USA of Disinformation

[SneakySecrets]

United States government teaming up with social media companies to keep us safe from bad thoughts.

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/

Because as we all know, no free democracy could ever exist when it’s government allows its citizens to say whatever they want. 

[Francis Xavier]

Tight I hate thinking

[Atiba Applebum]

What a juvenile way of thinking about this.   Let’s let disinformation continue to flow unabated.  It’s not a true democracy unless I can tell everyone Paul Pelosi is the villain of Barbarian 2 or use social media to kill the rest of the Rohingya people

[GardenSkater77]

I’m going to react before reading what you sent in true internet fashion.

The government is incompetent to do anything with regard to the internet. Mark Z. Goes to capital hill periodically and basically has to stop their VCR from flashing 00:00.

However, freedom of speech is not just posting anything you want online. Speculating on whether Sebo  Walker is well liked by his Krooked teammates has real life consequences.

That’s all I’m going to say on the matter for now.

[.Blackshoes.]

People are allowed to have bad opinions, but I also understand people's justified concern with disinfo leading to actual real-world violence. My biggest worry with stuff like this is that it always starts out as something reasonable, but then it turns into people going to prison for having ill-informed opinions.

[half staff]

remember the 'fuck censorship' stickers? felt like that was an alternative, maybe fringe of the disaffected left vibe. now it's far right (in theory anyways).
i'm an absolutist but it seems like younger people don't care or want freedom of speech. sad.

[Atiba Applebum]

What’s with all these new posters coming in and spam posting.  Elon bots?

[m path]

What’s with all these new posters coming in and spam posting.  Elon bots?

   Some slapper trying to derail the thread or maybe not.  Such speculation perhaps is spreading 'disinformation'.  No moral hazard to worry about with these measures the government is taking anyway, right guys?

[Atiba Applebum]

i guess it depends on whether you trust corporations more than the government to effect positive change or you think neither should meddle. do you really think people will start policing that themselves in way they haven't for the past 5-7 years?  if you don't think anything should be done about it, then you must not think the proliferation of misinformation on the internet isn't a massive problem/one of the biggest problems we face in this era.


 was there a "moral hazard" anytime the government has had to step in to regulate industries who have gotten too reckless?  Slippery slope arguments are inane because it's baseless fearmongering, unless i haven't noticed all the people marrying animals that was sure to happen as a result of the moral hazard of allowing gay marriage

[m path]

  Thats what I'm saying man, the mere thought of suggesting there might be moral hazard in this move by the government is quite very inane.  Come on here.  Obviously governments and corporations are completely separate anyway.

[Atiba Applebum]

Idk. I don’t traffic in blanket innuendo.  Different parties running the government have different stances.   I wouldn’t say the government blocking penguin and Simon schuster merger this week wasn’t particularly pro-corporation, a stance a republic government wouldn’t share. 

[SneakySecrets]

What a juvenile way of thinking about this.   Let’s let disinformation continue to flow unabated.  It’s not a true democracy unless I can tell everyone Paul Pelosi is the villain of Barbarian 2 or use social media to kill the rest of the Rohingya people

Yeah, believe it or not, people are actually allowed to believe dumb shit if they want. 

You would prefer that government has the right to remove anything it deems to be harmful speech?  That doesn’t sound the least bit dystopian to you? ….And how that could possibly go wrong?

[Atiba Applebum]

Expand Quote

What a juvenile way of thinking about this.   Let’s let disinformation continue to flow unabated.  It’s not a true democracy unless I can tell everyone Paul Pelosi is the villain of Barbarian 2 or use social media to kill the rest of the Rohingya people

[close]

Yeah, believe it or not, people are actually allowed to believe dumb shit if they want. 

You would prefer that government has the right to remove anything it deems to be harmful speech?  That doesn’t sound the least bit dystopian to you? ….And how that could possibly go wrong?

So you think the way things are going now are great and nothing needs to be done?   

The government is obviously not going to remove “anything” it wants, it’s targeting specific misinformation threads (remember the Russian troll farm fun that helped sway
 brexit and 2016) or that incited terrorist acts at home and abroad where they foment genocide. 

