Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by adolph » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

geekpowa wrote: post #160

adolph wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article is from January 5 2022, a year less a day after the events in question, right? So it doesn't contradict a claim about the original reporting.

First article google search returns today != the first time NYT reported these things including clarifications as they became public which was months after the event around April 2021, and widely reported in detail by the press at that time. In regards to the underlying events, and my motivation for commenting, it is splitting hairs. Media reported what was established at the time but none of it significantly changes…

Your claim:

> The article contradicts your claim "reported and quietly fixed days later without ever really owning up to it".

It doesn't contradict the initial claim since the article to which you linked is from a year later. What you would need to do is establish the historical chronology of newspaper articles that did not report police lies and then quietly correct the record days later. Otherwise your counterclaim is very weak.

> Media reported what was established at the time

News media do not report what is established at any time. What is established is by nature not news. The presence of claims in the media are then used to convince people of what information is established as true. By uncritically repeating lies news media has been fanning conflict since before the sinking of the Maine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(1889)

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

#552

Post by cloutchaser » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #546

syshum wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Clinton conceded right away and notably did not urge her supporters to storm the Capitol to “rectify” the results. And regarding governors, recall that most of the swing states were under republican control. Edit: I noticed now you gave the Russian connection as the example. Russian interference was indeed the case. Many people were angry at that but there’s an important differen…

No post body was provided.

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

#553

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #403

TulliusCicero wrote: post #395

Low-moderation platforms tend to have...issues. They attract trolls and extremists, the regular people don't like sharing space with trolls and extremists, so they leave. Rinse and repeat for a while, and soon all the normal people are gone. If Facebook permitted everything, they'd just be committing business suicide.

And yet the popular social media sites have far more moderation than classical platforms, which are not regarded as causing problem. You mean low-moderation platforms tend to have objectionable content. True, but I don't see the problem.

Part of it is popularity/reach. People find objectionable content more objectionable when it's more visible.

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

#554

Post by jimkleiber » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

native_samples wrote: post #511

bigger_inside wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the public perception: only one side demands censorship. This isn't quite true and only shows you how well one side is at publicizing that they're being censored, which, ironically, means they're censored -less-. Palestinian accounts on facebook have been deleted for years when they were trying to report on occupation. Facebook also deleted all the accounts of Nicaraguan socialists trying to counter…

Well, I was using vaccines as an example because it's mentioned in the article (which appears to be prompted by some flak from the Guardian). I don't know about Palestinians and Nicaraguan socialists. Are they demanding that their critics be silenced? I doubt they're in any position to even imagine demanding that. "It's an old (very, very old) insight that rules for censorship are made with the excesses of the right…

> the best examples of right wing censorship I can think of are all related to sexual morals and porn

While those topics do come up for censorship here in the US, some people are also demanding to remove topics related to race and other interpretations of history, and sometimes for curse words.

For example, two trending topics in the US today are Dan Bongino getting kicked off YouTube and the book Maus being restricted/removed/relegated in a school district in Tennessee, and people complaining from both sides of being censored.

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

#555

Post by philipkglass » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #550

philipkglass wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider speech that is legal but likely to offend most Americans. For example, a picture gallery of American soldiers killed in Iraq, where each picture is captioned "Death to Crusaders, death to America!" If the 1a.gov platform is limited to citizens, it limits the number of accounts that can use that platform for agitating against Americans. If the platform is open to anyone in the world, it's going to end up as t…

> If the platform is open to anyone in the world, it's going to end up as the #1 host of terrorist-sympathetic media in the world. Is it not more advantageous to collect the metadata regarding disagreeable content and shadowban it to decrease engagement? How would citizenship be established to the platform? Would it not allow pseudonymous content? Do parents get to control the platform use of minor children?

Is it not more advantageous to collect the metadata regarding disagreeable content and shadowban it to decrease engagement?

Shadow-banning legal but disagreeable content seems counter to the mission of a "publish anything that is legal under American law" platform.

