13 ms·

The Social Media Problem

73 points by janvdberg 6y ago

core-questions 6y ago
> It would really help if both Facebook and Twitter would be far more pro-active in shutting down these fountains of nonsense. When I see this, especially from someone who bills themselves as > "Professionally I get paid to separate fact from fiction" it horrifies me. What they're saying is that the existing draconian control of speech that is implemented on the social media networks is not enough, that we need to hire even more people to do moderation, that free speech needs to die even harder, because we can't trust poor stupid people to make their own decisions, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say. What a bunch of elitist bullshit. Small wonder that people are increasingly finding people like Jacques Mattheij to be unpalatable, nanny-state toadies that are to be routed around at best and attacked argumentatively when needed. Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? This shows me that people have not learned what free speech is, what it is for, and why it was a hard-fought right that continues to need fervent defense. Mattheij can't conceive of a world where his draconian moderation system could possibly backfire. Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. Mattheij either didn't read any of the excellent 20th century dystopian science fiction, or thought it was a user's manual for how to create an idealized totalitarian state. Because of course, gigantic corporations and the government are going to choose what's in everyone's best interests. Of course, it is inconceivable that they would have any agenda of their own, or would want to make cultural changes at scale without the full consent of society. It's never been tried, anywhere, right? Never ends badly? Ahh, but it's to save us from ourselves, right?
- chrisco255 6y ago
  There's nothing inevitable about freedom of speech. China is 4000 years old, and they still don't have it. It WAS hard fought for. Speaking and thinking are the same thing. A society that cannot speak without fear of censorship is one that cannot think. It cannot ask difficult questions. It cannot speak truth to power. It is as much a cultural value as a legal one. It should be promoted and celebrated.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Promoted, celebrated, and continued to be fought for. If you tautologically define "freedom of speech" as the compromise we have in the US, then that's true that we "have freedom of speech", but if you think at an objective measure of absolute freedom of speech (which would include any combination of words you could say, including what we would call libel, hate speech, copyright infringement, etc), then freedom of speech doesn't really exist anywhere. There are just variations of restricted speech, some more than others, but also some different than others.
- dvt 6y ago
  Man, it's sad that HN is going down the reddit rabbit hole, spam downvoting these kinds of well-though-out posts that (admittedly) go against the zeitgeist of SV "know-better-than-thou" elitist mentality -- with absolutely zero discussion or counter-arguments. The arguments here are sound: - Free speech is a virtue worth striving for - Disinformation -- to the detriment of the public -- is a price we're willing to pay (barring some narrow cases) - The alternative is draconian authoritarianism As Juvenal asked almost two millenia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I'm sick of programmers that never picked up a philosophy or political science book in their lives think they just solved the world's problems by giving Google or Facebook carte blanche to censor as they see fit (because you happen to agree with the outcome today).
  - tyrust 6y ago
    I'm guessing that it was down-voted for the vitriol and personal attacks which aren't relevant to the arguments.
    - throwsadlfksjdf 6y ago
      The personal attacks were warranted, he said exactly how I felt reading that article.
  - Analemma_ 6y ago
    It is not a well-thought-out post. It uses a bunch of emotionally-loaded but content-free trigger phrases like "elitist bullshit" and "nanny-state toadies" rather than well-supported arguments, and is being spam-downvoted for that reason.
    - dvt 6y ago
      It definitionally is elitist bullshit though -- Mattheij's entire post implies that he knows better. Sure the term might trigger you, but that doesn't make it any less true. To wit, I personally would've been much more scathing: I mean, has he even heard of John Stewart Mill? There's been a lot of trial and error here, and the blog post conveniently ignores it all.
- actuator 6y ago
  I am mostly a free speech absolutist but let me take one of the example you gave, India. Only yesterday, there was a FB post which said something negative about Islam. This led to people from that community rioting in Bangalore in which 3 have died and parts of city have burnt. [1] This is not the first time a social media post has caused this over there. I would say the issue is very nuanced specially in areas where the social fabric is not that strong and if some amount of moderation can help, be it. But as always, who will watch the watchmen. [1]: Warning: Cancerous ads: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-areas-of-bengalurus-pulakeshinagar-resemble-war-zone/articleshow/77502311.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-...
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    I think you can stay absolutist (albeit, being a bit cold about the situation). The principle of free speech is that it's paid for in blood because it's the least worst choice. Edit: I personally think the reasonable limit is calling for violence or organizing genocide. But those have never really been protected in common law.
    - not2b 6y ago
      Easy for you to say, because you aren't a Rohingya and don't have to worry about people organizing your genocide on WhatsApp. We have to be able to criticize the government and debate polices, but when blood is involved (trying to get people killed) there has to be a line.
      - themacguffinman 6y ago
        If people are organizing your genocide on WhatsApp, WhatsApp is not the problem.
    - actuator 6y ago
      But how do you reconcile with things like this. Free speech is better, but how much blood is worth it. Again, going with the current example. Indian subcontinent has had a tumultuous history mostly in the last millenium. It has been ravaged by conquests involving destruction of a lot of things that the pagan culture(now referred as a religion) held dear. Even though now the part of the subcontinent that is India now is majority that religion. There is resentment for/from every religion that came from outside. There are still unresolved things which can cause things to flare up easily. We have seen this flare up in US, say LA riots. Imagine a culture which has had issues about their identity and injustices in the past for far longer. Imagine people allowed to build narratives that incite violence freely and spread them like wildfire. It can turn deadly fast and has in the past.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  > Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? Umm, yes? People are extremely vulnerable to misinformation distributed by platforms and people they trust, even if that misinformation will harm themselves or people near them. Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Facebook was essential in embedding false information into the minds of informationally vulnerable people in order to create the dual democratic disasters of 2016: Trump and Brexit. Feeding seniors a constant misinformation diet of 'vote Brexit or your country will be overrun with Syrian terrorists' until they vote to destroy their children's economic future causes real harm. Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide[0] should also put to rest any thought that Facebook, as it is currently operated, is compatible with human rights. Making people believe in UFOs and bigfoot is harmless; spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump), destroy their children's futures (pro-Brexit), or kill their neighbors (anti-Rohingya) is not. If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > Umm, yes? So patronizing. Okay, people are "vulnerable" to misinformation; there's an unstated implication here that you've ascended to some higher level by virtue of consuming your daily dose of establishment media, and that you're no longer personally susceptible to this, and that there's no chance that any of your institutionally approved sources could ever misinform you. > Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Well, that's tough, isn't it? If you're so afraid of that, maybe you should get a proper respirator, and only emerge into public to buy groceries, and then just live in full lockdown for the rest of your life. Sounds like you don't trust people to consume the information they want and to make their own risk judgements; too bad you're not in control of their actions. What a utopia that would be, eh? I'm sure you'd never misinform anyone, or say something and then have to walk it back a week later, or anything else. Blaming Facebook for this is like blaming your municipality, or your car dealership, when you get into a car accident. Yeah, they built the roads, they sold you the car, but it's on you - it's your risk, ultimately, because it's your life. Yes, you can do risky things; yes, you can even do things that increase risks for others. That's life. It's all part of the fabric of living in a free society. You can only actually protect yourself, and even then, only partially. Controlling what other people can say or think isn't actually going to afford you that much more security. > Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide As if these things wouldn't take place without Facebook; as though there wouldn't be some other way for people who are already morally in the position of wanting to kill others for their differences wouldn't just find some other way to kick it off. Again, you're blaming the medium for the message, and you have the misguided idea that somehow, if the right censoring moderators clamped down on discussion just a little bit more, that event wouldn't have happened. Of all the small-souled bugman mentalities, this is truly the worst. > spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump) I'm not an American, and so I have no real dog in the fight, but as far as I can tell being in favour of an establishment political party is kind of bread-and-butter democracy, isn't it? How is someone being in favour of your democratically elected president "destroying democracy", and how is acting like that's the case not in and of itself just as anti-democracy a thing to do? Maybe, just maybe, you Yanks could stop frothing at the mouth about Orange Man Bad for ten minutes, and _use_ your freedom of speech to actually engage with people and find out what motivates them, what their fears are, why they've arrived at their conclusions, and maybe build some common ground so you can actually start to understand the underlying economic problems that have put you in the position you're in. The things that destroyed small-town Main Street are not too far off the things that destroyed the inner city, really.... > If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. How about this: if Facebook won't do anything about your personal bugaboos, you should follow my lead and just delete your Facebook account and move on with your fucking life. Why do you feel this intense need to enforce your own personal qualms about what people say onto others? It's so easy, bro, just click that big X and go outside for a couple minutes. Get some perspective. Because otherwise, you're asking for one of the most important freedoms ever won to be thrown away just so you won't be uncomfortable for a couple moments here and there. I can't imagine being so fragile.
- wruza 6y ago
  You're basically saying that we-all-together are a pile of unfixable trash (sorry if this summary is inexact). And yes, that aligns well with what I think about "us". But that's only when you look at it in stasis. This force that tfa represents is one of the forces that glues everything together. If not this "elitist bullshit", who would gonna go and prevent minds from leading into the opposite bullshit? It is easy to blame an apple for falling on your head, but had you turn off gravity, you'd left with not much time to regret. I'm not even sympathetic to that hn jacquesm if that's him, but it's in our nature to fall into another bullshit pit right after someone pulls us from one. Discussing and questioning methods for balancing between the bullshits is important. You're just conflating that with an actual totalitarianism, because two vectors appear to be aligned atm. Humanity has to make true information accessible (not only technically, but psychologically accessible, filtering out a complete bullshit noise that overscreams a signal). It's only ten+ years since we found ourselves in this mess,it's not an old thing. People were fed with wrong/insane ideas before, but it never was a world-wide self-sustainable viral phenomenon that no one really controls (as in tv). You're all for people doing their business and leaving them alone, but now many have no basis to rest on, and if that's not a problem for you right now, chances are it will quickly become one.
- balfirevic 6y ago
  > Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. For an example that's less dramatic but closer to the western world, take a look at the Croatian (an EU country) authorities arresting a journalist over some tweets: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-journalist-index-hr-arrested https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-jo... Journalists are also regularly getting sued and fined on the count of "hurting someone's honor and reputation", mostly by politicians and (seriously) court judges.
- claytoneast 6y ago
  I don't think anywhere in this post talks about whether or not Mattheij has looked at those events, read those books, thought those thoughts, and what his opinions are on them as related to Free Speech. Assuming the worst of your intellectual opponent is extremely uncharitable and doesn't reflect well.
fossuser 6y ago
