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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

#141

Post by monoideism »

Animats wrote: post #123
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #81

I come from a country where a free speech was never really a thing, and I tell you, americans, this: you don't value it enough. Restrictions on free speech inevitably lead to some form of censorship, and any form of censorship inevitably leads to the population being subjected to some 'official' version of 'truth'. This 'truth', however, is carefully curated to coerce the population to act in a certain way. So when T…

It's worth listening to the people from censorship-heavy countries. The US is better off for not having censorship. Free speech is messy. But it beats the alternative. It's useful to read what the extremists have to say, if you read the extremists from both sides. You can still read Dabiq, ISIL's magazine, online. (That may have backfired. Their position was, it's a war to the death between our Islam and everybody el…

> Universal Basic Income people (that used to be called the "dole" in the UK)

I'm much more ambivalent than I used to be about UBI, after seeing what large groups of sequestered, out-of-work, bored, and angry people are capable of doing, but just to clarify, UBI is not the same as the dole. The dole is only given to people who are unemployed, whereas UBI is given to everyone.

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

#142

Post by easterncalculus »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #93
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #81

I come from a country where a free speech was never really a thing, and I tell you, americans, this: you don't value it enough. Restrictions on free speech inevitably lead to some form of censorship, and any form of censorship inevitably leads to the population being subjected to some 'official' version of 'truth'. This 'truth', however, is carefully curated to coerce the population to act in a certain way. So when T…

I came into the article expecting to hate it, but the author eventually kind of won me over. She doesn't think Americans should abandon free speech, but she does think we should approach it more like Germany and France. > Germany and France have laws that are designed to prevent the widespread dissemination of hate speech and election-related disinformation. “Much of the recent authoritarian experience in Europe aros…

Germany and France don't have free speech. If there's speech that you receive legal action for then it isn't free.

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

#143

Post by 0x6862 »

Animats wrote: post #123
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #81

I come from a country where a free speech was never really a thing, and I tell you, americans, this: you don't value it enough. Restrictions on free speech inevitably lead to some form of censorship, and any form of censorship inevitably leads to the population being subjected to some 'official' version of 'truth'. This 'truth', however, is carefully curated to coerce the population to act in a certain way. So when T…

It's worth listening to the people from censorship-heavy countries. The US is better off for not having censorship. Free speech is messy. But it beats the alternative. It's useful to read what the extremists have to say, if you read the extremists from both sides. You can still read Dabiq, ISIL's magazine, online. (That may have backfired. Their position was, it's a war to the death between our Islam and everybody el…

I think the downvotes are about your assessments on some of these issues.

But you’re absolutely right in that only by reading these varied sources can you approximately discern what’s really going on. Reading bs trains your bs detector. Only read bs and you won’t be able to distinguish it from reality

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

#144

Post by mythrwy »

dagmx wrote: post #79
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/answe…

Maybe it's not entirely about funding.

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

#145

Post by krapp »

easterncalculus wrote: post #142
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came into the article expecting to hate it, but the author eventually kind of won me over. She doesn't think Americans should abandon free speech, but she does think we should approach it more like Germany and France. > Germany and France have laws that are designed to prevent the widespread dissemination of hate speech and election-related disinformation. “Much of the recent authoritarian experience in Europe aros…

Germany and France don't have free speech. If there's speech that you receive legal action for then it isn't free.

Well... then free speech doesn't exist anywhere, because notwithstanding laws against libel, slander, false advertising, perjury etc, there's really no place in the world which doesn't have some form of societal taboos, standards of politeness and courtesy, or notions of acceptable behavior which will lead to consequences if transgressed.

Edit: I see you changed "If there's speech that you receive consequences for then it isn't free" to "If there's speech that you receive legal action for then it isn't free." I'm assuming you were just trying to disambiguate, but even by that more narrow definition freedom of speech is practically nonexistent.

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

#146

Post by SamReidHughes »

crazygringo wrote: post #57
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #26

It's ironic that Emily Bazelon, the author of this essay, is the granddaughter of the late influential federal judge David Bazelon. Judge Bazelon was a well-known progressive and a well-known free speech proponent. Although his granddaughter shares his broadly progressive worldview, her position on this issue is different. The evolution from David to Emily reflects that of the US left as a whole. Most people like to…

> In practice, it is a tool for those who don't occupy the commanding heights of a culture to push back against those who do. But isn't the article arguing the exact opposite? 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. Which is not something anyone saw coming, and which deserves to be tre…

The fact is, people reading only the New York Times, HuffPo, CNN, etcetera, are completely engulfed in a disinformation environment. They're basically abuse victims.

