I think there is a lesson to be learned from this:
"even the most ignorant might might feel emboldened to try interpreting God’s words for themselves. As such, there was serious risk that honest folk would be led far from the path of orthodoxy"
This happened, and (among other things) lead to contemporary Biblical literalism (an extreme from of the protestant elevation of the Bible as authoritative over theological argument and tradition).
On the other hand, however bad a thing you think Biblical literalism is, I do not think anyone would argue (now, with the benefit of hindsight etc) that it would have been a good thing to censor books in the way Filippo wanted.
The police are a way for us to delegate our self-defense to a third party, the state. We give the police a certain level of authority in return for (hopefully) safety.
In your metaphor you're suggesting, "don't protect yourself, you already delegated that responsibility".
Censoring speech on the internet is exactly the same delegation of responsibility. "Don't protect yourself, delegate that responsibility to the censors".
Your metaphor is making the opposite point that you're intending.
Anyone unwilling to address this in the free speech argument is not arguing in good faith. Putting things out there in bad faith is the exact reason why censorship needs to be considered. Not a good look.
> Doesn’t unmasking all actors provide an efficient shortcut?
I can't figure out what you are suggesting here. It kind of feels like you are suggesting removing anonymity from online discussions is the solution? But I doubt that's actually what you are driving at.
I am indeed suggesting exactly this, though there are different layers of anonymity.
Such as continent, nation, state/city, down to the individual.
But I also mean that everyone knows who the others are from the start of a conversation. Not so much as a punitive measure after-the-fact.
My question is this: Rather than censoring, why aren’t we asking whether/how misinformation can be directly and visibly attributed to the sources peddling the misinformation?
There are at least two ways to refute Brandolini's Law, both work.
The first refutation is in response to a steelman version of the argument. It's simply that that you often can't know whether a claim is or isn't bullshit until someone manages to refute it, or tries to and fails. Thus even if this claim is correct, it doesn't matter. People will just have to spend the energy in order to discover what's true.
The second refutation is to observe that Brandolini's Law is itself bullshit. Therefore anyone presenting it as relevant to a debate on free speech is in fact arguing in bad faith, as you put it, whether they know it or not.
Where does this "law" come from? Calling it a law makes it sound like it's got some empirical basis in fact, and it's phrased in a mathematical way, but in reality it's literally a snarky tweet made in 2013 by some rando programmer [1]. Not only was it presented with no evidence but when asked "How do you know that" his reply was "Just read #ThinkingFastAndSlow ... then everything will fall in place". But very ironically Thinking Fast and Slow is a book famous for being built on bullshit. Many of the studies within it don't replicate, and the author later admitted that he relied too heavily on underpowered studies for his claims.
Even if this book wasn't full of bullshit, nothing in it is about the claim Brandolini made! So we have something that pretends to be some sort of scientific law but isn't, and which is justified via a bullshit irrelevant reference to a book that doesn't make that claim and which is itself full of bullshit studies. It's a fractal of bullshit.
Brandolini's Law is a good example of why we need an open and uncensored internet. Far too many people are willing to take claims at face value because they are phrased in ways that sound superficially scientific or authoritative. Our only defense against this is when people are free to refute such claims in public, extensively and robustly, without being moderated into oblivion. Only then will we be able to inch slowly closer to a truth-based and shared reality.
I agree it sounds like it should be true. But the reason BS is effective is that it often sounds true without actually being so. I can think of many examples within 10 seconds where high effort bullshit was trivially refutable, so I don't think it's safe to assume that this non-"law" actually holds in reality regardless of how cozy it may feel.
But I'm not willing, because your willingness to make unfounded assumptions leads you to demand things like censorship and the removal of all anonymity, which would only be possible at great cost and would certainly make it much harder to refute official, government sanctioned BS which is the most important kind.
Hacker News is an especially good example of why it's important. This forum is full of people who both generate and accept vast quantities of "right sounding" BS all the time, just look at any discussion of COVID, climate, etc. All you'd do with your proposals is enable large-scale harassment and punishment of anyone pointing out that yes Virginia, it's actually quite likely that a novel coronavirus came from the lab right next to the first cases, the that was experimenting on novel coronaviruses. Instead of leading us towards insight and truth you'd have it that all such people are immediately silenced on the grounds of producing producing clever "BS" that's too hard to refute.
As for science, I'm afraid that replication is usually not necessary to uncover a paper as BS. It's actually one of the things I was thinking of when I said high effort BS can often be trivially refuted. Scientists like to do a full replication anyway because within their culture that's considered respectable and lawsuit-proof, whereas pointing out that a paper is illogical, makes absurd assumptions and none of the numbers add up can land you in hot water. But in reality lots of high-effort scientific papers that took a team of authors months to produce can be refuted in five minutes by just pointing out things in the text. "How did this get through peer review?" is a very common response to studying bad scientific papers - you don't need a full blown replication to detect these problems.
Some misinformation is misinformation, it can be refuted.
Some "misinformation" is information where there are multiple perspectives, and the "mis" classification is because the ruling party is on the opposite side. This is why censorship is chosen, because it cannot be refuted. The correctness or incorrectness is in the eye of the beholder.
I'll get ravaged for pointing this out, but Hunter Biden's laptop and Joes corruption in Ukraine were Russian misinformation until last year. Now the NYT admits the laptop is real and is slowly admitting that Burisma smells really bad.
What in the Bible can you show to be misinformation? You seem to be making the same mistake as the censors: that you personally do not believe something to be true means it is misinformation.
If you just want a good example, one of the first best sellers was Malleus Maleficarum, the book that revived belief in witchcraft (belief in which, contrary to popular misconceptions, had been suppressed by the church for most of the medieval period) and lead to the witch burnings of the early modern era.
Nobody has to prove that there are no unicorns, who claims their existence has to present the evidence, and I was obviously not referring to the parts of the Bible that deal with mundane things. But let me rephrase my statement, by printing the Bible unsubstantiated claims were spread. I will give you that misinformation and unsubstantiated claim are not the same, but there is considerable overlap.
Never mind the Bible is a fairly (very) accurate historical record of the history of the Israelites post Judges.
Since you're clearly a biblical scholar:
What part of the Bible is misinformation?
What is your definition of misinformation?
Do you consider the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran misinformation?
What would you have done to convert this misinformation? Let it be until the forces of liberalism erase Christianity (and Judaism presumably)? Forced anti-Bible education in the elementary curriculum? Incarceration of religious? The Reds in Mexico and Spain shot priests and raped nuns. Was that too much? Not far enough?
If this post is misinformation, which you are asking for evidence of, why don't you refute it, as the article suggests?
I disagree that the Bible is misinformation now; it's historical literature - a very long novel, much like other fantasy novels. The same is true for the other stories you mention.