I think he's right, but there's a subtlety here that's often missed. Zuckerberg talks about it directly [0] and I think his approach is probably the most reasonable. Social Media platforms do have some responsibility to moderate (and they have the legal Good Samaritan protection to do so in the US thanks to section 230). They have a particular responsibility since their 'engagement' algorithms have often historically led to making things worse by elevating controversial content. When they're using algorithms to elevate certain types of content they are employing some level of editorial control and have some responsibility as publishers in how they rank that content (what they choose to show more widely, what they choose to allow to fall into obscurity). FB for their part has put a lot of effort into determining this kind of moderation standard and what they allow from users [1]. The recent political stuff is interesting in part because Zuckerberg is arguing that democratically elected politicians should be an exception to these rules, basically that citizens have a right to see the speech of their elected leaders (and lies should be corrected by a free press). While FB is legally able to moderate the speech of an elected politician on their platform, Zuckerberg argues it's wrong for FB to decide what political speech is okay to block because they shouldn't be in the position to make that call. I think he's right to be concerned about that precedent. This doesn't apply to the speech of regular users or even to the political speech of non-democratically 'elected' politicians. [0]: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f... [1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-facebook-war-on-hate-speech https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-... [Edit]: Also this: > "One thing that interests me and that I have so far not been able to find out is how it starts. How does a ‘normal’ person step into this cult world where up is down and not think to themselves: “Hm, this does not seem like it is believable”." I think people do think this at first, but I think we are all more vulnerable to being infected by bullshit then we like to believe. People are wildly inconsistent, even in their own views most of the time (yes even you, and me). We think poorly, many people believe crazy things, we argue via motivated reasoning, don't extend views globally, don't consider things the same when they're out of sight etc. When exposed to lots of wrong information repeatedly I think most people get corrupted, even those that are pretty analytical. I think it takes continuous vigilance to not believe crazy things (and I think people get worse as they get older at being able to do this well). I don't think these are outliers, I think this is the norm. Most people just don't wonder about things at all so avoid being radicalized into harmful action based on their own crazy beliefs. I also suspect in-person interaction has a lot of built in de-escalation mechanisms that bias towards unity and friendliness most of the time, so things get worse when you lose that natural control.
baby 6y ago
So we have great tools to facilitate communication between people, and yeah there is downside to having people communicate, does it mean communication is bad? I don't think so.
dexen 6y ago
Two observations: 1. The crazy ideas jacquesm decries have a limited influence on one's life. Those are (predominantly) singular topics rather than all-encompassing ideologies. They are more of conversation starters than life guides. Aside of some rare dangerous ones (COVID-19 theories perhaps?), their impact places somewhere between stamp collecting and junk food consumption. All the flat earthers, the 5G's, the moon landing hoaxes etc., - let people have weird hobbies. We can handle them as a society. 2. Given how prevalent conspiracy theories are - across times, cultures, geographical locations, social niches - I posit our propensity towards them is not a random fluke of human psyche. No, I posit the conspiracy theories play a role in some other societal processes. I posit that trying to eradicate or suppress the underlying mechanism, without understanding the mechanism in the wider context of all societal processes would cause unforeseen negative consequences.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Also, any effort to regulate via law what people are spouting quickly becomes a cure worse than the disease.
  - erichocean 6y ago
    > Also, any effort to regulate via law what people are spouting quickly becomes a cure worse than the disease. China's economy seems to be doing fine, and the population is docile. What else do you think elites care about? My point is that the "cure" seems to work fine in practice so long as it isn't too onerous. Any restrictions on speech in the US are likely to be limited to volatile social issues (hate speech) and enforced primarily by elites using the private sector.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    I think that's largely an attribute of the US legal system. The debates about legislation last so long and cost so much political capital that legislators are wary of making more frequent but smaller changes to laws. Also, a law is not always needed. Frequently culture and society have ways to discourage problems created by outliers without turning to new laws. The problem occurs when issues (like conspiracy thinking and lack of trust in long-lived institutions / "the establishment") start to move from outlier status to mainstream.
smitty1e 6y ago
Ain't the software; it's the peopleware. > But there are a lot of them and they all have the vote, waiting to be pushed as useful idiots to some higher goal. Politicians have started to realize that they don’t actually need to get a real mandate, and that they won’t be held accountable for lying. At that level, every time someone lies more people become susceptible to being pulled in to this web of deception. One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth. The act of trying to centralize everything into a legacy, monolithic, waterfall, big iron system results in a Tower of Babel. Its proponents swear it's Progress. Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level, where voters can either be wise or spendthrift at their leisure. Doubtless we'll prefer a more catastrophic collapse, but dreaming is still occasionally legal.
- ISL 6y ago
  Some level of coordinated collective action is required. It is clear that our local choices have global impact. The trick is finding mutually beneficial and agreed-upon strategies for getting along with one another. Much of the trouble in the United States can be traced to Congress abdicating its responsibilities (under presidents of both parties). As voters, we are responsible for that failure. November is coming soon; it is an opportunity to choose those representatives who will choose the right thing over the expedient thing when the choice is required.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    I used to think that the fact that the HoR size has held constant since 1910 (!) was among the major problems. 2020 saw a week where: - POTUS couldn't remove the unconstitutional act of a predecessor, that should have been a Congressional job at all points - SCOTUS rewrote the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that should have been a Congressional job at all points - Congress blew fat piles of cash on COVID-19 but did precious little else of which I'm aware I submit that a https://conventionofstates.com/ https://conventionofstates.com/ is overdue.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nemo44x 6y ago
Ok I’ll bite. I’m sure this person means well. But I have to ask - why are they the authority on what is OK for people to believe, talk about, and propagate? Who owns the truth? Why is this persons views the correct ones? Or even more, what about things that are talked about on the internet, have their groups, that they don’t find problematic but others do. And why are those ok? Because they believe this? The foundation of Liberalism (I’m not saying left wing here) is that no one owns knowledge. No one has the last day and all opinions can be heard. And mocked relentlessly. And through this we will discover as close to the truth as we can. Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth. All ideas are fallible. If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it. The minute someone gets to say “that’s ok to be said and this other thing is not. End of story” we are in trouble. It doesn’t mean someone can’t be raked across the coals for their awful ideas - you need to own it. But anyone or group that gets to determine what is ok and what is not is, in essence, a fundamentalist regime. We don’t need inquisitors. We don’t need thought police. We do need people willing to say “that’s bullshit and here is why”. If you can prove that generally speaking 2+2=5 then the foundation of arithmetic is broken. But meanwhile I can poke holes in your argument. Until you can prove it better than 2+2=4 then I can judge you for a sophist at best, a dipshit less generously.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  > Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth. Putting truth itself on a pedestal doesn't really address the problem. The problem is people are motivated by things other than a good standard of truth most of the time. Social media provides a medium where it is easy for emotion can rule over reason and advertisers profit off of it. > If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it. Let's say everyone online starts calling you a pedophile because a soon-to-be-ex-wife of yours decided to try to cause you harm. What then? Is posting your address next also free speech? The issue is not the truth, or access to it, but the fact we have large numbers of people that act on things less than the truth and a culture/economy that seems to perpetuate that for those who aren't interested. Putting these people in the same network as people who really want to talk about and debate ideas isn't working. There are standards of truth but people that aren't ruled by reason won't obey them. They'll go with their gut, or what their friends say, or what they think they should say to impress their peers, or what everyone else is doing. For people who over their lives have been concerned more with survival or overcoming trauma than a real exchange of knowledge or ideas, often these strategies work well.
mountainboy 6y ago
This article sounds to me like a lot of hand-wringing and complaining that people are thinking for themselves and talking amongst themselves rather than worshipping at the ivory tower. In other words, music to my ears.
- mountainboy 6y ago
  downvoted... must've struck a nerve.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    > Be kind. Don't be snarky. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
throwaway234101 6y ago
> But a person who does PCR analysis and knows the ins and outs of PCR tests that maintains that there is no such thing as COVID-19 is on another level for me. That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around. A person who specializes in analyzing viruses tells the author something counterintuitive and instead of re-assessing his own assumptions, he labels the specialist delusional. That last sentence, "That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around", could easily apply to the author.
quicklime 6y ago
> Filtering out the bad from the good is going to be very important if we don’t want to accidentally lose such minor marbles as our democracies, our health and our safety. I really think that a better solution to this problem is to fix the shortcomings of our democratic systems. The majority of people don't believe that 5G towers cause COVID-19, or that 9/11 was an inside job. A stable democracy should be resilient enough to withstand a small number of wrong people. But that's not the case for the US. The election result for the entire country (of 330 million people!) can be flipped by a few tens of thousands of voters in the right electorates. I recognize that this is going to be a hard problem to fix. But I do believe it would be easier than trying to reverse the laws of economics that drive social media companies to do the things they do.
- burlesona 6y ago
  I have wondered how much less (if any) this is a problem in Democracies with Parliamentary systems, particularly any that don't use "first past the post" voting. Anyone from outside the US have insight on that to share?
- bmitc 6y ago
  I agree we need to shore up the democratic systems. However, I think you are greatly underestimating the amount of propaganda that is fed to a huge amount of people in the U.S. who lap everything up. I feel people sweeping it under the rug are part of the problem. And I think you are also underestimating the amount of people who have extremely strong nationalistic and even white supremist attitudes and seek to spread them. The U.S. is a very big place and many of these people hide in plain site, just waiting for their opportunity for people like Trump or Stephen Miller to get power. I've experienced it from both educated and non-educated, rich and poor. I grew up in a rural, predominately white area. I know these people and how they think, and it's scary. Social media acts as a medium for people to transmit these ideas at a speed and power not known before. We need to address both our democratic and communication systems.
4bpp 6y ago
Anecdotes abound, when this is really not the sort of debate that should be conducted using anecdotes (cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chin...). Sure, some societies have uncensored social media and wind up with a lot of people believing that vaccines are a Bill Gates conspiracy, occasionally leading to real harm. Other societies, as a downstream effect of uncensored social media, wind up with racial pogroms, as a commenter elsewhere in here pointed out. On the other hand, some societies with censorship wind up totalitarian hellholes, and some societies didn't even have social media at all and still had racial pogroms (whether initiated by local word of mouth, or the local counterpart of the same elites that presumably would be in charge of censoring social media if there were social media). The existence of these anecdotes tells us nothing about whether we would be better off with or without uncensored social media, or whether some other more subtle solution than censoring or not censoring would lead to better outcomes. So, which one is more likely? Which one has worse consequences in expectation? This argument can only be done quantitatively, and as far as I know nobody has produced the numbers that we would need to do that. We might as well try to determine whether private possession of bladed objects should be permitted based on a comparing whether an emotional account of a marital stabbing, defense of the cultural value of home cooking or appeal to the value of adults feeling like society trusts them to hurt themselves feels more moving. (If we stop trying to pretend that there is a meaningful utilitarian argument to be had here, though, on an idealistic level, where emotional appeals are properly at home, I'm with the more critical commenters here. Quoting from low culture like video games may be a little tacky, but: "Beware he[sic] who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.")
