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It is important to recognize that things we disagree with are not exclusively propaganda. This has been a knee-jerk reaction lately. We find something offensiv

It is important to recognize that things we disagree with are not exclusively propaganda. This has been a knee-jerk reaction lately. We find something offensive, repulsive, and anger-inducimg and instantly we apply subjective label and everything that goes along with it. Instead we should strive to be objective and not demand that others see things through soley our perspective or yet suffer the consequences of labels, or worse. The gripes you had are mostly covered by the legality question: Is a platform really for free speech if it only permits one side of the discourse to occur? If language is not illegal, who are we to censor it? The last point is this - nothing about language is violence. Violence is violence. Words are just words and they have fixed meaning. The distinction is critical and not bound by subjective reasoning in a civilization that hopes to last.

Comevius 4y ago
It's not really a question of free speech, it's a question of consequences. We don't want people to die just so you can have every side of the discourse represented equally. Not all sides are equally factual, and representation of the facts matter. Vaccine denial and climate change denial are a good example, if you give them equal representation, if you keep repeating lies people start believing them, which causes a lot of harm. It's called a false balance. Facts matter. The same goes for the marginalization of minorities, for example transgender people. Giving intolerance a platform makes it socially acceptable. Indeed, violence against transgender people is frequent. Just look what Russia achieved in the United States alone using social media. Media is power, social media is power on steroids. You have to wield that power responsibly.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Lots of words to say you're smarter than everyone else and only your desired outcomes should be permitted for humanity.
  - Comevius 4y ago
    More than 1 million American people died from COVID-19, half of them didn't have to, they did because assholes made a lot of money of their corpses, on ad-enabled or political platforms, promoting a hysteria against vaccination. My desired outcome is people not dying in agony and fear if we can help it, and we can. I also prefer people like Alex Jones not getting rich from manufacturing controversies. He accused the parents of the Sandy Hook victims of being crisis actors, just because his analytics showed that calling a school shooting hoax makes more people watch him. Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences.
    - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
      Technically none of them should have died, but the incompetence of the Chinese Communist Party and the NIH under Dr. Fauci ensured another outcome. Nobody's businesses needed to shut down. Kids didn't need to be banned from schools. Churches should not have been locked up. Governors completely screwed us with what we now know were fully arbitrary rules made solely for compliance. Nobody needed to lose their job over a "vaccine" mandate that functioned more like Tylenol than a vaccine. As such, nobody needed to lose their house or live in their car, or relocate their entire families in search of new work. Finally, the only immunity the vaccine produced was given to the pharma companies, who up until March 2020, were the devil incarnate. "I also prefer people like Alex Jones not getting rich from manufacturing controversies." But you'd be fine with CNN enriching themselves doing the same thing, because that's what they do, just to a different audience and different tactics, yet the same outcome (revenue). Who made you arbiter of truth? "Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences." This is beaten to death and it doesn't really mean anything. It is a way for you to say, my way or the highway. It is not constructive. The very purpose of free speech, free association, and free press is to say what you think without consequence. Our respective feelings matter very little and factor even less into the equation.
    - carimura 4y ago
      Although I largely disagree with your statement that a million people died because of "assholes", I think your broader meta-point is that we're moving into a brave new world of realtime instant information and that is having an unknown impact on mankind. I think of the classic case of children watching YouTube recommendations for less than an hour and getting to videos showing them how to commit suicide. It's sickening and disgusting. I do recommend people check out Mighty Ira about Ira Glasser's time as exec director at the ACLU defending the right for Nazi's to march through a predominantly Jewish town (some of which survived the holocaust). It's pretty moving and as a society we need to always remember the importance of the first amendment and those who have fought to protect it as we continue to erode it away further and further trying to protect people from themselves.
cyanydeez 4y ago
It's not about disagreeable messages, it's about the total inauthenticity of those messages. Having ten bots reproduce your messages makes it apparent that your message can't stand on its own and needs to use a dark pattern against human cognitive bias. In the case of bots, that's repetition.

Comevius 4y ago

It's not really a question of free speech, it's a question of consequences. We don't want people to die just so you can have every side of the discourse represented equally. Not all sides are equally factual, and representation of the facts matter. Vaccine denial and climate change denial are a good example, if you give them equal representation, if you keep repeating lies people start believing them, which causes a lot of harm. It's called a false balance. Facts matter. The same goes for the marginalization of minorities, for example transgender people. Giving intolerance a platform makes it socially acceptable. Indeed, violence against transgender people is frequent. Just look what Russia achieved in the United States alone using social media. Media is power, social media is power on steroids. You have to wield that power responsibly.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Lots of words to say you're smarter than everyone else and only your desired outcomes should be permitted for humanity.
- Comevius 4y ago
  More than 1 million American people died from COVID-19, half of them didn't have to, they did because assholes made a lot of money of their corpses, on ad-enabled or political platforms, promoting a hysteria against vaccination. My desired outcome is people not dying in agony and fear if we can help it, and we can. I also prefer people like Alex Jones not getting rich from manufacturing controversies. He accused the parents of the Sandy Hook victims of being crisis actors, just because his analytics showed that calling a school shooting hoax makes more people watch him. Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    Technically none of them should have died, but the incompetence of the Chinese Communist Party and the NIH under Dr. Fauci ensured another outcome. Nobody's businesses needed to shut down. Kids didn't need to be banned from schools. Churches should not have been locked up. Governors completely screwed us with what we now know were fully arbitrary rules made solely for compliance. Nobody needed to lose their job over a "vaccine" mandate that functioned more like Tylenol than a vaccine. As such, nobody needed to lose their house or live in their car, or relocate their entire families in search of new work. Finally, the only immunity the vaccine produced was given to the pharma companies, who up until March 2020, were the devil incarnate. "I also prefer people like Alex Jones not getting rich from manufacturing controversies." But you'd be fine with CNN enriching themselves doing the same thing, because that's what they do, just to a different audience and different tactics, yet the same outcome (revenue). Who made you arbiter of truth? "Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences." This is beaten to death and it doesn't really mean anything. It is a way for you to say, my way or the highway. It is not constructive. The very purpose of free speech, free association, and free press is to say what you think without consequence. Our respective feelings matter very little and factor even less into the equation.
  - carimura 4y ago
    Although I largely disagree with your statement that a million people died because of "assholes", I think your broader meta-point is that we're moving into a brave new world of realtime instant information and that is having an unknown impact on mankind. I think of the classic case of children watching YouTube recommendations for less than an hour and getting to videos showing them how to commit suicide. It's sickening and disgusting. I do recommend people check out Mighty Ira about Ira Glasser's time as exec director at the ACLU defending the right for Nazi's to march through a predominantly Jewish town (some of which survived the holocaust). It's pretty moving and as a society we need to always remember the importance of the first amendment and those who have fought to protect it as we continue to erode it away further and further trying to protect people from themselves.

cyanydeez 4y ago

It's not about disagreeable messages, it's about the total inauthenticity of those messages. Having ten bots reproduce your messages makes it apparent that your message can't stand on its own and needs to use a dark pattern against human cognitive bias. In the case of bots, that's repetition.