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I'm reading this hoping for good points, but I mostly am seeing weak arguments. Also the title is baity. >> The worst thing Trump ever did to any of them was t

I'm reading this hoping for good points, but I mostly am seeing weak arguments. Also the title is baity. >> The worst thing Trump ever did to any of them was to say mean things about them in tweets. Those aren't assaults on press freedom. It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter. >> [Facebook and Twitter] had to start censoring…because journalists at CNN and NBC and The New York Times demanded they do so. I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative. >> [Seems to be arguing that millenials care about free speech less because they are coddled] I'm not even gonna touch that one. >> They began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians who believe that the modes of information [should be] regulated by them and by others. That's just unfortunately the modern-day mentality of the journalist. If he hadn't slipped the word authoritarian in there, I think this might be the most interesting point of the piece. I think a lot of people, including journalists, scientific journals, textbooks, wikipedia, even HN believe in rating/filtering information on its quality (is it true?, is it divisive?, does it have an agenda?). In fact, the filtering/amplifying of information is the primary job of such platforms. As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. Based on the results of the great experiment (Qanon, Trump presidency, "stop the steal", capitol riots) people want to pull back to the tried-and-true pre-web-2.0 journalism (i.e. gatekeepers). This is where a good-faith exploration would really be interesting. >> [Seems to insinuate that the NYT doesn't believe in whistleblowers like Snowden.] I hope that's not true.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter. What's the alternative? Traditional media gets a pass for everything wrong they do because pizzagate? > I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative. Not when they've been calling for it since long before the riot. (I'm not sure when it became riots. Was there a second one?) > As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism And lest we not forget state-sponsored media. > We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. The experiment we tried was a Facebook algorithm designed to increase "engagement" by promoting controversy. That was a Bad Idea. Maybe time to smash them up instead of appointing them arbiters of the discourse.
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
> As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. Based on the results of the great experiment (Qanon, Trump presidency, "stop the steal", capitol riots) people want to pull back to the tried-and-true pre-web-2.0 journalism (i.e. gatekeepers). It's worth noting that the invention of the printing press caused massive social change in Europe, and was not looked upon very kindly at the time by many. I think the internet analogy writes itself, and I hope that we maintain the ability of humans to converse about what interests them regardless of how crazy they are. Just remember kids, words are not actions. I can say that I'm gonna burn Y-combinator down (I don't even know where it is, to be honest) but that is not the same as actually burning down their buildings. I worry that we're conflating these two things too much in terms of what we see on the Internet. And to be fair, the major driver of the craziness of the Republican party is TV and talk radio, not social media.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter. What's the alternative? Traditional media gets a pass for everything wrong they do because pizzagate? > I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative. Not when they've been calling for it since long before the riot. (I'm not sure when it became riots. Was there a second one?) > As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism And lest we not forget state-sponsored media. > We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. The experiment we tried was a Facebook algorithm designed to increase "engagement" by promoting controversy. That was a Bad Idea. Maybe time to smash them up instead of appointing them arbiters of the discourse.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

> As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. Based on the results of the great experiment (Qanon, Trump presidency, "stop the steal", capitol riots) people want to pull back to the tried-and-true pre-web-2.0 journalism (i.e. gatekeepers). It's worth noting that the invention of the printing press caused massive social change in Europe, and was not looked upon very kindly at the time by many. I think the internet analogy writes itself, and I hope that we maintain the ability of humans to converse about what interests them regardless of how crazy they are. Just remember kids, words are not actions. I can say that I'm gonna burn Y-combinator down (I don't even know where it is, to be honest) but that is not the same as actually burning down their buildings. I worry that we're conflating these two things too much in terms of what we see on the Internet. And to be fair, the major driver of the craziness of the Republican party is TV and talk radio, not social media.