7 ms·

GP's quote implores the reader to do the balancing. When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bia

by tomc1985 6y ago

GP's quote implores the reader to do the balancing. When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias. That's not to say that a good counter argument shouldn't be presented in the article, just that a moral mandate to include both sides often creates that false balance

lmilcin 6y ago
Ah, yes... that only works if we are not being actively manipulated. In ideal world all people would be weighing evidence, try to think logically and appeal to timeless, basic principles. Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and (what a shocker) half of people have less than 100 IQ. While it is easy to see through most lies most of the time (the logic just isn't there), the goal is not to fool everybody. It is enough to fool just enough people to sow confusion.
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endymi0n 6y ago
An important distinction, granted. Although my quote rather questions whether there is always something to balance in the first place. If you try to find the middle ground between truth and a blatant, confident lie that was pulled from thin air to sow doubts on that truth, you get a half-lie — or truth casted in doubt, which was exactly what the lie was made for. Find a fringe case about a dead body voting and you can sow doubts about a whole election. Call out a politician lying once and suddenly it does not matter anymore whether you are lying every day to the casual onlooker. I am absolutely not sure whether censoring such content is the right answer, but I'm pretty sure providing an open microphone and an uncontrolled echo chamber to narcisstic sociopaths backed by Wall Street interests and foreign bot armies isn't either.
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starfallg 6y ago
We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information. Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair.
- dumpsterdiver 6y ago
  > We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information. Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair. The system you are referring to is called our discerning minds, and it is already in place. By removing any piece of an argument you are removing the ability of a discerning mind to make a sound judgement.
  - starfallg 6y ago
    And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention? There's a reason why advertisements work, and it goes hand-in-hand on why ads are regulated.
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    - dumpsterdiver 6y ago
      > And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention? Good question. Of course, there is no individual human mind capable of such a thing, and so why should such a mind be permitted to decide what the masses get to see?
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias. But that's also why the condemnation of balance is misdirected. Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. It isn't choosing how to spend its own words in a newspaper with a finite number of pages or a news channel with a finite amount of airtime, it's choosing what other people can say in a medium with effectively unlimited carrying capacity. It also has a big problem because the platform is simultaneously a medium for the dissemination of information to the public and a medium for the debate of nascent ideas. Suppose that tomorrow we got a claim of widespread election fraud that could actually be substantiated, given a sufficient amount of crowdsourcing or collaboration between experts in different fields. Now they can't even discuss it because the effort to substantiate it involves putting forth a theory that hasn't been substantiated yet?
- tremon 6y ago
  Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. That's just mincing words. Facebook is very much a communications platform that determines what its users get to see. In that sense, Facebook exercises editorial control over its content, and to its users it makes no difference whether that control is automated or manual. Therefore it doesn't matter whether we classify Facebook as a "journalist", the damage done by Facebook's editorial control is the same.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > That's just mincing words. It isn't. A journalist is choosing what they themselves say out of their own mouths. Anybody attributing everything that third party speakers say via Facebook as the official position of Facebook is false.

lmilcin 6y ago

Ah, yes... that only works if we are not being actively manipulated. In ideal world all people would be weighing evidence, try to think logically and appeal to timeless, basic principles. Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and (what a shocker) half of people have less than 100 IQ. While it is easy to see through most lies most of the time (the logic just isn't there), the goal is not to fool everybody. It is enough to fool just enough people to sow confusion.

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endymi0n 6y ago

An important distinction, granted. Although my quote rather questions whether there is always something to balance in the first place. If you try to find the middle ground between truth and a blatant, confident lie that was pulled from thin air to sow doubts on that truth, you get a half-lie — or truth casted in doubt, which was exactly what the lie was made for. Find a fringe case about a dead body voting and you can sow doubts about a whole election. Call out a politician lying once and suddenly it does not matter anymore whether you are lying every day to the casual onlooker. I am absolutely not sure whether censoring such content is the right answer, but I'm pretty sure providing an open microphone and an uncontrolled echo chamber to narcisstic sociopaths backed by Wall Street interests and foreign bot armies isn't either.

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starfallg 6y ago

We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information. Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair.

dumpsterdiver 6y ago
> We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information. Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair. The system you are referring to is called our discerning minds, and it is already in place. By removing any piece of an argument you are removing the ability of a discerning mind to make a sound judgement.
- starfallg 6y ago
  And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention? There's a reason why advertisements work, and it goes hand-in-hand on why ads are regulated.
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  - dumpsterdiver 6y ago
    > And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention? Good question. Of course, there is no individual human mind capable of such a thing, and so why should such a mind be permitted to decide what the masses get to see?

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias. But that's also why the condemnation of balance is misdirected. Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. It isn't choosing how to spend its own words in a newspaper with a finite number of pages or a news channel with a finite amount of airtime, it's choosing what other people can say in a medium with effectively unlimited carrying capacity. It also has a big problem because the platform is simultaneously a medium for the dissemination of information to the public and a medium for the debate of nascent ideas. Suppose that tomorrow we got a claim of widespread election fraud that could actually be substantiated, given a sufficient amount of crowdsourcing or collaboration between experts in different fields. Now they can't even discuss it because the effort to substantiate it involves putting forth a theory that hasn't been substantiated yet?

tremon 6y ago
Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. That's just mincing words. Facebook is very much a communications platform that determines what its users get to see. In that sense, Facebook exercises editorial control over its content, and to its users it makes no difference whether that control is automated or manual. Therefore it doesn't matter whether we classify Facebook as a "journalist", the damage done by Facebook's editorial control is the same.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > That's just mincing words. It isn't. A journalist is choosing what they themselves say out of their own mouths. Anybody attributing everything that third party speakers say via Facebook as the official position of Facebook is false.