7 ms·

> 1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints. For the most part, those "viewp

by ardy42 6y ago

> 1. Tech platforms are uncomfortable with certain viewpoints expressed on their platforms and seek to limit these viewpoints. For the most part, those "viewpoints" are verifiable falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and other types of disinformation and misinformation. For instance, the recent migrations to Parler are chiefly people who want to deny the legitimate US presidential election result and spread false claims of widespread vote fraud. Using the term "viewpoint" like you did is misleading, since it has the effect of making literal lies sound like legitimate differences of opinion. > 3. This marginalisation leads to increasing extremism; going from the likes of “immigrants bad” we saw in 2016 to disputing and attempting to overturn democracy. Eh, not so much. A lot of the recent "increasing extremism" (for instance QAnon and Boogaloo Bois), occurred on mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter. While pushing crazies and extremists to places like Gab and Parler probably radicalizes many of them further, it also isolates them from the wider community, which helps reduce their ability to recruit new people into their lunacy.

Hermel 6y ago
So what? People should be free to discuss stupid and wrong ideas. Btw: I think conspiracy theories are good indicators for what certain people want to believe. I personally don't want to be disconnected from these indicators.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > So what? People should be free to discuss stupid and wrong ideas. And they are, but if they want to do it on Twitter, Twitter gets to have its say as well. However, the conspiracy theorists don't seem to like it when Twitter exercises its rights by labeling their tweets, like in this case. As for why this matters, people who want to live in functioning democracies have a strong interest in making sure the truth prevails in public discourse, and that lies find the habitat difficult.
  - wernercd 6y ago
    "Twitter gets to have it's say" Free speech is more than just a law... it's an idea and a philosophy. Part of making sure "truth prevails" is having open discourse about topics. That involves people with "Wrong" ideas the ability to talk. When platforms like Facebook and Twitter become the arbiter of what's "right"? Then people will leave those platforms because lawfully they have the "right" to censor their platform... but people WILL talk about it elsewhere. Facebook/Twitter may win this "battle" by purposefully influencing an election by hiding disinformation they disagree with (while allowing disinformation they are okay with)... but they'll lose the war as other platforms gain momentum and legitimacy. The internet will route itself around the censorship.
    - berkes 6y ago
      What place does someone with the delusion that '2+2=7' have in 'prevailing the Truth'. Such a person only frustrates that search for truth. They don't make the outcome faster, easier or more true, do they?
      - wernercd 6y ago
        What place does "russian collusion" have? because "2+2=7" is provably true/false... but Russian collusion? not so much... meanwhile, it's "truth" that's allowed to be spoken of without repercussion... Because life isn't as simple as "2+2=7"... it's opinions and people saying "my opinion is valid and yours is banned from open discussion". Because I can find plenty of examples of stuff that isn't as clear as flat-earthers or pizzagate that's being blocked from public discorse.
        berkes 6y ago
        Ok, but let's start with stuff that is provably false, yet is debated all along. For example: There is a climate crisis. This is a scientifically proven fact, not an opinion. Yet people deny it, often with the argument "I'm entitled to this opinion." No. You are not, because it is not an opinion; at most it is a delusion, at worst it is a lie (that you might honestly believe in). This is a 2+2=4 situation, or as near as one can get; yet one that even heads of "modern" states keep saying that is anything but 4. Once we start from the basis that "there is a climate crisis", we can move forward, make choices and so on. A choice might be "it's there, but we're not going to do anything against it, because our economy". That is effective. (albeit something I would have a strong opninion about). At least others can still move forward. But stating it does not exist (which is provably untrue) really harms effectiveness a lot.
  - Hermel 6y ago
