It’s not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media::One person’s content moderation is another’s censorship when it comes to Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on handling misinformation.
Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about whether disinformation is desirable.
It benefits Republicans, so the side it benefits would obviously desire that benefit.
you’re dense af if you don’t think it benefits both sides. Russian collusion anyone?
Part of the problem is who decides what is misinformation. As soon as the state gets to decide what is and isn’t true, and thus what can and cannot be said, you no longer have free speech.
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Don’t worry, the person you responded to is conservative so they’re doing their damnedest to finish off education
What makes you say that I, specifically, am against education?
You’re a conservative. Your ilk has fought for many years tooth and nail against education. You’re aware it’s destructive to your ability to spread lies.
Do you think conservatives are a monolith?
Look, every ideology has nuance but it’s not about what you believe it’s about what you do and fucking congratulations for destroying the education system and somehow making it cost more.
The same reason we know you are racist.
And who decides what is being taught if this is to be solved with education? That still just falls into the same dogma enforcement that presupposes objective truth especially in political matters. it just turns from censorship to indoctrination of some kind. There can be no real discussion about political matters if it’s presupposed that there is such thing as objective truth in some hard science sense in political discourse, because then every side in an argument from a position of objective truth and there is no way to compromise or approach the other side when everybody are either heretics or believers to your side.
T E A C H C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G
If we did that, there wouldn’t be any communists left, because they’d realize it has a number of unsolvable problems.
My personal favorite is theres no mechanism to go from the “tyranny of the proles” stage to the “true communism” stage.
What the fuck is this conservative obsession with imaginary CoMmUnIsT boogie men? No one said shit about communism in this conversation because no one here gives a tiny chicken-fried fuck about it. Yet, here you are diligently crafting a straw man to light on fire.
Can you even define communism? Go ahead and define it. And then explain what it has to do with this conversation. Bringing up random-ass Fox News buzzwords is a sign of an extremely weak argument.
Teaching critical thinking has absolutely nothing to do with presupposing the existence of objective truth in political matters.
…and there is no way to compromise…
Never in history has a conservative entered a compromise negotiation in good faith.There is simply no such thing as a conservative who is genuinely interested in compromise.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. Every word.
The state deciding on speech is a red line yes but that’s not even on the table here. This is about social media moderation. It actually seems really suspiciously disingenuous to bring that up here.
OP: Thread about social media moderation
You: The state deciding what’s true is the death of free speech!
Actually your comment is one of the big problems in this debate. People can’t tell the difference between a private social media firm moderating hate content and the government taking away their freedom of speech. You just slurred the two together yourself by bringing this up here.
Centralized for-profit companies policing speech doesn’t really solve free speech concerns. It doesn’t violate the US first amendment, but corporate-approved speech isn’t really free speech either. No person or organization is really suitable to be the arbiter of truth, but at the same time unmoderated misinformation presents its own problems.
Yes it solves it. Companies are not required to carry your voice around the world, which is what their platforms do. Stop equating guaranteed amplification with your freedom of speech. It’s wrong and dumb. I’ve lived in countries that actually restrict speech and whatever the Facebook mod did to you is NOTHING. The only reason Americans even fall into this stupid way of thinking is because their speech is so free. When your speech has never truly been restricted you have no idea what that freedom even means.
I’m not necessarily in favor of “guaranteed amplification”, as you put it. Anyone is free to yell whatever ideas they have on a street corner. Barring some specific exceptions, that is free speech. I understand why a for-profit company might not want to amplify any means everything someone decides to spew out. We’ve designed an un-free capitalist system though where some people do have guaranteed amplifiers, and others do not. That’s the problem I’m more interested in solving. It’s not forcing any one company to be forced to amplify any specific idea, but rather to make sure that centralized authorities, be they governments, social media companies, etc can’t in unison stamp out those ideas. I think decentralized platforms like this are somewhat key to that goal, even with individual instances having full moderation and federation control.
I’m not necessarily in favor of “guaranteed amplification”, as you put it.
