8 ms·

Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic About Section 230

96 points by leotravis10 6y ago

Lazare 6y ago
The headline seems to be....quite accurate. What a terrible job by Sixty Minutes. Then again, Sixty Minutes has a long history of making stuff up, lying about it, or peddling other peoples lies without bothering to investigate (eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Controversies), so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised...
- giantg2 6y ago
  I was going to say the same thing about mainstream journalism in general using the misrepresentation of the gender wage gap and deception like the Katie Couric thing a couple years ago. Thanks for posting the specific 60 Minutes link!
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Why is this being downvoting? For years the media was representing the gender wage gap as being a man and women in the same job with all attributes other than gender being equal (even Obama said this during a state of the union). That clearly isn't what the BLS study says (difference in occupations drive the wage gap on an aggregate level). Wage gap issue: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/03/31/great-news-ladies-the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-myth/?sh=1bdef0bc3b34 https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/03/31/grea... Couric issue: https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editing-reflects-poorly-on-couric-and-her-gun-documentary https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editin... I guess people just want to downvote rather than discuss something which they are likely misinformed on.
    - Guthur 6y ago
      Because the narrative comes first, facts always are second. It's been said quite blatantly that it doesn't matter that the statistics might not back up the claim because "there is obviously a problem", this has been going on for decades... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxygmc_SMAU&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxygmc_SMAU&t=3s
    - GauntletWizard 6y ago
      To clarify: "difference in occupations drive the wage gap on an aggregate level" - This is the largest driver in the aggregate level, but not the only one. The media presentation was still absolutely untrue, but there's a good argument for a real (albeit much smaller) gap when accounting for "all attributes other than gender being equal"
    - listless 6y ago
      I feel sad when I see drive-by downvotes with no rebuttal. It feels...mean spirited.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > long history A handful of incidents in a show running since 1968 isn't enough to say that.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I suppose that is one interpretation. The distribution of the controversies is skewed to the recent years though. 14 in the past 34 years seems kind of high to me. What changed that they went from 0 controversies in the first 18 years to this current level?
    - jjulius 6y ago
      According to the same 60 Minutes Wikipedia article linked to at the start of this comment chain, there have been 2,325 episodes of 60 Minutes that have aired. 14 is only 0.6% of 2,325, so (assuming each controversy stems from one episode) less than 1% of their episodes have generated controversy. Edit: That said, also according to the linked Wiki article, there have been only 13 aired controversies (the last one is an internal issue). The updated percentage is 0.56%.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        What are the numbers since '86 when the controversies started? Probably about 1%? Have they issued corrections for them?
        jjulius 6y ago
        >What are the numbers since '86 when the controversies started? Without the exact number of episodes that have aired since then, I cannot answer that question. >Have they issued corrections for them? It seems to me that you only skimmed the Wikipedia article to get a total count of controversies and to determine the dates around when they occurred. It would probably do you some good to take just a few minutes to read through them so that you better understand the nuance of them, the actual severity of the issues, and whether or not they issued corrections, retractions, etc. In fact if you had read through them, you'd have noticed that the last one isn't a controversy about any aired content at all but is rather an internal issue, so there have only been 13 controversies.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  I don’t think I get you point, but I will say that interview creeps me out. His cutesy grin was unsettling.
richwater 6y ago
The audacity to believe that misinformation and otherwise "bad" content would cease to exist if online platforms become liable is insane. For true liability, platforms would need to verify the ID of every user, essentially making the government completely control the content of the internet. Absolutely ridiculous and honestly not even feasible.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I don't know about the feasibility comment. Based on what the NSA already does, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to expand those sorts of programs. Not that I would support that.
- marstall 6y ago
  might not cease to exist, but at least it wouldn't be spread so widely?
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Sure. The audience of online media is much larger than the number of people's grandparents watching 60 Minutes.
- topspin 6y ago
  > Absolutely ridiculous and honestly not even feasible. What is not feasible about this? Anonymity, in particular, is not assured. Establishment media routinely publishes think pieces about why we might want to outlaw anonymity.
- neuland 6y ago
  I didn't watch the episode. But, I don't think the effect of repealing 230 is in dispute. It would make hosting content you didn't write unfeasible. The questions is whether that is a good thing or not. And what new rule would replace it if any. Personally, I think even a complete repeal with no replacement would be a good thing. The vast majority of social networks, forums, comment sections, and other public spaces online are a cancer that are destroying our society. And censorship is a poor alternative. Even if you find yourself on the favorable side of the censors now, inevitably they will come for you.