Pretty much. The OP could, with some charity, be considered crudely restating the teachings of second century Church Fathers [1]. Or it could be an ignorant [2]
whole cloth rejection of the Bible as fantastical as if it were Narnia.
What does OP consider misinformation? What, if not all, does the OP consider misinformation in the Bible? But that's the modus operandi today isn't it? Shout "misinformation" and have corporate power censor it.
[1] that many passages of the Bible are clearly allegorical and should be interpreted as such.
[2] ignorant as it ignores the extensive historical cross-references with non Judaic sources or archeological discoveries.
It is fantastical, and this is by design. I've visited many places described in the Bible; I know it's somewhat grounded in fact. But much like other historical literature, it isn't a completely reliable historical document, especially given that it has been doctored through the ages, such as the Synod of Hippo 'approving' the canon.
But, as I said, I disagree with the notion that it, or any other religious work, is misinformation. It was the 'truth' at the time it was conceived. Other religions existed and continue to exist. Religious dogma isn't necessarily misinformation.
As I said in other comments, the term misinformation might not be the best fit, take unsubstantiated claims instead. Also my initial comment was to some extent meant jokingly and provocative.
For what I mean, pick whatever supernatural thing you want - God's existence, how he made the universe and Adam and Eve, how he talked to people from a bush, how he flooded the world and killed everyone accept Noah and the other guys and animals on the boat, how he sacrificed his son, ...
There are of course also historic facts in the Bible, I am obviously not saying it is all nonsense. We do not even have to argue about a historical Jesus, could be either way.
There is no room for being a bit provocative here. Misinformation was mostly directed at the unsubstantiated claims about God, beyond that the Bible is of course a multifaceted book of its time containing all kinds of stuff from historical records to moral guidelines.
You consider God unsubstantiated because you reject the signs and miracles of the Abrahamic God, like I reject the signs and miracle of Hinduism.
That hardly means Abraham's God (or Vishnu) doesn't exist or the Bible is misinformation.
The difference between us two is that I would never debase myself and declare the Veda's misinformation just because I don't believe in Vishnu; rather I consider the Vedas a jewel to be treasured by all peoples across the world.
But, to be honest, Im a more open minded and tolerant guy than your average fellow.
Now that we have kind of clarified what you mean, what is your evidence that any of those things actually happend besides that someone wrote a couple of paragraphs about them in the Bible? I would also be interested in knowing why those miracles no longer occur or, if they still occur, why do we not have any credible high quality videos of them?
Did I say anything like that? I asked for any evidence besides words in the Bible. But we already know that there is none because if it existed, then it would be a central piece of our understanding of the world and everyone would learn about it in school. The best there is are things like pieces of fabric that were supposedly used to wrap the body of Jesus.
Even if one could actually prove this, it would at best prove that some guy named Jesus existed and was crucified. From that to there is a God and Jesus was his son it is still a GIGANTIC leap that would still have absolutely zero evidence.
So in anticipation that there will be no evidence provided for biblical miracles, I included the followup question why miracles are no longer happening nowadays. And for the case that someone would respond that they are still happening nowadays I include another followup question, why is there video evidence despite everyone running around with a phone in their hand at all times.
So I really do not know why you would turn my completely reasonable question into one for HDTV video of biblical events. Either you did not even properly read my comment before replying or that must be some kind of evasive maneuver to avoid addressing the actual question.
And one more thing before someone accused me of having some ideological prejudices or whatnot. I could not care less whether to universe runs on string theory or whether God is pulling the strings, I am only interested in knowing the truth or the most likely or most reasonable explanation about how our universe works. Show me the evidence and I will accept whatever it implies.
The Bible claims the existence of God without any evidence. As I said in another comment, I am willing to change my wording from misinformation to unsubstantiated claims as there might be a fine line that makes the Bible fall into the later but not the former category.
What would I have done is not a good question. As whom? What means would have been available to me? It seems that at least in the western world religions are in a general decline which I would want to attribute to generally improved education. And that seems also the best, albeit a slow path. So if one could have done anything, then probably better education and maybe less support by the state for religious institutions. But this is of course all hindsight, how would you educate people about things not yet discovered, how would you make them take a more scientific perspective when science was still in its infancy?
Ah yes, therefore we should treat everyone like children who need our protection. Wait, we're going to need some extra power so we can properly protect them. Yeah, we'll probably need a big budget too.
And we know what's right and wrong so we need to take swift and bold action against these cretins - I mean citizens - who are espousing the wrong views.
What a lovely free and liberal society we have. And it just so happens our kids are learning less and less in school [0]... darn, I guess we'll have to crackdown even harder and triple the budget....
The biggest problem with a total lack of moderation is stochastic terrorism. As a response to gp mentions, people attacking fiber optic cables for “causing covid” is a problem that can’t simply be refuted logically.
The term has been well known in public-policy discussions for at least a decade. The basic idea goes back a loooooong time, at least to 1170 when Henry II of England asked, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (meaning Thomas Becket). Thus he ensured that someone would and did, even though he didn't know who, where, or how. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie could serve as a contemporary example that also predates what wiki-editors seem aware of. Offering a clear path to gain favor is almost as good as an order.
Nowadays, when a prominent US politician says "these people are {killing babies|sexualizing children|stealing an election} and something should be done about it" then it becomes increasingly likely that violent acts will follow, even though no specific or direct order was given. It's a way to rule by fear while supposedly retaining deniability, but anybody who has been paying attention can see right through it and it's beginning to look as though the legal system might catch up.
I cite an example from 1170 and you pretend I'm claiming it's new? Maybe you should direct your comments to my interlocutor, who claimed not to know the term in 2023. Using "this isn't new" as your standard opening - three times in this discussion alone and all of them a bit spurious - isn't very good for curious conversation.
Exactly what it says: the legal system has not caught up. Even in a post-Brandenburg world, the standard is still that the threat must be both explicit and imminent. They're still struggling with the "stochastic" part of stochastic terrorism, even though the phenomenon itself has existed for centuries.
> I’m talking about the current legal system here like you, so I’m wondering what’s fundamentally so new that censorship is the only answer here?
Never said, never implied, not even relevant in this particular sub-thread.
> Exactly what it says: the legal system has not caught up. Even in a post-Brandenburg world, the standard is still that the threat must be both explicit and imminent. They're still struggling with the "stochastic" part of stochastic terrorism, even though the phenomenon itself has existed for centuries.
That’s not an answer. I already showed you where we have existing laws and precedent; so I ask again what’s different?
Or are you saying that the bar for inciting violence was considered too stringent?
Because the only legal lack I’m aware of is what to do when a President is the one that incites a rebellion.
> Never said, never implied, not even relevant in this particular sub-thread.
