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Honestly if a lie that blatant even needs to be censored, then I think we can just say democracy is a failure. What concerns me are the lies / truths that depen

Honestly if a lie that blatant even needs to be censored, then I think we can just say democracy is a failure. What concerns me are the lies / truths that depend very much on values and biases that would get caught out because of Facebook's own biases or people gaming the system.

justin66 7y ago
> Honestly if a lie that blatant even needs to be censored, then I think we can just say democracy is a failure. The problem with what you are saying is, if we accept that there can be any curbs on free speech at all, "how could anyone be stupid enough to believe that?" is not a useful guiding principle for setting the threshold at all. The classic example of speech that is not covered by the First Amendment is crying "fire!" in a crowded theater. Of course it's rather crazy for everyone to trample each other trying to escape a fire that does not exist when they do not even smell smoke. That is completely beside the point. We govern the speech based on the damage it does, the intent to do damage, and the utter lack of any redeeming qualities to the speech.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  FYI, the example of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater comes from a case against someone who was claiming that drafting people into the military was involuntary servitude, and was illegal and worth resisting. I think they should have been allowed to say that.
  - justin66 7y ago
    Oh, I should have chosen a different example! I certainly think the argument that we cannot censor based on whether or not someone would be a bit foolish to believe the lies being spread still stands, but I'll leave it for now. (Although I believe I share the OP's sentiment that the whole thing is not a sign that democracy is in great shape...)
eloisius 7y ago
I agree. I feel like creating the illusion of a disinformation-free platform will only weaken peoples' ability to discern it. Taiwan has a hands-off strategy for dealing with it for that reason [1]. 1: https://cpj.org/blog/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-combatting-disinfor.php https://cpj.org/blog/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-...
andrewflnr 7y ago
I don't buy defeatist statements like this anymore. Let's be real, if it turns out lies actually do "need" to be censored for whatever basically measurable definition of need you prefer, are you literally going to give up on democracy? What are you going to replace it with? Unless you just give up on morality entirely, you're still going to try to find a solution. That means that the only thing "...then we can just say democracy is a failure" accomplishes today is give you a clever-sounding way to avoid thinking about a hard problem. That's not a good thing.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  >> are you literally going to give up on democracy American democracy? Oh yeah I've absolutely given up. Candidates I like never even come close to winning. Often they don't win ballot access. I'll still vote, but I'm done contributing to campaigns or being optimistic about the outcome. I would expect most of the ads in question here fall into one of two categories. One of them is considered false by one side, but an argument can also be made by the other, because each side is probably cherry-picking some data, looking at different contexts with different values, etc. I honestly don't think FB can do this at scale without bias, arbitrary judgment calls that don't seem fair and take too long to resolve, etc. So let's say they just let all those cases slide. The other category is things that are what we on HN would call blatantly false, where there is no supporting evidence, tons of evidence to the contrary, and it just violates common sense. Are we saying that we trust people who fall for the latter, and do no independent research before basing votes on things they see in FB ads, are people we should still trust to judge national economic plans and foreign policy in the debates? I'm sorry if this is defeatist, but I just don't think so. Those aren't people I even want to be on a jury of my peers. I'd rather just be judged by the man with the law degree and years of experience. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, but I just don't even think it's a drop in the bucket. With so many people who lack basic knowledge of civics but have the right to vote, I think we're just past the point of no return to idiocracy until there's some major collapse and we start from the ground up. But the mere fact that we're having this argument is beyond me. After every election, which ever side loses goes grasping at straws. With Obama it was the birthers. With Trump it's social media ads. With the last 2 Republican presidents it's been the electoral college. I mean I'm sitting here watching the 49% (concentrated in a few dense areas), claim they have more of a democratic mandate than the 48% (spread out in very culturally distinct areas), when most people don't even vote. I see both parties as being inappropriately quick to judge and legislate matters that they're completely unfamiliar with. I'm pretty individualist, but US democracy seems to just be a constant race to a tyranny of the majority, with the legislature having abdicated many of their responsibilities to the executive. Violations of the law by the government just seem to get ignored because that's the way it is now. So if I did get to pick what we replace the current US democratic system with, I'd far rather go for at least a parliamentary system where instead of me thinking I have a representative for my geographic area, my party gets a share of the power and has to figure out a way to share power with the other parties. It's less direct, but if I don't get to be as self-governing as I want to be, I don't want to be governed by a bunch of people who fall for Facebook spam.
deleted 7y ago
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justin66 7y ago

