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History also shows that a majority of people believing in astrology or moon landings not being real is much less harmful than a majority of people believing tha

History also shows that a majority of people believing in astrology or moon landings not being real is much less harmful than a majority of people believing that the Jews are conspiring to enslave you, vaccines will kill you or even that if you don't force the VP to vote himself back into office, the President won't be able to stop children from being raped. And yes, religions can persuade some average people to do some great things or strange things or be incitement to blow themselves up in the middle of a marketplace or drink the Kool Aid. So keeping an eye on these things is probably a good idea, and if people decide certain stuff should come with content warnings or not be disseminated on their platform thats probably OK. Sure, there are slippery slopes when you start censoring stuff but there are slippery slopes when you stop too, particularly when the actual debate is less about silencing all discussion of misinformation and more about whether misinformation has an inalienable right to a megaphone. Porn is still censored extensively even in its most inoffensive forms and people under certain ages aren't allowed to watch films with rude words, and yet people are insisting that true liberty means that whilst corporations are entitled to decide boobies and f-bombs are inappropriate for their platform, they must be compelled to host Qanon. I'm not sure that was the lesson we were supposed to take from past battles over obscenity laws.

throwawayboise 6y ago
> if you don't force the VP to vote himself back into office, the President won't be able to stop children from being raped. Extreme framing that makes it easy to dismiss. There are people who think this recent election had some very fishy stuff going on, but are not buying the lunatic fringe, q-anon type of stuff.
- notahacker 6y ago
  'Extreme framing' represents the actual tipping point that resulted in the actual actions (and arguments) being criticised. (Same goes for other examples: Germany has actual laws rather than mere Facebook policies concerning holocaust denial because it views the slippery slope towards Naziism as more plausible and dangerous than the slippery slope towards a unified state version of history) As for people with concerns about 'fishy stuff', they've been granted plenty of prime time TV hours to talk about it, had fifty lawsuits thrown out by judges often politically aligned with them and are happily posting all over the Internet without fear of any consequences whilst elected officials loudly advocate their cause. Suffice to say this is not the experience of the average 1950s communist or pornographer. I'm not convinced that the existence of more nuanced arguments about elections means social media should be obliged to broadcast Donald Trump declaring that he won a landslide victory without challenge or Lin Wood making Trump look rational, which all too many 'free speech' arguments have been devoted to.

throwawayboise 6y ago

> if you don't force the VP to vote himself back into office, the President won't be able to stop children from being raped. Extreme framing that makes it easy to dismiss. There are people who think this recent election had some very fishy stuff going on, but are not buying the lunatic fringe, q-anon type of stuff.

notahacker 6y ago
'Extreme framing' represents the actual tipping point that resulted in the actual actions (and arguments) being criticised. (Same goes for other examples: Germany has actual laws rather than mere Facebook policies concerning holocaust denial because it views the slippery slope towards Naziism as more plausible and dangerous than the slippery slope towards a unified state version of history) As for people with concerns about 'fishy stuff', they've been granted plenty of prime time TV hours to talk about it, had fifty lawsuits thrown out by judges often politically aligned with them and are happily posting all over the Internet without fear of any consequences whilst elected officials loudly advocate their cause. Suffice to say this is not the experience of the average 1950s communist or pornographer. I'm not convinced that the existence of more nuanced arguments about elections means social media should be obliged to broadcast Donald Trump declaring that he won a landslide victory without challenge or Lin Wood making Trump look rational, which all too many 'free speech' arguments have been devoted to.