9 ms·

It's too easy to come up with, spam and spread bad ideas, but actual work to refute them. As long as people are not paid to refute bad actors with an agenda, ba

by mxfh 8y ago

It's too easy to come up with, spam and spread bad ideas, but actual work to refute them. As long as people are not paid to refute bad actors with an agenda, bad views will eventually stand unchallenged and make life worse for everyone for the profit an amusement of a view. As said refuting partially worked in small communities, but not on a global audience scale where the is no effective way of social sanctions, that would happen in smaller knit ones. So, in the light of this spreading provenly bad ideas shouldn't be made as cheap of a process that it is now.

mirimir 8y ago
Yes. Also, you can refute all you want, but if the bad ideas are better clickbait than your refutations, they will spread faster.
- reader5000 8y ago
  Maybe there's a reason a "bad idea" is clickbait.
  - true_religion 8y ago
    Hatred simply feels good. Unless you are saying that is something defensible or praiseworthy, then I am not sure where you are going with this thread of thought.
    - reader5000 8y ago
      Who gets to determine what is "hatred"? The natural upvote/downvote economy of the internet or a self-appointed anonymous class of bigtech mass-censors? When you go on the internet would you prefer to see reality or an artificial selection of on-canon content pre-approved by the priest-media class as in the age of television? In many ways it doesn't matter because infotech decentralization will slowly find a way, and forcible censorship will no longer be possible.
      - jazzyjackson 8y ago
        Whoa there buddy, there's other options for moderation besides media-priests || free market. How about we just let the people who own the machines decide what data sits on their machines? So I agree, decentralization will allow some communities to be total free market reddits and chans where anything goes, and I expect them to be very unpleasant places to hang out for some and not others. I'll be over here in my private community where Microsoft can't read my discussions and anyone whining about the priest-media will be booted.
      - Whitestrake 8y ago
        With more decentralization comes more freedom of association; I will choose to be a part of communities that I judge to have a reasonable view of what is "hatred", and those communities will, just like they do today, kick out offenders. Decentralization will give people the opportunity to spread their hatred among themselves, without involving me, which is... exactly how things operate today. So... Bring on infotech decentralization, I guess. It's got its merits, and for me, nothing about all this hate speech will change.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    That's almost a truism, no?
    - reader5000 8y ago
      Indeed.
  - Whitestrake 8y ago
    Can't think of a better explanation than this video by CGP Grey, titled "This Video Will Make You Angry", [7:26]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- specialist 8y ago
  A lie is half-way around the world before the truth has its pants on. — Mark Twain Younger me was a free speech ultimatist. Alas, human nature. Propaganda works, so well that people aren’t even aware of changing their minds. Overton windows. Blowback, where refuting further cements the falsehood. Belief as attire. Etc, etc.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    I agree, but I also think there’s some effect of censorship that drives people toward the censored idea. Part of it is a rebellion against authority (“who are YOU to tell ME what ideas are fit or unfit to consume?”); I think there’s some related effect that is driving Trump’s popularity—some people are rebelling against the cultural authority of the left (by which I mean major news publications, entertainment media, university faculty, social media companies, etc—powerful cultural institutions). Another problem is what happens when bad actors come into power and get to do the censoring? We’ve just handed them a nice precedent, have we not?
    - webmaven 8y ago
      > there’s some effect of censorship that drives people toward the censored idea. Not successful censorship per-se, but attempted censorship. See the "Streisand Effect": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
  - candiodari 8y ago
    And, as has been clearly illustrated, "trusted" news source can't always be trusted either. So preventing "lies" (lie is almost always a matter of perspective) to spread ... is really always also preventing people from finding out the truth. We just used to find that acceptable. Wars have been started by fake news from "reputable" sources. If fake news regulations become widespread and usable, they would be trivially easy for the rich and the government to abuse for censorship. Can you imagine how this would have gone had the president had the ability to prevent "fake news" from spreading ? https://globalnews.ca/news/4209011/trump-immigrant-animal-fake-news/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4209011/trump-immigrant-animal-fa... (I would argue that in Europe this "fake news" censorship is in fact pretty much normal. Only ... a part of the fake news isn't fake at all, but rather embarrassing to the government. The situation with rioting in French cities is 100x worse than sites like "Le Monde" report (which ones? Let's just say any > 1 mil ppl and there's only a few you'd be wrong about. Nice is pretty damn bad, for instance. Destruction in the city center every friday. You should see the security measures shops are taking, wtf). And other things that the government doesn't like get extremely downplayed as well : France was pretty much shut down due to a student strike in Paris for Macron's labor laws 3 times, and twice for his agricultural policy (both of which are downright abusive, and I'd say the protests were very justified) ... and there was a small mention of a protest march in Le Monde. Mass car torchings are a weekly occurrence since 2005 or so where I live. It baffles me, but it really looks like they're literally doing this just to save face for that asshole Macron. I get it ... I get it. He "saved Europe", especially after Brexit. He also fucked up France, and that matters more to me, and should matter more to French media and French voters. It's absurd because there literally isn't a single person in France that doesn't know these events happen, so what's the point of keeping them out of newspapers ? Do they think people will just forget ?)
- jarfil 8y ago
  That's why refutations also need to be good clickbait. But of course that requires good communicators, while many people with in-depth knowledge are not even mediocre ones.
  - webmaven 8y ago
    For refutations to be both true and better clickbait requires not merely good communicators, but excellent or even world-class communicators, to adequately satisfy both sets of constraints. Meanwhile, bullshitters have a much easier job. eg. the creationist argument "If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?" doesn't even make sense, it just sounds good, confirms existing bias, conveys the (false) feeling of understanding, etc. As a result, it is unfortunately very persuasive, and continues to spread much faster than the refutations, which aren't as simple and don't give the same superficial "aha" jolt of satisfaction. In fact, the closest I've come to a refutation that works as well is "well, if selective breeding of dogs is true, why do we still have wolves?", but of course then you still have to follow up with one or more examples of natural selection mechanisms & the idea of non-uniform environments (more small and fast prey over here, dry and cold weather over there, etc.), or you're inadvertently confirming their bias by introducing an intelligent selecting agency as part of your argument.
fvdessen 8y ago
I remember national TV talking about UFOs, proofs of WMD in Irak, Homosexuality being a disease, conspiracy magazines in every gas station shop, and no easy way to verify anything. I have the impression that the general quality of available information has only gone up.
- mxfh 8y ago
  Promoting those things back than had significant opportunity costs for getting things published and reaching an audience. And bad actors even got denied free or even paid communication channels after a number of bad faith offenses, so gatekeepers to mass communication were a good thing in that respect. Of course they also work the other way around, if a bad idea manages to creep in, but it took a significant amount of coordinated resources in analog times. I think it's no accident, that the rise of fascism and totalitarian Stalinism is coincident with the rise of radio and the maturing fields of advertising and mass psychology. This is the first wave it got a magnitude cheaper, to reach big audiences. We're witnessing the second one. (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Nowadays intentionally bad ideas work like spam, they have only an very small individual chance to get hold of a person, but with an near infinite number of permutations for free, it's way more likely to hit each individuals psychological weak spot eventually. So it was never easier to spread ideas for individuals, but so it for all sorts of corporate and even nation actors posing as individuals.
  - webmaven 8y ago
    > (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Even though the printing press kicked off societal changes that took a few centuries to mature and settle down, it was only slow by our current standards. The societies and institutions that were being disrupted evolved in an environment that changed on millenial timescales, so they were, in some senses, shell shocked for most of those 'few centuries' due to a failure to adapt despite having ample (by our standards) time, and the new institutions that arose were regarded as disruptive upstarts for generations (eg. the Lutheran church). Anyway. An order-of-magnitude change is going to be just as disruptive, even if the change is from "snail's pace" to "tortoise-like".
Alex3917 8y ago
> It's too easy to come up with, spam and spread bad ideas, but actual work to refute them. That makes sense for shared forums. But not in the case of someone like Alex Jones, where he has his own media platform on his own site and various channels, and not in the case of Gab where they're hosting their own forum.