Fair. The sub-thread spawned from moderated speech but I agree moderation isn’t the same as censorship.
Maybe public policy discussions between foolish people, but not elsewhere. You really don't want to go down the route of loosening the standards around blaming people for unrelated people's acts. Not only would that simply be an excuse to engage in actual terrorism, committed against anyone who has an opinion or enters politics, but it's a sword that cuts both ways.
After all, the most violent political acts in the last few years in the USA were the Floyd riots. But do you really want to prosecute anyone who argues that there's a racism problem in America for "stochastic terrorism", because some people heard that and went looting? Seems obviously inflammatory and unwise.
It's unlikely. It's not just how educated an motivated you are, you don't have enough time to be an expert in everything.
There are billion dollar industries designed to change your mind and get you to act against your best interest without you even recognising it, but people think they are "free thinkers".
Assuming you are a human, you don't have time to read everything even on just the important issues. The people who are deliberately producing information (as opposed to those whose misinformation is due to error) can often outnumber the producers of accurate information by orders of magnitude.
That's both because it takes much more work to produce something accurate than to produce something inaccurate, and because those deliberately producing misinformation often more resources to put toward such production.
I thought we did science and determined that telling people they're victims of misinformation is about the most useless way of trying to change their mind. Facebook experimented with refutation and it was a disaster, it had the opposite effect intended. At least that's what I heard, and given everything I know about human nature I believe it.
I'd be suspicious of any research from BigTech on this - it is in their vested interest to allow and control political discussions on their platform due to the huge influence it gives them in shaping political discourse in any country.
Disinformation campaigns are asymmetrical warfare. It takes a huge amount of effort to undo the damage caused by disinfo, while it's trivial to create more disinformation (and this was already true before generative AI became a thing).
So, no. If we can prevent it from being created or launched, or if we can prevent it from reaching its audience, then, and only then, information can win.
That's not what I said or meant. Given a lot of political coordinated misinformation campaigns come from a limited number of actors and organizations, with mostly aligned interests, I don't think it's impossible, or even difficult, to prevent their weapons from spreading without any collateral damage to freedom of speech. You can still be wrong and nobody should prevent you from expressing the wrongness the same way you shouldn't be able to prevent someone else from correcting you.
Remember the reason for free speech: it exists so that the people can be informed, a fundamental requirement for the exercise of democracy. When someone actively and deliberately misinforms the people, for whatever reasons, they should be held accountable for any damage they cause - the very same way one can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theatre and expect society not to punish them for the deaths they caused.
I disagree with this because intent is a significant factor to consider.
If a person contributing online is incorrect but participates in good faith, refuting is a great way to continue the discussion in a healthy, constructive manner.
If a person contributing online is not participating in good faith, this becomes a lot more complex. Especially based on the degree and potential impacts of misinformation.
Free speech is a right that only works when people utilizing it do so responsibly.
I agree with you on the point that free speech (and free societies in general I think) require a culture of good faith participation. You only get nice things when everyone is more or less civil.
The problem is making the tough choices of what to do about uncivil discourse or bad faith actors who are not interested in upholding civility for the sake of the society. Unfortunately there are no easy answers which leave us with a lot of bad or difficult options to choose from.
Very true, IMO one of the reasons why the internet is so toxic is because humans aren't actually interacting directly with each other - we just fire off our thoughts into the ether from behind our screens.
I'd think we're not utilizing all of our social faculties we otherwise would in a face-to-face conversation. We don't see a human in front of us so our brains aren't "firing on all cylinders". E.g. being polite, assuming good-faith, tempering negative impulses and all of the other social lubricant that normally allows humans to peacefully coexist in a society.
The concept of "good faith" is a self-refuting one, as it has no real definition. It's just an sophisticated sounding ad-hominem that means "I don't think this person really believes what they say" but is invariably made without any proof, as it's the sort of unfalsifiable she's-a-witch claim that cannot be proven one way or another.
you can still read the flagged and dead comments. they are NOT censored. they are hidden to get out of the way, but they are not removed. if you want to know what is being flagged or dead, you can go and check. i do. that's exactly the point.
For those in favor of censoring the internet, here's a notion that helped me:
Probably all of us would be against censoring the verbal communications between individuals in our society. Such communication is full of untruths and agenda-driven lies. Right now parents and teachers the world over are propagating untruths to children. Workplace discussions are happening around watercoolers where unscientific nonsense is spreading. We just accept that this space of human interaction is the noise floor of our civilization, and maybe even appreciate the agency that this gives us.
With the spread of the internet, that same communication is happening online. It being online is literally the only difference. Let the noise flow, I say, and from it can both objective and social truths arise. To do anything else doesn't give us truth anymore than did restricting interpersonal speech in certain unpleasant regimes throughout history.
I think some people truly believe they are 100% correct and anyone who disagrees should be silenced. It is narcissistic thinking that defeats honest debate, or honest communication.
This may be true, but it's the wrong straw man to attack in this debate. The real argument for censorship is to eliminate flooding the media with deliberate misinformation in favor of some actor who is doing it on purpose to influence the real world.
I believe if we had had a system in place to censor unscientific information regarding climate change, we would not be in as deep shit as we are now. It's a very strong argument for moderating what can and cannot be said publicly, as the negative consequences will be felt dearly by many.
Obviously there are problems with censorship, but I just want to point out that nothing about this is as clear cut as you would like to believe.
science sometimes can get it wrong too. only through the clash of opinions can we work out the real truth.
i absolutely agree that the spread of some messages should be limited, but outright censorship risks removing the wrong messages, and gets in the way of a critical discussion.
I assume you enjoy browsing unmoderated message boards then? Do I need to create 100 bot accounts to parrot this point of view for you to believe some amount of censorship is not only beneficial, but actually mandatory.
these problems can be solved with downvoting. HN is doing that, and the curious/critical readers here can see the dead comments and judge for themselves. no actual removal of comments needed.
You shouldn't get that annoyed. If you look at the other two links I provided. The elites at the time were calling on censorship for the same reasons as on hackernews and in academia & Government. Same narratives around censoring the printing press as for social media today.
I'm not suprised by Government or those (elites) who gain from this.
What's a shame to me, is our academics are making the same terrible arguments as those from the 1400's.
The problem has always been who can you trust to choose what is misinformation. I know of no one I would outsource that too, I certainly don't want to outsource it to any of the billionaire owners of the social networks, news papers nor to any government now or in the future.
I live in an age where the WHO called Covid droplet spread when it was and proven to be airborne and governments around the globe are still telling people to diligently wash their hands for a virus they breath in. Most of the mainstream media and social media is happily going with that as well. You can't trust people generally, including the authorities and experts on a topic.
I choose no one to have the power over what I can read.
