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The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

nytimes.com

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Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#71

Post by acituan »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #69
acituan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It warns that those in power now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth and democracy and thereby attempt to preserve power. Except with new media no one can really push information, it is mostly up to the recommendation algorithms to propagate the messages, which is optimized for creating more engagement and ad dollars. This, singlehandedly damages more of democrati…

> Except truth is hardly an out there objectivity Except truth by definition is objective. Opinions and beliefs are subjective. The earth is spherically shaped - this is not a subjective opinion, it is objective truth. > including utopian ideas of its attainability with likes of “fact checks” Aren't "fact checks" part of the free discussion? If a leader is spewing lots of falsehoods then it's up to the 4th estate to…

> Except truth by definition is objective

Except metaphysics of truth has been discussed for centuries and things are more complicated than that. Truth on matters most interesting to us is mostly transjective (neither objective nor subjective but depends on the interaction between the agent and the arena), because which truth you pursue is as important as what the thing is in itself, and the information we could seek about most things in themselves is inexhaustibly large.

“Earth is spherically shaped” is not an “objective truth” if you are calculating the response time of your radio transmission of your satellite over a ground station up north, you need to get more precise than a “sphere”.

> Aren't "fact checks" part of the free discussion?

Certainly they are allowed, but they are posturing an institutional authority they don’t have. It is not a magical epistemology machine that you can put in bleeding edge scientific research in and it will spew “truth”s out.

They are attempts to monopolize truth finding process, cheat the way out of dialectic with more institutions. There is no board or organization of “fact checkers”, no standards, no transparency. It is a branding gimmick.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#72

Post by noxer »

zozbot234 wrote: post #27
crazygringo wrote: post #2

Given how much the issue of free speech comes up here on HN -- especially regarding Twitter, Facebook, and politics -- I think this is a really important article for people to read. It's long, but is extremely nuanced and shows that the issue is far more complex than just "the solution to offensive speech is more speech". One key takeaway is in the middle: > [Free speech is] a fundamentally optimistic vision: Good id…

> [Free speech is] a fundamentally optimistic vision: Good ideas win. The better argument will prove persuasive. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Free speech is pessimistic as heck. It's saying that good ideas don't necessarily win, but if you allow authoritarians to engage in arbitrary censorship then bad ideas will always win. Censoring free speech is not just a "crude authoritarian's" move; it's what all authoritarians do whe…

Exactly, in fact it doesn't even matter what comes out of it there is simply no alternative to Free Speech that could work. Free Speech at least can work that's more than any other concept has to offer.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#73

Post by zepto »

dagmx wrote: post #13
zepto wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more about what ‘accountability’ means in this case?

Accountability could take many forms: * Having to delineate between news and opinion more clearly. Fox news is a high profile example, but many news sources do this. The inter mixing of news and opinion without clearly defining what is opinion, leads to the spread of opinion as truth. * encouraging social media sites to require political ads be transparent of who funds them and make it clear to a viewer. * require po…

I really like those. Verifiability and paper trail seem very important.

I’d recommending not using the term accountability if these are the things you mean. Generally it has the connotation of being responsible for outcomes.

I also think that there is possibly a false dichotomy between free speech and news here. As if regulating news is somehow the same thing as curtailing free speech. I’m not sure it needs to be so stark.

If we introduced some or all of these regulations, we could simply attach them to the use of ‘news’ as a product description. I.e. If you don’t do these things, you can’t sell a product called news.

This would be similar to not being able to call yourself a medical doctor or police officer without he right credentials.

As far as I can see free speech is a red-herring. We should preserve it strongly, but also introduce a category of media product that has certain guarantees or protections.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#74

Post by rayiner »

dagmx wrote: post #54
ilaksh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> massive increases in education resources This is why China is the most advanced country in the world. They have entire camps set up for immersive education for people who talk about religious nonsense! How progressive!

That's a straw man in bad faith. Increasing education resources doesn't have to have an end goal of reeducation camps. Education is woefully underfunded in America, especially rural America. Starting with giving people access to the same level of education across the board is a good first step in increasing critical thinking. Not everything has to be torn down into authoritarian versus a free for all. There are lots…

> Education is woefully underfunded in America, especially rural America.

Relative to what? The US spends among the most of any country on education. https://www.mercatus.org/sites/default/files/International-E...

If the assertion is that education is underfunded everywhere in the world, that’s an interesting assertion, but what’s the basis?

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#75

Post by UncleOxidant »

dagmx wrote: post #7
ColanR wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the argument you've highlighted is a good idea, or a particularly dangerous one. Maybe we should discuss it and find out. Or maybe we should call what you're saying 'propaganda' and ban it outright, since it might call for 'radical' and 'potentially destabilizing' 'changes to our democracy'. It would be too bad if you could only present it as an opinion, in limited arenas far away from anyone who might di…

Nothing in their post or the article says that things shouldn't be up for discussion. That's not even the point of it. The point has been about whether more powerful figures can use their platform to drown out the free speech of others and the lack of accountability. The article is in fact calling for more accountability, which is precisely what your comment about discussion would be. You're in effect reinforcing bot…

> The point has been about whether more powerful figures can use their platform to drown out the free speech of others

The article isn't focusing on that aspect, though. It's suggesting that falsehoods and propaganda can flood the zone with so much shit that people are just tired of trying to sort though it to figure out what's actually true and what isn't. The modern (post-modern?) demagogue doesn't bother with curtailing free speech, they just put out many false narratives like Putin does. "The spewing of falsehoods isn’t meant to win any battle of ideas. Its goal is to prevent the actual battle from being fought, by causing us to simply give up."

