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How do you prove something is disinformation? Time for a ministry of truth? I can imagine already imagine for example which version of the Convington kids case

How do you prove something is disinformation? Time for a ministry of truth? I can imagine already imagine for example which version of the Convington kids case would be considered official and information.

docdeek 8y ago
This is exactly right. Trusting a government to determine what is true and what is not, and enforcing that version of truth via shutting down certain speech and penalising those who speak it, is a bad idea. I’ve no problem with a government announcing that they believe something is true or false, but I have a big problem with them restricting the speech of people who happen to disagree.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Instead we have a ministry of truth being perpetuated by sites such as Youtube, with incredibly harmful information being disseminated and treated as truth resulting in disease outbreaks and outright denial of history. In your idealistic world of free speech, the innocent pay the price for the freedom to spread lies and deceit. At what point do we accept that it has to be fixed, or are we OK with diseases previously eradicated coming back in full force?
  - colordrops 8y ago
    The difference is that there is also an overwhelming force of true speech to counter the lies and deceit. Once you start banning speech, only "official" lies will be allowed. See China. Where the hell did you get the idea that free speech is only OK until people start to lie? You can take my free speech from my cold, dead mouth.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      We're in the era when automated propaganda means the lies can far more easily overwhelm the truth. And just as with guns, the lies end up with the deaths of innocent bystanders.
      - colordrops 8y ago
        Whereas before, manual propaganda ended up with deaths of innocent bystanders. Can you point to any source that indicates that deaths have gone up due to AI/social media bots? And even if there was a study, it's not necessarily a case for censorship. Pretty much every basic right Americans have are trade-offs rather than 100% positive.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      > The difference is that there is also an overwhelming force of true speech to counter the lies and deceit That doesn't seem to be hugely helping as far as climate change goes. For anything where money is involved deepest pockets counts far more than the "overwhelming force" of true speech. It has become depressingly common to see topics being astroturfed or an "Independent Health Research Institute" set up by the guilty corporate or a trade body, and SEO'd and adworded to page 1. Like Soviet Bloc use of "democratic", use of "independent" in an information site has almost become proof it's not. :) We need to dream up some life changing consequences for lies and misinformation, serious enough that it stops being standard policy of every medium size enterprise.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      If that overwhelming force of true speech worked, then why hasn't climate change denial, anti-vaccine nonsense etc been eradicated from the public sphere yet? In fact, why are those movements growing?
      - averros 8y ago
        That is because climate alarmism has been around for quite a while and anybody who has memory longer than a goldfish's can easily recollect the promised catastrophes which just didn't happen. Anti-vaccine nonsense is often painted as refusal to do all vaccines (there are nuts like that but they are few) rather than not exactly groundless suspicion that SOME new vaccines and aggressive vaccination regiments are pushed onto public not for the benefit of people but rather for the benefit of pharmas and because of evident willful misrepresentation of potential for dangerous side effects - not to mention that the very notion of forced medication strikes many people as utterly totalitarian. These movements are growing precisely because of persistent lying, exaggerations, and totalitarian inclinations of people who promote climate "change" (a good example of Orwellian newspeak, isn't it?) and ever-growing number of must-do vaccines as reason for more taxation and more corporate welfare. A normal human reaction to being forced to submit is to resist. Even if force is supposed to be for the victim's own good.
        fzeroracer 8y ago
        > These movements are growing precisely because of persistent lying, exaggerations, and totalitarian inclinations of people who promote climate "change" (a good example of Orwellian newspeak, isn't it?) What complete and utter bullshit. Yes, not all of the predictions behind climate change have come true; science evolves and new predictions or estimations are made as advancements in technology grow. Yet we've seen many of the predictions come true and many far worse things start to pop up, including the mass decline of insects worldwide and the rapidly rising sea level.
        SuddsMcDuff 8y ago
        "we've seen many of the predictions come true... including the mass decline of insects worldwide" Interesting you should mention that. No doubt you're referring to the recent study [1], heavily pushed by the likes of The Guardian [2], the Washington Post and the BBC, warning of the "collapse of nature" due to declining insect population. Did you also know that this study turned out to be flawed to the point of uselessness? So flawed in fact that the Global Warming Policy Foundation sent a complaint to its publishers and is calling for its withdrawal? [3] I think you unwittingly just proved aveross' point vis-à-vis 'climate alarmism'... [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397#F1 https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397#F1 [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti... [3] https://www.thegwpf.org/hyper-alarming-study-was-hype/ https://www.thegwpf.org/hyper-alarming-study-was-hype/
    - creato 8y ago
