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Welsh government commits to making lying in politics illegal

68 points by stubish 2y ago

Bostonian 2y ago
This gives the people who decide what statements are "lies" too much power. Many politicians would like to silence the "lies" of their opponents.
- elric 2y ago
  Sure. But what's the alternative? Letting politicians lie through their teeth with impunity? You would think that liars and cheaters wouldn't get (re-)elected, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    >But what's the alternative? Debate. An opposition with political power. Separation of powers. Federalism. This is an ancient problem, which has been confronted by different societies in many ways. In no society has "banning lying" ever worked and it never will. Politics is about disagreement about facts.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      You can get a debate of multiple people full of lies. Having a debate doesn't change the content. > In no society has "banning lying" ever worked Have you got a specific case in mind? I couldn't find one and multiple articles about Wales refer to it as the first country. So where has it not worked before?
      - constantcrying 2y ago
        >Have you got a specific case in mind? Yes, namely that in all of political history I am not aware of a single case where an idea this awful was even attempted.
        viraptor 2y ago
        I see. So what you meant was "it was never tried" rather than «In no society has "banning lying" ever worked», which is a very different thing.
    - zimpenfish 2y ago
      > Politics is about disagreement about facts. That only works when both sides have respect for the truth and facts and disagree in good faith. When one side becomes unhinged and unmoored from reality (cf Trump, UK Tories, etc.), things go horribly wrong.
    - Bostonian 2y ago
      It's also a disagreement about values. For example, voters who align with the two political parties know what abortion is but disagree about when it should be legal.
    - Towaway69 2y ago
      Constructive debate - debate that doesn’t criticise the messenger, debate that constructively searches for optimal solution for all and not just the few.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      > In no society has "banning lying" ever worked and it never will. Politics is about disagreement about facts. Many political systems implement ethical guidelines and laws to minimize lying, especially in formal settings like courtrooms and official statements. Why hold politics to a lesser standard? > In no society has "banning lying" ever worked and it never will There have been periods and societies where strong cultural or legal norms against lying have fostered more honest political environments. Ancient Athens had ostracism, where citizens could vote to exile those seen as harmful to the state, including habitual liars. There used to be laws about lying through your teeth on news broadcasts.. While not perfect, removing them hasn't exactly been healthy for democracy, has it?
  - Yizahi 2y ago
    Legislate an easy, fast and unencumbered process to vote ANY politician out of the system by simple popular majority vote which can't be vetoes by any other politician, and couple that with a 5 year ban to hold any of the top-500 political positions (president, parliament, senate, ministries) if vote passes. It won't help that much and will rarely succeed, but it's better than nothing. Definitely better than toothless, vague and potentially totalitarian legislations like the one described in the OP.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  What's the rationale for being able to charge people with perjury who lie in court? Are people in court less likely to want to silence their opponents?
  - caseysoftware 2y ago
    > What's the rationale for being able to charge people with perjury who lie in court? It's a period bound by topic, time, and location for a matter you were (likely) directly involved in or witnessed.
delichon 2y ago
Here's an opinion piece about the bipartisan penchant for lies in the recent debate: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/3067847/biden-lies-too/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/306784... Most of us think one guy lied more and worse than the other. But which one can we trust to appoint the people who determine which were lies and which not? Me: neither.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Biden also rolled out the lie about Trump calling neo-Nazis “fine people”: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
  - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
    Hmm. Not commenting on the True/False marker on the snopes page, but > For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong. When it's clear to everyone that it's entirely a group of white supremacists, and someone says many of them actually are very fine people, to many that demonstrates an attempt to protect and legitimize the group and defend its atrocities by whitewashing the nature of its character. There's a lot of historical evidence of Trump's affinity for white supremacist groups and of their affinity for him in return (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump) so it's not like this was out of the blue. Personally I would say the given context above makes Biden's statement basically correct and Snopes's tag misleading (ok, I guess I did comment on it), which is I guess subjective.
    - EnigmaFlare 2y ago
      "attended by white supremacists" doesn't mean "attended exclusively by white supremacists". Why not show how you know that all of them were?
pipes 2y ago
Looking forward to a ministry of truth.
- npsomaratna 2y ago
  Sounds (Monty) Pythonesque.
  - BadBadJellyBean 2y ago
    IF you don't know: the ministry of truth is a fictional entity from the book 1984 from Geoerge Orwell. It's purpose is to change any evidence that would disprove the "thruths" declared by the government.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Looking forward to a ministry of truth not aimed at the general population and journalists.
- LinuxBender 2y ago
  The MoT was created in the United States in 2022 under the Department of Homeland Security. [1] It was briefly paused but I have no idea what it's current status is. [1] - https://www.newsweek.com/nina-jankowicz-resignation-disinformation-governance-board-1707888 https://www.newsweek.com/nina-jankowicz-resignation-disinfor...
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Next Years headline: "Welsh rediscover strategic truth is worse than obvious manipulative lies" In a macabre way, I kind of admire those that try to legislate morality in a democracy. Good luck =3