koolk3ychain 6y ago
Whether or not you like Musk is beside the point, but this clip of Elon's comments on twitter and his SEC suit makes it clear that the journalistic integrity of 60 Minutes is lackluster at best and that Leslie Stahl couldn't be more irrelevant in today's media. This is a true gem, a mic drop of mic drops if there ever was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNypdYQoWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNypdYQoWk
- giantg2 6y ago
  I mustn't have enough background. What was the deception?
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    If you're referring to Musk's deception of shareholders, he sent a tweet in Aug 2018 [0] saying that he was going to take Tesla private at $420 per share, which led to a fine from the SEC and some other civil lawsuits. [0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?s=20
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I'm aware of the SEC investigation. I was asking how that interview was deceptive or non-fact checked.
      - vulcan01 6y ago
        Ah, I see. Not sure what the OP was pointing out there, but perhaps it was the interviewer's laughing not being befitting of a journalist?
        giantg2 6y ago
        Interesting. I could see that. I actually didn't think of that. My impression with most laughter like that is that it can be a mechanism to disarm the interviewee and possibly get more info from them.
marstall 6y ago
I watched the piece. Here are the basic points it made (which I agree with): - Pre-internet, generally speaking the only entities capable of widely spreading facts about private individuals were things you could sue for defamation or libel: newpapers, tv stations etc. - Now Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can spread defamatory information about anyone without paying a similar price. - It's true that the services will eventually accede to taking the content down (although in one case, that of a woman murdered on camera, it seemed to have proved difficult/impossible to fully do so given all the reposts). - But they let it be put it up there in the first place! Once its up, all the damage to someone's life can be done in a day.
- majormajor 6y ago
  For all that "don't read the comments" seems to be common knowledge in the tech community, we have a collective blind spot about the product design choices we make that amplify annonymous, un-vetted, un-sourced claims. Almost all our tech media products default to treating things as "this is good enough to broadcast to the world until someone proves we should take it down" instead of defaulting to "this is probably low-value dreck that's not worth much distribution." This is certainly easier from a product design perspective... but does it really make sense?
  - giantg2 6y ago
    What would a sensible alternative be?
    - postmeta 6y ago
      No recommendations or notifications without liability.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I don't think think this really solves the issue of content quality like the original comment was addressing. However, I do think it's a step in the right direction and makes sense. After all, if your platform is promoting specific content by your own actions/volition, then it's no longer just content posted by some user, but it's now being used or reposted/linked by the company that owns the platform for monetary gain (I would guess ToS would solidify this with some boilerplate statement saying they can use your content to make money and to promote the platform etc).
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
Keep this incident in mind next time you're watching '60 Minutes' report on a subject you don't have familiarity with.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- shakezula 6y ago
  Gell-Mann Amnesia in action.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Someone needs to come up with a catchy name for a variant of the Gell Mann Amnesia effect where you know a source is willing to bend their presentation of facts for their agenda but ignore that knowledge when their aligns to your agenda. Because IMO that's a far bigger issue in 2021 than people innocently taking things at face value.
    - shakezula 6y ago
      Hmmmm... selection bias maybe? I think that’s in line enough with what you’re describing.
- jancsika 6y ago
  That's bound to bias the viewer in the opposite direction, which is no better. After all, a '60 minutes' investigation of opioid distributors led to Congress repealing a very bad law[1]. Why not just approach a subject with which you are unfamiliar with healthy skepticism (like everything else)? And perhaps seek out a domain expert you trust for confirmation when at all possible. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-joe-manchin-introduces-repeal-2016-law-60-minutes-opioid-epidemic-report/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-joe-manchin-introduces-...
  - tylersmith 6y ago
    This is just another thing they managed to cause a moral panic about. They did not reveal a "very bad law", they made it harder for people to get safely manufactured opioid products. Pushing more people to unsafe/sub-par street products in the name of their safety. It's disgusting.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Bye 60 minutes. So long and thanks for all the fish. I have no desire to provide ad revenue to an outfit attacking the free and open internet.
tootie 6y ago
Techdirt didn't actually cite any factual errors. They complain that 60 Minutes made a bunch of mistakes due to their poor journalistic integrity then make a load of unsubstantiated opinions. The fact that facebook and youtube will usually do the right thing out of their own good will isn't really a defense of 230. Nor is 60 Minutes making a pat statement that "230 is bad" as much as saying that disinformation is proliferating and there's very limited legal recourse under 230. There's no advocacy for a simple repeal. The presentation is factual.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
