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Democrat Groups Plan to “Fact Check” Private Text Messages

34 points by garyclarke27 5y ago

paulddraper 5y ago
The more reputable source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-vaccination-campaign-499278 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-vaccina... > Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely. > “We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country's public health and will not shy away from calling that out.”
- dgfitz 5y ago
  How do they say plan managing disinformation sent over SMS? This seems… alarming? Do people get disinformation text messages about vaccines? I can’t say I have.
  - 6f8986c3 5y ago
    Probably the same way Facebook and Twitter censor private messages. It’s just unencrypted data.
- uncoder0 5y ago
  'More reputable' is subjective based on your own bubble and frame of reference. The OP's link is 'right biased' your link is 'left biased'. I generally try to read a little bit of everything, with a huge grain of salt, and there is no way to read this action as anything other than 'oppressive' imo. Just look at the whole lab leak fiasco for a very recent example of why this type of censorship is awful for both truth and science. Sadly I've not found a news source that simply reports known facts.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulddraper 5y ago
    First, my political views are right-wing. Second, while Zero Hedge does report on interesting/lesser known stories, they take very strong opinions on the story. For example, "Trying to 'fact check' people’s personal conversations is utterly demented." While I wholeheartedly agree with that sentence, it is nonetheless an opinion, not a fact. Where possible, I prefer articles that state facts and leave the opinion-making to the reader.
  - sumthinprofound 5y ago
    >> The OP's link is 'right biased' your link is 'left biased'. The politico link referenced was linked as the source of information in the zerohedge article OP submitted.
  - 6f8986c3 5y ago
    You will never find this, because it can not exist. There are so many variables. Not just word choice, but which facts do you report? If something is highly important, but you only have about 60% certainty, how do you share that? Your only option is to triangulate.
cusenses 5y ago
What can regular people even do about this? It's a disgusting overreach if it ends up happening. And if it's all being performed by private companies, in industries where there is very little choice of competitors, there's no violation of rights and no way for us to avoid having our private messages be scrutinized by some authority.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  Regulation, unfortunately, probably can’t solve this. Imagine that we had the most thoroughly crafted law imaginable to prevent private messages from being blocked or modified. You still have to take those companies to court, which cost a ton of money, fight them over years, and even if you win, then what? The only workable strategies I see at this point are to fight to preserve individual choice, and the ability to connect point-to-point.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  The same thing people are doing under other repressive regimes like the ones in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others (China comes to mind but the CCP has been quite successful in suppressing dissent): stop using open channels, start using encrypted [1] communications for things which go outside of the currently mandated narrative, assume your communications are being monitored by "the Party" so make sure to appear to be a good citizen when using open communication channels unless you're willing to suffer the consequences. Also, make sure to vote wisely the next time and hold whatever candidate you vote for to his promises. Don't just follow whatever stupid narrative you're being fed, think for yourself. > ...if it's all being performed by private companies, in industries where there is very little choice of competitors, there's no violation of rights and no way for us to avoid having our private messages be scrutinized by some authority. If those private companies serve as the regime's lackeys doing their bidding to monitor citizens communications they should not be treated like private companies but as state actors. [1] where encrypted should be read as "encrypted without _NSAKEY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)" et al.
- bassman9000 5y ago
  Stop voting the blatantly conglomerated collusion that is Big Tech + MSM + DNC.
berinateni 5y ago
Politics aside this isn't going to be technically possible apart from plain SMS. iMessage and WhatsApp are encrypted so it won't be possible to intercept and fact check them.
- inetknght 5y ago
  Wait until end-to-end encryption is illegal.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  Both Apple and Facebook support this type of censorship. As do many of their employees. You don’t even need to make encryption illegal. You just need to backdoor it. Trivial for one or two well-placed developers.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    You don't even need to back door it. WhatsApp already implemented restrictions on forwarding of messages, which shouldn't be possible if the encryption worked. Of course they didn't need to: you can just include a "forwarded counter" in the message and enforce it on the client. That trick can be done for any rule they wish to enforce.