I'll also assert that the problem of volume is real. Both quantity and loudness.
The challenger incident is a good case study. The motivated management to attempt the launch made it such that the quiet truth of the actual safety was hard for the group to hear. Until it was a disaster.
(Yes, I think I'm basically restating the squeaky wheel idea.)
This article is conveniently omitting the conservative efforts to censor content and spread less factual versions of reality, like the Florida school system’s wide censorship of books implemented by Ron DeSantis, or the conservative efforts in multiple states to remove any discussion gender or race from curriculum, or approval of PragerU as an education vendor in Texas.
Government censorship is bad, and bill C-10 is bad, but the one-sided nature of this article reveals its true motivation, which is to support conservative politics.
That's fair, and it's also exactly one of the issues discussed in this thread. Namely, that refuting "misinformation" is an order of magnitude harder than spreading it.
I can tell we have deep disagreements, and it would take entirely too much time and effort to try and convince you otherwise (which is probably unachievable in this sort of forum anyways).
I'll just say that I disagree with the framing of your points around school curriculum and Florida censorship. The framing is the most uncharitable interpretation of what's actually going on, which is why I referred to your "less factual versions of reality".
It allows individual parents to DDoS the school with objections to individual materials, forcing hearings led by a vaguely defined “unbiased” individual.
It requires librarians to undergo state level training to choose materials. How bad this is really depends on the content of the training (do any of us know what that is?). We all know who controls the state government of Florida.
It doesn’t have to be overt censorship to be a bad bill that disincentivizes schools from carrying books with controversial topics and has the effective result of censorship. If a school wants to avoid a procedural nightmare they just can’t carry some materials at all.
Here’s a quote directly from Ron DeSantis’ website championing the bill:
> “Recently I discovered one of the most disturbing, pornographic books in my child’s high school in Orange County,” said Alicia Farrant, Parent, Orange County. “After some research, I learned that an alarming percentage of high school and middle school library books contain similar material. It is appalling that removal of pornographic and sexually explicit books has even been cause for debate.”
In other words, some parent was mad that a book discussed sex. A glaring omission is the title of the material, it’s just an anonymous unknown scapegoat. Now the it is undoubtedly banned thanks to the objection of one parent.
Now students have one less resource that gives them information and perspective about the changes happening to their body and their journey to adulthood. Now parents can easily get books removed based on their personal objections rather than their value to the school community as a whole.
This is exactly the "censorship" the right obsesses about. Not the real kind, as in the examples you cited. What they want is the ability to make any claim they want with zero support, and when asked for any "turn the tables" by putting the entire burden on their interlocutor - who might, as in this case, have met it already. They call denial of that "censorship" even if it very much isn't. That's just giving zero credence to zero proof or effort. They need periodic reminders that the right to speak freely does not include the right to be heard, believed, or even taken seriously. It's only censorship when you can't speak even on your own platform.
The author also seems to have pulled a fast one, writing:
> Unfortunately, some politicians seem to have an unhealthy obsession with censorship. For example, U.S. President Joe Biden recently accused social media platforms, like Facebook, of “killing people” with misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Criticizing something, even by the President, is not censorship.
Part of me agrees, another strongly disagrees. Refutation works in a rational society, and we don't live in one.
Quoting the fantastic Terry Pratchett: "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on."
This has a few consequences: 1) Most of the damage is done. 2) Correcting the lie/misinformation takes a lot more effort that it takes to spread the lie. 3) The lie/misinformation can cost lives (missinformation on vaccines, coloidal silver, etc)
It doesn't help that some people and publications make money by selling lies and inflaming people (tabloids, many 'influencers', etc). And also that some supposedly respected institutions are often the originator of those lies (e.g. health risks of smoking, excess sugars, etc)
The solution isn’t to censor. How does one decide what should be censored and what should be allowed? We are refining what we know and altogether dropping wrong ideas for new ones. What is the goal of censorship? There was a time when those who suggested the Earth revolved around the sun were censored and attacked.
As the OP makes pretty clear, the amplification effect of the internet has made the problem worse than it used to be, so "traveled well before" is misleading at best.
This asymmetry has been written about many times - as bullshit, flooding the zone, sealioning, etc. What some call censorship is often just trying to make things symmetrical again, to give those who are trying to argue from facts a fighting chance. That's why such accusations are a staple among the people who peddle the misinformation in the first place, and also among people who are just trying to avoid accountability when they've always been perfectly free to say what they want. People need to learn what real censorship is, and stop throwing the term around any time they don't think they're getting the hearing or reaction they deserve.
> As the OP makes pretty clear, the amplification effect of the internet has made the problem worse than it used to be, so "traveled well before" is misleading at best.
Correct. What about our ability to ruin reputations? Hasn’t that amplified as well via the so-called Streisand effect?
You are advocating for censorship for practical reasons, but it is censorship at the end of the day.
What you’re saying is that it’s hard to battle misinformation, and this is true. What isn’t true is that muzzling misinformation is the only way to combat this problem, even if it seems like the easiest approach.
And if you want accountability, then censorship is the least effective approach in a democratic society; as you’ve hidden away what should be held to account.
How about, platforms that publish misinformation should be financially liable for the ill effects of the misinformation. How did we build a tech ecosystem wherein tech companies get the exclusive right to run ads against the content on their site, and yet have no liability over the effects of that content?
So if that platform were a public square, we’d hold the government liable?
I deeply disagree with the proponents of anti-vax; and many of the right-wing positions.
And I think, for instance, removing some of the internet anonymity and breaking up tech monopolies would both be quite helpful in solving the problems we have today.
Completely shutting down discourse and not allowing fringe ideas to be discussed, however, can’t be the way.
It's a pointless endeavour when there are those who'll believe religiously in bunk regardless. I spent a considerable amount of time during the pandemic refuting a "data scientist" on Twitter whose forte was misquoting BMJ articles and producing misleading charts based loosely on real data. Didn't change a single mind even when I could show it was bleedingly obvious he was full of shit. What's worse is he knew perfectly well what he was doing, and I'm certain he also owned a copy of "How to Lie With Statistics". I now wish I had spent that time on something more productive and left his followers to believe whatever they wanted to believe.
How do you know? People don't post "thanks for changing my mind!" when they change their mind.
Have you ever changed your mind? How often did you go and express that you changed your mind to the person who changed your mind? Did you at some point start voting differently? Did you go to the politician that convinced you and told him he changed your mind? Probably not, people mostly change their mind in silence, many wont even acknowledge they changed their mind if you confront them.
I used to believe the United States had the most sophisticated production and mediums for creating and spreading their propaganda and cultural values. But the ban against Russia Today (Accused of spreading propaganda, RT gets deplatformed - https://www.protocol.com/entertainment/rt-ban-roku-apple-dir... ) in both the US and Europe really changed my perspective.