intended 6y ago
These conversations become hard, because its not well discussed, and the finesse to divide these into "new" and "old" problems is being developed. For example an "old" problem is that this is how humans interact with information and sensationalism. The news cycle effect, the sale of content along with the packaging of professionalism - was a problem before the net. But there are also a novel situations where this new rate, scale, and quality of information creation/dissemination result in new structures issues. An example of this is the perception that a belief is more widely held than it is in the general public, due to social media. IF you got into a conspiracy group, and it were populated by 1000s of real conspiracists, it would still be a small fraction of the population of %(people online)(speak your language)(other filters). BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified. A clear field where tech creates new problems is where tech outstrips old societal and human thresholds of functioning. Social media feeds which reinforce information, constant and from your pocket? New problem Automated creation of content to populate feeds? New New problem. Creation of propaganda ? Old problem, new medium, new tools - question on whether scope and scale make it a new problem. ----- Perhaps the "new" problems can, to some extent, be solved by tech. "Old" problems will almost certainly need tech+political will and manpower to solve.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified. I think you're pointing out some important but extremely easy to overlook things here. How many newspaper articles, blog posts, and twitter/forum discussions have we had in the last two years about fake news and conspiracy theories, typically written in confident but grave tones? But of the people writing these things, how many of them really know what they're talking about? What is the source of their knowledge? What is the underlying source of the claims Jacques is making in the article we're discussing? How many of the people opining on such subjects actually spend any serious time within the communities they're reporting on? If the topic/culture was something other than the behaviour of conspiracy theorists (say, African Americans), do you think it would have any effect on how the information would be received by readers? In that case, I suspect a lot of people might fairly quickly wonder if the author actually happens to know as much as they claim, and I think it would be fairly easy to find plenty of anecdotal conversations on the internet to substantiate that prediction. The human brain "sees" all sorts of things. It can produce an instantaneous answer to most any question you ask it, whether or not it actually has much actual concrete data to work with. There are a variety of ways to control this default functionality, the major progress we've made with decreasing racial stereotyping in the last several decades is a good example. But that took a lot of coordinated messaging, education, and peer pressure, for a very long time. Despite that, we're still rather far from declaring mission accomplished. And that is just one topic - how many others do we have in this same category? I doubt we'll make much progress on these issues, especially now with the brutal efficiency of mass communication we've released into society (with hardly a second thought), until we can finally realize what the root of the problem is: the human mind. And it's not just "those other people" whose minds are flawed, the problem is with the base hardware and software itself - it's just easier to notice in some people than others, especially when it's constantly in the news.
uniqueid 6y ago
> quick way to report a Tweet or FB post that spreads disinformation would already help a lot. That point is what always goes through my head when a Dorsey or a Zuckerberg or a Wojkiki gives another "more work to be done" apology. If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content?
- stx 6y ago
  > If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content? I think they are trying to narrow what can be flagged. I think they want to avoid people just flagging posts they do not agree with. There is a quote "History is a set of lies agreed upon." To me you could replace history with social media and the quote would be true. Or at least thats the lie I agree with.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  How is it convoluted? The "Report" button is quite easy to find in tweets and posts.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    I used it a few times to report clear old schools racist stuff. My experience is that it takes 7 steps to report that content on twitter in Germany, and isn’t as easy as expected. I documented the process here: https://twitter.com/dgellow/status/1274398162711691266?s=20 https://twitter.com/dgellow/status/1274398162711691266?s=20 Also, every single time Twitter responded that they won’t do anything about the reported content (again, I’m talking about clear old school racist content).
    - themacguffinman 6y ago
      To be fair, that doesn't seem unduly convoluted to me. They are doing their due diligence: it looks like you specifically picked the Twitter-is-liable-in-Germany-if-they-get-it-wrong legal option, so they very reasonably give you a questionnaire because they want you to be specific about what you're demanding of their vaguely defined Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz obligations. Then they got back to you, saying they disagree with your judgement. That's a lot of "moderation is hard" work and they're doing their job. However much you might disagree with their verdict, they're not hiding reporting functionality or making reports unduly difficult or ignoring reports.
mmaunder 6y ago
Who gets to decide who doesn’t get to speak? If an individual, we suppress popular opinion unpopular with leadership. If the collective, we suppress unpopular data and ideas that may be accurate or innovative. You can’t have selective freedom of speech.
- deleted 6y ago
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- razzimatazz 6y ago
  I agree selective freedom of speech is hard. Probably too hard. I tend to support selective augmentation of other people's speech - "fact checkers have shown this to be inaccurate" next to a conspiracy fan's latest comment. As long as it is more precise than just downvoting to oblivion.
  - jdashg 6y ago
    And who's to object to that! Speech is free and visible, and no information is withheld, it's just not passively amplified without reasonable vetting.
    - krapp 6y ago
      >And who's to object to that! I take it you didn't see the outrage around here when Twitter "fact-checked" Trump's statements - even that was denounced as propaganda and censorship.
- dgellow 6y ago
  > Who gets to decide who doesn’t get to speak? The platform owner, then potentially a judge.
daenz 6y ago
>The fig leaf of Free Speech will no doubt be brandished as the greatest good and too sacred to be messed with but the facts are that every form of free speech has limitations. And that actively trying to harm others by abusing that right should come with some kind of limit or at a minimum a way to reduce its reach. Most of the reasoning around free speech rights and such are from a time when getting a letter across the country took three weeks. This is what the seed of authoritarianism looks like: moral justifications for forcing people to believe, communicate, and behave the way you think is correct.
- white-flame 6y ago
  The specific limit of free speech is where it causes legal damages to others. The particular form of authoritarian scaremongering on display tries to undefine that court-testable line to include any useful moral panic, but never really addresses the notion that loosening that line means their own speech could also easily be suppressed, as the "other side" could use the new suppression tools as freely and subjectively as themselves.
  - conception 6y ago
    Two things- What about legal damages but not directly cause and effect. Something like stochastic terrorism? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stocha...) If someone is saying “Someone out kill x...” either directly or via dog whistles and whoops someone “crazy” kills them, should we tolerate that as a society? This is being played out by the massive increase, for instance, of violence and crime on Asian Americans because of the rhetoric of right wing media in regards to China but you can’t charge anyone with a direct comer and yet damages are happening. And if the test is specifically legally proven damages then well society makes the laws and the question returns to should we as a society allow people to incite violence and how do we draw that line? It’s not an easy question but I don’t think it’s as simple as “legal damages”. The second point which is perhaps more to the grandparent is all voices are certainly not equal - especially on the internet. Should a corporation or state actor with the finances to blanket their voice across the spectrum of media not have any limits on it? As speech is weaponized, which it was in 2016 and counties to be done so today, should it be regulated in some way like other weapons are? What will society look like when the voices with the power to spread their message continue to shrink? Everything needs moderation and regulation especially when it can do such harm to society. Again there’s a debate on where to draw the line but I don’t think we want to live in a society of might/money makes right in the sphere of media communications any more than we already are in it.
intended 6y ago
Since people are discussing conspiracies, I present to you the Batman argument to inoculate your near and dear ones. 1) All conspiracy theories require the evil organization to achieve several super human/ super organizational feats such as: * Perfect coordination - across timezones, personalities, objectives * Great wealth * excellent control of public figures * Advanced technology * Great secrecy Etc. These are all impossible asks, which any normal person knows if they have worked in any team of people. Many conspiracies die because of how hard it is to keep everyone aligned, and if people were that efficient in secrecy, imagine how efficient they would be without that burden. Therefore, Implication 1) If you believe in the conspiracy, we must also live in a world where such levels of efficiency are possible. which means that 2) It is also possible for an organization or individuals to exist, who take advantage of these efficiencies and advantages to do "good". Now if it was possible to stay in the dark, while having advanced tech and great wealth - well you've just described Batman. So the question you can train all your loved ones to ask, anytime they encounter a great claim, is whether this claim means that we live in a world where batman can exist. ------------------------ While this is a childish way to encode a defense, its meant to be easy to consume, and to protect people who regularly wont have time to spend the effort to verify information or toxic content when they encounter it. So while it is outlandish, that is partly the point - to diminish the earnestness and terror that conspiracy theories exude, without your active intervention being required. edit: This can apply to any superhero/or superfriends. I just chose Batman.
motohagiography 6y ago
Maybe the only ethical thing to do at this point is for the founder/owners of these platforms to commit acts of sabotage so that people might become free of them. Investors are all hedged, founders have cashed out, some of them aren't profitable anyway, employees can find other work if its done over time. Nothing of value would be lost. The point about connecting gullible people is interesting and useful. It's likely social media has just automated the underlying phenomenon behind mass hysteria. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases) The real social media problem is we've put a slot machine in every pocket, and now nobody can turn them off until the hysteria has run its course and we evolve a resistance to them - or if the founders do this one unthinkable thing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
babesh 6y ago
This thesis is crap and is blind to much bigger conspiracy theories that have been going on for thousands of years and that still have much stronger holds on societies than anti mask conspiracy theories. Modern social media did not cause them to grow to what they were since it did not exist when they were created and grew. Christianity: Jesus died and came back to life. He died for your sins. You are going to hell if you don’t repent your sins. Please give the church 10%. Buddhism: You are going to endlessly suffer. Please contribute to the temple to support the monks. Please pay monks to bless funerals. Hinduism: You are born into a caste and stuck in it. You are shit and untouchable. If you touch me or try to marry my daughter, I will kill you. The reality is that you have systems and people that prey on human weaknesses for time immemorial. It is much more interesting to examine how those technologies/systems operate.
- babesh 6y ago
  Free speech was protection against conspiracy theories and now the author wants to ban free speech to protect us from conspiracy theories. Sheer nonsense.
- acephal 6y ago
  >The reality is that you have systems and people that prey on human weaknesses for time immemorial. It is much more interesting to examine how those technologies/systems operate. Welcome to the wonderful world of Michel Foucault's critique of historiography Next, we'll examine Western notions of 'progress', rationalization, and humanism as being parsable along the same lines
username3 6y ago
Misinformation spreads because Twitter rate limits users replying to misinformation.

