"Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth." Those of you claiming that "democracy" depends on authorities preventing the spread of misinformation are ipso facto saying that democracy requires the government, or megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government (as Psaki made clear is happening), to define what counts as "truth" (a Ministry…
It's actually worse - the "truth" necessarily implies that there is but one, and that everything else in false. Does this sound familiar ? This is exactly what religious loonies say in order to take control. Science necessarily involves keeping your own ignorance, epistemic and otherwise, in mind while dealing with things, but it's quite worrying that the West is going back on what was won with blood and sweat.
Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
871–880 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#872"Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth." Those of you claiming that "democracy" depends on authorities preventing the spread of misinformation are ipso facto saying that democracy requires the government, or megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government (as Psaki made clear is happening), to define what counts as "truth" (a Ministry…
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#873Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s also important to understand that the only reason anyone is talking about misinformation right now is because the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th, a direct attempt to “seize control over free societies”. (Admittedly a poor attempt at it though) which was sparked by wild accusations, unsubstantiated assertions, and a mountain of failed litigation by “the previous guy”. No amount of whi…
> the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th Umm, no. I’d rather say it was a mildly interesting event for the entire world outside of the US. For instance, I don’t remember myself experiencing horror really.
I think a better example though is Flat Earth ideas.
Suppressing people from communicating that the Earth is flat is far more dangerous than the idea that the Earth is flat.
All the West really has going for it is that we are able to entertain ridiculous ideas. This is what lets our creativity percolate on the network.
Once that is gone we have nothing. Just a small % of the global population, kind of lazy, kind of entitled.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#874I see a lot of comments misinterpreting this. First, it's not about private files, it's about distributing content. Google isn't spying on your private files, but does scan them when you share them publicly. E.g. keep all the pirated movies you want on your Drive, and even give private access to friends, but the moment you make them publicly viewable Google scans them and limits access accordingly. So no, this isn't…
> Google isn't spying on your private files This is false. All of the major services that host images scan them for child porn, regardless if they're private or shared. I don't know how they're going to apply these rules and, unless you work there and are involved in this, neither do you.
Google's response was that it was a corporate feature that was accidentally turned on for all accounts.
So they certainly have infrastructure to do deep content scans of all users docs. Realistically they probably do still scan all accounts for internal metrics, it's just notification that has been disabled.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#875One is that our assumptions and norms around free speech/press aren't from digital communications world. They're from TV & newspaper world. Letters & Telephone world. In the last generation, lines have been blurred between mass media, conversational messaging, documents, information, software. Apple's app store escalated the software part of it, AWS further confused it. What "speech" is, for the average person, is hard to draw lines around
Douglas Adam had a good bit on this. Paraphrased: It's explaining to rivers how "the coming of the ocean" will affect them. Currents and such will still exist in the ocean, but... Thus with online media. Do free speech ideals still matter? Yep. What do they mean? How do they work? What do they do? Those aren't, IMO, trivially answerable with analogies to telephone, letter and newspaper world.
Two is that whatever the hell freedoms like association, speech, assembly, media and such mean today, they run through FB, Google, etc. In parts of the world where FB have the dominant free internet deal, even moreso. It's their structures and rules that matter. Say a politician from medium-sized country X is banned from FB or Twitter, this can seriously affect their chances. Same for any kind of activist group, political party, union etc. FB policy people don't necessarily even know the language of the country. Where there are tensions between democratic rights and the new world, the tension is usually highest where a tech giant is.
Three is back to one. There is an interconnectedness here that's hard to stop. We have a digital democracy. It's young, but it's here. Whatever democracy is, happens digitally now.
I hope this isn't cynical, but I've kind of become accelerationist on this. Let's play this game. Force Google's policy courts to be public, maybe.
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#876"Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth." Those of you claiming that "democracy" depends on authorities preventing the spread of misinformation are ipso facto saying that democracy requires the government, or megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government (as Psaki made clear is happening), to define what counts as "truth" (a Ministry…
> "Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth." That’s not sufficiently true. In fact, asserting untrue propositions is one of the easiest-to-counter ways of misinformation. Real pros use humbuggery; of a set of n true propositions, pick a subset m to lead the audience to your conclusions and you haven’t even “lied”. That’s why “fact checking” is such a popular way of narrative laundering, becau…
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#877"Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth." Those of you claiming that "democracy" depends on authorities preventing the spread of misinformation are ipso facto saying that democracy requires the government, or megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government (as Psaki made clear is happening), to define what counts as "truth" (a Ministry…
> "Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth." That’s not sufficiently true. In fact, asserting untrue propositions is one of the easiest-to-counter ways of misinformation. Real pros use humbuggery; of a set of n true propositions, pick a subset m to lead the audience to your conclusions and you haven’t even “lied”. That’s why “fact checking” is such a popular way of narrative laundering, becau…
I've never heard the word humbuggery before, but I completely agree with the rest. Before social media we used to call that "choosing what to cover". It's also called a "lie of omission", so any censor who suppresses true information can reasonably be accused of lying (or misinformation) themselves.