It would be really interesting to know the cost-benefit analysis they did before considering such a drastic step because not only does it go against their democratic values it suddenly introduces a very apparent cognitive dissonance to the western idea that Russia is weak and irrelevant as a super power (and isn't even worthy to be called a super power) - if that is the reality then why is it that the US, the most vocal vanguard of free speech, suddenly feels so threatened by the ideas in RT? And why do US and European political leaders suddenly believe that they are no longer in a position to present a strong counter view to the ideas in RT?
My regular sources of news includes my country's own local media, and international outlets like BBC, CNN, DW, Arab News, Gulf Times, NYT, NYP, NPR etc. RT wasn't even on the radar. RT is now part of my regular sources of news - when I learnt about the ban, I got curious about it and checked it out (the Streisand effect at work). I found the content to be similar to many of the other public funded media outlets - all of them have similar types of news, views and propaganda (why their own country / culture is great, how their enemies are wrong, and their different perspective about other countries depending on their own country's relationship with them etc.).
Yes, when it comes to reporting on the US, I did notice a definite slant towards Republican politics on RT.
But then, if one believes in democracy and free speech the way the US does, why should a non-Republican administration feel threatened if RT paints the American Republicans in a better light than the Democrats (or some other politician or party)? It's natural for voters to be swayed but finally it is still an American who is elected by the masses - whether it be a Democrat or a Republican. And representational democracy offers a check and balance in such a democracy - just because Americans who read RT get swayed and elect Republicans, doesn't mean the elected Republicans have to be swayed by the mass (in fact it often is the other way, and like I pointed out, representation can serve as one of the built-in checks and balances of representational democracy against majoritarianism).
However, if some Democrats / Americans believe that their own fellow American politicians will not serve their own country's interest, America has an existential issue bigger than Russia.
Censoring information just makes the educated suspicious towards an administration. Countering it, or even just presenting an alternate perspective to it is what cultivates democratic value. Else it is a slow slide to authoritarianism, which is what we are all seeing more and more of, around the world.
No. This is well proven.
1) it is exponentially easier to generate bullshit than to refute it
2) the prevalence of misinformation can sway public opinion and the opinion of those without sufficient experience to refute
The correct approach is to lay out the facts clearly, outlining the chain of reasoning so that anyone can follow it if they choose. Identify known purveyors of bullshit and shut them down so they stop polluting the idea space.
And carefully, with intellectual humility consider opposing but well reasoned ideas.
Shutting down known bullshiters is necessary for preserving public discourse otherwise they just spray bullshit at all hours of all days and overwhelm well reasoned discourse.
If someone is shouting nonsense in a debate, interrupting, and not listening you have no obligation to keep them in the debate. In fact if they’re arguing in bad faith that alone is enough to stop listening to them, stop amplifying them, stop talking about their ideas.
> No. This is well proven. 1) it is exponentially easier to generate bullshit than to refute it
If it's well proven then you can easily link to a rigorous proof of that claim, one that justifies the use of mathematical terminology like "exponentially easier". Yes?
I think it's not actually proven and cannot be proven because you don't have a precise definition of bullshit to begin with, let alone a reliable means of identifying it, nor any way to measure how "easy" it is to create rather than refute.
Therefore any claim that it is exponentially easier, must itself be misinformation. Which means that under your own policy you would be "shut down", whatever that means. See how sharp the sword is that you wish to wield here?
Unfortunately while the thinking is correct, in reality a lot of information is suppressed and censored because it doesn't fit the motives and beliefs of those in control of the platform. It's a little too generalized but I believe the truth does not mind a challenge, but a lie will fight.
An element to this this I'd like to see explored is how reliant some are on social media for most if not all their information. Said platforms already heavily tailor what individuals see in order to maximize engagement.
Not only is it significantly harder to debunk misinformation than to create it (i.e., Brandolini's Law), but there's a good chance on social media platforms that the types of individuals presented with misinformation from some party A will never even be exposed to the debunking information from some party B at all.
So, for many, they're effectively already in a censorship-rich environment. The idea that there is or has ever been a truly free exchange of ideas seems disingenuous at best.
>Many of their published articles are by well-known climate change skeptics Patrick Moore (see publications), Donna Laframboise (see publications), and Paul Driessen (see publications)
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 355 ms ] threadhttps://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-war-against-printing/
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65585/pg65585-images.ht...
"even the most ignorant might might feel emboldened to try interpreting God’s words for themselves. As such, there was serious risk that honest folk would be led far from the path of orthodoxy"
This happened, and (among other things) lead to contemporary Biblical literalism (an extreme from of the protestant elevation of the Bible as authoritative over theological argument and tradition).
On the other hand, however bad a thing you think Biblical literalism is, I do not think anyone would argue (now, with the benefit of hindsight etc) that it would have been a good thing to censor books in the way Filippo wanted.
The police are a way for us to delegate our self-defense to a third party, the state. We give the police a certain level of authority in return for (hopefully) safety.
In your metaphor you're suggesting, "don't protect yourself, you already delegated that responsibility".
Censoring speech on the internet is exactly the same delegation of responsibility. "Don't protect yourself, delegate that responsibility to the censors".
Your metaphor is making the opposite point that you're intending.
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Anyone unwilling to address this in the free speech argument is not arguing in good faith. Putting things out there in bad faith is the exact reason why censorship needs to be considered. Not a good look.
This problem is not new (boy that cried wolf).
Doesn’t unmasking all actors provide an efficient shortcut?
I can't figure out what you are suggesting here. It kind of feels like you are suggesting removing anonymity from online discussions is the solution? But I doubt that's actually what you are driving at.
Such as continent, nation, state/city, down to the individual.
But I also mean that everyone knows who the others are from the start of a conversation. Not so much as a punitive measure after-the-fact.
My question is this: Rather than censoring, why aren’t we asking whether/how misinformation can be directly and visibly attributed to the sources peddling the misinformation?
The first refutation is in response to a steelman version of the argument. It's simply that that you often can't know whether a claim is or isn't bullshit until someone manages to refute it, or tries to and fails. Thus even if this claim is correct, it doesn't matter. People will just have to spend the energy in order to discover what's true.
The second refutation is to observe that Brandolini's Law is itself bullshit. Therefore anyone presenting it as relevant to a debate on free speech is in fact arguing in bad faith, as you put it, whether they know it or not.
Where does this "law" come from? Calling it a law makes it sound like it's got some empirical basis in fact, and it's phrased in a mathematical way, but in reality it's literally a snarky tweet made in 2013 by some rando programmer [1]. Not only was it presented with no evidence but when asked "How do you know that" his reply was "Just read #ThinkingFastAndSlow ... then everything will fall in place". But very ironically Thinking Fast and Slow is a book famous for being built on bullshit. Many of the studies within it don't replicate, and the author later admitted that he relied too heavily on underpowered studies for his claims.
