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There's something fundamentally flawed about the idea that censorship in the name of preventing misinformation is protecting the foundation of democracy. You c

There's something fundamentally flawed about the idea that censorship in the name of preventing misinformation is protecting the foundation of democracy. You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with any truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they're right. I should at this point note that Google doesn't directly claim to go quite that far in preventing misinformation, they mostly claim to disallow things that could harm the democractic process (e.g. telling people to vote at the wrong place, their candidate has died, etc.). At least that kind of information is usually agreed upon (if not there are bigger problems than mere misinformation), though they seem to try to include claims of voter-fraud, which is a bit dangerous.

hackererror404 5y ago
Imagine if Britain had this same technology when the USA was founded... It of course would have quickly cracked down on communications and it would have done so in the name of "peace" and "what's right"... This idea that thinking critically of a government and even believing that perhaps the government as it stands today is not the government "of and for the people" (sure could be interpreted as anti-democracy by that same corrupt government)... And maybe that's not correct, but who is the government to say that we can or cannot challenge them in public discourse as it is supposedly protected under the first amendment? This is indeed an insanely slippery slope and people willing to trade their freedoms because they think it's for the ultimate good, I think are really making a mistake... it's not difficult to understand that this is one of the first steps of an actual fundamentally corrupt government... This is easily open to abuse and vast interpretation.
- BrainWorm 5y ago
  `Magna Carta originated as an unsuccessful attempt to achieve peace between royalist and rebel factions in 1215`
- mohas 5y ago
  Welcome to Iran, UK of 17xx technology of 20xx regarding online monitoring and censorship
- shadilay 5y ago
  This was explored before in an excellent blog post. https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
- narrator 5y ago
  If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war. That's the war where the British used barbed wire and the machine gun to invent the concentration camp.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    > If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war. Smart. It would have. That is indeed how you fight an insurgency. Not sure how new it really is though. Compare and contrast to the Harrying of the North. > to invent the concentration camp I hear they borrowed the idea from the Spanish in Cuba. Compared to alternatives, it was supposed to be more humane: "Get the civilians out of harm's way (and keep them from aiding the guerillas without killing them)". It wasn't until the Nazi extermination camps of WW2 that the phrase "concentration camp" took on such negative valences. Granted people did die in concentration camps, but the deaths were of things like cholera -- the same diseases that would run through army camps. Arguably we still have them today, under the new name "refugee camp". > the Boer war It shouldn't be left out that the British had a decent case for moral high ground in that war. The Boers were religious hyper-conservatives who believed God had given them a right to Black slaves, whereas the British had banned slavery throughout the Empire and were going to some expense to enforce this.
BrainWorm 5y ago
Soapbox, Zine, Flyer, Specialty Forum, Usenet, Civilian Radio You aren't censored if you can't generate a link to Bits on a google server.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Call me a deontologist but if it's good then all of them should do it and if it's bad then none of them should.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  Do you feel the same way about free speech zones? Don't like what someone says, just force them to move out of the way so they end up protesting to an empty audience. Naturally if it's a big enough protest you may have to use violence (tear gas, riot police ect...) to do this but hey, they still get their right to free speech, so i guess it's all good and democratic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
Steltek 5y ago
What would you do to combat the deliberate misinformation campaign that is weakening the US and many other countries? While propaganda and polarization are not new, the speed, reach, and aggregation are only possible with modern communication. An early tidbit that may have been lost with deplatforming was that Euro leaders also disagreed, citing that only the state could be trusted with that power. However, the US Constitution mostly prohibits that route and it's left to private companies to make up their own minds about what content they want to host.
- contravariant 5y ago