73 points by janvdberg 6y ago

> It would really help if both Facebook and Twitter would be far more pro-active in shutting down these fountains of nonsense. When I see this, especially from someone who bills themselves as > "Professionally I get paid to separate fact from fiction" it horrifies me. What they're saying is that the existing draconian control of speech that is implemented on the social media networks is not enough, that we need to hire even more people to do moderation, that free speech needs to die even harder, because we can't trust poor stupid people to make their own decisions, read what they want to read, and say what they want to say. What a bunch of elitist bullshit. Small wonder that people are increasingly finding people like Jacques Mattheij to be unpalatable, nanny-state toadies that are to be routed around at best and attacked argumentatively when needed. Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? This shows me that people have not learned what free speech is, what it is for, and why it was a hard-fought right that continues to need fervent defense. Mattheij can't conceive of a world where his draconian moderation system could possibly backfire. Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. Mattheij either didn't read any of the excellent 20th century dystopian science fiction, or thought it was a user's manual for how to create an idealized totalitarian state. Because of course, gigantic corporations and the government are going to choose what's in everyone's best interests. Of course, it is inconceivable that they would have any agenda of their own, or would want to make cultural changes at scale without the full consent of society. It's never been tried, anywhere, right? Never ends badly? Ahh, but it's to save us from ourselves, right?

