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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]

#371
I’m deeply concerned about disinformation, it’s a major problem. Politics has always had spin, and many issues are complex and it can be easy to state things too emphatically to press your case. Accusations of lying are everyday in politics. But recently flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people has become normalised. It’s a serious threat.

This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it though. We cannot ever allow government to control what can or cannot be said, outside narrow limits such as incitement to violence. Making the case for the truth will just have to be done the hard way.

Fortunately it looks like this is only 2 congresscritters, not “House Democrats” generally. There are at least a handful of utter wing nuts on both party benches so last put this in perspective.

The main problem with social media services is algorithms that drive engagement by turning people’s feeds into an ever more extreme echo chamber. Whether it’s lefties being zombified into SJW snowflakes deplatforming people on campuses, or Qannnon turning people into alt right political flat earthers. That’s what they need to address, picking and choosing opinions to block is a fig leaf move that’s more likely to backfire than improve anything. It’s a hard problem though. What do we do about these engagement algorithms? I’ve no clue.

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

#372
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> misinformation is combat with MORE discussion, not less! The problem with that idea is that it takes more effort to debunk a lie than to tell one. It also takes more effort to absorb a debunking than a lie. That's why disinformation works. Here's an example: JFK ate babies occasionally, and the media hushed it up. Oswald was actually a secret high-level CIA operative, and was so outraged by this that he assassinate…

Your example actually tells something. Nobody would believe your JFK baby eating story. It is easy to write a fake story, but it is not easy to have lots of people believe your fake story. "Misinformation" can spread because they seem plausible to enough people, not because they are "bullshit" like your example.

How about Jewish space lasers?

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with these points - but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying what do you do when your partner in debate completely ignores all of those things, but has equal say in the outcomes?

Agree to disagree, vote on it, and sometimes loose. Part of being in a democracy is that sometimes you dont get what you want, even when you are sure you are right. Change can be slow, even for good ideas. If you have faith in humanity and democracy, then you believe good ideas will prevail in the end. There were US abolitionists in 1770 and the civil rights movement ended in 1970.

And when the problems require solutions in decades and not centuries to be agreed on? What then?

I used to have a lot more faith in our democracy but I can't help but feel lately like something has fundamentally changed, and the system is just catching up to that. What changed? I have no idea, but something feels _different_ from before.

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume good intentions, respect them as individuals, and listen to what they have to say even if you disagree. These are basic tenants of productive debate.

Sometimes. I know people who only care to maximize for themselves and their immediate tribe, and could not care less what happens to others not useful for them. It is naive to play the game as if others aren't interested in capturing an outsized share of the winnings. And obviously they're not going to officially state their motives.

I'm not convinced any other strategy of discourse is a winning one. Competing disinformation campaigns are a race to the bottom where everyone looses. Also, sometimes people simply want different things.

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

#376

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…

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.

The government is the people, no? In any case, by the time the country elects a majority federal politicians who are all unified in spreading the same misinformation, we were in trouble long before that...

Also, if you think these letters represent censorship, I think you should take a look at the definition of that word. At best, you're crying wolf and at worst, you're spreading misinformation yourself.

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

#377

These letters are potentially unconstitutional actions. First amendment rights can be violated by entities other than the government. As pointed out in [1], the government can't induce a company to do something that were government to do it would be illegal: It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish…

> These letters are are bordering on potentially unconstitutional actions. “bordering on potentially X” is a very misleading way to say “not even arguably X”. But that's really all it says.

Thanks. I removed the unnecessary 'bordering on'. The intent was to say they're unconstitutional in my view.

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

#378
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't what "free speech" means. Free Speech means the government won't imprison or execute you. Private companies operate private services, they can kick you off for saying "bread" if they want and it's not "limiting free speech".