  It's a hard problem for democracy, the best countermeasures I know of are transparency and education, but those are mitigations at best, you can't really do much if a majority of people believe an untruth. You could also elect me as your benevolent dictator, I'll be happy to bring the misinformation to an end, but the lie I'd tackle first would be that this has anything to do with democracy.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > you can't really do much if a majority of people believe an untruth Treat the propaganda campaign like the war it is - and arrest those who are serving as foreign actors for treason. The earlier people are finally willing to admit Russia and China are waging a war against the whole Western world, the better. The big multipliers - #45, Alex Jones, Fox News, Newsmax, OANN - are publicly known, as are most of the people spreading the stuff on FB, and can be taken down. No need to resolve to a surveillance state, just public information is enough.
    - Aerroon 5y ago
      But if you're going down that route then why should other western governments not treat the US as a threat too? There's extensive spying going on by the US against them and there's plenty of American propaganda too. Should Europe ban Hollywood movies? Arrest American businessmen for spying? Where does it end?
    - 5y ago
kirykl 5y ago
If Google didn’t hide the URL people might know what voting location info is official and what’s not
crazygringo 5y ago
> There's something fundamentally flawed There isn't really. You're adopting, I assume, J.S. Mill's view, that the cure for bad speech is more speech, which he famously published in 1859. However, since then it's been widely accepted that when speech reaches a certain level of harm then the greater good is to prevent/punish it. You can't incite violence under the guise of free speech. You can't advertise that something is safe when it's not. This is because more speech can't undo violence and death after it occurs. And when it comes to misinformation with regards to provable and intentional lies about voting procedures, election results, etc. that falsely harm the country's institutions and legitimacy, it's entirely consistent for that to fall under the widely-accepted prohibition of speech that rises to a certain threshold of harm. It directly leads to mobs, riots, and revolution based on lies, not based on actual injustices. This doesn't mean any harmful speech is prohibited -- that's ridiculous. You're generally allowed to insult people, tell lies, etc. But there's a threshold of harm that gets established.
- overgard 5y ago
  Giving anyone the ability to arbitrate what is "good" speech vs "bad" speech is way too much power. In any era of history there have always been "truths" that were massively popular and eventually overturned. I don't think we are the first era to be an exception. So when you're talking about punishing "bad" speech you are talking about creating super powerful entities just because they agree with you. That intent scares me far more than whatever nonsense you get from q anon or antivaxxers.
  - cmckn 5y ago
    > Giving anyone the ability to arbitrate what is "good" speech vs "bad" speech is way too much power. But that isn't at all what is happening here. Google has decided that they don't want to enable people to distribute certain data using their platform. They're not being crowned the omnipotent oracle of good and bad. > you are talking about creating super powerful entities just because they agree with you. This position is bizarre to me -- what do you think an elected government is? I vote to create "super powerful entities that agree with me" every 4 years. Those entities possess the power to destroy all life on earth. Google is not anywhere near as powerful as those entities, and while it is not (directly) democratically accountable, it does derive its power from its users. No information will be permanently erased just because Google does not spend money and time making it available on Drive.
nickysielicki 5y ago
The bigger problem that I have with the idea that misinformation kills democracy is that it seems to suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon or that the average person has been well informed throughout the history of western democracy. Democracy thrived before the printing press. Democracy survived the invention of the printing press, which was mostly in the hands of magnates who could afford it. Democracy survived the invention of television and radio, which was (and still is) in the hands of a select few magnates. We build up terms like "journalistic integrity" and look at the past with rose colored glasses as if these mediums delivered pure objective truth. If anything, what we're seeing with the internet is a more true democracy with a wider range of opinions, less controlled by small groups of plutocrats. If you don't like to see the death of that plutocracy, or you're happy to see a new group of benevolent plutocrats come in to retake control the narrative, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you don't really like democracy.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  When and where did democracy thrive before the printing press?
  - contravariant 5y ago
    Ancient Greece perhaps? Though not in medieval Europe, at least not that I'm aware off.
    - riffraff 5y ago
      Europe had them in the middle ages too: Italy's seafaring republics (Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Pisa et al) where (nominal) democracies, practically owned the Mediterranean sea and lasted a thousand years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_republics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_republics
      - danenania 5y ago
        The Norse also had many democratic customs.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
weare138 5y ago