    > And they are, but if they want to do it on Twitter, Twitter gets to have its say as well. And that's why they are exercising their right to move away from Twitter.
  - odessacubbage 6y ago
    >And they are ask jim watkins or weev or dick masterson about that. alternative platforms get to exist on a small scale as long as they maintain obscurity, but as soon as old media releases a black pr scarepiece, they get Esther Aronowitz'ed pretty quickly. >people who want to live in functioning democracies have a strong interest in making sure the truth prevails in public discourse, and that lies find the habitat difficult. i think you will find that every conspiratorial thinker completely agrees with that sentiment.
  - bluecalm 6y ago
    Once Twitter has a say it becomes a publisher not a platform. There is no practical difference between writing a piece yourself and choosing which piece to publish out of thousands other people write. After all you can always claim something you write was submitted by an anonymous donor. Twitter is a publisher and should be responsible for all that it publishes including calls for violence which it regularly features.
- sparkie 6y ago
  Recall that for at least 3 years, Reddit, here, and many other places were pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. Nobody can fact check for you. You need to make your own opinions based on the knowledge you have, and suppressing information does not make you more informed.
  - andybak 6y ago
    > many other places were pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. I might be out of touch but isn't it fairly established at this point that - for certain definitions of "collusion" - it was factually true? i.e. not "Trump got together with Putin and hatched a plan" true but "both sides obliquely acknowledged the interests of the other with a nod and a wink" true?
    - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
      I'm not one for comprehension, but are you stating that if China prefers to have Biden at the helm, and if he wins that they colluded to get him there? Quite the gymnastics friend.
      - andybak 6y ago
        No - I'm saying in addition to "Russia prefers Trump at the helm", there was some (direct or indirect) contact between the two parties and some awareness and (implicit or explicit) encouragement from the Trump camp for Russian actions. Surely there is a meaningful distance between that and your formulation?
    - XorNot 6y ago
      It has also been proven more and more true as time goes on - i.e. the FBI's recent report that Rudy Guiliani was targeted by Russian intelligence to feed disinformation to Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-biden-ukraine-russian-disinformation/2020/10/15/43158900-0ef5-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi... Not to mention this essentially public attempt at it from 2016 which for some reason everyone laughed off as "a joke": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/trump-russia-clinton-emails.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/trump-russia-... (footage of the moment included in the article). Literally the only reason "oh it was just not true" is a prevailing bit of logic is because no one in power has cared to do a single thing about it, or even so much as announce that it's in no way acceptable.
Siira 6y ago
How are they “verifiable” falsehoods? E.g., conspiracy theories are famous for being almost always unfalsifiable. These views usually are a mix of low prior hypotheses, politically incorrect semi-truths, marketing propaganda (with few empirical assertions), and lies.
- refurb 6y ago
  "The NSA is secretly monitoring all communications on the internet" That would have easily been labeled misinformation and disinformation 10 years ago.
  - askl56 6y ago
    Likewise with the Jeffrey Epstein story.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    And... That's fine I think. Nobody actually knew that, even though many suspected it. Less strict versions of that sentence would be completely fine. Discussing the details of things like their secret rooms at internet exchanges and countermeasures in case it was true would be great too. But it's like people saying "MS is selling all your behaviour data" today, which is likely partially true, but not quite in that way. And when they take that extreme position without having something to back it up, it's hard to / not worth discussing.
  - entropea 6y ago
