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The predictable [and unfortunate] side effect of censorship on private platforms is it creates the illusion that the truth is being covered up. I have no doubt

The predictable [and unfortunate] side effect of censorship on private platforms is it creates the illusion that the truth is being covered up. I have no doubts the next surveillance and encryption backdoor bills will be based upon the incidents happening right now. It's far better for society to keep discussions in plain sight, even if they are woefully misguided.

kiba 6y ago
And allow actors to spread disinformation anytime they wanted even though the megaphone was given and then amplified(on engagement metric) by these megacorporations in the first place?
- capableweb 6y ago
  Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do. Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others. To stop taking everything we hear as automatic truth and instead consider all opinions, even if they sounds wrong at first. We need another Age of Reason instead of what we're executing on now.
  - amznthrwaway 6y ago
    You have nostalgia for an age that never existed, and you are pushing for a solution that has no chance of success.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do So we shouldn't try at all? It's similarly impossibleto in the near term reduce cancer, Covid or drunk driving deaths to zero. Should stop fighting them? We have evidence, from de-platforming ISIL, that this method works in reducing radicalization. (A marginalization strategy [1] was found to be more effective.) I want to embrace arguments promoting the most people having access to the megaphone as possible. But we need to start from a position of facts, not feeling. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/marginalizing-violent-extremism-online https://www.lawfareblog.com/marginalizing-violent-extremism-...
  - alpha_squared 6y ago
    I'm all for beating the "more education" drum, but at some point we're going to need to reckon with the fact that there are some very intelligent people out there who should know better and don't or, worse, exploit it to take advantage of others.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do. Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others. True, but you're being too black and white. While it may not be possible to stop disinformation completely, it is possible to reduce it significantly. What you're advocating for is akin to admitting that lead will never be completely eliminated from drinking water, so instead of doing anything to reduce it from toxic levels, we should (unrealistically) work on making people who are immune to lead poisoning. Your solution is a chimera. It is not possible (or at least wildly impractical given current constraints) to teach most people to be so knowledgeable and wise that they can find the truth in a haystack of seductive lies. And even if that wasn't true, the people who've bought into the lies would label your education program as biased and fight it.
  - kortex 6y ago
    Seconded. Establishing what is disinformation is hard; establishing truth is even harder. Restricting speech is fraught with trouble, but there is much precedent in the USA for compelling speech: see drug warnings and nutrition facts. Censoring and banning should be reserved for actual hazards such as provoking violence. But I think the automatic tagging of social media with "Here is another perspective", while being seen by some as chilling, is the best way to go.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I think that "responsible news" and "responsible government" are two things that are achieved by societies by pure luck and cannot simply be willed into existence. Given what's happened in the US with the emergence of the alt right I've been wracking my brain over ways we could safely accomplish free expression of ideas and I don't think it's possible. Either you allow for hate speech to be empowered and gain a megaphone or someone needs to be the decider on what is false. You don't actually need to kill off misinformed reporting or slanted reporting - you just need to censor reporting that is knowingly false and presenting non-facts as if they are facts - if you can kill that sort of information dead then I think society is able to sort out and prevent bubbles from forming around publications that choose to focus on certain stories - or that consistently frame stories to suit their agenda. I think that the stars aligned from about 95-2010 where all the news outlets were still afraid enough of the government that they mostly kept in line but the government didn't really have the resources to actually police things. Oh also, the Age of Reason was pretty darn irrational compared to today - don't let a fancy name and rose tinted glasses blind you to the faults of yesterday.
  - kiba 6y ago
    Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others The way it works is that you and I reject information based on reflex. If someone tells you to drink bleach to cure covid-19, would you do it? No, of course not. it wouldn't take a second for you and I to even consider it. No rooms for critical thinking there. What you want people to do, is based on a slow thought process and careful consideration, but nobody have such time. Disinformation agents can just keep spamming us with even more facts to consider since they can make up anything they want. Gish gallop as it were. Verification is slow, even just surface level check to make sure the facts match up. So how did we not become fooled? Because we trust certain authorities and reject other out of hand.
- Moodles 6y ago
  Yes, because the trade off is worth it, and we should treat people like grownups who can think for themselves. Why not encourage critical thinking and wider reading, instead of being the police of literally all the information on your giant social media platform?
  - kiba 6y ago
