851–860 of 865 posts
Do they have a link to the highest levels of governments with a team of experts certify what's true and what's false?
...Or are they algorithmically deranking sites that don't fit the narrative of their customer base?
Last one seems more likely.
This tangent of virtue signalling these last few years has been.... constant and tiring. Lately, every thing claiming to be a rebel is a tyrant.
when shit hits the fan, the West is no better than a dictatorship. it's only a fluffy democracy when there is no danger and the war is far away. we got the "free" media blasting every line from the government without any scrutiny and social media silently censoring and re-ranking posts to fit the central party's narrative.
Historically, which category has Russia fallen into?
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I've been waffling between whether or not I think this is a good thing. I am curious on your thoughts: A lot of malicious actors have learned how to game the search ranking algorithms by making carefully crafted lies that are easily spread as truths online quickly. They are able to get their fake news to spread (and this rank higher) in ways that legitimate sources can't. Most people only ever look at the first page…
>Most people only ever look at the first page of results when searching for answers, and, let's be honest, take those answers for the truth. Do you? The argument I'm hearing is that most people are stupid and those stupid people aren't smart enough to know better, so the smart people need to control their lives to "protect them." I'm not sure if you realize this but this was the same argument used to perpetuate slave…
Yup, exactly. And that argument is correct.
> this was the same argument used to perpetuate slavery.
> Edit: Elaborated my argument.
No, created a huge strawman.
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Have you not experienced an avalanche of friends and family members sending you sketchy videos of dubious provenance? The past two years have illustrated to me that the majority of people are just not equipped to distinguish good and bad sources of information, particularly on the internet. That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they are deficient in the particular skill of distinguishing disinformation campaig…
>As far as slavery goes, that's one hell of a slippery slope. Owning a website and curating the information on it is tantamount to kidnapping people and exercising ownership over them and their children? That's like saying someone who "hurt" your feelings is engaging in literal torture and murder. Ah, but I was comparing the justification to perpetuate said institutions, not the pain inflicted of the institutions the…
Most places in the world, you're not allowed to own or use weapons as you see fit.
Information is weaponized nowadays.
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>Most people only ever look at the first page of results when searching for answers, and, let's be honest, take those answers for the truth. Do you? The argument I'm hearing is that most people are stupid and those stupid people aren't smart enough to know better, so the smart people need to control their lives to "protect them." I'm not sure if you realize this but this was the same argument used to perpetuate slave…
> The argument I'm hearing is that most people are stupid and those stupid people aren't smart enough to know better Yup, exactly. And that argument is correct. > this was the same argument used to perpetuate slavery. > Edit: Elaborated my argument. No, created a huge strawman.
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Have you not experienced an avalanche of friends and family members sending you sketchy videos of dubious provenance? The past two years have illustrated to me that the majority of people are just not equipped to distinguish good and bad sources of information, particularly on the internet. That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they are deficient in the particular skill of distinguishing disinformation campaig…
I think the idea that this many people have been duped by disinformation campaigns is in bad faith. People wouldn't be seeking alternative sources if they had any reason to trust mainstream corporate media, and the latter has proven themselves deeply untrustworthy given the number of political scandals and manufactured crises they have grossly misrepresented by cheering them on and making it clear that critical think…
And what they find are usually other sources which gaslight them far more, but whose (dis)information they then proselytise as if they've Done Their Own Research and finally Seen The Light.
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You think I'm arguing in bad faith? That I'm deliberately advancing an argument I know to be untrue? OK, interesting... Anyway, moving on, I think you make some good points. Absoultely, so-called MSM has gaslighted people on various occasions. But that doesn't disprove the "duped by information campaigns" premise, it supports it. People are distrustful of MSM because they have been successfully deceived in the past.…
>Everything that is true is there, but so is every lie, and every near truth. But because all information is equally available without regard for truth, the library is effectively useless. That's what an entirely uncurated internet becomes. I don't disagree with most of what you said, but I don't think that's a justification for censorship. The non-curated internet did come up with Wikipedia and a lot of great source…
> I don't think that, to paraphrase, "people believe dumb things," is a good justification for censorship.
