5 ms·

I would also argue that unfettered access to incorrect information is also a massive problem for democracy.

ohithereyou 7y ago
I don't want a Ministry of Truth filtering what I'm allowed to hear. In a functional democracy, education and robust debate are supposed to be the defenses against misinformation. Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument.
- beefield 7y ago
  Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma[1]. Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. [1]See Huxley, Brave new world.
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    >Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma This is not a new phenomenon. There have always been snake oil salesmen, con men, liars, and thieves. Societies that have very strict control over what people can and cannot say (think the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, where you could be jailed for counter-revolutionary speech or misleading the people) still had lots of problems with snake oil salesmen, con men, liars, and thieves, but they also had a problem with people going to jail (or worse) for saying "the state is the cause of this famine", "the state killed a bunch of innocent protesters", "I disagree with the current economic system", "I am angry that the state took my land from me and gave it to someone else", "the rent is too damn high", "maybe we shouldn't build so many nuclear weapons", and "I don't support Chairman Mao/Uncle Joe". I will assume that any Ministry of Truth that you would support would set out to be expressly non-political at its inception, but giving any one organization the power to restrain the expression of ideas is openly inviting those with an agenda to attempt to co-opt it into suppressing opinions and arguments critical of their agenda. This is an inherent drawback to giving anything power - it inherently becomes political even if the original intent is for it to not be political. I would rather live in a society where snake oil salesmen, con men, liars, and thieves are punished after they commit their crimes than have a single person's freedom to say "fuck the government" suppressed because they misquoted a statistic.
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    >Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. Every loves this idea right up until the point they realize that their own and the Ministry's opinions do not align.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomp 7y ago
    How would that work in practice? The Mainstream Media is obviously partisan and serves to protect the strong (e.g. Iraq WMD, Epstein). The government (and associated institutions, e.g. jails, court, FBI, NSA.) as well (e.g. Epstein, Snowden, Assange). Who would you "trust" to pick and choose the information you're allowed to see?
  - clarkmoody 7y ago
    The Ministry of Truth has coercive power. They can arrest you, jail you, torture you, or kill you -- legally -- for the content of your thought and speech. Private sector actors cannot do that.
    - beefield 7y ago
      Sorry, not answering all comments, but we do already have this kind of restricted Ministry of Truth. For example, there are libel laws and you may end up in jail for the content of your speech. And that is in my humble opinion a good thing. (With the painfully obvious disclaimer that I guess needs to anyhow be added in these kind of discussions, no, not all restriction of speech is good, there are really murky waters there when you want to draw the line, And that is why we have a thing called Democracy.)
      - ohithereyou 7y ago
        We do not have a Ministry of Truth that restricts and punishes people before for what the have not yet said. We have the rule of law that gets involved after the fact.
  - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
    It's a scylla and charibdis problem to be sure - though personally, I'd prefer we err on the side the Soma. But what's wrong with what we do now, private actors who try to build reputations as having possession of truth and we muddle along with those who sound most plausible to us? Sure, some people choose the wrong sources, but that seems a smaller risk than Everyone choosing the wrong source.
  - prepend 7y ago
    In BNW it was the government that established the system with soma for workers. It wasn’t a function of private industry.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    IIRC, Soma was voluntary, a recreational drug akin to marijuana. So I'd err significantly on that side.
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  Do you think the education level is adequate enough to protect against people constantly propagating lies?
  - leereeves 7y ago
    If you want someone to decide what's true because you believe the people aren't capable of doing so for themselves, you've already given up on democracy.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      I would like there to be better education and yes, some kind of authority that we can warn people that the information has been reviewed and is likely to be incorrect or lies. Objective reality does exist as does scientific concensus on for example climate change.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        Fact checkers and scientists already exist, but in a democracy, the people have the right to choose whether to listen to them or not. Are you saying you'd prefer that people be forced to follow their decisions? Or that information they declare "incorrect" be banned? That's not democratic, that's authoritarian.
