8 ms·

A Small Town in the Philippines Banned Gossip

77 points by secstate 7y ago

jimrhods23 7y ago
There is a paywall. But, If the town actually tried to ban gossip, it's essentially a ban on the freedom of speech. I'm not sure how that would be enforced anyway. You aren't allowed to talk about anything besides yourself?
brians 7y ago
I hear it’s because of what the mayor did.
coding123 7y ago
Sometimes I feel like creating a chrome plugin that hides pay wall sites in hn. Since I couldn't read it. Yikes how do the police handle a report of gossip... You get arrested and then what? Let's say you decide to keep gossiping, 3 strikes and they treat you like a drug dealer I bet.
- justwalt 7y ago
  Why not tweak the tool to modify the links into outline links?
skilled 7y ago
Gossip, the lowest form of human interaction and yet most find it a reasonable way to get by in life. It's not laws that have to fix this, but people themselves have to figure out the value of self-respect.
- mantas 7y ago
  How do you define what is threshold of reasonable chat on other people? How much proof do you need? Do you allow more leeway for public persons? Or do you want people to stop talking about other people altogether?
  - skilled 7y ago
    It's easier to judge others actions than it is to take responsibility for your own. That's all I am saying.
- martindbp 7y ago
  I always had your knee-jerk reaction to gossip, but after reading "How the mind works" by Steven Pinker I had to rethink my stance. I think I've been too influenced by sayings such as "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people". What Pinker argues is that gossip is a very important activity, it helps us learn more about our world, the social structures within it, and more importantly: who is trustworthy? Let's say A gossips to me about B (saying something bad). If another person C corroborates the character of B with their own experience, I can reasonably assume B is a bad actor. If C doesn't corroborate then perhaps A is the bad actor, spreading false rumours. Either way I've gained information. During our evolutionary history, learning who is trustworthy and who is not would be the difference between life and death. Just because we are far removed from lethal consequences in today's society doesn't mean gossip is any less useful. It can help you figure out if you should trust your business partner, invest in someone's business or provide a personal loan etc.
  - ARandomerDude 7y ago
    > If C doesn't corroborate then perhaps A is the bad actor, spreading false rumours. The problem: you always suspect B of being a bad actor and maybe A. How long is enough for C to have completed his non-corroboration period? Gossip destroys relationships with suspicion at every turn. ETA: please don't take this as an endorsement of gossip being a criminal offense in the Philippines.
    - yowlingcat 7y ago
      I don't think this argument makes sense. The information gossip provides is probabilistic rather than binary. You never really get a "true" answer, but that's the point -- it's just a signal. Suspicions are not created equal; perhaps a major, corroborated, founded suspicion could destroy relationships where a minor one may not.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Gpetrium 7y ago
      I think it is worth noting that the word gossip has been painted with negative connotation in our society. The moment humans realized that the world is full of information asymmetry and unknowns, they started to gossip. Gossip is a tool to transfer knowledge of others/things to someone who may not have the means to confirm it themselves. In theory, a private reference from a friend to a potential employer about you is gossip (E.g. @ARandomerDude is a trustworthy individual, you should hire him) even thought your friend may not have a full picture of who you are.
noego 7y ago
