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Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

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Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#151

Post by jefft255 »

mjevans wrote: post #133
cool_dude85 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Incorrect. We can __prosecute__ against those who break the law. We __must not__ censor, because that is the slippery slope; all the more so when it is done without judicial oversight in an adversarial review system.

If I understand correctly, you're claiming that we __must not__ censor child pornography? Isn't prosecution a form of censorship anyways? I think what you're saying is a textbook example of a slippery slope fallacy.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#152

Post by bradford »

rayiner wrote: post #37

The letter complains about Fox and OANN's partisan and inflammatory rhetoric, with supporting citations to sources on the left who trade heavily in partisan and inflammatory rhetoric. Just three citations in you get to Karen Attiah, Washington Post's Global Opinions Editor: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/29/karen-attia... > “White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s,’ and not calling…

> Whether it's "inflammatory" speech or "misinformation"--these rules will not be applied even-handedly.

When one source of disinformation has a contribution to negative outcomes, It's going to draw more scrutiny. As long as that happens regardless of content-origin, it's the kind of even-handedness that I'd hope for.

You mention Maddow, and, while I don't watch her, If her show's content possibly contributed to a putsch, I'd hope that someone would look into it.

Media has been full of crazy for decades now and authorities typically look the other way until some significant event occurs. January 6th was very significant, and if Fox/oann/newsmax had a role in it, I'd like to know. Bringing up Maddow and other opinion sources seem like whataboutism here.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#153

Post by SkyBelow »

zug_zug wrote: post #103
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #76

To determine misinformation you must first determine information. We would need to setup some government entity to determine true information. We could call it the "Ministry of Truth". Unless that name is already taken? ... the cold wind blows...

If only somehow the government could determine what is true... When somebody is accused of a crime we just have to say "Guilty according to whom?" and let them go, because there's no way to know what's true. Sure the DNA says he murdered 3 children, but what are those scientists really after! If only there were some organized system for appointed people with great track records to somehow listen to both sides of an a…

>Sure the DNA says he murdered 3 children

Does it? Enough labs have shown to be unreliable in handling evidence and being able to follow correct procedures. Remember back when the bite marks showed they were the murderer, or the skull shaped showed them to be a killed, or they didn't float so they must've been a witch?

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#154

Post by dragonwriter »

asterialite wrote: post #49

I think the crux of the issue is not freedom of speech, but rather determining what counts as harmful disinformation. I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed; the point of contention is precisely where we should draw the line. The violent, seditious sentiments present in America today are a direct result of people being permitted to pander dangerous lies with no consequences, lies which have cause…

> I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed

I think it, and the processes around it, needs to be understood.

Whether it needs to be curbed is another question; it certainly needs not to be systematically advantaged unless avoiding that would have greater adverse costs which means, when it is spreading within a regulated system like Cable TV, it definitely needs to be understood to assure that the spread is not an artifact of, or enhanced unintentionally by, the structure of regulation. Which makes it an important area of legislative inquiry even given the assumption that none of the disinformation covered is outside of the scope of protected speech.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#155

Post by edbob »

jolux wrote: post #86
edbob wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded about the future because the quote you disagreed said "there will be", and I think the general tone of discussion here is around the potential future for abuse. We've seen notable comments by Democratic voters who are legitimately afraid of what their party will become. In this context, I'm not sure if current comparisons of misinformation are very relevant. Having explained my thinking, I'll make sure to…

I agree that the potential for future abuse of a power to regulate misinformation is high. That does not necessarily mean that it outweighs the current value, but I think reasonable people can disagree about this and I think it’s a debate we should be having, given the events of 1/6. I don’t want to get into an argument about which side is worse here or whether they’re equivalent. Suffice it to say, we have different…

Thank you for the respectful discussion. I feel like I understand your position a lot more clearly now.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#156

Post by asterialite »

jimbob45 wrote: post #139
asterialite wrote: post #49

I think the crux of the issue is not freedom of speech, but rather determining what counts as harmful disinformation. I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed; the point of contention is precisely where we should draw the line. The violent, seditious sentiments present in America today are a direct result of people being permitted to pander dangerous lies with no consequences, lies which have cause…

>I imagine we all agree that disinformation should be curbed I don't agree with that. I think the problem is precisely those who think they get to decide what is and isn't disinformation and who gets to choose to curb it.

That's kind of what I'm saying, though. Disinformation is a problem, but because there is no objective arbiter of truth, curbing free speech to prevent it is impossible. Anyone who can do so (i.e. Jack Dorsey, Amazon, etc.) has immense power, and this is a bad thing.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#157

Post by richardwhiuk »

dang wrote: post #84
temp8964 wrote: post #57

Flagged. Lol. Because the letters didn't use the exact words "demand", "censor". Haha.

You broke the site guidelines with that title, which was neither accurate nor neutral (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26240472 ). Using titles to editorialize isn't "haha", it's against the rules and will cause you to lose submission privileges on HN. That goes double for divisive, inflammatory topics like this one. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking t…

dang: I'm not particularly sure in what way this is a new phenomenon. It's basically just US politics as normal.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#158

Post by amadeuspagel »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #112
njharman wrote: post #35

Judging 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.

> child pornography, bomb-building tutorials, and revenge porn

None of these things are misinformation.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#159

Post by ABeeSea »

hpcjoe wrote: post #118
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

"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…

Parler was kicked off of AWS for violating AWS’s policies.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to tell you that YouTube and Facebook don’t use AWS.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#160

Post by mindslight »

bhupy wrote: post #67
omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do, for individuals, in specific situations. Like I stated in my comment above, I'm not certain those would apply in this case.

The New York Times vs Sullivan precedent pretty specifically addressed that issue: organizations (like the NYT) are protected by the First Amendment. Also, just taking a step back, the Constitution makes no mention of a difference between individuals and groups. If you and I were to group together to advocate for something, our rights to advocate for that thing don't magically disappear. In fact, by this logic, we do…

The New York Times is a corporation with a government-granted charter that grants it things like limited liability. It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights.

And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press. Given our microkernel government, institutions like the New York Times are better seen as part of the de facto government than independent organizations speaking truth to power - eg marketing the Iraq war. This relationship is easier to see with say Equifax than NYT, but the dynamic is similar.

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