But I wouldn’t worry.  whatever dumb thoughts you utter into the void of cyberspace will be left unmolested by Uncle Sam

[SneakySecrets]

Expand Quote

Expand Quote

What a juvenile way of thinking about this.   Let’s let disinformation continue to flow unabated.  It’s not a true democracy unless I can tell everyone Paul Pelosi is the villain of Barbarian 2 or use social media to kill the rest of the Rohingya people

[close]

Yeah, believe it or not, people are actually allowed to believe dumb shit if they want. 

You would prefer that government has the right to remove anything it deems to be harmful speech?  That doesn’t sound the least bit dystopian to you? ….And how that could possibly go wrong?

[close]

So you think the way things are going now are great and nothing needs to be done?   

The government is obviously not going to remove “anything” it wants, it’s targeting specific misinformation threads (remember the Russian troll farm fun that helped sway
 brexit and 2016) or that incited terrorist acts at home and abroad where they foment genocide. 

But I wouldn’t worry.  whatever dumb thoughts you utter into the void of cyberspace will be left unmolested by Uncle Sam

If you’re someone that is fine with the government censoring it’s own citizens, nothing I’m going to say is going to change your mind, and vice versa.

But against my better judgement, here goes:

From the article:

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

So anyone with a view that differs from the federal government on any of these topics is subject to being censored.  These are just their headliners; there isn’t actually any confined scope to the speech they can limit.

The parameters for what is and isn’t mis/dis/malinformation are so vague that a case could be made that any sort of dissenting speech should be scrubbed off the internet. 

It’s odd to me that I would have to go out of my way to explain to another American why mass government censorship is a bad thing.  A quick skimming of the past half-century of American history should provide enough evidence that our federal government is not the benign, impartial arbiter of truth you seem to assume it is. 

[tkp]

content moderation is tough, but there is a reason why it exists (imagine slap without it).

who ever holds the power to moderate is likely going to act based on their (or their team's) beliefs and best interests. that's typically where ideologies clash. what should or should not be allowed? how is that determined? why was that decided?

it's a slippery slope. communities where you are not allowed to speak up are toxic, but so are communities where people are actively harming one another with no recourse.

this article goes through the ringer of a "free speech" platform and the challenges encountered, it's worth a read:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221105130724/https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/

[Deputy Wendell]

for what little it is worth, i'm behind most everything SneakySecrets has stated in this thread. so i guess the current administration--and all of the integrity, lucidity, and beneficence therein--has decided that the American public is ill-equipped to evaluate credible info and sources for itself? i'd love to see the federal government's criteria for doing so.

i may be straying here...but i don't think so...both parties are a disgrace, in their own precious and unique ways, and in a number of ways that are increasingly similar.

what i'm especially enjoying as of late though, is between touching articles on how affluent, hip, professional couples decide on those expensive but irresistible homes in neighborhoods like "Stuyvesant Heights," whored-out rags like the New York Times are just on total fucking FASCIST ALERT. the panic amongst privileged white hypocrites who detrimentally pass for "the left" as we speed towards these elections is fucking hilarious. evidently, there are "fascists" everywhere in this country now, and if all of the predictions for the upcoming elections are correct, this new category of American is the most ethnically and racially diverse category out there...weird.

i know one thing, the shooting ranges i frequent are more diverse places than the university campuses where i teach.

hey, one last thing, y'all remember when Frantz Fanon said this?

"The unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps."

[backinaction]

First off, I don't know what the solution is.

But I do know that what we are doing has led us to now - teetering on the precipice of democracy.   The lies about fraud in the last election are still believed by way to many people and over half of midterm Republican candidates are election deniers.  That's fucking scary. 

There is zero proof of widespread fraud in the last election.  None.  Not there.  Yet there are a bunch of candidates that are running with their primary messaging that they are going to fix a problem that isn't real.  And a lot are going to win because people are fucking idiots that are lied to and they believe it.

So how do we fix it before our democracy becomes a failed experiment? 

Go vote against any asshole who thinks the 2020 election was stolen.

[TheLurper]

I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

[manysnakes]

But I do know that what we are doing has led us to now - teetering on the precipice of democracy.   The lies about fraud in the last election are still believed by way to many people and over half of midterm Republican candidates are election deniers.  That's fucking scary.