I don't support this specific law, since "gossip" is a nebulous term. That said, the idea is pretty intriguing. I suspect that society would be far better off if the deliberate authoring and spread of misinformation, were made illegal. There would have to be a stupidity-waiver; anyone dumb enough to actually believe in something like Flat-Earth should be allowed to espouse it all they want. But anyone who willfully lies about witnessing things that never happened, or claims possession of evidence that they do not actually possess, should face charges for the deliberate spread of misinformation.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  This is a bad idea because of the chilling effect it has on unpopular ideas and information. This is especially chilling to scrutinization of long held falsehoods. I'm thinking of all the "facts" I was taught in school that turned out to be flat wrong.
  - optimalsolver 7y ago
    Such as?
    - derangedHorse 7y ago
      Pluto being a planet lol
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      Tastebuds. The big crunch.
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      That the US is a wonderful nation that never did any wrong and never helped dictatorships rise to power in it’s decades long fight against the Soviet Union.
    - skookumchuck 7y ago
      Margarine was healthier than butter. I sure regret following that "fact".
partisan 7y ago
At a small enough level, you can maintain standards of conduct that are civil and fair. Once you reach a certain size, you lose the cohesion and accountability that makes someone feel like they need to be civil. Maybe part of solving that problem is making everyone part of a group where they are accountable and then making that group accountable to a larger group and so on until the largest group is accountable to society as a whole. Some organized crime groups work this way as a way of controlling the incidence of violence, but the bonds between the members is stronger, in some sense than the bonds between casual acquaintances in the groups we form on a day-to-day basis. I was thinking about how Facebook and YouTube are delisting and otherwise punishing creators of “fake news” and while it certainly seems a way of punishing and silencing unpopular thoughts and opinions, I do wonder whether a tightly controlled Facebook is the solution to society’s ills. I see people on Twitter being defamed for their speech or actions and I wonder if that is where we start to get our accountability back at a societal level? Where else do we have a group where everyone can be held accountable?
- jamesb93 7y ago
  You mean like a government?
  - partisan 7y ago
    Not like a government. Unless you mean to make unpopular speech illegal. What I am referring to is a group that makes people accountable for behavior that is legal by the definition of the law, but is otherwise considered anti-social and should be discouraged through shaming or loss of status.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      That group already exists, it's called "everyone," and their past efforts all Twitter harassment.
      - partisan 7y ago
        “Everyone” is too large of a group. And way too anonymous. The group would be one in which you value your membership and the opinion of others. In the past, it would have been a church, a social club, or in a small town, the town itself.
oedmarap 7y ago
It's rare that I get to quote Atlas Shrugged so I'll just leave this below: > There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. What's even more worrying in my opinion from the article: - references to Puritanical punishment seemingly framed in a positive light - citing of the linguistic/anthropological context of gossip without much further qualification - the Binaloan authorities' clear lack of understanding of what merits free speech - the mention of this law being beneficial to upcoming political candidates (of whom public discussion should be encouraged)
- kadendogthing 7y ago
  >It's rare that I get to quote Atlas Shrugged I mean there's not really anything applicable in the book to reality or how people act.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    Pointing out the book is a bit cringe-worthy and overly simplistic is one thing, but nothing in the book describes how people act? Have you read the book? Most often online opinions on Rand have been learned by reading second-hand (if that) opinions (also known as: gossip). I recall it had a few things to say about things like big business cozying up to government, government propagandizing the populace, that sort of thing. Shortcomings aside, I think it has a lot of relevance to today's world.