As others have said, it's not new, but now, for the first time in US history, the media moguls are censoring not only their own broadcasts, but everyone's communications. Could America have ever developed as it has if the postal service or phone company had done that?
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#878Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government is actively telling social media companies which posts need to be taken down. That makes them state actors. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-administration...
If I flag something on Twitter or Facebook as violating site rules, or an FHEO official tells Craigslist they're aware of posts violating housing discrimination rules, that doesn't make any of these sites my actor or state actors. It makes them people who care about either keeping that stuff off their site or keeping the law.
Also your logic falls apart considering the courts ruled last year that Trump wasn't allowed to block people on Twitter. You "flagging" or "blocking" something is very different from the government doing it or pressuring companies to do it. That makes them state actors as has been ruled multiple times in the past.
Nor are we talking about stuff which "breaks the law" here. By social media's own proven standards, they kept the lab leak theory off their platform for 1.5 years. They are censoring women who oppose men competing in their sports or entering their private areas like spas and bathrooms. Palestinians get censored under the guise of "anti-semitism" and Israelis/Christians get censored under the guise of "islamaphobia" depending upon which political side has power. If we had such big social media back in 2000s, they would be censoring anyone who spoke out against the war or there not being any WMDs. If you spoke out against the Syrian gas attack hoax, you would'd get censored too.
From Supreme Court of the United States opinion couple months ago:
> "But whatever may be said of other industries, there is clear historical precedent for regulating transportation and communications networks in a similar manner as traditional common carriers. Candeub 398–405. Telegraphs, for example, because they “resemble[d] railroad companies and other common carriers,” were “bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination." ... "Internet platforms of course have their own First Amendment interests, but regulations that might affect speech are valid if they would have been permissible at the time of the founding. See United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 468 (2010). The long history in this country and in England of restricting the exclusion right of common carriers and places of public accommodation may save similar regulations today from triggering heightened scrutiny—especially where a restriction would not prohibit the company from speaking or force the company to endorse the speech." ... "The similarities between some digital platforms and common carriers or places of public accommodation may give legislators strong arguments for similarly regulating digital platforms. [I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of ”digital platforms." ... "For example, although a “private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” Halleck, 587 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 6, 9), it is if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint. Ibid. Consider government threats. “People do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around.” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U. S. 58, 68 (1963). The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly. See ibid.; Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991, 1004–1005 (1982). Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital platform if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats. The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him. But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smoth- ered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves."
> "As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition, unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them."
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#879I have yet to encounter a small group of people, let's say less than ~15 people (all adult and responsible, children and fools are another matter and must be protected by adults), where someone thinks that others shouldn't access to some content (because they are irrevocably dumb or evil-minded), that he detains the Truth and has to forbid everything he dislikes.
In all huge groups (modern nations) it is the norm. As each one doesn't know most of the citizens, he/she is at best mislead into thinking of them as a bunch of children, and at worse is afraid of them.
Even if many people cannot, for the time being, tackle something useful/necessary (for example to distinguish raw bullshit from consistent information) they may "train" by being exposed to it, thus building some experience (living and dialoging with others will enlighten them).
How may one accept to live among others while thinking that most of them are dumb and unable to learn, or evil-minded? How may one who doesn't think so want to bar them from any content?
Re: Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”
#880Ahh Hell No! I mean - Who gets to define 'misleading and/or confusing'? Google? A court case? If they (Google) want to impose restrictions such as "Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users" - Might I suggest that they apply those very same standards to their own behavior. * But who can watch the watchmen? * I am grateful that I have a symmetric ftth connection. Information (correct or inco…
> Who gets to define 'misleading and/or confusing'? Google? A court case? They claim that anything "misleading" is "includes information [...] that contradicts official government records." This is a wildly Orwellian way to dictate "truth" : it's whatever the government body says is true. (1984 _literally_ has a "Ministry of Truth") Authorities can be wrong, and can _themselves_ be incentivized to mislead. Why place…
> This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records.
There is no wider applicability of "government records" specified.