> Honestly if a lie that blatant even needs to be censored, then I think we can just say democracy is a failure. The problem with what you are saying is, if we accept that there can be any curbs on free speech at all, "how could anyone be stupid enough to believe that?" is not a useful guiding principle for setting the threshold at all. The classic example of speech that is not covered by the First Amendment is crying "fire!" in a crowded theater. Of course it's rather crazy for everyone to trample each other trying to escape a fire that does not exist when they do not even smell smoke. That is completely beside the point. We govern the speech based on the damage it does, the intent to do damage, and the utter lack of any redeeming qualities to the speech.

TallGuyShort 7y ago
FYI, the example of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater comes from a case against someone who was claiming that drafting people into the military was involuntary servitude, and was illegal and worth resisting. I think they should have been allowed to say that.
- justin66 7y ago
  Oh, I should have chosen a different example! I certainly think the argument that we cannot censor based on whether or not someone would be a bit foolish to believe the lies being spread still stands, but I'll leave it for now. (Although I believe I share the OP's sentiment that the whole thing is not a sign that democracy is in great shape...)

eloisius 7y ago

I agree. I feel like creating the illusion of a disinformation-free platform will only weaken peoples' ability to discern it. Taiwan has a hands-off strategy for dealing with it for that reason [1]. 1: https://cpj.org/blog/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-combatting-disinfor.php https://cpj.org/blog/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-...

andrewflnr 7y ago

I don't buy defeatist statements like this anymore. Let's be real, if it turns out lies actually do "need" to be censored for whatever basically measurable definition of need you prefer, are you literally going to give up on democracy? What are you going to replace it with? Unless you just give up on morality entirely, you're still going to try to find a solution. That means that the only thing "...then we can just say democracy is a failure" accomplishes today is give you a clever-sounding way to avoid thinking about a hard problem. That's not a good thing.

TallGuyShort 7y ago
>> are you literally going to give up on democracy American democracy? Oh yeah I've absolutely given up. Candidates I like never even come close to winning. Often they don't win ballot access. I'll still vote, but I'm done contributing to campaigns or being optimistic about the outcome. I would expect most of the ads in question here fall into one of two categories. One of them is considered false by one side, but an argument can also be made by the other, because each side is probably cherry-picking some data, looking at different contexts with different values, etc. I honestly don't think FB can do this at scale without bias, arbitrary judgment calls that don't seem fair and take too long to resolve, etc. So let's say they just let all those cases slide. The other category is things that are what we on HN would call blatantly false, where there is no supporting evidence, tons of evidence to the contrary, and it just violates common sense. Are we saying that we trust people who fall for the latter, and do no independent research before basing votes on things they see in FB ads, are people we should still trust to judge national economic plans and foreign policy in the debates? I'm sorry if this is defeatist, but I just don't think so. Those aren't people I even want to be on a jury of my peers. I'd rather just be judged by the man with the law degree and years of experience. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, but I just don't even think it's a drop in the bucket. With so many people who lack basic knowledge of civics but have the right to vote, I think we're just past the point of no return to idiocracy until there's some major collapse and we start from the ground up. But the mere fact that we're having this argument is beyond me. After every election, which ever side loses goes grasping at straws. With Obama it was the birthers. With Trump it's social media ads. With the last 2 Republican presidents it's been the electoral college. I mean I'm sitting here watching the 49% (concentrated in a few dense areas), claim they have more of a democratic mandate than the 48% (spread out in very culturally distinct areas), when most people don't even vote. I see both parties as being inappropriately quick to judge and legislate matters that they're completely unfamiliar with. I'm pretty individualist, but US democracy seems to just be a constant race to a tyranny of the majority, with the legislature having abdicated many of their responsibilities to the executive. Violations of the law by the government just seem to get ignored because that's the way it is now. So if I did get to pick what we replace the current US democratic system with, I'd far rather go for at least a parliamentary system where instead of me thinking I have a representative for my geographic area, my party gets a share of the power and has to figure out a way to share power with the other parties. It's less direct, but if I don't get to be as self-governing as I want to be, I don't want to be governed by a bunch of people who fall for Facebook spam.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]