    Iraq war criticism would've been labeled as conspiracy and had warnings below tweets and Youtube videos, despite us now knowing there were no WMD's.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Not sure why you're down voted. It's a good example. The whole "Saddam was buying yellowcake" was completely false, yet the only evidence was a gov't statement saying it was true. If someone said "that's a lie", it would likely have been viewed as disinformation, but it would have been the truth.
robswc 6y ago
I could agree with a lot of this... the problem for me though is it always comes back to actually enforcing this stuff. I already know I sinned by trying to have a productive conversation of twitter, however when "talking" with a few self proclaimed communists (no, I don't think they were joking) they basically implied the "rich" deserve to die, they were morally allowed to kill them, etc. IIRC, this was on a post about a teachers union displaying a guillotine and I pretty much said "yea, lets not be like this." There was also some racism thrown in there, I guess for good measure. They seem to have even developed their own "secret language", calling white people 'mayos' and 'yts' - maybe to get around filters? Or just to be extra edgy. I would argue that pushing some justification of murdering fellow citizens because of their net worth is just as dangerous as the insane conspiracies about lizard people... if not more. Yet, I don't think these things are shut down or given the same standards as what you're thinking of. I wish for twitter (and everyone else's sake) they equally applied their "TOS". I have no need to go to those sites you mentioned... in fact I can't think of anything less productive but on the flip side of the coin, I've pretty much deleted twitter for the same reason.
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  I'm sure it must have been terrifying but overall I'd rather have the real war, Poor v Rich , than the deluded Poor v Poor. It would be over quickly and we won't even lose anything of value.
alkonaut 6y ago
I agree, but the situation is symmetrical. Parler is removing liberal memes (unsure if it’s automatic moderation after flagging - but that doesn’t really matter as the outcome is the same). We know which side is crazy though.
- mythrwy 6y ago
  Both sides?
refurb 6y ago
For the most part, those "viewpoints" are verifiable falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and other types of disinformation and misinformation. "For the most part" But incredibly, disinformation and misinformation like "the Hunter Biden story is a Russian plot" doesn't get censored, despite absolutely no proof and in fact, evidence to the contrary. Funny that is.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I mean, Glenn Greenwald resigned from the Intercept so he could write about it. That post wasn't censored in any way, shape or form. There were huge threads here about this for literally a week. Seems like a bad job was done on supressing that information.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Huh? I'm talking about the claims it's all "Russian disinformation" were not censored on Twitter. That's despite intelligence agencies saying that "there is no evidence it's Russian disinformation".
    - XorNot 6y ago
      You mean the story with an implausible chain of evidence that somehow winds up at Rudy Giuliani. This Rudy Giuliani: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-biden-ukraine-russian-disinformation/2020/10/15/43158900-0ef5-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi... The one intelligence agencies are in fact definitely claiming is being targeted by Russian disinformation?
      - refurb 6y ago
        Your link doesn't even refer to the files. It's just a vague warning about "Russian disinformation".
wyoh 6y ago
There's sufficient statistical incoherence to warrant skepticism about the US election.
- d_e_solomon 6y ago
  No, there's not. This is the point. The people driving these conspiracies are applying statistical techniques poorly and then parroting their claims on social media.
- tpush 6y ago
  No, there really isn’t. Election fraud happens all the time, but there is zero evidence of it happening in any quantities here that would change anything about the results.
- BearsAreCool 6y ago
  I've dug a fair bit into the statistic based claims and most of them just don't hold much water. The benfords law one that picked up steam being the main one I dug into, I even made a nice repo with fancy graphs but the meme had died out by the time I finished so I never shared it. However the main summary was "Benfords law just doesn't work for proportions of a precinct" However, if we want to go deeper into the rabbit hole, if there was a coup to steal the election I'd expect there to be ample fake claims of election stealing that would be easy to debunk.

