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So I went in thinking this was going to be a massive abuse of power, but it seems... reasonable. Either because it is intrinsically or because of the messed up

So I went in thinking this was going to be a massive abuse of power, but it seems... reasonable. Either because it is intrinsically or because of the messed up relationship with the truth most politics seems to have these days. I for one would welcome a mandatory fact check on all political speech, with clear separation of facts and opinion.

zpeti 7y ago
The thing with these things is in theory it sounds great, if you have a fully independent checker/person doing the checks. The trouble is we are human, and no one is truly independent. Put that together with the classic phrase, there are lies, damned lies, and then statistics. Facts can be shown in a way that manipulates, is that ok or not? Who decides, is the crucial question? Are you willing to give the same power you want, to tell us what facts are, to your political opponents?
- megous 7y ago
  > Are you willing to give the same power you want, to tell us what facts are, to your political opponents? Not sure what's up with this thought, as it's repeated many times in the comments here. You don't give power to the opponents, they either take it, or they are elected. They'll be able to make their own laws, or cancel old ones, regardless of what you want or do now.
  - tus88 7y ago
    It's called constitutional democracy. There should be restraints on the power of even an elected government.
    - mrybczyn 7y ago
      I support this idea! We should establish one of these.
      - tus88 7y ago
        We already did.
        diffeomorphism 7y ago
        Pretending to misunderstand sarcasm is not all that funny. In case you actually misunderstood the post you are replying to, the point was that these checks are not up to the task (as in "what you are describing sounds much, much better than it works in reality. How nice it would be if it actually were like that")
    - megous 7y ago
      Singapore? Anyway, we have constitutional democaracy where I live, and almost every article is qualified by "unless law tells othervise". Even speech is restricted, you can't say anything you like in TV, it's regulated and has an oversight bureaucracy. It's just made so that law is not targeted at any particular party, but on particular behavior.
    - ValentineC 7y ago
      > There should be restraints on the power of even an elected government. It's times like these that I'm glad Singapore has an open and mostly uncensored internet access policy. As the dominant party in Singapore controls more than two-thirds of parliament [1], they have been able to push through constitutional changes without much consultation [2] — a recent example was the increase in the private-sector requirement for candidates of our Presidency (head of state), and it being reserved for people from a specific ethnic group [3]. Mainstream media in Singapore is highly regulated and mainly spreads the government angle, which leaves the internet as one of the few open platforms for dissenting perspectives to be spread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Parliament_of_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Parliament_of_Singapore [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Singapore#Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Singapore#Amen... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_elections_in_Singapore#Qualifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_elections_in_Sing...
- adamlett 7y ago
  Who decides, is the crucial question? The fact that we have courts of law where judges routinely make decisions about difficult, gray area questions, tells me that this is a solved problem. I can imagine a special court (or board or whatever; just as long as it falls under the judiciary branch and is therefore independent) set up to make quick rulings. There should of course be a way to appeal the rulings to a normal court.
  - zpeti 7y ago
    And are those courts used for deciding who to ban/silence on twitter/facebook/instagram?
    - adamlett 7y ago
      I don’t think I understand the question. Private entities obviously still get to decide what kind of content they wish to disallow.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  > Facts can be shown in a way that manipulates, is that ok or not? That's an easy one, yes it is ok. If we just get rid of outright lies, that will do tremendous positive change in the news sphere. Manipulation can be subjective, but facts cannot. Manipulation is best left to the apprehension of the individual end users, because in other case it will just get more intricate and will never be fully caught anyway. Plus the determining of what is manipulation and what is legitimate weighing of facts is always going to be subjective, so there is nothing to do here.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    But then not regulating truth is the far easier solution. 1. The sun is yellow 2. The sun is white 3. The sun is green Which of those statements are false and which are true? Only facts please.
    - Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
      Those statements are not in the form of facts that matter. It is very easy to make an example when you are allowed to make abstract statements without context. Please try to make a statement that matters in any debate, that would change something in a policy or the practical world, and you'll see that it is much easier to reliably and objectively distinguish between which one is a fact and which is opinion/false/etc.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  How about instead of endless discussions about gray areas and ambiguities we simply worry only about two categories: - Clearly a lie and criminally so. - Might be a lie or not, but out of the scope of this law. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    The current situation is good enough.