The article keeps using the word propaganda. I do not think it means what they think it means. ‘Propaganda’ implies that 60 Minutes knew some of the information was false or misleading, yet used it anyway because it supports their agenda. The author presents no information to support a claim that 60 Minutes has such an agenda. Much more likely is that 60 Minutes didn’t understand the story and got it wrong. Absent evidence, to do otherwise is to claim the ability to read minds.
- noodles_nomore 6y ago
  Propaganda isn't about lying at all. Wiktionary etymology: From New Latin propāganda, short for Congregātiō dē Propagandā Fide, "congregation for propagating the faith", a committee of cardinals established in 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions, and properly the ablative feminine gerundive of Latin propāgō (“propagate”) (see English propagation). Modern political sense dates from World War I, not originally pejorative. It basically means advertising or public relations, pejoratively.
prodtorok 6y ago
The episode may be terrible and indeed misleading for the wrong reasons. But, and just as this written journalism can influence, that doesn't mean the adversarial stance is wrong. Information feed and stimuli are becoming increasingly powerful. It's not clear where lines should be drawn, but there may be some moral dilemmas worth discussing.
michaelmrose 6y ago
A liars Tax A modest proposal to remove some of the malicious misinformation on the internet without killing 230. Have all users pay a small bond say $10 to an org of their own choosing in exchange for something not entirely dissimilar to an ssl cert that certifies that they are an actual person not identity #53434 created by a script and that they will not use it to sign provably false statements or those that are undertaken with reckless disregard for the truth. Allow anyone to risk a fee designed to deter frivolous claims in order to challenge an existing bonded statement. This can be more than the $10 if needed but it is not lost if the claim is provably true. A small fee to be retained by the agency to cover its costs either way. For example it may require one to risk $30 to receive $8. Attacking things that are questionable but not outright lies would be non productive. Attacking broadly shared falsehoods that are trivially verifiable would be. Social media platforms can require a bond in good standing to create an account. Bots would become expensive and ephemeral sources of income for scripts hunting for them. Nobody would bother to create bots for major platforms any longer as it would be non viable. The individuals running the cert providers wouldn't turn into the ministry of truth because they would go out of business if everyone took their business elsewhere. Ultimately permissive cert providers that dismiss all claims would be equally non viable because no providers have to accept their certs for account creation or posting. Platforms can also allow you to sign statements which ought to be visually indicated by your browser for extra visibility or can require all posts to be signed (also visually indicated). Optionally they can provide a check to help users test their own shared media to see if what they are sharing is something so obviously wrong and stupid that a script can identify the bullcrap you are trying to post. See the flat earth, lizard people, or Rathensperger's brother works for China conspiracies. The third time they have to pay an extra $10 or stop posting on Facebook they are liable they are likely to start doing actual fact checks themselves. None of this stops dubious networks like parler or gab either having no certification requirements or having a certification authority that forwards fact checks to /dev/null but browsers can be configured with a list of legitimate certification authorities and be configured to show a visible indication that the page is untrusted for example a red outline around the entire page area. This list should be provided by the browser/computer/OS vendor but be user editable so that if the user can decide to trust the gab certification authority they can do so. This ability will not destroy the utility of the system which is that most information exchanged on the internet will require a small amount of skin in the game making spreading deliberate lies difficult and expensive. Networks whose only claim to fame is that they will allow any hideous misbehavior the users please to entertain will never be the majority of the internet. The obvious question is what is the implications for anonymity on the internet. Your cert authority would not receive a notification for every action you take on the internet but they would be liable to both know who exactly who you are and any statement that was challenged. They would probably know broadly what sites you interacted with. This information would under court order be subject to seizure by the government. Such a system isn't resilient against a repressive regime but neither is the system we have now as it is used by 99.9% of users today. I can imagine it also serving to allow more John Doe lawsuits to be launched against individuals more easily as there is now a viable party to sue to reveal the identity of the poster but this is already a problem given that most users can in fact be unmasked by their ISPs now.
flowerlad 6y ago
This isn't just about libel and defamation of individuals. This is also about degradation of society as a whole. Today half the population gets their news from social media, and it is full of conspiracy theories. This is a major, major issue, and is leading to societal decay. Something needs to be done.
PIKAL 6y ago
I have literally never heard an account of someone who is an expert in a field or topic being impressed with the accuracy of a mainstream media report on that field or topic. What has the world come to when rolling stone a better source for news than 60 minutes or cnn?

