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Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

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Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#61

Post by autoexec »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #9
autoexec wrote: post #4

I'm not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.

Ten years ago I would have agreed. Today? I'm not sure you're right about which is the greater threat. Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today . Right now. I'm not sure what the real answer should be. If "the market" manages to get the propaganda farms' misinformation under control, then great. If they don't , the only answer I can see is for government t…

> I'm not sure what the real answer should be.

the real answer is full transparency. Someone posting a lie is only a problem when no one is allowed to challenge it, and when you allow censorship you are giving someone the authority to prevent challenges to both truth and lies at the same time.

The Constitution has problems and I've love to see some changes to it, but freedom of speech is not something we should abandon. I don't think I've ever met anyone who wants "absolute freedom of speech". Everyone, even our government and courts agree that there are limits, but censorship is not the solution to lies, it is their most efficient breeding ground and it removes our only defense.

We must be able to point out lies and falsehoods no matter where they come from or who is inconvenienced by the truth.

The problem we have now is a populace that is largely uneducated and incapable of telling the truth from a lie or knowing when a source is untrustworthy. We can help to solve that with education and training in basic critical thinking skills. In the meantime we should be exposing and correcting lies publicly and transparently and holding people accountable for knowingly spreading dangerous falsehoods (free to speak still does not mean free from consequences).

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#62

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

demindiro wrote: post #41
autoexec wrote: post #4

I'm not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.

I find it fascinating that people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information. If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled"

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#63

Post by [deleted] »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #48
demindiro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that people defend censoring "misinformation" because people (supposedly) cannot discern it from "real" information. If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?

I mean, have you seen the common folk?

[deleted]

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#64

Post by rdfgtdffsdaf »

Xelbair wrote: post #53
Fauntleroy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, have you seen the common folk?

and what makes you think you are better than them?

He's on Hacker News lol, he's better than everyone. It's a condition of membership in this secret club.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#65

Post by honkler »

corbulo wrote: post #27

Ill admit I don't know a ton about India's constitution. Do they have freedom of speech? How is it phrased?

Only majority community (Upper caste - hindi speaking - hindus have freedom of speech). Infact they are so free that they can call for genocide on live television, and get away with it. If you're minority (especially a journalist), you'd be Jailed without trial for years (UAPA and NSA). Think of it as a modern day Gulag.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#66

Post by kelnos »

autoexec wrote: post #36
johndhi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the government well suited to declare what it and isn't misinformation though? Shouldn't we farm that out to a third party?

> Why is the government well suited to declare what it and isn't misinformation though? Presumably because much of the lies and disinformation going around involves them to start with. When some nutjob starts posting about something like millions of American citizens being locked up in FEMA camps, or claiming that a proposed healthcare bill calls for the formation of a government death panel any respectable fact chec…

That doesn't really work, though. You picked some examples of obviously-false things that someone might say about the US government (one would hope, at least), and, sure, the US government is in a decent position to refute those claims.

But let's take something we now know to be true: the NSA collecting data on US citizens. Pre-Snowden, someone could post something asserting that the NSA is spying on us. The government, being the hypothetical arbiter of what is and isn't misinformation, would of course immediately label that as misinformation.

You can't trust the government to be honest here. Sometimes they will even lie for fairly good reasons. But I don't want them marking things as misinformation (or, worse, suppressing such information) when it's true. And they certainly will do that, sometimes.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#67

Post by wolverine876 »

indy wrote: post #5
radicaldreamer wrote: post #2

Unfortunate that this rightward lurch by the Modi government (still incredibly popular in India) will be ignored by the "west" due to competition with China. India considers unfettered social media and speech a threat to stability, just like China.

Why label this 'rightward'? Plenty of left-leaning governments throughout history have used censorship.

> Plenty of left-leaning governments throughout history have used censorship.

What does that have to do with Modi? Modi's government has moved far to the right.

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#68

Post by dang »

rdfgtdffsdaf wrote: post #64
Xelbair wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and what makes you think you are better than them?

He's on Hacker News lol, he's better than everyone. It's a condition of membership in this secret club.

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#69

Post by fear_and_coffee »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #9
autoexec wrote: post #4

I'm not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.

Ten years ago I would have agreed. Today? I'm not sure you're right about which is the greater threat. Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today . Right now. I'm not sure what the real answer should be. If "the market" manages to get the propaganda farms' misinformation under control, then great. If they don't , the only answer I can see is for government t…

[dead]

Re: Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts

#70

Post by yutijke »

corbulo wrote: post #40
yutijke wrote: post #18

Unchecked Censorship by the government can be a problem, but I find it hard to take voices in this space on face value since they are often the most vocal cheerleaders when a government or political party they like is doing the censorship since it's "Human rights" not politics. Given the dissolving line between Social media and the Town square, who should be the arbiters of speech on Social media? A committee appoint…

Democracies cannot function if the people are shielded from all the evil things that necessitate thinking critically. Bad information is a fact of life, not social media. The only way you get someone to think critically is putting them in a situation where they have to. If you constantly censor and baby them, they won't make better decisions they will make worse ones. The idea that censorship has to happen in order t…

But most people do not think critically. Even if we try we do not have access to perfect information.

You read a news article. Is it fact? Is it a tilted spin? Is it truth that omits strategic nuances?

No matter how critically I approach it, I will not be able derive objective truth from biased and fuzzy information.

At some point you will need to trust someone to curate.

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