51–60 of 520 posts
I think the "Facebook bad" horse has been beaten down to Earth's inner core. Yes, Facebook has its downsides just as any other social platform would. Yes, you can live without it. But I don't believe that the negatives Facebook has enabled comes close to the utility it has provided to society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The free speech is well... a lot like right to bear arms. While you only had muskets, right to bear arms had a clear benefit (ability to quickly raise reasonably trained militia ready to fight in days) and little risks. Now that you can buy assault rifles, and war has become so high-tech that people who are trained to use small arms and nothing else aren't of any benefit in it - it has become a different thing.... Wh…
Where can you buy assault rifles?
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Any measure for success, when used as a target, becomes a bad measure. Freedom of speech is a measure of a free society, if you make freedom of speech the target and insist on maximising it without limit, then boring complicated truths are overwhelmed by simplistic emotionally engaging lies. I don’t know where to aim, exactly, only that the real target is whatever freedom of speech is for — call it X because I’m not…
This sounds to me like mental gymnastics to justify censorship on the grounds that lies are more popular than the truth, as if this is some new development that Facebook just recently made possible. Lies have always been more popular than the truth. Observe that billions of people are entirely convinced that there is an invisible and omniscient wizard residing in the sky, watching them. The majority of people believi…
> Appointing censors is a naive and harmful approach to solving that problem, counterintuitively.
But even then I would happily accept even the part that it is “naive” to appoint censors (I am calling for something much more subtle).
These two things are close, but not perfectly so. “Free speech = free society” has been a good approximation for most of history even despite a majority believing in falsehoods.
But the difference is there.
Facebook per se isn’t the problem, I think; I would blame everyone who uses A.I. on large populations, testing and refining what is most likely to be shared without consideration as it “sounds about right” while pushing a particular narrative (in Facebook’s case the goal is “money”; others, including those who use Facebook as their means for this testing, have political rather than financial agendas). Facebook is just one of many doing that, the A.I. genie is well out of the bottle, and conversely Facebook could exist without that A.I. optimising for something we don’t really want.
However, despite that being the only point where I think you’re actively disagreeing with me, I disagree with your new point here:
> look at some of the short term effects and foolishly conclude that it's making things worse, focusing on antivaxxers and the like while ignoring the rise in global literacy and scientific progress and achievement.
These are separate dimensions of what I consider a good society. China is part of the rise in those two, yet lacks free speech. Does it lack all the things which free speech is a good proxy for? I don’t know; but it does lack free speech.
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Religion is already banned in places such as France. Did not do them much good. A ban on free speech will be equally as effective.
What do you mean Religion is banned in France? I'm curious about what sort of twisted broad exaggeration and misunderstanding do you have to believe to drop something like that?
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The free speech is well... a lot like right to bear arms. While you only had muskets, right to bear arms had a clear benefit (ability to quickly raise reasonably trained militia ready to fight in days) and little risks. Now that you can buy assault rifles, and war has become so high-tech that people who are trained to use small arms and nothing else aren't of any benefit in it - it has become a different thing.... Wh…
Where can you buy assault rifles?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The free speech is well... a lot like right to bear arms. While you only had muskets, right to bear arms had a clear benefit (ability to quickly raise reasonably trained militia ready to fight in days) and little risks. Now that you can buy assault rifles, and war has become so high-tech that people who are trained to use small arms and nothing else aren't of any benefit in it - it has become a different thing.... Wh…
Where can you buy assault rifles?
The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https:…
To me, the case for free speech has never looked as good. A few (even hundreds) of murders are an acceptable cost of free speech. Restricted speech has killed millions. Little by little the western freedoms are being taken away. And you want it to go faster? Rap music which idolizes violence is allowed, despite thousands dying every year in connection to crimimal enterprise. The case to ban rap is just as naive as th…
The thing that really pushed me over the edge was the poll that said “98% of people don’t believe what they read on the internet”.[1]. Unlike many people, I actually have faith that people will accept the truth, eventually. It may take time and it may be messy and ugly, but it will happen.
And I also believe that the free flow of ideas (good and bad) is a fundamental quality of the American system that is overall a net plus, not a net negative.
And I feel sad when I see people so willing to give up such a fundamental right because of what they see on Facebook. I mean it’s not like there are thousands of examples of where a lack of free speech has been used to oppress people.
[1] https://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/23/almost-everyone-doesnt-...
The case for free speech absolutism has never looked more questionable than it does right now. Every online platform that has tried to market itself as a “bastion of free speech” has become overrun with the absolute worst of society and as of 2020 is directly implicated in multiple real life terrorist attacks including most recently in the Nez Zealand government’s post-mortem on the Christchurch shootings here https:…
To me, the case for free speech has never looked as good. A few (even hundreds) of murders are an acceptable cost of free speech. Restricted speech has killed millions. Little by little the western freedoms are being taken away. And you want it to go faster? Rap music which idolizes violence is allowed, despite thousands dying every year in connection to crimimal enterprise. The case to ban rap is just as naive as th…
On the free speech and authoritarian side of things you have stuff like the genocide in Myanmar where the direct correlation does appear to be causal: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
What's the amount of murders and ethnic cleansing attributable to free speech where free speech does become suspect? Hundreds, thousands... what?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is your argument that free speech exclusively attracts the scum of the earth? Maybe these hate bubbles wouldn't proliferate if they had to co-exist on a platform with a diverse set of opinions. These people are heavily outnumbered. But of course, all the major platforms are so successful because they aggressively silo people into pigeonholes via curation.
The argument is that free speech absolutism attracts totalitarianism that wants free speech for itself specifically, and will hide behind the demand for free speech at the expense of many other things, include the speech of those it disagrees with. And we should not put up with that kind of dishonesty.
The nature of the medium has intrinsic properties and that means that if you broadcast opinions, you always get pushback. It doesn't mean there is or is no justification for it. It is the trivial result of connecting everyone on the planet.
Be it differences or misunderstandings, there simply is no authority that would be accepted to enact a rule that you have to adhere to certain official statements about health, elections or Santa Clause.
As bas as some terrorist deeds may be, the continuation of decreasing liberty for security we tried for some decades is counterproductive and devoid of any results. Change it or lets yourself be classified as insane already.
Not a fan of facebook, but if you don't like it, you can just not use it. Doesn't mean you have the right to dictate how others use media. And don't think you are different to other historic mistakes of curbing speech.