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Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

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Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#431

Post by m0llusk »

beefield wrote: post #87
golergka wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of many, many reasons why western countries and social media companies should not normalise censorship re-branded like "fighting disinformation".

How do you propose western countries and social media companies fight disinformation?

Dmytro Zolotukhemin at the Institute of Information Security in Ukraine has an interesting take on this which he talks about in detail on an interview with Silicon Curtain on YouTube. He asserts that the idea of disinformation is so slippery and hard to work with that it is not worth it. What we really have is stories that people share. His idea is that the right way to regulate this is to provide people with tools for assessing information themselves. Basic critical thinking and internet searches can go a long way to revealing both truth and ambiguity. This is a specific variation of the idea that the answer to bad information exchange is more and better information exchange.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#432

Post by spoiler »

jliptzin wrote: post #418
alphanullmeric wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, your comparison is just not equivalent. A sale is a transfer of property. We enforce the implicit contract that goes along with that. The buyer will pay, the seller will deliver, the product is accurate, etc. This discussion is about speech, for which no such contract exists. If you disagree, then you should have no problem arresting people for showing off a 3 watt bulb they claim to be 5 watts.

Not a lawyer but I could imagine a situation where you're in a store and you see an advertisement for a blue light bulb that says that blue light bulbs are proven to disinfect surfaces. You remember you have some blue light bulbs at home, so you go home and screw them in. Or maybe you go on amazon and order some blue light bulbs because they're cheaper, even though different brands are not making that claim, the firs…

Right, but people (and companies) lie all the time, and it's not something that's illegal. It's amoral, but not illegal.

I'm not sure where I stand on the matter personally.

Like, taking the constant social turmoil in America as an example: anything people dislike they call disinformation/fake news, but are equally guilty and okay with of spreading and allowing the same behaviour if it furthers their agenda. Or they will at least be more lenient to their side of the arguments indulging in it, since it aligns with their biases.

I've seen this happen from both right wing and left wing members one Twitter and on Reddit. I personally don't use these platforms, but I've seen various threads with insane amounts of hypocrisy.

There's so many nuance and unresolved problems.

Like, how do we know truth isn't what's being censored?

How can we even tell in this day and age when the truth is? It's often diluted with some hidden agenda. Either political or corporate (or oftentimes both). I can't sit for hours fact checking everything I read from different sources. I have a job, and I also don't want to spend all my free time on it. But on the other hand it's also topic I care about (just not THAT much I guess?). Who to trust?

And I feel like this "the ones in power control what's true" generally feels like a slippery slope.

I also hate that I'm beginning to sound like a crazy tinfoil-wearing person.

Idk, humans are complicated. Social media in its current iteration was a mistake, since it created platforms for some very dangerous and narcissistic people

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#433

Post by bentlegen »

Teever wrote: post #396
alphanullmeric wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, your comparison is just not equivalent. A sale is a transfer of property. We enforce the implicit contract that goes along with that. The buyer will pay, the seller will deliver, the product is accurate, etc. This discussion is about speech, for which no such contract exists. If you disagree, then you should have no problem arresting people for showing off a 3 watt bulb they claim to be 5 watts.

People can be victims of false advertising even if they don't actually complete a transaction with the offender.

“These other products give you cancer! Only use Febreze to mask odours in your home.”

viewer goes and tosses out all their presumably-cancer causing products, never purchases Febreze

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#434

Post by 4gotunameagain »

thanatropism wrote: post #346

Are we avoiding "Turkiye" as an expression of anti-Erdogan politics? Is it ok to call Kinshasa the capital of Rhodesia?

Think of it the same as the facebook --> meta situation.

There should be friction to rebranding.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#435

Post by ajmurmann »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #146
golergka wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of many, many reasons why western countries and social media companies should not normalise censorship re-branded like "fighting disinformation".

Curiously, all the people that support such censorship in western countries are actually against it in this instance. Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to.