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#76

Post by dagmx »

zepto wrote: post #73
dagmx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accountability could take many forms: * Having to delineate between news and opinion more clearly. Fox news is a high profile example, but many news sources do this. The inter mixing of news and opinion without clearly defining what is opinion, leads to the spread of opinion as truth. * encouraging social media sites to require political ads be transparent of who funds them and make it clear to a viewer. * require po…

I really like those. Verifiability and paper trail seem very important. I’d recommending not using the term accountability if these are the things you mean. Generally it has the connotation of being responsible for outcomes. I also think that there is possibly a false dichotomy between free speech and news here. As if regulating news is somehow the same thing as curtailing free speech. I’m not sure it needs to be so…

The main point of the article is that the free speech laws in this country have clouded the divide between free speech for individuals, and the rights for media companies and political parties to spread misinformation as they see fit.

What you're proposing in your last paragraph is what the article is proposing too. The issue is that under the guise of an absolutist take of free speech, we've now put all free speech under the same banner.

To apply protections to the categories of media would require rethinking what free speech means and who it applies to.

IMHO free speech is great. It just needs certain measures around transparency and corporate lobbying to prevent it being brought down with the bad actors

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#77

Post by coldtea »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #69
acituan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It warns that those in power now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth and democracy and thereby attempt to preserve power. Except with new media no one can really push information, it is mostly up to the recommendation algorithms to propagate the messages, which is optimized for creating more engagement and ad dollars. This, singlehandedly damages more of democrati…

> Except truth is hardly an out there objectivity Except truth by definition is objective. Opinions and beliefs are subjective. The earth is spherically shaped - this is not a subjective opinion, it is objective truth. > including utopian ideas of its attainability with likes of “fact checks” Aren't "fact checks" part of the free discussion? If a leader is spewing lots of falsehoods then it's up to the 4th estate to…

>Except truth by definition is objective. Opinions and beliefs are subjective. The earth is spherically shaped - this is not a subjective opinion, it is objective truth.

Except in politics we seldom care about such hard truths, but about which policy is best, what's better, what's moral, etc, which is subjective.

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#78

Post by coldtea »

taxicab wrote: post #11
ColanR wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the argument you've highlighted is a good idea, or a particularly dangerous one. Maybe we should discuss it and find out. Or maybe we should call what you're saying 'propaganda' and ban it outright, since it might call for 'radical' and 'potentially destabilizing' 'changes to our democracy'. It would be too bad if you could only present it as an opinion, in limited arenas far away from anyone who might di…

Since the point clearly went over your head or you just decided to give that snotty reply to a strawman you came up with: parent was saying good ideas don't win if demagogues can hold a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas in the same way that, say, the ISP industry can hold broadly anti-consumer policies that customers don't do anything about because it is locally not a free market. To expand it further, I would arg…

>parent was saying good ideas don't win if demagogues can hold a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas

Well, that's irrelevant, as free speech is not about "good ideas winning", but all ideas being able to be heard.

Saying that some are "demagogues" is begging the question, and presumes one side has the good ideas, and the other doesn't.

Which, whether is the case or not, should be irrelevant from the perspective of free speech.

"Free speech for good ideas" is not free speech, it's a dictatorship of people prescribing and controlling which ideas are to be considering good.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#79

Post by dagmx »

rayiner wrote: post #74
dagmx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a straw man in bad faith. Increasing education resources doesn't have to have an end goal of reeducation camps. Education is woefully underfunded in America, especially rural America. Starting with giving people access to the same level of education across the board is a good first step in increasing critical thinking. Not everything has to be torn down into authoritarian versus a free for all. There are lots…

> Education is woefully underfunded in America, especially rural America. Relative to what? The US spends among the most of any country on education. https://www.mercatus.org/sites/default/files/International-E... If the assertion is that education is underfunded everywhere in the world, that’s an interesting assertion, but what’s the basis?

I will try to make this non partisan, but there is sadly a strong correlation in these links.

The issue isn't so much total levels of funding. It's even levels of funding, with many schools being underfunded especially in rural and minority districts

https://www.aft.org/press-release/education-underfunding-top...

https://tcf.org/content/about-tcf/tcf-study-finds-u-s-school...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/02/...

Edit: HN doesn't let me reply to replies to this post. So sadly I cannot engage with people replying. Perhaps some kind of depth limit?

Re: The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

#80

Post by humanrebar »

dagmx wrote: post #53
orangecat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This congregates power into the already powerful As opposed to throwing people in prison for expressing incorrect views? Who do you think will be in charge of that process? Hint: not the powerless.

That's a bit of a reactionary straw man there. Nobody said anything about prosecution for incorrect views. Neither I, nor the article, advocate for jail. Accountability can take many forms , none of them need to be dire. Many can just be tantamount to better transparency so we know who to hold accountable in the first place, and the requirement for posting sources in political ads for further reading.

You might have good intentions here, but you also have a setup for a motte-and-bailey argument. It starts with "surely the enforcement would be benign" but who holds the powerful to account when it actually comes time to reign the powerful in?

Maybe they'll merely be blacklisted from lucrative or prestigious positions in government or industry?

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