chrisco255 6y ago
There's nothing inevitable about freedom of speech. China is 4000 years old, and they still don't have it. It WAS hard fought for. Speaking and thinking are the same thing. A society that cannot speak without fear of censorship is one that cannot think. It cannot ask difficult questions. It cannot speak truth to power. It is as much a cultural value as a legal one. It should be promoted and celebrated.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Promoted, celebrated, and continued to be fought for. If you tautologically define "freedom of speech" as the compromise we have in the US, then that's true that we "have freedom of speech", but if you think at an objective measure of absolute freedom of speech (which would include any combination of words you could say, including what we would call libel, hate speech, copyright infringement, etc), then freedom of speech doesn't really exist anywhere. There are just variations of restricted speech, some more than others, but also some different than others.
dvt 6y ago
Man, it's sad that HN is going down the reddit rabbit hole, spam downvoting these kinds of well-though-out posts that (admittedly) go against the zeitgeist of SV "know-better-than-thou" elitist mentality -- with absolutely zero discussion or counter-arguments. The arguments here are sound: - Free speech is a virtue worth striving for - Disinformation -- to the detriment of the public -- is a price we're willing to pay (barring some narrow cases) - The alternative is draconian authoritarianism As Juvenal asked almost two millenia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I'm sick of programmers that never picked up a philosophy or political science book in their lives think they just solved the world's problems by giving Google or Facebook carte blanche to censor as they see fit (because you happen to agree with the outcome today).
- tyrust 6y ago
  I'm guessing that it was down-voted for the vitriol and personal attacks which aren't relevant to the arguments.
  - throwsadlfksjdf 6y ago
    The personal attacks were warranted, he said exactly how I felt reading that article.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  It is not a well-thought-out post. It uses a bunch of emotionally-loaded but content-free trigger phrases like "elitist bullshit" and "nanny-state toadies" rather than well-supported arguments, and is being spam-downvoted for that reason.
  - dvt 6y ago
    It definitionally is elitist bullshit though -- Mattheij's entire post implies that he knows better. Sure the term might trigger you, but that doesn't make it any less true. To wit, I personally would've been much more scathing: I mean, has he even heard of John Stewart Mill? There's been a lot of trial and error here, and the blog post conveniently ignores it all.
actuator 6y ago
I am mostly a free speech absolutist but let me take one of the example you gave, India. Only yesterday, there was a FB post which said something negative about Islam. This led to people from that community rioting in Bangalore in which 3 have died and parts of city have burnt. [1] This is not the first time a social media post has caused this over there. I would say the issue is very nuanced specially in areas where the social fabric is not that strong and if some amount of moderation can help, be it. But as always, who will watch the watchmen. [1]: Warning: Cancerous ads: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-areas-of-bengalurus-pulakeshinagar-resemble-war-zone/articleshow/77502311.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/riot-hit-...
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  I think you can stay absolutist (albeit, being a bit cold about the situation). The principle of free speech is that it's paid for in blood because it's the least worst choice. Edit: I personally think the reasonable limit is calling for violence or organizing genocide. But those have never really been protected in common law.
  - not2b 6y ago
    Easy for you to say, because you aren't a Rohingya and don't have to worry about people organizing your genocide on WhatsApp. We have to be able to criticize the government and debate polices, but when blood is involved (trying to get people killed) there has to be a line.
    - themacguffinman 6y ago
      If people are organizing your genocide on WhatsApp, WhatsApp is not the problem.
  - actuator 6y ago
    But how do you reconcile with things like this. Free speech is better, but how much blood is worth it. Again, going with the current example. Indian subcontinent has had a tumultuous history mostly in the last millenium. It has been ravaged by conquests involving destruction of a lot of things that the pagan culture(now referred as a religion) held dear. Even though now the part of the subcontinent that is India now is majority that religion. There is resentment for/from every religion that came from outside. There are still unresolved things which can cause things to flare up easily. We have seen this flare up in US, say LA riots. Imagine a culture which has had issues about their identity and injustices in the past for far longer. Imagine people allowed to build narratives that incite violence freely and spread them like wildfire. It can turn deadly fast and has in the past.
bleepblorp 6y ago
> Yes, there's bullshit about COVID and chemtrails and aliens all over the internet. Why do you care so much? You're so worried that people are going to make their own choices, live their own lives, make mistakes that impact others? Umm, yes? People are extremely vulnerable to misinformation distributed by platforms and people they trust, even if that misinformation will harm themselves or people near them. Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Facebook was essential in embedding false information into the minds of informationally vulnerable people in order to create the dual democratic disasters of 2016: Trump and Brexit. Feeding seniors a constant misinformation diet of 'vote Brexit or your country will be overrun with Syrian terrorists' until they vote to destroy their children's economic future causes real harm. Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide[0] should also put to rest any thought that Facebook, as it is currently operated, is compatible with human rights. Making people believe in UFOs and bigfoot is harmless; spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump), destroy their children's futures (pro-Brexit), or kill their neighbors (anti-Rohingya) is not. If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
- core-questions 6y ago
  > Umm, yes? So patronizing. Okay, people are "vulnerable" to misinformation; there's an unstated implication here that you've ascended to some higher level by virtue of consuming your daily dose of establishment media, and that you're no longer personally susceptible to this, and that there's no chance that any of your institutionally approved sources could ever misinform you. > Facebook-propagated lies about COVID-19 risks and fake treatments kill both the people who believe them and the people believers are exposed to. Well, that's tough, isn't it? If you're so afraid of that, maybe you should get a proper respirator, and only emerge into public to buy groceries, and then just live in full lockdown for the rest of your life. Sounds like you don't trust people to consume the information they want and to make their own risk judgements; too bad you're not in control of their actions. What a utopia that would be, eh? I'm sure you'd never misinform anyone, or say something and then have to walk it back a week later, or anything else. Blaming Facebook for this is like blaming your municipality, or your car dealership, when you get into a car accident. Yeah, they built the roads, they sold you the car, but it's on you - it's your risk, ultimately, because it's your life. Yes, you can do risky things; yes, you can even do things that increase risks for others. That's life. It's all part of the fabric of living in a free society. You can only actually protect yourself, and even then, only partially. Controlling what other people can say or think isn't actually going to afford you that much more security. > Reporting on Facebook's failure to act in response to its platform being used to incite the Rohingya genocide As if these things wouldn't take place without Facebook; as though there wouldn't be some other way for people who are already morally in the position of wanting to kill others for their differences wouldn't just find some other way to kick it off. Again, you're blaming the medium for the message, and you have the misguided idea that somehow, if the right censoring moderators clamped down on discussion just a little bit more, that event wouldn't have happened. Of all the small-souled bugman mentalities, this is truly the worst. > spreading propaganda that incites people to destroy their own democracy (pro-Trump) I'm not an American, and so I have no real dog in the fight, but as far as I can tell being in favour of an establishment political party is kind of bread-and-butter democracy, isn't it? How is someone being in favour of your democratically elected president "destroying democracy", and how is acting like that's the case not in and of itself just as anti-democracy a thing to do? Maybe, just maybe, you Yanks could stop frothing at the mouth about Orange Man Bad for ten minutes, and _use_ your freedom of speech to actually engage with people and find out what motivates them, what their fears are, why they've arrived at their conclusions, and maybe build some common ground so you can actually start to understand the underlying economic problems that have put you in the position you're in. The things that destroyed small-town Main Street are not too far off the things that destroyed the inner city, really.... > If Facebook won't do anything about their platform being used for these purposes, then Facebook should be shut down. How about this: if Facebook won't do anything about your personal bugaboos, you should follow my lead and just delete your Facebook account and move on with your fucking life. Why do you feel this intense need to enforce your own personal qualms about what people say onto others? It's so easy, bro, just click that big X and go outside for a couple minutes. Get some perspective. Because otherwise, you're asking for one of the most important freedoms ever won to be thrown away just so you won't be uncomfortable for a couple moments here and there. I can't imagine being so fragile.
wruza 6y ago
You're basically saying that we-all-together are a pile of unfixable trash (sorry if this summary is inexact). And yes, that aligns well with what I think about "us". But that's only when you look at it in stasis. This force that tfa represents is one of the forces that glues everything together. If not this "elitist bullshit", who would gonna go and prevent minds from leading into the opposite bullshit? It is easy to blame an apple for falling on your head, but had you turn off gravity, you'd left with not much time to regret. I'm not even sympathetic to that hn jacquesm if that's him, but it's in our nature to fall into another bullshit pit right after someone pulls us from one. Discussing and questioning methods for balancing between the bullshits is important. You're just conflating that with an actual totalitarianism, because two vectors appear to be aligned atm. Humanity has to make true information accessible (not only technically, but psychologically accessible, filtering out a complete bullshit noise that overscreams a signal). It's only ten+ years since we found ourselves in this mess,it's not an old thing. People were fed with wrong/insane ideas before, but it never was a world-wide self-sustainable viral phenomenon that no one really controls (as in tv). You're all for people doing their business and leaving them alone, but now many have no basis to rest on, and if that's not a problem for you right now, chances are it will quickly become one.
balfirevic 6y ago
> Mattheij hasn't looked at what's happening in Belarus, in India/Pakistan, and what happened during the Arab Spring when governments decided to use the power at their disposal to shut down on the people's ability to freely converse with one another, even about Unapproved Topics, even with Officially Illegal Opinions. For an example that's less dramatic but closer to the western world, take a look at the Croatian (an EU country) authorities arresting a journalist over some tweets: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-journalist-index-hr-arrested https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38478-duhacek-jo... Journalists are also regularly getting sued and fined on the count of "hurting someone's honor and reputation", mostly by politicians and (seriously) court judges.
claytoneast 6y ago
I don't think anywhere in this post talks about whether or not Mattheij has looked at those events, read those books, thought those thoughts, and what his opinions are on them as related to Free Speech. Assuming the worst of your intellectual opponent is extremely uncharitable and doesn't reflect well.

