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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]

#581

Post by asterialite »

macspoofing wrote: post #560
asterialite wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who decides what is 'disinformation' or 'misinformation'? You? The Democratic representatives? Jack Dorsey? No thanks. You are restating what I said almost word for word — but still disagreeing. Somehow. Everyone probably agrees that disinformation must be curbed; not everyone agrees on what exactly disinformation is. You seem to think I'm biased against Republicans. This is the case. You seem to be biased against…

>You are restating what I said almost word for word — but still disagreeing. Somehow I can elaborate. That you've elevated disinformation as a major societal issue that needs to be solved is itself a particular partisan talking point put out by Democrats to explain Hillary's loss in 2016. Trump never had the temperament to be a good president. He should not have been voted in and Hillary was a better candidate ... bu…

> is itself a particular partisan talking point put out by Democrats to explain Hillary's loss in 2016

...No? Trump lied far less back in 2015. The reason he won is that media gave him a platform, not that he used it to lie. Most Democrats agree with this analysis. Curbing misinformation is not a partisan issue, either: Trump spent his entire presidency railing against "fake news" and though the fast majority of his complaints were inaccurate, falsehoods are peddled by media from both sides of the aisle.

> yours is not a good faith attempt to tackle this problem objectively

Neither is yours. Taking an aggressive stance from the get-go, claiming that Democrats are as bad as Republicans when it comes to lying – none of these are markers of good faith.

My whole point is that because misinformation can't be tackled objectively, it's far harder to censor people than it seems. Because of this, censorship is not as good an idea as one might think. I do say that "If the GOP had not been able to lie about election fraud, the Capitol attack might not have happened," but I spend the rest of my comment explaining why censorship is a bad idea.

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

#582

Post by blacktriangle »

Spivak wrote: post #393
blacktriangle wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly why no matter where you land politically, you should be 100% in favor of fighting for free speech for yourself and the other side.

I think there’s a disconnect here. Does free speech have to include someone knowingly purposely spreading misinformation with the intent to deceive people? Or someone speaking with the explicit intent to harm another person? Because I think nobody should be able to silence your thoughts, ideas or opinions but those things don’t encompass all speech.

A few decades ago homosexuality was a mental illness, global cooling was going to kill us all soon, and a healthy diet was a pyramid based on eating a ton of grains. Do you want to live in a world where people arguing against those points of view were prosecuted for "knowing purposely spreading misinformation?" Because that's the world you are advocating.

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

#583

Post by Diederich »

apostacy wrote: post #126
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…

Lets of course also not forget the biggest one, COVID. COVID was fake news, until it wasn't. Previous weeks (months?) were spent suppressing warnings about it. I specifically remember being banned for saying that people should wear face coverings. In February I tried saying that people should think twice before taking the subway or going to Lunar New Year. January 2020, there was overwhelming evidence that something…

> I specifically remember being banned for saying that people should wear face coverings.

May I ask: what was the venue? HN?

I generally agree with your overall point here.

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

#584

Post by jimbokun »

xyzzyz wrote: post #580
jimbokun wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: My son's soccer team from the city decided they wanted to make a statement against racism and kneel for the national anthem before games. At one of the suburban/rural schools, they were vehemently booed and yelled at by the parents and supporters of the other team. (And the decision to kneel was made after a game the previous season against a different rural high school where my son's team mates were racial…

That’s not booing for voting, that’s about making a divisive political statement on a freaking kid soccer game . When you bring your activism into non-political contexts, don’t get surprised when people don’t like it.

So you’re saying it’s socially unacceptable?

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

#585

Post by Spivak »

blacktriangle wrote: post #582
Spivak wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a disconnect here. Does free speech have to include someone knowingly purposely spreading misinformation with the intent to deceive people? Or someone speaking with the explicit intent to harm another person? Because I think nobody should be able to silence your thoughts, ideas or opinions but those things don’t encompass all speech.

A few decades ago homosexuality was a mental illness, global cooling was going to kill us all soon, and a healthy diet was a pyramid based on eating a ton of grains. Do you want to live in a world where people arguing against those points of view were prosecuted for "knowing purposely spreading misinformation?" Because that's the world you are advocating.

I feel like we're arguing past one another. This is not about dissenting opinions or someone holding unorthodox views. This is about someone knowingly purposefully making stuff up, presenting it as fact, and spreading it around with the intent to deceive people.

I'm not saying this should a tool to enable internet censors. This should be used to go after the networks of people people producing this garbage. Unless you operate a website or blog where you are literally making stuff up and spreading it around as fact then this doesn't affect you in the slightest.

A lot of good examples of this surfaced when people were talking about what bathrooms trans people should use. It was an entirely manufactured controversy where no-name fly-by-night "news" sites would publish completely fictional stories about sexual assault cases to try and sway public opinion. I, and you, should be equally as mad at someone making up news stories trying to sway public opinion the other way.

