[cjjuice]

It should not be the job of the social media companies to be judge and jury for truth. Let the people decide for themselves what is true and false.

Basically the social media company argument is... we think people are too dumb to figure out what is "real" or not so we are going to censor. That to me is an extremely damning view of the common person.

But then, everywhere on the platform.. "make a plan to vote". So you trust people to vote but don't trust them with the unfiltered information so they can inform themselves without outside intervention?

[munk-a]

The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing. The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it individually formed or inherited) with about 75% of America essentially being unmovable D or R safe votes.

Censorship is a hard question and I think we do need to have better laws promoting free access to material (even "libelous" material) but this is also an area where I think it's pretty clear the government has failed in a big way - twitter + FB shouldn't be news platforms, the dumb news aggregators (like google news) do a pretty good job of being dumb platforms, but those commentary platforms are being run by private entities that can "censor" speech as they like depending on how it benefits or harms their platform. America is in a bit of a crisis right now since the extreme partisan divide has driven the real media (print, TV) to actually split into mutually disproving and incompatible bubbles. On election night one half of the country is going to be absolutely astounded since everything they consumed said their candidate was going to win.

I'm not certain what the solution is but some moderation is required to prevent the apparent acceptance of some pretty hateful views along with conspiracy theories. The Internet introduced clickbait to the world in a manner it never previously conceived of - tabloids have been around for ever but never gotten serious consideration - suddenly major political figures are embracing and re-packaging tabloid headlines and it's a bit of a crisis of information for our society.

[jerf]

'The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing.'

The "common person" is the one doing the moderating on the platforms. There is no pool of superintelligent, superwise, super-everything people doing the hard work of moderating on the platform. It's just common people.

It's not even a good sample of common people. It has a very particular slant to it; very American, for one thing.

[sam_goody]

RealClearPolitics makes a point of presenting articles on both sides of the spectrum and has grown tremendously.

I am cautiously optimistic that there are a lot, lot, lot of people (like myself) that are interested in trying to balance their views, and make a point of reading both sides - especially when a headline is sensational.

I don't think Google news is as balanced as RCP, but it sure beats just reading CNN or Fox!

[munk-a]

I think RealClearPolitics is a great example of solid reporting - I avoided it (along with the intercept and 538 which is weirdly now sort of a news site) in the example above since I'm not certain how sustainable they are in the long run - they may exist because the internet being here means some pretty nice balanced news sources are eventually bound to appear... but corporations have a way of eating media sources that don't say nice things about them. I do really hope that RCP and a lot of the other independent media (even the highly left-slanted ones like TYT) manage to survive and thrive - but I think aggregated news is a thing that has value and I think that maybe highly opinionated commentary of news (like you'd see on twitter/facebook) also has value since it allows for more room for advocacy of ideas.

[srtjstjsj]

RCP is "diverse" compared to CNN or Fox offering opinions from center (mayyybe center -left) Bloomberg/Politico/NYMag to far right (Federalist), with a clear Right bias. Their founding mission to provide diversity to balance the Liberal Mainstream Media. They have nothing Left like Mother Jones or Jacobin.

The farthest left they go is in linking to Biden endorsements, but Biden is a centrist establish Democrat who has been endorsed by most of the pre-2016 Republican party.

It's obvious from the list of sources: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

[arminiusreturns]

I've said it before and I'll say it again; it's the same justification that has been used to justify moves away from democracy. "Those poor dumb plebs, they just don't know any better, we, the elites, know whats best, so we should reduce the amount of democracy!" [1]

1. https://archive.org/details/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralC...

You say "some moderation is required to prevent the apparent acceptance of some pretty hateful views along with conspiracy theories", but the entire point is that then you are giving over to some other person or entity the power and ability to decide what you get to read. I think this should be rejected as a slippery slope made of ky-jelly.

"Don't take security in the false refuge of consensus and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be okay because you're in the safely moral majority."

"It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear, and every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your own action, because you deny yourself the right to hear something." - Christopher Hitchens [2]

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY

bonus (the whole speech is quotable): "Dr. Johnson was waited upon by various delegations of people, to congratulate him of the nobility of the quality; of the Commons; the Lords; and also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London, who tended on him in his Fleet Street lodgings and congratulated him: "Dr. Johnson," they said, "We are delighted to find that you have not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary." "Ladies," said Dr. Johnson, "I congratulate you on being able to look them up". Anyone who can understand that joke, and I'm pleased to see that 10% of you can, gets the point about censorship especially prior restraint as it's known in the United States where it's banned by the first amendment to the constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt, no one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and - more to the point - one has to suspect the motives of those who do so, in particular: the motives of those who are determined to be offended; of those who will go through a treasure house of English, like Dr. Johnson's first lexicon, in search of filthy words to satisfy themselves and some instinct about which I dare not speculate."

