351–360 of 645 posts
Fits well with the current wave of authoritarianism/nationalism that has taken root all over the world. A free and open internet represents everything that a government that wishes complete control over its people would be afraid of.
Joe Biden wrote the original Patriot act. Lets not pretend that liberalism doesn't come with a jackboot on the neck of the people either.
If we are going to have an honest conversation about censorship in the United States, we must call out the political left as the principal perpetuator. Whether it's college campuses violently protesting conservative speakers (e.g. Ben Shapiro), tech platforms banning and labeling speech they disagree with (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, Reddit), or corporate America demonizing those whose speak the truth and/or hold differin…
I think we'll start to see stuff built on IPFS and libp2p that will break that trend at least for some of us. Maybe it'll be like the internet used to be, for the technically inclined who aren't afraid of being offended or offensive.
The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information…
You've failed to make the case that the government is not a "bad actor". They've used all sorts of manufactured consensus techniques to get us into unjust wars or to give up our liberties (i.e. mass surveillance, lockdowns, etc) for over-blown threats. We aren't going to get education from the government. Open debate and discussion are really the only cure for propaganda.
The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information…
"We imagine the internet as a global medium where anyone can access any resource, and it’s supposed to make communication easier, especially across international borders,". It is. That doesn't mean that a democratically elected govt has to allow sites considered "good" by a private group (like the authors of this article) especially when even the authors themselves seem to be okay with blocking child pornography site…
...are you not? Like, I get your "moral relativism" argument, but I don't think anyone besides "extra-principled" libertarians would think there is some hypocrisy between advocating against the censorship of news/political ideas and literal child abuse.
Fits well with the current wave of authoritarianism/nationalism that has taken root all over the world. A free and open internet represents everything that a government that wishes complete control over its people would be afraid of.
Joe Biden wrote the original Patriot act. Lets not pretend that liberalism doesn't come with a jackboot on the neck of the people either.
No, he didn't.
USA PATRIOT Act was from Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI). It incorporated material from 3 earlier bills, one of which was also by Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the others by Sen. Daschle (D-SD) and Rep. Oxley (R-OH).
https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/3162...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you or the responders read the article? This reads like an assumption that the article is about tech companies in the United States and their effects to combat election misinformation. It's not. The part about the United States says this: > While the United States saw a small uptick in blocking, mostly driven by individual companies or internet service providers filtering content, the study did not uncover widesp…
HN really needs a way to force people to have at least clicked on the article before posting. Maybe something where the article has to be clicked on, and then a X minute timer is started so that people will be strongly incentivized to read the article before commenting.
I'm the worst on HN at commenting on a topic before/instead of reading the article.
But I see HN not as a place to share random articles around the web, but as a place to discuss interesting topics with a (relative to other alternatives) civil and educated userbase.
I'm usually not super interested in what a single person has to say on a given subject (i.e. the linked article) as much as I am in the collective thoughts/responses from the HN community.
Again, admitting that I'm likely part of the problem, but just being honest, and -- in my own mind, at least -- feels like a mostly justified reason for making the most of the time that I have/feel like spending on these topics.
If a similar community existed that was (again, relative to other alternatives) civil & educated, but just allowed discussion on topics vs. links to articles, I'd be hanging out/engaging there instead.
Remember how the usefulness of the internet and social media was championed by media during the Arab Spring movement? Now it's suddenly a threat to our democracy. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/16/21570072/obama-interne...
> Obama: Now you have a situation in which large swaths of the country genuinely believe that the Democratic Party is a front for a pedophile ring...I was talking to a volunteer who was going door-to-door in Philadelphia in low-income African American communities, and was getting questions about QAnon conspiracy theories.
> Goldberg: Is this new malevolent information architecture bending the moral arc away from justice?
> Obama: I think it is the single biggest threat to our democracy.
The second paragraph in the article is more in line with what he actually said:
> Now he worries that the internet and social media have helped create “the single biggest threat to our democracy.”
There's a big difference between saying that the internet is the single biggest threat to society, and saying that it (and more specifically, social media) has helped some people communicate disinformation and "fake news" - which is what Obama see as the threat to society in this context.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A free and open internet also allows propaganda and hate to flourish which are two bedrocks of most authoritarian and nationalist regimes. It isn't as simple as ending censorship will allow everyone to be free.
Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups. There is also the immunity to bad ideas aspect; Its important that the propaganda is heard openly and argued against in public, as this makes people immune to these arguments. Censor these bad idea…
This is so false it's bordering on the absurd. Anyone with even a little experience with debate and techniques like Gish gallop, which are widely employed, know that rational arguments simply do not convince most people of things. Humans aren't purely rational beings. It's dangerous to assume we can just talk away propaganda because all evidence points to the contrary.
More than 80% of Trump supporters believe the election was rigged against their candidate despite there literally being no evidence supporting this claim. We're seeing propaganda succeed on such a massive scale because it's so widely spread and so difficult to counter. You've got literally millions of people who have been conditioned to label everything that contradicts their views as "fake news". There is a reason why Fox News viewers score lower on current information than people who don't watch any news at all. Their propaganda works and talking about it and pointing it out isn't helping at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've failed to make the case that the government is not a "bad actor". They've used all sorts of manufactured consensus techniques to get us into unjust wars or to give up our liberties (i.e. mass surveillance, lockdowns, etc) for over-blown threats. We aren't going to get education from the government. Open debate and discussion are really the only cure for propaganda.
What benefit do you think the government gets out of lockdowns? (other than the obvious one of stopping the spread of the pandemic).
(1) Identification of potential dissidents. Those who violate lockdowns or mask orders are most likely to resist state control.
(2) Normalizing control over common activities. It takes four weeks to normalize a new habit. "Two weeks to stop the spread" has been going on since March (that's thirty-two weeks and counting). Americans are now habituated to state-controlled social behaviors.
(3) Destruction of in-person social channels outside the sphere of state electronic surveillance.
(4) Normalizing fear of non-conformists ("you're killing grandpa").
(5) Destruction of non-sanctioned economies. Global companies have effectively been part of the state for decades, and can easily weather the storm. Smaller businesses can not, which dries up cashflow outside of state-approved channels.