IMO the issue in the entire discussion of "censorship" shouldn't be between censorship vs no censorship but about the outrage amplifiers social media has become. It makes the already huge problem with Bandolini's Law / "flooding the zone with shit" so much bigger by amplifying random voices that drive engagement which is most effectively driven by outrage. I'd wager that addressing this issue will suddenly reduce the number of discussions about "censorship"

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#436

Post by Sunspark »

xwdv wrote: post #411
cultofmetatron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For anyone telling to use VPN, yeah, many people are used to using VPN because of these blocks not to mention, imagine learning to setup a VPN (Beacuse your life depends on it) while you're buried under rubble..

[flagged]

Radio signals do not penetrate through stone or concrete well which causes increased battery drain. You also have the issue of perhaps diminishing oxygen and cognitive impairment caused by shock and crush trauma.

It would be better for battery life for people to just text a friend or family member and say "crushed under tons of stone at home, please send help". Nobody is going to do an AMA on Twitter while buried using up the precious battery life for retweets and likes.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#437

Post by joshfee »

dvt wrote: post #381
WaxProlix wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concept of the marketplace of ideas and that, by and large, ideas are sifted via free speech and the good ones last while the bad ones die This might be the core of it then, because while I generally agree with the idea of Free Speech in the abstract, I don't think that it's been having good outcomes for society in the era of the cultic milieu, and I think that has to do with this 'marketplace' idea not really hold…

The problem with alternatives to the "free marketplace of ideas" is that they are all (by definition) authoritative. And who's the best "authority" here? The government? Me? You? Who decides what ideas get to be censored? Imo, there's more problems with the authoritative model than the marketplace model. Kind of like Churchill's famous quote about democracy: "it's the worst form of government, except from all the oth…

I think a large part of the problem we have today is lack of attribution. It is too easy for participants to pretend to be 1000 voices instead of a single voice. I don't think being able to pretend to be multiple people is particularly helpful to the "marketplace of ideas". Conversely if I see/hear the same sentiment a 1000 times and can distinguish between "1000 voices" and "one voice a thousand times" then that is useful for me determining how much weight to give to those ideas when forming my own ideas.

The other nice aspect of attribution is that there is a factual answer to "who is speaking". I don't need to evaluate the merits to your speech in order to understand who is speaking. In today's world it may not be easy/possible to know the specific answer to "who is speaking", but by observing any speech I know that there must have been _someone_ speaking.

As for how to get to a world with attribution... not so sure what the options are that don't suffer a lot of the same problems. But it at least seems like an approach that doesn't require authoritative assessment of the underlying speech itself to yield societal benefits.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#438

Post by pmontra »

michaelt wrote: post #304
alphanullmeric wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiously, all the people that support such censorship in western countries are actually against it in this instance. Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to.

> Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to. Well, or they have a more nuanced view than "censorship no" or "censorship yes" For example, I support laws preventing stores from selling 3 watt LED bulbs in packages claiming they're 5 watt LED bulbs; or selling generic LED bulbs in packages claiming they're Phillips bulbs. Even though the…

That's not censorship. That's preventing fraud. Censorship would be preventing you to talk against those frauds.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#439

Post by slg »

smcn wrote: post #428
slg wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But advertising still isn't the root cause. Why does this type of content draw more viewers?

Are you trying to say that biology is the root cause? The content is successful as it emits a reaction from us. Whether a good reaction or a bad one, we still engage with it. Whether you're binge watching a TV show you love or hate scrolling a subreddit that makes you angry, the content is designed to elicit some form of reaction that keeps you coming back or memetically passing it on. However that is not a new devel…

There are two aspects to the root cause. You mentioned the first part, basic human biology pushes us towards content that elicits a reaction. The second part is that lies inherently have an advantage over the truth to elicit a reaction because they are only limited by human imagination while the truth is limited obviously by the truth.

As long as humans have the free will to engage with whatever content they choose, there is a natural human reaction to engage with lies. Therefore, the idea that truth eventually wins out over lies is inherently flawed. It isn't the fault of capitalism or algorithms. The problem is human nature doesn't respond properly to bad speech. We can't change human nature, so the only option left is stopping bad speech.

Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake

#440

Post by throw93 »

Wow, this is eerily similar to what happened in India during second wave of COVID. Tweets complaining about oxygen shortage or handling of Covid in general were restricted in India.

It’s just weird why some governments do that. Playing down the crisis just delays the recovery efforts.

Source - 1) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56883483.amp 2) https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/recode/22410931/india-pande...

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