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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
by 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 agoIt's called constitutional democracy. There should be restraints on the power of even an elected government.
- mrybczyn 7y agoI support this idea! We should establish one of these.
- tus88 7y agoWe already did.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoPretending 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 agoSingapore? 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 agoWho 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.
- 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 agoBut 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 agoThose 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 agoHow 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 agoThe current situation is good enough.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoMaybe, 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 agoThat 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 agoHow 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 agoRed herring.