Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

news.umich.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 645 posts

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#281

Post by slg »

cortic wrote: post #264
slg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A free and open internet also allows propaganda and hate to flourish which are two bedrocks of most authoritarian and nationalist regimes. It isn't as simple as ending censorship will allow everyone to be free.

Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups. There is also the immunity to bad ideas aspect; Its important that the propaganda is heard openly and argued against in public, as this makes people immune to these arguments. Censor these bad idea…

>Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups.

This is repeated so much it is practically a meme at this point, but is there anything to actually back it up? Especially when users have the ability to control what they see. If someone is in a bubble of disinformation, it doesn't matter how many voices outside the bubble try to debunk those claims.

It seems like a more effective approach would to be to work on preventative measures so people are never exposed to these harmful beliefs rather than wait until these beliefs are heard and then try to convince them they are wrong.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#282

Post by quicklime »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #126
varispeed wrote: post #40

The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information…

>The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.

I remember those classes in VCE. Unfortunately a lot of people interpreted it as a class on "how to be persuasive" (as a writer) rather than "how to avoid being persuaded by propagandists" (as a reader).

We were taught common logical fallacies, and then tested on how well we could spot instances of them in a news article. But I remember also being asked to write persuasive essays, without being taught how to reason in a way that avoided those fallacies.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#283

Post by Koshkin »

busterarm wrote: post #77
lilactown wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the literal definition of fascism but it's also Not Good(tm).

If you think that's the case, you don't know your history. It's exactly the tactic of Mussolini. Edit: And when he did it, most of the western world/press fawned on him and praised him as a genius until he went and allied himself with Hitler.

To be fair, Hitler himself was not universally recognized as a "bad guy" until, well, later.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#284

Post by Pils »

cristoperb wrote: post #258
root_axis wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked up "Suroosh Alvi". The results are a little different but IMO pretty similar content-wise, nothing jarring. I do see the 5th result you mentioned on yandex missing on google's front page, but all of the google results seem pretty relevant, and the link you mentioned seems to be hosted on vice.com, so I'm not sure if I buy the idea that they're trying to hide that link. Has this guy recently done something co…

I'm not sure, but they might be talking about one of Vice's other founders, Gavin McInnes, who is known as a far-right provocateur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_McInnes#Views

Maybe Tim Pool? Big far-right podcaster, was famously an early intern at Vice, regularly claims to be one of Vice's founders.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#285

Post by AussieWog93 »

naringas wrote: post #141
AussieWog93 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.

just because it's in the curriculum doesn't mean it will be taught well. consider (for example) k-12 mathematics pretty much anywhere...

Agreed on k-12 maths, but the analysis of persuasive techniques was actually taught quite well and comprehensively, at least when I went through school (finished in 2011).

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#286

Post by dragonwriter »

Koshkin wrote: post #283
busterarm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that's the case, you don't know your history. It's exactly the tactic of Mussolini. Edit: And when he did it, most of the western world/press fawned on him and praised him as a genius until he went and allied himself with Hitler.

To be fair, Hitler himself was not universally recognized as a "bad guy" until, well, later.

To be depressingly fair, Hitler was never (and is still not) universally recognized as a "bad guy".

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#287

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ttt0 wrote: post #222
ojbyrne wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the right has moved the Overton Window so much to the right that they see things that most of the world would see as mainstream (Black Lives Matter, Abortion, Medicare for All, Defund the Police, Anti-Fascism etc) as extreme.

That's not how the Overton Window works. The Overton Window says what kind of opinions are socially acceptable. If you describe those things are mainstream, they're by definition inside the Overton Window. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're more likely to be fired for being a nationalist rather than a communist, so that's another indicator that the Overton Window is actually on the left.

I'm not the one you're replying to, but here's how I think the Overton Window works.

Everyone has a personal Overton Window - the set of ideas that they think are reasonable and acceptable, even if they personally don't agree. When most of the personal Overton Windows approximately align on a particular topic, then we have society's Overton Window.

For example, think about gay marriage. 50 years ago, maybe even 20, 95% of society thought that gay marriage was clearly not acceptable. That meant that 95% of society agreed with 95% of society's personal Overton Windows on the topic, and so we had a clear society-wide Overton Window.

Now we have maybe 30% of people who still think that gay marriage is clearly not acceptable. We also have 40% who think that gay marriage is clearly in bounds. Of those, maybe half (so 20% of the population) think any doubts about gay marriage are clearly unacceptable. There is no position which a large majority of society finds acceptable. (All numbers made up, but I think they're in the approximate neighborhood.)

The society-wide Overton Window didn't move. It shattered.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#289

Post by AussieWog93 »

busterarm wrote: post #195
AussieWog93 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.

And Daniel Andrews. My condolences.

Hahaha, touche.

Re: ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

#290

Post by Der_Einzige »

quicklime wrote: post #282
AussieWog93 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.

I remember those classes in VCE. Unfortunately a lot of people interpreted it as a class on "how to be persuasive" (as a writer) rather than "how to avoid being persuaded by propagandists" (as a reader). We were taught common logical fallacies, and then tested on how well we could spot instances of them in a news article. But I remember also being asked to write persuasive essays, without being taught how to reason i…

Its impossible to not be fallacious in any meaningful discourse that goes on long enough, and that's okay.

Every single invocation of an expert is an argument from authority.

Every single invocation of logic like "it is more like nature therefor it is more good" is a naturalistic fallacy.

Do we even need to get to other ones like "appeal to emotion"?

Maybe we should instead recognize that "logic" does not necessarily describe reality (given that there are an infinite number of possible logics based on which axioms you start with), and that being worried about and trying to avoid "logical fallacies" in our reasoning does not help us see reality more closely to how it is.

Post reply on HN