      > The difference is that there is also an overwhelming force of true speech to counter the lies and deceit. Is there really? The president of the United States: http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/highlights/vaccines http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/highlights/vaccines
  - mikeq101101 8y ago
    Part of freedom is responsibility. If you want to be intellectually consistent, you would never trust MSM. They lied about every war, their body count is far far higher than that of some YouTube channels.
    - somebadguy 8y ago
      You really are a sad lonely incel. Fuck off.
  - docdeek 8y ago
    What happens when it goes further than people who encourage others not to vaccinate their kids or who spread the word about a flat Earth? If you decide to allow the government to determine what is truth and what is a lie, and then to punish those that speak something the government considers untruthful, you’re heading for a future that is far more dangerous than measles outbreaks and anti-scientific discourse. What happens when the government determines there is an official version of history and you can’t dispute that official version without punishment? What happens when the government decides that news reports should all align with an official ‘true version’ of current events, as determined by the government, of course?
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      We're headed for a potentially disastrous future as a result of climate change being viewed as a hoax and old diseases being revived. I view the potential destruction of the human race as being far more dangerous than potentially some checks and balances on tech companies using 'faulty algorithms' as an excuse for why their content engines keep recommending conspiracy theories and false information to everyone. While the earth's climate ends up being permanently altered and forever affecting human habitation we'll still be arguing about how vaccines are turning the frogs gay.
  - raxxorrax 8y ago
    I would say at the point where free speech could believably proven to "hurt the innocent". If you denounce idealism in favor of some alleged pragmatism, I would need pragmatic evidence.
  - SuddsMcDuff 8y ago
    "In your idealistic world of free speech, the innocent pay the price for the freedom to spread lies and deceit." I'd replace 'innocent' with some combination of 'gullible', 'ignorant', or just 'stupid'. We have a tried & tested strategy for dealing with stupid people - it's called education.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      No, you're mischaracterising this. Gullible people believe the lies, but they're not necessarily the victims, they are more likely to be perpetrators. A lot of the nastier cases (e.g. Rwanda, Rohingya) the innocents are those murdered by the gullible.
- nightfly 8y ago
  Especially in an era where our president refers to every negative article about him as "fake news".
- CM30 8y ago
  Especially as you have no idea when a government hostile to you or your beliefs may take power, and if they do, well then it could means news and things you believe in get censored or banned. Anyone who believes governments should have the ability to decide what 'fake news' is should remember who's in the White House about now, or who runs the FCC at the moment. And who might be in the White House in a few years/run the FCC in a few years, etc.
pjc50 8y ago
Court cases? Ultimately that's where Sandy Hook has ended up. More seriously, if you believe that it's impossible for courts to establish truth or that they are the same thing as Party members of the elected government, you've already given up on the possibility of rule of law and arguably democracy as a whole.
- A2017U1 8y ago
  Can I take the dozens of news outlets in the Western world to court for lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It was their coverage which arguably resulted in public support with billions of tax dollars spent on a lie Or were they simply reporting what they were told without proof? It's a very slippery slope.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    I think any effective, honest campaign against lying in public life has to take both newspapers and politicians into account somehow. UK press regulation is absent but at the same time we have onerous libel law. Having "accurately reporting what the government minister said" still open press to liability is .. interesting, especially when considering how to report Trump.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Can I take the dozens of news outlets in the Western world to court for lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Which specific ones?
  - creato 8y ago
    > Can I take the dozens of news outlets in the Western world to court for lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It was their coverage which arguably resulted in public support with billions of tax dollars spent on a lie The "dozens of news outlets" were not, as far as they knew, lying. They were reporting what their sources, many/most of them public, told them. If you want to punish someone for this lie, it should be the Bush administration.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
abainbridge 8y ago
The report recommends, "tech companies assume legal liability for content identified as harmful after it has been posted by users". If they do that, the existing laws and court system would be used decide what is disinformation, in the same they are currently applied to traditionally published media.
- beaner 8y ago
  If this were being applied to the media, where the links come from, we wouldn't need to apply it to tech sites, where the links are shared. This doesn't cover all cases but it's offloading the responsibility from "journalists" to tech. If the media were honest at all they'd acknowledge that they're most of the problem.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  And then everything is frozen. No discourse allowed because moderators become the police and they cannot accept any liability. This law cannot be allowed to pass in such a broad form. Obviously it is convenient to status quo.