…and…
We’ve designed an un-free capitalist system though where some people do have guaranteed amplifiers, and others do not. That’s the problem I’m more interested in solving.
Those two statements of yours seem in opposition to one another. In your second statement you’re calling out that some people have guaranteed amplifiers while others don’t and say thats a problem. However your first statement says you’re not in favor of guaranteed amplifiers for everyone.
The only logical third outcome I can make out that would make those two statement NOT contradictory is if you don’t want guaranteed amplifiers for ANYONE, but I don’t think you’re saying that.
Can you clarify who you believe should have guaranteed amplifiers?
I’m not looking for guaranteed amplifiers. I’m looking for an outcome where anyone can find an amplifier if that’s what they want. No party should be required to amplify anyone else. It’s possible in this situation that someone could fail to find an amplifier, but I’d like to minimize that by just having many platforms with different incentives such that it is unlikely that they would all align against any one persons message.
The fediverse is built on this concept. Every instance can moderate their own users and communities, and choose which other instances to federate with. It’s unlikely that a specific user would be unable to find an instance that accommodates them, even if larger instances won’t. This contrasts with traditional social media where there is a sole for-profit entity that controls the entire network, able to completely remove people and ideas they don’t want.
I’m looking for an outcome where anyone can find an amplifier if that’s what they want.
How is that not a guaranteed amplifier?
but I’d like to minimize that by just having many platforms with different incentives such that it is unlikely that they would all align against any one persons message.
So if a person’s message is something clearly abhorrent like “white supremacy” advocating violence against other races, you’re hopeful there is a platform that person can amplify their voice with their ideas to the general public?
It’s unlikely that a specific user would be unable to find an instance that accommodates them, even if larger instances won’t.
My guess is that as the user increases the level of their bigotry, if the instance still allows is, that instance will be de-federated by nearly everyone. So they have their own echo chamber at that point. How is this different than what groups like that have done for decades prior to the internet with a private newsletter mailed out? This is essentially the situation we have at present.
What are you advocating that would change this?
If you want to talk about corporate ownership of media, and how corporate media platforms are so powerful that they become the only thing that matters, there’s plenty to rail against there. It just doesn’t have anything to do with free speech. Here we are discussing how important it is not to let institutions squash ideas. Again, totally not even in the offing. The reality is that social media simply wants to moderate nazi hatred, while conservatives cry “free speech!”
There’s plenty of free media out there, including this platform we’re talking on. There’s no freedom of speech issue here. In my day we just said fuck the mods. We didn’t clutch our pearls and presume we had a god given right to say whatever we want wherever we want.
You can’t walk into Davies Symphony Hall and cry freedom of speech because you want to be heard by the crowd that came for the orchestra.
No person or organization is really suitable to be the arbiter of truth
Courtrooms are arbiters of truth literally all the time. There are plenty of laws for which truth is a defence, and dishonesty is punished.
When battling misinformation, the problem is not that lying on the internet is legal - it is still actionable. Fraud is still illegal. False or misleading advertisements are still illegal. Defamation is still illegal. Perjury is illegal in the criminal law sense, not just torts. Ask Martha Stewart who the “arbiter of truth” is.
The problem is that it’s functionally impossible to enforce on the scale of social media. If 50,000 people call you a pedophile because it became a meme even though it was completely untrue, and this costs you your job and you start getting death threats, what are you going to do about that? Sue them all?
So we throw up our hands and let corporations handle it through abuse policies, because the actual law is unworkable - it’s “this is illegal but enforcing it is so impractical that it’s legal”. Twitter and Facebook don’t have to deal with that crap so we let them do a vague implementation of the law but without the whole “due process” thing and all the justice they can mete out is bans.
If you disagree, then I’ve got a Nigerian prince who’d like to get your banking info, and also you’re all cannibals.
You do not have free speech on social media today, private platforms decide what they want to have.
The state does not have to be the one to decide these things, nor is it a case of “deciding” what is true, we have a long history of using proofs to solidify something as fact, or propaganda, or somewhere in between. This is functionally what history studies are about.
That brings up another thing. At what point does it become a “public space”?
