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Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

reuters.com

71–80 of 216 posts

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

civilized I have trouble relating that word to the fresh memory of watching drooling, bearded gun-monkeys clambering on tables in the Capitol chanting 'hang Mike Pence!'

Both spellings of that word are acceptable. Get off of your high horse, especially if you can't even ride it yourself. Your depictions of the very disturbed, impoverished and desperate people involved in the DC/Capitol building fiasco are heartless, cruel, and completely uncivilized. You clearly have no idea what is going on in their lives, just as so many of them were unaware of what the BLM marches were all about.

  Both spellings of that word are acceptable
Because I was quoting a single word, I just typed it into my phone, which 'autocorrected' it.

There's nobody, and I mean 'nobody' literally, whose actions I cannot empathize with, if I take into account their limitations and life experiences. It's impractical to do that in everyday life. One would never be able to pass judgement on anybody. And I pass judgement on these dangerous idiots.

A reminder, by the way, that my feelings here aren't particularly directed toward you, personally :)

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#73

Earlier 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.

The voting system was audited, repeatedly. Biden even gained votes because the auditing system discovered that some votes weren't being counted. It was brought to multiple courts repeatedly and the only thing done was that elector witnesses were allowed to be slightly closer to the people counting.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#74
post #15
post #3

The predictable [and unfortunate] side effect of censorship on private platforms is it creates the illusion that the truth is being covered up. I have no doubts the next surveillance and encryption backdoor bills will be based upon the incidents happening right now. It's far better for society to keep discussions in plain sight, even if they are woefully misguided.

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?

If it was the megaphone that was the main problem then simply removing the engagement metric aspect should solve it. Reddit tried that when they stopped listing controversial subreddits from the main page and stopped giving new members recommendations to go there.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#75

Am I the only one that’s starting to think the US should do this too? I don’t care about censoring any ideas I’m just sick of all the obnoxious people screaming at each other and not changing a single mind in the process.

I'm with you. I care about free speech. I care about the implications of censorship. But I'm also just tired of it all. If (for example) banning Trump from Twitter means we stop having entire articles and public radio pieces devoted to talking about them... it's hard for me to fight that.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also don’t change the rules right before the election.

The rules were changed months in advance. Due to this, suing only after a loss was heavily disfavored by the courts.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also don’t change the rules right before the election.

No rules were changed right before the election, except perhaps by Trump who tried to rail against mail-in voting and destroyed the USPS in the process.

This talking point - that mail-in votes were somehow less secure than previously - is such a post-hoc rationalization it makes me sick

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#79
post #15

Earlier 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.

Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others

The way it works is that you and I reject information based on reflex.

If someone tells you to drink bleach to cure covid-19, would you do it? No, of course not. it wouldn't take a second for you and I to even consider it. No rooms for critical thinking there.

What you want people to do, is based on a slow thought process and careful consideration, but nobody have such time.

Disinformation agents can just keep spamming us with even more facts to consider since they can make up anything they want. Gish gallop as it were. Verification is slow, even just surface level check to make sure the facts match up.

So how did we not become fooled? Because we trust certain authorities and reject other out of hand.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#80
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been audits of the voting system. They didn't believe them, and they were reported falsely in the media they follow. It's a cult. It's like trying to convince them that aliens don't exist. (Epstein would have been prosecuted .. if he hadn't died in extremely mysterious circumstances. Now that's a situation where absence of evidence where evidence should be expected - the security cameras - drives paranoia.…

The “cult” (if you insist) was once much smaller, so something must be driving this phenomenon, which means there is hope that we can stop or even reverse it. What makes people go from believing the media, science, etc to unwarranted skepticism? Specifically, what changed in the last couple of decades that might’ve yielded this result? My pet theory is that our institutions increasingly pivoted from truth-seeking to…

> something must be driving this phenomenon

I’m going to go with a repeated exposure to propaganda designed to convince people that the election “WAS RIGGED” and sow distrust in our system of government. The left certainly has some questionable positions, but the “stop the steal” movement is not rooted in fact.

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