This discussion does HN a disservice.
Further the comments reflect a prior, thoroughly editorialized title.
Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
111–120 of 602 posts
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#112Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people. Never the hands of authorities whether those be government or corporate. Why must fight all censorship. Because once you allow "a thing" to be censored, it becomes possible to censor "any thing". Things in the past which were labeled misinformation and would have been suppressed for even longer (or forever) under current social attit…
Hard disagree. We can censor, for example, child pornography, bomb-building tutorials, and revenge porn. I'm not going to fight against censoring them on the grounds that allowing them to be censored will allow anything else to be censored too.
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#113Reading the letters, they are only signed by two Democratic members of the house. They are both on the committee for communications and technology, but they only represent 2 of 28 voting representatives.
This really feels more like a publicity stunt on their part to please their constituents than some sort of concerted effort by the Democratic party, but perhaps someone with more insight on congress could enlighten me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Energy_Sub...
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#114"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel ." Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?
It is -very- partisan, and equivalent to poking a wasp nest with a stick. The country is very, very divided, not just between D vs R but also progressive vs...everyone else. I wish I had the answers(surprise, I don't), but I feel we should find some commonality, some give and take, and get on a path toward a semblance of unity. Trying to silence your opposition is what I'd call the complete opposite of that approach.
I think the only way to handle this is to stand up for common sense, and call out those attempting to use 1984 as a playbook. To shine the disinfecting light of day upon things like this. To vote the idiots who push this crap, out.
This could be making sure you primary them, recall them, or elect other persons. Seriously, allegiance to political parties is not what I am looking for in my elected reps. I want them to work on behalf of me. Not their particular party label.
The damage that the two parties fighting for political power have done to this country is ... staggering.
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#115Does anyone have any proposals for dealing with mass misinformation other that aren't censorship? I mean specific ideas, not just "people need to be more decerning"?
I ask because I don't like censorship but I feel we're approaching a point where we have censorship and democracy or we don't have democracy anymore. And I like democracy...
* information isn't glamorous, so unless we redesigned the whole media market it won't win by itself.
* educating people is noble, but it will take 80 years for the humans currently alive to be replaced by a new generation of educated people. And that's assuming a high success rate in education to spot fake news etc.
* there are very few ways to reform democracy that might improve this. We could require people to pass simple tests before they can vote, and blackout non-fact-only news for a month before elections. But I already hear how that's not much better than simply censoring fake news.
Any other ideas?
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#116We can't have people thinking those wrong thoughts! Stop them at the source.
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've noticed that there is a common belief amongst Democrats and Progressives that people are duped into holding conservative viewpoints because of Fox News. Whenever I have asked people on the left why they think Republicans and Conservatives believe what they believe, the conversation always includes references to Fox News and the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. So in that sense I can understand why so many Democr…
I agree that many people think that, but it gets the chronology precisely backwards. CNN has been on the air since 1980. Fox News didn't even exist until 1996, and didn't become popular until 2000. Fox News is a response to media bias,[1] not the other way around. [1] And by "bias" I don't necessarily mean open bias. CNN wasn't partisan in the 1990s like it is today. But it still provided news filtered through a libe…
The truth is, we don't know the causality. Nobody has a good explanation of what makes an otherwise normal, intelligent person believe Q-anon, for example. We have some ham-fisted theories about how Hitler riled his country to exterminate Jews, but it's not really a nuanced enough explanation to say when/if something like it could happen again [nor assure us it won't].
I'd like to pretend that we're all rational agents, but I know that there are certain "emotional backdoors" that people like Hitler have exploited in the past to get people to do horrible things against everybody's interest.
For those of us who live in a country controlled by the will of the majority, obviously the education of the average person is a priority.
If the shoe was on other foot, and I had a mainstream news channel that had 40% of the population angry and believing demonstrably false things (e.g. Aliens were running the country and I could point out the aliens for you), and I was hinting/insinuating a revolution was necessary, how hard would you defend my cable TV show?
[Edit - Lol, I know I've got a pretty solid argument when nobody can answer the question but only give a pouty downvote]
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#118"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel ." Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?
Worse than that, it is an attempt at intimidation. Given today's climate, it would not surprise me if it works.
Look at it this way. The capital riot on 6-Jan was planned and discussed on Youtube, facebook, and twitter. Apparently, barely a mention on Parler. Yet Parler was excoriated and deplatformed for it, and for not policing its comment sections. Yet Youtube, facebook, and twitter have faced no consequences for their ... whats the word I heard used about Parler ... complicity?
This is a dystopian future.
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#119"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel ." Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?
It's political censorship disguised at fact checking. If they were really concerned about "fake news", they would apply the same standards to the other side. Remember how just a couple years ago almost all of the major media outlets were pushing a conspiracy theory about "Russian Collusion"? Yet nobody is talking about shutting ABC, CBS, NBC, or MSNBC down, kicking them off cable, or banning them from the internet.
Careful, most people including most HN readers still believe in the Russian Collusion theory despite it being quietly disavowed by the press.
Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anybody, it should be the public, not the government, from the perspective of constitutional law. In an ethical sense, I'm less sure, because I feel pretty certain that the networks named in these letters are harmful to the country and harmful to democracy, but I'm unsure about the relative costs in the long-term of government intervention here. The ruling party attacking opposition media is never a good look, no…
This is the United States - the government is the public.
That's not really the case. The government is accountable to the public, but it also has the power to conceal things from the public, and take unilateral action in the case of the executive branch.
What I mean by "the public" are individuals cooperating to boycott organizations they see as corrosive to democracy, which is the typical solution for problems like this. The government is expressly and pretty strongly forbidden from regulating speech by our constitution, which is the mechanism by which the government is accountable to the people.