    Critical thinking? The vast majority of useful information in the world is based on trust and authority, not on critical verification and people examining the evidence directly. Do you have any idea just how much work it is to verify that just the facts cited actually match up? That doesn't include verifying if the facts are accurate in and in itself. I did a surface level verification to a virology professor, and I found a few details wrong, and some which I couldn't figure out which fact was likely correct. It took me forever to do, and that was just one part of a very long lecture series. How about the fact that whenever someone offer me a cure for covid-19 in term of injecting bleach, I basically dismissed it out of hand. Was it because I think long and hard about injecting bleach into my body is a good idea? No. There was certainly no critical thinking happening. It's a reflexive rejection. instead of being the police of literally all the information on your giant social media platform? These platforms are not in any way unbiased free for all discussion forums. They are already making editorial choices by choosing to promote viral posts to drive up engagement metric and pushing down any less inflammatory posts. At the very least they can do is slow down any angry promoting posts.
    - Moodles 6y ago
      I understand (and agree) that the majority of knowledge we have is based on authority. I'm not suggesting everyone should do their own climate change research to believe climate change. I'm just suggesting they don't have to believe all the headlines they read, they can read multiple news sources with different political views, etc. Basically, you want people to decentralize their trust in authority. I think that'll quell fake news more than getting Facebook to try to moderate it all a like giant, impossible game of whack-o-mole. It doesn't have to be that complicated. We (try to) teach school children this in history class. I think it's a lot more complicated, and risky, to overly moderate your tech platform for "misleading" news, particularly related to politics.
- fangpenlin 6y ago
  Please define disinformation, and who gets the right to decide what's correct? And what if they are wrong? I still remember when experts/ CDC / WHO claimed wearing a face mask is useless. I still remember there was once a time claiming earth not flat is disinformation and could be burned to death alive.
- belorn 6y ago
  If it was the megaphone that was the main problem then simply removing the engagement metric aspect should solve it. Reddit tried that when they stopped listing controversial subreddits from the main page and stopped giving new members recommendations to go there.
tehjoker 6y ago
The crazy thing is that the Q-Anon people will inevitably see the spate of arrests and censorship as "The Storm" prophecy coming true but in reverse, an "Anti-Storm". I have a feeling this will only make many of them even more committed and possibly now that they can point to something real, could even grow the movement. Crazy stuff.
- djtriptych 6y ago
  Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
  - benjohnson 6y ago
    Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the voting system would have helped. Just show the movement that there nothing to hide rather than yell at them and appear to cover up.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      Also don’t change the rules right before the election.
      - TeaDrunk 6y ago
        The rules were changed months in advance. Due to this, suing only after a loss was heavily disfavored by the courts.
      - nawgz 6y ago
        No rules were changed right before the election, except perhaps by Trump who tried to rail against mail-in voting and destroyed the USPS in the process. This talking point - that mail-in votes were somehow less secure than previously - is such a post-hoc rationalization it makes me sick
    - dag11 6y ago
virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
"Discussions" sounds very nice. Sure, let's keep those in plain sight. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about calls for organized violence from highly visible people who have massive, massive audiences.
meekmockmook 6y ago
I'm already seeing people who I otherwise politically agree with demand that Telegram be decrypted. Madness.
jancsika 6y ago
The central problem is this: Social media in its current form is essentially an enormous, unregulated casino that now encompasses the entirety of the U.S. This unregulated casino essentially monopolizes people's time and expression through addictive patterns, tested and re-deployed with realtime feedback, pushing people more and more toward destructive ends. If we're not talking about regulation-- and again, casinos are heavily regulated and most people I've met do not object to the idea of casinos being regulated-- then we're not talking about the core problem. As for speech: If there were suddenly an enormous uptick in larger and larger groups of people doing 3-day coke benders, I think it goes without saying that I would defend their right to free speech. But why would I be talking about their free speech in the first place? More to the point-- if the dealers fueling those benders only ever wanted to talk about free speech-- while at the same time doing piecemeal censorship of the most shocking things their addicts say-- shouldn't I surmise it was a cynical, last ditch effort of drug dealers only looking to cash in and avoid responsibility? Edit: clarification
Dumblydorr 6y ago
You say this as if there aren't millions of people who are willing and eager to assume the truth is being covered up already. Come now, that withstands zero investigation. Even with zero censorship, millions upon millions would fall into terrible rabbit holes already. The sad fact is some people love conspiracies and love thinking they're the real informed ones amidst the sheeple. The real effect of censorship on FB and other insanely wealthy and powerful social media would be forcing the platforms to reckon with the garbage collection they've never solved. If Zuckerberg can donate 99% of his wealth to charity, maybe he can apply that to his own company and use those resources to stop problems at their inception.
- loufe 6y ago
  Let's make sure we use the right terminology, especially on a site like HN. People love conspiracy THEORIES. There are huge conspiracies going on right now, doubtless. There are also THEORIES of conspiracies which are downright ridiculous, mixed in with those acurately predicting some real ones. Conflating conspiracies with conspiracy theories is a great way to minimize efforts to uncover actual conspiracies on the go.

