8 ms·

>"...the desire to have someone force these companies to remove hate speech or misinformation can backfire. To see how, we need look no further than Singapore’s

by Reedx 7y ago

>"...the desire to have someone force these companies to remove hate speech or misinformation can backfire. To see how, we need look no further than Singapore’s new “fake news” law, which has already been used to force an opposition politician to modify a Facebook post to include the government’s position on the topic he mentioned in his post, along with a large banner across the original saying “False.” This is so obvious, it's disheartening to me that people are trying to give the US government power to do this.

jerf 7y ago
It's the goal. Those seeking it would be advised to consider whether it's a power they really want Trump to have, or his successor, but there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely and the fact that some people they disagree with has some control at the moment is a momentary aberration. I would suggest history does not favor this viewpoint.
- downerending 7y ago
  You can like Trump or not, but he's probably one of the people in power who'd least care for this sort of censorship. He clearly revels in public debate, perhaps even to an unhealthy degree. It may not be Lincoln-Douglas stuff, but that's how democracy is supposed to work.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shoes_for_thee 7y ago
    Citation needed. When he sees something he disagrees with he flatly calls it fake and moves on. That's not debate.
    - spaginal 7y ago
      But that is where it ends with him. Debate doesn't have to be healthy to still be debate, but he isn't stopping the people from saying the things against him. When you start trying to create laws or compel companies to shut down speech you disagree with or don't like, either through the guise of hate speech laws or "stopping disinformation", that is the scenario we are scared about that is rampant for abuse.
      - shoes_for_thee 7y ago
        > he isn't stopping the people from saying the things against him. A) yes, he does. refer to the various people he has paid to stop talking about him through NDAs and catch & kill. b) yes, he does. refer to the trump campaign's refusal to credential bloomberg most recently. and various would-if-he-could: c) refer to trump saying SNL is an attack on his safety, eg. d) refer to trump referring to any non-fox media as 'the enemy of the people' e) refer to trump recommending treason charges against NYT. f) refer to trump recommending treason charges for people who refused to applaud at the state of the union and on and on and on. there are endless examples of trump requesting legal action against various people "saying things" about him that he doesn't like. those people are only protected by the constitution. i have no interest in creating laws to compel companies to shut down speech i disagree with. i am a free speech absolutist. but a) he does stop people from saying things via civil legal action and b) he would stop people from saying things via criminal action if it were legal to do so.
  - ikeyany 7y ago
    That is not factually correct. He revokes press credentials of journalists who criticize him. He encourages people to attack journalists, and some of his supporters have already done so. I advise caution against spreading false information so blithely.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - gotoeleven 7y ago
      Im just curious what journalists you're talking about. He tried to revoke Jim Acosta's for being very uncordial (to put it lightly), and he revoked Bloombergs after they said they would only investigate him and not Democrats. Are there others? If he revoked the credentials of everyone who criticized him then there would be hardly any left...
      - ikeyany 7y ago
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-house-has-revoked-my-press-pass-its-not-just-me--its-curtailing-access-for-all-journalists/2019/05/08/bb9794b4-71c0-11e9-8be0-ca575670e91c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-house-has-...?
        gotoeleven 7y ago
        This might be a better description of what happened, without the paywall and a bit less histrionics. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/white-house-press-passes.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/white-house-press-passes...
    - will4274 7y ago
      He certainly does not revoke press credentials of journalists just for criticizing him. He did revoke the credentials of a single journalist who was apparently incapable of waiting his turn and repeatedly interrupted the press conference. I'd advise you to heed your own advice about spreading false information.
  - headcanon 7y ago
    He revels in attention towards himself when he says outlandish or controversial stuff, and calls dissenting viewpoints "Fake News". Not the same thing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - livueta 7y ago
    Without descending too deeply into American domestic politics, I'm skeptical of that given his stated desire to expand the scope of slander and libel laws. It's really easy to end up in a "speech for me, not for thee" kind of scenario, especially when that reveling is generally more polemical than forensic.
    - xanthrax 7y ago
      Similar to how for years in the UK you had super injunctions (less so now) that could be requested but they weren't cheap.
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      I understand why public figures have no recourse to slander and lies, but it doesn’t make it fair. It’s only just in that protecting the powerless against armies of lawyers from the powerful, is the best we can do. But allowing damaging lies to go unpunished is certainly a black eye for justice.
  - growlist 7y ago
    Indeed. From my observation it's the left that are looking intolerant and scary, attempting to force opinions in their preferred direction and delegitimise opposing views.
- daenz 7y ago