I rather like the idea of having a public hosting platform that would allow Americans to publish anything that is legal under American law, but there are many questions about how that would work in practice (including those questions in your final paragraph). I also am not sure how much public support there would be for such a platform once people realize how much near-universally-loathed material is not actually illegal to publish under American law.

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

#556

Post by jimkleiber » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

prox wrote: post #305

jimkleiber wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills. I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go…

What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with. HNs rules are great in t…

I agree that much of the design of social media can contribute to this.

As much as I love this:

> HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox.

I also just thought how HN may contribute to this through design. I'm replying to your post right now and I can only see your post on my screen. While I can click "parent" in the menu to see the chain of replies or "context" to see your post in the context of all the replies, I'm not able to see both a reply box and the context before your post on the same page.

So, it requires me to either keep in working memory what the parent said, and what the grandparent said and great grandparent, or maybe to have a multitabbed approach. Conversely, something like Discourse allows me to scroll up and down to see the previous posts while maintaining a compose window open.

Maybe this isn't the place for such a comment, I guess I just felt frustrated in another thread and worried I'd give a reply that either repeated what someone said before or didn't encapsulate the conversation.

I think these little details really matter in communication and how we often overlook them or discount them.

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

#557

Post by hutzlibu » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #548

hutzlibu wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment. If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant. Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it. I ser…

“ I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style.” Determining what to optimize for is basically what preference is. Some prefer attractiveness and aesthetics over comfort, and in most cases there is no option that optimizes all variables due to complex cross talk… After you choose which subjective preference to optimize for, you can definitely employ t…

"After you choose which subjective preference to optimize for, you can definitely employ the scientific method to try to parse that further, but that comes after the preference:) "

I think I can apply the scientific method also to preferences. Meaning if it really makes me happy, to be accepted in certain circles where the conditions are bad shoes, then so be it.

But personally I decided years ago, that this is not the case for me.

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

#558

Post by throwawaygh » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #368

throwawaygh wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but how do you mandate the use of Fediverse (as opposed to tiktok/fb/insta/twitter/substack/etc.)?

Why would you want to mandate it? That would kill Fedi faster than anything. Make it an available option that stands the test of time, while other things come and go, and people will use it eventually. (The Fediverse is already over a decade and a half old; almost as old as Facebook.) Although, there are some proposals in the EU to make it mandatory for social media companies to use open communication protocols like…

It's less about mandating a specific platform or network and more about reducing the ability to profiteer off of political speech.

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

#559

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #439

marcus_holmes wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I wouldn't agree with you, as journalists (and here I mean real journalists) are often members of professional organisation and they have code of conduct This is a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Clearly there are professional journalists who are not adhering to the code of conduct. So clearly you will claim that they are not "real" journalists, and that journalists are only "real" journalists if they adhere to t…

> Yes, having someone champion a Flat Earth is a good thing. Groupthink is a very real danger. Just because someone thinks of absurd stuff, doesn't mean this fixes groupthink. To combat groupthink requires critical analysis, and safety - that is, the group must allow for people who make different (but still logical) points that go against the grain. However, flat earthers do not fall into this category, because they…

There was an article on HN recently about how science is moving past the scientific method by using models rather than testing hypotheses with experiments. I'm not sure I consider this "science", but still.

There was no evidence for plate tectonics either, until they started looking for it. And, obviously, the burden was on the new hypothesis to prove itself.

I'm not saying we should encourage Flat Earthers to present at Astronomy conferences. I'm saying we should not try to shut them up. That "safety" you're talking about has to be boundless, because if there are bounds then they will shrink. Are shrinking.

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

#560

Post by epgui » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #549

epgui wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies— not the intention, sincerely!

Ha, happens to us all! Ironically my reply attracted downvotes, as it appears some felt the same way about my tone policing.

Here's an upvote for good-faith feedback! :)