Even if this book wasn't full of bullshit, nothing in it is about the claim Brandolini made! So we have something that pretends to be some sort of scientific law but isn't, and which is justified via a bullshit irrelevant reference to a book that doesn't make that claim and which is itself full of bullshit studies. It's a fractal of bullshit.
Brandolini's Law is a good example of why we need an open and uncensored internet. Far too many people are willing to take claims at face value because they are phrased in ways that sound superficially scientific or authoritative. Our only defense against this is when people are free to refute such claims in public, extensively and robustly, without being moderated into oblivion. Only then will we be able to inch slowly closer to a truth-based and shared reality.
[1] https://twitter.com/ziobrando/status/289635060758507521
Real investigative journalism is costly, for example, and fewer outlets are able to do this today.
Our society is the poorer for it but there seems to be too many interests and market forces against this.
We see this in science where it’s the lack of replication that uncovers the BS.
We’ll agree to disagree, but I’m willing to assume this as a given to progress an argument.
Hacker News is an especially good example of why it's important. This forum is full of people who both generate and accept vast quantities of "right sounding" BS all the time, just look at any discussion of COVID, climate, etc. All you'd do with your proposals is enable large-scale harassment and punishment of anyone pointing out that yes Virginia, it's actually quite likely that a novel coronavirus came from the lab right next to the first cases, the that was experimenting on novel coronaviruses. Instead of leading us towards insight and truth you'd have it that all such people are immediately silenced on the grounds of producing producing clever "BS" that's too hard to refute.
As for science, I'm afraid that replication is usually not necessary to uncover a paper as BS. It's actually one of the things I was thinking of when I said high effort BS can often be trivially refuted. Scientists like to do a full replication anyway because within their culture that's considered respectable and lawsuit-proof, whereas pointing out that a paper is illogical, makes absurd assumptions and none of the numbers add up can land you in hot water. But in reality lots of high-effort scientific papers that took a team of authors months to produce can be refuted in five minutes by just pointing out things in the text. "How did this get through peer review?" is a very common response to studying bad scientific papers - you don't need a full blown replication to detect these problems.
Some "misinformation" is information where there are multiple perspectives, and the "mis" classification is because the ruling party is on the opposite side. This is why censorship is chosen, because it cannot be refuted. The correctness or incorrectness is in the eye of the beholder.
I'll get ravaged for pointing this out, but Hunter Biden's laptop and Joes corruption in Ukraine were Russian misinformation until last year. Now the NYT admits the laptop is real and is slowly admitting that Burisma smells really bad.
If you just want a good example, one of the first best sellers was Malleus Maleficarum, the book that revived belief in witchcraft (belief in which, contrary to popular misconceptions, had been suppressed by the church for most of the medieval period) and lead to the witch burnings of the early modern era.
Since you're clearly a biblical scholar:
What part of the Bible is misinformation?
What is your definition of misinformation?
Do you consider the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran misinformation?
What would you have done to convert this misinformation? Let it be until the forces of liberalism erase Christianity (and Judaism presumably)? Forced anti-Bible education in the elementary curriculum? Incarceration of religious? The Reds in Mexico and Spain shot priests and raped nuns. Was that too much? Not far enough?
I disagree that the Bible is misinformation now; it's historical literature - a very long novel, much like other fantasy novels. The same is true for the other stories you mention.
What does OP consider misinformation? What, if not all, does the OP consider misinformation in the Bible? But that's the modus operandi today isn't it? Shout "misinformation" and have corporate power censor it.
[1] that many passages of the Bible are clearly allegorical and should be interpreted as such. [2] ignorant as it ignores the extensive historical cross-references with non Judaic sources or archeological discoveries.
But, as I said, I disagree with the notion that it, or any other religious work, is misinformation. It was the 'truth' at the time it was conceived. Other religions existed and continue to exist. Religious dogma isn't necessarily misinformation.
For what I mean, pick whatever supernatural thing you want - God's existence, how he made the universe and Adam and Eve, how he talked to people from a bush, how he flooded the world and killed everyone accept Noah and the other guys and animals on the boat, how he sacrificed his son, ...
There are of course also historic facts in the Bible, I am obviously not saying it is all nonsense. We do not even have to argue about a historical Jesus, could be either way.
That hardly means Abraham's God (or Vishnu) doesn't exist or the Bible is misinformation.
The difference between us two is that I would never debase myself and declare the Veda's misinformation just because I don't believe in Vishnu; rather I consider the Vedas a jewel to be treasured by all peoples across the world.
But, to be honest, Im a more open minded and tolerant guy than your average fellow.
I thought you merely rejected them as misinformation, not that you ignored the very claims.
Even if one could actually prove this, it would at best prove that some guy named Jesus existed and was crucified. From that to there is a God and Jesus was his son it is still a GIGANTIC leap that would still have absolutely zero evidence.
So in anticipation that there will be no evidence provided for biblical miracles, I included the followup question why miracles are no longer happening nowadays. And for the case that someone would respond that they are still happening nowadays I include another followup question, why is there video evidence despite everyone running around with a phone in their hand at all times.
So I really do not know why you would turn my completely reasonable question into one for HDTV video of biblical events. Either you did not even properly read my comment before replying or that must be some kind of evasive maneuver to avoid addressing the actual question.
And one more thing before someone accused me of having some ideological prejudices or whatnot. I could not care less whether to universe runs on string theory or whether God is pulling the strings, I am only interested in knowing the truth or the most likely or most reasonable explanation about how our universe works. Show me the evidence and I will accept whatever it implies.
What would I have done is not a good question. As whom? What means would have been available to me? It seems that at least in the western world religions are in a general decline which I would want to attribute to generally improved education. And that seems also the best, albeit a slow path. So if one could have done anything, then probably better education and maybe less support by the state for religious institutions. But this is of course all hindsight, how would you educate people about things not yet discovered, how would you make them take a more scientific perspective when science was still in its infancy?
And we know what's right and wrong so we need to take swift and bold action against these cretins - I mean citizens - who are espousing the wrong views.
What a lovely free and liberal society we have. And it just so happens our kids are learning less and less in school [0]... darn, I guess we'll have to crackdown even harder and triple the budget....
[0] https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/state-test-r...
The term has been well known in public-policy discussions for at least a decade. The basic idea goes back a loooooong time, at least to 1170 when Henry II of England asked, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (meaning Thomas Becket). Thus he ensured that someone would and did, even though he didn't know who, where, or how. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie could serve as a contemporary example that also predates what wiki-editors seem aware of. Offering a clear path to gain favor is almost as good as an order.