>You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with any truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they're right. Google is not the government. It's a private company owned by private citizens who also have the same constitutional rights. You're not being 'censored'. It's not a violation of your free speech. You're free to petition the government and you're free to just host your files someplace other than Google Drive. Access to Google Drive is not a 'right'. Quit trying to conflate the two. It's a disingenuous argument meant to confuse the issue and push a personal narrative.
- mjthompson 5y ago
  I'm not even close to convinced by your response. Relying on the public-private divide as the sole basis for your retort is weak. You also assert that the person is pushing a personal narrative, but I suggest you're doing the same. There's an argument that private corporations that are involved in dissemination of information (search engines and social media) should respect principles of freedom of speech as a democratic principle, regardless of constitutional mandate. Suppose the government outsources welfare eligibility decision-making to a private company. Does this mean traditional notions of fairness we would expect from such an decision-maker do not apply, because they are a private company?
  - pronlover723 5y ago
    So then, I should be able to paint your house and car with whatever messages "I" want and you should not be allowed to erase them. Is that the argument you're making?
    - FeepingCreature 5y ago
      If "my" house is actually a meeting place for half the country, or even just half the city, and I've decided almost anyone can paint on the walls, I should not be able to say that one specific person cannot paint on the walls because, for instance, I don't like what party they vote for. Any restriction on wallpainting in that space must be independent of the content of the message. If I wanted to limit that message, I should have to go through the proper democratic circles, ie. pass a city ordnance. This is the same logic that prevents me from saying that in this meeting hall, gay people are not allowed entry.
shrimpx 5y ago
This seems like a “throw the baby out with the bath water” situation in both directions: Censorship, like you note, can be used for evil to suppress anything you disagree with and drive your narrative. But unbridled amplified speech opens the possibility for destructive mass influence of minds, to be evil and destroy the good things those minds agree on. So to me this is at least nuanced. Insisting on completely unchecked speech, however unscientific and destructive, is not a reasonable position.
bamboozled 5y ago
This is absolutely true. If I can't explore new ideas, evaluate information and make up my own mind, no matter how much bullshit exists, I'm not living in a democratic free society anymore. I'm living in a technological dystopia, and authoritarian state. I'm afraid, skepticism is part of a healthy democracy...no matter how much the government want me to get a jab. When did Google feel the need to be the world police?
- intended 5y ago
  Your brain is mapped. Dear god people - we know how to create malformed content. To assume you are immune is like assuming you are immortal or that your computer is unhackable. Modern Misinformation is malformed code, being done at scale. It’s cluster bombing civilians who can never muster the resources to defend against it. It’s not about you. It’s about the attacker.
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    You keep mentioning in this thread “malformed code” as if nonsense Facebook posts are executables my brain is loading. What do you mean by “your brain is mapped?”
    - intended 5y ago
      I’m using malformed content because I’m on a coder forum. It’s the easiest analogy to apply. We know how brains operate and process information. We know that it’s not going to treat information in an unbiased manner. It processes identity information, threats, statistics and out group information differently - among a whole world of idiosyncrasies. Attackers sadly also know enough how to create content that subverts that processing in precise manners. It’s content designed simply to propagate and defeat logical or rational scrutiny. Its filled with the kinds of logical fallacies that maybe YOU would defeat, but are so broadly spread that it will always find victims. Those victims are then set up for the next round of content and then the next round. Eventually this content dominates the discourse. It’s like suddenly everyone knows that the yeti was an astronaut. Google misses more misinformation than it finds - and this is even if we discuss only America or the English speaking world. Smaller nations aren’t even coveted, and rare languages or regions don’t even have automated analysis
estaseuropano 5y ago
But there's a difference between 'disagree' and 'state objectively false things'. The US media especially is poisoned with stuff like that - see all the lies around covid and mask wearing.
grumple 5y ago
There's something fundamentally flawed about trusting people to determine truths themselves as well. Doubly so when those spreading misinformation are well funded propagandists that have been attacking education for years. China, Russia, Germany, Italy, Cuba... these and other nations became communist/authoritarian with the ardent support of the people of those nations (enough people anyway). Tens of millions died as a result. People die today as a result. People are oppressed as a result.