[Spivak]

> The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it individually formed or inherited) with about 75% of America essentially being unmovable D or R safe votes.

This is one of those statements that sounds bad on the surface but is actually totally reasonable and has nothing to do with some trope about the "uninformed masses" or whatever. Locally the individual matters a lot more but at the national level voting histories show that the party dominates.

People have "disqualifying issues." And this is totally rational. Being black and voting R is nuts -- same if you're gay. And if you're pro-life then voting D is unpalatable. These kinds of polarizing issues very nearly define the party line. So yeah, if you go the polls in Nov and don't know if you're voting D or R (nationally) then you're probably crazy uninformed.

The actual decision making happens during the primaries where people suddenly have an entire group of people who aren't immediately disqualified and the internal discussion gets a lot more nuanced.

[rayiner]

> Being black and voting R is nuts -- same if you're gay.

I'm not sure if its objectively "nuts" but almost 25% of LGBT voters supported Romney over Obama. That's accounting for the fact that openly LGBT voters are much younger than other voters: twice as likely to be 18-34 and half as likely to be 55+. Median age is about 35, versus 50 for the overall population. Romney won 37% of folks 18-29 and 51% of folks 45-64. There are too many gay republicans to call them all "nuts."

[kelnos]

Obviously all people have different kinds of policy opinions, and the "R" and "D" buckets are way too coarse to describe everyone. Someone who is gay can just as easily be a fiscal conservative (for example) as someone who is straight.

But what I can't understand is how someone -- even if they agree with most of their chosen party's platform -- could vote for a party whose leadership largely wants to erase them. I just don't understand someone who is gay voting for people who believe that their sexual orientation is a "choice", many also believing that it's a "sin" that should be forcibly "re-educated" out.

Certainly calling them "nuts" is dismissive, disrespectful, and doesn't help us understand what's going on, but... really, I do not at all understand what's going on.

[munk-a]

As someone on the D side of things I'm generally in the same camp as you opinion-wise but not all republicans are pray-away-the-gay crazy - that may be Pence's particular brand but Romney ended up legalizing civil unions while governor of MA. Partisan politics like to paint things as black and white but they're a lot more grey than that.

Similarly R-side folks might believe that all D-folks are Trotskyists while that's a rather rare stance to have - certainly the D-side is more towards interventionalism - but nobody with serious power on the D end of things (not even bernie) is advocating for a planned economy.

I feel very strongly about moving towards proportional representation for the house over FPTP slotting. I think the extremism in the current political climate is largely fueled by this us vs. them choice - get us better representation so we can all see that Trotskyists pull one or two house reps nation-wide and slice off of the Dems at large... And watch the white-supremists and westboro baptist church folks get kicked out of the GOP at large and end up with a seat or two themselves. These are fringe groups[1]...

Our current voting system allows negative campaign ads to be just as effective as positive ones - knocking your opponent down 3 pts is the same as raising yourself 3 pts... but it's far easier to craft negative campaign ads so the electorate is constantly submerged in hateful vitriol. We need election reform so we can stop viewing each other as the enemy.

1. Please note, the current administration has actually started embracing these groups more, but this is a new development and should be a clear signal that the country is in trouble.

[xyzzyz]

I think your image of Republican Party messaging is wildly out of sync with how Republican voters see it. It’s closer to where religious faction of the party has been in early 2000s, but it hardly resembles their position today. I do not find it particularly surprising, given that one simply cannot get an accurate view of it without explicitly looking for it: you won’t get it in CNN or MSNBC, and most non-Republicans would never stoop so low to actually watch the “partisan hacks” on Fox.

[rayiner]

I’m not gay, so I’ll offer an analogy. I’m a brown guy with a beard from a Muslim country and with a Muslim last name. I found my friends’ (sincere) concern about Trump’s campaign rhetoric to be odd, because I didn’t find it alarming myself. (Apparently 30% of Muslims polled did not.) I thought it was distasteful and counterproductive—pissing away a demographic George W. Bush won in 2000–but I felt all the rhetoric on the left about concentration camps was way overblown. I didn’t support Trump for other reasons, but the mere presence of some xenophobes in the party wouldn’t keep me out of it. I care about my safety, but I don’t really care if other people think we should have fewer Muslim immigrants. (Also, being from a Muslim country I know that the security issues aren’t totally manufactured.)