  It seems like most people who support that kind of censorship are indeed short-sighted of how it can be used against them in the future, but there are also bad actors that just want to destabilize everything because it fits in with their goal making conditions bad enough that it will be easier to "smash the X" (patriarchy, capitalism, social classes, etc). Anything that upsets what they perceive as the "established order" is good, because it gives a better foothold to advance their other agendas.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely ... and who are willing to alter the rules to make sure that, once they get power, it will be easier for them to continue to have complete control indefinitely. And why? Because they are certain of the rightness of their ideas, and therefore if the people vote against them, it can only be because the people have been lead astray by lies and propaganda. Such people deserve, at a minimum, our profound suspicion.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    William S. Burroughs argued that people who know that they're right, and impose their beliefs on others, should be killed on sight. Because they're infected with the "right virus". Just like we kill rabid animals. But then, he was probably joking. And fscking with his readers' perspectives.
- tenpies 7y ago
  > there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely I think you are confusing outcome for mechanism. The idea is that once their side wins, they'll clamp down so hard on wrong-think that the other side effective ceases to exist. It will be like elections under a dictator: sure there's another party, but if you vote for them you get a free trip to the re-education camp and get erased from all databases.
tenebrisalietum 7y ago
Constitutional rights don't matter for people if parties with vast economic power can render the exercise of those rights pointless. Most people absolutely will trade freedom for security, because most people aren't late 1700's frontiersman that hunt for food, defend land from intruders, huddle together in a rickety log cabin built with their own two hands, and die before they're 40. Most people that aren't the elite-very-rich depend on things like stores, roads, cars, jobs, and paychecks to survive comfortably, which is always going to be supported by some balance of corporatism and government.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway5d097 7y ago
  >Constitutional rights don't matter for people if parties with vast economic power can render the exercise of those rights pointless This is an interesting point, but I don't get how that follows from the rest of this post. More corporatism can often lead to worse quality of life as well. By making the lack of rights explicit rather than implicit, the exercise of such rights is made even more difficult. This seems like the kind of thinking from a lot of people in the PRC, and it's not working out very well for them, at least collectively.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
It won’t happen. It is incompatible with the first amendment. Thank god we baked that shit in instead of just passing a law to that effect.
- nabnob 7y ago
  It's already happened. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube already remove and delete comments that are outside the overton window. Sure, they're not part of the government, but when it comes to freedom of expression does it really matter?
  - jhomedall 7y ago
    Google, Facebook, and Twitter cannot jail you.
    - nabnob 7y ago
      Police investigated a man for sharing an offensive limerick on Twitter - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated-police-retweeting-transgender-limerick/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated...
      - mendelmaleh 7y ago
        That is in the UK, they don't have freedom of speech.
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    I see your point. But those platforms (while flawed) are operating legally, under their own volition, without direction from the United States Government. If the USG were to order Twitter to take down X person's tweets because it hurt someone's feelers, that would be a clear violation of the first amendment. Additionally we have a strong legal precedent of not permitting "compelled speech". Plainly put, they can't force you to label your own Facebook posts with your opponents claims as well. I am totally on your side that these few companies are in far too much control. But they aren't the USG, or compelled to block/force-speech on their behalf.
BryantD 7y ago
When we're considering regulation, it's important to consider the activity we're regulating in context. Here's one extreme: it's legal to light a match. It's not legal to light a match and toss it into a gas pump. We shouldn't regulate speech, but you should own the consequences of your actions -- speech included. If you're spreading anti-vax propaganda, you're complicit in killing kids. It's certainly not as bad as pulling the trigger; you're one component of a much greater whole, and any restrictions or punishment should reflect that.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  >If you're spreading anti-vax propaganda, you're complicit in killing kids. That is absolutely nuts if you believe that.
  - F-0X 7y ago
    Is it? If A says to B, "don't vaccinate your kids", B complies, and then B's child dies of a disease it could have been vaccinated against, you would not say A had any culpability?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - banads 7y ago
      Depends on if you think people have any free will or ability to think for themselves
      - F-0X 7y ago
        I don't think it does. People share information and learn from each other. Hence, it is important to be responsible when providing information. We frequently see disclaimers on HN, Reddit, etc. like "IANAL", so as to put forward a point of view while warning it shouldn't be taken too seriously as actionable advice. It's the sensible thing to do. Anybody spreading anti-vaccination propaganda has been convinced of it themselves.