hackererror404 5y ago

Imagine if Britain had this same technology when the USA was founded... It of course would have quickly cracked down on communications and it would have done so in the name of "peace" and "what's right"... This idea that thinking critically of a government and even believing that perhaps the government as it stands today is not the government "of and for the people" (sure could be interpreted as anti-democracy by that same corrupt government)... And maybe that's not correct, but who is the government to say that we can or cannot challenge them in public discourse as it is supposedly protected under the first amendment? This is indeed an insanely slippery slope and people willing to trade their freedoms because they think it's for the ultimate good, I think are really making a mistake... it's not difficult to understand that this is one of the first steps of an actual fundamentally corrupt government... This is easily open to abuse and vast interpretation.

BrainWorm 5y ago
`Magna Carta originated as an unsuccessful attempt to achieve peace between royalist and rebel factions in 1215`
mohas 5y ago
Welcome to Iran, UK of 17xx technology of 20xx regarding online monitoring and censorship
shadilay 5y ago
This was explored before in an excellent blog post. https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
narrator 5y ago
If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war. That's the war where the British used barbed wire and the machine gun to invent the concentration camp.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  > If the American revolution had happened 100 years later it would have looked like the Boer war. Smart. It would have. That is indeed how you fight an insurgency. Not sure how new it really is though. Compare and contrast to the Harrying of the North. > to invent the concentration camp I hear they borrowed the idea from the Spanish in Cuba. Compared to alternatives, it was supposed to be more humane: "Get the civilians out of harm's way (and keep them from aiding the guerillas without killing them)". It wasn't until the Nazi extermination camps of WW2 that the phrase "concentration camp" took on such negative valences. Granted people did die in concentration camps, but the deaths were of things like cholera -- the same diseases that would run through army camps. Arguably we still have them today, under the new name "refugee camp". > the Boer war It shouldn't be left out that the British had a decent case for moral high ground in that war. The Boers were religious hyper-conservatives who believed God had given them a right to Black slaves, whereas the British had banned slavery throughout the Empire and were going to some expense to enforce this.

BrainWorm 5y ago

Soapbox, Zine, Flyer, Specialty Forum, Usenet, Civilian Radio You aren't censored if you can't generate a link to Bits on a google server.

contravariant 5y ago
Call me a deontologist but if it's good then all of them should do it and if it's bad then none of them should.
throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
Do you feel the same way about free speech zones? Don't like what someone says, just force them to move out of the way so they end up protesting to an empty audience. Naturally if it's a big enough protest you may have to use violence (tear gas, riot police ect...) to do this but hey, they still get their right to free speech, so i guess it's all good and democratic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Steltek 5y ago

What would you do to combat the deliberate misinformation campaign that is weakening the US and many other countries? While propaganda and polarization are not new, the speed, reach, and aggregation are only possible with modern communication. An early tidbit that may have been lost with deplatforming was that Euro leaders also disagreed, citing that only the state could be trusted with that power. However, the US Constitution mostly prohibits that route and it's left to private companies to make up their own minds about what content they want to host.

contravariant 5y ago
It's a hard problem for democracy, the best countermeasures I know of are transparency and education, but those are mitigations at best, you can't really do much if a majority of people believe an untruth. You could also elect me as your benevolent dictator, I'll be happy to bring the misinformation to an end, but the lie I'd tackle first would be that this has anything to do with democracy.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > you can't really do much if a majority of people believe an untruth Treat the propaganda campaign like the war it is - and arrest those who are serving as foreign actors for treason. The earlier people are finally willing to admit Russia and China are waging a war against the whole Western world, the better. The big multipliers - #45, Alex Jones, Fox News, Newsmax, OANN - are publicly known, as are most of the people spreading the stuff on FB, and can be taken down. No need to resolve to a surveillance state, just public information is enough.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    But if you're going down that route then why should other western governments not treat the US as a threat too? There's extensive spying going on by the US against them and there's plenty of American propaganda too. Should Europe ban Hollywood movies? Arrest American businessmen for spying? Where does it end?
  - 5y ago