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    Per my parent post: >Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument. In my mind, the correct response to the rise of FAKE NEWS (aka: yellow journalism, sensationalism, propaganda, public relations, advertisement) is to focus on teaching critical thinking skills, not to have a censor that says 'You can say this thing but not that thing'. Will bad people have harmful, self serving opinions? Yes, they will. That's part and parcel of living in a free society.
- chuckgreenman 7y ago
  That point of view works in a perfect world, but there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table. Drinking bleach will not cure autism, but their are desperate parents out there ready to walk into that bear trap and opportunistic people are ready to spring it.
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    >there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table Is it possible to enumerate the set of all ideas that cannot be expressed, and if so, how do you enumerate this set, and who has the power to determine the members of this set? Advocating that someone should have their child drink bleach to cure their autism is a despicable act, and is likely criminal after the fact, but that's the difference here - it's criminal after someone takes action on it. Quoting Justice Brandeis from Whitney v. California: >Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech, there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one. [...] If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      They should still be allowed to be seen but should be heavily caveatted as NOT TRUE if we know they aren't. Another good one is the reporting on vaccines causing autism, but we all know vaccines save millions of lives.
      - dfsDfass123124 7y ago
        Twitter obviously should be the ones to determine what is true and false.
      - 7y ago
leereeves 7y ago
Unfettered access to information requires unfettered access to incorrect information. The power to decide what's "correct" will be abused to block correct information that damages someone powerful.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Exactly this. Therefore it logically follows that democracy depends on access to incorrect information. Clearly the mods should remove andy_ppp’s comment immediately, if not be held liable for hosting it in the first place. </s>
- jacksnipe 7y ago
  Right, so the hypothesis is that we can’t have unfettered access to information.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    So who do you propose gets to spoonfeed the masses with their okayed content? That is a terrifying argument.
    - damontal 7y ago
      pre internet weren't the masses spoonfed okayed information by network tv and newspapers?
    - prepend 7y ago
      Obviously the natural answer is the companies who started first and developed these products that are now super widely used. I’ve only heard two arguments- let Twitter do what they want (viva Capitalism!) or have government regulate (viva Socialism!). I wish there was more thought given by Twitter, and others, to just self apply free speech rights and stick to using the current legal system to restricting speech. There’s a ton of law to protect people from damaging speech (harassment, slander/libel, dangerous threats, etc). It’s quite possible that Twitter can just use a more rational standard for their process.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
navigatesol 7y ago
>incorrect information This is easy for "world is flat vs round". There is much more nuance to, for example, "this is discriminatory vs not".
matwood 7y ago
Which in part stems back to anonymity. Information becomes easier to filter and fact check when the purveyors and the sources are not anonymous. People also tend to act more civil when not anonymous. But, a lack of anonymity brings a whole host of other problems.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Anonymity is the keystone of free speech. There is no freedom of speech without the freedom to speak anonymously.
  - mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
    And if I run a 10,000 bot network - should my speech be free?
    - zaroth 7y ago
      Have you heard of the Federalist papers? Sybil attacks are a consequence of anonymity combined with low cost of identity creation, and inability to distinguish between different identities. The fix for Sybil attacks generally involves making identity creation more expensive, or providing a means for distinguishing more valuable identities. On HN, for instance, the karma score is one such mechanism. These systems can work without removing anonymity. And I never said anonymity was easy or without trade-offs.
- nradov 7y ago
  Removing anonymity doesn't solve anything. People post and share all sorts of lies and fake news under their real names. They just don't care. Preserving anonymity is essential for whistle blowers and other vulnerable people.
romaaeterna 7y ago
Absolutely correct. Incorrect information is a huge problem for democracy. The best technology that we have right now to fight incorrect information is an educated citizenry of people free to decide the facts for themselves and debate them openly. We can invest in this proven technology by improving that education, freedom, and open debate.

