Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#31

Post by anjbe » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #22

echelon wrote: post #2

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…

Active amplification of disinformation is just as much a threat to democracy. 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 w…

> 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.

And that sentiment—that very example, even—has been used to justify expansive restrictions on speech that nobody would or should put up with today, such as opposing the military draft.

“When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Schenck v. United States

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#32

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #22

echelon wrote: post #2

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…

Active amplification of disinformation is just as much a threat to democracy. 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 w…

> Sure yellow journalism existed. But it had anything resembling the scale, scope, reach, and speed as current technology

As a share of current events information, it was greater, often virtually monopolistic, for not just “yellow journalism” generally but often a fairly unified single viewpoint of yellow journalism. (In terms of divisiveness, the actual problem today isn't greater proportional influence of yellow journalism, but that there are alternatives, both opposing equally yellow journalism and less-yellow journalism, with widespread reach.)

> 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,

Except, you know, that despite that dicta in a case that has since been overturned (which also is widely now recognized as a travesty restricting core political speech), that was, not illegal and that it was outside the scope of protection was not justifiable based on the case law either at the time or at any point since.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#33

Post by philjohn » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #25

philjohn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your solution then?

Nobody is "saving democracy" by denying people the right to participate in the democratic process. In fact, it does quite the opposite by destabilizing the political discourse. The "solution" is to stop trying to control people.

How is content moderation "denying people the right to participate in the democratic process"?

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#34

Post by cgriswald » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #28

> 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…

> 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

How is this enforced?

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#35

Post by jancsika » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

karl11 wrote: post #3

Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?

The most worrisome part is that we have a perfect example in history of the casino/gaming industry being censored essentially to the point of irrelevance. Can you imagine what Las Vegas would look like if speech in the form of gaming machine design had been allowed to flourish instead of squashed?

Now even free games on an Iphone run circles around the kind of engagement a meatspace casino can garner.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#36

Post by F6F6FA » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #16

karl11 wrote: post #3

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?

To what? People discussing and voting for their favorite candidate? Before it got censored as fake news, parts of social media were pretty damn correct on the pandemic and its origins. All of regular media followed the narrative, some afraid of the truth, because Trump may have ran with it.

> How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity of facts?

This is about integrity/virtue of opinion. Conflate facts with opinions or political views and you lose right to talk facts. People voting in an authoritarian do not believe they are voting in an authoritarian, but an opposing voice to the evil socialist. It is poignant to defend democracy and at the same time complain of the rise of authoritarianism brought about by democracy.

In so many ways, you are then saying people are voting on the wrong people, because they do not read your newspapers, but their Facebook timelines.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#37

Post by detaro » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #34

cletus wrote: post #28

> 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…

> 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 How is this enforced?

You get fined (20-180 AUD apparently) if you don't appear.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#38

Post by chroem- » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #33

chroem- wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is "saving democracy" by denying people the right to participate in the democratic process. In fact, it does quite the opposite by destabilizing the political discourse. The "solution" is to stop trying to control people.

How is content moderation "denying people the right to participate in the democratic process"?

Systemic lopsided moderation (i.e. censorship) of one political viewpoint is absolutely denying people the right to participate in the democratic process. Just because we disagree with their viewpoint does not make censorship justified, nor does it take away from the fact that it is currently happening.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#39

Post by philjohn » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

F6F6FA wrote: post #36

philjohn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your solution then?

To what? People discussing and voting for their favorite candidate? Before it got censored as fake news, parts of social media were pretty damn correct on the pandemic and its origins. All of regular media followed the narrative, some afraid of the truth, because Trump may have ran with it. > How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity of facts? This is about integrity/virtue of opinion. Conflate…

We still don't know the origin of the pandemic - are you trying to claim otherwise?

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#40

Post by jakear » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #14

whitepaint wrote: post #6

Aren't governments (especially Germany and Australia for what they are doing at the moment) way more scarier than big tech? I am not scared of Google or Facebook at all. I am, however, scared of governments. Especially seeing how the pandemic was handled and how little resistance the handling got from the citizens.

Those governments (and the ones in the US) are at least beholden to voters. Large companies have no accountability, and if they disrupt the democratic process, they have no consequences either. Mark Zuckerberg is the authoritarian ruler of an extremely powerful entity that, in some countries, is more powerful than any local government.

> more powerful than any local government

I’ll believe that when I see FB agents smashing down doors to imprison (/kill) activists.