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I really want to believe in free speech absolutism, but have been really concerned how successful the "flooding the zone with shit" strategy in propaganda has b

I really want to believe in free speech absolutism, but have been really concerned how successful the "flooding the zone with shit" strategy in propaganda has been. This seems to have destabilized many western countries to varying degrees. The best solution I've heard for this is that we need better algorithms for what gets amplified by platforms and what doesn't. Similar to how thirty years ago I could have shouted all day about the moon landing being fake and it would have never made it into the evening news unless there was something more to it. What's your thoughts on how we can defend against the shit flooding? I find yhis entire problem area really hard.

Mezzie 5y ago
The flipside is that the old ways enabled institutions to lie to the people more easily. Remember Iraq? I just bring this up to keep us from getting rose-tinted nostalgia glasses about how much better things were before. Another caveat to what I'm about to say is that I think we're in for a century of legal and political upheaval, so long term solutions will need to fit into whatever we build next. That said, I think that there some things we could do. I'd like to see/hear more about looking into the possibility of regulating sentiment, for example. Maybe you can write any POSITION you want on culture war issue X, but you can't write it in such a way it's only meant to inflame anger/cause despair/etc. Or perhaps you can, but you have to have some kind of warning label, or that content is allowed but turned off/blurred by default (like NSFW pics on Reddit), so you have to actively go out of your way to consume things that are 'bad' for you. Also give people more tools and nudges. Like let people click through a Twitter profile and see that 80% of a person's Tweets are angry or about political topics. Somebody brought up tax policy as an example of something that doesn't get this treatment, and that's because tax policy is BORING and Slate/Newsmax aren't writing hit pieces about tax policy. People care about culture topics because the media whips them into a frenzy. We could also force the companies to do due diligence in their R+D/feature implementations; maybe Twitter should be forced to prove that each new algorithm change makes people HAPPIER (or at least doesn't have terrible mental health effects). Also I advocate for digital history and basic internet infrastructure information to be taught at the K-12 level; so much of the problem is that people don't understand how any of this works at a VERY BASIC level.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful response!

Mezzie 5y ago

The flipside is that the old ways enabled institutions to lie to the people more easily. Remember Iraq? I just bring this up to keep us from getting rose-tinted nostalgia glasses about how much better things were before. Another caveat to what I'm about to say is that I think we're in for a century of legal and political upheaval, so long term solutions will need to fit into whatever we build next. That said, I think that there some things we could do. I'd like to see/hear more about looking into the possibility of regulating sentiment, for example. Maybe you can write any POSITION you want on culture war issue X, but you can't write it in such a way it's only meant to inflame anger/cause despair/etc. Or perhaps you can, but you have to have some kind of warning label, or that content is allowed but turned off/blurred by default (like NSFW pics on Reddit), so you have to actively go out of your way to consume things that are 'bad' for you. Also give people more tools and nudges. Like let people click through a Twitter profile and see that 80% of a person's Tweets are angry or about political topics. Somebody brought up tax policy as an example of something that doesn't get this treatment, and that's because tax policy is BORING and Slate/Newsmax aren't writing hit pieces about tax policy. People care about culture topics because the media whips them into a frenzy. We could also force the companies to do due diligence in their R+D/feature implementations; maybe Twitter should be forced to prove that each new algorithm change makes people HAPPIER (or at least doesn't have terrible mental health effects). Also I advocate for digital history and basic internet infrastructure information to be taught at the K-12 level; so much of the problem is that people don't understand how any of this works at a VERY BASIC level.

ajmurmann 5y ago
Thank you for your thoughtful response!