Now, what do you mean by “erase?” Republicans don’t want to put gay people in concentration camps and forcibly re-educate them. But it has taken them longer to come around to accepting gay people than Democrats for predictable reasons that gay Republicans are presumably willing to put up with. Conservatism by its nature values the traditional family because they believe it is beneficial for society. The long-standing belief that being gay was a “lifestyle” along with 1970s rhetoric about disrupting the traditional family was predictably alarming. For liberals who had already abandoned the idea that society as a whole should pressure people to get married and have 2.1 kids, acceptance of same-sex relationships that wouldn’t necessarily follow the traditional path came much more easily. But attitudes towards same-sex relationships and marriage have evolved rapidly even among conservatives. In 1978, few people accepted that being gay was genetic. Today, 50% believe that. Acceptance of gay marriage very closely tracks rising understanding that being gay is innate. (Republicans aren’t as far along as Democrats in internalizing that. But even among Democrats only 61% believe that being gay is fully innate, so it’s not like gay Democrats can get totally away from such beliefs either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/234941/say-nature-nurture-expla....) Moreover, in this past decade studies have revealed that huge percentages of gay couples are already raising kids together. In the last decade, an image of gay people as being born that way, and being in committed relationships and raising kids no different than anyone else, has appeared. And it has enabled the reconciliation of conservatism and same-sex relationships to the point that half of Republicans already support same-sex marriage.

Gay Republicans presumably understand this thought process and are willing to work through it and let the process play out. Many, even agree with the general principle of social conservatism, even if they disagree about the specific case. It’s worth noting that gay conservatives played an important role in Obergefell. See: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/06/gay-marriage-vot...

> In 1989, most Americans had never even heard of gay marriage, and certainly couldn’t conceive that it would one day be legalized by popular vote. That year, Andrew Sullivan wrote a landmark essay for the New Republic, “Here Comes the Groom: A (Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage.” Sullivan’s essay is one of the most important magazine articles of recent decades. His argument, which he went on to elaborate in his books Virtually Normal and Same-Sex Marriage and in later essays, is that marriage for gays would “foster social cohesion, emotional security, and economic prudence.” Sullivan’s conservative case would eventually become the intellectual and moral foundation of the campaigns to legalize gay marriage. Sullivan gave Slate permission to reprint his New Republic essay in full.

[jamespo]

This Andrew Sullivan? "In 2003, he wrote he was no longer able to support the American conservative movement, as he was disaffected with the Republican Party's continued rightward shift on social issues during the George W. Bush era"

[RonanTheGrey]

Here's the problem:

Those people have a right to be wrong. That's why your vote counts as much as theirs does. The space that that leaves is where leadership is supposed to come in, in order to tilt the balance one way or the other. If a good leader doesn't arise, that's probably the problem you should be trying to solve.

The elitism of "we know better than you" has been used to justify some pretty horrific chapters in human history. Whether you like it or not, it is a much better state of being for the uninformed to vote, than the alternative.

[munk-a]

I think attributing it to "having the right to be wrong" is overly simplistic and you're missing a big chunk of what the core problem is - when you walk into a voting booth you are allowed to[1] check either the D or the R box. If you've followed a few rounds of elections chances are you've held your nose at least one of the times you've voted. Can you be a member of the GOP that is pretty well convinced that while the conservative courts might overturn Roe vs. Wade that gay marriage is essentially set in stone at this point? I think that's reasonable, I actually think that's pretty correct... No matter how extreme of a Mike Pence we get in office gay marriage is here to stay - if you're taking that as a given then maybe you're concerned about gun rights or the economy of one of a plethora of issues.

We're all complicated rainbows of opinions and when voting day comes around we're forced to either be red or blue and that's a problem.

1. Effectively, obviously you can vote third party by FPTP single slot elections make this incredibly ineffective - sorry... I really really wish this weren't the case.

[RonanTheGrey]

100% with you that FPTP was a mistake and should be rectified - I've seen some pretty good proposals of how ranked choice voting could work and would result in much more equitable outcomes.

[Spivak]

I would never say they shouldn’t vote and if I implied that then that was my mistake. My only point is that disparaging people who appear “party loyal” ignores the motivations that underpin that “loyalty”. On average people are pretty smart and I don’t think it’s too difficult to see some of the very real reasons why, at least nationally, people vote against one party or the other.

The joke about minorities begrudgingly huddling around the Democratic Party exists for a reason.