- caskstrength 5y ago
  But they don't need to break the encryption because iMessage and WhatsApp are closed platforms without support for third party clients, so Apple and Facebook can just create a list of "undesirable" keywords and push it to the client (automatically, without any way for the user to opt-out) that would mark such messages or completely delete them.
- alanlovestea 5y ago
  FB has always censored many of its media. I have no doubt WhatsApp will be the next.
Bjartr 5y ago
The original Politico article says the DNC plans to "work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation" and has no further information about what that entails. The Politico White House Correspondent has clarified in a tweet[1] that "Outside groups are attempting to flag to SMS carriers false information campaigns that are driving misinformation on vaccines." So it appears the goal is to specifically identify the misinformation campaigns. Since it's non-governmental, "outside groups", doing the identification I think that'd mean the information they're using to do this is, if not outright publicly available, at least acquirable/purchasable by arbitrary companies already. So at this point my conclusion is that no text messages sent by private individuals will be read as part of this that weren't already available to the highest bidder (e.g. for advertising/tracking purposes). Further, there's no indication that any private text messages at all will be modified, corrected, or made to include fact-check warnings or anything like that based on their content. And as described it could be even be as benign as asking people if they've gotten text message spam with that misinformation and trying to look for a pattern. [1] https://twitter.com/natashakorecki/status/1414716378385424387 https://twitter.com/natashakorecki/status/141471637838542438...
underseacables 5y ago
Based on current behavior of cancel culture, I don’t think generation Z truly appreciates the nightmare they are headed for. 20 years from now someone is going to come out of the woodwork with a tweet, text message, social media post, or heaven for bid only fans, and completely destroy someone’s life. The Internet is forever, and private companies are making that so.
- polka_haunts_us 5y ago
  I feel very, hopeless for lack of a better word, about this kind of thing lately. I feel strongly that we're sliding by popular demand into this kind of thing, that I'm well in the minority (not on this site but in the population at large) for thinking that it will end terribly, and that instead of putting up my own meager resistence to it, I'd rather egg it on because I believe everyone who genuinely believes it to be a good thing deserves every single repurcussion of it that will inevitably come to them. I realize this headspace is neither productive nor healthy, but honestly other than burying my head in the sand about the world today, I don't have any bright ideas for how to not be perpetually, distressed?
  - JustResign 5y ago
    If you egg it on, what makes you better than the "others" you distinguish yourself from?
    - polka_haunts_us 5y ago
      I think it's pretty clear that doing things that I truly believe lead to society at large becoming worse would make me a bad person, that's at least partially why I don't actually do them. Simultaneously, when looking at other people who take actions that I believe will make society worse, I don't wish them eternal peace and happiness as much as I wish they'd stub their toe, spill their coffee, and have a seagull poop on their back. That might make me a bad person, honestly I think it just makes me an average, if not slightly below average, person.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
salawat 5y ago
In short: DNC seeks to implement global surveillance of any SMS or chat medium to do pattern recognition and "fact check" insertion, which won't in any way lead to any type of bad or otherwise unintended side-effects or potential abuses at all, ever. There are few things I justify as worthy of the implementation of such a measure (I mean, I'm sure it's possible I'll think or hear of one some day) but I still find any mention of contemporary issues as a justification for doing so unconvincing against the potential for abuse. If true, would be political suicide to hopefully any reasonable individual. Also, saw a ZeroHedge article before it was flagged on HN. Feel like I just pulled off an achievement.
cirrus3 5y ago
"Zero Hedge (or ZeroHedge)[b] is a far-right[12] libertarian[17] financial blog,[13][14] presenting staff-written articles and aggregating news and opinions from external sources." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  "Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue. The most common form of this fallacy is 'A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
- native_samples 5y ago
  And yet it's just repeating something that appeared in Politico, so if you wish to ad hominem this page you need to also do it to them.

