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Washington Posts understandably longs for the days when large media outlets had a virtual monopoly on information but they're gone and not likely to make a come

by blfr 9y ago

Washington Posts understandably longs for the days when large media outlets had a virtual monopoly on information but they're gone and not likely to make a comeback. I don't know why they cheer Facebook/Twitter/whoever to take their place but I certainly hope this effort fails. Having Mark Zuckerberg decide who and what can be read on the Internet or even decide the elections is an outcome much worse than ISIS videos or Russian ads in my news feed.

TyLoo 9y ago
Everything has a cost, the cost of free speech is the possibility of hateful and destructive propaganda. This cost is in my opinion trivial compare to the alternatives. We saw what the cost of speech and information restriction have done to civilizations in history. The ability to speak freely and having access to information is not just one virtue like justice or compassion. It is the way by which we create our value. We should take really seriously any attempt by anyone to restrict it.
- Khaine 9y ago
  Its funny you say that. All freedom's come at a cost. In America, there is a large contingent who don't like the cost of the second amendment. Who is to say the cost of the first amendment is worth it, or the second? As an Australian, I don't have either a first amendment right to free speech, or a second amendment right to bear arms to protect against a tyrannical government. I do think that we, in the Western world are slowly giving away our freedoms, bit by bit in the name of safety. I do worry that our future is more black mirror than Star Trek. And I for one do not know how to right this ship, how to bring balance. For people to recognise that with freedom comes responsibility. That you must hold the individual to account for actions, and not let the collective suffer.
  - malloryerik 9y ago
    The Second Amendment grants the right to bear arms as part of a well regulated militia. Not unregistered Glocks with silencers under your mattress or in your glovebox.
- mynameishere 9y ago
  Hateful and destructive propaganda is also the cost of unfree speech.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > the cost of free speech is the possibility of hateful and destructive propaganda The worst case outcome of this is potentially genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib... Yes, speech and communication restriction is also potentially a part of this kind of society wide disaster. But that doesn't mean a society can tolerate an unlimited amount of hate speech safely forever. Ideally the destructive propagandists could be persuaded to shut up or people persuaded to ignore them, and I think if we want to continue with both free speech and not collapse into violence a lot more work needs to be done on this.
  - kijin 9y ago
    In Whitney v. California, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said that only the solution to destructive speech is more speech, not less. This idea has been at the core of American jurisprudence for a long time, but few people seem to grasp the full implication of the solution that Brandeis proposed. It's not simply that we should allow destructive propaganda, period. It's not just wishful thinking that better education would help people see through the bullshit. In the same judgment Brandeis also wrote that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty." He was asking US what WE have done to counter the bad speech that's all around us. How much time, money and energy have we devoted to the cause of exposing the haters for the hypocrites they are and demolishing their arguments to the point that not a stone is left upon another, using every non-violent action available to us, before we all ran to Uncle Sam and asked him to spank those bad boys on our behalf? So you're right, a lot more work needs to be done. But not by the government. It's only because the rest of us have been so careless that destructive propaganda is having a field day rummaging through our democracy. The people who have a duty to produce better speech includes everyone from the CEOs of big social media companies to every last user who saw something bad but went "eh, I don't have time for this." The cost of giving up free speech is unconscionable, but the cost of maintaining it isn't trivial, either.