by ardy42 6y ago

Hermel 6y ago

So what? People should be free to discuss stupid and wrong ideas. Btw: I think conspiracy theories are good indicators for what certain people want to believe. I personally don't want to be disconnected from these indicators.

ardy42 6y ago
> So what? People should be free to discuss stupid and wrong ideas. And they are, but if they want to do it on Twitter, Twitter gets to have its say as well. However, the conspiracy theorists don't seem to like it when Twitter exercises its rights by labeling their tweets, like in this case. As for why this matters, people who want to live in functioning democracies have a strong interest in making sure the truth prevails in public discourse, and that lies find the habitat difficult.
- wernercd 6y ago
  "Twitter gets to have it's say" Free speech is more than just a law... it's an idea and a philosophy. Part of making sure "truth prevails" is having open discourse about topics. That involves people with "Wrong" ideas the ability to talk. When platforms like Facebook and Twitter become the arbiter of what's "right"? Then people will leave those platforms because lawfully they have the "right" to censor their platform... but people WILL talk about it elsewhere. Facebook/Twitter may win this "battle" by purposefully influencing an election by hiding disinformation they disagree with (while allowing disinformation they are okay with)... but they'll lose the war as other platforms gain momentum and legitimacy. The internet will route itself around the censorship.
  - berkes 6y ago
    What place does someone with the delusion that '2+2=7' have in 'prevailing the Truth'. Such a person only frustrates that search for truth. They don't make the outcome faster, easier or more true, do they?
    - wernercd 6y ago
      What place does "russian collusion" have? because "2+2=7" is provably true/false... but Russian collusion? not so much... meanwhile, it's "truth" that's allowed to be spoken of without repercussion... Because life isn't as simple as "2+2=7"... it's opinions and people saying "my opinion is valid and yours is banned from open discussion". Because I can find plenty of examples of stuff that isn't as clear as flat-earthers or pizzagate that's being blocked from public discorse.
      - berkes 6y ago
        Ok, but let's start with stuff that is provably false, yet is debated all along. For example: There is a climate crisis. This is a scientifically proven fact, not an opinion. Yet people deny it, often with the argument "I'm entitled to this opinion." No. You are not, because it is not an opinion; at most it is a delusion, at worst it is a lie (that you might honestly believe in). This is a 2+2=4 situation, or as near as one can get; yet one that even heads of "modern" states keep saying that is anything but 4. Once we start from the basis that "there is a climate crisis", we can move forward, make choices and so on. A choice might be "it's there, but we're not going to do anything against it, because our economy". That is effective. (albeit something I would have a strong opninion about). At least others can still move forward. But stating it does not exist (which is provably untrue) really harms effectiveness a lot.
- Hermel 6y ago
  > And they are, but if they want to do it on Twitter, Twitter gets to have its say as well. And that's why they are exercising their right to move away from Twitter.
- odessacubbage 6y ago
  >And they are ask jim watkins or weev or dick masterson about that. alternative platforms get to exist on a small scale as long as they maintain obscurity, but as soon as old media releases a black pr scarepiece, they get Esther Aronowitz'ed pretty quickly. >people who want to live in functioning democracies have a strong interest in making sure the truth prevails in public discourse, and that lies find the habitat difficult. i think you will find that every conspiratorial thinker completely agrees with that sentiment.
- bluecalm 6y ago
  Once Twitter has a say it becomes a publisher not a platform. There is no practical difference between writing a piece yourself and choosing which piece to publish out of thousands other people write. After all you can always claim something you write was submitted by an anonymous donor. Twitter is a publisher and should be responsible for all that it publishes including calls for violence which it regularly features.
sparkie 6y ago
Recall that for at least 3 years, Reddit, here, and many other places were pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. Nobody can fact check for you. You need to make your own opinions based on the knowledge you have, and suppressing information does not make you more informed.
- andybak 6y ago
  > many other places were pushing the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. I might be out of touch but isn't it fairly established at this point that - for certain definitions of "collusion" - it was factually true? i.e. not "Trump got together with Putin and hatched a plan" true but "both sides obliquely acknowledged the interests of the other with a nod and a wink" true?
  - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
    I'm not one for comprehension, but are you stating that if China prefers to have Biden at the helm, and if he wins that they colluded to get him there? Quite the gymnastics friend.
    - andybak 6y ago
      No - I'm saying in addition to "Russia prefers Trump at the helm", there was some (direct or indirect) contact between the two parties and some awareness and (implicit or explicit) encouragement from the Trump camp for Russian actions. Surely there is a meaningful distance between that and your formulation?
  - XorNot 6y ago
    It has also been proven more and more true as time goes on - i.e. the FBI's recent report that Rudy Guiliani was targeted by Russian intelligence to feed disinformation to Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-biden-ukraine-russian-disinformation/2020/10/15/43158900-0ef5-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi... Not to mention this essentially public attempt at it from 2016 which for some reason everyone laughed off as "a joke": https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/trump-russia-clinton-emails.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/trump-russia-... (footage of the moment included in the article). Literally the only reason "oh it was just not true" is a prevailing bit of logic is because no one in power has cared to do a single thing about it, or even so much as announce that it's in no way acceptable.