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  Strategic truth is the status quo in UK politics: it is easy to interrogate, it is expected to answer questions, and the media is used to both spotting it and interogating it. Bad faith flat out liars do not respond to interrogation, because they do not feel the need to. It's not that difficult to imagine a set of steps that return us to the pre-social-media days where politicians were expected to colour only within the lines, as a matter of ethics and principle. And it would be better, not worse, than the kinds of lies that risk our democracies now.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    Hard to say really, a half-truth is worse than a lie given people won't know which facts that serve actual policy decisions are missing. Thus, someone claiming to be a single source of truth without err, must ultimately also lie by omission to rule rather than represent. In such cases, even an objective mind is fooled into believing there is a rational choice in false dichotomy. I'd vote for Lord Bucket-head, as I think irrational covert evil simply shows a lack of resolve. =3
    - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
      I don't think anyone should trust anyone claiming to be a single source of truth. But that isn't what this legislation is about. It does, unfortunately, go along with other problems we must solve, such as encouraging people to rebuild trust in media organisations, and encouraging media organisations to earn that trust.
      - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Indeed, organizations like Sinclair Broadcast Group exemplify the issues with a homogeneous consolidated media opinion of what "truth" means. In a random system, the errors of known facts should not be slanted toward any bias, but rather cancel out over time in a predictable manner. Oh joy, a fresh bag of cheese goldfish crackers, nom nom nom =3
constantcrying 2y ago
Completely ridiculous and destructive to any political system. In any democratic system political conflict is also a conflict about determining truth, giving some institution the power to determine truth from lie puts far too much political power into that institution. That institution will naturally be a target for capture as it allows the criminal prosecution of the opposition. This is a genuinely insane idea and goes against essentially all democratic thought, which always wanted to give political opposition some means of participation.
- Towaway69 2y ago
  Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? The underlying problem of lying in politics exists. Banning it is one approach, what about education so that the average voter can recognise lies? Personally banning things isn’t my cup of tea yet societal it seems to be the easiest, cheapest and laziest solution to most problems.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? There's no problem of "fake truths" in politics. It's a recently made-up "problem", used to justify controlling. Politics is the very process of working out disagreements on what is the truth and what needs to be done. You can't agree on truth in advance.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      That works for people interested in working out disagreements. There's a large number interested in just shouting their lies again every time they're debated. The concept of posting something slightly incorrect to get people to disagree with you, just so you can grow the number of your followers (who don't care) has really only became a thing since Twitter and it's definitely used for political reasons.
      - rayiner 2y ago
rightbyte 2y ago
How about, I don't know, midterm approval voting instead of some sort of crimethink law? Whatever is considered, not is, a 'lie' is more or less arbitrary.
- ben_w 2y ago
  The theory goes that each election is such a test. UK can't do "midterm" because doesn't have fixed terms of office, just a maximum time between them — general elections can be called whenever the prime minister has a chat with the king about it.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Nah a lot of times lies are very easy to point out and confirm. Lots of things do have absolute facts backing them up and aren’t simply contextual or “opinion”. Saying covid is a virus and can kill people, especially those with weak immune systems is something has absolutely been scientifically proven. Saying “it’s a government hoax and they made it up” is quite easily qualified as a lie by many sources, and it was also something very easily found all through the USA politics during the pandemic. That’s just one example.
mandmandam 2y ago
Wild how the concept of basic accountability for deliberate obvious and egregious lies is breaking so many brains in here. The way I see it, we either reign in the 'firehose of falsehood' style of electioneering, or we put our future in the hands of the best (ie, worst) liars. "But if we had laws like this, how would we have ever invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? Would you jail Biden for lying about student loans and pandemic payments, or Obama for lying about Roe v Wade and Guantanamo?! 98% of our politicians would be jailed!!" ... Exactly. The devil is certainly in the details with something like this - but to say it can't be done (without even trying) is defeatist.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  Exactly right. Depressing to see the default assumption here, as usual.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  I don't get your reasoning. Not lying about Iraq would have been considered a 'lie'. Those in power decides what is considered a lie or not.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    > Not lying about Iraq would have been considered a 'lie'. ... What? > Those in power decides what is considered a lie or not. Not necessarily. There are in fact ways to give that power to independent groups, and to protect them from capture. Diversified funding, transparent auditing and finances, whistleblower protections, short tenures, etc etc. Saying that it's just impossible is, again, awfully defeatist - and we can't afford not to try.
- squigz 2y ago
  It's not only defeatist, but it's playing directly into the hands of those they think will take over the system (even further) with this "ministry of thought"-esque approach.
Yizahi 2y ago
Haha, funny joke. It will totally happen, because as we all know that people in power are great at policing and restricting themselves. And on that terrible disappointment, it's time to continue our usual life. (c)
pessimizer 2y ago