I don't want a Ministry of Truth filtering what I'm allowed to hear. In a functional democracy, education and robust debate are supposed to be the defenses against misinformation. Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument.

beefield 7y ago
Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma[1]. Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. [1]See Huxley, Brave new world.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  >Unfortunately looks to me that if you do not have a Ministry of Truth, you end up with a society where private actors pump people with soma This is not a new phenomenon. There have always been snake oil salesmen, con men, liars, and thieves. Societies that have very strict control over what people can and cannot say (think the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, where you could be jailed for counter-revolutionary speech or misleading the people) still had lots of problems with snake oil salesmen, con men, liars, and thieves, but they also had a problem with people going to jail (or worse) for saying "the state is the cause of this famine", "the state killed a bunch of innocent protesters", "I disagree with the current economic system", "I am angry that the state took my land from me and gave it to someone else", "the rent is too damn high", "maybe we shouldn't build so many nuclear weapons", and "I don't support Chairman Mao/Uncle Joe". I will assume that any Ministry of Truth that you would support would set out to be expressly non-political at its inception, but giving any one organization the power to restrain the expression of ideas is openly inviting those with an agenda to attempt to co-opt it into suppressing opinions and arguments critical of their agenda. This is an inherent drawback to giving anything power - it inherently becomes political even if the original intent is for it to not be political. I would rather live in a society where snake oil salesmen, con men, liars, and thieves are punished after they commit their crimes than have a single person's freedom to say "fuck the government" suppressed because they misquoted a statistic.
- navigatesol 7y ago
  >Personally, I am willing to accept a restricted version of Ministry of Truth to avoid that outcome. Every loves this idea right up until the point they realize that their own and the Ministry's opinions do not align.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tomp 7y ago
  How would that work in practice? The Mainstream Media is obviously partisan and serves to protect the strong (e.g. Iraq WMD, Epstein). The government (and associated institutions, e.g. jails, court, FBI, NSA.) as well (e.g. Epstein, Snowden, Assange). Who would you "trust" to pick and choose the information you're allowed to see?
- clarkmoody 7y ago
  The Ministry of Truth has coercive power. They can arrest you, jail you, torture you, or kill you -- legally -- for the content of your thought and speech. Private sector actors cannot do that.
  - beefield 7y ago
    Sorry, not answering all comments, but we do already have this kind of restricted Ministry of Truth. For example, there are libel laws and you may end up in jail for the content of your speech. And that is in my humble opinion a good thing. (With the painfully obvious disclaimer that I guess needs to anyhow be added in these kind of discussions, no, not all restriction of speech is good, there are really murky waters there when you want to draw the line, And that is why we have a thing called Democracy.)
    - ohithereyou 7y ago
      We do not have a Ministry of Truth that restricts and punishes people before for what the have not yet said. We have the rule of law that gets involved after the fact.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  It's a scylla and charibdis problem to be sure - though personally, I'd prefer we err on the side the Soma. But what's wrong with what we do now, private actors who try to build reputations as having possession of truth and we muddle along with those who sound most plausible to us? Sure, some people choose the wrong sources, but that seems a smaller risk than Everyone choosing the wrong source.
- prepend 7y ago
  In BNW it was the government that established the system with soma for workers. It wasn’t a function of private industry.
- Izkata 7y ago
  IIRC, Soma was voluntary, a recreational drug akin to marijuana. So I'd err significantly on that side.
andy_ppp 7y ago
Do you think the education level is adequate enough to protect against people constantly propagating lies?
- leereeves 7y ago
  If you want someone to decide what's true because you believe the people aren't capable of doing so for themselves, you've already given up on democracy.
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    I would like there to be better education and yes, some kind of authority that we can warn people that the information has been reviewed and is likely to be incorrect or lies. Objective reality does exist as does scientific concensus on for example climate change.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      Fact checkers and scientists already exist, but in a democracy, the people have the right to choose whether to listen to them or not. Are you saying you'd prefer that people be forced to follow their decisions? Or that information they declare "incorrect" be banned? That's not democratic, that's authoritarian.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  Per my parent post: >Most western democracies long since scrapped proper education because it's easier to win the support of the population with propaganda^H public relations than it is to make a reasoned argument. In my mind, the correct response to the rise of FAKE NEWS (aka: yellow journalism, sensationalism, propaganda, public relations, advertisement) is to focus on teaching critical thinking skills, not to have a censor that says 'You can say this thing but not that thing'. Will bad people have harmful, self serving opinions? Yes, they will. That's part and parcel of living in a free society.
chuckgreenman 7y ago
That point of view works in a perfect world, but there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table. Drinking bleach will not cure autism, but their are desperate parents out there ready to walk into that bear trap and opportunistic people are ready to spring it.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  >there are some ideas that don't deserve a seat at the table Is it possible to enumerate the set of all ideas that cannot be expressed, and if so, how do you enumerate this set, and who has the power to determine the members of this set? Advocating that someone should have their child drink bleach to cure their autism is a despicable act, and is likely criminal after the fact, but that's the difference here - it's criminal after someone takes action on it. Quoting Justice Brandeis from Whitney v. California: >Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech, there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one. [...] If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    They should still be allowed to be seen but should be heavily caveatted as NOT TRUE if we know they aren't. Another good one is the reporting on vaccines causing autism, but we all know vaccines save millions of lives.
    - dfsDfass123124 7y ago
      Twitter obviously should be the ones to determine what is true and false.
    - 7y ago