96 points by leotravis10 6y ago

The headline seems to be....quite accurate. What a terrible job by Sixty Minutes. Then again, Sixty Minutes has a long history of making stuff up, lying about it, or peddling other peoples lies without bothering to investigate (eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Controversies), so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised...

giantg2 6y ago
I was going to say the same thing about mainstream journalism in general using the misrepresentation of the gender wage gap and deception like the Katie Couric thing a couple years ago. Thanks for posting the specific 60 Minutes link!
- giantg2 6y ago
  Why is this being downvoting? For years the media was representing the gender wage gap as being a man and women in the same job with all attributes other than gender being equal (even Obama said this during a state of the union). That clearly isn't what the BLS study says (difference in occupations drive the wage gap on an aggregate level). Wage gap issue: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/03/31/great-news-ladies-the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-myth/?sh=1bdef0bc3b34 https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/03/31/grea... Couric issue: https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editing-reflects-poorly-on-couric-and-her-gun-documentary https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editin... I guess people just want to downvote rather than discuss something which they are likely misinformed on.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Because the narrative comes first, facts always are second. It's been said quite blatantly that it doesn't matter that the statistics might not back up the claim because "there is obviously a problem", this has been going on for decades... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxygmc_SMAU&t=3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxygmc_SMAU&t=3s
  - GauntletWizard 6y ago
    To clarify: "difference in occupations drive the wage gap on an aggregate level" - This is the largest driver in the aggregate level, but not the only one. The media presentation was still absolutely untrue, but there's a good argument for a real (albeit much smaller) gap when accounting for "all attributes other than gender being equal"
  - listless 6y ago
    I feel sad when I see drive-by downvotes with no rebuttal. It feels...mean spirited.
mhh__ 6y ago
> long history A handful of incidents in a show running since 1968 isn't enough to say that.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I suppose that is one interpretation. The distribution of the controversies is skewed to the recent years though. 14 in the past 34 years seems kind of high to me. What changed that they went from 0 controversies in the first 18 years to this current level?
  - jjulius 6y ago
    According to the same 60 Minutes Wikipedia article linked to at the start of this comment chain, there have been 2,325 episodes of 60 Minutes that have aired. 14 is only 0.6% of 2,325, so (assuming each controversy stems from one episode) less than 1% of their episodes have generated controversy. Edit: That said, also according to the linked Wiki article, there have been only 13 aired controversies (the last one is an internal issue). The updated percentage is 0.56%.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      What are the numbers since '86 when the controversies started? Probably about 1%? Have they issued corrections for them?
      - jjulius 6y ago
        >What are the numbers since '86 when the controversies started? Without the exact number of episodes that have aired since then, I cannot answer that question. >Have they issued corrections for them? It seems to me that you only skimmed the Wikipedia article to get a total count of controversies and to determine the dates around when they occurred. It would probably do you some good to take just a few minutes to read through them so that you better understand the nuance of them, the actual severity of the issues, and whether or not they issued corrections, retractions, etc. In fact if you had read through them, you'd have noticed that the last one isn't a controversy about any aired content at all but is rather an internal issue, so there have only been 13 controversies.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
I don’t think I get you point, but I will say that interview creeps me out. His cutesy grin was unsettling.

richwater 6y ago

The audacity to believe that misinformation and otherwise "bad" content would cease to exist if online platforms become liable is insane. For true liability, platforms would need to verify the ID of every user, essentially making the government completely control the content of the internet. Absolutely ridiculous and honestly not even feasible.

giantg2 6y ago
I don't know about the feasibility comment. Based on what the NSA already does, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to expand those sorts of programs. Not that I would support that.
marstall 6y ago
might not cease to exist, but at least it wouldn't be spread so widely?
- dylan604 6y ago
  Sure. The audience of online media is much larger than the number of people's grandparents watching 60 Minutes.
topspin 6y ago
> Absolutely ridiculous and honestly not even feasible. What is not feasible about this? Anonymity, in particular, is not assured. Establishment media routinely publishes think pieces about why we might want to outlaw anonymity.
neuland 6y ago
I didn't watch the episode. But, I don't think the effect of repealing 230 is in dispute. It would make hosting content you didn't write unfeasible. The questions is whether that is a good thing or not. And what new rule would replace it if any. Personally, I think even a complete repeal with no replacement would be a good thing. The vast majority of social networks, forums, comment sections, and other public spaces online are a cancer that are destroying our society. And censorship is a poor alternative. Even if you find yourself on the favorable side of the censors now, inevitably they will come for you.