Not bothered at all by this. These people are sworn in as representatives, or registering in order to compete to be sworn in as representatives. The vote is as sacred as the courtroom. Politicians can be mistaken, politicians can have wildly different interpretations of the facts, but allowing them to deliberately lie is a choice. A bad one. What case be made for perjury to be illegal and deliberate lying by politicians not illegal that doesn't prioritize the judiciary over the electorate? The choice is between rule by appointed elders or democracy, and our sovereignty, the legitimacy of our government, comes from democracy. Politicians can even pretend to have wildly different interpretations of the facts in order to deceive the public. They had better not admit that they actually know the truth about those facts in their available communications, though. edit: another benefit in the US would be that if political parties are fixing a primary, which they have every right to do as private organizations, they would not be able to coordinate this with the candidate themselves. Lying to the electorate is as essential to democracy as lying to a jury is essential to the justice system.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  Agreed. The number of people in the comments here failing to connect this to perjury under oath, which is already illegal for very good reason, is absolutely wild to me.
hermannj314 2y ago
Truth is a social construct. The use of fables, hyperbole, puffery or invoking of spiritual beliefs should not send a politician to jail.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > The use of fables, hyperbole, puffery or invoking of spiritual beliefs should not send a politician to jail. Agreed. But the argument is about lying, which is not any of those things. I am not convinced it could ever work, though maybe in a society with a king it is plausible. We certainly manage to define "lying" well enough to call it "perjury" when you do it in a courtroom after swearing an oath. So it can be done. But who will be the judge(s)?
incomingpain 2y ago
>“That is an existential threat. A democracy starts to break down if the electors can’t trust what the elected say. Politicians opening their mouth == lying. Covid had an awful lot of lying from the government. Mass surveillance by the government. Political promises which arent kept are lies. But to give the sitting government the power to decide what is true and what is not will 100% of the time result in censorship of the opposition. It will force political speech underground and create a huge polarization problem, until mandatory revolution. I know this because im describing Canada.
logicchains 2y ago
They should make failing to keep promises in politics illegal. Truth can be a matter of debate but somebody doing something they explicitly promised not to, or failing to do something they promised, is pretty clear, and there's a wealth of contract law for determining it. If a vote is a contract then a broken promise is fraud.
- ben_w 2y ago
  I feel the same way, but don't see how it could be done. The UK doesn't have a separate layer of constitutional law that's harder to change than the rest, each government can pass or repeal any law as they desire, including a law that tries to force them to keep promises.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
  You jump to an extreme form of accountability when frankly any accountability at all would be a step wise improvement. Time and time again the populous demonstrates it does not care about individually broken promises because we have aggregated power and choice far too much. We often vote on representatives, but can't vote on individual issues, and even then binary, non-ranked voting further removed our individual power.
- cmilton 2y ago
  Politicians could be well intentioned. They may find it much more difficult to accomplish those promises once in office, with the majority of hurdles being out of their control.
sharpshadow 2y ago
If this works at all, it will lead politicians to more isolation from facts, since you can’t lie about something you don’t know. Also who is responsible if you transmit lie somebody told you as a fact. Many wonder here in Germany if our politicians at the moment are somewhat less able mentally then they should be, but the root cause is their choice of information sources. If you got only people around you telling you one side of he story you do actually still believe that Ukraine is winning.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  > Also who is responsible if you transmit lie somebody told you as a fact. Lying means knowingly telling the false
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Wouldn’t the solution for the politician be simple, don’t lie about things you don’t know about, don’t say things you can’t back up with some evidence or logical backing.
austin-cheney 2y ago
I strongly support this. Freedom of speech is not absolute and should carry civil liability and professional sanctions as determined by context, status of representation, and venue. I would like to see how they enforce this. It would be nice to sanction deceptions whether by stupidity or deliberation. On the other hand, I would not want to see somebody sanctioned because in the heat of the moment of a live debate they accidentally misstate some facts or incorrectly draw an inference. In that case the speech is not entirely truthful but there was no intention to deceive either. Debates seek to educate the electorate about a candidates mastery of the subject matter and their ability to qualify their position against a challenged response.
booleandilemma 2y ago
And will there be any politicians who are not imprisoned after this?
- caseysoftware 2y ago
  Yes. Mostly challengers, rarely incumbents.
specialist 2y ago
All political reforms must be considered in context. I only know the USA, so am unqualified to comment about the Welsh proposals. One folk (mis)understanding in the USA is that journalism will hold politicians to account. If that ever was the case, it's certainly not happening now. We need something to counterbalance misinformation. Lest we succumb to mob rule and thereby forfeit our democracy to tyranny. h/t Aristotle I'm completely fine with banning all political advertising. It serves zero purpose, is a net negative for society. Instead, candidates and parties would publish their agenda, platforms, proposed legislation, accomplishments, and misc critiques. They'd also have to focus on "the ground game", like doorbelling and townhalls. Most campaign spending is on advertising. So next we eliminate most fund raising. Just publicly finance campaigns. It's cheaper (for society) overall. Since > 2/3rds of a politician's time is spent fund raising, we just freed them up to do some actual legislating and governing. Woot. I also want to establish trusts (or equiv) for investigative reporting. Just give journalists money (stipends) and see what they come up with. Like todays bloggers and podcasters, but without the patreon links. Publishers, editors, and other journalists will then pick up and boost worthy reporting. And the larger trusts (for research and publishing) can underwrite expenses as needed. I'm bullish on innovations like Citizen Assemblies https://participedia.net/search?selectedCategory=all&query=citizen%20assembly https://participedia.net/search?selectedCategory=all&query=c... and Citizen Juries. They're slow, deliberative democracy. Antithical to today's public discourse. PS- At the end of the day, I support whatever reforms get our society to a multi-racial majoritarian democracy.
- xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
  While I agree with you, Citizen Assemblies and Citizen Juries have a big problem, which you mention, in that they can take substantial time to build sufficient momentum to take action and have impact. These things don't work if the coup has already transpired. Conversely endowing these bodies with the ability to act swiftly also brings significant risk. I'm not sure what to believe in here.
  - specialist 2y ago
    Me neither. That said, policy work is already slow. A politic friend lobbys on behalf of working families. His org's very first legislative win was enacting modest praternity leave (IIRC). The smallest sliver of their agenda (basically a Nordic style safety net). It took EIGHTEEN YEARS. Similarly, in The Waxman Report, former Rep Henry Waxman relates the yeoman work of policy. Some of the reforms he worked on took THIRTY YEARS. In comparison, maybe Citizen Assemblies aren't so bad. It could be one of those counterintuitive "slow down to speed up" things. Back when I managed teams, I flipped most of our workflows to front load everything. Hash all the major stuff at a project's launch. Everyone HATED it. Absolutely HATED all the DISCUSSION. Let's just get to work. After ramming all my process crap down everyone's throat, my teams mostly ran themselves, always hit their deadlines, and made money. (And of course no one remembered all the initial strive.) Alas, the major downside of "continuous process improvement" is the apparent requirement of having a benevolent dictactor, enforcing empowerment and delegation. (Oh, the irony.) Backsliding is so, so easy. The impulse to gatekeep and concern troll must always be clamped down. Alas. To finish off, I'm with you. Seems like even if "more democracy" is the best answer, we've probably run out of time. Or maybe we need these ideas fleshed out, to have a plan ready, for the power vacuum resulting from tyranny's inevitable failure. I just don't know.
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
Ahh, here they are: the default HN assumptions that foreign democracies are constructed from people who are either naïve, censorious or abusive, and incapable of nuance or restraint. Lying in politics, in certain contexts, is already punishable: lying to parliaments has consequences the world over. Lying to Congress, lying to a British parliamentary committee, ministerial ethics codes that punish misleading parliament, lying to the Australian parliament, it's all punishable in various ways. The big question to answer is this: why should a politician be able to tell a demonstrable lie using their official communications, without consequence? Their official social media presence, their official political status twitter feed. Why should politicians not be expected to colour only within the lines, like we used to expect them to do in the era before social media? What, exactly, is the problem with punishing a flat out, demonstrable lie by a politician? Why do people not imagine that a bipartisan/multipartite commission or an ombudsman can't manage that, when we have effective ombudsmen in the UK that ensure basic truth (that is, not flat out lies or misleading claims) in advertising, truth in financial services claims, laws that prevent lying about curing cancer etc.? Why does everyone -- particularly US HNers -- have to assume measures like this are intrinsically fascist? Just because your own politics is infected with the spiritual offspring of Lee Atwater and Charles Coughlin doesn't mean we have to accept that same downward spiral in our own. People in the UK believe politicians should want to be held to a higher standard, and we'd like them to try to get back to how they behaved before foreign social media platforms enabled them to lie at scale like drunken sailors with impunity.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
g-b-r 2y ago
This is the single thing that would fix most democracy problems, I can't believe that someone is trying it!!! (and have a even harder time believing that someone is against the idea)
rootusrootus 2y ago
This seems unworkable. I propose we eliminate politicians altogether. I am kidding, but not entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
thinkingemote 2y ago
This seems to go against Parliamentary Privilege [1] where politicians have freedom of speech and are immune to prosecution for lying (or defamation, slander etc) during their official work. Usually it's when a politician names an alleged criminal, oligarch, corporation etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege_in_the...
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  The strong presumption with the use of parliamentary privilege is that one's career is curtailed in one way or another if it is invoked to tell an untruth. You are right that this suggestion is in opposition to that, in some ways, but it's also worth noting that the way not to be prosecuted is to continue with the strong presumption that lying to parliament is bad. In practice this law would be more about official communications aimed at the press, where in the recent election we have seen the former government side engage in some pretty egregious lying without consequence, including misusing the work of non-partisan civil service functions.
guilhas 2y ago
Politicians already speak in half truths, "give with one hand, take away with the other"... At most you'll get more polished half truths You can't exactly fact check promesses, and politicians in power are already not held accountable for current laws, they just make commissions, inquiries, special counsels... until it goes away. Just another chess piece to be used in their political ping pong games, spending millions in the process, solving nothing
plesner 2y ago
How much of a politician's time is taken up by making public statements of the type this kind of legislation covers? At least for someone in power, surely only a small part. If we can't trust politicians to tell the truth in public statements then that's the smaller problem. The bigger problem is: what are they doing the rest of the time when not in public? What kinds of decisions are they making and how are they exercising power? Being a liar and being a terrible leader goes hand in hand. This gives the impression of doing something useful when the best case scenario is that awful people can continue to exercise power, they just have to be a bit more careful what they say in public. The real question is, how do you prevent terrible people from ending up in positions of power. But avoiding that requires changing how people come to power which nobody in power wants to do. So we get red herrings like this instead.

