Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election • Hacker News Board

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#161

Post by amalcon » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

mental1896 wrote: post #144

amalcon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also don't seem to realize that the action does not need to be real to cause a reaction by the other side. I'd provide an example, but to do so would just inject my own biases. I'm sure anyone reading this can think of at least 5-6 "reactions" by the other side which had no precipitating action -- regardless of which side they're on. It starts to seem a little silly to worry about the reaction on the other sid…

I actually can't think of any. Could you give just 1 example?

I'm trying to avoid my own bias here, so I'm going to come up with two examples that should be familiar to US audiences, one from each side. Take your pick:

- Impeaching Trump and attempting to remove him from office after the Ukraine call (which Trump supporters believe to be perfectly normal presidential behavior, and Trump opponents believe was naked corruption tantamount to solicitation of a bribe)

- The recent insurrection in the American capitol to prevent the certification of Biden as the next President (which Trump opponents believe to be the result of a legitimate process, and Trump supporters believe to be an entirely fabricated victory)

I happen think the former was a fully warranted reaction to a real (if ineffective) attempt to undermine American democracy, and the latter a reckless and contemptible reaction to nothing. It's irrelevant to my point, though: if you can look at either of those and say there's nothing there, then the other side is completely capable of reacting to nothing.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#162

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #158

glial wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The phenomenon in question is a sharp increase in the number of "post-truth" right-wingers--those people who can't be convinced by evidence alone that their position is wrong. This largely predates the most recent election and I would argue the rise began even in advance of Trump (although I think he was a coalescing figure which accelerated the phenomenon).

It's not just the right wing. The intellectual view that "all speech is about power, not truth" is much more prevalent among the left.

Now, that wasn't a view that was largely held on the right. In fact, I suspect it still isn't. The "post truth" on the right are people who still believe in truth, believe that they have it, and won't listen to any evidence to the contrary. In fact, maybe this is the consequence of the "post truth" left - if the right believes that the left believes what the left says about speech, then the right has no reason to trust any truth claim coming from the left.

But the change may in fact be as you say, that the post-truth people grew on the right. Now you can't sway chunks of either side with facts.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#163

Post by Jon_Lowtek » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

genericone wrote: post #83

This is how Zuckerberg's dream of connecting the entire population of the world comes to an end. Countries that don't want foreign influence (of both good and bad varieties) injected directly through their citizens eyeballs will ban social media first. Then a "nextdoor" style social media company will appear and allow individual countries to control how their social media is used. That or a Docker image with a Generi…

Facebook allows region specific control. Who do you believe does "content moderation" for groups talking in Swahili? Or Arabian? Or Chinese? To be honest i do not know, all i can tell is who does it in german and it is not south dakota. Sure many people in uganda speak english and can probably move discussions to other regions, but that would also be possible with more "regional social networks".

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#164

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

glial wrote: post #80

throwaway894345 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been thinking about Bayesian reasoning and propaganda. If you reason at least somewhat in a Bayesian way, and you're exposed to a repeated stream of the same lie, then if you update your priors at all with each exposure, you will eventually regard the lie as being probably true. And the main point of propaganda is to repeat the lie as often and in as many places as possible.

But it isn't inevitable that people update their priors. Many people don't when exposed to advertising, for example. If we recognize propaganda, then maybe we can do the same.

The problem with that is what throwaway894345 is talking about, that people decide that you're propaganda and won't listen, even if they are the ones who have believed the propaganda lie.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#165

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #155

throwaway894345 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What institutions are you claiming have shifted from "truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy"? It seems to me that the reason these institutions appear more progressive is that American conservatism is becoming less and less in touch with the truth. I think it's a feedback loop at this point, but as for "which institutions", the media and the academy are pretty prominent institutions that have largely come…

I don't know how to counter this argument because it just reverts back to the original question that djtriptych asked for which I don't have an answer. Open discussion failed. Many conservatives distanced themselves from the truth. That inherently leaves any truth seeking institution with a progressive bias because reality has a progressive bias. I agree that can turn into a feedback loop like you suggest, but what i…

I think the answer is pretty simple: restore neutrality and objectivity to epistemological institutions. This doesn't mean that empirically false right-wing viewpoints need to be presented on equal footing with empirically true left-wing viewpoints, but rather that subjective issues should be described objectively rather than in the left-wing narrative. Similarly, when popular left-wing mistruths arise, these institutions should call them out as they would right-wing mistruths, however infrequently this may happen. In a word, "honesty".

Conservatives (like everyone) need to specifically believe there is a path forward for their legitimate viewpoints, rather than the current system which more-or-less equally discredits legitimate and illegitimate conservative viewpoints. In addition to restoring objectivity and neutrality to epistemological institutions, we could also actively encourage more conservatives to participate in these institutions (and of course, treat them fairly and respectfully as they accept the invitation) to reverse decades of driving them out of these institutions. Yes, this is basically affirmative action for conservatives, and I appreciate the irony.