[RonanTheGrey]

Ah, ok. Good points... So, I have been around awhile -- 6 presidential elections and many more smaller ones.. I got to thinking about this and I realized that at some point, the national conversation changed from 'who you vote for and why' to 'who you vote against and what horrible things will happen if they win'.

To be fair that kind of rhetoric has existed since even the earliest days of the US, but I think on the whole voting has historically been seen as something you DO rather than something you use to fight against. The change in balance is... worrying.

[srtjstjsj]

Since 1974 every election's plurality major issue has been abortion or war, exactly "who you vote against and what horrible things will happen if they win"

Abortion will be banned, Bush will start a war, Obama will create the world's first Muslim Socialist state

[srtjstjsj]

> On average people are pretty smart

This is a vacuous statement. How smart is pretty smart?

[srtjstjsj]

What if you are Black and pro-Life, high income and live in the suburbs, married to a Palestinian and have a police officer brother married to a Jew?

[dasudasu]

With two parties divided along ideological left-right lines, it’s expected that a majority won’t be switching side too often in their lifetime. The opposite would be ideologically weak parties doing a form of clientelism that would change according to the trends of the day.

[munk-a]

Comparing the US system with parliamentary governments - I reject the assumption that the two parties are clearly divided along left-right lines. People all have a pretty wide diversity of opinions there are plenty of people I know that are both pro-life and pro-medicare for all - they don't have a home in the US political system and thus have to settle for one party of the other.

The US's two-party entrenchment forces this false appearance of an us vs. them political battle. It's true that in the US you can only legitimately vote for either D or R in races and that this further entrenches the two parties - but issue voters should be flowing pretty freely between the two parties as their individual focuses shift.

[srtjstjsj]

> The opposite would be ideologically weak parties doing a form of clientelism that would change according to the trends of the day.

Like the Southern Strategy, the Blue Dog Democrats, Tea Party, and Donald Trump (party-switcher).

Look at the radical positions calling themselves "conservative" today, getting more extreme since the 1980s when religous extremists stated taking over the Republican Party.

One-third of US voters are Independent not registered to a party.

The US electoral system forces to parties, but those parties change and are sometimes replaced.

[secondcoming]

'hateful' is entirely relative.

What's wrong with conspiracy theories? They're as harmless as The X Files.

[munk-a]

I'm going to need some sources on conspiracy theories being harmless - Pizzagate[1] lead to someone firing off live rounds in a pizza parlor, QAnon is also tied to some kidnappings[2], anti-vaxers have led to somewhere in the range of 50-60k deaths[3] - anti-maskers... it's a bit too early to tell but some folks put the number around 130k[4]...

Conspiracy theories aren't harmless.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violen...

3. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/anti-vaxxer-views-blamed-as-me...

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/covid-deaths.html

[rightbyte]

[3] doesn't claim any numbers on how many surplus deaths 'anti-vaxers' are the cause of.

[munk-a]

Ah sorry - to infer, the MMR vaccine had measles on a steady downward trend - the article is highlighting a 15% raise in cases. I think it's safe to attribute 15% of the 140k worldwide deaths to the anti-vax movement since we were actually approaching eliminating that disease (like we did smallpox)

[didibus]

> It should not be the job of the social media companies to be judge and jury for truth. Let the people decide for themselves what is true and false

This only works if they remove themselves from choosing what to show who, what to promote, and what to demote.

As long as they are actively choosing who will see what, how often, what things will be promoted, etc. Then they are basically the judge and jury. This is their current dilemma. That's why they're starting to have stronger moderation. They'd want to actively promote things that make them money, and moderate away all things that puts them in hot water, without it affecting the money they make.

[rhizome]

>Basically the social media company argument is... we think people are too dumb to figure out what is "real" or not so we are going to censor

Why can't "we don't want this trash on our site" be the reason? It's "funny" how those who want to propagate banned material always cast themselves as some repressed group subject to the tyranny of government power.

It can still be posted on Gab or Parler, right?

[hiram112]

> Why can't "we don't want this trash on our site" be the reason?

That's a perfectly fine stance, and it has worked well for traditional publishers like the NY Times and Washington Post for decades. They control all their content, and publish exactly the narrative they want. OTOH, if NY Times publishes an OP Ed that slanders and doxes me, causes me to lose my job, etc. then I have the legal right to sue them. See for example the Covington Kid[1].