fossuser 6y ago

I think he's right, but there's a subtlety here that's often missed. Zuckerberg talks about it directly [0] and I think his approach is probably the most reasonable. Social Media platforms do have some responsibility to moderate (and they have the legal Good Samaritan protection to do so in the US thanks to section 230). They have a particular responsibility since their 'engagement' algorithms have often historically led to making things worse by elevating controversial content. When they're using algorithms to elevate certain types of content they are employing some level of editorial control and have some responsibility as publishers in how they rank that content (what they choose to show more widely, what they choose to allow to fall into obscurity). FB for their part has put a lot of effort into determining this kind of moderation standard and what they allow from users [1]. The recent political stuff is interesting in part because Zuckerberg is arguing that democratically elected politicians should be an exception to these rules, basically that citizens have a right to see the speech of their elected leaders (and lies should be corrected by a free press). While FB is legally able to moderate the speech of an elected politician on their platform, Zuckerberg argues it's wrong for FB to decide what political speech is okay to block because they shouldn't be in the position to make that call. I think he's right to be concerned about that precedent. This doesn't apply to the speech of regular users or even to the political speech of non-democratically 'elected' politicians. [0]: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f... [1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-facebook-war-on-hate-speech https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-... [Edit]: Also this: > "One thing that interests me and that I have so far not been able to find out is how it starts. How does a ‘normal’ person step into this cult world where up is down and not think to themselves: “Hm, this does not seem like it is believable”." I think people do think this at first, but I think we are all more vulnerable to being infected by bullshit then we like to believe. People are wildly inconsistent, even in their own views most of the time (yes even you, and me). We think poorly, many people believe crazy things, we argue via motivated reasoning, don't extend views globally, don't consider things the same when they're out of sight etc. When exposed to lots of wrong information repeatedly I think most people get corrupted, even those that are pretty analytical. I think it takes continuous vigilance to not believe crazy things (and I think people get worse as they get older at being able to do this well). I don't think these are outliers, I think this is the norm. Most people just don't wonder about things at all so avoid being radicalized into harmful action based on their own crazy beliefs. I also suspect in-person interaction has a lot of built in de-escalation mechanisms that bias towards unity and friendliness most of the time, so things get worse when you lose that natural control.

baby 6y ago

So we have great tools to facilitate communication between people, and yeah there is downside to having people communicate, does it mean communication is bad? I don't think so.

dexen 6y ago

Two observations: 1. The crazy ideas jacquesm decries have a limited influence on one's life. Those are (predominantly) singular topics rather than all-encompassing ideologies. They are more of conversation starters than life guides. Aside of some rare dangerous ones (COVID-19 theories perhaps?), their impact places somewhere between stamp collecting and junk food consumption. All the flat earthers, the 5G's, the moon landing hoaxes etc., - let people have weird hobbies. We can handle them as a society. 2. Given how prevalent conspiracy theories are - across times, cultures, geographical locations, social niches - I posit our propensity towards them is not a random fluke of human psyche. No, I posit the conspiracy theories play a role in some other societal processes. I posit that trying to eradicate or suppress the underlying mechanism, without understanding the mechanism in the wider context of all societal processes would cause unforeseen negative consequences.

smitty1e 6y ago
Also, any effort to regulate via law what people are spouting quickly becomes a cure worse than the disease.
- erichocean 6y ago
  > Also, any effort to regulate via law what people are spouting quickly becomes a cure worse than the disease. China's economy seems to be doing fine, and the population is docile. What else do you think elites care about? My point is that the "cure" seems to work fine in practice so long as it isn't too onerous. Any restrictions on speech in the US are likely to be limited to volatile social issues (hate speech) and enforced primarily by elites using the private sector.
- thephyber 6y ago
  I think that's largely an attribute of the US legal system. The debates about legislation last so long and cost so much political capital that legislators are wary of making more frequent but smaller changes to laws. Also, a law is not always needed. Frequently culture and society have ways to discourage problems created by outliers without turning to new laws. The problem occurs when issues (like conspiracy thinking and lack of trust in long-lived institutions / "the establishment") start to move from outlier status to mainstream.

smitty1e 6y ago

Ain't the software; it's the peopleware. > But there are a lot of them and they all have the vote, waiting to be pushed as useful idiots to some higher goal. Politicians have started to realize that they don’t actually need to get a real mandate, and that they won’t be held accountable for lying. At that level, every time someone lies more people become susceptible to being pulled in to this web of deception. One viable thing to do is redistribute political power instead of wealth. The act of trying to centralize everything into a legacy, monolithic, waterfall, big iron system results in a Tower of Babel. Its proponents swear it's Progress. Return to the enumerated powers on the Constitution, and refactor all this Progressive cruft to the State level, where voters can either be wise or spendthrift at their leisure. Doubtless we'll prefer a more catastrophic collapse, but dreaming is still occasionally legal.

