[dirheist]

It's not just Russia and China that realize this though, the US government does too and they're starting to directly push (it was indirectly previously) for private corporations to censor dissent even if it is correct (see the White House directing Twitter to kick off Alex Berenson in emails).

So you're stuck between doing what favours US intelligence services (coordinating with these private companies behind close doors and directly/indirectly pressuring them to increase moderation) or foreign intelligence services utilizing fake news and bot accounts to sew distrust in western elections.

If you're Twitter the answer is to not censor anything and to allow people to disseminate the information and to decide for themselves weather it looks relevant, fake, or whether its trustworthy. The United States has had yellow journalism and fake newspaper rags on sale for hundreds of years, just because it's easier to consume fake news now doesn't mean we need a radically new solution.

[mikkergp]

> just because it's easier to consume fake news now doesn't mean we need a radically new solution.

Your arguments don’t seem to support this conclusion, why not? Methods change when technology changes.

[ravenstine]

A solution is to discourage media consumption. Modern media may be full of disinformation or malinformation, but those types of information reside on a mound of overinformation intended to overhelm the average person's ability to parse out reality and form their own conclusions. Making available streams of nooze, cat videos, fictional killers, social media dares, and jiggling butts is totally unnatural to the human mind that did not develop under these conditions. If we can't get enough of the public to consider these things harmful in the way we do things like alcohol, then we're kind of screwed because large amounts of disinformation aren't even necessary. As long as the mind is retarded by too much information, it has been set up to accept the single most absurd disinformation.

[mikkergp]

I mean, I love it, but that’s not a solution, it’s a fantasy.

[unit_circle]

I don't think it's a fantasy, it's just that organic solutions like religions or societal norms take a long time to develop and that development is damn messy.

[raxxorraxor]

But you don't need to introduce a new problem that doesn't solve the old one in the first place. How should this ministry of truth be implemented? It will simply be counter propaganda, which means more propaganda. US propaganda on the English speaking net is vastly dominating, nothing comes close. It looks different in other languages of course.

Although to be more precise it is talking points of said propaganda that is multiplied to a far greater extend.

[nobody9999]

>If you're Twitter the answer is to not censor anything and to allow people to disseminate the information and to decide for themselves weather it looks relevant, fake, or whether its trustworthy.

And if you do that, Twitter then becomes a 280 character 4chan/8kun-like platform.

Moderation is essential to keeping internet forums from devolving into cesspools.

The question then becomes, "who should do such moderation?" Should it be private entities (of which there are more than one within any political boundary), the government (which one can't opt out of short of physically moving) and/or both?

I believe that government should stay out of the business of moderating speech, leaving that to private entities who (within certain limits, many of which don't apply WRT digital communications) can moderate/remove any content they choose.

If I don't like how such entities do so, I can vote with my feet/wallet and go somewhere else. Which isn't generally feasible when a government does it.

All that said, there definitely is a problem with disseminating dis/mis-information that has, and will (increasingly) continue to negatively impact discourse and political discussion.

So what's to be done about it? That's a complicated question. For me, the answer is to try and get accurate news (not opinion -- opinion isn't news) from multiple sources and make a determination for myself as to the value/validity of information.

Unfortunately, many folks are unwilling or unable (whether that be time constraints, lack of access, lack of knowledge/interest in sources that challenge their preconceived notions, etc.) to do so. And so many folks just assume that their Facebook/Google/Instagram/Tik-Tok feeds are accurate and honest.

If/when that turns out not to be the case, large swathes of the population are now being misled and won't even know it.

That DHS is looking at dis/mis-information as a national security threat isn't the problem -- in fact, I applaud them for doing so.

The problem is one of institutional distrust (whether valid or not in this or any other circumstance, it exists), providing bad actors the space to spew false/misleading/irrelevant information to advance their goals.

Which makes it more difficult for those with unpopular (not false or misleading -- there's a difference) ideas to gain traction. And that's a problem as well.

How does this play out? I don't see anything close to a positive outcome (i.e., generally free speech and discourse with a strong tilt toward rewarding factual information and penalizing mis/dis-information).

The best-case scenario in my mind would be more decentralization of discussion forums. That gives us both the best and worst of both worlds: Folks can express themselves freely in forums that are accepting of those types of expression, while limiting the impact of mis/dis-information to those who actively seek it out.

Which isn't all that great for a "best-case" scenario, but seems more appropriate than heavy handed, centralized (private and governmental) moderation.

I won't hold my breath.

[amadeuspagel]

> And if you do that, Twitter then becomes a 280 character 4chan/8kun-like platform.

4chan is a forum. Everyone who browses a 4chan board sees the same posts. For that reason, these boards are moderated, but apparently not heavily enough for the tastes of some people, to whom for 4chan is the epitome of horror.

Twitter is a platform. Everyone who uses twitter decides who to follow and who to block. Everyone sees different tweets.

Twitter for a long time had almost complete freedom of speech. It described itself as the free speech wing of the free speech party[1]. In that time, it had fewer rules then 4chan. But to use twitter did not feel like using 4chan, unless you decided to follow the kind of people who post on 4chan.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-w...

[pessimizer]

> And if you do that, Twitter then becomes a 280 character 4chan/8kun-like platform.

I feel like it's important to note during these discussions that twitter was a 4chan-like platform until it started doing political censorship leading up to the 2020 election, and it is currently a 4chan-like platform that practices political censorship and virtually no other type (4chan is a very successful and influential platform that other platforms, like reddit, imitated.)

You can freely follow any random person and reply "you're a fucking idiot" after every tweet they make, and twitter will not be interested. You can create a #fuckingidiot hashtag and organize hundreds of people under it with the sole purpose of harassing this one person. Twitter will not be interested in it, and will not censor you.

Twitter is not censoring for civility, it's censoring for orthodoxy.

[heavyset_go]

> You can freely follow any random person and reply "you're a fucking idiot" after every tweet they make, and twitter will not be interested

This isn't true, I've reported such tweets in the past and Twitter ended up locking accounts and suspending some for it.

[pessimizer]

Type in #NAFO. A Poland-based social media disruption operation, literally supported by the state department and feted by Adam Kinzinger. Survey the tweets.

[res0nat0r]

And this is the hell that Elon is bringing upon himself and all of his companies now that he owns Twitter.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...

[pessimizer]

Open harassers and disruptors are not actually that hard to find and moderate. The problem is lack of desire, not ability. There are various government departments that have harassment operations going on twitter, and there was a story not too long ago about twitter actually warning the government that their operations were becoming too obvious to ignore.

[marmadukester39]

Maybe social media is Fermi’s great filter.