4 ms·

The principle of using skepticism is a sound one, but what do you do when the majority of your users don't employ that practice? Just let misinformation spread

by allenu 6y ago

The principle of using skepticism is a sound one, but what do you do when the majority of your users don't employ that practice? Just let misinformation spread and just be okay with the ramifications on society because "it's not my problem my users are gullible"?

blhack 6y ago
I don't agree with your characterization. Ideally twitter shouldn't really be able to spread "misinformation" because people shouldn't be using it as a source of information to begin with. These moves they have been making around fact checking, censoring things etc, make this problem worse. They're trying to increase people's trust in twitter, which they shouldn't be doing, they should be actively trying to do the opposite, and they will fail to remove all of the misinformation. So the result will be that people will still see misinformation, but they'll trust it more. It's the exact opposite.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
A meta comment: I've noticed this is a variation of another argument I hear from the national security side, usually from the Kissinger-Brzezinski-ites in particular who argue that their anti-democratic actions are because the people are too dumb to govern themselves (The so called "Crisis of Democracy") and therefore in some machiaviellian realpolitik way, their unconstitutional actions are justified. (One of Kissinger's famous quotes being something to the effect of the "The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer".) I keep thinking back to the freedom of speech circuit Christopher Hitchens did and some of the great speeches on the topic he gave, some of which are him broadly denouncing the ability, want or acceptance of any person or group of persons to be the one who decides what you can and cannot read and/or say. I wonder where the voices of whoever holds those intellectual reins these days is, because I'm not hearing it.

by allenu 6y ago

blhack 6y ago

I don't agree with your characterization. Ideally twitter shouldn't really be able to spread "misinformation" because people shouldn't be using it as a source of information to begin with. These moves they have been making around fact checking, censoring things etc, make this problem worse. They're trying to increase people's trust in twitter, which they shouldn't be doing, they should be actively trying to do the opposite, and they will fail to remove all of the misinformation. So the result will be that people will still see misinformation, but they'll trust it more. It's the exact opposite.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

A meta comment: I've noticed this is a variation of another argument I hear from the national security side, usually from the Kissinger-Brzezinski-ites in particular who argue that their anti-democratic actions are because the people are too dumb to govern themselves (The so called "Crisis of Democracy") and therefore in some machiaviellian realpolitik way, their unconstitutional actions are justified. (One of Kissinger's famous quotes being something to the effect of the "The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer".) I keep thinking back to the freedom of speech circuit Christopher Hitchens did and some of the great speeches on the topic he gave, some of which are him broadly denouncing the ability, want or acceptance of any person or group of persons to be the one who decides what you can and cannot read and/or say. I wonder where the voices of whoever holds those intellectual reins these days is, because I'm not hearing it.