3 ms·

The page you mentioned is perfectly readable here in the US unlike much of the Propaganda on YouTube. Propaganda is effective else it wouldn't be of any use. P

The page you mentioned is perfectly readable here in the US unlike much of the Propaganda on YouTube. Propaganda is effective else it wouldn't be of any use. People judge veracity in large part via ubiquity and truthiness not intelligent analysis therefore it is useful to block it as any other munitions heading your way. People can still get the other side of the argument by going directly to the source without organically encountering lies on YouTube and being influenced. Not blocking the Kremlin but blocking YouTube channels seems like a very balanced correct response. P.S. nobody cares about Hunter Biden

didericis 5y ago
You're playing a very dangerous game, even if wartime changes the calculus. Though what you're saying about judgement is true, all of the worst cases of authoritarian repression were similarly justified. "We can't allow capitalist propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll sabotage us", "we can't allow jewish propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll destroy the race", "we can't allow communist propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll destroy our freedom", etc. Viewing information as munition rather than a raw resource meant to be democratically parsed is something all repressive systems share in common. What distinguishes our society is our ability to self correct and our decentralized method of truth discovery. That can and does get used against us, as will our hypocrisy if we alter our approach. The solution to abuse of that decentralization is not to bureaucratize truth and create a mechanism for centralized information control, however well intended or carefully crafted to attempt balance. The system level solution is to make sure that those speaking the truth within our systems are protected and discovered. The societal level solution is to make sure that those people have enough credibility and leadership capital to be listened to and take that responsibility seriously. Our major news organizations have been burning their credibility and leadership capital for at least a decade. The willingness of people to defer to random online youtube personalities over more established sources is a failure of those established sources. That loss of credibility cannot be solved by blocking worse sources. Those more established sources need to be more honest, engage in more long form discussion and less narrative crafting, and most importantly, speak with more humility and without patronizing the masses that are falling for the propaganda. If the only people genuinely acknowledging certain grievances and speaking to an audience like equals are bad actors or influenced by bad actors, those falling for propaganda have no reason to switch sources. That's not to say there aren't other more immediately actionable solutions to online chaos and disinformation. From the technical side, there should be less algorithmic emotional hijacking/feed manipulation. If this industry hadn't pursued click maximization so aggressively and took viewpoint diversity more seriously as an essential design goal these platforms would be much more difficult to take advantage of by propagandists. I understand why things evolved as they did and understand a lot of people have been and are trying very hard to promote societal health, but there's a certain culture of arrogance and desire to tweak human behavior that's won out over a culture of viewpoint diversity that I think would have much more effectively inoculated people against the kind of destructive propaganda state actors we're seeing now.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  There is no slippery slope whatsoever. The government isn't blocking content nor requiring it to be blocked. Individual companies are choosing to block some of the most obvious propaganda. The obvious pressure relief value for unpopular truths is trivially obtained by sharing such "truths" on their own sites and peer to peer which is as it stands incredibly trivial if not as effective as using existing social media networks to blast information directly at the stupidest and most vulnerable to manipulation but its certainly there. > The willingness of people to defer to random online youtube personalities over more established sources is a failure of those established sources. Bubkis. I know people who prefer conspiracy theory websites to public health info. It's not a failure of any variety of those public health authorities that stupid people prefer exciting and often comforting bullshit to dismal truth. The people who prefer such are largely the same demographics which have always talked about stupid crazy crap like chemtrails and a young earth. There is nothing new about this contingent save its weaponization.

didericis 5y ago

You're playing a very dangerous game, even if wartime changes the calculus. Though what you're saying about judgement is true, all of the worst cases of authoritarian repression were similarly justified. "We can't allow capitalist propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll sabotage us", "we can't allow jewish propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll destroy the race", "we can't allow communist propaganda, we're facing an existential threat/they'll destroy our freedom", etc. Viewing information as munition rather than a raw resource meant to be democratically parsed is something all repressive systems share in common. What distinguishes our society is our ability to self correct and our decentralized method of truth discovery. That can and does get used against us, as will our hypocrisy if we alter our approach. The solution to abuse of that decentralization is not to bureaucratize truth and create a mechanism for centralized information control, however well intended or carefully crafted to attempt balance. The system level solution is to make sure that those speaking the truth within our systems are protected and discovered. The societal level solution is to make sure that those people have enough credibility and leadership capital to be listened to and take that responsibility seriously. Our major news organizations have been burning their credibility and leadership capital for at least a decade. The willingness of people to defer to random online youtube personalities over more established sources is a failure of those established sources. That loss of credibility cannot be solved by blocking worse sources. Those more established sources need to be more honest, engage in more long form discussion and less narrative crafting, and most importantly, speak with more humility and without patronizing the masses that are falling for the propaganda. If the only people genuinely acknowledging certain grievances and speaking to an audience like equals are bad actors or influenced by bad actors, those falling for propaganda have no reason to switch sources. That's not to say there aren't other more immediately actionable solutions to online chaos and disinformation. From the technical side, there should be less algorithmic emotional hijacking/feed manipulation. If this industry hadn't pursued click maximization so aggressively and took viewpoint diversity more seriously as an essential design goal these platforms would be much more difficult to take advantage of by propagandists. I understand why things evolved as they did and understand a lot of people have been and are trying very hard to promote societal health, but there's a certain culture of arrogance and desire to tweak human behavior that's won out over a culture of viewpoint diversity that I think would have much more effectively inoculated people against the kind of destructive propaganda state actors we're seeing now.

michaelmrose 5y ago
There is no slippery slope whatsoever. The government isn't blocking content nor requiring it to be blocked. Individual companies are choosing to block some of the most obvious propaganda. The obvious pressure relief value for unpopular truths is trivially obtained by sharing such "truths" on their own sites and peer to peer which is as it stands incredibly trivial if not as effective as using existing social media networks to blast information directly at the stupidest and most vulnerable to manipulation but its certainly there. > The willingness of people to defer to random online youtube personalities over more established sources is a failure of those established sources. Bubkis. I know people who prefer conspiracy theory websites to public health info. It's not a failure of any variety of those public health authorities that stupid people prefer exciting and often comforting bullshit to dismal truth. The people who prefer such are largely the same demographics which have always talked about stupid crazy crap like chemtrails and a young earth. There is nothing new about this contingent save its weaponization.