The problem with election denying isn't access to information, it's the complete collapse in trust of public institutions and democratic legitimacy, and a political system which is fundamentally unable to address these issues.

[manysnakes]

To anyone supporting this; it should be plainly obvious from something like the Hunter Biden laptop story that "disinformation" is and will be any story which potentially goes against a mainstream narrative which represents corporate and governmental interests.

[backinaction]

To anyone supporting this; it should be plainly obvious from something like the Hunter Biden laptop story that "disinformation" is and will be any story which potentially goes against a mainstream narrative which represents corporate and governmental interests.

"Corporate interest" would have been to spread the Hunter story far and wide because Trump was arguably the candidate that helped corporate interests the most.  Spreading the story was also in the interest of the government at the time.  But Hunter Biden wasn't running for office, and I haven't seen anything come up since that shows that Joe Biden was engaged in any illegal activity.   Zero.   Yet the person he was running against has so many lawsuits and investigations that I can't keep count. 

And a bullshit story in the press in 2016 about Hilary's emails probably cost her the election and set the daily disinformation from Trump into our lives.  (That, and Nate Silver giving Hilary so much of an advantage in the odds that many people that would have voted for her did something else that day because their vote "wasn't needed" for the win).

We have a huge part of the population that believes Tucker Carlson's daily lies, even though Fox argued in court that his lies were so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe them.  And Fox won.  They admit in court that they are peddling lies, but people believe them anyway.   

Sidney Powell's lawyers used the same defense.   And yet people still believe her.

People believe the lies and disinformation because they live in an information silo and lack the reasoning skills to figure out that the same people who lied to them 28 times before is probably going to lie again.

[Atiba Applebum]

Expand Quote

To anyone supporting this; it should be plainly obvious from something like the Hunter Biden laptop story that "disinformation" is and will be any story which potentially goes against a mainstream narrative which represents corporate and governmental interests.

[close]

"Corporate interest" would have been to spread the Hunter story far and wide because Trump was arguably the candidate that helped corporate interests the most.  Spreading the story was also in the interest of the government at the time.  But Hunter Biden wasn't running for office, and I haven't seen anything come up since that shows that Joe Biden was engaged in any illegal activity.   Zero.   Yet the person he was running against has so many lawsuits and investigations that I can't keep count. 

And a bullshit story in the press in 2016 about Hilary's emails probably cost her the election and set the daily disinformation from Trump into our lives.  (That, and Nate Silver giving Hilary so much of an advantage in the odds that many people that would have voted for her did something else that day because their vote "wasn't needed" for the win).

We have a huge part of the population that believes Tucker Carlson's daily lies, even though Fox argued in court that his lies were so ridiculous that no reasonable person would believe them.  And Fox won.  They admit in court that they are peddling lies, but people believe them anyway.   

Sidney Powell's lawyers used the same defense.   And yet people still believe her.

People believe the lies and disinformation because they live in an information silo and lack the reasoning skills to figure out that the same people who lied to them 28 times before is probably going to lie again.

Don’t forget the Russian troll farms which meddled in this election, brexit, and many other elections by being able to target specific demographics and inundate them with falsities.   

Also, reminder that Musk laid off most if not all of the content moderation team at twitter and his blue check mark stance is going to make disinformation easier to proliferation on twitter

[SneakySecrets]

I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

I think there are a couple things that can be done.  The first is already happening: people are wising up to the fact that cable news is notoriously biased an unreliable and less and less people are watching.  Their ratings are a fraction of what they were 10-20 years ago and continue to dwindle.

The other thing that seems to be happening is a decentralization of news:  People can sort of pick and choose from a variety of smaller, non-mainstream news outlets on podcasts or YouTube and can subscribe to the substack of individual journalists.

So in this scenario, instead of someone consuming a story from one or two giant news outlets, they can get a mosaic of different viewpoints from their curated roster of smaller outlets.  If one wanted, they could get the story from a left perspective, a right perspective, centrist, etc… and if they find any of these outlets to be outright lying to them, they simply unsubscribe and tell their friends.

I’m sure this isn’t a perfect system, but I think it provides the opportunity for some checks and balances.