leereeves 7y ago

Unfettered access to information requires unfettered access to incorrect information. The power to decide what's "correct" will be abused to block correct information that damages someone powerful.

zaroth 7y ago
Exactly this. Therefore it logically follows that democracy depends on access to incorrect information. Clearly the mods should remove andy_ppp’s comment immediately, if not be held liable for hosting it in the first place. </s>
jacksnipe 7y ago
Right, so the hypothesis is that we can’t have unfettered access to information.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  So who do you propose gets to spoonfeed the masses with their okayed content? That is a terrifying argument.
  - damontal 7y ago
    pre internet weren't the masses spoonfed okayed information by network tv and newspapers?
  - prepend 7y ago
    Obviously the natural answer is the companies who started first and developed these products that are now super widely used. I’ve only heard two arguments- let Twitter do what they want (viva Capitalism!) or have government regulate (viva Socialism!). I wish there was more thought given by Twitter, and others, to just self apply free speech rights and stick to using the current legal system to restricting speech. There’s a ton of law to protect people from damaging speech (harassment, slander/libel, dangerous threats, etc). It’s quite possible that Twitter can just use a more rational standard for their process.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

navigatesol 7y ago

>incorrect information This is easy for "world is flat vs round". There is much more nuance to, for example, "this is discriminatory vs not".

matwood 7y ago

Which in part stems back to anonymity. Information becomes easier to filter and fact check when the purveyors and the sources are not anonymous. People also tend to act more civil when not anonymous. But, a lack of anonymity brings a whole host of other problems.

zaroth 7y ago
Anonymity is the keystone of free speech. There is no freedom of speech without the freedom to speak anonymously.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
  And if I run a 10,000 bot network - should my speech be free?
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Have you heard of the Federalist papers? Sybil attacks are a consequence of anonymity combined with low cost of identity creation, and inability to distinguish between different identities. The fix for Sybil attacks generally involves making identity creation more expensive, or providing a means for distinguishing more valuable identities. On HN, for instance, the karma score is one such mechanism. These systems can work without removing anonymity. And I never said anonymity was easy or without trade-offs.
nradov 7y ago
Removing anonymity doesn't solve anything. People post and share all sorts of lies and fake news under their real names. They just don't care. Preserving anonymity is essential for whistle blowers and other vulnerable people.

romaaeterna 7y ago

Absolutely correct. Incorrect information is a huge problem for democracy. The best technology that we have right now to fight incorrect information is an educated citizenry of people free to decide the facts for themselves and debate them openly. We can invest in this proven technology by improving that education, freedom, and open debate.