koolk3ychain 6y ago

Whether or not you like Musk is beside the point, but this clip of Elon's comments on twitter and his SEC suit makes it clear that the journalistic integrity of 60 Minutes is lackluster at best and that Leslie Stahl couldn't be more irrelevant in today's media. This is a true gem, a mic drop of mic drops if there ever was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNypdYQoWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNypdYQoWk

giantg2 6y ago
I mustn't have enough background. What was the deception?
- vulcan01 6y ago
  If you're referring to Musk's deception of shareholders, he sent a tweet in Aug 2018 [0] saying that he was going to take Tesla private at $420 per share, which led to a fine from the SEC and some other civil lawsuits. [0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?s=20
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I'm aware of the SEC investigation. I was asking how that interview was deceptive or non-fact checked.
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      Ah, I see. Not sure what the OP was pointing out there, but perhaps it was the interviewer's laughing not being befitting of a journalist?
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Interesting. I could see that. I actually didn't think of that. My impression with most laughter like that is that it can be a mechanism to disarm the interviewee and possibly get more info from them.

marstall 6y ago

I watched the piece. Here are the basic points it made (which I agree with): - Pre-internet, generally speaking the only entities capable of widely spreading facts about private individuals were things you could sue for defamation or libel: newpapers, tv stations etc. - Now Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can spread defamatory information about anyone without paying a similar price. - It's true that the services will eventually accede to taking the content down (although in one case, that of a woman murdered on camera, it seemed to have proved difficult/impossible to fully do so given all the reposts). - But they let it be put it up there in the first place! Once its up, all the damage to someone's life can be done in a day.

majormajor 6y ago
For all that "don't read the comments" seems to be common knowledge in the tech community, we have a collective blind spot about the product design choices we make that amplify annonymous, un-vetted, un-sourced claims. Almost all our tech media products default to treating things as "this is good enough to broadcast to the world until someone proves we should take it down" instead of defaulting to "this is probably low-value dreck that's not worth much distribution." This is certainly easier from a product design perspective... but does it really make sense?
- giantg2 6y ago
  What would a sensible alternative be?
  - postmeta 6y ago
    No recommendations or notifications without liability.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I don't think think this really solves the issue of content quality like the original comment was addressing. However, I do think it's a step in the right direction and makes sense. After all, if your platform is promoting specific content by your own actions/volition, then it's no longer just content posted by some user, but it's now being used or reposted/linked by the company that owns the platform for monetary gain (I would guess ToS would solidify this with some boilerplate statement saying they can use your content to make money and to promote the platform etc).

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

Keep this incident in mind next time you're watching '60 Minutes' report on a subject you don't have familiarity with.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shakezula 6y ago
Gell-Mann Amnesia in action.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Someone needs to come up with a catchy name for a variant of the Gell Mann Amnesia effect where you know a source is willing to bend their presentation of facts for their agenda but ignore that knowledge when their aligns to your agenda. Because IMO that's a far bigger issue in 2021 than people innocently taking things at face value.
  - shakezula 6y ago
    Hmmmm... selection bias maybe? I think that’s in line enough with what you’re describing.
jancsika 6y ago
That's bound to bias the viewer in the opposite direction, which is no better. After all, a '60 minutes' investigation of opioid distributors led to Congress repealing a very bad law[1]. Why not just approach a subject with which you are unfamiliar with healthy skepticism (like everything else)? And perhaps seek out a domain expert you trust for confirmation when at all possible. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-joe-manchin-introduces-repeal-2016-law-60-minutes-opioid-epidemic-report/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-joe-manchin-introduces-...
- tylersmith 6y ago
  This is just another thing they managed to cause a moral panic about. They did not reveal a "very bad law", they made it harder for people to get safely manufactured opioid products. Pushing more people to unsafe/sub-par street products in the name of their safety. It's disgusting.

michaelmrose 6y ago

Bye 60 minutes. So long and thanks for all the fish. I have no desire to provide ad revenue to an outfit attacking the free and open internet.

tootie 6y ago

Techdirt didn't actually cite any factual errors. They complain that 60 Minutes made a bunch of mistakes due to their poor journalistic integrity then make a load of unsubstantiated opinions. The fact that facebook and youtube will usually do the right thing out of their own good will isn't really a defense of 230. Nor is 60 Minutes making a pat statement that "230 is bad" as much as saying that disinformation is proliferating and there's very limited legal recourse under 230. There's no advocacy for a simple repeal. The presentation is factual.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

