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Its not fake news if its true but inconvenient, so there's a pretty firm line there. There are plenty of recent examples of legitimately fake and (intentionally

Its not fake news if its true but inconvenient, so there's a pretty firm line there. There are plenty of recent examples of legitimately fake and (intentionally) misleading content that has been propagated on Facebook, I assume anyone with any right wing friends has been inundated with it. But in addition to that, the simple protection against censoring true notions that annoy the powerful is transparency. Complete transparency with when and why and how things are blocked would be a start. Blocking clearly fake content, banning people who (repeatedly) post it, and being transparent about the reasons seems like a fair progress with a fairly clean line between it and proposed dystopian outcomes.

rendall 6y ago
"Its not fake news if its true but inconvenient, so there's a pretty firm line there." I agree that truth is a pretty firm line, but discerning that truth and agreeing on it is a very, very squishy line. Discerning what's true is arguably the most difficult task we can face, philosophically speaking No matter how many well-meaning people agree that some assertion A is false, if they are wrong and have the authority to suppress it, then they have committed the injustice of censorship. Even with the scientific method, which I believe is the best method ever invented for discerning truth, there have been many, many times that the scientific consensus has been, not only wrong, but egregiously, arrogantly wrong. Any time throughout history that authorities have been allowed to suppress what they believed to be false - and they often had excellent reasons for believing so - they invariably and inevitably suppress ideas that turn out to be true. Throwing AI at the problem is just adding another layer of misdirection. It's not going to be better this time in spite of all of the other times just because an AI decides it No, personally speaking, I think we will have a much, much healthier society if we can just learn to live with the fact that people believe stupid things and they will always believe stupid things even when you try to hide the stupid things from them. I know that I believe things that are both wrong and stupid, I just don't know which things. If everyone could acknowledge that they probably hold at least some wrong and stupid ideas, we would all be a little bit more humble about banishing other peoples' wrong and stupid ideas.

rendall 6y ago

"Its not fake news if its true but inconvenient, so there's a pretty firm line there." I agree that truth is a pretty firm line, but discerning that truth and agreeing on it is a very, very squishy line. Discerning what's true is arguably the most difficult task we can face, philosophically speaking No matter how many well-meaning people agree that some assertion A is false, if they are wrong and have the authority to suppress it, then they have committed the injustice of censorship. Even with the scientific method, which I believe is the best method ever invented for discerning truth, there have been many, many times that the scientific consensus has been, not only wrong, but egregiously, arrogantly wrong. Any time throughout history that authorities have been allowed to suppress what they believed to be false - and they often had excellent reasons for believing so - they invariably and inevitably suppress ideas that turn out to be true. Throwing AI at the problem is just adding another layer of misdirection. It's not going to be better this time in spite of all of the other times just because an AI decides it No, personally speaking, I think we will have a much, much healthier society if we can just learn to live with the fact that people believe stupid things and they will always believe stupid things even when you try to hide the stupid things from them. I know that I believe things that are both wrong and stupid, I just don't know which things. If everyone could acknowledge that they probably hold at least some wrong and stupid ideas, we would all be a little bit more humble about banishing other peoples' wrong and stupid ideas.