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Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
This issue is so complicated. Yellow journalism existed in the 1920s. It's nothing new. There will always be people that want to consume these materials and believe them. The alarming thing are the calls for censorship. Look at how bad the media and platforms have been about Covid. Early advice on masking, lab leak, adipose inflammation, and other fairly innocuous lines of research were censored. Imagine centrally pu…
Sure yellow journalism existed. But it had anything resembling the scale, scope, reach, and speed as current technology (which is why it is taking over). Trying to trivialize this new reach would be like trivializing using everyone's iPhone/Android GPS to hand out speeding tickets - sure it's the same law, but an entirely different regime when you can get a new ticket every minute.
Despite free speech laws, it has always, and under pretty much every legal system, still been illegal to utter certain types of speech, such as yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, or inciting riot. It is never absolutely free.
If all you do when any hint of managing dezinformatsyia arises is cry "everything must be free (as in speech) and anything resembling censorship is horrible", you are being too simplistic. (and leading with it's "so complicated" and moving to censorship alarms is no less simplistic.
People and companies need to be responsible for the consequences of what they spread. Wildly amplifying disinformation based on engagement, without anything resembling a moral compass is not sustainable.
Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
The problem is not that everybody can access information. The problem is that click-bait false information is pushed by ranking algorithms more and more in front of the eyes of people who are ready to believe in them. The information bubble then is making people more and more radicalized.
Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
What's your solution then?
This issue is so complicated. Yellow journalism existed in the 1920s. It's nothing new. There will always be people that want to consume these materials and believe them. The alarming thing are the calls for censorship. Look at how bad the media and platforms have been about Covid. Early advice on masking, lab leak, adipose inflammation, and other fairly innocuous lines of research were censored. Imagine centrally pu…
Claiming that it was definitely a lab leak because of furin clevage - saying it with certainty, is most definitely misinformation, the truth is we don't know (and may never). If people say "it could have been a lab leak" (and many people did, without being "censored") that's different.
Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
That’s how I read it too. It’s interesting to see how platforms’ freedom to moderate as they please is being assaulted from all sides—some groups are claiming they must be forced to moderate more or be punished for what their users post, while others are claiming they must be forced to moderate less (or not at all) or be punished for what their users post.
This one is easy. There is no integrity of facts. No matter what standard you use you will have cases where reasonable people disagree. Historians argue about interpretation of facts all the time. There is no universal objective truth.
You can argue that you don't need absolute integrity and just clamp down on the fringe stuff but that just shifts the problem. You will find a boundary where reasonable people disagree about action being needed.
Election integrity actually has more to do with politicizing the elections process, which is so incredibly dangerous. The whole "ends justify the means" is a symptom of a siege mentality, which is deliberately created by those who personally benefit from it.
So what could the US do? Three things:
1. State independent commissions to run elections, draw boundaries around Congressional districts and certify elections. This should not be done by the legislature;
2. Move voting to Saturday and Sunday;
3. Make appearing at a polling place mandatory. This one is controversial. This is the system Australia has. You don't have to vote. You simply need to show up and get your name crossed off. That's it; and
4. Preferential or ranked choice voting.
Optional voting is nothing more than a tool for voter suppression. Stripping citizens of voting rights, (historically) tests on literacy to be able to vote, some districts requiring you to queue for hours to vote and so on are all designed to suppress the vote.
I don't care if someone was a felon or you think they're not informed enough (who decided that?). The absolute death of democracies is where a small minority dictates what happens to the rest of the country and that's where the US is hdeaded.
The tech giants have very little to do with that.
Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
> How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity of facts? This one is easy. There is no integrity of facts. No matter what standard you use you will have cases where reasonable people disagree. Historians argue about interpretation of facts all the time. There is no universal objective truth. You can argue that you don't need absolute integrity and just clamp down on the fringe stuff but that just s…
Facts can be opinions instead.
[1] https://insiderpaper.com/facebook-court-filing-fact-checks-a...