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I will jump on this bandwagon and say color me not surprised. The issue is emblematic of a bigger issue though. General trust in our society is generally down.

I will jump on this bandwagon and say color me not surprised. The issue is emblematic of a bigger issue though. General trust in our society is generally down. It stretches beyond the sectors normally understood as BS ( advertising, HR come to mind ), but moved to corrupt just about everything else out there. We are a point, where the only organization that is somewhat trusted is military. That is not a good state of affairs.

ep103 5y ago
Because we need regulation of new technologies and to address issues that are becoming endemic and long-standing enough that the general populace genuinely understands them. From neonics and bees to misinformation and facebook. But our political class has adopted a policy that demands no action be taken, as that is the official policy position on all free-market related issues for one of the two major political parties. So popular belief that our society can fix the issues it is presented with drops. Which means societal trust drops. And those who are causing said problems, become emboldened.
- rajin444 5y ago
  Giving more power to those abusing it is not going to create trust. Trust has been broken for all of human history. It’s just much easier for us to notice it now. I don’t know the solution, but more of what we’ve been doing isn’t it.
- rektide 5y ago
  > Because we need regulation of new technologies and to address issues that are becoming endemic and long-standing enough that the general populace genuinely understands them. in my view, regulation is not the answer. what's happened, from my perspective, is that only a small handful of platforms have gel'led into place, have come to take over all of our social media world. this is largely via a system of rampant acquisitions/anti-competitive behavior, & enormously high switching costs of leaving any given network. we need more people engaged & trying to find answers. we need more networks. we need new ways of networking, new ways of moderating, at scale. the current contenders are mostly well over a decade old & have rotted into place, and trying to regulate these vast networks is not going to bring us to a better place. we have to really journey, to better, less dull places, via innovation & competition. personally i feel like social networks are elemental to freedom of speech & democratic practices in the world today. if we as a public value speech, believe it important for public good, i would like to see funds set up to fund development & running of public good works. we should fund the fediverse, we should fund people trying to build helpful moderation tools; we should practice actively the values that are important to us.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  >policy that demands no action be taken If that's to be changed, who takes the action? The government? Does the government decide what's bad, and what's not? It's an unanswerable question that none agrees on. Society hasn't worsened meaningfully, this kind of stuff has always existed, but the internet exposes this to everyone, pulling everyone out of their pre-internet bubbles.
jackfoxy 5y ago
And the military is the pawn of a corrupt State Department, national security elite, and military industrial complex, which renders moot the mostly honorable conduct of people in the military.
notacoward 5y ago
> the only organization that is somewhat trusted is military Only in certain quarters. The US military has been subject to deliberate infiltration by both evangelicals (especially Air Force), white supremacists, and proto-insurrectionists for decades. More recently, there has been a seemingly endless parade of officers committing public acts of insubordination, or even incitement to mutiny/sedition. At this point, trust in the military is mostly limited to people who share those agendas.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  That is quite the claim, do you have proof?
  - notacoward 5y ago
    Which claim do you find surprising? The infiltration has been documented so many times I'd consider it obvious. Here is just one example of the evangelical flavor for you to follow up on. https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/3/29/christian-takeover-us-military https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/3/29/christian-take... Likewise for white supremacists. https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/02/11/splc-testifies-congress-alarming-incidents-white-supremacy-military https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/02/11/splc-testifies-con... Here is just the latest example of an active duty military officer committing very public acts of insubordination. https://www.stripes.com/branches/marine_corps/2021-08-27/marine-officer-called-out-senior-leaders-Afghanistan-failures-viral-video-relieved-of-command-2690718.html https://www.stripes.com/branches/marine_corps/2021-08-27/mar... I'll let you look up the examples of military personnel participating in January 6 yourself. I'm a little wary TBH of being "sea-lioned" about things that are super well known and documented. It's an argument-by-exhaustion tactic I learned to recognize at least twenty years ago.
    - MichaelZuo 5y ago
      Thanks for the links. For your first link, I’m not sure how that’s considered infiltration if the ‘infiltrators’ are proudly announcing their beliefs and intentions, and from what I understand as a group have doing so since the 19th century. If there are actually folks that, for example, pretended to be atheist/agnostic, climbed up the ranks, and suddenly became an evangelical then your worries are more understandable, though I’m not sure if that’s happened. The info in the second link does seem worrying if true. For the last link, considering there are thousands if not tens of thousands (?) of Lt. Cols, and equivalent ranks, in the US military, it’s somewhat surprising but not that unusual, or worrying, that there’s public insubordination by a few.

