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Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

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Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#31

Post by chucksmash »

platz wrote: post #13
someguydave wrote: post #9

If we assume that voters are unable to deal with misinformation then we have already given up on democracy. The next logical step is to decide how to blunt the will of the misinformed voter.

Depends on what you mean by democracy. Suppose you get 100% voter participation through free and fair elections. Are you still sure that fails the definition of democracy? How hard is it to make that case? What if the voters choose an outcome you just don't happen to like? Is that all of a sudden undemocratic?

It's certainly possible to make an undemocratic decision democratically.

Consider holding a referendum that specified nobody who hadn't yet been born as of the referendum date would ever be allowed to vote.

It's a purposefully silly example (HN isn't for political debates!) but broadly, it's a democratically made self determination that reduces or precludes the ability to make democratic decisions in the future.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#32

Post by platz »

mrleiter wrote: post #28

This is a classic example of shifting the blame. Yes, he admits that facebook spent too much time trying to minimise the problem. And indeed they did. But it's not only the misinformation that is the problem, facebook itself is at the heart of the problem. They are one of many, albeit facebook being on the more influential side, platforms through which misinformation is spread. And of course education is the main han…

Yes, it is blame-shifting.

Facebook's board knows exactly what it is doing. Are they going to take a hit from their shareholders given the choice? No.

> We thought the Internet would bring prosperity and an explosion of knowledge growth

Yes, but the movement also came with a mandate, that information and services should be free. That severly restricts the business models available. I dont think consumers can solve the problem easily. They are caught in behavior-modifying algorithms. The problem is a new business model needs to be created.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#33

Post by platz »

chucksmash wrote: post #31
platz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by democracy. Suppose you get 100% voter participation through free and fair elections. Are you still sure that fails the definition of democracy? How hard is it to make that case? What if the voters choose an outcome you just don't happen to like? Is that all of a sudden undemocratic?

It's certainly possible to make an undemocratic decision democratically. Consider holding a referendum that specified nobody who hadn't yet been born as of the referendum date would ever be allowed to vote. It's a purposefully silly example (HN isn't for political debates!) but broadly, it's a democratically made self determination that reduces or precludes the ability to make democratic decisions in the future.

That's why I made sure to include "free and fair elections" in my description

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#34

Post by azahk »

mo3gut wrote: post #23

Mr Stamos is unhappy with Russia, mentioned repeatedly. Their "activity" needs to be "dealt with". AIPAC, "America's Pro-Israel Lobby", isn't worth a mention. Israel apparently does nothing that needs to be dealt with. Are you Americans on this forum grateful that people like Mr Stamos decide for you which countries should have influence?

Most people in the media, government, high tiers of big business, etc. are Jewish, so you won't see anything like that anytime soon. It will eventually happen though, and it will be ugly (for them).

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#35

Post by chucksmash »

platz wrote: post #33
chucksmash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly possible to make an undemocratic decision democratically. Consider holding a referendum that specified nobody who hadn't yet been born as of the referendum date would ever be allowed to vote. It's a purposefully silly example (HN isn't for political debates!) but broadly, it's a democratically made self determination that reduces or precludes the ability to make democratic decisions in the future.

That's why I made sure to include "free and fair elections" in my description

And the current election would be both free and fair. It's the consequences that would be anything but.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#36

Post by esotericn »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #16

"Tech will always need to act in a quasi-governmental manner, making judgments on political speech and operating teams in parallel to the U.S. intelligence community," No, absolutely not Alex. The fact that these massive tech monopolies are so powerful that it's now just taken for granted that they are pseudo-governmental entities should be a wake up call for everyone. It's high time we start talking about anti-trust…

Indeed.

The fact that we've let online speech fall in to a narrow set of patterns defined by companies that are larger than some governments is completely ridiculous.

We need platforms that are controlled by users. And no, we don't need to wait for them before we kill the centralized data miners either. We survived before Facebook, we'll survive without it.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#37

Post by dahdum »

mo3gut wrote: post #23

Mr Stamos is unhappy with Russia, mentioned repeatedly. Their "activity" needs to be "dealt with". AIPAC, "America's Pro-Israel Lobby", isn't worth a mention. Israel apparently does nothing that needs to be dealt with. Are you Americans on this forum grateful that people like Mr Stamos decide for you which countries should have influence?

Israel is an ally, so their influence is both expected and accepted.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#38

Post by noetic_techy »

Oh please. The headline might as well have been:

We need to protect people from information and ideas we don't agree with.

Freedom of speech is not just about speech, its about ideas. Nobody should ever be deemed the arbiter of truth. Not Facebook, not the government, not anyone. Decentralize the social networks. Let everyone speak, even the bad people.

Realize that you actually make the problem worse by suppressing information, even bad information. Making information "forbidden" makes it that much more appealing to people, enhancing the us-vs-them tribal mentality. Especially when its a reasonable opinion or idea with some merit. Suddenly it sounds like suppression of the truth.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#39

Post by ourmandave »

“Congress needs to codify standards around political advertising,” he writes, saying that existing laws are decades out of date and don’t cover the types of platforms that exist today.

Here's an article of all the platforms political ad policies (from June 2018) for advertisers.

https://marketingland.com/the-big-list-of-political-ad-polic...

Most ad policies have been updated to stop foreign paid political ads. And the FEC and states have laws on allowed content.

But paid ads are one thing. Fake accounts posting lies and mis-information are another.

Re: Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation

#40

Post by zzzcpan »

qaq wrote: post #25
empath75 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of very smart, very educated people are creating and spreading this misinformation intentionally or unintentionally.

I guess should have being more specific as in educate people to identify misinformation campaigns. The alternative of giving government powers to sensor information looks even less reasonable.

Education works, except that the whole system relies on the same propaganda tricks. Governments use education to spread ideology and they would never properly teach people about their tricks, they want people to believe in all the bullshit, get used to the system, participate in the system, obey it, they don't want to prepare dissidents at schools.
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