ISL 6y ago
Some level of coordinated collective action is required. It is clear that our local choices have global impact. The trick is finding mutually beneficial and agreed-upon strategies for getting along with one another. Much of the trouble in the United States can be traced to Congress abdicating its responsibilities (under presidents of both parties). As voters, we are responsible for that failure. November is coming soon; it is an opportunity to choose those representatives who will choose the right thing over the expedient thing when the choice is required.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  I used to think that the fact that the HoR size has held constant since 1910 (!) was among the major problems. 2020 saw a week where: - POTUS couldn't remove the unconstitutional act of a predecessor, that should have been a Congressional job at all points - SCOTUS rewrote the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that should have been a Congressional job at all points - Congress blew fat piles of cash on COVID-19 but did precious little else of which I'm aware I submit that a https://conventionofstates.com/ https://conventionofstates.com/ is overdue.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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nemo44x 6y ago

Ok I’ll bite. I’m sure this person means well. But I have to ask - why are they the authority on what is OK for people to believe, talk about, and propagate? Who owns the truth? Why is this persons views the correct ones? Or even more, what about things that are talked about on the internet, have their groups, that they don’t find problematic but others do. And why are those ok? Because they believe this? The foundation of Liberalism (I’m not saying left wing here) is that no one owns knowledge. No one has the last day and all opinions can be heard. And mocked relentlessly. And through this we will discover as close to the truth as we can. Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth. All ideas are fallible. If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it. The minute someone gets to say “that’s ok to be said and this other thing is not. End of story” we are in trouble. It doesn’t mean someone can’t be raked across the coals for their awful ideas - you need to own it. But anyone or group that gets to determine what is ok and what is not is, in essence, a fundamentalist regime. We don’t need inquisitors. We don’t need thought police. We do need people willing to say “that’s bullshit and here is why”. If you can prove that generally speaking 2+2=5 then the foundation of arithmetic is broken. But meanwhile I can poke holes in your argument. Until you can prove it better than 2+2=4 then I can judge you for a sophist at best, a dipshit less generously.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
> Nobody - no group, movement, person, or authority owns the truth. Putting truth itself on a pedestal doesn't really address the problem. The problem is people are motivated by things other than a good standard of truth most of the time. Social media provides a medium where it is easy for emotion can rule over reason and advertisers profit off of it. > If people use the internet to say the most outrageous things then do be it. Let's say everyone online starts calling you a pedophile because a soon-to-be-ex-wife of yours decided to try to cause you harm. What then? Is posting your address next also free speech? The issue is not the truth, or access to it, but the fact we have large numbers of people that act on things less than the truth and a culture/economy that seems to perpetuate that for those who aren't interested. Putting these people in the same network as people who really want to talk about and debate ideas isn't working. There are standards of truth but people that aren't ruled by reason won't obey them. They'll go with their gut, or what their friends say, or what they think they should say to impress their peers, or what everyone else is doing. For people who over their lives have been concerned more with survival or overcoming trauma than a real exchange of knowledge or ideas, often these strategies work well.

mountainboy 6y ago

This article sounds to me like a lot of hand-wringing and complaining that people are thinking for themselves and talking amongst themselves rather than worshipping at the ivory tower. In other words, music to my ears.

mountainboy 6y ago
downvoted... must've struck a nerve.
- chillacy 6y ago
  > Be kind. Don't be snarky. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

throwaway234101 6y ago

> But a person who does PCR analysis and knows the ins and outs of PCR tests that maintains that there is no such thing as COVID-19 is on another level for me. That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around. A person who specializes in analyzing viruses tells the author something counterintuitive and instead of re-assessing his own assumptions, he labels the specialist delusional. That last sentence, "That’s the kind of purposeful refusal of the world as it exists all around us that I can not get my head wrapped around", could easily apply to the author.

quicklime 6y ago

> Filtering out the bad from the good is going to be very important if we don’t want to accidentally lose such minor marbles as our democracies, our health and our safety. I really think that a better solution to this problem is to fix the shortcomings of our democratic systems. The majority of people don't believe that 5G towers cause COVID-19, or that 9/11 was an inside job. A stable democracy should be resilient enough to withstand a small number of wrong people. But that's not the case for the US. The election result for the entire country (of 330 million people!) can be flipped by a few tens of thousands of voters in the right electorates. I recognize that this is going to be a hard problem to fix. But I do believe it would be easier than trying to reverse the laws of economics that drive social media companies to do the things they do.

burlesona 6y ago
I have wondered how much less (if any) this is a problem in Democracies with Parliamentary systems, particularly any that don't use "first past the post" voting. Anyone from outside the US have insight on that to share?
bmitc 6y ago
I agree we need to shore up the democratic systems. However, I think you are greatly underestimating the amount of propaganda that is fed to a huge amount of people in the U.S. who lap everything up. I feel people sweeping it under the rug are part of the problem. And I think you are also underestimating the amount of people who have extremely strong nationalistic and even white supremist attitudes and seek to spread them. The U.S. is a very big place and many of these people hide in plain site, just waiting for their opportunity for people like Trump or Stephen Miller to get power. I've experienced it from both educated and non-educated, rich and poor. I grew up in a rural, predominately white area. I know these people and how they think, and it's scary. Social media acts as a medium for people to transmit these ideas at a speed and power not known before. We need to address both our democratic and communication systems.

4bpp 6y ago

Anecdotes abound, when this is really not the sort of debate that should be conducted using anecdotes (cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chin...). Sure, some societies have uncensored social media and wind up with a lot of people believing that vaccines are a Bill Gates conspiracy, occasionally leading to real harm. Other societies, as a downstream effect of uncensored social media, wind up with racial pogroms, as a commenter elsewhere in here pointed out. On the other hand, some societies with censorship wind up totalitarian hellholes, and some societies didn't even have social media at all and still had racial pogroms (whether initiated by local word of mouth, or the local counterpart of the same elites that presumably would be in charge of censoring social media if there were social media). The existence of these anecdotes tells us nothing about whether we would be better off with or without uncensored social media, or whether some other more subtle solution than censoring or not censoring would lead to better outcomes. So, which one is more likely? Which one has worse consequences in expectation? This argument can only be done quantitatively, and as far as I know nobody has produced the numbers that we would need to do that. We might as well try to determine whether private possession of bladed objects should be permitted based on a comparing whether an emotional account of a marital stabbing, defense of the cultural value of home cooking or appeal to the value of adults feeling like society trusts them to hurt themselves feels more moving. (If we stop trying to pretend that there is a meaningful utilitarian argument to be had here, though, on an idealistic level, where emotional appeals are properly at home, I'm with the more critical commenters here. Quoting from low culture like video games may be a little tacky, but: "Beware he[sic] who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.")

intended 6y ago

These conversations become hard, because its not well discussed, and the finesse to divide these into "new" and "old" problems is being developed. For example an "old" problem is that this is how humans interact with information and sensationalism. The news cycle effect, the sale of content along with the packaging of professionalism - was a problem before the net. But there are also a novel situations where this new rate, scale, and quality of information creation/dissemination result in new structures issues. An example of this is the perception that a belief is more widely held than it is in the general public, due to social media. IF you got into a conspiracy group, and it were populated by 1000s of real conspiracists, it would still be a small fraction of the population of %(people online)(speak your language)(other filters). BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified. A clear field where tech creates new problems is where tech outstrips old societal and human thresholds of functioning. Social media feeds which reinforce information, constant and from your pocket? New problem Automated creation of content to populate feeds? New New problem. Creation of propaganda ? Old problem, new medium, new tools - question on whether scope and scale make it a new problem. ----- Perhaps the "new" problems can, to some extent, be solved by tech. "Old" problems will almost certainly need tech+political will and manpower to solve.

mistermann 6y ago
> BUT - the human brain sees "enough" activity in the forum/web page to trigger an internal "critical mass" threshold, this creates "social proof" and the belief gets solidified. I think you're pointing out some important but extremely easy to overlook things here. How many newspaper articles, blog posts, and twitter/forum discussions have we had in the last two years about fake news and conspiracy theories, typically written in confident but grave tones? But of the people writing these things, how many of them really know what they're talking about? What is the source of their knowledge? What is the underlying source of the claims Jacques is making in the article we're discussing? How many of the people opining on such subjects actually spend any serious time within the communities they're reporting on? If the topic/culture was something other than the behaviour of conspiracy theorists (say, African Americans), do you think it would have any effect on how the information would be received by readers? In that case, I suspect a lot of people might fairly quickly wonder if the author actually happens to know as much as they claim, and I think it would be fairly easy to find plenty of anecdotal conversations on the internet to substantiate that prediction. The human brain "sees" all sorts of things. It can produce an instantaneous answer to most any question you ask it, whether or not it actually has much actual concrete data to work with. There are a variety of ways to control this default functionality, the major progress we've made with decreasing racial stereotyping in the last several decades is a good example. But that took a lot of coordinated messaging, education, and peer pressure, for a very long time. Despite that, we're still rather far from declaring mission accomplished. And that is just one topic - how many others do we have in this same category? I doubt we'll make much progress on these issues, especially now with the brutal efficiency of mass communication we've released into society (with hardly a second thought), until we can finally realize what the root of the problem is: the human mind. And it's not just "those other people" whose minds are flawed, the problem is with the base hardware and software itself - it's just easier to notice in some people than others, especially when it's constantly in the news.