Theres an old supreme court case on a company town that claimed someone was trespassing on a sidewalk. The supreme court ruled it was a public space, and thus they could pass out leaflets.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/marsh-v-alabama-1946/
Imo, a lot of big sites have gotten to that stage, and should be treated as such.
I think this is an underrated point. A lot of people are quick to say “private companies aren’t covered by free speech”, but I’m sure everyone agrees legal ≠ moral. We rely on these platforms so much that they’ve effectively become our public squares. Our government even uses them in official capacities, e.g. the president announcing things on Twitter.
When being censored on a private platform is effectively social and informational murder, I think it’s time for us to revisit our centuries-old definitions. Whether you agree or disagree that these instances should be covered by free speech laws, this is becoming an important discussion that I never see brought up, but instead I keep seeing the same bad faith argument that companies are allowed to do this because they’re allowed to do it.
This is an argument for a publicly-funded “digital public square”, not an argument for stripping private companies of their rights.
Why not both?
While I agree that punishing companies for success isn’t a good idea, we aren’t talking about small startups or local business ran by individual entrepreneurs or members of the community here. We’re talking about absurdly huge corporations with reach and influence the likes that few businesses ever reach. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to apply a different set of rules to them, as they are distinctly different situations.
Because one is violating the first amendment rights of a private company, the other isn’t. Punishing a private company for how an individual uses their platform isn’t constitutional. It would be like holding car manufacturers liable for drunk drivers.
I fully agree. Small groups have limited resources. But google and facebook have a ton of resources, they can handle more oversight.
That’s a good idea, but I still think big sites are public spaces at this point.
“Publicly-accessible private space” and “public space” are two legally-distinct things. In a public town square, you have first amendment rights. In a shopping mall*, your speech and behavior are restricted. This is similar in that regard. Both are publicly-accessible, but one is private property and can be subject to the rules of the property owner.
Edit: *not applicable to certain behaviors or speech in Californian malls
To your shopping mall example, you got it wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins
It’s different because the company built and maintains the space. Same goes for a concert hall, a pub, etc…
Nobody believes that someone being thrown out of a pub for spouting Nazistic hate speech is their “free speech being trampled”. Why should it be any different if it’s a website?
You rarely see the discussion, because there’s rarely a good argument here. It boils down to “it’s a big website, so I should be allowed to post whatever I want there”, which makes little to no sense and opens up a massive quagmire of legal issues.
bad faith argument that companies are allowed to do this because they’re allowed to do it.
So let’s get this straight, it’s “bad faith” to point out facts but “good faith” to support bigotry and hatred like you’re “accidentally” doing with your argument?
It’s bad faith to argue that companies should be allowed to do things because they’re already allowed to do those things. I see a little bit of that creeping in even here with the concept of “rights”, as if corporations were humans. Laws can change.
It’s good faith to ask if companies have too much power over what has become our default mode of communication. It’s also good faith to challenge this question with non-circular logic.
Your assumption that I’m defending racism and bigotry is exactly why I think this stuff is important. You’ve implied I’m an insidious alt-rightist trying to dog whistle, and now I’m terrified of getting banned or otherwise censored. I’m interested in expressing myself. I do not want to express bigotry. But if one person decides what I said is even linked to bigotry, suddenly I’m a target, and I can lose a decades-old social account and all of its connections. And if that happens I just have to accept it because it’s currently legal. It’s so fucking stressful to say anything online anymore.
Didn’t read this. You already showed your hand
You saw whatever hand you wanted to see. Have you considered that I’m gay and pro-choice, and I have legitimate reasons to worry that some corporations (e.g. Twitter) will try and start censoring support for these through selective enforcement of the current ToS?
What’s more dangerous, your grandma being allowed to say racist things on Facebook, or marginalized groups being systematically silenced? You’re missing the forest for the trees.
Alas, you’ve also shown yours.
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There is a key difference here. Social media companies have some liability with what gets shared on the platform. They also have a financial interest in what gets said and how it gets promoted by algorithms. The fact is, these are not public spaces. These are not streets. They’re more akin to newspapers, or really the people printing and publishing leaflets. The Internet itself is the street in your analogy.