People can curate more left or right-leaning news sources depending on the person, which I think is ok.  But a nice first step out of these information silos we live in would be to promote having at least one or two opposing viewpoints in your news diet.  I know this sounds kinda silly, but maybe make it the cool, fashionable thing to actually listen to and consider good-faith argument from someone that you disagree with.  This will, at the very least, humanize the opposing side, that someone aligned with a different political party isn’t automatically a soulless monster.  Hearing out an opposing view can test, refine, validate, strengthen arguments which seems way better than being sort of passively indoctrinated by a cable news talking-head.  This seems far healthier to me.

Are there going to be people that still believe in nonsense and baseless conspiracy theories?  Fuck yeah there are.  I think that’s just a part of the human condition and it tends to swell when they see once-trusted institutions failing around them everywhere they look.  I think that a healthier news environment where people are more discriminating, demand honesty and proof will (hopefully) eventually trickle down to the David Icke/Pizza gate crowd.

This seems to me to be a far better solution than simply letting an anonymous government bureaucracy internally decide for us what is true or false and what can or cannot be spoken online. 

[half staff]

I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

foucault was a pedo who died of aids. i'd take anything he says with a grain of antiobotics.
all you guys who think censorship is the answer are going to be surprised when it turns on you. basic animal farm shit.

[companguero]

Expand Quote

I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

[close]

foucault was a pedo who died of aids. i'd take anything he says with a grain of antiobotics.
all you guys who think censorship is the answer are going to be surprised when it turns on you. basic animal farm shit.

An idea can be wholly separated from its author.
Dismissing information based on defamation just seems stupid.

Ironically you are self censoring based on some kind of grudge I’m guessing.

I have no idea what foucault is known for but the idea described by TheLurper makes some sense.

[Atiba Applebum]

Expand Quote

I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

[close]

foucault was a pedo who died of aids. i'd take anything he says with a grain of antiobotics.
all you guys who think censorship is the answer are going to be surprised when it turns on you. basic animal farm shit.

I have literally zero concerns about being personally censored.   

[oyolar]

Expand Quote

I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

[close]

foucault was a pedo who died of aids. i'd take anything he says with a grain of antiobotics.
all you guys who think censorship is the answer are going to be surprised when it turns on you. basic animal farm shit.

Get your homophobic bullshit out of here.
http://www.telospress.com/must-we-cancel-foucault/

[TheLurper]

I think there are a couple things that can be done.  The first is already happening: people are wising up to the fact that cable news is notoriously biased an unreliable and less and less people are watching.  Their ratings are a fraction of what they were 10-20 years ago and continue to dwindle.

The other thing that seems to be happening is a decentralization of news:  People can sort of pick and choose from a variety of smaller, non-mainstream news outlets on podcasts or YouTube and can subscribe to the substack of individual journalists.

So in this scenario, instead of someone consuming a story from one or two giant news outlets, they can get a mosaic of different viewpoints from their curated roster of smaller outlets.  If one wanted, they could get the story from a left perspective, a right perspective, centrist, etc… and if they find any of these outlets to be outright lying to them, they simply unsubscribe and tell their friends.

I’m sure this isn’t a perfect system, but I think it provides the opportunity for some checks and balances.

People can curate more left or right-leaning news sources depending on the person, which I think is ok.  But a nice first step out of these information silos we live in would be to promote having at least one or two opposing viewpoints in your news diet.  I know this sounds kinda silly, but maybe make it the cool, fashionable thing to actually listen to and consider good-faith argument from someone that you disagree with.  This will, at the very least, humanize the opposing side, that someone aligned with a different political party isn’t automatically a soulless monster.  Hearing out an opposing view can test, refine, validate, strengthen arguments which seems way better than being sort of passively indoctrinated by a cable news talking-head.  This seems far healthier to me.

Are there going to be people that still believe in nonsense and baseless conspiracy theories?  Fuck yeah there are.  I think that’s just a part of the human condition and it tends to swell when they see once-trusted institutions failing around them everywhere they look.  I think that a healthier news environment where people are more discriminating, demand honesty and proof will (hopefully) eventually trickle down to the David Icke/Pizza gate crowd.

This seems to me to be a far better solution than simply letting an anonymous government bureaucracy internally decide for us what is true or false and what can or cannot be spoken online.

