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I don't see at all how your conclusion ("state run propaganda is the one you want") follows from what you quoted, or from that comment as a whole.

lettergram 8y ago
I'm basically saying, there is no "fake news" it's all "fake" or white washed with the politics of the presenter. By making the claim it's a technical innovation that led to the political problem - it's ignoring the fact it's a political problem, caused by a political problem (that everyone is biased by politics). I think it's naive to think technical innovations cause the political issues. Even from the cold war example - it's politics that caused it, just the technology raised the stakes. Politics created the issue, not the engineering
- bumholio 8y ago
  I certainly did not say that official state propaganda is better than online propaganda by other political actors (including foreign states). It's that modern society has developed institutions to deal with the innate tendency of political actors to control the public discourse. The free press, democracy and public accountability of leaders evolved in a different technological context, and the existence of those institutions was sometimes defended with blood. When you disrupt the economic basis of free press, you create a fundamental vulnerability, at least on the short run until those institutions adapt, like an organism exposed to a new mutation of a pathogen. An it might well take blood again to recalibrate. As a technologist, you don't get to ignore the political effects of what you create, you can't say "well, people have been killing themselves on this planet for millions of years, I've merely created a device to automate killing a whole country, a neutral technology." It's not neutral, it has imediate political effects, it gives power to those who have it to the detriment of the rest. There is no debate technology can change the world for the better, you just can't presume that any technology, introduced at any moment of time, to any audience will be by definition positive. And once you start to nuance that position of absolute amorality for technology, you are engaging in politics. Technology is always power and power is always political.
hitekker 8y ago
Like a communist who calls genetics a "bourgeois science", or a libertarian who calls global warming a "government conspiracy": the point is to apply an ideology to an uncomfortable reality, and get labels that terminate any further thought.

lettergram 8y ago

I'm basically saying, there is no "fake news" it's all "fake" or white washed with the politics of the presenter. By making the claim it's a technical innovation that led to the political problem - it's ignoring the fact it's a political problem, caused by a political problem (that everyone is biased by politics). I think it's naive to think technical innovations cause the political issues. Even from the cold war example - it's politics that caused it, just the technology raised the stakes. Politics created the issue, not the engineering

bumholio 8y ago
I certainly did not say that official state propaganda is better than online propaganda by other political actors (including foreign states). It's that modern society has developed institutions to deal with the innate tendency of political actors to control the public discourse. The free press, democracy and public accountability of leaders evolved in a different technological context, and the existence of those institutions was sometimes defended with blood. When you disrupt the economic basis of free press, you create a fundamental vulnerability, at least on the short run until those institutions adapt, like an organism exposed to a new mutation of a pathogen. An it might well take blood again to recalibrate. As a technologist, you don't get to ignore the political effects of what you create, you can't say "well, people have been killing themselves on this planet for millions of years, I've merely created a device to automate killing a whole country, a neutral technology." It's not neutral, it has imediate political effects, it gives power to those who have it to the detriment of the rest. There is no debate technology can change the world for the better, you just can't presume that any technology, introduced at any moment of time, to any audience will be by definition positive. And once you start to nuance that position of absolute amorality for technology, you are engaging in politics. Technology is always power and power is always political.

hitekker 8y ago

Like a communist who calls genetics a "bourgeois science", or a libertarian who calls global warming a "government conspiracy": the point is to apply an ideology to an uncomfortable reality, and get labels that terminate any further thought.