Your analogy about Newspapers isn’t accurate either. The writers of a newspaper are paid by the company and everyone knows that writers execute the newspaper’s agenda. Nothing gets published without review and everything aligns with the company’s vision. Information is one way and readers buy it to consume information. They don’t expect their voice to be heard and the newspaper don’t pretend that the readers have that ability either. This isn’t comparable to a social media site at all.
I’m not saying it is identical, there are some key differences, and yet social media platforms are much more like a publishing company than they are a town square. Just because they’re choosing to publish your tweets/posts for free and you’re choosing to create content without pay doesn’t mean it’s not a better analogy than saying their the equivalent of a public space. They’re very clearly not a public space. Using the street analogy, these are storefronts on the street, not the street itself. Again, the Internet itself is the street. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, or whatever social media platform, are not the street or the town square. They are not and should not be considered to be public spaces any more than a mall or a Walmart is.
Again, the Internet itself is the street.
Internet is a bunch of compters connected together. Social media sites are a part of the internet. If you say internet itself is a street, then social media sites are part of that street as well. If you’re just thinking about just the supporting infrastructure like cables, routers and switches, a lot of them belong to private companies as well. So you’re talking about a street in a gated community, then you shouldn’t expect any attributes of public space there either. Do you see that diiferentiating social media sites from public spaces just because they are owned by companies fail very quickly when you apply the reasoning consistently? Internet is quickly approaching the status of a basic human right, yet most of it is owned by private companies.
Do you know what’s equivalent to malls and Walmart on internet? That’s Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.
What’s the analogy to a real world place people go to express themselves, protest and engage with the broader society? The closest I can think of is a town square.
So a better analogy in my opinion is,
- Cables, satellites, routers and switches: Streets
- Online news websites (Vox.com The Verge etc): Newspapers
- Streaming video and audio sites: TV and radio
- Malls, and supermarkets: Online shopping sites
- Social media: Town square
Companies probably shouldn’t be liable then for what individuals share / post then, instead the individuals should. Social media constantly controls their push / promotion of posts currently using algorithms to decide what should be shown / shared and when.
I hate this so much. I want real, linear feeds from all my friends I’m following, not a personally curated style sanitized feed to consider my interests and sensibilities.
The Supreme Court is visiting such issues this month. Second block of text:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/10/major-second-and-first-amendment-cases-headline-november-sitting/
So we should make a law that says Facebook allows neo Nazi hatred then? Not sure I follow what you’re getting at if you wouldn’t say yes to this question
I don’t trust facebook to decide what is hate speech and what isn’t, if thats what you’re saying.
Are you suggesting that large online spaces should have laws and police to investigate and enforce the laws? Of course this is already in place, but not at all enforced in the same manner as a public place.
No, I don’t trust anyone to do that. Everyone should be able to judge for themselves.
Except that, clearly, they can’t. Look at the republican base.
No, you don’t trust lIbRuLs, though Fox News can lie every second of every day and you’ll never criticize them
Nobody (besides maybe extreme conservatives) is advocating for “the state” to decide what “is and isn’t true”. That’s not what this is about.
Furthermore, “misinformation” and “disinformation” refer to things that can be true! Propogansists don’t always need to invent false facts for them to be used in deceptive ways. To suggest that the goverment should stay out of the matter unless they utilze a perfectly foolproof fact-o-meter is IMO, shortsighted. “The state” makes policy decisions all the time with imperfect facts.
If you want to deal with misinformation, at some point someone has to say what misinformation is. Someone has to make a judgement on every fact, every event, every story.
And holy fuck my dude! “Furthermore, “misinformation” and “disinformation” refer to things that can be true!”
Thats some shit straight out of 1984. Censoring true facts? Wtf is wrong with you?
propagandists don’t always need to invent false facts to use them in deceptive ways
Doing some subtle straw man arguments there, huh? Or just missed the rest of the comment?