kiba 6y ago

And allow actors to spread disinformation anytime they wanted even though the megaphone was given and then amplified(on engagement metric) by these megacorporations in the first place?

capableweb 6y ago
Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do. Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others. To stop taking everything we hear as automatic truth and instead consider all opinions, even if they sounds wrong at first. We need another Age of Reason instead of what we're executing on now.
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  You have nostalgia for an age that never existed, and you are pushing for a solution that has no chance of success.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do So we shouldn't try at all? It's similarly impossibleto in the near term reduce cancer, Covid or drunk driving deaths to zero. Should stop fighting them? We have evidence, from de-platforming ISIL, that this method works in reducing radicalization. (A marginalization strategy [1] was found to be more effective.) I want to embrace arguments promoting the most people having access to the megaphone as possible. But we need to start from a position of facts, not feeling. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/marginalizing-violent-extremism-online https://www.lawfareblog.com/marginalizing-violent-extremism-...
- alpha_squared 6y ago
  I'm all for beating the "more education" drum, but at some point we're going to need to reckon with the fact that there are some very intelligent people out there who should know better and don't or, worse, exploit it to take advantage of others.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation completely, no matter what we do. Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others. True, but you're being too black and white. While it may not be possible to stop disinformation completely, it is possible to reduce it significantly. What you're advocating for is akin to admitting that lead will never be completely eliminated from drinking water, so instead of doing anything to reduce it from toxic levels, we should (unrealistically) work on making people who are immune to lead poisoning. Your solution is a chimera. It is not possible (or at least wildly impractical given current constraints) to teach most people to be so knowledgeable and wise that they can find the truth in a haystack of seductive lies. And even if that wasn't true, the people who've bought into the lies would label your education program as biased and fight it.
- kortex 6y ago
  Seconded. Establishing what is disinformation is hard; establishing truth is even harder. Restricting speech is fraught with trouble, but there is much precedent in the USA for compelling speech: see drug warnings and nutrition facts. Censoring and banning should be reserved for actual hazards such as provoking violence. But I think the automatic tagging of social media with "Here is another perspective", while being seen by some as chilling, is the best way to go.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I think that "responsible news" and "responsible government" are two things that are achieved by societies by pure luck and cannot simply be willed into existence. Given what's happened in the US with the emergence of the alt right I've been wracking my brain over ways we could safely accomplish free expression of ideas and I don't think it's possible. Either you allow for hate speech to be empowered and gain a megaphone or someone needs to be the decider on what is false. You don't actually need to kill off misinformed reporting or slanted reporting - you just need to censor reporting that is knowingly false and presenting non-facts as if they are facts - if you can kill that sort of information dead then I think society is able to sort out and prevent bubbles from forming around publications that choose to focus on certain stories - or that consistently frame stories to suit their agenda. I think that the stars aligned from about 95-2010 where all the news outlets were still afraid enough of the government that they mostly kept in line but the government didn't really have the resources to actually police things. Oh also, the Age of Reason was pretty darn irrational compared to today - don't let a fancy name and rose tinted glasses blind you to the faults of yesterday.
- kiba 6y ago
  Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse and digest information we receive from others The way it works is that you and I reject information based on reflex. If someone tells you to drink bleach to cure covid-19, would you do it? No, of course not. it wouldn't take a second for you and I to even consider it. No rooms for critical thinking there. What you want people to do, is based on a slow thought process and careful consideration, but nobody have such time. Disinformation agents can just keep spamming us with even more facts to consider since they can make up anything they want. Gish gallop as it were. Verification is slow, even just surface level check to make sure the facts match up. So how did we not become fooled? Because we trust certain authorities and reject other out of hand.
Moodles 6y ago
Yes, because the trade off is worth it, and we should treat people like grownups who can think for themselves. Why not encourage critical thinking and wider reading, instead of being the police of literally all the information on your giant social media platform?
- kiba 6y ago
  Critical thinking? The vast majority of useful information in the world is based on trust and authority, not on critical verification and people examining the evidence directly. Do you have any idea just how much work it is to verify that just the facts cited actually match up? That doesn't include verifying if the facts are accurate in and in itself. I did a surface level verification to a virology professor, and I found a few details wrong, and some which I couldn't figure out which fact was likely correct. It took me forever to do, and that was just one part of a very long lecture series. How about the fact that whenever someone offer me a cure for covid-19 in term of injecting bleach, I basically dismissed it out of hand. Was it because I think long and hard about injecting bleach into my body is a good idea? No. There was certainly no critical thinking happening. It's a reflexive rejection. instead of being the police of literally all the information on your giant social media platform? These platforms are not in any way unbiased free for all discussion forums. They are already making editorial choices by choosing to promote viral posts to drive up engagement metric and pushing down any less inflammatory posts. At the very least they can do is slow down any angry promoting posts.
  - Moodles 6y ago
    I understand (and agree) that the majority of knowledge we have is based on authority. I'm not suggesting everyone should do their own climate change research to believe climate change. I'm just suggesting they don't have to believe all the headlines they read, they can read multiple news sources with different political views, etc. Basically, you want people to decentralize their trust in authority. I think that'll quell fake news more than getting Facebook to try to moderate it all a like giant, impossible game of whack-o-mole. It doesn't have to be that complicated. We (try to) teach school children this in history class. I think it's a lot more complicated, and risky, to overly moderate your tech platform for "misleading" news, particularly related to politics.
fangpenlin 6y ago
Please define disinformation, and who gets the right to decide what's correct? And what if they are wrong? I still remember when experts/ CDC / WHO claimed wearing a face mask is useless. I still remember there was once a time claiming earth not flat is disinformation and could be burned to death alive.
belorn 6y ago
If it was the megaphone that was the main problem then simply removing the engagement metric aspect should solve it. Reddit tried that when they stopped listing controversial subreddits from the main page and stopped giving new members recommendations to go there.