68 points by stubish 2y ago

This gives the people who decide what statements are "lies" too much power. Many politicians would like to silence the "lies" of their opponents.

elric 2y ago
Sure. But what's the alternative? Letting politicians lie through their teeth with impunity? You would think that liars and cheaters wouldn't get (re-)elected, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >But what's the alternative? Debate. An opposition with political power. Separation of powers. Federalism. This is an ancient problem, which has been confronted by different societies in many ways. In no society has "banning lying" ever worked and it never will. Politics is about disagreement about facts.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    You can get a debate of multiple people full of lies. Having a debate doesn't change the content. > In no society has "banning lying" ever worked Have you got a specific case in mind? I couldn't find one and multiple articles about Wales refer to it as the first country. So where has it not worked before?
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      >Have you got a specific case in mind? Yes, namely that in all of political history I am not aware of a single case where an idea this awful was even attempted.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        I see. So what you meant was "it was never tried" rather than «In no society has "banning lying" ever worked», which is a very different thing.
  - zimpenfish 2y ago
    > Politics is about disagreement about facts. That only works when both sides have respect for the truth and facts and disagree in good faith. When one side becomes unhinged and unmoored from reality (cf Trump, UK Tories, etc.), things go horribly wrong.
  - Bostonian 2y ago
    It's also a disagreement about values. For example, voters who align with the two political parties know what abortion is but disagree about when it should be legal.
  - Towaway69 2y ago
    Constructive debate - debate that doesn’t criticise the messenger, debate that constructively searches for optimal solution for all and not just the few.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    > In no society has "banning lying" ever worked and it never will. Politics is about disagreement about facts. Many political systems implement ethical guidelines and laws to minimize lying, especially in formal settings like courtrooms and official statements. Why hold politics to a lesser standard? > In no society has "banning lying" ever worked and it never will There have been periods and societies where strong cultural or legal norms against lying have fostered more honest political environments. Ancient Athens had ostracism, where citizens could vote to exile those seen as harmful to the state, including habitual liars. There used to be laws about lying through your teeth on news broadcasts.. While not perfect, removing them hasn't exactly been healthy for democracy, has it?
- Yizahi 2y ago
  Legislate an easy, fast and unencumbered process to vote ANY politician out of the system by simple popular majority vote which can't be vetoes by any other politician, and couple that with a 5 year ban to hold any of the top-500 political positions (president, parliament, senate, ministries) if vote passes. It won't help that much and will rarely succeed, but it's better than nothing. Definitely better than toothless, vague and potentially totalitarian legislations like the one described in the OP.
pessimizer 2y ago
What's the rationale for being able to charge people with perjury who lie in court? Are people in court less likely to want to silence their opponents?
- caseysoftware 2y ago
  > What's the rationale for being able to charge people with perjury who lie in court? It's a period bound by topic, time, and location for a matter you were (likely) directly involved in or witnessed.

delichon 2y ago

Here's an opinion piece about the bipartisan penchant for lies in the recent debate: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/3067847/biden-lies-too/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/306784... Most of us think one guy lied more and worse than the other. But which one can we trust to appoint the people who determine which were lies and which not? Me: neither.

rayiner 2y ago
Biden also rolled out the lie about Trump calling neo-Nazis “fine people”: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  Hmm. Not commenting on the True/False marker on the snopes page, but > For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong. When it's clear to everyone that it's entirely a group of white supremacists, and someone says many of them actually are very fine people, to many that demonstrates an attempt to protect and legitimize the group and defend its atrocities by whitewashing the nature of its character. There's a lot of historical evidence of Trump's affinity for white supremacist groups and of their affinity for him in return (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump) so it's not like this was out of the blue. Personally I would say the given context above makes Biden's statement basically correct and Snopes's tag misleading (ok, I guess I did comment on it), which is I guess subjective.
  - EnigmaFlare 2y ago
    "attended by white supremacists" doesn't mean "attended exclusively by white supremacists". Why not show how you know that all of them were?

pipes 2y ago

Looking forward to a ministry of truth.

npsomaratna 2y ago
Sounds (Monty) Pythonesque.
- BadBadJellyBean 2y ago
  IF you don't know: the ministry of truth is a fictional entity from the book 1984 from Geoerge Orwell. It's purpose is to change any evidence that would disprove the "thruths" declared by the government.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pessimizer 2y ago
Looking forward to a ministry of truth not aimed at the general population and journalists.
LinuxBender 2y ago
The MoT was created in the United States in 2022 under the Department of Homeland Security. [1] It was briefly paused but I have no idea what it's current status is. [1] - https://www.newsweek.com/nina-jankowicz-resignation-disinformation-governance-board-1707888 https://www.newsweek.com/nina-jankowicz-resignation-disinfor...