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

#586

Post by blacktriangle »

Spivak wrote: post #585
blacktriangle wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few decades ago homosexuality was a mental illness, global cooling was going to kill us all soon, and a healthy diet was a pyramid based on eating a ton of grains. Do you want to live in a world where people arguing against those points of view were prosecuted for "knowing purposely spreading misinformation?" Because that's the world you are advocating.

I feel like we're arguing past one another. This is not about dissenting opinions or someone holding unorthodox views. This is about someone knowingly purposefully making stuff up, presenting it as fact, and spreading it around with the intent to deceive people. I'm not saying this should a tool to enable internet censors. This should be used to go after the networks of people people producing this garbage. Unless yo…

You're right, it's not about opinions and who can say what. The issue we're arguing past one another, and the real important one, is who do you trust do decide that. The other guy seems to believe it's possible to have some government that is a benevolent determiner of truth vs propaganda, where I believe the other guy is painfully naive.

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

#587

Post by macspoofing »

asterialite wrote: post #581
macspoofing wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are restating what I said almost word for word — but still disagreeing. Somehow I can elaborate. That you've elevated disinformation as a major societal issue that needs to be solved is itself a particular partisan talking point put out by Democrats to explain Hillary's loss in 2016. Trump never had the temperament to be a good president. He should not have been voted in and Hillary was a better candidate ... bu…

> is itself a particular partisan talking point put out by Democrats to explain Hillary's loss in 2016 ...No? Trump lied far less back in 2015. The reason he won is that media gave him a platform, not that he used it to lie. Most Democrats agree with this analysis. Curbing misinformation is not a partisan issue, either: Trump spent his entire presidency railing against "fake news" and though the fast majority of his…

>The reason he won is that media gave him a platform, not that he used it to lie.

He won because people voted him in as per the constitution. I'm sure there are a ton of factors around the particular mechanism of his winning. The media gave him a huge platform to be sure. They didn't do it because they liked him. They did it because of ratings and as a way to mock him because it looked like he would flame out (and he almost did flame out, many times). But OK, free press is free press and he got a huge amount of it.

But to be clear, it was the Hillary campaign strategy to let Trump tank himself by shinning a bright light on what a mess he was. At one point she literally stopped taking interviews and press conferences for months [1]. So if media attention is what wins election, what the heck was she thinking?!? And if Hillary didn't want the media platform, is it really the media's fault for giving it to Trump? In hindsight, that was a bad campaign strategy. Also, had Bill Clinton never decided to visit Loretta Lynch on her plane, she never would have recused herself, and that dummy James Comey would never have made himself the face of the email investigation (another thing Hillary brought on herself) and tank her poll numbers a week before election with that ridiculous letter to Congress (if there was one thing that lost her the election, that latter was it).

>Most Democrats agree with this analysis.

I'm not sure about that. For 4 years after Trump's election, the Democratic base, the Democratic party and the former nominee attributed Trump's win to foreign interference. I think every Democrat, Hillary included, has claimed Trump is an illegitimate president, who was clearly a Russian puppet, who stole the election because of Russian disinformation. That happened. And of course, prior to 2020, the party that ALWAYS claimed election fraud was the Democratic party. Every lost election, state or federal, was because of voter intimidation, or voter suppression, or voter id laws, or some variation of that. So who actually sowed the seeds of election mistrust? Where were the calls to curb misinformation then?

But yes, I do agree that legislating away 'misinformation' is fraught with problems.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/18/hi...

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

#588

Post by xyzzyz »

jimbokun wrote: post #584
xyzzyz wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not booing for voting, that’s about making a divisive political statement on a freaking kid soccer game . When you bring your activism into non-political contexts, don’t get surprised when people don’t like it.

So you’re saying it’s socially unacceptable?

In some contexts, yes. A kid's soccer game is a place to hang out together and have fun, not to relitigate the major point of social disagreement of the day. If some kids from some other school behaved in an improper manner, deal with this problem directly, instead of taking your grievance out on unrelated community whose only crime is also being rural, so surely must be bunch of evil racists.

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

#589

Post by jimbokun »

xyzzyz wrote: post #588
jimbokun wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying it’s socially unacceptable?

In some contexts, yes. A kid's soccer game is a place to hang out together and have fun, not to relitigate the major point of social disagreement of the day. If some kids from some other school behaved in an improper manner, deal with this problem directly, instead of taking your grievance out on unrelated community whose only crime is also being rural , so surely must be bunch of evil racists.

They kneeled before every game. They weren’t singling out any specific community.

And the school pushed as hard as it could to have the original incidents addressed (the same school has been reported for other similar incidents previously) and the league did not impose any consequences.

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

#590

Post by chrismcb »

ineptech wrote: post #343
LanceH wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a legislative body which is trying to limit speech not through legislation but through intimidation. They could pass a law and have it struck down nearly immediately, or they could flog CEO's in public for their own amusement.

Huh? How is this intimidation? It's not like spreading information to its viewers is something Fox was doing illegally or surreptitiously; it's their whole business. However many people they reached, I would think they'd be proud of the answer?

Did you read the letter that was written? It isn't the question about how many listened their were. It was the rest of the letter.
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