Again, this phenomenon is decades in the making; expect it to take roughly just as long to repair.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#166

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #159

throwaway894345 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. A rather obvious disproof: Twitter could ban 15% of conservative accounts expressly for being conservative.

The fact that you associate these viewpoints with conservatives is an indictment on conservatism, not an indictment on Twitter. Twitter has and will ban zero people for conservative viewpoints. Twitter has and will ban as many people as necessary for content that has the potential to lead to offline harm.

Was it not obvious that my example was contrived and hypothetical? How could I have been more clear that I was merely commenting on the logic and not speaking in support or opposition to the bans?

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#167

Post by a1369209993 » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #106

throwaway894345 wrote: post #23

Earlier 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”.

Yes it does, as it highlights their conservatism is not what got them banned.

"their conservatism is not what got them banned" also does not refute "only conservatives were banned".

(FWIW, I'm at least as strongly opposed to both sides as they are to each other, although that doesn't really have any bearing on "You are committing the logical fallacy of conflating "only X" versus "all X".". Edit, aside: "existential" qualifier would be "some X", not "only X"; is there a term for "not any non-X"?)

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#168

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #162

throwaway894345 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phenomenon in question is a sharp increase in the number of "post-truth" right-wingers--those people who can't be convinced by evidence alone that their position is wrong. This largely predates the most recent election and I would argue the rise began even in advance of Trump (although I think he was a coalescing figure which accelerated the phenomenon).

It's not just the right wing. The intellectual view that "all speech is about power, not truth" is much more prevalent among the left. Now, that wasn't a view that was largely held on the right. In fact, I suspect it still isn't. The "post truth" on the right are people who still believe in truth, believe that they have it, and won't listen to any evidence to the contrary. In fact, maybe this is the consequence of th…

You're absolutely right that there is also a post-truth left, but this thread is focusing on the post-truth right wing. Incidentally, the fix--restoring integrity to epistemological institutions--solves for both the post-truth right and the post-truth left.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#169

Post by slg » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #160

slg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most glaring example of this was public health authorities pushing for hard shut downs of pretty much all public spaces, but then turning around and giving the greenlight to densely packed BLM protests as critical to public health. The BLM protests weren't the first protests since the pandemic started. There were anti-lockdown protests going on before that which were just as if not even more "greenlit" than the…

> There were anti-lockdown protests going on before that which were just as if not even more "greenlit" than the BLM protests No. Public health authorities did not greenlight anti-lockdown protests, as they rightly shouldn't have. > In the end multiple organizations reported that there were no noticeable COVID spikes related to the BLM protests. Even if this were the case (I'm skeptical, so I'd be curious to see cite…

>No. Public health authorities did not "greenlight" anti-lockdown protests, as they rightly shouldn't have.

At this point, I'm not sure what you even mean about public health official greenlighting protests. Both protests were allowed to happen. Both had parts of protests that were preplanned and parts that weren't. Are you just talking about the comments Fauci made in an unofficial capacity?

>Even if this were the case (I'd be curious to see cites of actual papers), that indicates a failure on the part of public health authorities: they should have been greenlighting the anti-lockdown protests as consistent with public health, so long participants masked appropriately.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27408/w274...

>See e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-vaccine-firs... (non-paywall https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/the-elderly-vs-e...). To jump to the bit in question, ctrl-f "Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether preventing death"

That appears to be an argument about saving lives versus returning to normal. They aren't arguing that the vaccine should be given to people from diverse backgrounds just because. They are arguing that essential workers getting vaccinated is more important than getting the elderly vaccinated. They are simply noting the essential workers have a "high proportion of minority, low-income and low-education workers" which means they often aren't valued politically as much as other groups. Either way, they were only talking about recommendations that have no real power in deciding what happens with prioritization.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#170

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #168

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the right wing. The intellectual view that "all speech is about power, not truth" is much more prevalent among the left. Now, that wasn't a view that was largely held on the right. In fact, I suspect it still isn't. The "post truth" on the right are people who still believe in truth, believe that they have it, and won't listen to any evidence to the contrary. In fact, maybe this is the consequence of th…

You're absolutely right that there is also a post-truth left, but this thread is focusing on the post-truth right wing. Incidentally, the fix--restoring integrity to epistemological institutions--solves for both the post-truth right and the post-truth left.

I'm not sure it does. The post-truth left is post-truth not because of lack of faith in epstemological institutions, but because of a different epistemology. You can't fix that by a more honest press.

The right... if you had a more honest (or less biased) press, it might fix the post-truth right... eventually. Like, a decade or three later. You have to be trustworthy for a while before people will trust you.

And yet, I wonder if that paragraph is true. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I think I can tell when someone's presenting an ideologically varnished version of reality vs. when they're telling it straight. If reporters stopped being cheerleaders and started reporting, maybe people would figure it out faster than I expect.