5 ms·

To you it's a golden age, to others this is a period where the internet was thoroughly weaponized by misinformation agents to undermine democracy and civil soci

To you it's a golden age, to others this is a period where the internet was thoroughly weaponized by misinformation agents to undermine democracy and civil societies around the world.

throwaways885 5y ago
But isn't the flip side of all this censorship a reduced ability for people to tell bullshit from reality? Why is information intelligence not taught in schools? Much like an immune system, we need to be exposed to nonsense so that we're constantly vigilant. There will always be a group of nutters who believe in flat earth, that vaccines cause autism, etc... Trying to cut that off at the source just throws these people into underground cults. A more scalable, sustainable solution is to 1) teach people to do their research - properly, as in, don't go on Facebook and join "Flat Earth Society Boston" to find The Truth 2) teach people it's okay to change their minds - part of this spreading cultism is that political opinions are now core identities 3) teach people to tolerate opposing viewpoints, even the silly ones - point and laugh, but don't try to cancel and destroy their lives Another thing - every time a tweet or document is censored, the replies are generally cut off as well. How can people learn to distinct true and false if they don't get to see examples of people being wrong and corrected.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > Much like an immune system, we need to be exposed to nonsense so that we're constantly vigilant. No: much like an immune system, we need to be exposed to vaccines (i.e. education on how to spot deception, knowledge of what scams are currently going on). Enough people trying to deceive you, and eventually someone will succeed.
- pjc50 5y ago
  How is the education system today going to help people who went to school in the 1970s? Conversely, what should we teach children today about the information threats of the 2050s?
  - throwaways885 5y ago
    A proper fix is better than an instant fix.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      Sure, but in the meantime the misinformation voters get to pick the textbooks. This is a bit like educating people in fire prevention when the forest is already ablaze.
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  >But isn't the flip side of all this censorship a reduced ability for people to tell bullshit from reality? No. People have limited processing cycles in their heads, and you never notice the bullshit you fall for, so you can't correct for errors you're making. Critical thinking skills are great, but they don't provide you expert-level knowledge in every field, nor can they. Sometimes your educated heuristics are just plain wrong and someone else has better information you don't have access to. I see this all the time here with content in my field - developers just get law wrong all the time. You might remember an era when email inboxes were FLOODED with a deluge of dick pills, get rich quick schemes, Nigerian prince scams, and other low-effort, low-value content. Sure you might be able to avoid clicking on garbage, but the general health of your inbox declined dramatically. Does that mean society is going to end because we've trampled upon the rights of the latest Cialis replacement to spam my inboxes? Probably not.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    You have Johnny, saying you should wear a mask when you go to the store, because it helps you against covid. And Bobby says you shouldn't, because there's no evidence it helps, and it might even be even worse for you, if you wear it wrong. So you're suggesting we should remove Johnnys fearmongering, conspiracy post, because we should listen to the experts? https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas... Experts clearly say that "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," Expert knowledge by WHO. ...and a month later, we should delete Bobbys post too? Do we undelete Johnnys post?
    - ABCLAW 5y ago
      This is actually pretty interesting because your post is premised upon a massive misreading of what actually happened. It shows you can spread disinformation while thinking you did your research. The expert knowledge was that mass usage of masks early on in the pandemic could prevent frontline healthcare workers from accessing needed supplies while logistics spun up to meet demand. "There also is the issue that we have a massive global shortage," Ryan said about masks and other medical supplies. "Right now the people most at risk from this virus are frontline health workers who are exposed to the virus every second of every day. The thought of them not having masks is horrific." This is literally the third paragraph. When community spread began to drive the bulk of new infections and we've had months to spin up production on masks, obviously mass adoption changes in value.
mikepurvis 5y ago
Indeed, and that was also the period where Reddit happily hosted a whole bunch of extremely tasteless and borderline illegal communities centered around things like pictures of overweight people and sexualized children. A quick googling suggests that the first wave of closures was in 2015 [1] after a crushing wave of negative publicity and advertiser pullouts. The other really high-profile one was r/The_Donald, which wasn't closed until 2020 and even has its own Wikipedia article. [2] [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06/10/these-are-the-5-subreddits-reddit-banned-under-its-game-changing-anti-harassment-policy-and-why-it-banned-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald ---- EDIT: Actually, looks like r/jailbait was closed much earlier, in 2011, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Jailbait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... But certainly prior to June 2015, there was much, much broader tolerance for racist, sexist, transphobic content on the site.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  > But certainly prior to June 2015, there was much, much broader tolerance for racist, sexist, transphobic content on the site. And now it has moved to other, more hidden platforms, where there is noone to write counterarguments, and sometimes (tor, freenet,...) impossible to identify someone who writes actual threats and not just "yo momma so fat..." jokes.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I mean, that's literally what most of the posts are arguing for in this thread— that this needs to be a watershed moment to get serious about distributed, uncensorable alternatives to products like Google Drive. But in any case, "people will find alternatives" has never been a valid reason not to act (either here or in other popular cases such as guns/suicide). There is real value in having standards of conduct that go above and beyond the bare minimum of "not illegal." Moral and ethical value, of course, but also economic— in the reddit case, ultimately being a place that was viable for ad spends by mainline brands who wouldn't want to be associated with a site whose public image was that of being a safe space for hate speech. Google is a little different since there's no r/all page for GDrive that can be gamed to show this content, and nor is Google likely as worried about the safety of its reputation as an advertiser.
brandonmenc 5y ago
> to others this is a period where the internet was thoroughly weaponized by misinformation agents to undermine democracy and civil societies around the world. If you said something like this in the 1940s, you'd get a bunch of people nodding their heads in agreement and using it to justify the McCarthy hearings. Maybe I'm naive, but I still believe the lesser of the two evils is to err on the side against censorship. Also, if you've spent any time with crazy conspiracy theorists, you'd know that letting the government/corporations/media act as censors just adds fuel to that fire.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Conspiracy theorists have spent the last few years literally using the term "the good guys" to describe the federal government, and were clamoring for a military coup up until earlier this year.
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    I’m sorry, who are you referring to?
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      The conspiracy theorists I know, and most of r/Conspiracy, went from distrusting the government to generally converging on Qanon conspiracy theories, and Qanon adjacent conspiracy theories like #SaveTheChildren. They use the term "the good guys", literally those words, to describe those in the federal government who are supposedly fighting a secret war against a pedophile cabal that will culminate in a military coup. Interestingly enough, even those conspiracy theorists who haven't fallen down the far right conspiracy rabbithole are also assuming the federal government and military are on their side. A popular conspiracy theory is that the government is gearing up to disclose that UAP reports are actually evidence of alien contact. In those that hold this view, there's a widespread reverence for military members' testimony, and an almost implicit assumption that they are nearly infallible because of their military training. Instead of distrusting the government, they're eagerly awaiting for it agree with them and confirm their personal feelings towards reports of UAPs.