The article keeps using the word propaganda. I do not think it means what they think it means. ‘Propaganda’ implies that 60 Minutes knew some of the information was false or misleading, yet used it anyway because it supports their agenda. The author presents no information to support a claim that 60 Minutes has such an agenda. Much more likely is that 60 Minutes didn’t understand the story and got it wrong. Absent evidence, to do otherwise is to claim the ability to read minds.

noodles_nomore 6y ago
Propaganda isn't about lying at all. Wiktionary etymology: From New Latin propāganda, short for Congregātiō dē Propagandā Fide, "congregation for propagating the faith", a committee of cardinals established in 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions, and properly the ablative feminine gerundive of Latin propāgō (“propagate”) (see English propagation). Modern political sense dates from World War I, not originally pejorative. It basically means advertising or public relations, pejoratively.

prodtorok 6y ago

The episode may be terrible and indeed misleading for the wrong reasons. But, and just as this written journalism can influence, that doesn't mean the adversarial stance is wrong. Information feed and stimuli are becoming increasingly powerful. It's not clear where lines should be drawn, but there may be some moral dilemmas worth discussing.

michaelmrose 6y ago

A liars Tax A modest proposal to remove some of the malicious misinformation on the internet without killing 230. Have all users pay a small bond say $10 to an org of their own choosing in exchange for something not entirely dissimilar to an ssl cert that certifies that they are an actual person not identity #53434 created by a script and that they will not use it to sign provably false statements or those that are undertaken with reckless disregard for the truth. Allow anyone to risk a fee designed to deter frivolous claims in order to challenge an existing bonded statement. This can be more than the $10 if needed but it is not lost if the claim is provably true. A small fee to be retained by the agency to cover its costs either way. For example it may require one to risk $30 to receive $8. Attacking things that are questionable but not outright lies would be non productive. Attacking broadly shared falsehoods that are trivially verifiable would be. Social media platforms can require a bond in good standing to create an account. Bots would become expensive and ephemeral sources of income for scripts hunting for them. Nobody would bother to create bots for major platforms any longer as it would be non viable. The individuals running the cert providers wouldn't turn into the ministry of truth because they would go out of business if everyone took their business elsewhere. Ultimately permissive cert providers that dismiss all claims would be equally non viable because no providers have to accept their certs for account creation or posting. Platforms can also allow you to sign statements which ought to be visually indicated by your browser for extra visibility or can require all posts to be signed (also visually indicated). Optionally they can provide a check to help users test their own shared media to see if what they are sharing is something so obviously wrong and stupid that a script can identify the bullcrap you are trying to post. See the flat earth, lizard people, or Rathensperger's brother works for China conspiracies. The third time they have to pay an extra $10 or stop posting on Facebook they are liable they are likely to start doing actual fact checks themselves. None of this stops dubious networks like parler or gab either having no certification requirements or having a certification authority that forwards fact checks to /dev/null but browsers can be configured with a list of legitimate certification authorities and be configured to show a visible indication that the page is untrusted for example a red outline around the entire page area. This list should be provided by the browser/computer/OS vendor but be user editable so that if the user can decide to trust the gab certification authority they can do so. This ability will not destroy the utility of the system which is that most information exchanged on the internet will require a small amount of skin in the game making spreading deliberate lies difficult and expensive. Networks whose only claim to fame is that they will allow any hideous misbehavior the users please to entertain will never be the majority of the internet. The obvious question is what is the implications for anonymity on the internet. Your cert authority would not receive a notification for every action you take on the internet but they would be liable to both know who exactly who you are and any statement that was challenged. They would probably know broadly what sites you interacted with. This information would under court order be subject to seizure by the government. Such a system isn't resilient against a repressive regime but neither is the system we have now as it is used by 99.9% of users today. I can imagine it also serving to allow more John Doe lawsuits to be launched against individuals more easily as there is now a viable party to sue to reveal the identity of the poster but this is already a problem given that most users can in fact be unmasked by their ISPs now.

flowerlad 6y ago

This isn't just about libel and defamation of individuals. This is also about degradation of society as a whole. Today half the population gets their news from social media, and it is full of conspiracy theories. This is a major, major issue, and is leading to societal decay. Something needs to be done.

PIKAL 6y ago

I have literally never heard an account of someone who is an expert in a field or topic being impressed with the accuracy of a mainstream media report on that field or topic. What has the world come to when rolling stone a better source for news than 60 minutes or cnn?