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Maybe, yet there is still a lively discussion whether more tools or actions are necessary (e.g. Cambridge analytica, election interference, pizzagate and a guy storming into the restaurant with a gun based on that misinformation,...). I think most of that is probably already adequately covered by existing laws, but that selective (non)enforcement is potentially a big problem.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    That still sounds horrifyingly abusable which is the exact opposite of "good enough". Criminalizing "lies" sounds like the exact sort of thing that would be useful to cover up abuses of power. We already saw how "Espionage" was used for undeclared Wars with the Pentagon Papers. Now imagine Cointelpro also being covered or police brutality.
  - brutt 7y ago
    How you will charge external players for their coordinated fake-news attack on USA? Local laws are useless in international space, but they still can be used to suppress local opposition. Edit: remove "Russians".
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Red herring.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
Singapore is effectively a single party police-state. The only difference between SG and China, is that the PAP is in many ways, much more benevolent than the CCP (and economically, SG has a weird form of economic libertarianism). The ‘fact’ in this instance is mostly reasonable, but still open to a fair amount of interpretation. Before you celebrate a government seizing power, ask yourself if you’d like your political opponents to be wielding it, because they inevitably will be.
- thablackbull 7y ago
  Have you ever been to Singapore? It's hard to change views, but I'd like to leave this article with you [1]: > For example, a friend (a German national currently working in Washington) referred off-handedly to Singapore as a “police state” in a recent personal email. (She has never been here.) [...] That’s not all that perplexes Americans and some other Westerners. Singapore is a “police state”? If so, well, where are the police? One hardly ever sees one, and one never sees a uniformed policeman on a beat on the street. There is no visible acute poverty here, no beggars on the street, no evidence of homelessness, no gun violence, no graffiti, and women can walk alone at all hours of the day and night anywhere on the island without having to worry about being accosted. They say if you want to see a policeman, go to the malls and find one of the cardboard cutouts. [1] https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/11/21/the-puzzle-of-singapore/ https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/11/21/the-puzzle-...
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Singapore is pretty authoritarian but to call it a police state goes way too far. The comparison with the CCP is also honestly ridiculous. A more accurate parallel would be with Japan, with the almost unbroken run of LDP governments since the US occupation in terms of one party rule, but with a real and effective opposition. You could also look at other cities, albeit ones that are parts of, rather than constitutive of states, like San Francisco, which has been ruled by Democrats for longer than Singapore has been independent.
wccrawford 7y ago
Things like this usually start out helpful and useful, but over time it gets harder and harder to keep them from turning into something sinister. Most people aren't worried about the first use of a law like this. They're worried about the 100th, the 1000th, etc.
- latch 7y ago
  Aren't there just too many cases where this doesn't happen to make this appeal to probability flawed? For example, hate speech laws in Canada (or many other countries), or anti-discrimination laws? While they might have their detractors, it's a stretch to claim that they (in particular) have led us to a freedom apocalypse.
makomk 7y ago
It seems rather alarming to me. A member of the opposition got done for blaming the ruling party for the performance of a government-owned investment fund which is run by the wife of the current Prime Minister[1], and where (according to Wikipedia) the President has the ability to directly hire and fire the board members. It basically bans anyone from ever contradicting the official government position, no matter how questionable it is. Normally, a party which does this would have to worry about the other party getting back into power and doing the same to them, but since Singapore is a de-facto one party state that's not a concern here. Incidentally, the reason I can't link to a more mainstream article about the ownership of Temasek Holdings is probably that the more mainstream outlets seem to have been strongarmed into pulling them down.[2] [1] https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/singapores-lee-family-and-nepotism/ https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/singapores-lee-family-a... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/media/25times.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/media/25times.ht...
mytailorisrich 7y ago
A political speech is opinion. Some of these opinions may have been proved incorrect in the past but not everyone obviously agree on that. A mandatory fact check (by whom?) will end up suppressing 'incorrect' opinions and thus limit choice to one or two 'approved' candidates. (which is not far from what the Chinese government wants to do when it says that HK candidates must be approved first)

zpeti 7y ago

The thing with these things is in theory it sounds great, if you have a fully independent checker/person doing the checks. The trouble is we are human, and no one is truly independent. Put that together with the classic phrase, there are lies, damned lies, and then statistics. Facts can be shown in a way that manipulates, is that ok or not? Who decides, is the crucial question? Are you willing to give the same power you want, to tell us what facts are, to your political opponents?