To you it's a golden age, to others this is a period where the internet was thoroughly weaponized by misinformation agents to undermine democracy and civil societies around the world.

throwaways885 5y ago

But isn't the flip side of all this censorship a reduced ability for people to tell bullshit from reality? Why is information intelligence not taught in schools? Much like an immune system, we need to be exposed to nonsense so that we're constantly vigilant. There will always be a group of nutters who believe in flat earth, that vaccines cause autism, etc... Trying to cut that off at the source just throws these people into underground cults. A more scalable, sustainable solution is to 1) teach people to do their research - properly, as in, don't go on Facebook and join "Flat Earth Society Boston" to find The Truth 2) teach people it's okay to change their minds - part of this spreading cultism is that political opinions are now core identities 3) teach people to tolerate opposing viewpoints, even the silly ones - point and laugh, but don't try to cancel and destroy their lives Another thing - every time a tweet or document is censored, the replies are generally cut off as well. How can people learn to distinct true and false if they don't get to see examples of people being wrong and corrected.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
> Much like an immune system, we need to be exposed to nonsense so that we're constantly vigilant. No: much like an immune system, we need to be exposed to vaccines (i.e. education on how to spot deception, knowledge of what scams are currently going on). Enough people trying to deceive you, and eventually someone will succeed.
pjc50 5y ago
How is the education system today going to help people who went to school in the 1970s? Conversely, what should we teach children today about the information threats of the 2050s?
- throwaways885 5y ago
  A proper fix is better than an instant fix.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Sure, but in the meantime the misinformation voters get to pick the textbooks. This is a bit like educating people in fire prevention when the forest is already ablaze.
ABCLAW 5y ago
>But isn't the flip side of all this censorship a reduced ability for people to tell bullshit from reality? No. People have limited processing cycles in their heads, and you never notice the bullshit you fall for, so you can't correct for errors you're making. Critical thinking skills are great, but they don't provide you expert-level knowledge in every field, nor can they. Sometimes your educated heuristics are just plain wrong and someone else has better information you don't have access to. I see this all the time here with content in my field - developers just get law wrong all the time. You might remember an era when email inboxes were FLOODED with a deluge of dick pills, get rich quick schemes, Nigerian prince scams, and other low-effort, low-value content. Sure you might be able to avoid clicking on garbage, but the general health of your inbox declined dramatically. Does that mean society is going to end because we've trampled upon the rights of the latest Cialis replacement to spam my inboxes? Probably not.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  You have Johnny, saying you should wear a mask when you go to the store, because it helps you against covid. And Bobby says you shouldn't, because there's no evidence it helps, and it might even be even worse for you, if you wear it wrong. So you're suggesting we should remove Johnnys fearmongering, conspiracy post, because we should listen to the experts? https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas... Experts clearly say that "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," Expert knowledge by WHO. ...and a month later, we should delete Bobbys post too? Do we undelete Johnnys post?
  - ABCLAW 5y ago
    This is actually pretty interesting because your post is premised upon a massive misreading of what actually happened. It shows you can spread disinformation while thinking you did your research. The expert knowledge was that mass usage of masks early on in the pandemic could prevent frontline healthcare workers from accessing needed supplies while logistics spun up to meet demand. "There also is the issue that we have a massive global shortage," Ryan said about masks and other medical supplies. "Right now the people most at risk from this virus are frontline health workers who are exposed to the virus every second of every day. The thought of them not having masks is horrific." This is literally the third paragraph. When community spread began to drive the bulk of new infections and we've had months to spin up production on masks, obviously mass adoption changes in value.