    - kadendogthing 7y ago
      >Have you read the book? Yep. I even have the hard copy. Have had it since I was 15. >but nothing in the book describes how people act? Nothing original. But more often than not it often misapplies grounded social or civil concepts that would otherwise be valid. Which is what's happening right in OP's post. It's civic misinformation.
mudil 7y ago
Many evolutionary biologists believe that gossip is an evolutionary adaptation. The highest pressure that an individual organism experiences does not come from predators, but rather other individuals of the same species. There is always a struggle for mates, food, resources, space, etc. Even with predators, it is often not whether you can run away from it, but whether you are faster than other members of your species. Coming back to the gossip, it is basically assessment of what others are doing and where you stand. That's why gossip is so interesting for so many people, and that's why we gossip, why we have all these magazines, and all these reality shows. In some way, even fiction and drama is a sort of gossip, where we watch what happens to others and evaluate it from our own perspective.
dlphn___xyz 7y ago
thats not gonna happen
panarky 7y ago
> I was just repeating something I heard from someone else. I thought it was true. That family has a lot of debts. Advanced nations have systematized, normalized and sanitized these ancient behaviors to the extent we don't even realize we're doing the same thing on an industrial scale. How is gossiping about a neighbor's debt morally different than a credit reporting agency? How is a mining company giving a bag of cash to a provincial governor morally different from campaign contributions from lobbyists?
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > How is gossiping about a neighbor's debt morally different than a credit reporting agency? The problem with this example of gossip (and most gossip, IMO) isn't spreading information about creditworthiness. It's that gossip is unreliable, subject to inaccuracy, has a transmission medium that isn't content-neutral (ie lurid things get spread more often and content gets exaggerated), has no real recourse for the subjects of inaccuracies, doesn't have codified limits on content, etc etc etc. It's a very flawed method of information transmission, even when the transmission of that information is broadly good for society. I think the credit reporting system as it stands is a huge mess, but there's value in knowing a potential debtor's creditworthiness, and more importantly, the reporting system substantially mitigates most of the issues described above by operationalizing the process. A random person can't easily "start a rumor" about someone's credit history, you can view your report and dispute it, the agencies don't randomly add to the size of your reported debt because it makes a better story, they don't randomly report on things outside of their narrow purview, etc. > How is a mining company giving a bag of cash to a provincial governor morally different from campaign contributions from lobbyists? No real disagreement here...
  - swiley 7y ago
    > A random person can't easily "start a rumor" about someone's credit history I would totally disagree here, a random person can start a rummer about a random person's credit history. People who have come in contact with each other can start rumors about each other's credit history. There's no authentication. I would argue it's really no different, it's just bigger and most of us just live with it.
erokar 7y ago
Just another confirmation the Philippines has descended into fascism.
dymk 7y ago
How much would you like to bet that this became a thing because a city official didn't like a rumor spreading about them? How much would you like to bet that that rumor was true?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
scottmsul 7y ago
I'd be much more afraid of a government cracking down on gossip than a little gossip...
garbonicc 7y ago
God bless the United States of America.