Facebook and Google want to have their cake and eat it too. They want free rein to pretend like they're just aggregating content, but this election shows that they are definitely using both AI and humans to control what's published. So why should they enjoy all the rights of both a "tech platform" and also a traditional publisher, with none of the responsibilities and liabilities?

Section 230 was crafted explicitly for tech. It can be modified or removed, too.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=covington+kid+lawsuit

[joshuamorton]

Well no, the entire point of 230 was to allow content aggregators to actively moderate content.

As I see it, there are three options:

1. "platforms" are not allowed to moderate content (pre-section 230) without getting liable.

2. What we have now (sites can moderate as they see fit)

3. Some external board adjudicates on what it is acceptable to moderate

Of these, 3 seems by far the worst, and 2 seems better than 1 on empirical grounds.

> OTOH, if NY Times publishes an OP Ed that slanders and doxes me, causes me to lose my job, etc. then I have the legal right to sue them.

You also have the legal right to sue Google if they publish content that slanders you. You can even sue them for doxxing you. You wouldn't win either one. Nor would you win if you sued the NYT for doxxing you, or if an NYT article caused you to lose your job. Keep in mind that "the covington kid" didn't actually win any lawsuits, he sued a bunch of people for ridiculous amounts and settled out of court for, likely, a relatively trivial sum. It might have paid for his college, and that was mostly "make it go away" money. He's the free speech equivalent of a patent troll.

[srtjstjsj]

> 1. "platforms" are not allowed to moderate content (pre-section 230) without getting liable.

Pre 230, platforms were liable regardless of whether they moderated.

[joshuamorton]

That's incorrect. A platform that choose not to moderate anything was not liable for anything.

[rhizome]

Neither the NYT nor WaPo publish UGC, which is a nuance (the nuance, perhaps) that necessitates a middle ground and a recognition that the dish in play is not cake at all.

I didn't like 230 at the time, and frankly we wouldn't be having so many (IF ANY) Facebook headaches over the past 10 years if it had never been born. FB et al didn't want to choose between editorial and common carrier status and the government acceeded to that whine. 230 is what we got, and now we find that 230-protected companies want to exercise editorial control. I don't know what the perfect solution is, but reversing to the common carrier distinction ain't gonna be it.

[free_rms]

Is it 'trash' to be upset that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr from a no-show job that looks super crooked?

I understand that it's politically not helpful at this particular moment, and that the Trump kids are worse, but none of that makes it false, and it doesn't make me 'trash' for not liking it.

[rhizome]

>Is it 'trash' to be upset that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr from a no-show job that looks super crooked?

Yes, and it outs you as a blinkered rube. To be upset about Hunter Biden is 110% turnip truck.

It doesn't look super-crooked unless you take the word of certain interest-conflicted sources, because sinecures happen all the time, every day, for centuries, and $600K isn't that much for something like that in this day and age. It's simply not a big deal, and thus trash.

And yeah: now do Jared.

[HelloMcFly]

> Is it 'trash' to be upset that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr from a no-show job that looks super crooked?

No, because that's clearly verifiable facts summarized by an opinion. Now ask "Is it trash to acknowledge that Hunter Biden had his dad use his influence to replace a straight-laced Ukrainian prosecutor with a corrupt stooge so Hunter could enrich himself?"

That's trash. Or:

"Is it trash to point out how Soros-funded Democrats are involved in a global pedophilia conspiracy that American conservatives are secretly working to take down?"

That's also trash.

[free_rms]

It gets into the realm of speculation with partial facts, but you can make a pretty good case that Biden was involved with replacing one corrupt stooge with another one, who then just happened to drop all investigations into Hunter Biden's shady employer. Matt Taibbi has done some good reporting on this lately.

You could cast doubt on Taibbi or an any narrative that fills in the blanks in some places, but compare to the fevered Russia-conspiracy talk that got mainstream credibility, Rachel Maddow features, WaPo editorial references, etc for years. Is one so much worse than the other? Or is it just a matter of which side it favors in the short-term?

[HelloMcFly]

I do not cast doubt on Taibbi. I think the work he is doing is great, and should have been where the effort was in the first place. But so much of that particular topic is just circumstantial chum in the water that either few people actually investigated, or those that did could find little real supporting evidence.

But let me use Taibbi's own words here: “If something comes in and we don’t know the exact providence of it, that doesn’t mean we can’t publish it. All we have to do is establish that it’s true, and a lot of important stories have been broken that way.”

Ironically, Taibbi seems to say this as a criticism for Twitter reacting to the NYPost story. Except the NYPost did no work to establish it was true and even hired a Hannity employee to publish it since their own journalists wouldn't do it. That to me is the problem.

