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I wholeheartedly disagree with just about everything you said (much of it is misinformation and/or hysterics), but I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. :)

markdown 5y ago
I probably was a bit hysterical there, but I think the underlying point that an uneducated populace just can't cope in the modern world centered around information on the internet. I know someone I consider intelligent who started with one Joe Rogan video and a year later was a raving pro-Russia, pro-China, holocaust denying anti-vaxxer. Youtube took him from fun, reasonable guy who you'd love to have at a party to the bore who found a conspiracy in everything and who just oozed bile and anger at this new world that millennials had destroyed. If he couldn't fight the propaganda, your average person on the street can't. It's a recipe for disaster, and to my mind the only short term solution is to censor the propaganda. Of course over the long term, the only real solution is to create a smarter population who aren't just trained in arithmetic, but in logic and philosophy.
- qyi 5y ago
  I've never studied logic and yet I have never agreed with any conspiracy theory (the logical flaws are still obvious even if I can't name them). If you want people to think logically about topics, the first step is making them not be taboo.
- nbardy 5y ago
  Whatever problem your describing, the answer isn't to control people
  - markdown 5y ago
    Not people, just lies and propaganda.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Putting a lid on propaganda isn't "controlling people". When propaganda is thrown at you from foreign states, those states are the ones attempting to control your population. Fighting that is defending your citizens. How you fight is tricky and i don't agree that censorship is the right fix in the long run, but i don't think the person you are replying to thinks that either, it's just one easy way to combat some of it.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      In USAs case I'm hardly allne in thinking that it definitely wasn't foreign states who got Trump elected. If so they must have been insanely clever because the Democrats outspent them by orders of magnitude AFAIK. Trump got elected because people were tired of "politicians" and because Hillary messed up her campaign. Seriously: She was so close to winning it anyway that I like to think it was her calling a large chunk of her voter pool a "basked of deplorables" that got it over the edge.
      - scrollaway 5y ago
        I don't know why you're replying to my post with something unrelated to it.
        skinkestek 5y ago
        I might have misread or misunderstood. In that case, sorry for that.
licebmi__at__ 5y ago
Heh, I wholeheartedly agree with most of what gp said and I still wouldn’t trust google to protect people from misinformation. But I also disagree with ggp, as I don’t see google doing anything other than push ads.

markdown 5y ago

I probably was a bit hysterical there, but I think the underlying point that an uneducated populace just can't cope in the modern world centered around information on the internet. I know someone I consider intelligent who started with one Joe Rogan video and a year later was a raving pro-Russia, pro-China, holocaust denying anti-vaxxer. Youtube took him from fun, reasonable guy who you'd love to have at a party to the bore who found a conspiracy in everything and who just oozed bile and anger at this new world that millennials had destroyed. If he couldn't fight the propaganda, your average person on the street can't. It's a recipe for disaster, and to my mind the only short term solution is to censor the propaganda. Of course over the long term, the only real solution is to create a smarter population who aren't just trained in arithmetic, but in logic and philosophy.

qyi 5y ago
I've never studied logic and yet I have never agreed with any conspiracy theory (the logical flaws are still obvious even if I can't name them). If you want people to think logically about topics, the first step is making them not be taboo.
nbardy 5y ago
Whatever problem your describing, the answer isn't to control people
- markdown 5y ago
  Not people, just lies and propaganda.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Putting a lid on propaganda isn't "controlling people". When propaganda is thrown at you from foreign states, those states are the ones attempting to control your population. Fighting that is defending your citizens. How you fight is tricky and i don't agree that censorship is the right fix in the long run, but i don't think the person you are replying to thinks that either, it's just one easy way to combat some of it.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    In USAs case I'm hardly allne in thinking that it definitely wasn't foreign states who got Trump elected. If so they must have been insanely clever because the Democrats outspent them by orders of magnitude AFAIK. Trump got elected because people were tired of "politicians" and because Hillary messed up her campaign. Seriously: She was so close to winning it anyway that I like to think it was her calling a large chunk of her voter pool a "basked of deplorables" that got it over the edge.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I don't know why you're replying to my post with something unrelated to it.
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        I might have misread or misunderstood. In that case, sorry for that.

licebmi__at__ 5y ago

Heh, I wholeheartedly agree with most of what gp said and I still wouldn’t trust google to protect people from misinformation. But I also disagree with ggp, as I don’t see google doing anything other than push ads.