uniqueid 6y ago

> quick way to report a Tweet or FB post that spreads disinformation would already help a lot. That point is what always goes through my head when a Dorsey or a Zuckerberg or a Wojkiki gives another "more work to be done" apology. If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content?

stx 6y ago
> If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content? I think they are trying to narrow what can be flagged. I think they want to avoid people just flagging posts they do not agree with. There is a quote "History is a set of lies agreed upon." To me you could replace history with social media and the quote would be true. Or at least thats the lie I agree with.
themacguffinman 6y ago
How is it convoluted? The "Report" button is quite easy to find in tweets and posts.
- dgellow 6y ago
  I used it a few times to report clear old schools racist stuff. My experience is that it takes 7 steps to report that content on twitter in Germany, and isn’t as easy as expected. I documented the process here: https://twitter.com/dgellow/status/1274398162711691266?s=20 https://twitter.com/dgellow/status/1274398162711691266?s=20 Also, every single time Twitter responded that they won’t do anything about the reported content (again, I’m talking about clear old school racist content).
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    To be fair, that doesn't seem unduly convoluted to me. They are doing their due diligence: it looks like you specifically picked the Twitter-is-liable-in-Germany-if-they-get-it-wrong legal option, so they very reasonably give you a questionnaire because they want you to be specific about what you're demanding of their vaguely defined Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz obligations. Then they got back to you, saying they disagree with your judgement. That's a lot of "moderation is hard" work and they're doing their job. However much you might disagree with their verdict, they're not hiding reporting functionality or making reports unduly difficult or ignoring reports.

mmaunder 6y ago

Who gets to decide who doesn’t get to speak? If an individual, we suppress popular opinion unpopular with leadership. If the collective, we suppress unpopular data and ideas that may be accurate or innovative. You can’t have selective freedom of speech.

deleted 6y ago
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razzimatazz 6y ago
I agree selective freedom of speech is hard. Probably too hard. I tend to support selective augmentation of other people's speech - "fact checkers have shown this to be inaccurate" next to a conspiracy fan's latest comment. As long as it is more precise than just downvoting to oblivion.
- jdashg 6y ago
  And who's to object to that! Speech is free and visible, and no information is withheld, it's just not passively amplified without reasonable vetting.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >And who's to object to that! I take it you didn't see the outrage around here when Twitter "fact-checked" Trump's statements - even that was denounced as propaganda and censorship.
dgellow 6y ago
> Who gets to decide who doesn’t get to speak? The platform owner, then potentially a judge.

daenz 6y ago

>The fig leaf of Free Speech will no doubt be brandished as the greatest good and too sacred to be messed with but the facts are that every form of free speech has limitations. And that actively trying to harm others by abusing that right should come with some kind of limit or at a minimum a way to reduce its reach. Most of the reasoning around free speech rights and such are from a time when getting a letter across the country took three weeks. This is what the seed of authoritarianism looks like: moral justifications for forcing people to believe, communicate, and behave the way you think is correct.

white-flame 6y ago
The specific limit of free speech is where it causes legal damages to others. The particular form of authoritarian scaremongering on display tries to undefine that court-testable line to include any useful moral panic, but never really addresses the notion that loosening that line means their own speech could also easily be suppressed, as the "other side" could use the new suppression tools as freely and subjectively as themselves.
- conception 6y ago
  Two things- What about legal damages but not directly cause and effect. Something like stochastic terrorism? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stocha...) If someone is saying “Someone out kill x...” either directly or via dog whistles and whoops someone “crazy” kills them, should we tolerate that as a society? This is being played out by the massive increase, for instance, of violence and crime on Asian Americans because of the rhetoric of right wing media in regards to China but you can’t charge anyone with a direct comer and yet damages are happening. And if the test is specifically legally proven damages then well society makes the laws and the question returns to should we as a society allow people to incite violence and how do we draw that line? It’s not an easy question but I don’t think it’s as simple as “legal damages”. The second point which is perhaps more to the grandparent is all voices are certainly not equal - especially on the internet. Should a corporation or state actor with the finances to blanket their voice across the spectrum of media not have any limits on it? As speech is weaponized, which it was in 2016 and counties to be done so today, should it be regulated in some way like other weapons are? What will society look like when the voices with the power to spread their message continue to shrink? Everything needs moderation and regulation especially when it can do such harm to society. Again there’s a debate on where to draw the line but I don’t think we want to live in a society of might/money makes right in the sphere of media communications any more than we already are in it.

intended 6y ago

Since people are discussing conspiracies, I present to you the Batman argument to inoculate your near and dear ones. 1) All conspiracy theories require the evil organization to achieve several super human/ super organizational feats such as: * Perfect coordination - across timezones, personalities, objectives * Great wealth * excellent control of public figures * Advanced technology * Great secrecy Etc. These are all impossible asks, which any normal person knows if they have worked in any team of people. Many conspiracies die because of how hard it is to keep everyone aligned, and if people were that efficient in secrecy, imagine how efficient they would be without that burden. Therefore, Implication 1) If you believe in the conspiracy, we must also live in a world where such levels of efficiency are possible. which means that 2) It is also possible for an organization or individuals to exist, who take advantage of these efficiencies and advantages to do "good". Now if it was possible to stay in the dark, while having advanced tech and great wealth - well you've just described Batman. So the question you can train all your loved ones to ask, anytime they encounter a great claim, is whether this claim means that we live in a world where batman can exist. ------------------------ While this is a childish way to encode a defense, its meant to be easy to consume, and to protect people who regularly wont have time to spend the effort to verify information or toxic content when they encounter it. So while it is outlandish, that is partly the point - to diminish the earnestness and terror that conspiracy theories exude, without your active intervention being required. edit: This can apply to any superhero/or superfriends. I just chose Batman.

motohagiography 6y ago

Maybe the only ethical thing to do at this point is for the founder/owners of these platforms to commit acts of sabotage so that people might become free of them. Investors are all hedged, founders have cashed out, some of them aren't profitable anyway, employees can find other work if its done over time. Nothing of value would be lost. The point about connecting gullible people is interesting and useful. It's likely social media has just automated the underlying phenomenon behind mass hysteria. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases) The real social media problem is we've put a slot machine in every pocket, and now nobody can turn them off until the hysteria has run its course and we evolve a resistance to them - or if the founders do this one unthinkable thing.

deleted 6y ago
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babesh 6y ago

This thesis is crap and is blind to much bigger conspiracy theories that have been going on for thousands of years and that still have much stronger holds on societies than anti mask conspiracy theories. Modern social media did not cause them to grow to what they were since it did not exist when they were created and grew. Christianity: Jesus died and came back to life. He died for your sins. You are going to hell if you don’t repent your sins. Please give the church 10%. Buddhism: You are going to endlessly suffer. Please contribute to the temple to support the monks. Please pay monks to bless funerals. Hinduism: You are born into a caste and stuck in it. You are shit and untouchable. If you touch me or try to marry my daughter, I will kill you. The reality is that you have systems and people that prey on human weaknesses for time immemorial. It is much more interesting to examine how those technologies/systems operate.

babesh 6y ago
Free speech was protection against conspiracy theories and now the author wants to ban free speech to protect us from conspiracy theories. Sheer nonsense.
acephal 6y ago
>The reality is that you have systems and people that prey on human weaknesses for time immemorial. It is much more interesting to examine how those technologies/systems operate. Welcome to the wonderful world of Michel Foucault's critique of historiography Next, we'll examine Western notions of 'progress', rationalization, and humanism as being parsable along the same lines

username3 6y ago

Misinformation spreads because Twitter rate limits users replying to misinformation.