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Censorship is not and never can be a solution to the issue of misinformation. At best it can hide the problem as people are forced to take their wrongthink unde

by jjk166 6y ago

Censorship is not and never can be a solution to the issue of misinformation. At best it can hide the problem as people are forced to take their wrongthink underground, but there it festers and no one can effectively root it out. No the only way to deal with incorrect information is correct information. You can't suppress the argument, you need to win the argument. People need to be taught how to think critically and evaluate various conflicting sources of information, we must go out of our way to present information showing our positions to be true and call out even those we want to agree with when they don't, and we must take the high road and maintain composure even when others do not act in good faith. Yes, it's exhausting, but no one ever said doing the right thing is always easy.

LatteLazy 6y ago
I used to think this way but the nature of social media has changed my opinion. When Trump lied on TV, twitter etc, it worked. Shutting him up was a much more effective approach than "we think you should read this" links offering more information to people who didn't want it. And that's trump. Who is crawling into the depths of social media to win arguments on /r/TheDonald etc? No one. Partly because its exhausting and partly because they'll ban you. Bit mainly because talking bs is easier than disproving bs by an order of magnitude. It's asymmetric warfare. It's simply not practical to "win the argument" anymore. And winning the arguement doesn't actually change anyone's mind anymore. No one open minded and rational supported Trump after the last 4 years, yet his vote count went up by 7m. I feel like we'd never apply this to any other social issue. No one says we should not ban kids from smoking, but instead win the arguement on it with them. No one says we should permit drink driving but win the argument with every drunk arse hole and convince them not to do it. So why is this different? We're reaching a point where you can have social media without any fact checking OR you can have democracy. But not both. I don't expect the right answer to be easy. But I has to be possible and practical. This looks like the only option that fits that criteria right now.
- jjk166 6y ago
  See, this is exactly the attitude which is why censorship will fail. If you want democracy to survive, you need to ask and answer the question: why did Trump's lying work? It's not like he was the first and only person to say something absurd on twitter, but why did his message get tens of millions of people, many of whom you would otherwise consider to be open minded and rational, to vote for him not once but twice? And now that Trump has been forced off twitter you hear about much fewer controversies involving him, yet do you seriously think the issues that led to the problem in the first place have magically gone away? No the Trump supporters are still out there, discussing wild conspiracy theories, you're just less informed about it. Censorship is like a pain killer - it hides the issue, and maybe makes the issue more bearable for a short period of time, but it doesn't treat the underlying condition. It's not social media which democracy is incompatible with, but complacency. And this is the case for most social issues. You'd recieve extremely strong pushback trying to ban smoking or drinking except under extremely specific circumstances. And even then, kids smoking or people driving drunk suggest much deeper issues like unmanaged peer pressure issues at school or the absence of a viable method of transportation besides driving. Yes it's easier to sweep such issues under the rug and ignore them than to do the hard work and fix them, but that's not how you build and maintain a functioning society. And further, a child's right to smoke or a person's right to drive drunk is astronomically less sacred to democracy than the right to free speech. Getting back to censorship, I feel like you mischaracterized what I was saying. Posting "you should read this links" is not combatting misinformation. Changing school curriculums to focus on critical thinking, holding news publications accountable when they fall short of their editorial standards, and trying to understand where our ideological opponents are coming from so we can have constructive dialogue is what I'm referring to. You don't fix things by asking other people to change, we must make deep changes to our own behavior to secure our democracy. It's hard, it's unfair, it's distasteful, but there is no substitute. Deep down, you and everyone else knows this. Censorship is nothing more than a delightful fantasy of an easy way out, which we all know would lead to disastrous consequences if we actually attempted it.

by jjk166 6y ago

LatteLazy 6y ago

I used to think this way but the nature of social media has changed my opinion. When Trump lied on TV, twitter etc, it worked. Shutting him up was a much more effective approach than "we think you should read this" links offering more information to people who didn't want it. And that's trump. Who is crawling into the depths of social media to win arguments on /r/TheDonald etc? No one. Partly because its exhausting and partly because they'll ban you. Bit mainly because talking bs is easier than disproving bs by an order of magnitude. It's asymmetric warfare. It's simply not practical to "win the argument" anymore. And winning the arguement doesn't actually change anyone's mind anymore. No one open minded and rational supported Trump after the last 4 years, yet his vote count went up by 7m. I feel like we'd never apply this to any other social issue. No one says we should not ban kids from smoking, but instead win the arguement on it with them. No one says we should permit drink driving but win the argument with every drunk arse hole and convince them not to do it. So why is this different? We're reaching a point where you can have social media without any fact checking OR you can have democracy. But not both. I don't expect the right answer to be easy. But I has to be possible and practical. This looks like the only option that fits that criteria right now.

jjk166 6y ago
See, this is exactly the attitude which is why censorship will fail. If you want democracy to survive, you need to ask and answer the question: why did Trump's lying work? It's not like he was the first and only person to say something absurd on twitter, but why did his message get tens of millions of people, many of whom you would otherwise consider to be open minded and rational, to vote for him not once but twice? And now that Trump has been forced off twitter you hear about much fewer controversies involving him, yet do you seriously think the issues that led to the problem in the first place have magically gone away? No the Trump supporters are still out there, discussing wild conspiracy theories, you're just less informed about it. Censorship is like a pain killer - it hides the issue, and maybe makes the issue more bearable for a short period of time, but it doesn't treat the underlying condition. It's not social media which democracy is incompatible with, but complacency. And this is the case for most social issues. You'd recieve extremely strong pushback trying to ban smoking or drinking except under extremely specific circumstances. And even then, kids smoking or people driving drunk suggest much deeper issues like unmanaged peer pressure issues at school or the absence of a viable method of transportation besides driving. Yes it's easier to sweep such issues under the rug and ignore them than to do the hard work and fix them, but that's not how you build and maintain a functioning society. And further, a child's right to smoke or a person's right to drive drunk is astronomically less sacred to democracy than the right to free speech. Getting back to censorship, I feel like you mischaracterized what I was saying. Posting "you should read this links" is not combatting misinformation. Changing school curriculums to focus on critical thinking, holding news publications accountable when they fall short of their editorial standards, and trying to understand where our ideological opponents are coming from so we can have constructive dialogue is what I'm referring to. You don't fix things by asking other people to change, we must make deep changes to our own behavior to secure our democracy. It's hard, it's unfair, it's distasteful, but there is no substitute. Deep down, you and everyone else knows this. Censorship is nothing more than a delightful fantasy of an easy way out, which we all know would lead to disastrous consequences if we actually attempted it.