megous 7y ago
> Are you willing to give the same power you want, to tell us what facts are, to your political opponents? Not sure what's up with this thought, as it's repeated many times in the comments here. You don't give power to the opponents, they either take it, or they are elected. They'll be able to make their own laws, or cancel old ones, regardless of what you want or do now.
- tus88 7y ago
  It's called constitutional democracy. There should be restraints on the power of even an elected government.
  - mrybczyn 7y ago
    I support this idea! We should establish one of these.
    - tus88 7y ago
      We already did.
      - diffeomorphism 7y ago
        Pretending to misunderstand sarcasm is not all that funny. In case you actually misunderstood the post you are replying to, the point was that these checks are not up to the task (as in "what you are describing sounds much, much better than it works in reality. How nice it would be if it actually were like that")
  - megous 7y ago
    Singapore? Anyway, we have constitutional democaracy where I live, and almost every article is qualified by "unless law tells othervise". Even speech is restricted, you can't say anything you like in TV, it's regulated and has an oversight bureaucracy. It's just made so that law is not targeted at any particular party, but on particular behavior.
  - ValentineC 7y ago
    > There should be restraints on the power of even an elected government. It's times like these that I'm glad Singapore has an open and mostly uncensored internet access policy. As the dominant party in Singapore controls more than two-thirds of parliament [1], they have been able to push through constitutional changes without much consultation [2] — a recent example was the increase in the private-sector requirement for candidates of our Presidency (head of state), and it being reserved for people from a specific ethnic group [3]. Mainstream media in Singapore is highly regulated and mainly spreads the government angle, which leaves the internet as one of the few open platforms for dissenting perspectives to be spread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Parliament_of_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Parliament_of_Singapore [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Singapore#Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Singapore#Amen... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_elections_in_Singapore#Qualifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_elections_in_Sing...
adamlett 7y ago
Who decides, is the crucial question? The fact that we have courts of law where judges routinely make decisions about difficult, gray area questions, tells me that this is a solved problem. I can imagine a special court (or board or whatever; just as long as it falls under the judiciary branch and is therefore independent) set up to make quick rulings. There should of course be a way to appeal the rulings to a normal court.
- zpeti 7y ago
  And are those courts used for deciding who to ban/silence on twitter/facebook/instagram?
  - adamlett 7y ago
    I don’t think I understand the question. Private entities obviously still get to decide what kind of content they wish to disallow.
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
> Facts can be shown in a way that manipulates, is that ok or not? That's an easy one, yes it is ok. If we just get rid of outright lies, that will do tremendous positive change in the news sphere. Manipulation can be subjective, but facts cannot. Manipulation is best left to the apprehension of the individual end users, because in other case it will just get more intricate and will never be fully caught anyway. Plus the determining of what is manipulation and what is legitimate weighing of facts is always going to be subjective, so there is nothing to do here.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  But then not regulating truth is the far easier solution. 1. The sun is yellow 2. The sun is white 3. The sun is green Which of those statements are false and which are true? Only facts please.
  - Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
    Those statements are not in the form of facts that matter. It is very easy to make an example when you are allowed to make abstract statements without context. Please try to make a statement that matters in any debate, that would change something in a policy or the practical world, and you'll see that it is much easier to reliably and objectively distinguish between which one is a fact and which is opinion/false/etc.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
diffeomorphism 7y ago
How about instead of endless discussions about gray areas and ambiguities we simply worry only about two categories: - Clearly a lie and criminally so. - Might be a lie or not, but out of the scope of this law. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  The current situation is good enough.
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Maybe, yet there is still a lively discussion whether more tools or actions are necessary (e.g. Cambridge analytica, election interference, pizzagate and a guy storming into the restaurant with a gun based on that misinformation,...). I think most of that is probably already adequately covered by existing laws, but that selective (non)enforcement is potentially a big problem.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That still sounds horrifyingly abusable which is the exact opposite of "good enough". Criminalizing "lies" sounds like the exact sort of thing that would be useful to cover up abuses of power. We already saw how "Espionage" was used for undeclared Wars with the Pentagon Papers. Now imagine Cointelpro also being covered or police brutality.
- brutt 7y ago
  How you will charge external players for their coordinated fake-news attack on USA? Local laws are useless in international space, but they still can be used to suppress local opposition. Edit: remove "Russians".
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Red herring.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