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

Next Years headline: "Welsh rediscover strategic truth is worse than obvious manipulative lies" In a macabre way, I kind of admire those that try to legislate morality in a democracy. Good luck =3

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
Strategic truth is the status quo in UK politics: it is easy to interrogate, it is expected to answer questions, and the media is used to both spotting it and interogating it. Bad faith flat out liars do not respond to interrogation, because they do not feel the need to. It's not that difficult to imagine a set of steps that return us to the pre-social-media days where politicians were expected to colour only within the lines, as a matter of ethics and principle. And it would be better, not worse, than the kinds of lies that risk our democracies now.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  Hard to say really, a half-truth is worse than a lie given people won't know which facts that serve actual policy decisions are missing. Thus, someone claiming to be a single source of truth without err, must ultimately also lie by omission to rule rather than represent. In such cases, even an objective mind is fooled into believing there is a rational choice in false dichotomy. I'd vote for Lord Bucket-head, as I think irrational covert evil simply shows a lack of resolve. =3
  - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    I don't think anyone should trust anyone claiming to be a single source of truth. But that isn't what this legislation is about. It does, unfortunately, go along with other problems we must solve, such as encouraging people to rebuild trust in media organisations, and encouraging media organisations to earn that trust.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      Indeed, organizations like Sinclair Broadcast Group exemplify the issues with a homogeneous consolidated media opinion of what "truth" means. In a random system, the errors of known facts should not be slanted toward any bias, but rather cancel out over time in a predictable manner. Oh joy, a fresh bag of cheese goldfish crackers, nom nom nom =3

constantcrying 2y ago

Completely ridiculous and destructive to any political system. In any democratic system political conflict is also a conflict about determining truth, giving some institution the power to determine truth from lie puts far too much political power into that institution. That institution will naturally be a target for capture as it allows the criminal prosecution of the opposition. This is a genuinely insane idea and goes against essentially all democratic thought, which always wanted to give political opposition some means of participation.

Towaway69 2y ago
Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? The underlying problem of lying in politics exists. Banning it is one approach, what about education so that the average voter can recognise lies? Personally banning things isn’t my cup of tea yet societal it seems to be the easiest, cheapest and laziest solution to most problems.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Any other suggestion for fixing the problem of „fake truths“ in politics? There's no problem of "fake truths" in politics. It's a recently made-up "problem", used to justify controlling. Politics is the very process of working out disagreements on what is the truth and what needs to be done. You can't agree on truth in advance.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    That works for people interested in working out disagreements. There's a large number interested in just shouting their lies again every time they're debated. The concept of posting something slightly incorrect to get people to disagree with you, just so you can grow the number of your followers (who don't care) has really only became a thing since Twitter and it's definitely used for political reasons.
    - rayiner 2y ago

rightbyte 2y ago

How about, I don't know, midterm approval voting instead of some sort of crimethink law? Whatever is considered, not is, a 'lie' is more or less arbitrary.

ben_w 2y ago
The theory goes that each election is such a test. UK can't do "midterm" because doesn't have fixed terms of office, just a maximum time between them — general elections can be called whenever the prime minister has a chat with the king about it.
EasyMark 2y ago
Nah a lot of times lies are very easy to point out and confirm. Lots of things do have absolute facts backing them up and aren’t simply contextual or “opinion”. Saying covid is a virus and can kill people, especially those with weak immune systems is something has absolutely been scientifically proven. Saying “it’s a government hoax and they made it up” is quite easily qualified as a lie by many sources, and it was also something very easily found all through the USA politics during the pandemic. That’s just one example.

mandmandam 2y ago

Wild how the concept of basic accountability for deliberate obvious and egregious lies is breaking so many brains in here. The way I see it, we either reign in the 'firehose of falsehood' style of electioneering, or we put our future in the hands of the best (ie, worst) liars. "But if we had laws like this, how would we have ever invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? Would you jail Biden for lying about student loans and pandemic payments, or Obama for lying about Roe v Wade and Guantanamo?! 98% of our politicians would be jailed!!" ... Exactly. The devil is certainly in the details with something like this - but to say it can't be done (without even trying) is defeatist.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
Exactly right. Depressing to see the default assumption here, as usual.
rightbyte 2y ago
I don't get your reasoning. Not lying about Iraq would have been considered a 'lie'. Those in power decides what is considered a lie or not.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > Not lying about Iraq would have been considered a 'lie'. ... What? > Those in power decides what is considered a lie or not. Not necessarily. There are in fact ways to give that power to independent groups, and to protect them from capture. Diversified funding, transparent auditing and finances, whistleblower protections, short tenures, etc etc. Saying that it's just impossible is, again, awfully defeatist - and we can't afford not to try.
squigz 2y ago
It's not only defeatist, but it's playing directly into the hands of those they think will take over the system (even further) with this "ministry of thought"-esque approach.

Yizahi 2y ago

Haha, funny joke. It will totally happen, because as we all know that people in power are great at policing and restricting themselves. And on that terrible disappointment, it's time to continue our usual life. (c)

pessimizer 2y ago

Not bothered at all by this. These people are sworn in as representatives, or registering in order to compete to be sworn in as representatives. The vote is as sacred as the courtroom. Politicians can be mistaken, politicians can have wildly different interpretations of the facts, but allowing them to deliberately lie is a choice. A bad one. What case be made for perjury to be illegal and deliberate lying by politicians not illegal that doesn't prioritize the judiciary over the electorate? The choice is between rule by appointed elders or democracy, and our sovereignty, the legitimacy of our government, comes from democracy. Politicians can even pretend to have wildly different interpretations of the facts in order to deceive the public. They had better not admit that they actually know the truth about those facts in their available communications, though. edit: another benefit in the US would be that if political parties are fixing a primary, which they have every right to do as private organizations, they would not be able to coordinate this with the candidate themselves. Lying to the electorate is as essential to democracy as lying to a jury is essential to the justice system.