by mxfh 8y ago

mirimir 8y ago

Yes. Also, you can refute all you want, but if the bad ideas are better clickbait than your refutations, they will spread faster.

reader5000 8y ago
Maybe there's a reason a "bad idea" is clickbait.
- true_religion 8y ago
  Hatred simply feels good. Unless you are saying that is something defensible or praiseworthy, then I am not sure where you are going with this thread of thought.
  - reader5000 8y ago
    Who gets to determine what is "hatred"? The natural upvote/downvote economy of the internet or a self-appointed anonymous class of bigtech mass-censors? When you go on the internet would you prefer to see reality or an artificial selection of on-canon content pre-approved by the priest-media class as in the age of television? In many ways it doesn't matter because infotech decentralization will slowly find a way, and forcible censorship will no longer be possible.
    - jazzyjackson 8y ago
      Whoa there buddy, there's other options for moderation besides media-priests || free market. How about we just let the people who own the machines decide what data sits on their machines? So I agree, decentralization will allow some communities to be total free market reddits and chans where anything goes, and I expect them to be very unpleasant places to hang out for some and not others. I'll be over here in my private community where Microsoft can't read my discussions and anyone whining about the priest-media will be booted.
    - Whitestrake 8y ago
      With more decentralization comes more freedom of association; I will choose to be a part of communities that I judge to have a reasonable view of what is "hatred", and those communities will, just like they do today, kick out offenders. Decentralization will give people the opportunity to spread their hatred among themselves, without involving me, which is... exactly how things operate today. So... Bring on infotech decentralization, I guess. It's got its merits, and for me, nothing about all this hate speech will change.
- mirimir 8y ago
  That's almost a truism, no?
  - reader5000 8y ago
    Indeed.
- Whitestrake 8y ago
  Can't think of a better explanation than this video by CGP Grey, titled "This Video Will Make You Angry", [7:26]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
specialist 8y ago
A lie is half-way around the world before the truth has its pants on. — Mark Twain Younger me was a free speech ultimatist. Alas, human nature. Propaganda works, so well that people aren’t even aware of changing their minds. Overton windows. Blowback, where refuting further cements the falsehood. Belief as attire. Etc, etc.
- weberc2 8y ago
  I agree, but I also think there’s some effect of censorship that drives people toward the censored idea. Part of it is a rebellion against authority (“who are YOU to tell ME what ideas are fit or unfit to consume?”); I think there’s some related effect that is driving Trump’s popularity—some people are rebelling against the cultural authority of the left (by which I mean major news publications, entertainment media, university faculty, social media companies, etc—powerful cultural institutions). Another problem is what happens when bad actors come into power and get to do the censoring? We’ve just handed them a nice precedent, have we not?
  - webmaven 8y ago
    > there’s some effect of censorship that drives people toward the censored idea. Not successful censorship per-se, but attempted censorship. See the "Streisand Effect": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- candiodari 8y ago
  And, as has been clearly illustrated, "trusted" news source can't always be trusted either. So preventing "lies" (lie is almost always a matter of perspective) to spread ... is really always also preventing people from finding out the truth. We just used to find that acceptable. Wars have been started by fake news from "reputable" sources. If fake news regulations become widespread and usable, they would be trivially easy for the rich and the government to abuse for censorship. Can you imagine how this would have gone had the president had the ability to prevent "fake news" from spreading ? https://globalnews.ca/news/4209011/trump-immigrant-animal-fake-news/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4209011/trump-immigrant-animal-fa... (I would argue that in Europe this "fake news" censorship is in fact pretty much normal. Only ... a part of the fake news isn't fake at all, but rather embarrassing to the government. The situation with rioting in French cities is 100x worse than sites like "Le Monde" report (which ones? Let's just say any > 1 mil ppl and there's only a few you'd be wrong about. Nice is pretty damn bad, for instance. Destruction in the city center every friday. You should see the security measures shops are taking, wtf). And other things that the government doesn't like get extremely downplayed as well : France was pretty much shut down due to a student strike in Paris for Macron's labor laws 3 times, and twice for his agricultural policy (both of which are downright abusive, and I'd say the protests were very justified) ... and there was a small mention of a protest march in Le Monde. Mass car torchings are a weekly occurrence since 2005 or so where I live. It baffles me, but it really looks like they're literally doing this just to save face for that asshole Macron. I get it ... I get it. He "saved Europe", especially after Brexit. He also fucked up France, and that matters more to me, and should matter more to French media and French voters. It's absurd because there literally isn't a single person in France that doesn't know these events happen, so what's the point of keeping them out of newspapers ? Do they think people will just forget ?)
jarfil 8y ago
That's why refutations also need to be good clickbait. But of course that requires good communicators, while many people with in-depth knowledge are not even mediocre ones.
- webmaven 8y ago
  For refutations to be both true and better clickbait requires not merely good communicators, but excellent or even world-class communicators, to adequately satisfy both sets of constraints. Meanwhile, bullshitters have a much easier job. eg. the creationist argument "If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?" doesn't even make sense, it just sounds good, confirms existing bias, conveys the (false) feeling of understanding, etc. As a result, it is unfortunately very persuasive, and continues to spread much faster than the refutations, which aren't as simple and don't give the same superficial "aha" jolt of satisfaction. In fact, the closest I've come to a refutation that works as well is "well, if selective breeding of dogs is true, why do we still have wolves?", but of course then you still have to follow up with one or more examples of natural selection mechanisms & the idea of non-uniform environments (more small and fast prey over here, dry and cold weather over there, etc.), or you're inadvertently confirming their bias by introducing an intelligent selecting agency as part of your argument.

