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This comment is indicative of the absolute sea change that has happened over the last four years with how we treat speech and journalism. Gone are the days whe

This comment is indicative of the absolute sea change that has happened over the last four years with how we treat speech and journalism. Gone are the days when if you read a story and thought it was BS, you ignored it and moved on. Or when a politician says something dumb, that's obviously untrue or a distortion, you just laughed and said "what an idiot". Today, these things are "disinformation" and are "an attack on our democracy". This is a severe escalation, and I think what it's priming us all to do is reject Free Speech as a principle wholesale and replace it with an "official" narrative that is approved ahead of time (approved by who exactly, that remains to be seen). All politicians spread "disinformation". That's the nature of politics: framing the facts of a story, or distorting them, to support your preferred narrative to get elected. Same goes for all partisan journalism, and the same goes for "mainstream" outlets that still have their own narrative they like to push for their own reasons. Somehow we're still so shell-shocked from 2016 that we've escalated every little bit of political tomfoolery to be a literal attack on the democratic institution itself. It's just bizarre.

bosswipe 6y ago
There's a difference between framing events vs fabricating them from whole cloth. The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  I'm not sure there's a sufficient difference between those things to make the point you're trying to make stick. There's a non-trivial amount of people in this country (and on this website, it seems) who think Trump is, literally not metaphorically, an agent of the Kremlin. Are those people a threat to democracy? I certainly don't think so. I think they're idiots, but I don't think they're literally threatening democracy. >Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy. The line you are drawing here is very very close to accusing people who share false information of treason. Are we sure we want to walk up to that line? I'm not. I think it's frankly pretty silly. It's also interesting that you assume there is some neutral arbiter that can decide what is "real" and what is "true" and what is "fact" (all different things, btw). >The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. It's also interesting that you think this was ever the state of democracy, and not the status quo.
- aksss 6y ago
  > The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Let’s review the history of the oldest democracy on the planet. And then the history of the second, the third, etc. Who gets to decide what information is real? CDC? WHO? NYT? Fox? Who’s the final authority if not each of us? Your statement implies incredibly low expectations for the people and inflated expectations for “authorities”. It is ultimately an _authoritarian_ view, quite the opposite of democracy.
drewrv 6y ago
It's been argued time and again, from one side that Facebook and Twitter are private companies and that free speech doesn't apply on their sites, and from another side that what we're talking about is an abstract principal of free speech, not the legal definition. But if you remove the loaded term of "free speech", what's actually being discussed here is "website moderation policies". With that framing, what is the expectation for Facebook and Twitter? To devolve into 4chan? Personally, I like well moderated sites. That's why I'm here! It's bizarre to me that so many other people who chose to spend their time here expect Facebook and Twitter to be laissez faire about moderation.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  You can redefine the discussion all you want, but my comment was related to how people have changed their views on speech in the age of social media and the internet (and especially since 2016). I don't really care to rabbit hole right now about TOS policies on these websites, but I do care about how we collectively think about principles like free speech and what constitutes a "threat" to democracy. So, to directly respond to what you're bringing up, laissez faire moderation policies are not a threat to democracy.

bosswipe 6y ago

There's a difference between framing events vs fabricating them from whole cloth. The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy.

remarkEon 6y ago
I'm not sure there's a sufficient difference between those things to make the point you're trying to make stick. There's a non-trivial amount of people in this country (and on this website, it seems) who think Trump is, literally not metaphorically, an agent of the Kremlin. Are those people a threat to democracy? I certainly don't think so. I think they're idiots, but I don't think they're literally threatening democracy. >Injecting completely false information into the public discourse is a direct attack on democracy. The line you are drawing here is very very close to accusing people who share false information of treason. Are we sure we want to walk up to that line? I'm not. I think it's frankly pretty silly. It's also interesting that you assume there is some neutral arbiter that can decide what is "real" and what is "true" and what is "fact" (all different things, btw). >The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. It's also interesting that you think this was ever the state of democracy, and not the status quo.
aksss 6y ago
> The only way democracy can work is if voters are making decisions based on real world information. Let’s review the history of the oldest democracy on the planet. And then the history of the second, the third, etc. Who gets to decide what information is real? CDC? WHO? NYT? Fox? Who’s the final authority if not each of us? Your statement implies incredibly low expectations for the people and inflated expectations for “authorities”. It is ultimately an _authoritarian_ view, quite the opposite of democracy.

drewrv 6y ago

It's been argued time and again, from one side that Facebook and Twitter are private companies and that free speech doesn't apply on their sites, and from another side that what we're talking about is an abstract principal of free speech, not the legal definition. But if you remove the loaded term of "free speech", what's actually being discussed here is "website moderation policies". With that framing, what is the expectation for Facebook and Twitter? To devolve into 4chan? Personally, I like well moderated sites. That's why I'm here! It's bizarre to me that so many other people who chose to spend their time here expect Facebook and Twitter to be laissez faire about moderation.

remarkEon 6y ago
You can redefine the discussion all you want, but my comment was related to how people have changed their views on speech in the age of social media and the internet (and especially since 2016). I don't really care to rabbit hole right now about TOS policies on these websites, but I do care about how we collectively think about principles like free speech and what constitutes a "threat" to democracy. So, to directly respond to what you're bringing up, laissez faire moderation policies are not a threat to democracy.