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Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

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Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#171
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for your first point, I suspect the parents and their attorneys have decided to split the lawsuits up strategically. I do not know how civil suit reform could address something like this. As for your second point, it is indeed true that I don’t think Alex Jones caused a billion dollars worth of damage. I simply cannot envision the specifics of this case warranting a billion dollars of restitution. If this was a ca…

Murderers generally don't have access to a billion dollars. Alex Jones does.

I can’t find any indication that his net worth is anywhere close to a billion dollars, that infowars has revenue anywhere close to that, or that any of his ventures have a valuation high enough.

If the damages were something like $10-20 million I wouldn’t be making these posts.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#172
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign boogiemen tend to be behind a lot of bad laws. The coup failed without having to jail people for arbitrary wrongthink and I doubt this will be useful for anything but crushing domestic opposition and silencing whistleblowers.

I don't care what's good what's bad, i'm just making an observation and i share my knowledge The "one sided" mindset in the west is tasteless and boring

One side of what?

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#173
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care what's good what's bad, i'm just making an observation and i share my knowledge The "one sided" mindset in the west is tasteless and boring

One side of what?

No post body was provided.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#174

The world would, without a doubt, be a better place if politicians, news organizations, influencers/celebrities, etc. did not lie to the masses. It would also likely be a much quieter place, in that some of these entities would not be able to produce so much content due to the need to corroborate before posting, printing or opening their mouths. Some would be silent, because a lot of these people are truly ignorant a…

> The latest one is against Tulsi Gabbard, who, after announcing she is leaving her political party, is now the target of all manner of attacks from multiple angles, including such things as saying she is a member of a cult. I use this example because it is very fresh, quite literally the last few days. Gabbard was a weak link in her own party, she's been deliberately contrarian solely for the sake of being contraria…

> Gabbard was a weak link in her own party, she's been deliberately contrarian solely for the sake of being contrarian.

The only thing I am pointing out is that the carpet bombing against her did not start until she decided to not be a part of that group. If she was the horrible human being she is being made out to be it should have been news many years ago, not now. Put a different way: If the motivation was to ensure quality human beings become our leaders and questionable candidates are expunged, the carpet bombing about her would have happened a long time ago. It is happening now because she is now the enemy and factions of the media are in such alignment with the party she is leaving behind that they engage in open warfare against anyone opposing them. Regardless of party affiliation, this is not what our press should be about. Again, objectively not good for society.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exceptionally beneficial to whoever gets to define what is and isn't "misinformation," and you're kidding yourself if you think that it'll only ever be used in benevolence and not to the benefit of whatever picotyrant is in charge at a given moment.

Bad laws are beneficial to anyone who can use them well enough for their advantage. That is why we try to come up with good laws. But having no laws are worse.

Before this law, Turkey wasn't a lawless land.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#176
post #38

I see a lot of people critical of Turkey... and I agree. But the US is not too far away. See AB-2098 in California just signed by governor / likely presidential nominee Gavin Newson [1] which basically gives the state the ability to revoke medical licenses for spreading "false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific contrary to the standard of care" (in other words, go against the CDC or other sta…

The question is how we can keep our own countries from going down similar routes? With tech being what it is, it will become harder and harder to resist the state over time, so we will need better and better ways of keeping our houses in order so that things will not “decay,” to use a slightly classical term With ai and surveillance / mass-manipulation tech, it will be extremely hard to come back from authoritarianis…

We would need to limit the state in some way so that it would be unable to grow beyond a certain set of powers. The populace would also need to agree that such an arrangement was a preferable alternative to being subject to a state which attempts to control every aspect of life. Of course, in order for the populace to have a unified agreement to such a thing they would need a shared set of values and morals that transcend the idea that "might makes right". Essentially, we would need an agreed upon moral code that is superior to the state which could then be used to limit the state.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if you already have a dictatorship, or something approaching it, "disinformation" means, in the eyes of the law as it is applied, information counter to the ruling party's interest. I agree that disinformation, real disinformation, is being used as a tool to spread authoritarianism and we need better means to combat it. This law, I am afraid, is double speak. It purports to oppose disinformation b…

Everything is in the eyes of the law. Porn is in the eyes of the law too. As is violent speech and terrorism. We steer clear of laws that are dubious and ambiguous because they can be leveraged whimsically or loopholed. But ignoring threats to full democracy (disinformation) is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous.

I agree about the danger of disinformation. But writing a law and claiming it combats disinformation is not the same as combatting disinformation.

In Russia today you can go to jail for up to 15 years for stating that Russia is at war. Why? According to the ruling powers this is disinformation. It doesn't matter that they are lying and you are telling the truth. What matters is that they decide.

My point isn't that there can be no law combatting disinformation but that you cannot take the authorities' claims about their law at face value.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#178
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in law school, in the before times, libel and defamation were treated as a holdover from British common law. We learned how they had been winnowed down in the long “arc of justice,” starting with the Zenger trial in 1735. This trend of weakening libel and defamation laws, and any constraints on speech, was treated as uniformly positive.

Weakening... but not down to nothing. It's a lot harder to be found guilty of libel in the US than in the UK, and that's a good thing . You still can be, though, and that is also a good thing . ("Guilty" may be the wrong word, because it's not a criminal offense, but I'm not sure what the right one is here.)

> ("Guilty" may be the wrong word, because it's not a criminal offense, but I'm not sure what the right one is here.)

Defamation is a crime in many jurisdictions, including the US (not federally, but in over 20 states). Prosecutions and convictions are rare-but not non-existent. At least in the US, punishments are light (Wikipedia cites a study saying that the average custodial sentence for criminal libel in the US is just under six months). In free countries, prosecutions are generally reserved for particularly egregious cases (e.g. suppose A does some trivial thing to offend B, so as payback B plasters posters all over town accusing A of sex crimes, with the allegation being completely invented). Given this, the vast majority of defamation cases are civil not criminal.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#179
post #38

I see a lot of people critical of Turkey... and I agree. But the US is not too far away. See AB-2098 in California just signed by governor / likely presidential nominee Gavin Newson [1] which basically gives the state the ability to revoke medical licenses for spreading "false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific contrary to the standard of care" (in other words, go against the CDC or other sta…

If you don't want to be beholden to the state then don't get a state enforced license. > 270. (a) It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccin…

> If you don't think professional conduct means accurately representing a course of treatment and it's risk I don't know what to say to you.

What if, you know, accurately representing a course of treatment required contradicting CDC/FDA? Say, suppose you’re a medical researcher, doing science, and you find that CDC/FDA are completely wrong on some count (as they have been many, many times in the past). Are they supposed to just repeat CDC-blessed falsehoods that they know to be false? Do you want to institute an office of the arbiters of truth, such that it is legally forbidden to disagree with them?

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth, or what the state decides is the truth ? Those are not always the same thing.

Sure. Professionals should be sticking to positive statements [1] though. So saying something like, the covid vaccine will give you austim I think should be grounds for losing your license. On the other hand, saying something like, there's a high change you'll have flu like symptoms if you get the vaccine would not be grounds (the symptoms are disclosed as part of the vaccine trials). But saying something like, I wou…

> The law makes the claim of "contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care"

One thing I have observed - a lot of what people call “scientific consensus” is not the consensus of the research literature, rather it is the “consensus” of position statements put out by professional bodies. The later often lack much of the tentative and provisional nature of the former, with doubts and uncertainties being hidden rather than highlighted. While even peer-reviewed research is not immune to political pressures, these kinds of “position statements” are much more susceptible to political influence than the actual research literature is.

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