by Reedx 7y ago

jerf 7y ago

It's the goal. Those seeking it would be advised to consider whether it's a power they really want Trump to have, or his successor, but there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely and the fact that some people they disagree with has some control at the moment is a momentary aberration. I would suggest history does not favor this viewpoint.

downerending 7y ago
You can like Trump or not, but he's probably one of the people in power who'd least care for this sort of censorship. He clearly revels in public debate, perhaps even to an unhealthy degree. It may not be Lincoln-Douglas stuff, but that's how democracy is supposed to work.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shoes_for_thee 7y ago
  Citation needed. When he sees something he disagrees with he flatly calls it fake and moves on. That's not debate.
  - spaginal 7y ago
    But that is where it ends with him. Debate doesn't have to be healthy to still be debate, but he isn't stopping the people from saying the things against him. When you start trying to create laws or compel companies to shut down speech you disagree with or don't like, either through the guise of hate speech laws or "stopping disinformation", that is the scenario we are scared about that is rampant for abuse.
    - shoes_for_thee 7y ago
      > he isn't stopping the people from saying the things against him. A) yes, he does. refer to the various people he has paid to stop talking about him through NDAs and catch & kill. b) yes, he does. refer to the trump campaign's refusal to credential bloomberg most recently. and various would-if-he-could: c) refer to trump saying SNL is an attack on his safety, eg. d) refer to trump referring to any non-fox media as 'the enemy of the people' e) refer to trump recommending treason charges against NYT. f) refer to trump recommending treason charges for people who refused to applaud at the state of the union and on and on and on. there are endless examples of trump requesting legal action against various people "saying things" about him that he doesn't like. those people are only protected by the constitution. i have no interest in creating laws to compel companies to shut down speech i disagree with. i am a free speech absolutist. but a) he does stop people from saying things via civil legal action and b) he would stop people from saying things via criminal action if it were legal to do so.
- ikeyany 7y ago
  That is not factually correct. He revokes press credentials of journalists who criticize him. He encourages people to attack journalists, and some of his supporters have already done so. I advise caution against spreading false information so blithely.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - gotoeleven 7y ago
    Im just curious what journalists you're talking about. He tried to revoke Jim Acosta's for being very uncordial (to put it lightly), and he revoked Bloombergs after they said they would only investigate him and not Democrats. Are there others? If he revoked the credentials of everyone who criticized him then there would be hardly any left...
    - ikeyany 7y ago
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-house-has-revoked-my-press-pass-its-not-just-me--its-curtailing-access-for-all-journalists/2019/05/08/bb9794b4-71c0-11e9-8be0-ca575670e91c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-house-has-...?
      - gotoeleven 7y ago
        This might be a better description of what happened, without the paywall and a bit less histrionics. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/white-house-press-passes.php https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/white-house-press-passes...
  - will4274 7y ago
    He certainly does not revoke press credentials of journalists just for criticizing him. He did revoke the credentials of a single journalist who was apparently incapable of waiting his turn and repeatedly interrupted the press conference. I'd advise you to heed your own advice about spreading false information.
- headcanon 7y ago
  He revels in attention towards himself when he says outlandish or controversial stuff, and calls dissenting viewpoints "Fake News". Not the same thing.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- livueta 7y ago
  Without descending too deeply into American domestic politics, I'm skeptical of that given his stated desire to expand the scope of slander and libel laws. It's really easy to end up in a "speech for me, not for thee" kind of scenario, especially when that reveling is generally more polemical than forensic.
  - xanthrax 7y ago
    Similar to how for years in the UK you had super injunctions (less so now) that could be requested but they weren't cheap.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    I understand why public figures have no recourse to slander and lies, but it doesn’t make it fair. It’s only just in that protecting the powerless against armies of lawyers from the powerful, is the best we can do. But allowing damaging lies to go unpunished is certainly a black eye for justice.
- growlist 7y ago
  Indeed. From my observation it's the left that are looking intolerant and scary, attempting to force opinions in their preferred direction and delegitimise opposing views.
daenz 7y ago
It seems like most people who support that kind of censorship are indeed short-sighted of how it can be used against them in the future, but there are also bad actors that just want to destabilize everything because it fits in with their goal making conditions bad enough that it will be easier to "smash the X" (patriarchy, capitalism, social classes, etc). Anything that upsets what they perceive as the "established order" is good, because it gives a better foothold to advance their other agendas.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
> there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely ... and who are willing to alter the rules to make sure that, once they get power, it will be easier for them to continue to have complete control indefinitely. And why? Because they are certain of the rightness of their ideas, and therefore if the people vote against them, it can only be because the people have been lead astray by lies and propaganda. Such people deserve, at a minimum, our profound suspicion.
- mirimir 7y ago
  William S. Burroughs argued that people who know that they're right, and impose their beliefs on others, should be killed on sight. Because they're infected with the "right virus". Just like we kill rabid animals. But then, he was probably joking. And fscking with his readers' perspectives.
tenpies 7y ago
> there's a lot of people who seem to operate on the presumption that in the long term, their side is going to have complete control of the government indefinitely I think you are confusing outcome for mechanism. The idea is that once their side wins, they'll clamp down so hard on wrong-think that the other side effective ceases to exist. It will be like elections under a dictator: sure there's another party, but if you vote for them you get a free trip to the re-education camp and get erased from all databases.

