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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

#371

Post by amanaplanacanal »

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…

From a US perspective, only your second bullet seems likely to survive court scrutiny. Unless you think you can get support to amend the Constitution.

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

#372

Post by jacquesm »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #368
jacquesm wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hilarious that my comment got flagged by - supposedly - the proponents of free speech.

How do you know why you got flagged or by whom?

It typically shows 'flagged' in the line above the comment.

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

#373

Post by LocalH »

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…

Existence itself is subjective. Reality itself is objective, but anything we touch has a hint of subjectivity present, inherent to our existence. The true falsehood is that there is an objective reality that we can perceive.

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

#374

Post by jacquesm »

abecedarius wrote: post #367
jacquesm wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hilarious that my comment got flagged by - supposedly - the proponents of free speech.

Sigh, humans are gonna human. One of the problems with suppressing criticism of even things that are completely true and right, as Mill points out, is that people come to believe the true thing in only a hollow way. I've been thinking that may have happened to the doctrine of free speech itself in the U.S. -- becoming just a slogan kids learn to parrot in school. Hollow it enough and it's easily lost. (Added: I found…

I think you're well past that stage already. Plenty of people parrot the founders as though they had some kind of divine insight into what makes a good state, rather than to see political systems as subsequent attempts to learn from mistakes made in the past. It is very well possible that 'free speech' should be sacrosanct, but the US is doing a piss-poor job of showing that that is the case.

Political systems come and they go, so far the 'free speech' countries are not doing remarkably better than the countries with some limitations on free speech and it would be good to recognize this and to see what can be learned from each other rather than to put dogma first.

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

#375

Post by blockmeifyoucan »

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…

Advertising needs to go away. All moral arguments aside, humanity can no longer afford to spend so much energy on something with so little benefit.

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

#376

Post by amanaplanacanal »

TedShiller wrote: post #298

Funny how social media went from being the "great democratizer" when Obama won, to "disinformation" when Trump won.

I know this isn’t what you meant, but social media changed quite a bit between 2008 and 2016. In 2008 both twitter and Facebook were in their infancy. If anybody called them “great democratizers” it was probably more about their promise than their results.

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

#377

Post by amanaplanacanal »

jacquesm wrote: post #372
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know why you got flagged or by whom?

It typically shows 'flagged' in the line above the comment.

But you said you were flagged by the proponents of free speech. How would you know that?

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

#378

Post by fulafel »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #263
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who will fact-check the fact-checkers? Also, who will ensure that fact-checking rules are consistently applied to everyone?

Agreed. Who snopes the snopes? Did you know Snopes has been shown to be biased since it is ran by people who lean one direction, who stops them from misinforming the public. What about when politicians are exposed and the media shields them are we just going to blindly trust a biased media source? We need to allow the people to review all evidence and form conclusions from said evidence. I cant tell you how many time…

The basic premise of Snopes is already political of course. Facts vs disinformation is a political question.

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

#379

Post by abecedarius »

leftyted wrote: post #50

This is another "we have to kill free speech to save it" spiel. I don't find these arguments convincing and the use of Hannah Arendt is particularly egregious. Hannah Arendt was not (and never claimed to be) a philosopher. She was a political theorist who tried, in her own words, to "look at politics with eyes unclouded by philosophy". > Looking back at the rise of fascism and the Holocaust in her 1951 book “The Orig…

Sad to see this excellent comment so far down in the list. It's making me want to read some Arendt.

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

#380

Post by SubiculumCode »

cookiengineer wrote: post #322
joshuamorton wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again, this is just the status quo. Why is lying to someone to take their money a crime, but lying to someone to influence an election not? What makes money worth special protections, but voting not?

I guess this is why it's called capitalism. Jokes aside, I think that democracies which are split up into executives, legislatives and judicatives are not well designed from an architectural standpoint. What's missing is a society of technologically specialized gremiums that evaluate knowledge and truthfulness, and are able to either control the press or to control the legislative process. So many laws have been crea…

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