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Before internet, the village idiot was just that and laughed off. With internet, they got a group and justified themselves and now people are falling for that.

Before internet, the village idiot was just that and laughed off. With internet, they got a group and justified themselves and now people are falling for that. If these idiots were taking just themselves off the cliff, then sure. But they are taking villagers who cant tell the difference between legit or not off the cliff too. Even worse, those idiots are turning these misguided villagers onto the rest who know better to not listen to these idiots. This is a failing of the education system here. But no one is talking about how to really distinguish propaganda from real. Sure they misguided people have freedom of speech, but they are growing like a virus and a virus needs to contained. Social literally has the term "viral" for crying out loud. The other more important thing to contain would be the medium on which this infection is spreading. Which mean reducing the impact of the feed algorithm. Access to the feed should be limited. Also, facebook and youtube dont want to give up the feed. That is what keeps the humans hooked. If one part of the body is cancerous, you cut it off. You dont stand around arguing if that part of the body has right to free speech.

trustscientism 5y ago
I agree the news feed algorithm is pouring gasoline on the fire, but how do you expect human beings to react to being persecuted and censored as "viruses" and "cancers"; untermensch? What is the ultimate end game with that line of thinking? "Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
- quantified 5y ago
  To continue the analogy, the way that information flows now allows the exposure to infect everyone else. Is it the information a boil of injustice or an Ebola cough of Nazism? I’m not arguing either way. I lean more toward keeping information uncensored, but let’s recognize that the ready ingestion of poison isn’t in the majority’s interest. And society always is willing to say “we’ll censor our taboos”, we didn’t really mean uncensored anyway.
telchior 5y ago
Is it really the village idiot? Or is it a national-level genius, masquerading as a local villager? Most of this stuff is really just memes being shared around. And memes, as much as they sometimes look like utterly uneducated trash (complete with errors of spelling / grammar / logic) are usually created by one person then shared by many. I suspect that one person is something of a mastermind; the many, of course, may be morons. The discussion always seems to go toward censoring the many. I don't support that, even if I vehemently disagree with them. If my aunt, who I don't want to call a moron but does share some utterly insane memes, continues posting things, that's fine. I vehemently disagree with her and hate her viewpoint. She should get to share it anyway. But I feel like social networks could do a lot more in locating and halting the mastermind that's 50 shares back in the chain, whispering in in their ears. It's like the story from a couple weeks back about a 3-person media shop being responsible for a huge amount of misinformation on Facebook. That was exposed by journalists. Facebook, I feel, would let them go on forever and invests basically nothing in finding out where some of the more virulent content comes from.

trustscientism 5y ago

I agree the news feed algorithm is pouring gasoline on the fire, but how do you expect human beings to react to being persecuted and censored as "viruses" and "cancers"; untermensch? What is the ultimate end game with that line of thinking? "Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

quantified 5y ago
To continue the analogy, the way that information flows now allows the exposure to infect everyone else. Is it the information a boil of injustice or an Ebola cough of Nazism? I’m not arguing either way. I lean more toward keeping information uncensored, but let’s recognize that the ready ingestion of poison isn’t in the majority’s interest. And society always is willing to say “we’ll censor our taboos”, we didn’t really mean uncensored anyway.

telchior 5y ago

Is it really the village idiot? Or is it a national-level genius, masquerading as a local villager? Most of this stuff is really just memes being shared around. And memes, as much as they sometimes look like utterly uneducated trash (complete with errors of spelling / grammar / logic) are usually created by one person then shared by many. I suspect that one person is something of a mastermind; the many, of course, may be morons. The discussion always seems to go toward censoring the many. I don't support that, even if I vehemently disagree with them. If my aunt, who I don't want to call a moron but does share some utterly insane memes, continues posting things, that's fine. I vehemently disagree with her and hate her viewpoint. She should get to share it anyway. But I feel like social networks could do a lot more in locating and halting the mastermind that's 50 shares back in the chain, whispering in in their ears. It's like the story from a couple weeks back about a 3-person media shop being responsible for a huge amount of misinformation on Facebook. That was exposed by journalists. Facebook, I feel, would let them go on forever and invests basically nothing in finding out where some of the more virulent content comes from.