[13years]

You only have two choices, let all information be available regardless of whatever downside there may be, given that at least you still have some control over how to deal with that, or live in a truly Orwellian society in which you have no control over what you know.

[munk-a]

The world isn't a black and white place and there are a variety of more nuanced stances between those two extremes. Any amount of censorship doesn't necessarily and immediately devolve into 1984.

[13years]

And yet you are witnessing exactly what I describe today in realtime.

Censorship went from censoring crazy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2017, to affecting everyone in the public as well as heads of state.

I said this was going to happen the very day he was deplatformed. With great power comes great temptation and abuse nearly a certainty to follow.

[munk-a]

Free speech issues are never simple - but their solutions is never found in the extremes. We've already, as a society, compromised free speech to make exceptions for discriminatory speech and violent destabilizing speech - we're already compromising how available all information is and it's necessary to have a functioning society.

Right now the US, specifically you guys - most of the rest of the world is handling this better - has a huge issue with false information around vaccine efficacy and dangers. This issue must be resolved if you want to be included in an open world once again - some level of censorship is going to be required.

[13years]

> we're already compromising how available all information is and it's necessary to have a functioning society

I would call that a functioning prison. Not a society.

Freedom is extremism in a world of tyranny

[13years]

> has a huge issue with false information around vaccine efficacy and dangers

It is fascinating your viewpoint here, as the false information identified in the US is true information elsewhere. The reason for this is precisely the censorship and information control.

Reasonable censorship is an oxymoron

[munk-a]

This is a case of an algorithm doing stupid stuff and misclassifying things - it's also perfectly fair to criticize whether FB should actually control the classification algorithm for this particular type of statement. A misbehaving algorithm doesn't prove the lack of a system though - it just proves that the current one is broken.

[burnished]

Can you substantiate this? It seems pretty loaded, and I'm reminded of that fallacy where you state there are only two extremes possible as outcomes, you doing that on purpose or what?

[13years]

How to propose there is a middle ground? What everyone imagines is that if we only censor what is reasonable to censor it will be fine.

The fallacy is that we always view this from our personal perspective, yet we will not be the ones who make those choices. We give up that role to someone else.

Who has this role over society has immense power. Some would argue greater than governments themselves. It is only a matter of time before that vector will be exploited. It is in principle the same idea as regulatory capture, yet the incentives for capturing speech are far greater than a typical regulatory body.