kirykl 5y ago

If Google didn’t hide the URL people might know what voting location info is official and what’s not

crazygringo 5y ago

> There's something fundamentally flawed There isn't really. You're adopting, I assume, J.S. Mill's view, that the cure for bad speech is more speech, which he famously published in 1859. However, since then it's been widely accepted that when speech reaches a certain level of harm then the greater good is to prevent/punish it. You can't incite violence under the guise of free speech. You can't advertise that something is safe when it's not. This is because more speech can't undo violence and death after it occurs. And when it comes to misinformation with regards to provable and intentional lies about voting procedures, election results, etc. that falsely harm the country's institutions and legitimacy, it's entirely consistent for that to fall under the widely-accepted prohibition of speech that rises to a certain threshold of harm. It directly leads to mobs, riots, and revolution based on lies, not based on actual injustices. This doesn't mean any harmful speech is prohibited -- that's ridiculous. You're generally allowed to insult people, tell lies, etc. But there's a threshold of harm that gets established.

overgard 5y ago
Giving anyone the ability to arbitrate what is "good" speech vs "bad" speech is way too much power. In any era of history there have always been "truths" that were massively popular and eventually overturned. I don't think we are the first era to be an exception. So when you're talking about punishing "bad" speech you are talking about creating super powerful entities just because they agree with you. That intent scares me far more than whatever nonsense you get from q anon or antivaxxers.
- cmckn 5y ago
  > Giving anyone the ability to arbitrate what is "good" speech vs "bad" speech is way too much power. But that isn't at all what is happening here. Google has decided that they don't want to enable people to distribute certain data using their platform. They're not being crowned the omnipotent oracle of good and bad. > you are talking about creating super powerful entities just because they agree with you. This position is bizarre to me -- what do you think an elected government is? I vote to create "super powerful entities that agree with me" every 4 years. Those entities possess the power to destroy all life on earth. Google is not anywhere near as powerful as those entities, and while it is not (directly) democratically accountable, it does derive its power from its users. No information will be permanently erased just because Google does not spend money and time making it available on Drive.

nickysielicki 5y ago

The bigger problem that I have with the idea that misinformation kills democracy is that it seems to suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon or that the average person has been well informed throughout the history of western democracy. Democracy thrived before the printing press. Democracy survived the invention of the printing press, which was mostly in the hands of magnates who could afford it. Democracy survived the invention of television and radio, which was (and still is) in the hands of a select few magnates. We build up terms like "journalistic integrity" and look at the past with rose colored glasses as if these mediums delivered pure objective truth. If anything, what we're seeing with the internet is a more true democracy with a wider range of opinions, less controlled by small groups of plutocrats. If you don't like to see the death of that plutocracy, or you're happy to see a new group of benevolent plutocrats come in to retake control the narrative, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you don't really like democracy.

tshaddox 5y ago
When and where did democracy thrive before the printing press?
- contravariant 5y ago
  Ancient Greece perhaps? Though not in medieval Europe, at least not that I'm aware off.
  - riffraff 5y ago
    Europe had them in the middle ages too: Italy's seafaring republics (Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Pisa et al) where (nominal) democracies, practically owned the Mediterranean sea and lasted a thousand years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_republics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_republics
    - danenania 5y ago
      The Norse also had many democratic customs.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

weare138 5y ago

>You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with any truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they're right. Google is not the government. It's a private company owned by private citizens who also have the same constitutional rights. You're not being 'censored'. It's not a violation of your free speech. You're free to petition the government and you're free to just host your files someplace other than Google Drive. Access to Google Drive is not a 'right'. Quit trying to conflate the two. It's a disingenuous argument meant to confuse the issue and push a personal narrative.

