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I personally believe misinformation is a symptom rather than a cause of radicalization, but granting the premise, I don’t see how SV and USGOV can be trusted to

I personally believe misinformation is a symptom rather than a cause of radicalization, but granting the premise, I don’t see how SV and USGOV can be trusted to fairly censor and run their own propaganda campaigns without transparency. We already have examples of them abusing this power.

kube-system 3y ago
There's a complex web of how disinformation and misinformation interact. Misinformation spread by ignorant people to other ignorant people is bad, but I don't think it's really the problem here, and I don't think it should necessarily be censored. The real problem is the engineered disinformation which is introduced into the wild by malicious parties for the purpose of causing political unrest. The downstream people who latch on to these made up ideas then become unwitting amplifiers and/or people who decide to act in real life (e.g. David DePape). They're the victims of these social engineering attacks. Really, it's not much different than how malware spreads. It's just malware for social engineering.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  Call it what you will: I mean people in a free and fair healthy society cannot be radicalized by information. It can only happen when bad government and other organic social forces (which government could regulate with better policy) cause a material decline in people’s living circumstances. Weimar Germany had Nazis and Communists agitating and spreading disinformation for years. They did what they could to suppress and censor them both, instead of addressing the underlying causes that ultimately led to the complete social bankruptcy of the government and its takeover by the Nazis - but if it hadn’t been them it’d have been another extremist group. It wasn’t the ideology that created the extremism. It was the failed society. Censorship only accelerates the decline by further reducing the legitimacy of the government.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    > I mean people in a free and fair healthy society cannot be radicalized by information. It can only happen when bad government and other organic social forces (which government could regulate with better policy) cause a material decline in people’s living circumstances. That's just not true, and there are radical minds in every country on the planet. The young, uneducated, mentally ill, disabled, or other vulnerably impressionable minds are absolutely capable of being radicalized by falsehoods that target their insecurities or vulnerabilities. > Censorship only accelerates the decline by further reducing the legitimacy of the government. The government doesn't have to do the censoring. In the age of centralized media, media outlets "self-censored" (e.g. editing and fact checking), and were significantly more trusted by the public than any media outlets are today. The lost of trust in today's world is squarely to blame on social media platforms, who republish literal falsehoods and throw their hands up and say "section 230!" as they cash their ad checks. 100 years from now, this will be seen as the defining moral hazard of this century.

kube-system 3y ago

There's a complex web of how disinformation and misinformation interact. Misinformation spread by ignorant people to other ignorant people is bad, but I don't think it's really the problem here, and I don't think it should necessarily be censored. The real problem is the engineered disinformation which is introduced into the wild by malicious parties for the purpose of causing political unrest. The downstream people who latch on to these made up ideas then become unwitting amplifiers and/or people who decide to act in real life (e.g. David DePape). They're the victims of these social engineering attacks. Really, it's not much different than how malware spreads. It's just malware for social engineering.

Amezarak 3y ago
Call it what you will: I mean people in a free and fair healthy society cannot be radicalized by information. It can only happen when bad government and other organic social forces (which government could regulate with better policy) cause a material decline in people’s living circumstances. Weimar Germany had Nazis and Communists agitating and spreading disinformation for years. They did what they could to suppress and censor them both, instead of addressing the underlying causes that ultimately led to the complete social bankruptcy of the government and its takeover by the Nazis - but if it hadn’t been them it’d have been another extremist group. It wasn’t the ideology that created the extremism. It was the failed society. Censorship only accelerates the decline by further reducing the legitimacy of the government.
- kube-system 3y ago
  > I mean people in a free and fair healthy society cannot be radicalized by information. It can only happen when bad government and other organic social forces (which government could regulate with better policy) cause a material decline in people’s living circumstances. That's just not true, and there are radical minds in every country on the planet. The young, uneducated, mentally ill, disabled, or other vulnerably impressionable minds are absolutely capable of being radicalized by falsehoods that target their insecurities or vulnerabilities. > Censorship only accelerates the decline by further reducing the legitimacy of the government. The government doesn't have to do the censoring. In the age of centralized media, media outlets "self-censored" (e.g. editing and fact checking), and were significantly more trusted by the public than any media outlets are today. The lost of trust in today's world is squarely to blame on social media platforms, who republish literal falsehoods and throw their hands up and say "section 230!" as they cash their ad checks. 100 years from now, this will be seen as the defining moral hazard of this century.