The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by abecedarius » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #374

abecedarius wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Variation in laws and norms is a valuable teacher, and there's a lot of shallow faith in the civic religion, agreed on that much. I'm kind of too lazy to argue with you here about the rest.

The affordances of social media could be much better designed for preserving the memetic edge the more true ought to have over the more false; OTOH the way Twitter and Facebook are going about this attempt at reform is heavy-handed folly that's already backfiring. (http://www.islandone.org/Foresight/WebEnhance/HPEK1.html from the 1980s shows by example that it is possible to think ahead about societal consequences of the design of communications media. That particular paper focused on more scholarly publishing, but it's not like that's unimportant either.)

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

#382

Post by rayiner » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #320

rayiner wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox News isn’t designed to be even handed. “Fair and Balanced” is an inside joke. It’s designed to bring balance to a media industry that skews heavily left by offering the countervailing view on issues. (I do agree it’s gone downhill since Ailes left. Megyn Kelly has said as much.) To put it differently: you cannot understand what’s going on in the world just reading the NYT and watching CNN, especially in the Trump…

The whole media is skewing left is completely fabricated. If anything most media has traditionally been moderate conservative. It is simply that part of the republican part has moved so far to the right that Reagan would likely be kicked out today. And this to a large degree has been driven by Fox News. It is also important to point out that they are different to most other news media in that they categorize most of…

We’re not talking about 1971. CNN started in 1980. Fox News didn’t become popular until the early 2000s. My theory is that it arose in response to a distinct leftward swing in the media, where they were obviously rooting for Gore: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/ju.... In 2002, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 2:1 among journalists. By 2013 it was 4:1. Today, self-identified liberals outnumber self-identified conservatives 13:1 https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/media-bias-lef.... Journalists overwhelmingly donated to Clinton: https://publicintegrity.org/politics/journalists-shower-hill...

You can see the distinct leftward swing in coverage of the 2019 primary. The media was completely blindsided by the victory of Biden, and the implosion of progressive superstars like Warren and Harris.

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

#383

Post by abecedarius » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #377

jacquesm wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

FWIW this proponent didn't even downvote it, though I was kind of irritated by the 'dogmatic', etc.

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

#384

Post by lazyjones » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

Free speech was never about the truth. But its enemies always used their “truths” as an argument against it.

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

#385

Post by ardy42 » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #365

ardy42 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Lies can be carefully crafted to exploit the way human brains work, > Well, sure. But the problem is the censors are also human. If crafty lies can deceive the average person, why do we believe that the authorities are any less immune? > I feel like so many times anti-libertarian arguments follow this formula. "Regular people keep making this mistake. So let's just have the government, helpfully stop them from mak…

> Society needs institutions whose job is to figure out what the truth is, and information dissemination channels that filter out lies and disinformation. We do have these. Scientists and journalists. As we know, they aren’t perfect, but they do pretty well.

> We do have these. Scientists and journalists. As we know, they aren’t perfect, but they do pretty well.

Exactly, and it's a good thing if the social media networks (for instance) follow their lead when it comes to handling disinformation, conspiracy theories, and other lies and falsehoods.

Also not all journalists and media organizations are equally credible, and some effort needs to be made to evaluate them. For instance, here's Wikipedia's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per....

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

#386

Post by riverlong » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

mcadenhe wrote: post #341

riverlong wrote: post #332

I'm worried that this situation is going to get a great deal worse. A flurry of disinformation and online noise is somewhat manageable so long as it is coming from humans, who may be paid by a state or an enterprise to drive engagement with controversial topics. It's going to get a million times worse when this gets automated. Right now the quantity of disinformation is practically limited by the human capacity to po…

Interesting essay Jay. The top comment in this thread is by throwaway13337 . You see this when people have a hot take they want to post but aren't ready to own it in front of their peers. I'd bet on average comments from accounts with identifiable personal info are much more tame and civil. But if everyone is too scared to talk about something for fear of getting cancelled then anonymity is the natural answer. --- Ma…

I think there's a solution in pseudonymity: it has the liberating effects of anonymity, while providing some accountability that there's a real human behind the digital face.

For example, suppose there's some repository of hashes of Personal IDs. If you want to sign up somewhere, you have to submit a Personal ID that corresponds to such a hash -- the Personal ID doesn't get stored anywhere, but it authenticates that you're a real human. (Obviously this is a naive solution and something more clever would be necessary, but it's just an example.)

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

#387

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #381

jacquesm wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Variation in laws and norms is a valuable teacher, and there's a lot of shallow faith in the civic religion, agreed on that much. I'm kind of too lazy to argue with you here about the rest. The affordances of social media could be much better designed for preserving the memetic edge the more true ought to have over the more false; OTOH the way Twitter and Facebook are going about this attempt at reform is heavy-hande…

I think the problem is advertising. Advertising causes media to focus on the controversy because it is what drives engagement. Business-as-usual would not drive engagement nearly as much as outrage does.

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

#388

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #383

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

FWIW this proponent didn't even downvote it, though I was kind of irritated by the 'dogmatic', etc.

Is that improper use of the word? I thought it came close enough to the intended meaning.

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

#389

Post by blitz_skull » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #237

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…

>It's not unchecked free speech. Instead, it's unchecked curation by media and social media companies with the goal of engagement. Unchecked free speech has always been an issue, which is why even in America, where free speech occupies one of the highest rankings of competing social virtues by dint of history, there are still a litany of narrow carve outs. Do you lie to your business parters in the context of a trans…

Literally no one is making the argument that it’s actual unchecked free speech.

The person you replied to was making the case that the problem is the system, which it is.

Anyone over the age of 13 understands that “say anything lmao” doesn’t exist.

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

#390

Post by pdonis » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #364

pdonis wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who are we to punish? I didn't say "punish", I said "penalize". Responsible adults should not have to have their society ruined because irresponsible people are manipulating and other irresponsible people are being manipulated. > it's only because of social media's leverage But what causes the leverage? It isn't just social media; if a billion people read on Facebook that they should drink nail polish to immunize t…

What are your proposals? How do we make the masses of people less susceptible to this kind of manipulation? Without using the tools of government.

> How do we make the masses of people less susceptible to this kind of manipulation? Without using the tools of government.

I don't know how to solve the problem for everybody. I know how I solve it for myself: by using common sense and critical thinking, combined with a lot of background knowledge from a lot of different sources. But I don't know how to magically make everyone do that. And even people who do that won't always agree; many of the questions we would all like answers to do not have simple answers that everyone can agree on. People have different goals and values and they aren't always fully compatible, and we don't have a good understanding of many important problem domains.

What I do know is that the problem is unfixable with the tools of government. So we have no choice but to look for other, non-government ways of fixing it.