Siira 6y ago

How are they “verifiable” falsehoods? E.g., conspiracy theories are famous for being almost always unfalsifiable. These views usually are a mix of low prior hypotheses, politically incorrect semi-truths, marketing propaganda (with few empirical assertions), and lies.

refurb 6y ago
"The NSA is secretly monitoring all communications on the internet" That would have easily been labeled misinformation and disinformation 10 years ago.
- askl56 6y ago
  Likewise with the Jeffrey Epstein story.
- viraptor 6y ago
  And... That's fine I think. Nobody actually knew that, even though many suspected it. Less strict versions of that sentence would be completely fine. Discussing the details of things like their secret rooms at internet exchanges and countermeasures in case it was true would be great too. But it's like people saying "MS is selling all your behaviour data" today, which is likely partially true, but not quite in that way. And when they take that extreme position without having something to back it up, it's hard to / not worth discussing.
- entropea 6y ago
  Iraq war criticism would've been labeled as conspiracy and had warnings below tweets and Youtube videos, despite us now knowing there were no WMD's.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Not sure why you're down voted. It's a good example. The whole "Saddam was buying yellowcake" was completely false, yet the only evidence was a gov't statement saying it was true. If someone said "that's a lie", it would likely have been viewed as disinformation, but it would have been the truth.

robswc 6y ago

I could agree with a lot of this... the problem for me though is it always comes back to actually enforcing this stuff. I already know I sinned by trying to have a productive conversation of twitter, however when "talking" with a few self proclaimed communists (no, I don't think they were joking) they basically implied the "rich" deserve to die, they were morally allowed to kill them, etc. IIRC, this was on a post about a teachers union displaying a guillotine and I pretty much said "yea, lets not be like this." There was also some racism thrown in there, I guess for good measure. They seem to have even developed their own "secret language", calling white people 'mayos' and 'yts' - maybe to get around filters? Or just to be extra edgy. I would argue that pushing some justification of murdering fellow citizens because of their net worth is just as dangerous as the insane conspiracies about lizard people... if not more. Yet, I don't think these things are shut down or given the same standards as what you're thinking of. I wish for twitter (and everyone else's sake) they equally applied their "TOS". I have no need to go to those sites you mentioned... in fact I can't think of anything less productive but on the flip side of the coin, I've pretty much deleted twitter for the same reason.

dontcarethrow2 6y ago
I'm sure it must have been terrifying but overall I'd rather have the real war, Poor v Rich , than the deluded Poor v Poor. It would be over quickly and we won't even lose anything of value.

alkonaut 6y ago

I agree, but the situation is symmetrical. Parler is removing liberal memes (unsure if it’s automatic moderation after flagging - but that doesn’t really matter as the outcome is the same). We know which side is crazy though.

mythrwy 6y ago
Both sides?

refurb 6y ago

For the most part, those "viewpoints" are verifiable falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and other types of disinformation and misinformation. "For the most part" But incredibly, disinformation and misinformation like "the Hunter Biden story is a Russian plot" doesn't get censored, despite absolutely no proof and in fact, evidence to the contrary. Funny that is.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
I mean, Glenn Greenwald resigned from the Intercept so he could write about it. That post wasn't censored in any way, shape or form. There were huge threads here about this for literally a week. Seems like a bad job was done on supressing that information.
- refurb 6y ago
  Huh? I'm talking about the claims it's all "Russian disinformation" were not censored on Twitter. That's despite intelligence agencies saying that "there is no evidence it's Russian disinformation".
  - XorNot 6y ago
    You mean the story with an implausible chain of evidence that somehow winds up at Rudy Giuliani. This Rudy Giuliani: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-biden-ukraine-russian-disinformation/2020/10/15/43158900-0ef5-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi... The one intelligence agencies are in fact definitely claiming is being targeted by Russian disinformation?
    - refurb 6y ago
      Your link doesn't even refer to the files. It's just a vague warning about "Russian disinformation".

wyoh 6y ago

There's sufficient statistical incoherence to warrant skepticism about the US election.

d_e_solomon 6y ago
No, there's not. This is the point. The people driving these conspiracies are applying statistical techniques poorly and then parroting their claims on social media.
tpush 6y ago
No, there really isn’t. Election fraud happens all the time, but there is zero evidence of it happening in any quantities here that would change anything about the results.
BearsAreCool 6y ago
I've dug a fair bit into the statistic based claims and most of them just don't hold much water. The benfords law one that picked up steam being the main one I dug into, I even made a nice repo with fancy graphs but the meme had died out by the time I finished so I never shared it. However the main summary was "Benfords law just doesn't work for proportions of a precinct" However, if we want to go deeper into the rabbit hole, if there was a coup to steal the election I'd expect there to be ample fake claims of election stealing that would be easy to debunk.