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Bingo. I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and

Bingo. I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter. People who advocate for censoring foreign sources of influence are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically.

jimbob45 2y ago
You could ban every non-ethnically Chinese channel to push Chinese superiority. That would be bad, right? And before you say, “but they’re not doing that”, remember that we’re discussing how this theoretically could be a bad thing.
hcurtiss 2y ago
Exactly. To the degree elections are not rooted in a competition of ideas and individual agency, but rather are downstream of elite power and influence, then there are other more direct means of controlling populations, all of which tend to be a lot bloodier. All of this strikes me as a really dangerous path.
- luckylion 2y ago
  Are lies ideas? In a competition of "ideas", if one side lies, is it still a fair competition, or are they cheating? Should it be a fair competition?
  - hcurtiss 2y ago
    That angle would work if there wasn't so much disagreement about what constitutes lies. After the last few years, I am definitely not interested in having government actors decide for me what amounts to the truth. Personally, I suppose I much prefer a competition of ideas -- and the ability to decide for myself.
    - luckylion 2y ago
      I think there's a reasonable argument that part of that disagreement is a result of the hybrid warfare that is being fought over the information and opinions of citizens in many countries. We know about a few of these where hyper-partisan influencers were paid by Russia (or entities closely connected to the Russian government, if you insist on nuances) to spread Russia's viewpoints and attack social cohesion in the US. Is that a competition of ideas? Facebook and Twitter have in the past banned networks of account for inauthentic behavior. In other words: individuals (and you can probably narrows this to residents or citizens) are allowed to speak their mind and try to convince others of whatever they believe, but it has to be them, they cannot use bots, multiple accounts etc. It's not an easy thing to filter, of course. But pretend that it was, would you agree with that approach?
threeseed 2y ago
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing Because people are not capable of being informed on every topic in the world. Especially in a world that is increasingly more complex and nuanced. And this ignorance has been demonstrated to be exploitable in order to tear apart societies.
baq 2y ago
Read some books. 1984 would be a good start.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  That was a story to reach simple minds. No one in this forum needs 1984 to inform them of the methods and outcomes of propaganda.
  - photonthug 2y ago
    Don’t worry, chomskys manufacturing consent is also mentioned as relevant reading elsewhere in this thread, and then rejected, naturally on the grounds that learning stuff about propaganda might be propaganda
- olalonde 2y ago
  I read some, including 1984. What's your point? 1984 portrays exactly the kind of world I’d want to avoid - one where the government controls access to information and rigidly suppresses foreign influence.
iforgotpassword 2y ago
> implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically I think that is the case though. I will come off as arrogant and my lack of vocabulary might make it sound less elaborate, but a huge chunk of the population is not able or willing to so. This is why every time a country is facing a crysis, the populist politicians gain in popularity. People are already stressed out by their jobs, paying the bills, rising cost of living, so who wants to spend time and effort to research the causes of this, evaluate which proposed solution seems most realistic, what the tradeoffs are, compared to the dude who tells them that the problem is very simple and that he has the solution that is equally simple. It's the immigrants stealing the jobs, or the heat pumps forced upon them, or solar cells. And it doesn't even need foreign social media to come to that.
odyssey7 2y ago
Easy: reach the future electorate when they’re pre-teens and feed them influences that eschew critical thinking as a core value. If you can believe that lead pipes contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire… well, let’s just say the Internet is a series of tubes. The concerns about TikTok merely as a propaganda platform are naïve and almost quaint when considering what might actually be happening.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  You just described the corporate propaganda that generations of Americans have been bathed in.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    You make a good point. A crucial difference, however, is the types of entities and their motives. A conventional U.S. corporation's motive is to generate profits. Efforts stemming from that motive have not always been in the public interest, and such cases are worthy of regulatory attention, but they typically do not present national security risks. In odd cases where pursuing profits could create national security risks, Congress has sometimes intervened, such as when Nvidia was banned from selling certain processors to certain countries. A geopolitical entity is not a profit-motivated corporation, so the risk model is different, with national security factors being more salient.
mbesto 2y ago
> Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter. Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal? You have the draw the line somewhere. > are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically. A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy.
- sdwr 2y ago
  You got it, it's about playing by the rules. A robust culture of propriety is one line of defense against the bad times, and we're losing it.
- lmm 2y ago
  > Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal? Because those things are not just speech - they're implicit or explicit physical threats. America runs most of the world's social media platforms and expects other countries to be happy with that, but then panics the moment another country dares to offer them the same thing? I don't know which scenario is worse, the one where this is just an excuse for an America First trade war or the one where the US genuinely believes that controlling a social platform means you control the countries that use it.
- olalonde 2y ago
  > A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy. I think it’s less about admitting this and more about the impracticality of having citizens vote on issues daily.
drdaeman 2y ago
> people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions The problem is that people aren't ideal rational agents. Our collective reasoning tends to be heavily biased by the environment, and that there are actors who abuse this (by injecting ideas that indirectly help their agendas) for their personal gains. And in China's case, they want to undermine freedoms, including freedom of speech. We can consider ourselves as "rational, critical thinkers" all we want, but we aren't as there are myriads of ways we're gullible in one way or another. Plenty of examples in our history books. Still, I think that free speech is still more important, as it's the only way for a society to recover. With freedom of speech, an antidote (for a lack of better term) can eventually be found and injected into the public discourse, without it the future looks bleak. The way I see it, we need to encourage improvement of education on social sciences, human psychology, game theory and so on, encourage critical thinking but forewarn of all possible fallacies, and hope that it will be enough and that the inevitable counter-reaction won't prevail and undermine the effort.
- vkou 2y ago
  Okay, but why is Chinese influence any worse than that of some Australian billionaire who owns the biggest right-wing media conglomerate that broadcasts an absolute firehouse of damaging, divisive, and self-serving lies? If TikTok is harmful to democracy, Fox News is more than an order of magnitude worse. A large portion of the electorate watches its insanity like a full-time job. Most enemies of democracy, when measured by impact are 'domestic' and 'western', not some Chinese boogieman.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    My personal opinion? It's not significantly different. Or maybe it is, but, at least, I don't see a need (and a meaningful way) to develop a scale of maliciousness. Malicious agents have no nationality, race or some single origin. All they share is the mindset and some values, willing to abuse the system for personal gains or flawed misbeliefs (for a lack of better word - beliefs that are known to contradict our collective scientific understanding of the world).
johnnyanmac 2y ago
plenty of dangers, but considering what people actually do and care about on TikTok, I wouldn't really compare this to Facebook. >People who advocate for censoring foreign sources of influence are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically. Tbf, America did spend decades tearing down education to help support that conclusion.
motorest 2y ago
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. You should invest a minute thinking about the problem. Pay attention to your own opinion: people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. Focus on that. Now, consider that propaganda feeds false and deceiving information to the public. In some cases, the decision-maker is only exposed to propaganda. Even if that decision-maker is the most rational of actors, what kind of decisions can he do if they are only exposed to false and deceiving information? There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  >There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are? Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
  - motorest 2y ago
    > Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote. The "common carrier" status of services which hold editorial control over the content that's pushed and promoted is highly dubious.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      maybe common carrier is not quite right but social media has no proof of identity. hence I cannot sue motorest for libel if you send a nasty personal-attack reply to this :)
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Truth is subjective.
postingawayonhn 2y ago
> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. It would be less of a problem if US platforms were allowed into China to influence the Chinese too.
phatfish 2y ago
Does everyone think critically and rationally? If not how many don't (especially during key election periods) and can this group cast an oversized influence on election results or public opinion? Having the choice of two options at the ballot box, and social media meaning many people now form political opinions from anonymous accounts online does not fill me with confidence.