34 points by garyclarke27 5y ago

The more reputable source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-vaccination-campaign-499278 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-vaccina... > Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely. > “We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country's public health and will not shy away from calling that out.”

dgfitz 5y ago
How do they say plan managing disinformation sent over SMS? This seems… alarming? Do people get disinformation text messages about vaccines? I can’t say I have.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  Probably the same way Facebook and Twitter censor private messages. It’s just unencrypted data.
uncoder0 5y ago
'More reputable' is subjective based on your own bubble and frame of reference. The OP's link is 'right biased' your link is 'left biased'. I generally try to read a little bit of everything, with a huge grain of salt, and there is no way to read this action as anything other than 'oppressive' imo. Just look at the whole lab leak fiasco for a very recent example of why this type of censorship is awful for both truth and science. Sadly I've not found a news source that simply reports known facts.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- paulddraper 5y ago
  First, my political views are right-wing. Second, while Zero Hedge does report on interesting/lesser known stories, they take very strong opinions on the story. For example, "Trying to 'fact check' people’s personal conversations is utterly demented." While I wholeheartedly agree with that sentence, it is nonetheless an opinion, not a fact. Where possible, I prefer articles that state facts and leave the opinion-making to the reader.
- sumthinprofound 5y ago
  >> The OP's link is 'right biased' your link is 'left biased'. The politico link referenced was linked as the source of information in the zerohedge article OP submitted.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  You will never find this, because it can not exist. There are so many variables. Not just word choice, but which facts do you report? If something is highly important, but you only have about 60% certainty, how do you share that? Your only option is to triangulate.

cusenses 5y ago

What can regular people even do about this? It's a disgusting overreach if it ends up happening. And if it's all being performed by private companies, in industries where there is very little choice of competitors, there's no violation of rights and no way for us to avoid having our private messages be scrutinized by some authority.

6f8986c3 5y ago
Regulation, unfortunately, probably can’t solve this. Imagine that we had the most thoroughly crafted law imaginable to prevent private messages from being blocked or modified. You still have to take those companies to court, which cost a ton of money, fight them over years, and even if you win, then what? The only workable strategies I see at this point are to fight to preserve individual choice, and the ability to connect point-to-point.
the_third_wave 5y ago
The same thing people are doing under other repressive regimes like the ones in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others (China comes to mind but the CCP has been quite successful in suppressing dissent): stop using open channels, start using encrypted [1] communications for things which go outside of the currently mandated narrative, assume your communications are being monitored by "the Party" so make sure to appear to be a good citizen when using open communication channels unless you're willing to suffer the consequences. Also, make sure to vote wisely the next time and hold whatever candidate you vote for to his promises. Don't just follow whatever stupid narrative you're being fed, think for yourself. > ...if it's all being performed by private companies, in industries where there is very little choice of competitors, there's no violation of rights and no way for us to avoid having our private messages be scrutinized by some authority. If those private companies serve as the regime's lackeys doing their bidding to monitor citizens communications they should not be treated like private companies but as state actors. [1] where encrypted should be read as "encrypted without _NSAKEY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)" et al.
bassman9000 5y ago
Stop voting the blatantly conglomerated collusion that is Big Tech + MSM + DNC.

berinateni 5y ago

Politics aside this isn't going to be technically possible apart from plain SMS. iMessage and WhatsApp are encrypted so it won't be possible to intercept and fact check them.

inetknght 5y ago
Wait until end-to-end encryption is illegal.
6f8986c3 5y ago
Both Apple and Facebook support this type of censorship. As do many of their employees. You don’t even need to make encryption illegal. You just need to backdoor it. Trivial for one or two well-placed developers.
- native_samples 5y ago
  You don't even need to back door it. WhatsApp already implemented restrictions on forwarding of messages, which shouldn't be possible if the encryption worked. Of course they didn't need to: you can just include a "forwarded counter" in the message and enforce it on the client. That trick can be done for any rule they wish to enforce.
caskstrength 5y ago
But they don't need to break the encryption because iMessage and WhatsApp are closed platforms without support for third party clients, so Apple and Facebook can just create a list of "undesirable" keywords and push it to the client (automatically, without any way for the user to opt-out) that would mark such messages or completely delete them.
alanlovestea 5y ago
FB has always censored many of its media. I have no doubt WhatsApp will be the next.