tehjoker 6y ago

The crazy thing is that the Q-Anon people will inevitably see the spate of arrests and censorship as "The Storm" prophecy coming true but in reverse, an "Anti-Storm". I have a feeling this will only make many of them even more committed and possibly now that they can point to something real, could even grow the movement. Crazy stuff.

djtriptych 6y ago
Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
- benjohnson 6y ago
  Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the voting system would have helped. Just show the movement that there nothing to hide rather than yell at them and appear to cover up.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Also don’t change the rules right before the election.
    - TeaDrunk 6y ago
      The rules were changed months in advance. Due to this, suing only after a loss was heavily disfavored by the courts.
    - nawgz 6y ago
      No rules were changed right before the election, except perhaps by Trump who tried to rail against mail-in voting and destroyed the USPS in the process. This talking point - that mail-in votes were somehow less secure than previously - is such a post-hoc rationalization it makes me sick
  - dag11 6y ago

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago

"Discussions" sounds very nice. Sure, let's keep those in plain sight. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about calls for organized violence from highly visible people who have massive, massive audiences.

meekmockmook 6y ago

I'm already seeing people who I otherwise politically agree with demand that Telegram be decrypted. Madness.

jancsika 6y ago

The central problem is this: Social media in its current form is essentially an enormous, unregulated casino that now encompasses the entirety of the U.S. This unregulated casino essentially monopolizes people's time and expression through addictive patterns, tested and re-deployed with realtime feedback, pushing people more and more toward destructive ends. If we're not talking about regulation-- and again, casinos are heavily regulated and most people I've met do not object to the idea of casinos being regulated-- then we're not talking about the core problem. As for speech: If there were suddenly an enormous uptick in larger and larger groups of people doing 3-day coke benders, I think it goes without saying that I would defend their right to free speech. But why would I be talking about their free speech in the first place? More to the point-- if the dealers fueling those benders only ever wanted to talk about free speech-- while at the same time doing piecemeal censorship of the most shocking things their addicts say-- shouldn't I surmise it was a cynical, last ditch effort of drug dealers only looking to cash in and avoid responsibility? Edit: clarification

Dumblydorr 6y ago

You say this as if there aren't millions of people who are willing and eager to assume the truth is being covered up already. Come now, that withstands zero investigation. Even with zero censorship, millions upon millions would fall into terrible rabbit holes already. The sad fact is some people love conspiracies and love thinking they're the real informed ones amidst the sheeple. The real effect of censorship on FB and other insanely wealthy and powerful social media would be forcing the platforms to reckon with the garbage collection they've never solved. If Zuckerberg can donate 99% of his wealth to charity, maybe he can apply that to his own company and use those resources to stop problems at their inception.

loufe 6y ago
Let's make sure we use the right terminology, especially on a site like HN. People love conspiracy THEORIES. There are huge conspiracies going on right now, doubtless. There are also THEORIES of conspiracies which are downright ridiculous, mixed in with those acurately predicting some real ones. Conflating conspiracies with conspiracy theories is a great way to minimize efforts to uncover actual conspiracies on the go.