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

#147

Post by tptacek »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #108
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this argument proves too much. Clearly there is speech for which you support Twitter and Facebook suppression, and there is speech for which people here do not. We generally oppose any restraints that operate in the overt service of bigotry, and some of us don't oppose private restraints on unhinged conspiracy theories. I also strongly object to the notion that liberals somehow own this, when clearly both sid…

> " I also strongly object to the notion that liberals somehow own this, when clearly both sides of the spectrum instrumentalize speech and its suppression when it suits them. " Both sides might do it but it's against the tenets of Enlightment liberalism to do so, so of course those claiming to be liberals justifiably get called out for it. If a person eats meat, they don't get to call themselves a vegan; if a person…

Respectfully, I think that's a silly argument. "Liberal" isn't a label any modern (20th or 21st century) liberal chose for themselves. By way of example: "enlightenment liberalism" doesn't tell us much about whether property taxes should fund schools or whether teachers should earn merit pay, but the term "liberal" or "conservative" strongly suggests what someone believes about those issues. It's about as persuasive as coming up with some definition of "conservative" that conservatives fail to meet.

In a discussion like this, about American policy, the right thing to do is just to accept the working definition Americans use; otherwise, all we'll do is argue about semantics, and the debate we're having over social media sites suppressing things isn't about semantics. It's substantive.

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

#148

Post by mythrwy »

throwaway573925 wrote: post #34

The legal concept of "free speech" originally meant "speak truth to power". Highlight on truth and power . Now it's being co-opted to allow for propaganda, disinformation and even far-right apologists.

And far left apologists too!

(this is a pretty clear example of exactly why we need free speech)

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

#149

Post by stale2002 »

krapp wrote: post #131
orangecat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the effect of the spread and adoption of bad ideas is a price we should always be willing to pay? I would say that we should "always" allow bad ideas in the same sense that we should "always" avoid torture. In the sense that you can construct hypotheticals where not doing so would lead to catastrophic results, but it's necessary to have a very strong presumption in favor because anything else has a hig…

>Like the allegations of Russian collusion? Well no, I was think of Nazism, the Armenian genocide, the genocide in Myanmar (often attributed to Facebook), the treatment of Uyghurs in China, etc. >>widespread disbelief in the legitimacy of modern science and medicine >Like Kamala Harris saying not to take a vaccine if Trump recommends it? Oh.. I see, you're making this a partisan thing, just taking jabs at the Democra…

> I see, you're making this a partisan thing

The person gave examples of partisan things, that could happen, as an example of how arguments in favor of censorship could be abused.

That the point. You seem like you want to ban "lies and conspiracies", and I will point out that this same justification could be used to do horrible things, such as ban discussion of russian conspiracies.

That is why the person you are responding to said that "they're inherently highly subjective".

Also, I would like to point out that you seemed like you were dog whistling towards certain partisan ideas. Because although you spoke in generalities, you were clearing hinting at generalities that are often used to accuse certain political groups.

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

#150

Post by desipis »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #95

Society is misdiagnosing the issue here. It's not unchecked free speech. Instead, it's unchecked curation by media and social media companies with the goal of engagement. As long as media companies get the most benefit from people engaging with content, they will continue to promote information that is damaging to society. It may even be true information but when the goal is engagement, it's purpose will be to enrage…

> The core issue is the underlying system that values engagement over all things ... the advertising system.

I don't think you're digging deep enough here. It's not the business model. It's the technology.

We've invented technology that can, to a significant degree, control people. It is as addictive as hard drugs and people will just keep coming back to their dealer for more and more digital crack.

But it's worse than simply heroin or crack cocaine. It gives the dealers not just the power to keep people coming back for more, but also gives them far, far more control over not just what those people do, but what those people think.

The large companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) aren't in the business of search or social media. Nor are they in the business of advertisement. Their business model is selling complete control over people at the population level. At some point it will stop being a business model and start being a self sustaining model of raw power that strips us of our humanity.

We need to take a hard stance to all attempts at psychological manipulation via technology. A/B testing to see how changes affect behaviour should be seen as morally repugnant as selling crack cocaine to children.

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