6 ms·

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. "This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. "This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in reality.

fedeb95 4mo ago
Not entirely true. Many science is gatekeeped, as well as other types of information. May books require illegal services to be obtained, or money (when available). Information about facts is buried in a lot of misinformation. Free flow is very hard to obtain!
wongarsu 4mo ago
Peak free information flow was in 2010. When "social" media had its big break through, and nobody had learned how to control it yet. That time gave us the occupy movement, the Arab spring, and lots of hacktivism for the social good (mostly under the Anonymous umbrella). Then the counter movement happened. And let's just say by 2016 social media was firmly under control and became a force against the people
- pjc50 4mo ago
  Yeah. I was saying "twitter gives you a revolution whether you need one or not". It's not automatic that the revolution will be progressive. And in the case of the Arab Spring, a liberal revolution gave rise to elections which brought in a much less liberal government, which is why the whole thing collapsed in short order. But social media is also uniquely good at developing "negative polarization". Some of the counter movement was organic simply because people hated the progressive wins they saw.
- prox 4mo ago
  I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever screams at us the loudest. (from S2 Andor) The loss of objectivity is one of the greatest losses. People who are online to want their trench to “win” are advocates for loss. People who abuse their position to only proclaim their side is the best, the all-knowing, the superior, or whatever the flavor is of the day, are advocates for loss. And as we have seen, we are losing a lot by losing objectivity.
antman 4mo ago
We have peak flow of propaganda and disinformation to a cartoonish level.
- div 4mo ago
  While true, i don’t see how you can have one without the other. “Fighting disinformation” is the banner under which free flow is necessarily interrupted.
  - haritha-j 4mo ago
    Yes and no I think. If you analyse it, the censors will work to actually block channels where the truth can be shared. What's left over time is only the government sanctioned media, which over time becomes more and more corrupt with disinformation. So I think I agree with your second sentence but not your first, in that if we didn't pretend to fight disinformation, I think we wouldn't have so much of it.
- srean 4mo ago
  Unfortunately we do not have a solution for countering this kind of a 'denial of service' attack on information consumption. It is trivial to concoct believable lies as compared to the effort needed to debunk them in a way that is effective at social scale. Perhaps the only weapon is to teach how to think for oneself. Who is going to invest in that in a scale necessary? Those who have the resources to do that do not have sufficient motivation. Often the motivation to do the opposite is stronger.
  - b112 4mo ago
    Indeed. And with AI and video generation, it's now (or within months) literally undetectable. The closer we get to US midterms, the more we'll see how bad it really can get this time around. And the US elections in 2028? I can barely imagine. And the massive problem is, most people I talk to still think what they see on youtube is real. But of course, people thought the TV show Survivor was real, too. It's not a new phenomenon. But it is at crazy levels. I like your 'denial of service' designation, because even knowing the problem, maybe you can't find real info still.
nephihaha 4mo ago
We don't. Search engines return a limited number of results from "trusted media" and dissident opinion, whether balanced or batshit crazy, is all lumped together as misinformation and conspiracy theory.
- jdiff 4mo ago
  Search engines return a trove of SEO-optimized generated garbage. Search engines do not apply labels such as misinformation or conspiracy theory.
  - Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
    Actually they or at least social media does or used to do, peaking during the panny-d and dismantling the 'fake news' checks and balances during Trump II.
    - LtWorf 4mo ago
      In Italy a left wing writer and historian declared publicly he was going to vote a certain way on a referendum and facebook flagged it as "fake news"… how could it be fake news if it was clearly just his own opinion and intent on what to do.
  - mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago
    Try finding anything objective on the Ukraine war and you will find to have a constant narrative shoved down your throat
0ckpuppet 4mo ago
queue Nina Janowicz at the piano
bilekas 4mo ago
> We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. We have an abundance of allowed information today, there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information. Social media censoring, takedown requests, shadow banning, government censoring.
- broken-kebab 4mo ago
  >there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information I don't think it sounds true. Pre-internet, information distribution required access to specific technical tools, and physical transportation efforts. As one of USSR dissidents noted, risks of distribution grew almost exponentially with amount of pages (and it's about imprisonment, not account deletion). For comparison, emailing so far works even in very repressive countries. And even narrowing the issue to the West, while free speech suffered a lot recently, shadowbanned account is probably still works better than hectograph.
- miki123211 4mo ago
  We went from restricting the sharing of information to making information sharing unpopular. If you ban or censor a book, you immediately make the book seem more valuable. Because governments aren't omnipotent and all restrictions can be overcome (see the war on drugs as a particularly recent and pertinent example), you just Streisand-effect yourself. If, on the other hand, you take away the popularity and social status of those who read that book, branding them as gullible idiots in the popular imagination, people will have an aversion to reading it. You don't need to ban access to the book, in fact you shouldn't do that, just make sure that talking about it will get people to lose all their friends. Social media are the modern arbiters of popularity. If social media bans a subject, people get angry. If it just quietly deboosts anybody who talks about that subject, "well let's better not do that, we tried and people really didn't like those videos I guess"
  - prox 4mo ago
    You pretty much described why I quit “social” media wholesale. It’s a turf war and nothing goods comes from it that cannot be got elsewhere at a vastly higher quality.
threetonesun 4mo ago
Do we, or are a lot of people who may or may not be on the side of tyranny doing a lot of work to control how the information actually flows.