ep103 5y ago

Because we need regulation of new technologies and to address issues that are becoming endemic and long-standing enough that the general populace genuinely understands them. From neonics and bees to misinformation and facebook. But our political class has adopted a policy that demands no action be taken, as that is the official policy position on all free-market related issues for one of the two major political parties. So popular belief that our society can fix the issues it is presented with drops. Which means societal trust drops. And those who are causing said problems, become emboldened.

rajin444 5y ago
Giving more power to those abusing it is not going to create trust. Trust has been broken for all of human history. It’s just much easier for us to notice it now. I don’t know the solution, but more of what we’ve been doing isn’t it.
rektide 5y ago
> Because we need regulation of new technologies and to address issues that are becoming endemic and long-standing enough that the general populace genuinely understands them. in my view, regulation is not the answer. what's happened, from my perspective, is that only a small handful of platforms have gel'led into place, have come to take over all of our social media world. this is largely via a system of rampant acquisitions/anti-competitive behavior, & enormously high switching costs of leaving any given network. we need more people engaged & trying to find answers. we need more networks. we need new ways of networking, new ways of moderating, at scale. the current contenders are mostly well over a decade old & have rotted into place, and trying to regulate these vast networks is not going to bring us to a better place. we have to really journey, to better, less dull places, via innovation & competition. personally i feel like social networks are elemental to freedom of speech & democratic practices in the world today. if we as a public value speech, believe it important for public good, i would like to see funds set up to fund development & running of public good works. we should fund the fediverse, we should fund people trying to build helpful moderation tools; we should practice actively the values that are important to us.
maccolgan 5y ago
>policy that demands no action be taken If that's to be changed, who takes the action? The government? Does the government decide what's bad, and what's not? It's an unanswerable question that none agrees on. Society hasn't worsened meaningfully, this kind of stuff has always existed, but the internet exposes this to everyone, pulling everyone out of their pre-internet bubbles.

jackfoxy 5y ago

And the military is the pawn of a corrupt State Department, national security elite, and military industrial complex, which renders moot the mostly honorable conduct of people in the military.

notacoward 5y ago

> the only organization that is somewhat trusted is military Only in certain quarters. The US military has been subject to deliberate infiltration by both evangelicals (especially Air Force), white supremacists, and proto-insurrectionists for decades. More recently, there has been a seemingly endless parade of officers committing public acts of insubordination, or even incitement to mutiny/sedition. At this point, trust in the military is mostly limited to people who share those agendas.

MichaelZuo 5y ago
That is quite the claim, do you have proof?
- notacoward 5y ago
  Which claim do you find surprising? The infiltration has been documented so many times I'd consider it obvious. Here is just one example of the evangelical flavor for you to follow up on. https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/3/29/christian-takeover-us-military https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/3/29/christian-take... Likewise for white supremacists. https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/02/11/splc-testifies-congress-alarming-incidents-white-supremacy-military https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/02/11/splc-testifies-con... Here is just the latest example of an active duty military officer committing very public acts of insubordination. https://www.stripes.com/branches/marine_corps/2021-08-27/marine-officer-called-out-senior-leaders-Afghanistan-failures-viral-video-relieved-of-command-2690718.html https://www.stripes.com/branches/marine_corps/2021-08-27/mar... I'll let you look up the examples of military personnel participating in January 6 yourself. I'm a little wary TBH of being "sea-lioned" about things that are super well known and documented. It's an argument-by-exhaustion tactic I learned to recognize at least twenty years ago.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Thanks for the links. For your first link, I’m not sure how that’s considered infiltration if the ‘infiltrators’ are proudly announcing their beliefs and intentions, and from what I understand as a group have doing so since the 19th century. If there are actually folks that, for example, pretended to be atheist/agnostic, climbed up the ranks, and suddenly became an evangelical then your worries are more understandable, though I’m not sure if that’s happened. The info in the second link does seem worrying if true. For the last link, considering there are thousands if not tens of thousands (?) of Lt. Cols, and equivalent ranks, in the US military, it’s somewhat surprising but not that unusual, or worrying, that there’s public insubordination by a few.