[dathinab]

> What Taibbi is asking for is that the guy who tells you that drinking rat poison is good for you should be allowed an audience

He should, it's the basis of democracy. Sure rat poison is a bad example, but thinks are much less clear cut if we speak about other things, including covid19. So putting up warnings about this problems (potential more then just a subtle note at the side) is reasonable removing it is much less so (as long as they don't e.g. tell people to go on the street and kill all politicans or similar bs.).

I mean you start with removing 100% clear bs. misinformation.

Then you remove misinformation which contains some truth (it's still misinformation).

And before you notice unpleasant opinions are removed to (like e.g. the CIA having had similarities to a terrorist organization in the past, factual right but misguiding).

EDIT: Oh and if you tell people to dink rat poison and they do you should be held responsible for tricking people into killing them-self, still that's not the same as censoring the content. ------------

An example from Germany is that there is a very mixed movement called Querdenker. It clearly contains right radicals, nazies, covid denies, q-anon believers etc. BUT a non small part of the core movement are neither of this but people which believe in covid, believe it's bad. But also believe that the decisions done by the German government do more harm then good. But they get frequently denounced and grouped with all the problematic groups from before. Which has all kinds of problematic consequences (including making this people being more susceptible to manipulation from the problematic groups). Now removing (some of) the information sources of this people instead of adding information enlighten them about what is wrong with the information is only making it only worse. Furthermore you can't censor them as this will just push them to other information platforms and if you continue to censor again and again you will end up with a censorship system no less powerfull then chinas... which I believe no one would want in a democracy. So I believe we will have to learn how to handle such information _without_ censoring information we believe is wrong/misguiding.

[dragontamer]

> He should, it's the basis of democracy.

Do you support the election that happened on November 3rd 2020? Then you must support the results of the election, whether you like the election results, or not.

THAT is the basis of Democracy: the peaceful transfer of power based on the votes. If you do not respect the votes, then Democracy falls apart. You literally cannot have a Democracy without votes (while we had a Democracy through WW2 despite the "Office of Censorship").

We have a very, very large group of people who are now using free speech to destroy our trust in the election. We are now left with a decision: Free Speech vs Election.

My gut says that elections are more important than free speech. Historically, we have had times without any free speech what-so-ever (WWII / Office of Censorship). Its a luxury we can do without in times of crisis.

We cannot afford to lose faith in the election process. Period.

[Talanes]

Do you honestly believe that Government reduction in free speech would lead to a net gain in people's trust in the process?

[dragontamer]

Do you honestly believe that these lies that a huge number of people believe in are having a positive or neutral effect on the trust of our elections?

If it's neither positive nor neutral, then the only effect it could have is negative.

[Talanes]

And yet the solution to a negative can still itself be the cause of equal or greater negatives. Hence why I was asking if you believe it is a NET gain. Because the Government cracking down on speech, even obvious lies, will erode some people's trust in the system as well.

[dragontamer]

> And yet the solution to a negative can still itself be the cause of equal or greater negatives.

Cracking down on anti-election rhetoric is an obvious net positive, and needs no further explanation.

> Because the Government cracking down on speech, even obvious lies, will erode some people's trust in the system as well.

Too late for that. Dozens of millions of Americans have lost faith in the 2020 election. The only concern from my perspective is to stop the obvious bleeding: we must stop the false anti-election rhetoric before it poisons the minds of even more.

The lies are winning right now. Be it masks, election fraud, mail-in ballots, or whatever. My sister's father in law believes that COVID is a hoax, I have coworkers who don't think masks help and my mom thinks Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. I've seen enough lies, and I've lost faith that these people can have their vision cleared with the truth. My sister thinks the vaccine may hurt more than it may help and is avoiding the vaccine.

Its clear that misinformation is running amok and nothing is stopping it. The naive "debate with them" perspective goes literally no where, have you ever tried?

[Talanes]

>Cracking down on anti-election rhetoric is an obvious net positive, and needs no further explanation.

Yes, it does. Cracking down on speech would further enrage all those people, while also pissing off a great deal more. I think riots are a more likely outcome of your solution than anything positive.

[rStar]

"We cannot afford to lose faith in the election process. Period." Half the country doesn't vote, because they've lost faith in the election process.

[staticman2]

"Oh and if you tell people to dink rat poison and they do you should be held responsible for tricking people into killing them-self,"

So in your mind Google should assist people in tricking others into drinking rat poison by boosting the signal of their videos by hosting them on one of the world's most popular web sites, essentially making Google employees an accessory to murder, because the "basis of democracy" is assisting bad actors in tricking people into doing things like drinking rat poison.

That's certainly an interesting take.

In my view, you host someone's web site where they trick people into drinking rat poison, that makes you morally culpable. If you have human decency, you try to avoid doing things like that.

[claudiawerner]

>And before you notice unpleasant opinions are removed to (like e.g. the CIA having had similarities to a terrorist organization in the past, factual right but misguiding).

This is a slippery slope, and I'm not sure that it's justified theoretically. It's not as though this is precedent-setting - all platforms have excluded swathes of content for a very long time.

[8note]

Is Germany post WW2 better or worse the the US South post civil war though?