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. "This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in reality.

fedeb95 4mo ago

Not entirely true. Many science is gatekeeped, as well as other types of information. May books require illegal services to be obtained, or money (when available). Information about facts is buried in a lot of misinformation. Free flow is very hard to obtain!

wongarsu 4mo ago

Peak free information flow was in 2010. When "social" media had its big break through, and nobody had learned how to control it yet. That time gave us the occupy movement, the Arab spring, and lots of hacktivism for the social good (mostly under the Anonymous umbrella). Then the counter movement happened. And let's just say by 2016 social media was firmly under control and became a force against the people

pjc50 4mo ago
Yeah. I was saying "twitter gives you a revolution whether you need one or not". It's not automatic that the revolution will be progressive. And in the case of the Arab Spring, a liberal revolution gave rise to elections which brought in a much less liberal government, which is why the whole thing collapsed in short order. But social media is also uniquely good at developing "negative polarization". Some of the counter movement was organic simply because people hated the progressive wins they saw.
prox 4mo ago
I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever screams at us the loudest. (from S2 Andor) The loss of objectivity is one of the greatest losses. People who are online to want their trench to “win” are advocates for loss. People who abuse their position to only proclaim their side is the best, the all-knowing, the superior, or whatever the flavor is of the day, are advocates for loss. And as we have seen, we are losing a lot by losing objectivity.

antman 4mo ago

We have peak flow of propaganda and disinformation to a cartoonish level.

div 4mo ago
While true, i don’t see how you can have one without the other. “Fighting disinformation” is the banner under which free flow is necessarily interrupted.
- haritha-j 4mo ago
  Yes and no I think. If you analyse it, the censors will work to actually block channels where the truth can be shared. What's left over time is only the government sanctioned media, which over time becomes more and more corrupt with disinformation. So I think I agree with your second sentence but not your first, in that if we didn't pretend to fight disinformation, I think we wouldn't have so much of it.
srean 4mo ago
Unfortunately we do not have a solution for countering this kind of a 'denial of service' attack on information consumption. It is trivial to concoct believable lies as compared to the effort needed to debunk them in a way that is effective at social scale. Perhaps the only weapon is to teach how to think for oneself. Who is going to invest in that in a scale necessary? Those who have the resources to do that do not have sufficient motivation. Often the motivation to do the opposite is stronger.
- b112 4mo ago
  Indeed. And with AI and video generation, it's now (or within months) literally undetectable. The closer we get to US midterms, the more we'll see how bad it really can get this time around. And the US elections in 2028? I can barely imagine. And the massive problem is, most people I talk to still think what they see on youtube is real. But of course, people thought the TV show Survivor was real, too. It's not a new phenomenon. But it is at crazy levels. I like your 'denial of service' designation, because even knowing the problem, maybe you can't find real info still.

nephihaha 4mo ago

We don't. Search engines return a limited number of results from "trusted media" and dissident opinion, whether balanced or batshit crazy, is all lumped together as misinformation and conspiracy theory.

jdiff 4mo ago
Search engines return a trove of SEO-optimized generated garbage. Search engines do not apply labels such as misinformation or conspiracy theory.
- Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
  Actually they or at least social media does or used to do, peaking during the panny-d and dismantling the 'fake news' checks and balances during Trump II.
  - LtWorf 4mo ago
    In Italy a left wing writer and historian declared publicly he was going to vote a certain way on a referendum and facebook flagged it as "fake news"… how could it be fake news if it was clearly just his own opinion and intent on what to do.
- mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago
  Try finding anything objective on the Ukraine war and you will find to have a constant narrative shoved down your throat

0ckpuppet 4mo ago

queue Nina Janowicz at the piano

bilekas 4mo ago

> We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny. We have an abundance of allowed information today, there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information. Social media censoring, takedown requests, shadow banning, government censoring.

broken-kebab 4mo ago
>there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information I don't think it sounds true. Pre-internet, information distribution required access to specific technical tools, and physical transportation efforts. As one of USSR dissidents noted, risks of distribution grew almost exponentially with amount of pages (and it's about imprisonment, not account deletion). For comparison, emailing so far works even in very repressive countries. And even narrowing the issue to the West, while free speech suffered a lot recently, shadowbanned account is probably still works better than hectograph.
miki123211 4mo ago
We went from restricting the sharing of information to making information sharing unpopular. If you ban or censor a book, you immediately make the book seem more valuable. Because governments aren't omnipotent and all restrictions can be overcome (see the war on drugs as a particularly recent and pertinent example), you just Streisand-effect yourself. If, on the other hand, you take away the popularity and social status of those who read that book, branding them as gullible idiots in the popular imagination, people will have an aversion to reading it. You don't need to ban access to the book, in fact you shouldn't do that, just make sure that talking about it will get people to lose all their friends. Social media are the modern arbiters of popularity. If social media bans a subject, people get angry. If it just quietly deboosts anybody who talks about that subject, "well let's better not do that, we tried and people really didn't like those videos I guess"
- prox 4mo ago
  You pretty much described why I quit “social” media wholesale. It’s a turf war and nothing goods comes from it that cannot be got elsewhere at a vastly higher quality.

threetonesun 4mo ago

Do we, or are a lot of people who may or may not be on the side of tyranny doing a lot of work to control how the information actually flows.