jimbob45 2y ago

You could ban every non-ethnically Chinese channel to push Chinese superiority. That would be bad, right? And before you say, “but they’re not doing that”, remember that we’re discussing how this theoretically could be a bad thing.

hcurtiss 2y ago

Exactly. To the degree elections are not rooted in a competition of ideas and individual agency, but rather are downstream of elite power and influence, then there are other more direct means of controlling populations, all of which tend to be a lot bloodier. All of this strikes me as a really dangerous path.

luckylion 2y ago
Are lies ideas? In a competition of "ideas", if one side lies, is it still a fair competition, or are they cheating? Should it be a fair competition?
- hcurtiss 2y ago
  That angle would work if there wasn't so much disagreement about what constitutes lies. After the last few years, I am definitely not interested in having government actors decide for me what amounts to the truth. Personally, I suppose I much prefer a competition of ideas -- and the ability to decide for myself.
  - luckylion 2y ago
    I think there's a reasonable argument that part of that disagreement is a result of the hybrid warfare that is being fought over the information and opinions of citizens in many countries. We know about a few of these where hyper-partisan influencers were paid by Russia (or entities closely connected to the Russian government, if you insist on nuances) to spread Russia's viewpoints and attack social cohesion in the US. Is that a competition of ideas? Facebook and Twitter have in the past banned networks of account for inauthentic behavior. In other words: individuals (and you can probably narrows this to residents or citizens) are allowed to speak their mind and try to convince others of whatever they believe, but it has to be them, they cannot use bots, multiple accounts etc. It's not an easy thing to filter, of course. But pretend that it was, would you agree with that approach?

threeseed 2y ago

> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing Because people are not capable of being informed on every topic in the world. Especially in a world that is increasingly more complex and nuanced. And this ignorance has been demonstrated to be exploitable in order to tear apart societies.

baq 2y ago

Read some books. 1984 would be a good start.

datavirtue 2y ago
That was a story to reach simple minds. No one in this forum needs 1984 to inform them of the methods and outcomes of propaganda.
- photonthug 2y ago
  Don’t worry, chomskys manufacturing consent is also mentioned as relevant reading elsewhere in this thread, and then rejected, naturally on the grounds that learning stuff about propaganda might be propaganda
olalonde 2y ago
I read some, including 1984. What's your point? 1984 portrays exactly the kind of world I’d want to avoid - one where the government controls access to information and rigidly suppresses foreign influence.

iforgotpassword 2y ago

> implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically I think that is the case though. I will come off as arrogant and my lack of vocabulary might make it sound less elaborate, but a huge chunk of the population is not able or willing to so. This is why every time a country is facing a crysis, the populist politicians gain in popularity. People are already stressed out by their jobs, paying the bills, rising cost of living, so who wants to spend time and effort to research the causes of this, evaluate which proposed solution seems most realistic, what the tradeoffs are, compared to the dude who tells them that the problem is very simple and that he has the solution that is equally simple. It's the immigrants stealing the jobs, or the heat pumps forced upon them, or solar cells. And it doesn't even need foreign social media to come to that.

odyssey7 2y ago

Easy: reach the future electorate when they’re pre-teens and feed them influences that eschew critical thinking as a core value. If you can believe that lead pipes contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire… well, let’s just say the Internet is a series of tubes. The concerns about TikTok merely as a propaganda platform are naïve and almost quaint when considering what might actually be happening.

datavirtue 2y ago
You just described the corporate propaganda that generations of Americans have been bathed in.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  You make a good point. A crucial difference, however, is the types of entities and their motives. A conventional U.S. corporation's motive is to generate profits. Efforts stemming from that motive have not always been in the public interest, and such cases are worthy of regulatory attention, but they typically do not present national security risks. In odd cases where pursuing profits could create national security risks, Congress has sometimes intervened, such as when Nvidia was banned from selling certain processors to certain countries. A geopolitical entity is not a profit-motivated corporation, so the risk model is different, with national security factors being more salient.

mbesto 2y ago

> Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. If we truly trust in that, the source of the influence - foreign or domestic - shouldn’t matter. Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal? You have the draw the line somewhere. > are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically. A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy.