Twitter and Facebook, through action or inaction, now impact our democracy. Their action or inaction gives them responsibility whether asked for or not, conferred or not. I think this creates a need to act responsibly. I don't know how this should best be done, but I'm categorically against a complete "hands-off" given the expertise we've seen at creating and spreading manipulated content.

[free_rms]

I'll just say, if you're gonna put your thumb on the scale, you need to not fuck it up.

They streisand-effected the whole story, and made themselves look bad and unfair in the process -- how many unsourced claims about Russian interference have they let stand? This was a fiasco all around.

Cheers and solidarity.

[srtjstjsj]

The Burisma investigation was dropped by the shady prosecutor before the prosecutor was replaced. The opposition to the previous prosecutor was multi-national

[skybrian]

It's not that people are "too dumb" but rather that they aren't going to do the work needed to verify a story. How many phone calls do you make to verify something before resharing it? Most people make zero phone calls.

If you don't do the work, there's no reason to believe that you can do as good a job judging plausibility of a story as a good journalist can do. It's not about who's smarter, it's about not having the evidence.

I don't make any phone calls either, but I try to crib from people who do their homework. I also appreciate basic filtering to keep the noise down. It's not that I couldn't do my own spam filtering, but rather I don't want to.

[chmod775]

> Basically the social media company argument is... we think people are too dumb to figure out what is "real" or not so we are going to censor.

Most platforms, Twitter included, just wanted to be dumb service providers. They don't want to spend money and carry responsibility moderating content.

It was large media outlets and the public outrage they produced over "fake news" and "the far right" that pressured them into taking a more proactive stance.

People like me who were opposing it back then and saying "you don't know what you're asking for" got labeled far right, and essentially bunched with Trump, which was hilarious to me as a left leaning European.

Newspapers now becoming angry Twitter is evenly applying the new rules - the rules newspapers lobbied for - is even more hilarious to me.

And you have to understand that Twitter did not make a mistake in how they responded to this. The article objectively was against their rules.

Whether these rules are good rules is another matter, but clearly the whole thing was dumb from the start.

[kelnos]

> Most platforms, Twitter included, just wanted to be dumb service providers. They don't want to spend money and carry responsibility moderating content.

Not really. They already spend time and money figuring out what content to promote and demote in order to increase engagement and maximize their ad revenue. They're just finding that the some of the kinds of things that tend to surface because of that are the kinds of things that they need to moderate, otherwise people (both users and advertisers) will get fed up with the platform and leave.

[La1n]

>That to me is an extremely damning view of the common person.

But fake news has been spreading a lot, while maybe not in your circles it does still happen. And retraction or an apology article will not be spread as widely due to the fact that a lot of fake news is specifically inflammatory to be spread quickly and widely.

[goalieca]

The truth is often not black and white and doubly so when in the context of persuasion. When you start censoring information for accuracy then you're only getting one person's version of the truth which is even worse because now you're putting a gold stamp on it!

[munk-a]

That is a really really big danger here - but it's also how American media worked for a really long time. It comes with an enormous inherent pro-establishment bias but I think it's valid to view that bias as possibly being the lesser of evils.

I'm still on the fence personally, this is a really hard problem.

[ntsplnkv2]

Why?

Who's job should it be?

> we think people are too dumb to figure out what is "real" or not so we are going to censor. That to me is an extremely damning view of the common person.

Maybe dumb is the wrong word - but most people are not that bright. There's nothing wrong with saying that - it's why BS marketing is so effective.

[ilikehurdles]

> It should not be the job of the social media companies to be judge and jury for truth.

You present this as an axiom, like it's some kind of foregone conclusion, but why? Why shouldn't they be allowed to curate what content makes on their platform? I'm not saying they should have a legal mandate to judge truth, but if they object to certain publications, articles, authors, posts, etc, that's up to them.

[hellotomyrars]

"Unfiltered Information" is a nice ideal but it's also just not true. Additionally it doesn't account for intentional disinformation.

Regardless of the source, the information has already been filtered through whoever is presenting it.

(In this specific case I think the actions taken by Twitter were bone-headed/shortsighted but Twitter has no obligation to host any content or uphold your first amendment rights because they don't apply to Twitter.)

[colinmhayes]

Unfortunately most people are too blinded by political allegiance too correctly decide what is true. Might be a damming view of the common person but that doesn't make it untrue.

[SoSoRoCoCo]

> Let the people decide for themselves what is true and false.

They can't. They simply aren't capable.

