[exabrial]

So the latest fake news is that everyone is being told to shut off operating system updates permanently on their devices to "block apple and google". ::slams head into desk::

We're already seen that censoring fake news on vaccine safety only has fanned the flames because the perpetrators point out "they wouldn't censor us if it wasn't true!". So yeah, while these platforms have the right to do so, when you have a monopoly, it's probably the worst option for society.

Not only that, but as the conversations disappear from public view, they move underground... and I have no doubts this will be used to justify the next surveillance bill.

[AnthonyMouse]

It reminds me of how incredibly everyone handled the election fraud claims.

The media's method was apparently to loudly and forcefully deny them as quickly as possible.

So you had Giuliani come out and give his press conference laying out what they were allegedly going to prove. Immediate response is that they have no evidence. But they said explicitly that they were going to provide the evidence soon, once they'd finished preparing to present it.

Then they come out to present all of this witness testimony and the response while it's happening is that they're repeating already debunked claims. Already debunked because they hadn't previously provided anything like witness testimony to support them.

So now even if the claims are bunk, these media outlets have forcefully denied them at a point in time when they clearly couldn't have known that yet. Which destroyed their credibility to deny the claims later, once there had actually been enough time to evaluate them.

Which increased the number of people believing the claims to a degree that tech companies started censoring them. So now you're here:

> "they wouldn't censor us if it wasn't true!"

Impossible for anyone to convincingly deny the claims at this point because you've created the impression among believers that the truth is being suppressed. Because that's what censorship does.

Made a thousand times worse because it was right after notoriously censoring the NY Post over an article that turned out to be true, destroying their ability to claim that they were only censoring things that were false.

Who else thinks this isn't going well?

[cudgy]

What a horrible job it must be to work as a journalist for many of these news organizations. The pressure to please their editors and stoke their viewer base with a consistent narrative must be immense.

Surely, these journalists (pundits) must know what they are doing though. The question is why would an individual who sought to be a discoverer of truth allow themselves to end up in this situation.

Are they simply desperate to work in the news industry no matter what they have to do/say? Do they not realize that a large portion of the audience (from all political slants) is befuddled by their biased reporting?

True journalism appears relegated to freelancers sprinkled around the internet who unfortunately are not heard by the people that most need to hear them.

Yes, it isn’t going well.

[newacct583]

> because the perpetrators point out "they wouldn't censor us if it wasn't true!"

Where did they point that out, if they were censored? Seems like (and this is not nearly as ironic as it sounds) we need better/smarter censorship, not less.

The fundamental disease here isn't the propagation of incorrect facts, it's the evolution of communities where alternative facts become accepted canon. Once you have everyone's eyeballs on the same stories that they share again and again, then it doesn't really matter whether they're true or not.

So the same people that believe that covid-19 started in a lab believe that masks don't work, and climate science is bunk, and the election was stolen, and that Mueller is secretly working with Q, etc...

And that really does strike me as a cycle that can be broken. But yes, it requires control way up at the platform level to decide what can be shared. Real truth is real. Experts exist. And those experts should, yes, decide what gets published on mass forums. And in the world of just a few decades back that wasn't a controversial idea.

But ultimately it's all about norms. Because if there are entities (like a lot of folks here, sadly) who for cynical reasons really want some of that garbage to be shared, they'll always be able to break this by screaming "censorship". Which is what's happening now.

At the end of the day we have a group of people who came to power based on lies, trying to retain that power by suppressing all attempts to control those lies.

[thatguy0900]

And when the government has those new censorship systems good enough to decide which facts are the incorrect ones, they will act with restraint? The Cia will never inflict a trump on another country, out of their sense of morality? I would rather such things not exist.

[newacct583]

I was talking about norms, not government action, FWIW. That's exactly what we used to have. There have been nutjob conspiracy theories throughout history, but what we used to have is expert consensus that told it was wrong. Somewhere along the line the experts (largely, but not exclusively, picked by the media) got neutered by the social media bubbles.

Again, there isn't any actual censorship happening. If you're a conservative you can say whatever you want about any conservative policy you want on any platform you want. The only people having trouble right now are the ones who want to talk about violent overthrow of the government.