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by test098 978 days ago
> Who defines what illegal and misinformation mean?

EU regulators.

> The information being false or not is actually irrelevant, it's the process of censorship that's damaging.

> This is because even though humans are impulsive and emotional, we're still rational beings.

uh nope:

"The policy expands Facebook’s rules about what type of false information it will remove, and is largely a response to episodes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India in which rumors that spread on Facebook led to real-world attacks on ethnic minorities."

- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/facebook-to-re...

1 comments

> "The policy expands Facebook’s rules about what type of false information it will remove, and is largely a response to episodes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India in which rumors that spread on Facebook led to real-world attacks on ethnic minorities." >- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/facebook-to-re...

I'm aware of those frankly tragic episodes. But ask yourself this: is the problem the fact that simply misinfo was put on FB or the fact that there wasn't enough counter-balancing information available? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or downplay the situation, but the fact is that a lot of places suffer "from misinfo" because the only info available is misinfo. The human mind is inherently a curious mind. And as i've stated in my first comment, people tend to follow info from trains of thought that make sense(are logical)[yes, even if we're talking about religion/etc.): the contents of the information matters, how cohesive it is, how it attacks the false claims. I would argue that a big lie does not even need a "big truth" to be debunked, it only needs a well-thought question to instill the skepticism required for the lie to not be taken as plain truth.

Closing thoughts: in third-world regions: the ones you've mentioned, russia, "china"(on the freedom of information/liberty front), etc. the issue of misinformation is not really that misinformation exists; but actually that it is mainly the only information that exists, and there's not enough balancing "truth"/skepticism. You might think i'm silly or that i'm arguing for misinfo(that wouldn't suit me by the way), but I live in an ex-communist country: I've had some relative contact on how the centralized government used to push actual misinformation and how people took it as blind truth. After the said government(s) failed, people usually became more skeptical about all kinds of information(a good thing to do). Those people are the generation of my parents for example, a dying breed, and it should not come as a surprise that every subsequent generation that came after and took all news as "facts" became usually dumber, less rational, and more naive.

the propagation of misinformation is asymmetrical. a single person or group of people will not have the resources to counterbalance misinfo when its bankrolled by state actors or malicious groups who use it as a weapon. additionally, it's a lot harder to deconstruct a heavily-propagated lie and to educate people than it is to manufacture outrage (eg https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/1...).

what you're describing is an ideal world where everyone thinks and acts rationally and is willing to change their views when new information is presented. that is far from reality. in short, propaganda works for a reason.