fvdessen 8y ago

I remember national TV talking about UFOs, proofs of WMD in Irak, Homosexuality being a disease, conspiracy magazines in every gas station shop, and no easy way to verify anything. I have the impression that the general quality of available information has only gone up.

mxfh 8y ago
Promoting those things back than had significant opportunity costs for getting things published and reaching an audience. And bad actors even got denied free or even paid communication channels after a number of bad faith offenses, so gatekeepers to mass communication were a good thing in that respect. Of course they also work the other way around, if a bad idea manages to creep in, but it took a significant amount of coordinated resources in analog times. I think it's no accident, that the rise of fascism and totalitarian Stalinism is coincident with the rise of radio and the maturing fields of advertising and mass psychology. This is the first wave it got a magnitude cheaper, to reach big audiences. We're witnessing the second one. (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Nowadays intentionally bad ideas work like spam, they have only an very small individual chance to get hold of a person, but with an near infinite number of permutations for free, it's way more likely to hit each individuals psychological weak spot eventually. So it was never easier to spread ideas for individuals, but so it for all sorts of corporate and even nation actors posing as individuals.
- webmaven 8y ago
  > (Third one if you count the printing press, but the adoption happened over generations, so societies had time to adopt) Even though the printing press kicked off societal changes that took a few centuries to mature and settle down, it was only slow by our current standards. The societies and institutions that were being disrupted evolved in an environment that changed on millenial timescales, so they were, in some senses, shell shocked for most of those 'few centuries' due to a failure to adapt despite having ample (by our standards) time, and the new institutions that arose were regarded as disruptive upstarts for generations (eg. the Lutheran church). Anyway. An order-of-magnitude change is going to be just as disruptive, even if the change is from "snail's pace" to "tortoise-like".

Alex3917 8y ago

> It's too easy to come up with, spam and spread bad ideas, but actual work to refute them. That makes sense for shared forums. But not in the case of someone like Alex Jones, where he has his own media platform on his own site and various channels, and not in the case of Gab where they're hosting their own forum.