I don't even have to use a fallacy, this is literally happening:

The US has a growing population of people who sincerely believe devil-worshiping democrats are drinking the blood of stolen children. 15 are running for US congress.

We no longer need to even "slippery slope it", the worst-case scenario is happening: disinformation is usurping facts at an alarming rate with very real consequences.

[dahart]

Not disagreeing, but your comment leaves me with a lot of questions...

What would be the difference in this argument between 'social media' and other media? For example, should the same be true of newspapers? What about scientific or government publications?

If people should be allowed to decide for themselves what is true, should private for-profit companies also be allowed to decide what is true for themselves?

Do you consider stories that are verifiably false to be "unfiltered information"? Why should it be considered "information" if it's not true? Does it matter if the information being presented was known to be false and is being published for subversive politically motivated reasons?

Is your framing that they're saying people are dumb really true if the "information" is difficult or impossible to verify? Does it matter if it's a breaking story and there's only one such source of information? Does it matter if, statistically, there's a sizeable portion of smart people that will accept published stories as true?

[thereare5lights]

> That to me is an extremely damning view of the common person.

Isn't it self evident by now that most people lack critical thinking skills?

[efa]

Yes. And yet ever five seconds I'm bombarded by someone telling me to vote. I guess they don't care if people without critical thinking skills vote.

[munk-a]

It's my opinion that getting everyone to vote is the best option - there is a whole big chunk of the electorate that's quite uninformed but any attempt to narrow down the pool of eligible voters seems quite likely to fall into authoritarianism to me.

We've got a lot of historical evidence about what happens if you let only people of certain skin colors, gender or wealth vote and all of those approaches were eventually rejected in favor of a universal voting system[1]. Democracy seems like our best bet for a fair and just government and I'm strongly in favor of having better representation of the actual beliefs of the citizenry - even if they're folks I disagree with.

1. Assuming you ignore American oddities like the electoral college, ignore tacitly socially accepted voter suppression and accept that minimum voting ages should be a thing (which I'm still pretty "meh" on personally but whatever).

[chordalkeyboard]

Do you think there is also a danger of uninformed voters bringing about authoritarianism?

[munk-a]

Absolutely yea - especially since we're sorta leaning that way in America right now. But I think that that risk is coming out of undemocratic qualities of our government rather than the democratic ones.

I really really want to dump FPTP voting since I think it inevitably leads to two party systems and that two-party partisan us vs. them politics is what lets authoritarianism grow.

[chordalkeyboard]

Thanks for the reply. My perspective is that democracy is a type of authoritarianism, or at least closely related because the elections are decision-forcing processes that result in the losing side not getting what they want. How would you reconcile this?

[picardythird]

But here you have a man who stormed a pizza parlor with an AR-15, ready to uncover the global cabal of pedophilia that has infiltrated the Democratic Party.

Or the woman who won't vaccinate her children because she believes vaccines cause autism.

Or the person, communicating via the satellites that circle the Earth, who believes that the Earth is flat.

These people aren't rare - they're common. We live in an era of disinformation, and the very idea of truth has been eroded.

False stories spread over Twitter like wildfire, and to think that the majority of the thousands of readers who consume them are fact-checking them is perhaps a bit hopeful.

[rightbyte]

Lack of mental institutions are to blame not free speech on Twitter and FB. How about not making policys to combat covid-5g and the flat earth club.

[picardythird]

Twitter is not a bastion of free speech though, because a huge fraction of it is simply propaganda posing as free speech. On the day of the 2016 election, one of the top ten most re-tweeted accounts was a fake Russian account posing as an American conservative organization.

Covid-56 and flat earthers are some of the most outlandish examples, but the vast majority of misinformation is more subtle, and therefore more insidious. I'm not suggesting what the solution should be, but it's clear that complete un-regulation has lead to a completely broken information space.

[cycrutchfield]

If social media companies don't want to be used as transmission vectors of obvious foreign political influence, then they don't have to be. Just like if they don't want to be used as transmission vectors of pornography or any other type of content, then they don't have to be. In both cases it requires setting some sort of content standard and making decisions about whether the content meets that standard.

[cjjuice]

If it is truly foreign influence, then it is on the FBI/DoJ to do the investigation and publicly declare it as such and order it to be taken down.

Social Media companies are not equipped to make that distinction and should not do so.

[Splendor]

Are you arguing that social media companies should not remove posts and instead let normal individuals determine what's true; while also arguing that billion-dollar social media companies are not capable of determining what's true?

