4 ms·

One option is to preserve freedom of expression even when you disagree with what is being said.

heyitsguay 5y ago
Cool. Express yourself freely, I'll pay a couple hundred folks under the table to organically insert into conversations some anecdotes about how errantmind loves kicking puppies/harasses his co-workers/caused {scandal of the week}, and we'll let the free market of ideas decide between the opposing viewpoints.
- errantmind 5y ago
  No worries, it will have absolutely zero impact on my life. I'm not in any way dependent on public opinion for my income or social life. Even if I was dependent on public opinion, there is a wide divide between libel/slander and people voicing their opinion on any given subject. Please don't try to protect people from themselves by limiting their speech. It is patronizing and authoritarian.
ithkuil 5y ago
It also depends what do you do to "counteract disinformation". Do you censor? Or do you improve your side of the story? Would that be bad?
- errantmind 5y ago
  This invention of the connotations of 'misinformation' is much like the invention of the word Terrorist after 9/11. It was done to scare and shame people into lockstep. Nothing needs to be done. The problem was disproportionately expanded to shift even more power into the hands of authoritarians. Just because someone is wrong doesn't mean they should be silenced or censured.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    No doubt this characterisation is bring misused, or better, there surely is a lot of state-sponsored misinformation about misinformation. That said, not every information out there is genuine opinion that just falls on one or another side of some point on the spectrum. There is a form of "information" that is constructed as a cheap flood of random claims that are cheap to produce and hard to confute. (Aka https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law) Now imagine you recognize this latter as a serious problem in society. How can you approach to it without confusing it with the former?
    - errantmind 5y ago
      Honestly, I don't know, but I'd rather there be no confrontation than taking away people's fundamental rights
      - ithkuil 5y ago
        I think there is vast gulf between jailing people for saying things and rebutting bullshit online. The fact we as a society struggle to even discuss the difference is worrying. The "slippery slope" meme has poisoned our ability to see nuance and pushed otherwise reasonable people into extremist positions.
XyC0 5y ago
I agree with you, preserving freedom of expression is important, and it is easy to enforce irl, but online today it is easy to drown out people's opinions by flooding fb/twitter/comment-sections by bot-farms, the winner today is those who controls the biggest network/bot-farms, that is harmful for freedom of expression, it is easy/fast to claim stuff, but it usually takes many hours to prove that something is false, during this time it is easy to flood with many new claims, people usually has limited time to research claims and ordinary people are usually too lazy to look up stuff, that makes a big imbalance to the discussion, there is also many more ways harmful players gets the upper hand against good players online. Doing nothing at this point is harmful to freedom of expression, but what Sweden is doing about it can only time tell if it is good or bad, but at least they see there is a problem that needs to be solved.
- errantmind 5y ago
  Are these bot farms really all that much of a problem? As in, do we have a very clear grasp of the real magnitude of the problem? > Doing nothing at this point is harmful to freedom of expression This seems like Newspeak to me. Stifling freedom of expression in the name of freedom of expression is contradictory if it is abused as powers of this type always are.
  - XyC0 5y ago
    It is is a problem today, and it is a problem that is growing, censoring is not going to stop it, I feel that today that it is the private sector that do most censoring, censoring by states/countries in the western world seems a "small" problem, that is more transparent what they censor, as opposed to corporate censoring by the big players in the social media, that mostly is driven by money, I feel that there still is too many "boomers" in politics that is too naive/uneducated about how internet works, I think that only when younger generations takes over in politics as they more so will know the harsh truth that censoring on the internet only hurt the good players.

Cool. Express yourself freely, I'll pay a couple hundred folks under the table to organically insert into conversations some anecdotes about how errantmind loves kicking puppies/harasses his co-workers/caused {scandal of the week}, and we'll let the free market of ideas decide between the opposing viewpoints.

errantmind 5y ago
No worries, it will have absolutely zero impact on my life. I'm not in any way dependent on public opinion for my income or social life. Even if I was dependent on public opinion, there is a wide divide between libel/slander and people voicing their opinion on any given subject. Please don't try to protect people from themselves by limiting their speech. It is patronizing and authoritarian.

ithkuil 5y ago

It also depends what do you do to "counteract disinformation". Do you censor? Or do you improve your side of the story? Would that be bad?

errantmind 5y ago
This invention of the connotations of 'misinformation' is much like the invention of the word Terrorist after 9/11. It was done to scare and shame people into lockstep. Nothing needs to be done. The problem was disproportionately expanded to shift even more power into the hands of authoritarians. Just because someone is wrong doesn't mean they should be silenced or censured.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  No doubt this characterisation is bring misused, or better, there surely is a lot of state-sponsored misinformation about misinformation. That said, not every information out there is genuine opinion that just falls on one or another side of some point on the spectrum. There is a form of "information" that is constructed as a cheap flood of random claims that are cheap to produce and hard to confute. (Aka https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law) Now imagine you recognize this latter as a serious problem in society. How can you approach to it without confusing it with the former?
  - errantmind 5y ago
    Honestly, I don't know, but I'd rather there be no confrontation than taking away people's fundamental rights
    - ithkuil 5y ago
      I think there is vast gulf between jailing people for saying things and rebutting bullshit online. The fact we as a society struggle to even discuss the difference is worrying. The "slippery slope" meme has poisoned our ability to see nuance and pushed otherwise reasonable people into extremist positions.

XyC0 5y ago

I agree with you, preserving freedom of expression is important, and it is easy to enforce irl, but online today it is easy to drown out people's opinions by flooding fb/twitter/comment-sections by bot-farms, the winner today is those who controls the biggest network/bot-farms, that is harmful for freedom of expression, it is easy/fast to claim stuff, but it usually takes many hours to prove that something is false, during this time it is easy to flood with many new claims, people usually has limited time to research claims and ordinary people are usually too lazy to look up stuff, that makes a big imbalance to the discussion, there is also many more ways harmful players gets the upper hand against good players online. Doing nothing at this point is harmful to freedom of expression, but what Sweden is doing about it can only time tell if it is good or bad, but at least they see there is a problem that needs to be solved.

errantmind 5y ago
Are these bot farms really all that much of a problem? As in, do we have a very clear grasp of the real magnitude of the problem? > Doing nothing at this point is harmful to freedom of expression This seems like Newspeak to me. Stifling freedom of expression in the name of freedom of expression is contradictory if it is abused as powers of this type always are.
- XyC0 5y ago
  It is is a problem today, and it is a problem that is growing, censoring is not going to stop it, I feel that today that it is the private sector that do most censoring, censoring by states/countries in the western world seems a "small" problem, that is more transparent what they censor, as opposed to corporate censoring by the big players in the social media, that mostly is driven by money, I feel that there still is too many "boomers" in politics that is too naive/uneducated about how internet works, I think that only when younger generations takes over in politics as they more so will know the harsh truth that censoring on the internet only hurt the good players.