You see the issue here then, right? Government cannot limit your Free Speech, for the reason I (and you) pointed out. So... short of any alternative tools, the Government sets out to intimidate private companies into censoring on the Government's behalf. What more... it's not "The Government" - it's a political party that happens to be in power right now and is seeking to censor the other political party through mean…

You're deliberately mixing "Twitter bans me" with "Government imprisons me" and pretending they are the same thing so you can describe it as "private companies are allowed to limit free speech don't you see!" which is a misleading and incorrect description. You said "When these CEO's enact new policies that censors "Right-Think", it'll be totally okay because it's not the Government limiting Free Speech - private companies are allowed to limit Free Speech, don't you see!" and that is explicitly /not/ what limiting free speech means; a) that's not the Government limiting Free Speech, that's the Government doing something else, and b) a private company limiting your speech isn't a private company limiting Free Speech, it's a private company doing something else.

And Free Speech is too important for that equivocation to pass uncontested.

> "Government cannot limit your Free Speech, for the reason I (and you) pointed out."

I didn't point out a reason the Government cannot limit free speech, I pointed out that Twitter banning you is not anyone limiting Free Speech. The Government absolutely /can/ limit your Free Speech, that's why it's important and scary - of all organizations which exist only the Government can make it illegal for you to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article. Jeff Bezos cannot lock you up for writing a blog post critical of Amazon or making a credible bomb threat, but a government could (potentially) lock you up for writing a blog post critical of the government and can do so for making a credible bomb threat.

Your reason appears to be "the Government doesn't want to limit your Free Speech because it would make them look bad, so they lean on Twitter to ban people instead" - well I would far far prefer that, because having your Twitter account banned is less bad than being imprisoned, and more easily recovered from by posting somewhere else. You trying to claim this is limiting your Free Speech trivialises what it means for people in other countries to be imprisoned for being critical of the party in power (whether you call that a government or not).

> "What more... it's not "The Government" - it's a political party that happens to be in power right now"

That's what a government is.

> "and is seeking to censor the other political party through means of intimidation and coercion of private companies.

Again no; Twitter banning your account is a kind of censorship but not the same kind of censorship, even if they were paid by the President himself. You being arrested for having a Twitter account would be censorship, but it wouldn't be Twitter doing the arresting. The reason it's not (the same kind of / as bad) censorship is that you can make your own Twitter with blackjack and hookers and say "I love $politicalParty" all you like on it, and if everyone does that then Twitter fades into irrelevance. Just because Twitter is large and popular doesn't mean Twitter is obliged to provide service to everyone - subject to discrimination laws. If you phone up your local talk radio and they don't air your phonecall, that's not censorship.

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

#379
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

-> I want them to work on behalf of me . Sorry pal, Citizens United screwed up any chances of that.

I agree it had a part in it, but its not the whole story. Its the citizens being unable to elect people not beholden to political parties, with party obligations. These obligations appear to be more important than their obligations to the people who put them there.

This isn't a Citizen's United issue as much as it is a set of political parties that have evolved to control their captive populations. Some people vote D|R precisely to stick it to the others. They don't care about representation. They care about tribalism. The parties foster and encourage that thinking. The various "news" channels have their own opinions and often align with a particular party. Which means they are in the propaganda and red meat business. Not the news business.

CU is a part of this, in terms of providing fuel for the fire, but its been going on much longer than CU, and will continue regardless of whether or not CU gets struck down going forward.

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

#380
post #371

I’m deeply concerned about disinformation, it’s a major problem. Politics has always had spin, and many issues are complex and it can be easy to state things too emphatically to press your case. Accusations of lying are everyday in politics. But recently flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people has become normalised. It’s a serious threat. This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it thou…

> This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it though. We cannot ever allow government to control what can or cannot be said

Can you please point me to a proposal for government to control what can or cannot be said?

Not a speculation about what might, in the future, be proposed based on what some people fear based on the questions in these letters, but an actual concrete proposal?

Otherwise, I don't see how “This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it” follows from “We cannot ever allow...” since the only possible thing “this” can refer to doesn't, at all, involve the thing we “cannot ever allow”.

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