[cycrutchfield]

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes"

[HelloMcFly]

I can appreciate the deeply principled stand people on HN tend to make about this issue. I know there is a libertarian streak here around the access to content and information. I don't share those values, and think unchecked distribution of manipulated content creates a worse outcome for our society; I'd argue it is more inherently dystopian than straight-up government censored speech, which of course is not what's at stake here.

It doesn't matter whether I trust them to vote because they have a right to vote no matter what I think. I definitely do not trust masses of people to identify real vs. manipulated content that is expertly designed to be misleading, and I think companies that directly facilitate the spread of information have some level of responsibility for the consequences of enabling manipulated media to infect their users. I don't know what the balance is, I'm not dogmatic, but I think everyone needs to be a little less dogmatic on this issue.

[cjjuice]

Well argued point. However, I would counter that we should not do evil in the pursuit of good.

Let's find another way that does not limit free speech. It will be a harder solution to find sure, but the converse is too dangerous and nuanced to be implemented. It also gives social media companies undue influence over our democracy.

[HelloMcFly]

I suppose at the end of the day, I just don't see Twitter or Facebook playing some level of QA in manipulated media as censorship of free speech. Requiring some level of investigative work before publishing potential election-changing "news" doesn't seem at all controversial to me.

Social media companies already have undue influence over our democracy. I think we've already seen the damage they can do when they take a hands-off approach. There is no action they can take (or not take) that will not have major political implications. Do nothing and misinformation spreads like wildfire, likely first by bad-faith actors then by good and bad-faith actors. But doing something is fraught. Yet, I advocate for trying something over keeping one's hand off the till as we're talking about the real world here, and it is marginalized and under-served communities that ultimately pay the price.

[ta8645]

Everyone might have to start considering and addressing the needs of these people instead of ignoring them. The reason people are so exploitable is because those in power, who have intelligence and access to good information, seemingly despise the masses. At the very least dismiss them with contempt and ignore them.

The correct answer is to treat everyone as a worthy person, regardless of their intellectual prowess. The current left, with their self professed mission for the underdog, are the worst about this. The contempt a person must have for their fellow man in order to deem them as unworthy of free speech, is gut wrenching. Instead, we should be finding ways to make socially responsible ideas more accessible and inclusive for _everyone_.

[HelloMcFly]

> The contempt a person must have for their fellow man in order to deem them as unworthy of free speech, is gut wrenching

You don't know me. That you feel I have so much contempt for my "fellow man" because of this disagreement of ours is wild. I may just as well bemoan - in equally bad faith - your contempt for honesty, transparency, or reality.

At no point have I argued that anyone should be prevented from free speech, yet there your accusation sits. My argument that purveyors of socially-distributed content have some level of responsibility for the real-world impacts this creates, particularly on marginalized communities that are often not sharing/consuming this information and only victimized by it. Did I say anyone should be prevented from expressing themselves? No. Neither do I offer solutions because I am not an expert. But I don't believe a completely "hands-free" approach is viable because of how easy it is to manipulate content, trick people, and use tricks to ensure your message is spread in non-natural ways (e.g., bot farms). That is not "contempt" for the intellectual prowess of others, it's a recognition of the reality we've already seen; I'm not immune to it and neither are you.

I find your seemingly dogmatic belief well-intentioned (a courtesy you certainly did not apply to me) yet naive, hopeful but damaging. I believe - wholeheartedly - that the position I take is much more respectful of people and communities than yours. Because I'm not taking an ivory tower principled stand as if there are no real world implications. There have been, there are, there will be.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm willing to admit that. But this isn't merely an intellectual exercise for me as I feel it often is for so many.

[varispeed]

Exactly this. Medium that uses censorship for any reason, they think you are too stupid to understand the content in front of you so they take that decision from you to delete something. That should be illegal with few exceptions.

[rhizome]

>That should be illegal with few exceptions.

And thus the right wing comes around to centralized government control of companies.

[girvo]

That’s just the AuthRight, which to be honest seem to make up most right wing discourse these days. It’s curious.

[varispeed]

Not sure what it has to do with right/left wing. Free speech should exist regardless of your economic or social views and should be protected with the force of law.

[anthonypasq]

how is forcing a company to platform your views free speech?

[varispeed]

Platforms should welcome users of any background and views. Company shouldn't be able to ban someone based on their views and opinions. If user will violating T&C or the law then company should be able to remove the account.

[rhizome]

Because the (US) right wing and libertarians are the forces first to raise a hue and cry of socialism and central planning in response to any suggestion of government oversight of corporate activities.