If I use a true fact and blatantly ignore other facts and context to try to start an ethnic cleansing, should I be censored or not? The most dangerous lies are the ones that have bits of truth in them to gloss over the bad bits.
Don’t pretend that intent isn’t important, or that the world is black and white. Ignoring nuance is the most egregious underlying issue with conservatives.
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Uh, you know that happens regularly in courtrooms right? Like, almost every court battle hinges on what’s true and what’s not. And courts are an arm of the state.
In some cases it’s directly about the truth of speech. Fraud, defamation, perjury, filing a false report, etc. are all cases where a court will be deciding whether a statement made publicly is true and punishing a party if it was not. Ask a CEO involved in a merger how much “free speech” they have.
Except there have always been limits on speech, centered mainly on truth. Your freedom of speech doesn’t extend to yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire, for instance.
But we live in an age of alternative facts now, where science isn’t trusted if it comes up with conclusions that conflict with your world view. Do you get a pass if you are yelling “Fire” because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire because you got the COVID shot and now the 5G nanoparticles can’t transmit back to Fauci’s mind control lair?
Do you get a pass if you are yelling “Fire” because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire
Yes. Anyone in good faith attempting to warn others of any potential harm that they believe to be true to the best of their abilities should have their speech protected.
Anyone in good faith attempting to warn others of any potential harm that they believe to be true to the best of their abilities
But what if their beliefs are verifiably false? I don’t mean that in a sense of a religious belief, which cannot be proven and must be taken on faith. I mean that the facts are clear that there are no 5G nanoparticles in the vaccine for cell phone jammers to interfere with in the first place. That isn’t even a thing.
It’s one thing to allow for tolerance of different opinions in public. It’s another thing entirely to misrepent things that can be objectively disproven as true, just because you’ve tied it to a political movement. Can that really still be considered to be in good faith?
But what if their beliefs are verifiably false?
Yes. Because those with perverse incentives in power will falsify the truth to punish critics.
So there is no objective truth anymore, and any fact you don’t like can be dismissed by saying the Deep State is at fault? Is there a (((conspiracy))) to hide the fact that the Moon is really an egg?
There are objective truths, the issue lays in the deciding of them. Not to step on your cloak and dagger but I’m not saying we’ve got a ‘deep state’ or there’s some massive ((((conspiracy with too many parentheses)))).
The Earth may be round but I don’t want to have to worry about a flat earther judge ruling otherwise each time I say it.
Seek therapy
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One is the insidious things about misinformation is that it always starts with pieces that can’t be proven one way or the other. The Lab Leak theory is a perfect example, since there happens to be a lab in the same city as where the virus was first found. But many of the people who were pushing the theory were then extending it to “The Chinese made a bioweapon on purpose”, which was not supported by any facts at all, and was serving a political agenda.
Later, when some studies came out that couldn’t disprove the lab leak theory in its entirety, some used that as justification in saying that the Chinese bioengineered it, when that’s not at all what those studies said. But they use that kernel to try and prove the whole corny premise.
I wrote a comment about this earlier today. People who have been brainwashed to believe total nonsense often act in ways that are rational to them, but irrational to people who see the world through different eyes.
That’s fine until it’s violent action.
The alcoholic who thinks he’s “fine to drive” believes he’s perfectly rational. He’s drunk all the time and no accidents. That’s wonderful until he kills a family some night.
Technically, it’s causing a panic that’s illegal. Yelling fire is not. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28853/is-it-illegal-to-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre
Different states have different laws, of course, and I am not a lawyer, I just googled if it was actually illegal. Don’t actually go yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Right, it’s perfectly fine to alert people to a fire if there actually is one. Yelling “fire” when there isn’t one will be generally interpreted as causing a panic.
Oh weird, you coincidentally are a conservative mod lol
Gee so surprising you’re mad about cEnSoRsHiP
Well yeah, did you read the article?
Fucking tankies thinking inalienable rights are bad things.
Well, here’s how that was framed for participants of this study:
identified as misinformation based on a bipartisan fact check
And even with this, Republicans didn’t care if it was true or not.