Nowadays, when a prominent US politician says "these people are {killing babies|sexualizing children|stealing an election} and something should be done about it" then it becomes increasingly likely that violent acts will follow, even though no specific or direct order was given. It's a way to rule by fear while supposedly retaining deniability, but anybody who has been paying attention can see right through it and it's beginning to look as though the legal system might catch up.
I am not a lawyer but we’ve had these same discourses during the 1960s (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio)
Can you explain what you mean here, then?
I’m talking about the current legal system here like you, so I’m wondering what’s fundamentally so new that censorship is the only answer here?
Exactly what it says: the legal system has not caught up. Even in a post-Brandenburg world, the standard is still that the threat must be both explicit and imminent. They're still struggling with the "stochastic" part of stochastic terrorism, even though the phenomenon itself has existed for centuries.
> I’m talking about the current legal system here like you, so I’m wondering what’s fundamentally so new that censorship is the only answer here?
Never said, never implied, not even relevant in this particular sub-thread.
That’s not an answer. I already showed you where we have existing laws and precedent; so I ask again what’s different?
Or are you saying that the bar for inciting violence was considered too stringent?
Because the only legal lack I’m aware of is what to do when a President is the one that incites a rebellion.
> Never said, never implied, not even relevant in this particular sub-thread.
Fair. The sub-thread spawned from moderated speech but I agree moderation isn’t the same as censorship.
After all, the most violent political acts in the last few years in the USA were the Floyd riots. But do you really want to prosecute anyone who argues that there's a racism problem in America for "stochastic terrorism", because some people heard that and went looting? Seems obviously inflammatory and unwise.
Should you be held responsible if someone attacks "a prominent US politician" after reading your comment?
There are billion dollar industries designed to change your mind and get you to act against your best interest without you even recognising it, but people think they are "free thinkers".
But don't you dare silence me.
How do you feel about literacy tests for voting? Presumably you're all in.
Assuming you are a human, you don't have time to read everything even on just the important issues. The people who are deliberately producing information (as opposed to those whose misinformation is due to error) can often outnumber the producers of accurate information by orders of magnitude.
That's both because it takes much more work to produce something accurate than to produce something inaccurate, and because those deliberately producing misinformation often more resources to put toward such production.
Meanwhile people laying fibreoptic cable are attacked for creating covid
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/07/5g-conspira...
The perpetrators of these attacks don't come up with their ideas from nowhere.
lets create special goverment commitee that will read all messages before posting and block any 'misinformation'
So, no. If we can prevent it from being created or launched, or if we can prevent it from reaching its audience, then, and only then, information can win.
Agreed, we must shut down the dastardly Internet immediately! And burn all the books!
Remember the reason for free speech: it exists so that the people can be informed, a fundamental requirement for the exercise of democracy. When someone actively and deliberately misinforms the people, for whatever reasons, they should be held accountable for any damage they cause - the very same way one can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theatre and expect society not to punish them for the deaths they caused.
If a person contributing online is incorrect but participates in good faith, refuting is a great way to continue the discussion in a healthy, constructive manner.
If a person contributing online is not participating in good faith, this becomes a lot more complex. Especially based on the degree and potential impacts of misinformation.
Free speech is a right that only works when people utilizing it do so responsibly.
The problem is making the tough choices of what to do about uncivil discourse or bad faith actors who are not interested in upholding civility for the sake of the society. Unfortunately there are no easy answers which leave us with a lot of bad or difficult options to choose from.
Then an entire class of trolling stops becoming scalable.
I'd think we're not utilizing all of our social faculties we otherwise would in a face-to-face conversation. We don't see a human in front of us so our brains aren't "firing on all cylinders". E.g. being polite, assuming good-faith, tempering negative impulses and all of the other social lubricant that normally allows humans to peacefully coexist in a society.
FTFY
Probably all of us would be against censoring the verbal communications between individuals in our society. Such communication is full of untruths and agenda-driven lies. Right now parents and teachers the world over are propagating untruths to children. Workplace discussions are happening around watercoolers where unscientific nonsense is spreading. We just accept that this space of human interaction is the noise floor of our civilization, and maybe even appreciate the agency that this gives us.
With the spread of the internet, that same communication is happening online. It being online is literally the only difference. Let the noise flow, I say, and from it can both objective and social truths arise. To do anything else doesn't give us truth anymore than did restricting interpersonal speech in certain unpleasant regimes throughout history.
I believe if we had had a system in place to censor unscientific information regarding climate change, we would not be in as deep shit as we are now. It's a very strong argument for moderating what can and cannot be said publicly, as the negative consequences will be felt dearly by many.
Obviously there are problems with censorship, but I just want to point out that nothing about this is as clear cut as you would like to believe.
i absolutely agree that the spread of some messages should be limited, but outright censorship risks removing the wrong messages, and gets in the way of a critical discussion.
I live in an age where the WHO called Covid droplet spread when it was and proven to be airborne and governments around the globe are still telling people to diligently wash their hands for a virus they breath in. Most of the mainstream media and social media is happily going with that as well. You can't trust people generally, including the authorities and experts on a topic.
I choose no one to have the power over what I can read.
The challenger incident is a good case study. The motivated management to attempt the launch made it such that the quiet truth of the actual safety was hard for the group to hear. Until it was a disaster.
(Yes, I think I'm basically restating the squeaky wheel idea.)
Government censorship is bad, and bill C-10 is bad, but the one-sided nature of this article reveals its true motivation, which is to support conservative politics.
When refuted this article I at least gave you examples to work with.
I can tell we have deep disagreements, and it would take entirely too much time and effort to try and convince you otherwise (which is probably unachievable in this sort of forum anyways).
I'll just say that I disagree with the framing of your points around school curriculum and Florida censorship. The framing is the most uncharitable interpretation of what's actually going on, which is why I referred to your "less factual versions of reality".
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/?Tab=BillTex...
It allows individual parents to DDoS the school with objections to individual materials, forcing hearings led by a vaguely defined “unbiased” individual.
It requires librarians to undergo state level training to choose materials. How bad this is really depends on the content of the training (do any of us know what that is?). We all know who controls the state government of Florida.
It doesn’t have to be overt censorship to be a bad bill that disincentivizes schools from carrying books with controversial topics and has the effective result of censorship. If a school wants to avoid a procedural nightmare they just can’t carry some materials at all.
Here’s a quote directly from Ron DeSantis’ website championing the bill:
> “Recently I discovered one of the most disturbing, pornographic books in my child’s high school in Orange County,” said Alicia Farrant, Parent, Orange County. “After some research, I learned that an alarming percentage of high school and middle school library books contain similar material. It is appalling that removal of pornographic and sexually explicit books has even been cause for debate.”
https://www.flgov.com/2022/03/25/governor-ron-desantis-signs...
