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Like the sibling commenter, I don't get it. If people aren't trusted to express their will, however ill-informed, fickle and capricious, then what was the point

Like the sibling commenter, I don't get it. If people aren't trusted to express their will, however ill-informed, fickle and capricious, then what was the point of giving them the vote in the first place? And if someone puts a filter on the garbage that reaches impressionable people, then, being so impressionable, won't they be influenced by whoever controls the filter?

miningape 2y ago
Yeah it seems like just another misguided attempt at fixing some issue by the EU. The principal is nice, but the effects and implementation is garbage.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> what was the point of giving them the vote in the first place? To provide tools that counter pressures toward tyranny. > If people aren't trusted to express their will, however ill-informed, fickle and capricious, then what was the point of giving them the vote in the first place? The phrasing here suggests some principle that outweighs societal good. Informing voters in good faith helps them wield their voting tools skillfully. Informing voters in other ways yields other outcomes.
- azangru 2y ago
  > The phrasing here suggests some principle that outweighs societal good. Yes. What is the instrument for measuring societal good? And what is the mechanism for acting upon those measurements? My naive understanding is that in a society that purports to be democratic, societal good is expressed through votes (people vote for things they deem to be good, or for people who promise to bring those things about), and the enactment of those measurements is done through the same mechanism. > Informing voters in good faith helps them wield their voting tools skillfully. Informing voters in other ways yields other outcomes. Yes. Now we need a mechanism that establishes the goodness of faith of the informer. And if the past five or so years have taught me anything it is that barely anyone who plays professional-league politics speaks in good faith.
hackernewds 2y ago
It is more to limit a foreign entity's grasp on controlling the mindset of their citizens. You can compare the feeds of teens in China vs the US on TikTok
- azangru 2y ago
  I hear this concern a lot; but never could quite grasp it. If the premise is that the mindset of citizens is so easily controllable that a foreign entity can do it, then why is a foreign entity's control of citizens' mindset any worse than domestic entity's control of the same? If people have no protection against the control of their mindset, then does it not follow that their minds will be controlled by _some_ entity? Isn't the game already lost at that point? And are we really discussing whom we would rather surrender our minds to?
  - valval 2y ago
    I don’t think it’s a more complex subject than “these people are ours to control, not yours”.
    - azangru 2y ago
      Yes, I agree. But in a presumably democratic society, I would have thought, people would need convincing to submit to this claim.

miningape 2y ago

Yeah it seems like just another misguided attempt at fixing some issue by the EU. The principal is nice, but the effects and implementation is garbage.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

> what was the point of giving them the vote in the first place? To provide tools that counter pressures toward tyranny. > If people aren't trusted to express their will, however ill-informed, fickle and capricious, then what was the point of giving them the vote in the first place? The phrasing here suggests some principle that outweighs societal good. Informing voters in good faith helps them wield their voting tools skillfully. Informing voters in other ways yields other outcomes.

azangru 2y ago
> The phrasing here suggests some principle that outweighs societal good. Yes. What is the instrument for measuring societal good? And what is the mechanism for acting upon those measurements? My naive understanding is that in a society that purports to be democratic, societal good is expressed through votes (people vote for things they deem to be good, or for people who promise to bring those things about), and the enactment of those measurements is done through the same mechanism. > Informing voters in good faith helps them wield their voting tools skillfully. Informing voters in other ways yields other outcomes. Yes. Now we need a mechanism that establishes the goodness of faith of the informer. And if the past five or so years have taught me anything it is that barely anyone who plays professional-league politics speaks in good faith.

hackernewds 2y ago

It is more to limit a foreign entity's grasp on controlling the mindset of their citizens. You can compare the feeds of teens in China vs the US on TikTok

azangru 2y ago
I hear this concern a lot; but never could quite grasp it. If the premise is that the mindset of citizens is so easily controllable that a foreign entity can do it, then why is a foreign entity's control of citizens' mindset any worse than domestic entity's control of the same? If people have no protection against the control of their mindset, then does it not follow that their minds will be controlled by _some_ entity? Isn't the game already lost at that point? And are we really discussing whom we would rather surrender our minds to?
- valval 2y ago
  I don’t think it’s a more complex subject than “these people are ours to control, not yours”.
  - azangru 2y ago
    Yes, I agree. But in a presumably democratic society, I would have thought, people would need convincing to submit to this claim.