We’re actually past the point of anyone being able to be considered truthful by Republicans. It either tickles their feelings right or it doesn’t and that is all.
Section 230 gets the state involved from the get go. Remove liability protections from the state and everything else will shake out. Make little tweaks from there as necessary. The broad protection of 230 is causing this issue.
Isnt a grand jury enough to deal with this kinda thing? Like before damage is done but I don’t see why that mechanism can’t be useful here too?
Imo, not really. Juries are still problematic, in much the same way
Well it’s likely because both sides have seen instances where something that is absolutely true be silenced with a “disinformation” or “false news” justification. In recent memory, it has been more “left supporting” news stories that have been silenced than “right supporting” ones that have been falsely silenced. But in recent memory:
- Joe Biden’s son’s laptop. Later confirmed to not be Russian and to be accurate.
- Various emails from the Clinton Campaign being leaked. Claimed to be faked but largely proven accurate at the time of the leak (via DKIM) and with future legal action.
- Several stories about Biden’s declining health. Some of these during the primary pissed of the Bernie wing of the party for being silenced, some during the general pissed off Trump supporters. Biden is 80 years old. Everyone 80 years old has declining health but discussion of it was generally verboten.
- “Lab Leak Hypothesis” Still not proven true or false but believable enough that several government agencies believe it to be credible.
- Origins of the “Russia Collision” story being a person affiliated with Clinton/DNC.
And there’s a long list of obviously biased “fact checkers” making obvious mistakes. Like claiming Romney was lieing when he accurately predicted the outcome of Obamacare a claim that they would call the lie of the year on behalf Obama for repeating in 2013. I pick on polifact for being left leaning but there’s similar right wing “fact checkers” doing similarly biased fact checks.
I don’t have any trust whatsoever for any company, or the government, to be the decider of what counts as “mis/disinformation”.
Sometimes there are easy layups, like “the Holocaust did not happen” and “Vaccines have 5G chips inside them” which are obviously just wrong and I think most of us would agree not to have…
But what about “The Holocaust was overblown and the jews should stop whining about it”? I and probably 99% of people would say that’s a stupid opinion, but is that “misinformation”? Should a company be allowed to ban you for saying it?
How about things like the 13/52 statistic? Should that be removed? What about “42% of all transgenders commit suicide”? That’s used to attack that group a lot, should that be banned as well?
And, to be honest with you, the Democratic Party is absolutely obsessed with using clinical terms like those mentioned to stifle all discussion and act like they are the only voice on the issue you’re allowed to believe. Republicans freak out about this for good reason.
It’s always the Democratic side that gets conservative opinions that they think are bad (whether lies or otherwise), boot them off the platform, and then decide to trample all over their new platforms and get them killed off too. It’s never just “pRiVaTe CoMpAnY tHeY cAn dO WhAt ThEy WaNt MaKe YoUr oWn WeBsiTE”, it’s “you are not allowed to have a place to speak this idea that I think is bad for society anywhere on the internet”. I really, really do not want to embolden that sect more than they already are.
Just make a nonprofit third party that is as not biased as possible that you can search through with article links that can break down misinformation. Kind of like reverse image search but for articles that pulls up the article score.
third party that is as not biased as possible
First of all, humans inherently have bias. It’s literally inevitable. What’s more important is what your biases are, how aware of them you are and how they affect your reasoning and openness to new information that might conflict.
Besides, not all biases are created equal and not all biases are completely unreasonable.
Some people are biased against minority groups while others are biased against authority figures. Some are biased in favor of billionaires, others against them. Some will not vote for a candidate that receives corporate PAC money, others will not cosponsor a bill unless the PACs are on board
What a third party needs is to be steeped in bias against corruption and demagoguery and in favor of transparency.
Remember when Internet censorship was a right-wing business friendly cause because it was mostly about copyright?
Now the Internet is so influential that many other excuses for censoring it have been invented, many of which are or can be left-wing, like “misinformation”.
As someone opposed to censorship who thinks it is a good thing if we can exchange information through free association rather than having gatekeepers, I don’t know anymore who my ideological friends are.