tenebrisalietum 7y ago

Constitutional rights don't matter for people if parties with vast economic power can render the exercise of those rights pointless. Most people absolutely will trade freedom for security, because most people aren't late 1700's frontiersman that hunt for food, defend land from intruders, huddle together in a rickety log cabin built with their own two hands, and die before they're 40. Most people that aren't the elite-very-rich depend on things like stores, roads, cars, jobs, and paychecks to survive comfortably, which is always going to be supported by some balance of corporatism and government.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
throwaway5d097 7y ago
>Constitutional rights don't matter for people if parties with vast economic power can render the exercise of those rights pointless This is an interesting point, but I don't get how that follows from the rest of this post. More corporatism can often lead to worse quality of life as well. By making the lack of rights explicit rather than implicit, the exercise of such rights is made even more difficult. This seems like the kind of thinking from a lot of people in the PRC, and it's not working out very well for them, at least collectively.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

It won’t happen. It is incompatible with the first amendment. Thank god we baked that shit in instead of just passing a law to that effect.

nabnob 7y ago
It's already happened. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube already remove and delete comments that are outside the overton window. Sure, they're not part of the government, but when it comes to freedom of expression does it really matter?
- jhomedall 7y ago
  Google, Facebook, and Twitter cannot jail you.
  - nabnob 7y ago
    Police investigated a man for sharing an offensive limerick on Twitter - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated-police-retweeting-transgender-limerick/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated...
    - mendelmaleh 7y ago
      That is in the UK, they don't have freedom of speech.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  I see your point. But those platforms (while flawed) are operating legally, under their own volition, without direction from the United States Government. If the USG were to order Twitter to take down X person's tweets because it hurt someone's feelers, that would be a clear violation of the first amendment. Additionally we have a strong legal precedent of not permitting "compelled speech". Plainly put, they can't force you to label your own Facebook posts with your opponents claims as well. I am totally on your side that these few companies are in far too much control. But they aren't the USG, or compelled to block/force-speech on their behalf.

BryantD 7y ago

When we're considering regulation, it's important to consider the activity we're regulating in context. Here's one extreme: it's legal to light a match. It's not legal to light a match and toss it into a gas pump. We shouldn't regulate speech, but you should own the consequences of your actions -- speech included. If you're spreading anti-vax propaganda, you're complicit in killing kids. It's certainly not as bad as pulling the trigger; you're one component of a much greater whole, and any restrictions or punishment should reflect that.

creaghpatr 7y ago
>If you're spreading anti-vax propaganda, you're complicit in killing kids. That is absolutely nuts if you believe that.
- F-0X 7y ago
  Is it? If A says to B, "don't vaccinate your kids", B complies, and then B's child dies of a disease it could have been vaccinated against, you would not say A had any culpability?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - banads 7y ago
    Depends on if you think people have any free will or ability to think for themselves
    - F-0X 7y ago
      I don't think it does. People share information and learn from each other. Hence, it is important to be responsible when providing information. We frequently see disclaimers on HN, Reddit, etc. like "IANAL", so as to put forward a point of view while warning it shouldn't be taken too seriously as actionable advice. It's the sensible thing to do. Anybody spreading anti-vaccination propaganda has been convinced of it themselves.