking bleach because they read on Facebook it will cure COVID-19 or their child's autism. Should Facebook delete those posts? Add an official warning disclaimer (counter-information)? Depend on other users to reply with counter-information in comments?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#443

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #330
echelon wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nuanced analysis! Fantastic. In the past, the effects of freedom of speech were bounded by the cost of communication. Very few people could afford a soapbox with which to reach the world, so only certain messages were broadcast widely. Now everyone can send (and even amplify) messages quickly and easily. Previously celebrities, politicians, the media, and advertisers had a wide channel. Now interest groups, stat…

I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed. This may be correlation that does not imply causation. But demagogues had, for the first time, a way to reach into people's homes directly with their messages all the time, if they had access to microphones, video cameras, and broadcast towers. And it was a m…

> "I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed."

Surely you mean both fascism and socialism?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#444

Post by notyocheese »

hnatitagain wrote: post #233
saeranv wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strawman argument. No one cares about other people having and sharing different opinions. However the argument for moderating content on Facebook is centered around misinformation, and incitement of violence. There has now been multiple instances where right-wing populists have posted fake information on Facebook with political consequences. In Myanmar this incited in genocide[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.co…

This is a disingenuous argument that neglects to include the fact that 'misinformation' and 'violence' are stretched beyond the pale by ideologues in order to justify why something they disagree with politically should be removed on these platforms.

people have been murdered because of misinformation on facebook: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

That's pretty unambiguous to me.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#445

Post by [deleted] »

tallon wrote: post #429
majormajor wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute "freedom is simple, and restrictions are all bad" position is nonsense. Ignoring that there are people who would use their freedom to infringe on others is naive and childish. If everyone has a gun, we aren't all safer, we're just all each at the mercy of whoever decides to pull the trigger first.

>If everyone has a gun, we aren't all safer If everyone who is responsible has a gun, we are all safer.

[deleted]

Re: Mark in the Middle

#446

Post by em500 »

scarmig wrote: post #212
mrfusion wrote: post #174

Isn’t it weird you wouldn’t talk about politics in most settings especially among people you aren’t close to, but it’s ok to spam your 200 friends with political articles?

What I find most surprising is that all that political spam on Facebook drives engagement so much. At this point I barely get on it and never interact with my timeline, because half of it is shitty ads and the rest repetitive politics, and my mental model of people has most of us being turned off by it. Apparently not, though I do wonder if Facebook is somehow oversampling on a particular kind of engagement.

Don't be surprised that your (and likeminded people's) experience may not be representative of the world or even the country's at large. Poll after poll shows that 40% of the USA still supports Donald Trump.

Remember the famous (mis)quote "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"

Re: Mark in the Middle

#447

Post by nradov »

RangerScience wrote: post #346
dsbleia wrote: post #223

I think this actually made Zuck's leadership look solid. Of course it's a little naive to say "we aren't political", but he's probably just doing that because it's the calculated thing to say. Almost every other company says things like that, except for a few ideological ones in Silicon Valley. I don't know how anyone takes these employees at FB seriously. They are complaining about the lack of free snacks? Anyone co…

Free snacks, and their quality, is a complex signal. They're some of the first things to go as cash tightens up, and they're a decent rubric as to how much leadership actively gives a fuck about employees. Or they're a garnish on a pile of shit. It does definitely depend on the goals regarding company/employee relations: is this a job for which I'm paid money, or is it supposed to be more than that? If the former, ho…

If leadership actively cares about employees maybe they should eliminate free snacks altogether. Obesity kills about 300K Americans every year. The last thing that highly-paid tech workers with sedentary jobs need is more food.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192032

Re: Mark in the Middle

#448

Post by Pils »

samatman wrote: post #380
jarpadat wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple, although it may not be obvious. There are 2 different views about "what freedom/democracy is" that are presently doing battle in america, at least among inteligentsia One, the worldview embedded into your comment, is that freedom is about the limits of discourse. Under this system, limiting discourse is inherently undemocratic, so if facebook "censor(s) things they disagree with" this is bad and w…

You're doing a poor job of explaining the first worldview. Which is okay, you've acknowledged that you have trouble understanding it. This worldview has been called the "liberal consensus". What it holds is that the power to determine a discourse is inherently against freedom is corrupting , and by allowing an authority to determine that, it will inevitably be used as a weapon. Goalposts will shift. We will, hmm, go…

Determining how discourse occurs, its rules and the dividing line correct and incorrect speech is built in to the democratic process, not some holy "rules of the game" handed down by God. Your misguided understanding of "liberal consensus" is actually a fundamentally authoritarian position, a doctrinal decree about what can and cannot be discussed.

The irony of course is that the "experiments with official truth in the 20th century" in the US were often defended on the grounds of protecting "liberal consensus" from opposing viewpoints. See the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals statement of principles, the trade group responsible for the Hollywood Blacklist:

"We believe in, and like, the American way of life: the liberty and freedom which generations before us have fought to create and preserve; the freedom to speak, to think, to live, to worship, to work, and to govern ourselves as individuals, as free men; the right to succeed or fail as free men, according to the measure of our ability and our strength.

Believing in these things, we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of communism, fascism, and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life; groups that have forfeited their right to exist in this country of ours, because they seek to achieve their change by means other than the vested procedure of the ballot and to deny the right of the majority opinion of the people to rule."

Re: Mark in the Middle

#449

Post by cpeterso »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #344
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed the point of GP's comment. They never said Facebook can't do whatever they want. Just that Facebook employees shouldn't feel like they get a say in it. edit: btw I'm not saying it is GP's opinion that Facebook can do whatever they want. I have no idea what GP thinks about that. I'm only saying their argument wasn't specifically about that.

Why shouldn't employees get a say in the actions of their employers?

Management definitely gets a say in the actions of the company. So why not other employees, too?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#450

Post by claudeganon »

alquemist wrote: post #406
shadowgovt wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed. This may be correlation that does not imply causation. But demagogues had, for the first time, a way to reach into people's homes directly with their messages all the time, if they had access to microphones, video cameras, and broadcast towers. And it was a m…

Going further back, the Protestant Reformation was enabled by the spread of the printing press. In its wake, the 30 Years War. Upon utter exhaustion of the parties involved, the Peace of Westphalia set the stage for the modern nation states.

And an often passed over part of the Protestant Reformation is that it was fueled by rabid anti-Semitism and scapegoating. Martin Luther wrote a 65,000 word treatise called “On the Jews and their Lies” that’s widely considered to have been the basis for Nazi ideology:

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

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