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Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

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Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#81

Post by nickff »

numtel wrote: post #36
ziroshima wrote: post #4

No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. I just don't understand the shortsightedness, the naivete, or the willingness to discard the principle of free speech.

> No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets. Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries. A few years ago, Zuckerberg said that all problems would be solved if everybody told the truth all the time. It's not that simple though.…

>"I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets."

Profit is definitely one motivation for censorship, but there has been plenty of censorship in non-profit-centric situations. Communist countries and other government actors have been leaders in censorship, with no obvious profit motive.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#82

Post by omgitsabird »

redisman wrote: post #41
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then says masks don't help Actually, they said this: Masks don't help Masks do help, but save them for the healthcare workers Masks do help, get one, a cloth one is fine. Masks do help, double-mask Mask do help, but you need N95 masks Given that even with a properly fitting N95 mask that is form fitting you can still smell everything right through it, I think a properly fit, and negative pressure tested N100 or P10…

A mask someone could wear for hours will never block all smells. Even in a N99 you still smell gases and other small things

You can wear a SCBA for hours. You can also find P100 cartridges that eliminate smells from VOCs and "gases".

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#83

Post by dukeofdoom »

mint2 wrote: post #66
dukeofdoom wrote: post #54

Clearly, part of the problem is over reliance on experts. Somehow the professional class (empowered by Twitter and Social Media) has now convinced themselves that they're God's gift to to the world ... because they read a book. And is totally oblivious to how stupid some of those things they're advocating for are. When I go to a doctor, chances are he will prescribe me some drugs. Why? because thats what they're trai…

if the problem is our culture trusting experts, perhaps we need some sort of revolution to get rid of those experts and elite, and turn to populism mass movements. Hold that thought, I seem to remember some historical trials of that path. How did they go? Strange how they ended up with even more censorship.

yeah, well, I would argue it was a populist movement that brought France, and the US the bill or Rights and the constitution. So it worked at least sometimes. Not that I disagree that sometimes it did not work out for the better. Pol Pot being an example.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#84

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ziroshima wrote: post #4

No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. I just don't understand the shortsightedness, the naivete, or the willingness to discard the principle of free speech.

But if we let people decide for themselves, they might decide wrong! And our position is clearly and obviously right! But people are stupid and will listen to lies, so we have to remove the possibility of them being exposed to those lies!

/s, in case it wasn't obvious...

People are more certain of their own position than is warranted. This is true in politics (as C. S. Lewis said, in practice no policy can be more than probably correct). It was true with Covid ("trust the science" when not enough science had been done yet; people talked as if the correct course was obvious and certain, and they were often wrong in hindsight). And it will be true again, and again, and again.

And from that false certainty, people regard contrary opinions/interpretations of the data as not just false, but morally wrong. And then they regard people believing the "obviously wrong" position as a sign that people are stupid and not to be trusted with the facts. (Unlike themselves, of course, who clearly can be trusted with the facts, because they reached the right answers!)

And people don't see the dichotomy between "people are stupid and evil, and can't be trusted with the truth" and "we (who are also people!) can decide what is true, and can be trusted to only tell them the truth". When you point a finger at someone, four finger point back at you...

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#85

Post by jltsiren »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #12

We don’t have a trust problem. We have a lack of trustworthy people in positions of power problem. I see how one can be easily confused. But we (the People) don’t trust politicians or business leaders because they have show repeatedly they’re not worthy of trust.

That exactly is the trust problem. Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power, if the public assumes that those in power are untrustworthy and corrupt? And why would those in power remain trustworthy when the incentives are clearly in favor of abusing your power and the public assumes that you will do that anyway?

It's a vicious cycle, but a virtuous cycle would also work in the same way. Reality shapes people's expectations, and people's expectations shape reality.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#86

Post by throwawaygh »

commandlinefan wrote: post #52
paulpauper wrote: post #47

As bad as twitter and Facebook censorship is, it's worse for other sites, like Reddit or probably any v-bulletin forum. Reddit subs have soooo much moderation, especially any sub that that is even slightly popular, so many arbitrary and hidden rules and content guidelines. On twitter I can call someone a jerk and the worst that may happen is the person may block me, but that will get your banned from many reddit subs…

> Reddit subs have soooo much moderation Moderation I can live with. If some mod doesn't want me on their sub, I find another. It's the admin hammer bans of the subs I found that I object to.