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  Except freedom of Speech and of Information were always believed to be the heart of a healthy democracy, that decisions and policy were best set out by an informed and educated electorate. Not only is our electorate not very well educated, but if anything, we've seen that the wide availability of literally all human knowledge, which should lead to the best ideas if information = good decisions, has galvanized all parties involved to their own ideas and utterly ruined the concept of compromise. Even the most minor concessions to the other side (whichever other side it might be) is interpreted as weakness, so no politicians compromise, so nothing gets done because no given party ever controls the entire Government. Heck, in the USA, the GOP currently controls the executive and legislative branches and still can do nothing due to their own internal fragmentation. I'm not sure if the solution is less information, less free speech, that feels wrong to me. But at the same time it's clear what we're doing now is not even remotely working. It's breaking the entire system.
  - amigoingtodie 9y ago
    It is like they need more than what is effectively a two-party system.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      A lot of people say that but I'm not even sure that would do a whole lot to change things. I feel like the two parties already have huge gaps between different sub-groups, more parties would just be those same groups still arguing over the same shit. It would just be more visible I guess.
      - amigoingtodie 9y ago
        They do have huge gaps among the subgroups. I couldn't tell you what the official position of either major party is, besides outlawing bumpstocks, while the country is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. The visibility would allow the voter to make a less opaque choice, and bring accountability upon the elected official.
- liberte82 9y ago
  The worse case is that hateful and destructive propaganda wins out and we end up with mob rule. Just because we're somewhat, so far, kind of resisting the propaganda amongst enough people to prevent major harm, doesn't mean that will continue indefinitely. I'm not saying free speech isn't the answer. I don't have the answer. But the risks are greater than you say.
TorKlingberg 9y ago
This is just an ad hominem argument, and becoming tired. Every time an opinion is published in a newspaper, the first comment is along the lines of "old media trying to protect themselves". Where else would things like this be published and reach an audience?
- blfr 9y ago
  I don't know about every other time but my comment explicitly states that they lost their influence and there's nothing to protect any more. What's weird is they are now hoping someone else will take over. Especially weird since Facebook will happily take over old media's advertisers base and then charge them for access to their own audience at the other end. It's already happening.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  It's not an ad hominem argument. That would be saying "the argument is wrong because it's made by the Washington Post". I think the assertion here is more subtle: newspapers are really the only outlets attacking social media and claiming it brainwashes people. This isn't something that ever comes up in other discussions or forums as far as I can tell. Certainly I discuss politics with my own friends and Facebook or Twitter are not at the top of their lists of concerns. In contrast, much of the traditional press publishes hysterical clickbaity screeds like "6 ways social media has become a direct threat to democracy" almost every day. They're obsessed with the topic. But we've seen this all before. It used to be that Google News was the bogeyman. It is reasonable to point out journalists talk about this issue far greater issue than other classes of people, and that maybe this issue - if it exists at all - is really not as dramatic as they make it out to be.
  - samastur 9y ago
    They aren't. I, as many other people I read, have been arguing about SM threat for years, but unlike newspapers I like most people have a very very limited reach. Just because our reach is too short for you to notice it does not mean we don't exist.
Boothroid 9y ago
The funny thing is that MSM pomposity and righteousness seems to have an inverse relationship with their influence, at least in my observation.