77 points by secstate 7y ago

There is a paywall. But, If the town actually tried to ban gossip, it's essentially a ban on the freedom of speech. I'm not sure how that would be enforced anyway. You aren't allowed to talk about anything besides yourself?

brians 7y ago

I hear it’s because of what the mayor did.

coding123 7y ago

Sometimes I feel like creating a chrome plugin that hides pay wall sites in hn. Since I couldn't read it. Yikes how do the police handle a report of gossip... You get arrested and then what? Let's say you decide to keep gossiping, 3 strikes and they treat you like a drug dealer I bet.

justwalt 7y ago
Why not tweak the tool to modify the links into outline links?

skilled 7y ago

Gossip, the lowest form of human interaction and yet most find it a reasonable way to get by in life. It's not laws that have to fix this, but people themselves have to figure out the value of self-respect.

mantas 7y ago
How do you define what is threshold of reasonable chat on other people? How much proof do you need? Do you allow more leeway for public persons? Or do you want people to stop talking about other people altogether?
- skilled 7y ago
  It's easier to judge others actions than it is to take responsibility for your own. That's all I am saying.
martindbp 7y ago
I always had your knee-jerk reaction to gossip, but after reading "How the mind works" by Steven Pinker I had to rethink my stance. I think I've been too influenced by sayings such as "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people". What Pinker argues is that gossip is a very important activity, it helps us learn more about our world, the social structures within it, and more importantly: who is trustworthy? Let's say A gossips to me about B (saying something bad). If another person C corroborates the character of B with their own experience, I can reasonably assume B is a bad actor. If C doesn't corroborate then perhaps A is the bad actor, spreading false rumours. Either way I've gained information. During our evolutionary history, learning who is trustworthy and who is not would be the difference between life and death. Just because we are far removed from lethal consequences in today's society doesn't mean gossip is any less useful. It can help you figure out if you should trust your business partner, invest in someone's business or provide a personal loan etc.
- ARandomerDude 7y ago
  > If C doesn't corroborate then perhaps A is the bad actor, spreading false rumours. The problem: you always suspect B of being a bad actor and maybe A. How long is enough for C to have completed his non-corroboration period? Gossip destroys relationships with suspicion at every turn. ETA: please don't take this as an endorsement of gossip being a criminal offense in the Philippines.
  - yowlingcat 7y ago
    I don't think this argument makes sense. The information gossip provides is probabilistic rather than binary. You never really get a "true" answer, but that's the point -- it's just a signal. Suspicions are not created equal; perhaps a major, corroborated, founded suspicion could destroy relationships where a minor one may not.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gpetrium 7y ago
    I think it is worth noting that the word gossip has been painted with negative connotation in our society. The moment humans realized that the world is full of information asymmetry and unknowns, they started to gossip. Gossip is a tool to transfer knowledge of others/things to someone who may not have the means to confirm it themselves. In theory, a private reference from a friend to a potential employer about you is gossip (E.g. @ARandomerDude is a trustworthy individual, you should hire him) even thought your friend may not have a full picture of who you are.

noego 7y ago

I don't support this specific law, since "gossip" is a nebulous term. That said, the idea is pretty intriguing. I suspect that society would be far better off if the deliberate authoring and spread of misinformation, were made illegal. There would have to be a stupidity-waiver; anyone dumb enough to actually believe in something like Flat-Earth should be allowed to espouse it all they want. But anyone who willfully lies about witnessing things that never happened, or claims possession of evidence that they do not actually possess, should face charges for the deliberate spread of misinformation.

Waterluvian 7y ago
This is a bad idea because of the chilling effect it has on unpopular ideas and information. This is especially chilling to scrutinization of long held falsehoods. I'm thinking of all the "facts" I was taught in school that turned out to be flat wrong.
- optimalsolver 7y ago
  Such as?
  - derangedHorse 7y ago
    Pluto being a planet lol
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Tastebuds. The big crunch.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    That the US is a wonderful nation that never did any wrong and never helped dictatorships rise to power in it’s decades long fight against the Soviet Union.
  - skookumchuck 7y ago
    Margarine was healthier than butter. I sure regret following that "fact".

partisan 7y ago

At a small enough level, you can maintain standards of conduct that are civil and fair. Once you reach a certain size, you lose the cohesion and accountability that makes someone feel like they need to be civil. Maybe part of solving that problem is making everyone part of a group where they are accountable and then making that group accountable to a larger group and so on until the largest group is accountable to society as a whole. Some organized crime groups work this way as a way of controlling the incidence of violence, but the bonds between the members is stronger, in some sense than the bonds between casual acquaintances in the groups we form on a day-to-day basis. I was thinking about how Facebook and YouTube are delisting and otherwise punishing creators of “fake news” and while it certainly seems a way of punishing and silencing unpopular thoughts and opinions, I do wonder whether a tightly controlled Facebook is the solution to society’s ills. I see people on Twitter being defamed for their speech or actions and I wonder if that is where we start to get our accountability back at a societal level? Where else do we have a group where everyone can be held accountable?

jamesb93 7y ago
You mean like a government?
- partisan 7y ago
  Not like a government. Unless you mean to make unpopular speech illegal. What I am referring to is a group that makes people accountable for behavior that is legal by the definition of the law, but is otherwise considered anti-social and should be discouraged through shaming or loss of status.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    That group already exists, it's called "everyone," and their past efforts all Twitter harassment.
    - partisan 7y ago
      “Everyone” is too large of a group. And way too anonymous. The group would be one in which you value your membership and the opinion of others. In the past, it would have been a church, a social club, or in a small town, the town itself.

