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> Filtering your feed doesn’t cause them not to vote against their interests, firebomb your store, or attempt to assassinate leaders. Silencing people so that
by MikePlacid 4y ago
> Filtering your feed doesn’t cause them not to vote against their interests, firebomb your store, or attempt to assassinate leaders.
Silencing people so that they will vote against their own interests - it’s the last thing I ever can wish. Ends badly.
As to firebombing and assasination - wouldn’t you rather have them discuss and plan such things openly, so that police can easily apprehend them?
Or, as I’ve already described here - in 1990 during Gorbachev’s glasnost (kinda sorta more freer speech) our county seat newspaper with a proud name Kommunist published my article about some successful economic experiment we’ve done in our town. In the next issue the same paper published letters of angry “workers” naming me “an enemy of the people”. Which is a pretty serious accusation in the Soviet Union, historically speaking. It basically meant I should be killed if Gorbachev ever loses power to conservatives. A death threat, basically. And that threat was THE most important information I’ve ever got in my life. Why on earth I would wish it silenced?
- acdha 4y ago> wouldn’t you rather have them discuss and plan such things openly, so that police can easily apprehend them? That’s not the threat here: the problem are the changes constantly promoting messages which stay on the legal side but encourage people to do things. People like the woman behind LibsOfTikTok are careful not to incriminate themselves but they know there are people who will hear what they say and act on it. That’s why moderation can’t be individual: the people most susceptible to lies and propaganda are willingly seeking it out. That’s always been a problem but social media has made it orders of magnitude easier to discover.
- MikePlacid 4y ago> the people most susceptible to lies and propaganda are willingly seeking it out. That’s always been a problem but social media has made it orders of magnitude easier to discover. What are you basically saying is: democracy (which is impossible without free speech) is not able to work after social media is invented and deployed, because some people are susceptible to lies and propaganda. I kinda doubt the truth of such a radical statement. Democracy is not an ideal thing, but look what happens with alternatives - when some wise men decide what is better for those susceptible (and all others too).
- acdha 4y agoNo, what I’m saying is that democracy requires constant reinforcement - people have to stay committed to the ideas around sharing power, respecting other citizens they disagree with, and some basic shared reality. That doesn’t mean we can’t have social media but it means that we need to have some basic constraints, and that companies need regulation, especially for what they promote. Also, to be clear I’m not saying that this is unique to social media - for example, the current wave of anti-democratic sentiment in the U.S. has been promoted on cable TV as well - but that we can’t continue to ignore social media at a time when it’s shaping so much popular opinion.
- _gabe_ 4y ago> People like the woman behind LibsOfTikTok are careful not to incriminate themselves From what I know, this person literally just reposts crazy liberal videos verbatim. The same thing has and will continue to be done to crazy conservative ideas. > but they know there are people who will hear what they say and act on it. What is the account saying and hoping people will act on? It's bringing crazy ideas to the forefront to expose the ridiculousness of them. It's no different then people bringing the "lizard people" conspiracy theories to the forefront. It exposes how ridiculous these ideas are by taking the ideas out of the deeply nested echo chambers they're started in.
- acdha 4y ago> From what I know, this person literally just reposts crazy liberal videos verbatim. The same thing has and will continue to be done to crazy conservative ideas. That’s how this works: Chaya Raichik claims to just be sharing real things but in reality is often providing heavy spin or outright misrepresenting what she shares, encourages hate (e.g. she’ll routinely label LGBTQ people as child groomers), and takes no responsibility for her role in inciting violence. This culminated in children’s hospitals having to react to blob threats over the summer over false claims she popularized: https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/17/boston-childrens-hospital-doctors-facing-violent-threats-after-far-right-groups-spread-misinformation/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/17/boston-childrens-hos...