mjthompson 5y ago
I'm not even close to convinced by your response. Relying on the public-private divide as the sole basis for your retort is weak. You also assert that the person is pushing a personal narrative, but I suggest you're doing the same. There's an argument that private corporations that are involved in dissemination of information (search engines and social media) should respect principles of freedom of speech as a democratic principle, regardless of constitutional mandate. Suppose the government outsources welfare eligibility decision-making to a private company. Does this mean traditional notions of fairness we would expect from such an decision-maker do not apply, because they are a private company?
- pronlover723 5y ago
  So then, I should be able to paint your house and car with whatever messages "I" want and you should not be allowed to erase them. Is that the argument you're making?
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    If "my" house is actually a meeting place for half the country, or even just half the city, and I've decided almost anyone can paint on the walls, I should not be able to say that one specific person cannot paint on the walls because, for instance, I don't like what party they vote for. Any restriction on wallpainting in that space must be independent of the content of the message. If I wanted to limit that message, I should have to go through the proper democratic circles, ie. pass a city ordnance. This is the same logic that prevents me from saying that in this meeting hall, gay people are not allowed entry.

shrimpx 5y ago

This seems like a “throw the baby out with the bath water” situation in both directions: Censorship, like you note, can be used for evil to suppress anything you disagree with and drive your narrative. But unbridled amplified speech opens the possibility for destructive mass influence of minds, to be evil and destroy the good things those minds agree on. So to me this is at least nuanced. Insisting on completely unchecked speech, however unscientific and destructive, is not a reasonable position.

bamboozled 5y ago

This is absolutely true. If I can't explore new ideas, evaluate information and make up my own mind, no matter how much bullshit exists, I'm not living in a democratic free society anymore. I'm living in a technological dystopia, and authoritarian state. I'm afraid, skepticism is part of a healthy democracy...no matter how much the government want me to get a jab. When did Google feel the need to be the world police?

intended 5y ago
Your brain is mapped. Dear god people - we know how to create malformed content. To assume you are immune is like assuming you are immortal or that your computer is unhackable. Modern Misinformation is malformed code, being done at scale. It’s cluster bombing civilians who can never muster the resources to defend against it. It’s not about you. It’s about the attacker.
- l33t2328 5y ago
  You keep mentioning in this thread “malformed code” as if nonsense Facebook posts are executables my brain is loading. What do you mean by “your brain is mapped?”
  - intended 5y ago
    I’m using malformed content because I’m on a coder forum. It’s the easiest analogy to apply. We know how brains operate and process information. We know that it’s not going to treat information in an unbiased manner. It processes identity information, threats, statistics and out group information differently - among a whole world of idiosyncrasies. Attackers sadly also know enough how to create content that subverts that processing in precise manners. It’s content designed simply to propagate and defeat logical or rational scrutiny. Its filled with the kinds of logical fallacies that maybe YOU would defeat, but are so broadly spread that it will always find victims. Those victims are then set up for the next round of content and then the next round. Eventually this content dominates the discourse. It’s like suddenly everyone knows that the yeti was an astronaut. Google misses more misinformation than it finds - and this is even if we discuss only America or the English speaking world. Smaller nations aren’t even coveted, and rare languages or regions don’t even have automated analysis

estaseuropano 5y ago

But there's a difference between 'disagree' and 'state objectively false things'. The US media especially is poisoned with stuff like that - see all the lies around covid and mask wearing.

grumple 5y ago

There's something fundamentally flawed about trusting people to determine truths themselves as well. Doubly so when those spreading misinformation are well funded propagandists that have been attacking education for years. China, Russia, Germany, Italy, Cuba... these and other nations became communist/authoritarian with the ardent support of the people of those nations (enough people anyway). Tens of millions died as a result. People die today as a result. People are oppressed as a result.