You keep saying "censorship". Downweighting disinformation search results is far from censorship; it's just un-gaming the trolls' SEO gaming.
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> Is it hard to determine the difference between The National Enquirer and Nature? Try Fox News vs New York Times. > It's ultimately nuanced, but it's not rocket science. The challenge is not really with institutions, there are not that many of them, but rather with social media, individuals, commenters, state actors posing as 'regular people' etc.. Scoring how much you trust an entity to determine the truthfulness o…
Truthiness and bias are different. Also, 'editorial' vs. 'news' are actually different categories and we know what they are. 'Fox 5' - their evening show is pure gossip and innuendo - it has nothing to do with reality or the truth. Their nighthime 'personalities' are editorialists. But they do have regular news segments as well. All of that can be categorised. Also, the source of their bias can be roughly identified.…
Not for you, perhaps, and probably not on DDG (the original subject here). But AIUI the Google algorithm takes into account not only your actual search terms, but your browsing and search histories. So if you're a poor deluded MAGA dupe who's read too much of Mr. Lindell's rants before, it seems utterly plausible to me that at least Google would be only too happy to feed you more of his ravings. And it feels quite likely that Bing, f. ex, would work the same.
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You present tolerance as binary: you are tolerant or you are intolerant. There are degrees of tolerance. If you wish to foster a more tolerant society, you can refuse to tolerate the least tolerant people and thereby make the net level of tolerance in the society higher. Basically, you ban the bigots. Is this bigotry against bigots? No, actually, because bigotry is holding an unjustified negative opinion against some…
But in the eyes of the bigot their bigotry is totally justified. So it all boils down to "but I am right, trust me, my bigotry is totally justified" But yes, you're right with your assessment, that I view being tolerant as an absolute state. From my point of view being "a little" tolerant or "being 98% tolerant" is the same as not being tolerant at all. Being tolerant doesn't mean that I won't defend my values or sta…
Imagine two societies that have ten kinds of ideologies in them. In each society, one ideology rules.
One society will never give people like Lenin the time of day, but people of most other creeds are free to speak and act how they wish to.
In another, only people like Lenin will be approved, and a couple others tolerated grudgingly.
The first is easily much more free than the second, and I don't think you'd find a 100% free society pretty much anywhere, because even though the Paradox of Tolerance is endlessly abused, actually letting Lenin go about being Lenin is a really bad idea.
The issue is not necessarily in the argument, it's that it's wielded primarily by wokelets and other censorship-happy people in the present day, and their intolerance is not defined and narrow at all: their tolerance chart looks a lot more like Lenin's one than the anti-Lenin society's. When these people speak of tolerance, they speak of adherence with their own program since their own program is ostensibly a "tolerant" one.
The woke are, of course, tolerant the same way North Korea is democratic and the Berlin Wall was an "anti-Fascist protection rampart". "Bigot" just means "not on board with the ideological program" and is pretty expansive in definition. Lenin.
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You present tolerance as binary: you are tolerant or you are intolerant. There are degrees of tolerance. If you wish to foster a more tolerant society, you can refuse to tolerate the least tolerant people and thereby make the net level of tolerance in the society higher. Basically, you ban the bigots. Is this bigotry against bigots? No, actually, because bigotry is holding an unjustified negative opinion against some…
But in the eyes of the bigot their bigotry is totally justified. So it all boils down to "but I am right, trust me, my bigotry is totally justified" But yes, you're right with your assessment, that I view being tolerant as an absolute state. From my point of view being "a little" tolerant or "being 98% tolerant" is the same as not being tolerant at all. Being tolerant doesn't mean that I won't defend my values or sta…
Are you suggesting here that bigotry against Nazis is not justified? Or if not then what argument are you making? What do you hope to achieve with it? Nazis will always argue freedom of expression and make the argument you are making while it benefits them. They were democratically elected after all. But this doesn't mean they actually believe them. It's going to get thrown out the window the moment they are put in a position of power. Good on you for supporting that I guess?