oedmarap 7y ago

It's rare that I get to quote Atlas Shrugged so I'll just leave this below: > There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. What's even more worrying in my opinion from the article: - references to Puritanical punishment seemingly framed in a positive light - citing of the linguistic/anthropological context of gossip without much further qualification - the Binaloan authorities' clear lack of understanding of what merits free speech - the mention of this law being beneficial to upcoming political candidates (of whom public discussion should be encouraged)

kadendogthing 7y ago
>It's rare that I get to quote Atlas Shrugged I mean there's not really anything applicable in the book to reality or how people act.
- mistermann 7y ago
  Pointing out the book is a bit cringe-worthy and overly simplistic is one thing, but nothing in the book describes how people act? Have you read the book? Most often online opinions on Rand have been learned by reading second-hand (if that) opinions (also known as: gossip). I recall it had a few things to say about things like big business cozying up to government, government propagandizing the populace, that sort of thing. Shortcomings aside, I think it has a lot of relevance to today's world.
  - kadendogthing 7y ago
    >Have you read the book? Yep. I even have the hard copy. Have had it since I was 15. >but nothing in the book describes how people act? Nothing original. But more often than not it often misapplies grounded social or civil concepts that would otherwise be valid. Which is what's happening right in OP's post. It's civic misinformation.

mudil 7y ago

Many evolutionary biologists believe that gossip is an evolutionary adaptation. The highest pressure that an individual organism experiences does not come from predators, but rather other individuals of the same species. There is always a struggle for mates, food, resources, space, etc. Even with predators, it is often not whether you can run away from it, but whether you are faster than other members of your species. Coming back to the gossip, it is basically assessment of what others are doing and where you stand. That's why gossip is so interesting for so many people, and that's why we gossip, why we have all these magazines, and all these reality shows. In some way, even fiction and drama is a sort of gossip, where we watch what happens to others and evaluate it from our own perspective.

dlphn___xyz 7y ago

thats not gonna happen

panarky 7y ago

> I was just repeating something I heard from someone else. I thought it was true. That family has a lot of debts. Advanced nations have systematized, normalized and sanitized these ancient behaviors to the extent we don't even realize we're doing the same thing on an industrial scale. How is gossiping about a neighbor's debt morally different than a credit reporting agency? How is a mining company giving a bag of cash to a provincial governor morally different from campaign contributions from lobbyists?

wutbrodo 7y ago
> How is gossiping about a neighbor's debt morally different than a credit reporting agency? The problem with this example of gossip (and most gossip, IMO) isn't spreading information about creditworthiness. It's that gossip is unreliable, subject to inaccuracy, has a transmission medium that isn't content-neutral (ie lurid things get spread more often and content gets exaggerated), has no real recourse for the subjects of inaccuracies, doesn't have codified limits on content, etc etc etc. It's a very flawed method of information transmission, even when the transmission of that information is broadly good for society. I think the credit reporting system as it stands is a huge mess, but there's value in knowing a potential debtor's creditworthiness, and more importantly, the reporting system substantially mitigates most of the issues described above by operationalizing the process. A random person can't easily "start a rumor" about someone's credit history, you can view your report and dispute it, the agencies don't randomly add to the size of your reported debt because it makes a better story, they don't randomly report on things outside of their narrow purview, etc. > How is a mining company giving a bag of cash to a provincial governor morally different from campaign contributions from lobbyists? No real disagreement here...
- swiley 7y ago
  > A random person can't easily "start a rumor" about someone's credit history I would totally disagree here, a random person can start a rummer about a random person's credit history. People who have come in contact with each other can start rumors about each other's credit history. There's no authentication. I would argue it's really no different, it's just bigger and most of us just live with it.

erokar 7y ago

Just another confirmation the Philippines has descended into fascism.

dymk 7y ago

How much would you like to bet that this became a thing because a city official didn't like a rumor spreading about them? How much would you like to bet that that rumor was true?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

scottmsul 7y ago

I'd be much more afraid of a government cracking down on gossip than a little gossip...

garbonicc 7y ago

God bless the United States of America.