docdeek 8y ago

This is exactly right. Trusting a government to determine what is true and what is not, and enforcing that version of truth via shutting down certain speech and penalising those who speak it, is a bad idea. I’ve no problem with a government announcing that they believe something is true or false, but I have a big problem with them restricting the speech of people who happen to disagree.

fzeroracer 8y ago
Instead we have a ministry of truth being perpetuated by sites such as Youtube, with incredibly harmful information being disseminated and treated as truth resulting in disease outbreaks and outright denial of history. In your idealistic world of free speech, the innocent pay the price for the freedom to spread lies and deceit. At what point do we accept that it has to be fixed, or are we OK with diseases previously eradicated coming back in full force?
- colordrops 8y ago
  The difference is that there is also an overwhelming force of true speech to counter the lies and deceit. Once you start banning speech, only "official" lies will be allowed. See China. Where the hell did you get the idea that free speech is only OK until people start to lie? You can take my free speech from my cold, dead mouth.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    We're in the era when automated propaganda means the lies can far more easily overwhelm the truth. And just as with guns, the lies end up with the deaths of innocent bystanders.
    - colordrops 8y ago
      Whereas before, manual propaganda ended up with deaths of innocent bystanders. Can you point to any source that indicates that deaths have gone up due to AI/social media bots? And even if there was a study, it's not necessarily a case for censorship. Pretty much every basic right Americans have are trade-offs rather than 100% positive.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    > The difference is that there is also an overwhelming force of true speech to counter the lies and deceit That doesn't seem to be hugely helping as far as climate change goes. For anything where money is involved deepest pockets counts far more than the "overwhelming force" of true speech. It has become depressingly common to see topics being astroturfed or an "Independent Health Research Institute" set up by the guilty corporate or a trade body, and SEO'd and adworded to page 1. Like Soviet Bloc use of "democratic", use of "independent" in an information site has almost become proof it's not. :) We need to dream up some life changing consequences for lies and misinformation, serious enough that it stops being standard policy of every medium size enterprise.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    If that overwhelming force of true speech worked, then why hasn't climate change denial, anti-vaccine nonsense etc been eradicated from the public sphere yet? In fact, why are those movements growing?
    - averros 8y ago
      That is because climate alarmism has been around for quite a while and anybody who has memory longer than a goldfish's can easily recollect the promised catastrophes which just didn't happen. Anti-vaccine nonsense is often painted as refusal to do all vaccines (there are nuts like that but they are few) rather than not exactly groundless suspicion that SOME new vaccines and aggressive vaccination regiments are pushed onto public not for the benefit of people but rather for the benefit of pharmas and because of evident willful misrepresentation of potential for dangerous side effects - not to mention that the very notion of forced medication strikes many people as utterly totalitarian. These movements are growing precisely because of persistent lying, exaggerations, and totalitarian inclinations of people who promote climate "change" (a good example of Orwellian newspeak, isn't it?) and ever-growing number of must-do vaccines as reason for more taxation and more corporate welfare. A normal human reaction to being forced to submit is to resist. Even if force is supposed to be for the victim's own good.
      - fzeroracer 8y ago
        > These movements are growing precisely because of persistent lying, exaggerations, and totalitarian inclinations of people who promote climate "change" (a good example of Orwellian newspeak, isn't it?) What complete and utter bullshit. Yes, not all of the predictions behind climate change have come true; science evolves and new predictions or estimations are made as advancements in technology grow. Yet we've seen many of the predictions come true and many far worse things start to pop up, including the mass decline of insects worldwide and the rapidly rising sea level.
        SuddsMcDuff 8y ago
        "we've seen many of the predictions come true... including the mass decline of insects worldwide" Interesting you should mention that. No doubt you're referring to the recent study [1], heavily pushed by the likes of The Guardian [2], the Washington Post and the BBC, warning of the "collapse of nature" due to declining insect population. Did you also know that this study turned out to be flawed to the point of uselessness? So flawed in fact that the Global Warming Policy Foundation sent a complaint to its publishers and is calling for its withdrawal? [3] I think you unwittingly just proved aveross' point vis-à-vis 'climate alarmism'... [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397#F1 https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397#F1 [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti... [3] https://www.thegwpf.org/hyper-alarming-study-was-hype/ https://www.thegwpf.org/hyper-alarming-study-was-hype/
  - creato 8y ago
    > The difference is that there is also an overwhelming force of true speech to counter the lies and deceit. Is there really? The president of the United States: http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/highlights/vaccines http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/highlights/vaccines
- mikeq101101 8y ago
  Part of freedom is responsibility. If you want to be intellectually consistent, you would never trust MSM. They lied about every war, their body count is far far higher than that of some YouTube channels.
  - somebadguy 8y ago
    You really are a sad lonely incel. Fuck off.
- docdeek 8y ago
  What happens when it goes further than people who encourage others not to vaccinate their kids or who spread the word about a flat Earth? If you decide to allow the government to determine what is truth and what is a lie, and then to punish those that speak something the government considers untruthful, you’re heading for a future that is far more dangerous than measles outbreaks and anti-scientific discourse. What happens when the government determines there is an official version of history and you can’t dispute that official version without punishment? What happens when the government decides that news reports should all align with an official ‘true version’ of current events, as determined by the government, of course?
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    We're headed for a potentially disastrous future as a result of climate change being viewed as a hoax and old diseases being revived. I view the potential destruction of the human race as being far more dangerous than potentially some checks and balances on tech companies using 'faulty algorithms' as an excuse for why their content engines keep recommending conspiracy theories and false information to everyone. While the earth's climate ends up being permanently altered and forever affecting human habitation we'll still be arguing about how vaccines are turning the frogs gay.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  I would say at the point where free speech could believably proven to "hurt the innocent". If you denounce idealism in favor of some alleged pragmatism, I would need pragmatic evidence.
- SuddsMcDuff 8y ago
  "In your idealistic world of free speech, the innocent pay the price for the freedom to spread lies and deceit." I'd replace 'innocent' with some combination of 'gullible', 'ignorant', or just 'stupid'. We have a tried & tested strategy for dealing with stupid people - it's called education.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    No, you're mischaracterising this. Gullible people believe the lies, but they're not necessarily the victims, they are more likely to be perpetrators. A lot of the nastier cases (e.g. Rwanda, Rohingya) the innocents are those murdered by the gullible.
nightfly 8y ago
Especially in an era where our president refers to every negative article about him as "fake news".
CM30 8y ago
Especially as you have no idea when a government hostile to you or your beliefs may take power, and if they do, well then it could means news and things you believe in get censored or banned. Anyone who believes governments should have the ability to decide what 'fake news' is should remember who's in the White House about now, or who runs the FCC at the moment. And who might be in the White House in a few years/run the FCC in a few years, etc.