mikepurvis 5y ago

Indeed, and that was also the period where Reddit happily hosted a whole bunch of extremely tasteless and borderline illegal communities centered around things like pictures of overweight people and sexualized children. A quick googling suggests that the first wave of closures was in 2015 [1] after a crushing wave of negative publicity and advertiser pullouts. The other really high-profile one was r/The_Donald, which wasn't closed until 2020 and even has its own Wikipedia article. [2] [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06/10/these-are-the-5-subreddits-reddit-banned-under-its-game-changing-anti-harassment-policy-and-why-it-banned-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald ---- EDIT: Actually, looks like r/jailbait was closed much earlier, in 2011, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Jailbait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... But certainly prior to June 2015, there was much, much broader tolerance for racist, sexist, transphobic content on the site.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
> But certainly prior to June 2015, there was much, much broader tolerance for racist, sexist, transphobic content on the site. And now it has moved to other, more hidden platforms, where there is noone to write counterarguments, and sometimes (tor, freenet,...) impossible to identify someone who writes actual threats and not just "yo momma so fat..." jokes.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  I mean, that's literally what most of the posts are arguing for in this thread— that this needs to be a watershed moment to get serious about distributed, uncensorable alternatives to products like Google Drive. But in any case, "people will find alternatives" has never been a valid reason not to act (either here or in other popular cases such as guns/suicide). There is real value in having standards of conduct that go above and beyond the bare minimum of "not illegal." Moral and ethical value, of course, but also economic— in the reddit case, ultimately being a place that was viable for ad spends by mainline brands who wouldn't want to be associated with a site whose public image was that of being a safe space for hate speech. Google is a little different since there's no r/all page for GDrive that can be gamed to show this content, and nor is Google likely as worried about the safety of its reputation as an advertiser.

brandonmenc 5y ago

> to others this is a period where the internet was thoroughly weaponized by misinformation agents to undermine democracy and civil societies around the world. If you said something like this in the 1940s, you'd get a bunch of people nodding their heads in agreement and using it to justify the McCarthy hearings. Maybe I'm naive, but I still believe the lesser of the two evils is to err on the side against censorship. Also, if you've spent any time with crazy conspiracy theorists, you'd know that letting the government/corporations/media act as censors just adds fuel to that fire.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Conspiracy theorists have spent the last few years literally using the term "the good guys" to describe the federal government, and were clamoring for a military coup up until earlier this year.
- l33t2328 5y ago
  I’m sorry, who are you referring to?
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    The conspiracy theorists I know, and most of r/Conspiracy, went from distrusting the government to generally converging on Qanon conspiracy theories, and Qanon adjacent conspiracy theories like #SaveTheChildren. They use the term "the good guys", literally those words, to describe those in the federal government who are supposedly fighting a secret war against a pedophile cabal that will culminate in a military coup. Interestingly enough, even those conspiracy theorists who haven't fallen down the far right conspiracy rabbithole are also assuming the federal government and military are on their side. A popular conspiracy theory is that the government is gearing up to disclose that UAP reports are actually evidence of alien contact. In those that hold this view, there's a widespread reverence for military members' testimony, and an almost implicit assumption that they are nearly infallible because of their military training. Instead of distrusting the government, they're eagerly awaiting for it agree with them and confirm their personal feelings towards reports of UAPs.