In other words, some parent was mad that a book discussed sex. A glaring omission is the title of the material, it’s just an anonymous unknown scapegoat. Now the it is undoubtedly banned thanks to the objection of one parent.
Now students have one less resource that gives them information and perspective about the changes happening to their body and their journey to adulthood. Now parents can easily get books removed based on their personal objections rather than their value to the school community as a whole.
> Unfortunately, some politicians seem to have an unhealthy obsession with censorship. For example, U.S. President Joe Biden recently accused social media platforms, like Facebook, of “killing people” with misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Criticizing something, even by the President, is not censorship.
Quoting the fantastic Terry Pratchett: "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on."
This has a few consequences: 1) Most of the damage is done. 2) Correcting the lie/misinformation takes a lot more effort that it takes to spread the lie. 3) The lie/misinformation can cost lives (missinformation on vaccines, coloidal silver, etc)
It doesn't help that some people and publications make money by selling lies and inflaming people (tabloids, many 'influencers', etc). And also that some supposedly respected institutions are often the originator of those lies (e.g. health risks of smoking, excess sugars, etc)
> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
Good bullshit and misinformation traveled well even before the internet, so how did we manage before?
This asymmetry has been written about many times - as bullshit, flooding the zone, sealioning, etc. What some call censorship is often just trying to make things symmetrical again, to give those who are trying to argue from facts a fighting chance. That's why such accusations are a staple among the people who peddle the misinformation in the first place, and also among people who are just trying to avoid accountability when they've always been perfectly free to say what they want. People need to learn what real censorship is, and stop throwing the term around any time they don't think they're getting the hearing or reaction they deserve.
Correct. What about our ability to ruin reputations? Hasn’t that amplified as well via the so-called Streisand effect?
You are advocating for censorship for practical reasons, but it is censorship at the end of the day.
What you’re saying is that it’s hard to battle misinformation, and this is true. What isn’t true is that muzzling misinformation is the only way to combat this problem, even if it seems like the easiest approach.
And if you want accountability, then censorship is the least effective approach in a democratic society; as you’ve hidden away what should be held to account.
I deeply disagree with the proponents of anti-vax; and many of the right-wing positions.
And I think, for instance, removing some of the internet anonymity and breaking up tech monopolies would both be quite helpful in solving the problems we have today.
Completely shutting down discourse and not allowing fringe ideas to be discussed, however, can’t be the way.
How do you know? People don't post "thanks for changing my mind!" when they change their mind.
Have you ever changed your mind? How often did you go and express that you changed your mind to the person who changed your mind? Did you at some point start voting differently? Did you go to the politician that convinced you and told him he changed your mind? Probably not, people mostly change their mind in silence, many wont even acknowledge they changed their mind if you confront them.
It would be really interesting to know the cost-benefit analysis they did before considering such a drastic step because not only does it go against their democratic values it suddenly introduces a very apparent cognitive dissonance to the western idea that Russia is weak and irrelevant as a super power (and isn't even worthy to be called a super power) - if that is the reality then why is it that the US, the most vocal vanguard of free speech, suddenly feels so threatened by the ideas in RT? And why do US and European political leaders suddenly believe that they are no longer in a position to present a strong counter view to the ideas in RT?
My regular sources of news includes my country's own local media, and international outlets like BBC, CNN, DW, Arab News, Gulf Times, NYT, NYP, NPR etc. RT wasn't even on the radar. RT is now part of my regular sources of news - when I learnt about the ban, I got curious about it and checked it out (the Streisand effect at work). I found the content to be similar to many of the other public funded media outlets - all of them have similar types of news, views and propaganda (why their own country / culture is great, how their enemies are wrong, and their different perspective about other countries depending on their own country's relationship with them etc.).
Yes, when it comes to reporting on the US, I did notice a definite slant towards Republican politics on RT.
But then, if one believes in democracy and free speech the way the US does, why should a non-Republican administration feel threatened if RT paints the American Republicans in a better light than the Democrats (or some other politician or party)? It's natural for voters to be swayed but finally it is still an American who is elected by the masses - whether it be a Democrat or a Republican. And representational democracy offers a check and balance in such a democracy - just because Americans who read RT get swayed and elect Republicans, doesn't mean the elected Republicans have to be swayed by the mass (in fact it often is the other way, and like I pointed out, representation can serve as one of the built-in checks and balances of representational democracy against majoritarianism).
However, if some Democrats / Americans believe that their own fellow American politicians will not serve their own country's interest, America has an existential issue bigger than Russia.
Censoring information just makes the educated suspicious towards an administration. Countering it, or even just presenting an alternate perspective to it is what cultivates democratic value. Else it is a slow slide to authoritarianism, which is what we are all seeing more and more of, around the world.
The correct approach is to lay out the facts clearly, outlining the chain of reasoning so that anyone can follow it if they choose. Identify known purveyors of bullshit and shut them down so they stop polluting the idea space. And carefully, with intellectual humility consider opposing but well reasoned ideas.
Shutting down known bullshiters is necessary for preserving public discourse otherwise they just spray bullshit at all hours of all days and overwhelm well reasoned discourse.
If someone is shouting nonsense in a debate, interrupting, and not listening you have no obligation to keep them in the debate. In fact if they’re arguing in bad faith that alone is enough to stop listening to them, stop amplifying them, stop talking about their ideas.
If it's well proven then you can easily link to a rigorous proof of that claim, one that justifies the use of mathematical terminology like "exponentially easier". Yes?
I think it's not actually proven and cannot be proven because you don't have a precise definition of bullshit to begin with, let alone a reliable means of identifying it, nor any way to measure how "easy" it is to create rather than refute.
Therefore any claim that it is exponentially easier, must itself be misinformation. Which means that under your own policy you would be "shut down", whatever that means. See how sharp the sword is that you wish to wield here?
In that time you have 1000 more items of misinformation to debunk.
How do we win?
Not only is it significantly harder to debunk misinformation than to create it (i.e., Brandolini's Law), but there's a good chance on social media platforms that the types of individuals presented with misinformation from some party A will never even be exposed to the debunking information from some party B at all.
So, for many, they're effectively already in a censorship-rich environment. The idea that there is or has ever been a truly free exchange of ideas seems disingenuous at best.
>Among the positions promoted by the Centre is climate change denial.
>Funding comes from private charitable foundations (63%) such as the Aurea Foundation and the Heartland Institute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Centre_for_Public_Pol...
>Many of their published articles are by well-known climate change skeptics Patrick Moore (see publications), Donna Laframboise (see publications), and Paul Driessen (see publications)
https://www.desmog.com/frontier-centre-public-policy/