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Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

npr.org

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

#121

Post by F6F6FA »

philjohn wrote: post #39
F6F6FA wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> We still don't know

> are you trying to

Level 0 thinking, you do not even know the value of your cards. Such sophistry could only work on similar-leveled people. So if I engage, I'd be bluffing, and this is not a good idea to do with players who are basically no better or worse than random search.

Find all facts and circumstantial evidence for and against lab-leak and zoonosis. Then form your own opinion. That's my claim, and only that. That may even be an opinion worth engaging with, for as long as the "we still" in your world-view includes a couple of thousand Chinese internet trolls, and discredited conflicted scientists who despite this still seem to make it to the Lancet and NYT.

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

#122

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> I don't care if someone was a felon or you think they're not informed enough (who decided that?).

I don't even care if somebody is currently in prison; I think every prison needs a polling place and facilities for on-site journalists/reporters who are covering what is going on inside.

If your elections could be significantly moved by the votes of prisoners, you live in a failed state.

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

#123

Post by wklauss »

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?

Yes, and to think otherwise is extremely naive. I see this as another manifestation of the paradox of tolerance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

That doesn't mean that companies should be free from scrutiny or consequences if they overstep.

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

#124

Post by pvaldes »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #86
smt88 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better interpretation would be that Silicon Valley should stop algorithmically promoting anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian content.

What's anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian content? Would questioning the validity of an election be an example of it?

> Would questioning the validity of an election be an example of it?

If you can show solid evidence, or any evidence, supporting your claim, not.

If all the proofs of foul play that you show is a model of a smoking firegun made with cheetos and a lot of proven lies. Yes, Probably.

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

#125

Post by Clubber »

hugi wrote: post #61
rubicon33 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who gets to decide what is "hateful shit" ?

Content moderators. At the very least. I'm all for free speech, but what's happening today on the Internet is not free speech in any way or form. I'm pretty certain most of what's written on popular online forums today, such as political/news subreddits is propaganda or troll warfare.

>what's happening today on the Internet is not free speech in any way or form. I'm pretty certain most of what's written on popular online forums today, such as political/news subreddits is propaganda or troll warfare.

How exactly do you define free speech?

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

#126

Post by vanusa »

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?

Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?

No - that's not what they're saying.

If you want to, go read the respective acceptance speeches, in their original form. Actually the only relevant one (for this thread) is Maria Ressa's speech; Dmitry Muratov's speech didn't mention technology or the internet at all, despite what may have been implied in the NPR article.

As to Ressa's speach -- it's quite clear she wasn't advocating censorship, per se. A fair reading of what she was saying is that these companies should stop using algorithms that structurally promote hateful and inflammatory simply because it is more "engaging" -- as they have been caught doing red-handed, basically.

But that is, strictly speaking, different from advocating outright censorship of that material. In my view, quite obviously so.

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

#127

Post by systemvoltage »

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.

I'd like to add a few more if I may? Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Elon Musk, Tim Cook.

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

#128

Post by perl4ever »

karaterobot wrote: post #71
perl4ever wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why one would be surprised at the recipients of the Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel made his fortune from producing weapons and oil. Rehabilitating the reputation of people responsible for vast numbers of deaths seems exactly appropriate for the Peace prize when that's its purpose from the beginning.

What does that have to do with the selection of Nobel winners 125 years later? Honestly, what relationship could it possibly have? Are the awards haunted?

I think I agree that there's no reason that the awards must reflect historical precedent or some original intent or spirit.

However, it's common to appeal to that sort of thing. How often do people belabor the absence of pedigree of the prize in economics?

Those who don't believe the award has a "spirit" shouldn't complain about it being violated.

If you don't have any expectations for the Nobel prizes, good for you!

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

#129

Post by dionidium »

malermeister wrote: post #108
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?

This is known as the paradox of tolerance and was figured out right after WW2 by Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher who witnessed the rise of the Nazis. Authoritarians use the framework of a free society to rise to power until they are strong enough to topple it. A free society must be able to defend itself against that approach, even if it might seem contrary to its own values. Here's the way he formulated it: > U…

You say this was “figured out” like you think it’s some kind of natural law that was discovered by scientists. It’s not. It’s a value judgement. It’s not at all clear the trade-off is worth it and the very quote you supplied argues for “intolerance of intolerance” as a kind of a last resort, once things turn violent.

Second, as a practical matter, it’s not at all clear what constitutes intolerance. If you think the state has standing to adjudicate intolerance, then I can’t imagine you’ve been paying attention to the kind of routine social errors that are labeled intolerance on social media. The notion that it’s a legitimate function of the state to weigh in on these banal disagreements is risible.

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

#130

Post by uhtred »

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.

What is Germany doing? And what did you not like about how the pandemic was handled by the government?
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