sdwr 2y ago
You got it, it's about playing by the rules. A robust culture of propriety is one line of defense against the bad times, and we're losing it.
lmm 2y ago
> Sure, but then why is electioneering banned by polling places? Or why is voter intimidation illegal? Because those things are not just speech - they're implicit or explicit physical threats. America runs most of the world's social media platforms and expects other countries to be happy with that, but then panics the moment another country dares to offer them the same thing? I don't know which scenario is worse, the one where this is just an excuse for an America First trade war or the one where the US genuinely believes that controlling a social platform means you control the countries that use it.
olalonde 2y ago
> A democracy that is NOT a direct democracy is already admitting this. This is exactly the reason we have proxies in a representative democracy. I think it’s less about admitting this and more about the impracticality of having citizens vote on issues daily.

drdaeman 2y ago

> people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions The problem is that people aren't ideal rational agents. Our collective reasoning tends to be heavily biased by the environment, and that there are actors who abuse this (by injecting ideas that indirectly help their agendas) for their personal gains. And in China's case, they want to undermine freedoms, including freedom of speech. We can consider ourselves as "rational, critical thinkers" all we want, but we aren't as there are myriads of ways we're gullible in one way or another. Plenty of examples in our history books. Still, I think that free speech is still more important, as it's the only way for a society to recover. With freedom of speech, an antidote (for a lack of better term) can eventually be found and injected into the public discourse, without it the future looks bleak. The way I see it, we need to encourage improvement of education on social sciences, human psychology, game theory and so on, encourage critical thinking but forewarn of all possible fallacies, and hope that it will be enough and that the inevitable counter-reaction won't prevail and undermine the effort.

vkou 2y ago
Okay, but why is Chinese influence any worse than that of some Australian billionaire who owns the biggest right-wing media conglomerate that broadcasts an absolute firehouse of damaging, divisive, and self-serving lies? If TikTok is harmful to democracy, Fox News is more than an order of magnitude worse. A large portion of the electorate watches its insanity like a full-time job. Most enemies of democracy, when measured by impact are 'domestic' and 'western', not some Chinese boogieman.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  My personal opinion? It's not significantly different. Or maybe it is, but, at least, I don't see a need (and a meaningful way) to develop a scale of maliciousness. Malicious agents have no nationality, race or some single origin. All they share is the mindset and some values, willing to abuse the system for personal gains or flawed misbeliefs (for a lack of better word - beliefs that are known to contradict our collective scientific understanding of the world).

johnnyanmac 2y ago

plenty of dangers, but considering what people actually do and care about on TikTok, I wouldn't really compare this to Facebook. >People who advocate for censoring foreign sources of influence are implicitly admitting that they don't trust their population to think critically. Tbf, America did spend decades tearing down education to help support that conclusion.

motorest 2y ago

> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. Free speech is grounded in the idea that people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. You should invest a minute thinking about the problem. Pay attention to your own opinion: people are capable of reasoning and forming their own opinions. Focus on that. Now, consider that propaganda feeds false and deceiving information to the public. In some cases, the decision-maker is only exposed to propaganda. Even if that decision-maker is the most rational of actors, what kind of decisions can he do if they are only exposed to false and deceiving information? There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are?

jay_kyburz 2y ago
>There are plenty of reasons why libel and slander are punishable by law. Why do you think they are? Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote.
- motorest 2y ago
  > Also note: nobody is cracking down on libel and slander on social media because we consider internet publishers "common carriers" when infarct the should be held accountable for the things they promote. The "common carrier" status of services which hold editorial control over the content that's pushed and promoted is highly dubious.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    maybe common carrier is not quite right but social media has no proof of identity. hence I cannot sue motorest for libel if you send a nasty personal-attack reply to this :)
datavirtue 2y ago
Truth is subjective.

postingawayonhn 2y ago

> I never understood why "foreign influence" was supposed to be a bad thing. It would be less of a problem if US platforms were allowed into China to influence the Chinese too.

phatfish 2y ago

Does everyone think critically and rationally? If not how many don't (especially during key election periods) and can this group cast an oversized influence on election results or public opinion? Having the choice of two options at the ballot box, and social media meaning many people now form political opinions from anonymous accounts online does not fill me with confidence.