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?
The same reason we know you are racist.
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.
This is an argument for a publicly-funded “digital public square”, not an argument for stripping private companies of their rights.
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.
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.
Private company servers are never public space no matter how many people they serve.
What is wrong with you?
Sidewalks are literally out in public.
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.
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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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
But where do you draw the line? Sure, microchips in vaccines is one thing, but what about simply warning people the vaccine doesn’t stop the spread of disease? During the pandemic, that would get you crucified, except now it turns out it isn’t as effective at stopping transmission as we were first told.
I was and am pro vax. It saves lives. But I’m also not going to pretend there wasn’t a weird animosity towards anyone saying anything contrary to the official, government sponsored, talking points during the pandemic. People were vilified for suggesting the virus came from a lab. Or that masks weren’t as effective as we were making it out to be. Or that the tests were producing false results.
It’s all well and good to say people shouldn’t spread falsehoods, but sometimes the lines of what’s true are blurred through the lens of hindsight when they seemed so clear in the moment.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only reason he accurately predicted the outcome of Obamacare is because as soon as Republican states no longer had a democratic leadership to contend with they gutted the programs and made them a hollow form of their former selves. Predicting that isn’t exactly rocket science if you’re the one causing it.
As for all your other stuff I don’t think we need to go farther than bringing up Clinton’s emails to see that your arguments are reaching.
The only reason he accurately predicted the outcome of Obamacare is because as soon as Republican states no longer had a democratic leadership to contend with they gutted the programs and made them a hollow form of their former selves. Predicting that isn’t exactly rocket science if you’re the one causing it.
That’s not actually true. Once the plans were no longer eligible to add new members in; they became plans that could no longer add news subscribers into; meaning that the Insurance companies would have an ever decreasing group of people to pool their money with; making the plans ever more risky. Most of those plans stopped being offered long before Republican governors choose to not expand Medicare coverage.
As for all your other stuff I don’t think we need to go farther than bringing up Clinton’s emails to see that your arguments are reaching.
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/
These emails are valid emails. They’re not fakes. During the election; media outlets treated them as if they were fakes.
They weren’t able to add more because a Republican Congress cut down approved funding to do so.
The emails exist and were on a personal email server that was not approved which was a security breach. The same as it was a security breach when Trump did it on his personal phone.
It’s not okay but it’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it, moreover it’s been well reported that she renounced it apologized and since corrected it, so it’s more to the point that it doesn’t support your original argument.
They weren’t able to add more because a Republican Congress cut down approved funding to do so.
The “like your plan you can keep it” depended on private insurance continuing to offer plans that would not be tax advantaged. No additional funding was needed to see that that wasn’t going to be viable.
It’s not okay but it’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it, moreover it’s been well reported that she renounced it apologized and since corrected it, so it’s more to the point that it doesn’t support your original argument.
At the beginning of the scandal, the content of those emails were treated as faked and the first response from the media was to self censor stories about them.
That’s actually part of what made it a bigger story, is that when it later came out that they were real instead of people finding out about it months and months ago they found out in bits and pieces over time. In that instance the censorship actually likely hurt the Clinton’s more than it helped; but the outrage is still felt mostly on the right as they saw it as another in a long line of censorship decisions that targeted the right.
I can honestly tell you that no one thought they were they were skeptical of the source, once they were authentic not one outlet called them fake.
And report after report shows the opposite of what you claim. Right wing News is favored on almost all online platforms and much of network news
They were never able to be called unauthenticated. They were published with DKIM signatures from the beginning.
you’re confusing skepticism with oppression people taking a moment to believe something from Julian assange isn’t censorship, He’s not exactly the most trustworthy of sources no matter how much proof he brings up but once it was clear and it was pretty quick I think pretty much everyone bought on
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.
