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My issue is that I think while a Ministry of Truth may have good intentions, it will do more harm than good. Based on the principle that the counter to misinfo

My issue is that I think while a Ministry of Truth may have good intentions, it will do more harm than good. Based on the principle that the counter to misinformation is better information, not less misinformation. > The scientific consensus The issue is that this isn’t a fixed thing and changes in real time. So it’s challenging to know what the “consensus” is now, especially if your goal is to filter out wrong or anti-consensus, what method do you use to decide what is allowed and what isn’t? Finally, while Covid is serious and millions of people died. Diabetes and drug overdoses kill as well. We would be better served by limiting the misinformation that is ads for pharmaceuticals and coca cola. I think people buying sugary drinks over the past 50 years killed more than many diseases. [0] So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diabetes.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diabetes.htm 100k diabetes deaths per year in the US alone

cowpig 3y ago
There is no such thing as absolutes in social policy. Every situation has an edge case, a grey area. Something will always come up where you will have to balance an interpretation of a rule. The US has the most extreme version of freedom of speech of any country in the world. There are quite a few versions that are perfectly reasonable and implemented successfully without sliding down a slippery slope into a "ministry of truth". So the slippery slope is a fallacy in this case. The issue of sugary drinks is a false dichotomy. Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking tons of it all the time. If you want to draw a line for what kind of speech puts people in imminent danger, sugary drinks are definitively not over that line, while spreading a potentially lethal disease is clearly over that line. > So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. What evidence are you basing that on? In the past the government granted licenses to broadcast networks on TV, and had strict requirements on the kinds of things they could say on air. Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen?
- prepend 3y ago
  > Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking 100k cokes over their life due to watching lots of ads. No one gets sick from just one exposure to misinformation either. They sick from thousands and thousands that change their behavior. Ads for coke impact behavior negatively and result in poor health outcomes and death. Ads for opioid painkillers impact behavior negatively and result in poor health outcomes and death. Much more so than any Covid misinformation. That’s why I compared them. If the goal is to protect people, then we should restrict ads of “unhealthy” things. Right? Have that ministry of truth review what products are healthy or unhealthy. And just have them review all ads for if they are healthy or unhealthy. It’s exactly a slippery slope argument. I think applied correctly because if the government does this for some topics they will do them for more. Especially if they apply your logic of whether they should reduce harm. > Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen? This is an unprovable statement. But other countries had better outcomes. Perhaps the government’s actions resulted in more deaths than otherwise. Maybe only 900k would have died instead of 1.1M if government hadn’t restricted information flow.
raisedbyninjas 3y ago
This comparison is verging on hyperbole. I can't recall any soda ad that implied any health claims or encouraged drinking in excess. There's nothing unhealthy about sugar in moderation. What danger that exists is only expressed after years of heavy abuse. Even then, we have treatments for diabetes and heart disease. Unhealthy diets are not communicable diseases! Soda isn't forcing doctors to use garbage bags as PPE or fashion ventilators out of surplus hardware. Soda isn't cutting down young athletes after a single exposure. If there is to be any censorship or just fact-checking alongside misinformation, it's clear which occasion deserves it.
- prepend 3y ago
  I am not claiming that Covid and sugar are the same. They are different. But sugar is bad for you. Ads for sugar aren’t intended to convince people to drink it in moderation. Just like ads for cigarettes aren’t intended to make people smoke one per day. My point is that if we wanted to limit misinformation that causes harm, limiting ads for coke that result in sugar consumption that contributes to diabetes deaths. Lots and lots. Hopefully Covid won’t keep causing hundreds of thousands of deaths per year (1.1M so far in 3.5 years) but diabetes is just getting worse. Obviously government can do both and doesn’t have to choose. But it seems like limiting free speech for a minor benefit isn’t worth it when there’s a much clearer line to take. Preventing drug advertising is pretty simple and was already illegal until 1998.

cowpig 3y ago

There is no such thing as absolutes in social policy. Every situation has an edge case, a grey area. Something will always come up where you will have to balance an interpretation of a rule. The US has the most extreme version of freedom of speech of any country in the world. There are quite a few versions that are perfectly reasonable and implemented successfully without sliding down a slippery slope into a "ministry of truth". So the slippery slope is a fallacy in this case. The issue of sugary drinks is a false dichotomy. Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking tons of it all the time. If you want to draw a line for what kind of speech puts people in imminent danger, sugary drinks are definitively not over that line, while spreading a potentially lethal disease is clearly over that line. > So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. What evidence are you basing that on? In the past the government granted licenses to broadcast networks on TV, and had strict requirements on the kinds of things they could say on air. Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen?

prepend 3y ago
> Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking 100k cokes over their life due to watching lots of ads. No one gets sick from just one exposure to misinformation either. They sick from thousands and thousands that change their behavior. Ads for coke impact behavior negatively and result in poor health outcomes and death. Ads for opioid painkillers impact behavior negatively and result in poor health outcomes and death. Much more so than any Covid misinformation. That’s why I compared them. If the goal is to protect people, then we should restrict ads of “unhealthy” things. Right? Have that ministry of truth review what products are healthy or unhealthy. And just have them review all ads for if they are healthy or unhealthy. It’s exactly a slippery slope argument. I think applied correctly because if the government does this for some topics they will do them for more. Especially if they apply your logic of whether they should reduce harm. > Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen? This is an unprovable statement. But other countries had better outcomes. Perhaps the government’s actions resulted in more deaths than otherwise. Maybe only 900k would have died instead of 1.1M if government hadn’t restricted information flow.

raisedbyninjas 3y ago

This comparison is verging on hyperbole. I can't recall any soda ad that implied any health claims or encouraged drinking in excess. There's nothing unhealthy about sugar in moderation. What danger that exists is only expressed after years of heavy abuse. Even then, we have treatments for diabetes and heart disease. Unhealthy diets are not communicable diseases! Soda isn't forcing doctors to use garbage bags as PPE or fashion ventilators out of surplus hardware. Soda isn't cutting down young athletes after a single exposure. If there is to be any censorship or just fact-checking alongside misinformation, it's clear which occasion deserves it.

prepend 3y ago
I am not claiming that Covid and sugar are the same. They are different. But sugar is bad for you. Ads for sugar aren’t intended to convince people to drink it in moderation. Just like ads for cigarettes aren’t intended to make people smoke one per day. My point is that if we wanted to limit misinformation that causes harm, limiting ads for coke that result in sugar consumption that contributes to diabetes deaths. Lots and lots. Hopefully Covid won’t keep causing hundreds of thousands of deaths per year (1.1M so far in 3.5 years) but diabetes is just getting worse. Obviously government can do both and doesn’t have to choose. But it seems like limiting free speech for a minor benefit isn’t worth it when there’s a much clearer line to take. Preventing drug advertising is pretty simple and was already illegal until 1998.