Bjartr 5y ago

The original Politico article says the DNC plans to "work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation" and has no further information about what that entails. The Politico White House Correspondent has clarified in a tweet[1] that "Outside groups are attempting to flag to SMS carriers false information campaigns that are driving misinformation on vaccines." So it appears the goal is to specifically identify the misinformation campaigns. Since it's non-governmental, "outside groups", doing the identification I think that'd mean the information they're using to do this is, if not outright publicly available, at least acquirable/purchasable by arbitrary companies already. So at this point my conclusion is that no text messages sent by private individuals will be read as part of this that weren't already available to the highest bidder (e.g. for advertising/tracking purposes). Further, there's no indication that any private text messages at all will be modified, corrected, or made to include fact-check warnings or anything like that based on their content. And as described it could be even be as benign as asking people if they've gotten text message spam with that misinformation and trying to look for a pattern. [1] https://twitter.com/natashakorecki/status/1414716378385424387 https://twitter.com/natashakorecki/status/141471637838542438...

underseacables 5y ago

Based on current behavior of cancel culture, I don’t think generation Z truly appreciates the nightmare they are headed for. 20 years from now someone is going to come out of the woodwork with a tweet, text message, social media post, or heaven for bid only fans, and completely destroy someone’s life. The Internet is forever, and private companies are making that so.

polka_haunts_us 5y ago
I feel very, hopeless for lack of a better word, about this kind of thing lately. I feel strongly that we're sliding by popular demand into this kind of thing, that I'm well in the minority (not on this site but in the population at large) for thinking that it will end terribly, and that instead of putting up my own meager resistence to it, I'd rather egg it on because I believe everyone who genuinely believes it to be a good thing deserves every single repurcussion of it that will inevitably come to them. I realize this headspace is neither productive nor healthy, but honestly other than burying my head in the sand about the world today, I don't have any bright ideas for how to not be perpetually, distressed?
- JustResign 5y ago
  If you egg it on, what makes you better than the "others" you distinguish yourself from?
  - polka_haunts_us 5y ago
    I think it's pretty clear that doing things that I truly believe lead to society at large becoming worse would make me a bad person, that's at least partially why I don't actually do them. Simultaneously, when looking at other people who take actions that I believe will make society worse, I don't wish them eternal peace and happiness as much as I wish they'd stub their toe, spill their coffee, and have a seagull poop on their back. That might make me a bad person, honestly I think it just makes me an average, if not slightly below average, person.
Ancapistani 5y ago

salawat 5y ago

In short: DNC seeks to implement global surveillance of any SMS or chat medium to do pattern recognition and "fact check" insertion, which won't in any way lead to any type of bad or otherwise unintended side-effects or potential abuses at all, ever. There are few things I justify as worthy of the implementation of such a measure (I mean, I'm sure it's possible I'll think or hear of one some day) but I still find any mention of contemporary issues as a justification for doing so unconvincing against the potential for abuse. If true, would be political suicide to hopefully any reasonable individual. Also, saw a ZeroHedge article before it was flagged on HN. Feel like I just pulled off an achievement.

cirrus3 5y ago

"Zero Hedge (or ZeroHedge)[b] is a far-right[12] libertarian[17] financial blog,[13][14] presenting staff-written articles and aggregating news and opinions from external sources." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge

Ancapistani 5y ago
"Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue. The most common form of this fallacy is 'A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
native_samples 5y ago
And yet it's just repeating something that appeared in Politico, so if you wish to ad hominem this page you need to also do it to them.