by blfr 9y ago

TyLoo 9y ago

Everything has a cost, the cost of free speech is the possibility of hateful and destructive propaganda. This cost is in my opinion trivial compare to the alternatives. We saw what the cost of speech and information restriction have done to civilizations in history. The ability to speak freely and having access to information is not just one virtue like justice or compassion. It is the way by which we create our value. We should take really seriously any attempt by anyone to restrict it.

Khaine 9y ago
Its funny you say that. All freedom's come at a cost. In America, there is a large contingent who don't like the cost of the second amendment. Who is to say the cost of the first amendment is worth it, or the second? As an Australian, I don't have either a first amendment right to free speech, or a second amendment right to bear arms to protect against a tyrannical government. I do think that we, in the Western world are slowly giving away our freedoms, bit by bit in the name of safety. I do worry that our future is more black mirror than Star Trek. And I for one do not know how to right this ship, how to bring balance. For people to recognise that with freedom comes responsibility. That you must hold the individual to account for actions, and not let the collective suffer.
- malloryerik 9y ago
  The Second Amendment grants the right to bear arms as part of a well regulated militia. Not unregistered Glocks with silencers under your mattress or in your glovebox.
mynameishere 9y ago
Hateful and destructive propaganda is also the cost of unfree speech.
pjc50 9y ago
> the cost of free speech is the possibility of hateful and destructive propaganda The worst case outcome of this is potentially genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib... Yes, speech and communication restriction is also potentially a part of this kind of society wide disaster. But that doesn't mean a society can tolerate an unlimited amount of hate speech safely forever. Ideally the destructive propagandists could be persuaded to shut up or people persuaded to ignore them, and I think if we want to continue with both free speech and not collapse into violence a lot more work needs to be done on this.
- kijin 9y ago
  In Whitney v. California, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said that only the solution to destructive speech is more speech, not less. This idea has been at the core of American jurisprudence for a long time, but few people seem to grasp the full implication of the solution that Brandeis proposed. It's not simply that we should allow destructive propaganda, period. It's not just wishful thinking that better education would help people see through the bullshit. In the same judgment Brandeis also wrote that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty." He was asking US what WE have done to counter the bad speech that's all around us. How much time, money and energy have we devoted to the cause of exposing the haters for the hypocrites they are and demolishing their arguments to the point that not a stone is left upon another, using every non-violent action available to us, before we all ran to Uncle Sam and asked him to spank those bad boys on our behalf? So you're right, a lot more work needs to be done. But not by the government. It's only because the rest of us have been so careless that destructive propaganda is having a field day rummaging through our democracy. The people who have a duty to produce better speech includes everyone from the CEOs of big social media companies to every last user who saw something bad but went "eh, I don't have time for this." The cost of giving up free speech is unconscionable, but the cost of maintaining it isn't trivial, either.
FussyZeus 9y ago
Except freedom of Speech and of Information were always believed to be the heart of a healthy democracy, that decisions and policy were best set out by an informed and educated electorate. Not only is our electorate not very well educated, but if anything, we've seen that the wide availability of literally all human knowledge, which should lead to the best ideas if information = good decisions, has galvanized all parties involved to their own ideas and utterly ruined the concept of compromise. Even the most minor concessions to the other side (whichever other side it might be) is interpreted as weakness, so no politicians compromise, so nothing gets done because no given party ever controls the entire Government. Heck, in the USA, the GOP currently controls the executive and legislative branches and still can do nothing due to their own internal fragmentation. I'm not sure if the solution is less information, less free speech, that feels wrong to me. But at the same time it's clear what we're doing now is not even remotely working. It's breaking the entire system.
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  It is like they need more than what is effectively a two-party system.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    A lot of people say that but I'm not even sure that would do a whole lot to change things. I feel like the two parties already have huge gaps between different sub-groups, more parties would just be those same groups still arguing over the same shit. It would just be more visible I guess.
    - amigoingtodie 9y ago
      They do have huge gaps among the subgroups. I couldn't tell you what the official position of either major party is, besides outlawing bumpstocks, while the country is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. The visibility would allow the voter to make a less opaque choice, and bring accountability upon the elected official.
liberte82 9y ago
The worse case is that hateful and destructive propaganda wins out and we end up with mob rule. Just because we're somewhat, so far, kind of resisting the propaganda amongst enough people to prevent major harm, doesn't mean that will continue indefinitely. I'm not saying free speech isn't the answer. I don't have the answer. But the risks are greater than you say.

TorKlingberg 9y ago

This is just an ad hominem argument, and becoming tired. Every time an opinion is published in a newspaper, the first comment is along the lines of "old media trying to protect themselves". Where else would things like this be published and reach an audience?

blfr 9y ago
I don't know about every other time but my comment explicitly states that they lost their influence and there's nothing to protect any more. What's weird is they are now hoping someone else will take over. Especially weird since Facebook will happily take over old media's advertisers base and then charge them for access to their own audience at the other end. It's already happening.
peoplewindow 9y ago
It's not an ad hominem argument. That would be saying "the argument is wrong because it's made by the Washington Post". I think the assertion here is more subtle: newspapers are really the only outlets attacking social media and claiming it brainwashes people. This isn't something that ever comes up in other discussions or forums as far as I can tell. Certainly I discuss politics with my own friends and Facebook or Twitter are not at the top of their lists of concerns. In contrast, much of the traditional press publishes hysterical clickbaity screeds like "6 ways social media has become a direct threat to democracy" almost every day. They're obsessed with the topic. But we've seen this all before. It used to be that Google News was the bogeyman. It is reasonable to point out journalists talk about this issue far greater issue than other classes of people, and that maybe this issue - if it exists at all - is really not as dramatic as they make it out to be.
- samastur 9y ago
  They aren't. I, as many other people I read, have been arguing about SM threat for years, but unlike newspapers I like most people have a very very limited reach. Just because our reach is too short for you to notice it does not mean we don't exist.

Boothroid 9y ago

The funny thing is that MSM pomposity and righteousness seems to have an inverse relationship with their influence, at least in my observation.