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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

#401

Post by i_am_new_here »

taxicab wrote: post #337
ABCLAW wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> unrestricted 'say anything lmao' free speech does not exist I am baffled by everyone here talking about algorithmic platforms like Facebook and Twitter as if they are a bastion of free speech. They are designed to promote only the most engaging content (IE most outrageous and in some cases literal misinformation meant to feed on your biases). These services are not a free marketplace of ideas, they are companies wh…

>it is not well reasoned discussion with a diverse representation of viewpoints that keeps people glued to their devices

This sounds like Hacker News. Every platform has (or: develops) it's target audience and we also can't blame the companies behind, that they are "for profit". Ads are lucrative and relatively fair (even beneficial - e.g. small businesses can make aware of their offerings... others have pointed this out before). Over time things consolidate by themselves: "We" hang out on hacker news and other likely more proper offerings. It's sad to see people "logging into facebook" and dragging down the discussion or just being offensive because of stupidity. But you can't fix that. The discussion itself and about it (discussions about discussions - meta discussions) is important to make sure "things get exposed". Things consolidate with time, e.g. you might look back on your last 10 years, and there are countless communities, where I left a last angry comment and then left. I am sure those communities are just small and irrelevant echo chambers, shrinking, because even their loudest advocates get tired and realize over time, that something is wrong, subconsciously. While others stay, though I have the feeling that there are a lot of big and relevant communities, that I still follow, and which are growing, which gives me hope, that we are heading in the right direction.

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

#402

Post by Nasrudith »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #127
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…

Netflix doesn't sell ads (and doesn't rely on user-generated content, so they can't really threaten democracy), but if you read interviews with executives, they also seem to be optimizing for maximum time spent on the service. Apple, too, reportedly told developers it's increasingly looking for Apple Arcade games that will "keep users hooked" over a long period. [1] Consequently, I'm not convinced removing ad-support…

A coup is a threat to democracy, election rigging, or coercing others to vote or barring them from doing so.

Ads and propaganda aren't - it is absurd that this hyperbole is so blindly accepted.

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

#403

Post by Nasrudith »

joshuamorton wrote: post #279
unishark wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech in freedom of speech refers to the communication of ideas and opinions, not all communication. The term "freedom of expression" is commonly used to clarify this. Lying to your partner is not a crime. Taking their money under those circumstances is the crime.

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?

The real reason is because you cannot cleanly define promises when combined with other definitions nor would you neccessarily want to - surprisingly.

Say a politician promises to cut taxes or boost social spending and then a natural disaster strikes or an adversary attacks. Either war or repairs and relief consume time and money. Holding them to it would force suboptimal decisions.

Money however is fundamentally fungible and performs best when it flows. Fraud being legal would force far more caution and selectivity which would do vast systemic harm. Why invest if there is no guarantee that it isn't just a gift that may be paid back?

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

#404

Post by Nasrudith »

desipis wrote: post #150
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 th…

> 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.

Calling it "complete control" is absurd hyperbole ans ignores that psychological manipulation isn't even remotely new. In fact the goddamned politicians implicitly called upon to ban this are psychological manipulators already. So were televangalists, every theocrat and strongman who suppressed dissent enough that his victims were stockholmed.

It cannot strip us of humanity - although it would be a good thing if it could because "humanity" in that context is a collection of bugs exploited for evil.

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

#405

Post by pippy »

Traditional media companies have a motive for social media to implement prohibitive self policing measures. Youtube recently caved and gave media companies an extra boost in their trending algorithm and exceptions to expletive language, which made vloggers upset: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44279189

Traditional media tends to stick to big three excuses to implement these measures; 'think of the children', terrorism, and cyber bulling.

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

#406

Post by krapp »

roenxi wrote: post #206
krapp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Free speech is by far the most reliable way of identifying bad ideas as bad. ... but you just spent an entire paragraph arguing that it's impossible for any person to distinguish between good and bad in the marketplace of ideas, and that all attempts inevitably do more harm than good. How then would it be possible to identify bad ideas given freedom of speech? Surely any attempt to do so would suffer the same bad co…

There is a spectrum of reliability. A panel of experts deciding on truth or fakeness of news is on the bad end of the spectrum, everyone figuring out what they think is most likely true is further towards the good end of the spectrum. But nowhere on the spectrum is good enough to uncritically trust news you read on the internet. That can't be achieved. There is a choice of misinformation - either that approved by an…

Truth isn't the result of consensus, it's the result of knowledge. "everyone figuring out what they think is most likely true" leads to millions of people being propagandized into believing 5G towers cause coronavirus.

On average, the panel of experts is still going to be more reliable.

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

#407

Post by disown »

jacquesm wrote: post #182
abecedarius wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mill promoted free speech realistically as better than the alternative, is how I'd put it. Here's where he made his case; it's not too long to read: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2

But he lived well before the age of the internet and maybe, you know, just maybe when the world changes we should adapt to it rather than to dogmatically hold that what one person thought a couple of hundred years ago should be enshrined and never ever be changed lest the sky falls down.

No. Principles are there precisely for when the world changes.

> dogmatically hold that what one person thought a couple of hundred years ago should be enshrined and never ever be changed lest the sky falls down.

You know what's great about free speech? It's great at holding dogma at bay.

How do you challenge dogma without free speech?

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

#408

Post by disown »

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…

> Society is misdiagnosing the issue here.

I think you are being a bit generous here. It isn't society doing the diagnosing. It's just a group of highly privileged individuals. It's one disinformation entity demanding privileged position in the disinformation space.

All state propagandists complain about disinformation. Whether it is the bbc or chinese propaganda organizations or russian or whatever. They all claim to be worried about and fight against disinformation just like the nytimes. After all, if you are fighting disinformation, then you must not be party to disinformation. But we all know that's a lie.

> That is, the advertising system.

Nope. Disinformation/propaganda/yellow journalism/etc predates the modern age of advertisement. In the past, newspapers were funded by wealthy business people, politicians or government. And they were all created to further the aims of their creator via propaganda. Ask yourself who created the nytimes and why?

> This business model should be illegal.

Nope. You are being misled by disinformation. It's not the business model or the profit generating mechanism. It's the nature of the business itself. News/media/etc exist to manipulate people. It was created to tell people how they should think or feel about events. To guide the herd.

Also, engagement was important long before social media.

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

#409

Post by winston_smith »

optimiz3 wrote: post #391
wdn wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because politicians lie. Filtering one side but no the other by the media and social media is censoring. They are interfering with election.

Maybe politicians shouldn't be allowed to lie?

Then the people who decide what the politicians are allowed to say would themselves be politicians.

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

#410

Post by jariel »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #400
jariel wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an insult, the other way around, it's naive to think that the general population acts intelligently with respect to information available to them on an ad-hoc basis. All nations media outlets are absolutely protected and controlled industries for this very reason. Information can be wrong, totally misrepresented, hyperbolic, it can reach large numbers of individuals wherein contrasting information cannot. Th…

> that's fine, the truth is the truth, but not 10 days before an election it isn't. Why not? It's like watching a romantic movie, when a good guy crashes a wedding of a loved one in a last minute, and instead of "speak now or forever hold your peace" tell him "but not in 10 days before the wedding!"

Because it's nothing like that, and Putin is not 'a good guy' with noble intentions.
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