Singapore is effectively a single party police-state. The only difference between SG and China, is that the PAP is in many ways, much more benevolent than the CCP (and economically, SG has a weird form of economic libertarianism). The ‘fact’ in this instance is mostly reasonable, but still open to a fair amount of interpretation. Before you celebrate a government seizing power, ask yourself if you’d like your political opponents to be wielding it, because they inevitably will be.

thablackbull 7y ago
Have you ever been to Singapore? It's hard to change views, but I'd like to leave this article with you [1]: > For example, a friend (a German national currently working in Washington) referred off-handedly to Singapore as a “police state” in a recent personal email. (She has never been here.) [...] That’s not all that perplexes Americans and some other Westerners. Singapore is a “police state”? If so, well, where are the police? One hardly ever sees one, and one never sees a uniformed policeman on a beat on the street. There is no visible acute poverty here, no beggars on the street, no evidence of homelessness, no gun violence, no graffiti, and women can walk alone at all hours of the day and night anywhere on the island without having to worry about being accosted. They say if you want to see a policeman, go to the malls and find one of the cardboard cutouts. [1] https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/11/21/the-puzzle-of-singapore/ https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/11/21/the-puzzle-...
barry-cotter 7y ago
Singapore is pretty authoritarian but to call it a police state goes way too far. The comparison with the CCP is also honestly ridiculous. A more accurate parallel would be with Japan, with the almost unbroken run of LDP governments since the US occupation in terms of one party rule, but with a real and effective opposition. You could also look at other cities, albeit ones that are parts of, rather than constitutive of states, like San Francisco, which has been ruled by Democrats for longer than Singapore has been independent.

wccrawford 7y ago

Things like this usually start out helpful and useful, but over time it gets harder and harder to keep them from turning into something sinister. Most people aren't worried about the first use of a law like this. They're worried about the 100th, the 1000th, etc.

latch 7y ago
Aren't there just too many cases where this doesn't happen to make this appeal to probability flawed? For example, hate speech laws in Canada (or many other countries), or anti-discrimination laws? While they might have their detractors, it's a stretch to claim that they (in particular) have led us to a freedom apocalypse.

makomk 7y ago

It seems rather alarming to me. A member of the opposition got done for blaming the ruling party for the performance of a government-owned investment fund which is run by the wife of the current Prime Minister[1], and where (according to Wikipedia) the President has the ability to directly hire and fire the board members. It basically bans anyone from ever contradicting the official government position, no matter how questionable it is. Normally, a party which does this would have to worry about the other party getting back into power and doing the same to them, but since Singapore is a de-facto one party state that's not a concern here. Incidentally, the reason I can't link to a more mainstream article about the ownership of Temasek Holdings is probably that the more mainstream outlets seem to have been strongarmed into pulling them down.[2] [1] https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/singapores-lee-family-and-nepotism/ https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/singapores-lee-family-a... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/media/25times.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/business/media/25times.ht...

mytailorisrich 7y ago

A political speech is opinion. Some of these opinions may have been proved incorrect in the past but not everyone obviously agree on that. A mandatory fact check (by whom?) will end up suppressing 'incorrect' opinions and thus limit choice to one or two 'approved' candidates. (which is not far from what the Chinese government wants to do when it says that HK candidates must be approved first)