pjc50 8y ago

Court cases? Ultimately that's where Sandy Hook has ended up. More seriously, if you believe that it's impossible for courts to establish truth or that they are the same thing as Party members of the elected government, you've already given up on the possibility of rule of law and arguably democracy as a whole.

A2017U1 8y ago
Can I take the dozens of news outlets in the Western world to court for lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It was their coverage which arguably resulted in public support with billions of tax dollars spent on a lie Or were they simply reporting what they were told without proof? It's a very slippery slope.
- pjc50 8y ago
  I think any effective, honest campaign against lying in public life has to take both newspapers and politicians into account somehow. UK press regulation is absent but at the same time we have onerous libel law. Having "accurately reporting what the government minister said" still open press to liability is .. interesting, especially when considering how to report Trump.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Can I take the dozens of news outlets in the Western world to court for lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Which specific ones?
- creato 8y ago
  > Can I take the dozens of news outlets in the Western world to court for lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It was their coverage which arguably resulted in public support with billions of tax dollars spent on a lie The "dozens of news outlets" were not, as far as they knew, lying. They were reporting what their sources, many/most of them public, told them. If you want to punish someone for this lie, it should be the Bush administration.
AlexTWithBeard 8y ago

abainbridge 8y ago

The report recommends, "tech companies assume legal liability for content identified as harmful after it has been posted by users". If they do that, the existing laws and court system would be used decide what is disinformation, in the same they are currently applied to traditionally published media.

beaner 8y ago
If this were being applied to the media, where the links come from, we wouldn't need to apply it to tech sites, where the links are shared. This doesn't cover all cases but it's offloading the responsibility from "journalists" to tech. If the media were honest at all they'd acknowledge that they're most of the problem.
AstralStorm 8y ago
And then everything is frozen. No discourse allowed because moderators become the police and they cannot accept any liability. This law cannot be allowed to pass in such a broad form. Obviously it is convenient to status quo.