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
Agreed. The number of people in the comments here failing to connect this to perjury under oath, which is already illegal for very good reason, is absolutely wild to me.

hermannj314 2y ago

Truth is a social construct. The use of fables, hyperbole, puffery or invoking of spiritual beliefs should not send a politician to jail.

rootusrootus 2y ago
> The use of fables, hyperbole, puffery or invoking of spiritual beliefs should not send a politician to jail. Agreed. But the argument is about lying, which is not any of those things. I am not convinced it could ever work, though maybe in a society with a king it is plausible. We certainly manage to define "lying" well enough to call it "perjury" when you do it in a courtroom after swearing an oath. So it can be done. But who will be the judge(s)?

incomingpain 2y ago

>“That is an existential threat. A democracy starts to break down if the electors can’t trust what the elected say. Politicians opening their mouth == lying. Covid had an awful lot of lying from the government. Mass surveillance by the government. Political promises which arent kept are lies. But to give the sitting government the power to decide what is true and what is not will 100% of the time result in censorship of the opposition. It will force political speech underground and create a huge polarization problem, until mandatory revolution. I know this because im describing Canada.

logicchains 2y ago

They should make failing to keep promises in politics illegal. Truth can be a matter of debate but somebody doing something they explicitly promised not to, or failing to do something they promised, is pretty clear, and there's a wealth of contract law for determining it. If a vote is a contract then a broken promise is fraud.

ben_w 2y ago
I feel the same way, but don't see how it could be done. The UK doesn't have a separate layer of constitutional law that's harder to change than the rest, each government can pass or repeal any law as they desire, including a law that tries to force them to keep promises.
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xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
You jump to an extreme form of accountability when frankly any accountability at all would be a step wise improvement. Time and time again the populous demonstrates it does not care about individually broken promises because we have aggregated power and choice far too much. We often vote on representatives, but can't vote on individual issues, and even then binary, non-ranked voting further removed our individual power.
cmilton 2y ago
Politicians could be well intentioned. They may find it much more difficult to accomplish those promises once in office, with the majority of hurdles being out of their control.

sharpshadow 2y ago

If this works at all, it will lead politicians to more isolation from facts, since you can’t lie about something you don’t know. Also who is responsible if you transmit lie somebody told you as a fact. Many wonder here in Germany if our politicians at the moment are somewhat less able mentally then they should be, but the root cause is their choice of information sources. If you got only people around you telling you one side of he story you do actually still believe that Ukraine is winning.

g-b-r 2y ago
> Also who is responsible if you transmit lie somebody told you as a fact. Lying means knowingly telling the false
EasyMark 2y ago
Wouldn’t the solution for the politician be simple, don’t lie about things you don’t know about, don’t say things you can’t back up with some evidence or logical backing.

austin-cheney 2y ago

I strongly support this. Freedom of speech is not absolute and should carry civil liability and professional sanctions as determined by context, status of representation, and venue. I would like to see how they enforce this. It would be nice to sanction deceptions whether by stupidity or deliberation. On the other hand, I would not want to see somebody sanctioned because in the heat of the moment of a live debate they accidentally misstate some facts or incorrectly draw an inference. In that case the speech is not entirely truthful but there was no intention to deceive either. Debates seek to educate the electorate about a candidates mastery of the subject matter and their ability to qualify their position against a challenged response.

booleandilemma 2y ago

And will there be any politicians who are not imprisoned after this?

caseysoftware 2y ago
Yes. Mostly challengers, rarely incumbents.

specialist 2y ago

All political reforms must be considered in context. I only know the USA, so am unqualified to comment about the Welsh proposals. One folk (mis)understanding in the USA is that journalism will hold politicians to account. If that ever was the case, it's certainly not happening now. We need something to counterbalance misinformation. Lest we succumb to mob rule and thereby forfeit our democracy to tyranny. h/t Aristotle I'm completely fine with banning all political advertising. It serves zero purpose, is a net negative for society. Instead, candidates and parties would publish their agenda, platforms, proposed legislation, accomplishments, and misc critiques. They'd also have to focus on "the ground game", like doorbelling and townhalls. Most campaign spending is on advertising. So next we eliminate most fund raising. Just publicly finance campaigns. It's cheaper (for society) overall. Since > 2/3rds of a politician's time is spent fund raising, we just freed them up to do some actual legislating and governing. Woot. I also want to establish trusts (or equiv) for investigative reporting. Just give journalists money (stipends) and see what they come up with. Like todays bloggers and podcasters, but without the patreon links. Publishers, editors, and other journalists will then pick up and boost worthy reporting. And the larger trusts (for research and publishing) can underwrite expenses as needed. I'm bullish on innovations like Citizen Assemblies https://participedia.net/search?selectedCategory=all&query=citizen%20assembly https://participedia.net/search?selectedCategory=all&query=c... and Citizen Juries. They're slow, deliberative democracy. Antithical to today's public discourse. PS- At the end of the day, I support whatever reforms get our society to a multi-racial majoritarian democracy.

xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
While I agree with you, Citizen Assemblies and Citizen Juries have a big problem, which you mention, in that they can take substantial time to build sufficient momentum to take action and have impact. These things don't work if the coup has already transpired. Conversely endowing these bodies with the ability to act swiftly also brings significant risk. I'm not sure what to believe in here.
- specialist 2y ago
  Me neither. That said, policy work is already slow. A politic friend lobbys on behalf of working families. His org's very first legislative win was enacting modest praternity leave (IIRC). The smallest sliver of their agenda (basically a Nordic style safety net). It took EIGHTEEN YEARS. Similarly, in The Waxman Report, former Rep Henry Waxman relates the yeoman work of policy. Some of the reforms he worked on took THIRTY YEARS. In comparison, maybe Citizen Assemblies aren't so bad. It could be one of those counterintuitive "slow down to speed up" things. Back when I managed teams, I flipped most of our workflows to front load everything. Hash all the major stuff at a project's launch. Everyone HATED it. Absolutely HATED all the DISCUSSION. Let's just get to work. After ramming all my process crap down everyone's throat, my teams mostly ran themselves, always hit their deadlines, and made money. (And of course no one remembered all the initial strive.) Alas, the major downside of "continuous process improvement" is the apparent requirement of having a benevolent dictactor, enforcing empowerment and delegation. (Oh, the irony.) Backsliding is so, so easy. The impulse to gatekeep and concern troll must always be clamped down. Alas. To finish off, I'm with you. Seems like even if "more democracy" is the best answer, we've probably run out of time. Or maybe we need these ideas fleshed out, to have a plan ready, for the power vacuum resulting from tyranny's inevitable failure. I just don't know.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago

Ahh, here they are: the default HN assumptions that foreign democracies are constructed from people who are either naïve, censorious or abusive, and incapable of nuance or restraint. Lying in politics, in certain contexts, is already punishable: lying to parliaments has consequences the world over. Lying to Congress, lying to a British parliamentary committee, ministerial ethics codes that punish misleading parliament, lying to the Australian parliament, it's all punishable in various ways. The big question to answer is this: why should a politician be able to tell a demonstrable lie using their official communications, without consequence? Their official social media presence, their official political status twitter feed. Why should politicians not be expected to colour only within the lines, like we used to expect them to do in the era before social media? What, exactly, is the problem with punishing a flat out, demonstrable lie by a politician? Why do people not imagine that a bipartisan/multipartite commission or an ombudsman can't manage that, when we have effective ombudsmen in the UK that ensure basic truth (that is, not flat out lies or misleading claims) in advertising, truth in financial services claims, laws that prevent lying about curing cancer etc.? Why does everyone -- particularly US HNers -- have to assume measures like this are intrinsically fascist? Just because your own politics is infected with the spiritual offspring of Lee Atwater and Charles Coughlin doesn't mean we have to accept that same downward spiral in our own. People in the UK believe politicians should want to be held to a higher standard, and we'd like them to try to get back to how they behaved before foreign social media platforms enabled them to lie at scale like drunken sailors with impunity.

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g-b-r 2y ago

This is the single thing that would fix most democracy problems, I can't believe that someone is trying it!!! (and have a even harder time believing that someone is against the idea)

rootusrootus 2y ago

This seems unworkable. I propose we eliminate politicians altogether. I am kidding, but not entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

thinkingemote 2y ago

This seems to go against Parliamentary Privilege [1] where politicians have freedom of speech and are immune to prosecution for lying (or defamation, slander etc) during their official work. Usually it's when a politician names an alleged criminal, oligarch, corporation etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege_in_the...

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
The strong presumption with the use of parliamentary privilege is that one's career is curtailed in one way or another if it is invoked to tell an untruth. You are right that this suggestion is in opposition to that, in some ways, but it's also worth noting that the way not to be prosecuted is to continue with the strong presumption that lying to parliament is bad. In practice this law would be more about official communications aimed at the press, where in the recent election we have seen the former government side engage in some pretty egregious lying without consequence, including misusing the work of non-partisan civil service functions.

guilhas 2y ago

Politicians already speak in half truths, "give with one hand, take away with the other"... At most you'll get more polished half truths You can't exactly fact check promesses, and politicians in power are already not held accountable for current laws, they just make commissions, inquiries, special counsels... until it goes away. Just another chess piece to be used in their political ping pong games, spending millions in the process, solving nothing

plesner 2y ago

How much of a politician's time is taken up by making public statements of the type this kind of legislation covers? At least for someone in power, surely only a small part. If we can't trust politicians to tell the truth in public statements then that's the smaller problem. The bigger problem is: what are they doing the rest of the time when not in public? What kinds of decisions are they making and how are they exercising power? Being a liar and being a terrible leader goes hand in hand. This gives the impression of doing something useful when the best case scenario is that awful people can continue to exercise power, they just have to be a bit more careful what they say in public. The real question is, how do you prevent terrible people from ending up in positions of power. But avoiding that requires changing how people come to power which nobody in power wants to do. So we get red herrings like this instead.