Are people tuning into cable news less often? I see there was an uptick in 2021 and now things have come crashing back down in 2022, but I can't find a chart that shows ratings for the past 20 years. This is the best data set I can easily find: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/cable-news/

Next, the idea that people will create a mosaic of different viewpoints strikes me as very very unlikely if they start picking their journalists a la carte. People like to stay in their bubbles: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/

Even outside of news, what is your IG feed? I imagine like mine is 90% people jumping around on skateboards. Even without the algorithms that push us into bubbles of shit we are likely to want to see, we look for shit we want to see and put ourselves in a bubble. I think very few people are looking for multiple viewpoints.

News Media was trusted more in the 70s than today (https://news.gallup.com/poll/18766/trust-news-media-rebounds-somewhat-year.aspx) . I think deregulation had everything to do with this. Media for profit and media for entertainment creates garbage. FOX is the most successful cable news network by far and it is company that, in legal battles, says our biggest success isn't reporting news and his statements should not be taken as such https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

foucault was a pedo who died of aids. i'd take anything he says with a grain of antiobotics.
all you guys who think censorship is the answer are going to be surprised when it turns on you. basic animal farm shit.

Good post, bro. 1) This isn't an actual critique of the idea I presented, so good job. 2) You took an opportunity to present a real issue associated with Foucault (accusations again Foucault) and turned it into a fucking garbage post and earned a place on my ignore list. Congrats.

[half staff]

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I skimmed the article, so let me know if my ramblings are off topic. I don't know what the right answer is to any of this.

Foucault has some idea where power defines knowledge and then knowledge shapes power (it is a nice little circle). If powerful people define the stupidest shit as knowledge, it will re-enforce the power of these terrible people. The knowledge that the "election was stolen" gives power to a scary set of people who tell everyone that the election was stolen will ruin our future. The knowledge that "climate change is a hoax" gives power to scary people that will tell people climate change is a hoax and will ruin our future.

When thinking about free-speech issues, what makes it extra hard for me is the ability to duplicate, publish, and broadcast without any significant cost is beyond what many people would have imagined possible even 50 years ago. We always had scary ideas being spouted on the street corner, we had scary news papers, and scary authors like William Luther Pierce who could write and publish the garbage that would inspire Tim McVeigh to kill people in OK City, but none of this was easily accessed and it wasn't as pretty as a Facebook meme and it wasn't so easily supported by foreign governments that wish to destroy the West. The Anarchists Cookbook was a scary book in many ways, but it wasn't presented in meme form on Truth Social with the encouragement to kill all democrats cause they want to touch you while eating pizza at the Denver Airport.

I don't know what the answer is. Do we turn to some Ted Kaczynski luddite nonsense? Do we allow academics/researchers to define the truth? Do we allow politicians? Do we allow private companies and their content moderation teams? I don't know. However, I am scared that I live in a society where Alex Jones can be seen as a source of knowledge for so many as the shit he spouts into between supplement commercials is terrifying. I have relatives who live on every word that he spouts and they make very scary decisions based on this info.

Finally, does the US government have a duty to protect citizens from media designed by hostile foreign countries? Is an information war a "war" that requires changes to things we take for granted? Maybe.

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foucault was a pedo who died of aids. i'd take anything he says with a grain of antiobotics.
all you guys who think censorship is the answer are going to be surprised when it turns on you. basic animal farm shit.

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Get your homophobic bullshit out of here.
http://www.telospress.com/must-we-cancel-foucault/

pedo is homophobic? or a factual recounting of his cause of death?
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/4/16/reckoning-with-foucaults-sexual-abuse-of-boys-in-tunisia

[Sativa Lung]

Man I love it when a bunch of Americans who failed social studies and have only the most cursory understanding of what freedom of speech is complain about it.

You don't have the right to say anything you want in any forum without any repercussion and you never did. If you're posting something that causes demonstrable, tangible real world damage then yes, just like yelling fire in a crowded theater that should not be (and is not) allowed. This is not censorship. This is not new. If you can't accept that you're supporting a legitimately dangerous ideology then that's a personal issue, not a legal one.

Stop falling for emotional distractions and people trying to scare you. Use your head. Not to mention its the fucking internet, you can always just move your shitty message to a different server that the US govt has no authority over.