Better than doing what we do in the "civilised" world: only banning one side.
civilised actors don't smear poop in their nation's capitol.
civilised actors also dont riot for 7 months and burn down mulitple cities
Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
And allow actors to spread disinformation anytime they wanted even though the megaphone was given and then amplified(on engagement metric) by these megacorporations in the first place?
Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do. Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others. To stop taking everything we hear as automatic truth and instead consider all opinions, even if they sounds wrong at first. We need another Age of Reason instead of what we're executing on now.
I'm all for beating the "more education" drum, but at some point we're going to need to reckon with the fact that there are some very intelligent people out there who should know better and don't or, worse, exploit it to take advantage of others.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crazy thing is that the Q-Anon people will inevitably see the spate of arrests and censorship as "The Storm" prophecy coming true but in reverse, an "Anti-Storm". I have a feeling this will only make many of them even more committed and possibly now that they can point to something real, could even grow the movement. Crazy stuff.
Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
Personally I think these movements are the natural result of pivoting our epistemological institutions from truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy. The right in particular has less reason to recognize these institutions as “truth authorities” as even when the right has a good point (e.g., when the right asks, “how do we know that racism and not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?”) , they can rely on these institutions to ignore or misrepresent them. So some of them decide to go shopping around for their own epistemological institutions which will support them in a similar (albeit cruder and more overt) way to how universities, media, etc back progressives and progressive viewpoints.
The way out of this, IMHO, is to reverse course—to restore integrity to the media and generally to show the right that there is a good faith process through which their legitimate ideas can succeed and be rewarded. Trying to force an ideological hegemony isn’t going very well, however cathartic it may be or however right we are about our points and policy issues.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crazy thing is that the Q-Anon people will inevitably see the spate of arrests and censorship as "The Storm" prophecy coming true but in reverse, an "Anti-Storm". I have a feeling this will only make many of them even more committed and possibly now that they can point to something real, could even grow the movement. Crazy stuff.
Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
Well, having the government actually help people, work transparently, and prosecute corruption would do wonders for quelling conspiracies.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m pretty apathetic about these bannings (so hopefully this comment doesn’t read as support or opposition), but “not all conservatives were banned” does not refute “only conservatives were banned”.
The latter is an obvious lie. https://twitter.com/blm
Oooh, that's interesting. I hadn't heard about that one. Thanks for sharing.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#56"US was a a great role model this year. We aspire to silence more dissent and ensure our elections and democracy follow the American Way."
“US was a great role model this year. We aspire to feed our citizens a steady stream of disinformation so they are ready to storm the government and overturn the election if it doesn’t go our way” Everyone keeps making these same points in every thread, and no minds are changed.
You assume the steady stream of disinformation is only coming from facebook, and not the news corporations.
The reality is that CNN, MSNBC, Huffington post, New York Times, FOX, etc. all are shoving fluffed up pieces with an extreme bias. Every media outlet is doing this.
> Everyone keeps making these same points in every thread, and no minds are changed.
I agree with this. This is why we have always defaulted to "free speech" in America, while saying calls for violence are illegal. Currently, however, only one side's ideas are being banned; even if they don't call for violence, only if they "make people angry".
With and estimated ~200 protestors entering the building, we've effectively silenced tens of millions in response.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
These people need to see with their own two eyes that the things they think are true are not true. There is probably no bringing back some of the people who have gone really far down that road if corporations and government act with transparency and consistency going forward I think it will bring many people back and prevent more from doing down that road.
These people can stay crazy longer than the country can last.
For instance, if some people reevaluate their beliefs and come to a more generally accepted understanding of truth in the near future, the capital will still have been rioted.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
And allow actors to spread disinformation anytime they wanted even though the megaphone was given and then amplified(on engagement metric) by these megacorporations in the first place?
Yes, because the trade off is worth it, and we should treat people like grownups who can think for themselves. Why not encourage critical thinking and wider reading, instead of being the police of literally all the information on your giant social media platform?
Critical thinking? The vast majority of useful information in the world is based on trust and authority, not on critical verification and people examining the evidence directly.
Do you have any idea just how much work it is to verify that just the facts cited actually match up? That doesn't include verifying if the facts are accurate in and in itself.
I did a surface level verification to a virology professor, and I found a few details wrong, and some which I couldn't figure out which fact was likely correct. It took me forever to do, and that was just one part of a very long lecture series.
How about the fact that whenever someone offer me a cure for covid-19 in term of injecting bleach, I basically dismissed it out of hand. Was it because I think long and hard about injecting bleach into my body is a good idea? No. There was certainly no critical thinking happening. It's a reflexive rejection.
instead of being the police of literally all the information on your giant social media platform?
These platforms are not in any way unbiased free for all discussion forums. They are already making editorial choices by choosing to promote viral posts to drive up engagement metric and pushing down any less inflammatory posts.
At the very least they can do is slow down any angry promoting posts.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the voting system would have helped. Just show the movement that there nothing to hide rather than yell at them and appear to cover up.
Part of the problem is that people feel things are true and you can't debate or logicise that away. You can't argue against a feeling because it's deeply personal and you can't invalidate feelings. The most you can offer is another perspective and hope they're willing to consider it. Short of having them convince themselves, you can't really change people's minds when they feel something is true.
Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
Personally I think these movements are the natural result of pivoting our epistemological institutions from truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy. The right in particular has less reason to recognize these institutions as “truth authorities” as even when the right has a good point (e.g., when the right asks, “how do we know that racism and not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?”) , they can rel…
> when the right asks, “how do we know that racism and not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?”
This question isn't asked in good faith.
Besides, it's actually irrelevant; those deaths are statistics. What was demanded was prosecutions of specific police for specific shootings of specific, named people such as Breonna Taylor.
It's up to the white community to decide if police shootings of white people are too frequent, not frequent enough, or whatever. That is irrelevant to the BLM question.