I find this sentiment profoundly confusing. Admins are also just mods. Being angry at mods and admins? Not confusing. Being angry at neither? makes sense. Being angry at one but not the other? I don't get it.

Maybe it's because I run a few websites off of a machine in my basement, and those are where I say the things I want to say. If another website wants to ban me then fuck 'em I'll say what I want from my own IP/domain. I have never felt particularly entitled to say whatever I want on other people's in-house implementations of vbulletin. I understand that platforms are different, and commented elsewhere on that stuff, but

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#87

Post by 2457013579 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #7

You could argue that it is just another stage in 'Escape from Freedom'. I am going to simplify a lot here, but basically the process goes something like this: -Things are hard; people fight and win some degree of autonomy -Status quo sets in; people believe this is how it always will be -Things get easy and people forget what freedom is -Things get hard..

Sounds a lot like this saying that’s been going around the last few years:

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

Side tangent- I tried to find the author of that quote thinking it has to be a ‘wise man’ of the past (given that it’s not a gender neutral statement), and it looks like that it’s actually from a post apocalyptic book from 2016 that soon after became a meme.

Source: https://www.slanglang.net/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men...

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#88

Post by flyingcircus3 »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #3

The problem is the government and traditional media have been caught lying again and again. Once that trust is broken I don't know how you rebuild it. Hell people I commonly talk to still believe a police officer was beaten to death on 1/6 and that people, other then the women shot for trying to enter the chambers, died directly due to the riot. All because of that what the news reported and quietly fixed days later…

> traditional media

I see this distinction made all of the time when this topic comes up. The mainstream media is untrustworthy. Corporate media has an agenda. Legacy media is corrupt. These qualifiers all imply that there is some non-traditional, non-corporate, non-legacy media that does not have these problems. Yet whenever the people making these distinctions are asked who/what these superior alternatives are, the answers are always underwhelming, or outright laughable.

So who are these beacons of truth you allude by contrasting the "traditional" media?

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#89

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gtsop wrote: post #56
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > Trust in social media and traditional media is at an all-time low. Yeah, some of it is "people in power". And some isn't. But when you say > Yes, if that's what you mean. you sure look like you're trying to ignore what the article actually says, and twist the general idea to fit the axe you want to grind. That kind of stunt is (part of) why trust in society is low.

> twist the general idea to fit the axe you want to grind. From the article just after the line you quoted: > Trust in the U.S. federal government to handle problems is at a near-record low. Trust in the U.S.’s major institutions is within 2 percentage points of the all-time low. I can't possibly buy that fact that society has a problem if my aunt mary doesn't trust what plumberRob23 post on their instagram, so forgi…

Yes, it's the major institutions. And it's the mainstream media (I guess those count as major institutions). And it's social media.

I object to your trying to paint it as if it's only mistrust of major institutions. It's untrue to the article to limit it like that.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#90

Post by geekpowa »

remarkEon wrote: post #67
geekpowa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I search "Jan 6 Deaths" and very first hit is this NYT article. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/us/politics/jan-6-capitol... The article contradicts your claim "reported and quietly fixed days later without ever really owning up to it". Firstly it is the first hit so hardly quiet. Secondly it outlines that initial reporting of Sicknick's death was simply reporting what capital police said, later revised by medical…

This largely has to do with the social media ecosystem in which these traditional companies find themselves, where social media is the primary vector for information access for the majority now (HN is an extreme outlier where people may actually read things beyond their "news" feed). "quietly fixed" in that sense means "NYT reports one thing and it goes viral, corrects/updates/adds context later post-virality and, be…

Are we blaming traditional media companies for the content overload shitshow we now find ourselves living in?

If NYT could provide a remedy, what would that remedy even look like?

Wikileaks' ascendancy was on the narrative that traditional media is broken and untrustworthy. At the time I brought into that and the premise that they were disrupting this traditional industry and remaking it better. Now I realise like alot of IT focused disruption (including disruption I've worked on directly myself as an IT practioner), all they achieved was recreate the very thing they sought to disrupt, but poorly and generally worse version of it.

Older and wiser now and I realise personally that the trust problem is something much more than something for 'others' to step up and fix, but substantially in how I myself consume content.

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