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

#211

Post by stjohnswarts » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:40 AM UTC

geekpowa wrote: post #29

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…

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…

These are the lies they keep telling themselves. I had seen in several places that after more investigation the cop died of a heart attack,nevertheless it is almost certain he wouldn't have had that heart attack if that mob of traitors hadn't assaulted the capitol building, yet somehow they'll pick at a tiny detail and ignore the other 90% of the situation. It's maddening yet laughable at their feats of logic acrobatics.

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

#212

Post by stjohnswarts » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #177

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may have some details wrong, but do you think their overall impression of the event is wildly inaccurate? There was significant violence perpetrated during that event, even if it didn't result in death. Police officers were beaten. When these mistaken people are corrected and told no one died at the hands of rioters, but 150 police officers sustained injuries some so bad they were still out of work six months la…

> They may have some details wrong, but do you think their overall impression of the event is wildly inaccurate? Jan 6th, BLM protests, and the pandemic are all Rorschach tests. Unlike 9/11, the 1992 LA riots, and the Spanish Flu, the more recent events occupy a mushy middle ground of severity - a lot of people can go either way when deciding if they're the worst thing ever or just nuisances. The ambiguity is causing…

There is no "mushy middle ground" when it comes to a coupe attempt at the capitol building. Sorry but you are simply wrong about this. There is no ambiguity at all in that statement.

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

#213

Post by flyingcircus3 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:55 AM UTC

double_nan wrote: post #191

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm not sure that there is such a beacon of truth you are looking for. May be that should be the resolution after all the dust settles.

Of course there isn't! That's why its so preposterous to single out "traditional" media as the sole purveyors of falsehoods. Meanwhile, this other segment of the media is essentially a broken clock of bottomless cynicism and grievance airing, which somehow bears no blame for the erosion of trust.

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

#214

Post by throwoutway » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #103

throwawaygh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The status quo is a messy conflagration where initial beliefs were the brush, a combination of mental health issues and social frustration were the trees, and the perverse incentives of engagement metrics provided the high winds. So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy…

The silver lining of this awkward middle ground is the certainty that censorship is the wrong way to go. We may be doomed if people remain so easy to manipulate, but if you really believe that censorship is counter-productive, then education is the only path out.

We’ll also be doomed if this is just a trial run that just enables authoritarianism in another decade. If people roll over on this now, the government won’t care to subdue the populace more & more in the future.

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

#215

Post by wmf » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

cwoolfe wrote: post #34

I seem to recall reading "You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684250 I hope substack can really change the game here because their business model delivers content you paid to receive rather than competing for your attention. More on that here: https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati...

Eventually Substack revenue will level off and they'll probably start focusing on discovery and then they'll be in a pickle.

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

#216

Post by lmm » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:36 AM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #85

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 peop…

This seems like one of those situations where there's no silver bullet, no quick fix, just the long hard slog of rebuilding bit by bit.

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

#217

Post by lmm » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:39 AM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #86

commandlinefan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/d…

Becoming a mod of your own subreddit takes about 2 seconds - all you have to do is push a button. Becoming an admin of your own site is a lot more effort, even for a tech professional.

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

#218

Post by anonygler » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:44 AM UTC

I was trying to find those “fake face masks” just so someone knew what I was talking about, and apparently they were all deplatformed from Google searches. I didn’t want to buy one, just reference it. But nada. Found it on DuckDuckGo and it’s now my default search engine.

It’s just so offensive they think they should control what I’m exposed to. Creepy and offensive. Google has lost its mission of making the worlds information accessible in a fresh, horrible way. Tragic.

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

#219

Post by asiachick » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:48 AM UTC

anonygler wrote: post #218

I was trying to find those “fake face masks” just so someone knew what I was talking about, and apparently they were all deplatformed from Google searches. I didn’t want to buy one, just reference it. But nada. Found it on DuckDuckGo and it’s now my default search engine. It’s just so offensive they think they should control what I’m exposed to. Creepy and offensive. Google has lost its mission of making the worlds i…

I just search for "fake face masks" on google and they came right up

https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+face+mask&tbm=isch

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

#220

Post by throwawaylinux » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:53 AM UTC

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #209

throwawaylinux wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? To improve society. > 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? They were never trustworthy to begin with if they do that. Trustworthy…

> > Why would trustworthy people even try to gain power > To improve society. Is gaining power the most efficient way for a trustworthy and ethically constrained person to improve society? Keep in mind that if you answer that question "yes", you need to believe that attempting to gain power and use it ethically and responsibly is more effective at helping people than trying to earn a bunch of money and throwing it at…

> Is gaining power the most efficient way for a trustworthy and ethically constrained person to improve society?

I don't know, I doubt anybody really knows. I suspect it would highly depend on the individual and the circumstance they find themselves in. Either way people do things that are not "the most efficient" all the time in all areas of their lives.

> Keep in mind that if you answer that question "yes", you need to believe that attempting to gain power and use it ethically and responsibly is more effective at helping people than trying to earn a bunch of money and throwing it at GiveWell's top charities[1], after adjusting for chance of success, which is a pretty high bar to clear.

I don't answer yes. I think a lot of charity work has pretty dismal results in improving society at a large scale to be honest, but that's another story. In any case it's quite possible to do both. Most political offices come with a salary.