[HN Gopher] Society has a trust problem. More censorship will on...
___________________________________________________________________
Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it
worse
Author : jashkenas
Score : 108 points
Date : 2022-01-26 21:26 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (on.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (on.substack.com)
| umvi wrote:
| One of my favorite quotes I read last year: "Covid is as much a
| trust crisis as it is a health crisis"
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is one of the more important lessons about goodwill and
| trust. It takes years to amass, but only a moment to squander.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Reading the comments here, I get the impression that a lot of
| folks view censorship as a tool of oppression by those in power
| and free speech as the shield against it.
|
| If the past 10 years have taught us anything, it's that both
| "free speech" and censorship can be weaponised by those in power
| who wish to manipulate the discourse for their own personal gain.
|
| If we want regular folks to have a greater say in public
| discourse again, we need to strike a balance that limits the use
| of both sides as tools of oppression.
|
| I'd personally be in favour of fines or other punishments for
| deliberately or negligently propagating misinformation, assuming
| that the decision was made by a jury and not an unelected body.
| romseb wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how free speech has been weaponised by
| those in power?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| By mass-publishing targeted misinformation backed by huge
| organisations, then claiming that anyone trying to limit
| their manipulation is undermining free speech.
| rhaksw wrote:
| Moderation should be fully reviewable. I made a site to do this
| for reddit [1]. As of this hour, user pages [2] work best because
| the archive service is down. Subreddit history pages [3], which
| show where the community and mods have disagreed the most, also
| still work.
|
| [1] https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq
|
| [2] https://www.reveddit.com/y/rhaksw
|
| [3] https://www.reveddit.com/v/worldnews/history
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You could argue that it is just another stage in 'Escape from
| Freedom'. I am going to simplify a lot here, but basically the
| process goes something like this:
|
| -Things are hard; people fight and win some degree of autonomy
| -Status quo sets in; people believe this is how it always will be
| -Things get easy and people forget what freedom is -Things get
| hard..
| 2457013579 wrote:
| Sounds a lot like this saying that's been going around the last
| few years:
|
| "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times.
| Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
|
| Side tangent- I tried to find the author of that quote thinking
| it has to be a 'wise man' of the past (given that it's not a
| gender neutral statement), and it looks like that it's actually
| from a post apocalyptic book from 2016 that soon after became a
| meme.
|
| Source: https://www.slanglang.net/memes/hard-times-create-
| strong-men...
| skeptical2 wrote:
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As a little exercise, about once a day I take a pass through CNN
| or NPR, and then another through Fox News. Just to get a high
| level idea of what each side believes reality to be. It is
| fascinating how little overlap there is. For the most part I
| don't think people are really arguing with each other, they're
| just arguing with a straw man they have constructed to represent
| the opposition.
| austincheney wrote:
| I can empathize with this line of thinking but its incredibly
| unimaginative. Censorship is a symptom of a larger problem and
| users reliant upon something that intentionally abuses them, like
| Facebook, is a different symptom of the same problem. To me that
| larger problem is centralized information ownership and people
| shouldn't trust it.
|
| This is the compelling motivator of decentralization.
|
| Decentralization isn't blockchain, web3, or whatever. Blockchain
| is third party storage.
|
| In a decentralization scheme data resides at destinations. Nobody
| owns it but the destinations. Nobody observes it but
| destinations. There is no third party censorship.
|
| The only users that have to suffer third party censorship are
| influencers and broadcasters who don't want decentralization.
| zipswitch wrote:
| >we allow people to sound what alarms they want and patrons to
| decide for themselves what to pay attention to
|
| I think the above alteration throws the dilemma into a little
| sharper relief.
|
| We live in a complex society which requires a degree of deference
| to "expert authority" in order to function. Our collective
| ability to agree on how to determine who (or what) qualifies as
| such an authority is not working well. I do not have any answers
| in which I am confident, just Socrates line on the beginning of
| wisdom.
| mattnewport wrote:
| > I do not have any answers in which I am confident, just
| Socrates line on the beginning of wisdom.
|
| Socrates who was censored by being executed because he said
| things the authorities of the time didn't like? That Socrates?
| paulpauper wrote:
| Substack will always be a sort of niche site. It will never pull
| anything close to Facebook or Twitter numbers. So investors do
| not have much expectations for growth. If investors had higher
| expectations pf ad-based growth, then censorship would be a
| consideration if it meant boosting ad revenue.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| So many of these threads are now filled with more than the normal
| "a company made me take something down because it violated TOS"
| and now has a cavalcade of conspiracy theories.
|
| The tech community certainly wasn't immune to the craziness of
| the times.
| Liquix wrote:
| Could increased censorship actually be making the misinformation
| problem worse?
|
| If we are allowed to discuss and compare the merits of various
| theories, the wheat of truth naturally separates from the chaff
| of nonsense. When everything outside of The Approved Narrative is
| censored, people inevitably stumble across "banned" ideas - but
| there's no one to argue the other side or point out the flaws,
| making it far too easy to get sucked in.
| onphonenow wrote:
| One problem I am having is that on the left I thought things were
| pretty high quality from a facts / science side, and that has
| eroded. Fair disclosure - I'm a max dem donor and will likely
| continue to vote 100% dem.
|
| 7,000 (!) scientists have signed the John Snow memorandum. It
| states that "Furthermore, there is no evidence for lasting
| protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection".
|
| https://www.johnsnowmemo.com/john-snow-memo.html
|
| 6th paragraph
|
| This is despite the fact that our immune system has shown to
| work, pretty well, for almost ALL other influenzas and pandemics,
| that almost all analogous types of infections have LONG lasting
| natural immunity (MERS / SARS etc) etc.
|
| The CDC director has signed this letter.
|
| So we have a problem. CDC blocks testing, then says masks don't
| help, then says only vaccines can protect us. All these have (or
| will likely be) obviously false.
|
| So trust in the left I think is diminishing - too many lawyers?
| Too many folks focused on politics? Too many public health
| officials / scientists and not enough hard science folks?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Sorry, how is this a left/right issue? The actions you describe
| the CDC having undertaken were under a right wing government. I
| don't know how you're making this a political divide issue.
| umvi wrote:
| He's not pointing fingers at the other party, he's saying his
| trust _in his own party_ has eroded.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm not saying they are pointing fingers, I'm asking how is
| this evidence of his own party being a problem so as to
| cause distrust?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > then says masks don't help
|
| Actually, they said this:
|
| Masks don't help
|
| Masks do help, but save them for the healthcare workers
|
| Masks do help, get one, a cloth one is fine.
|
| Masks do help, double-mask
|
| Mask do help, but you need N95 masks
|
| Given that even with a properly fitting N95 mask that is form
| fitting you can still smell everything right through it, I
| think a properly fit, and negative pressure tested N100 or P100
| is likely the actual protective standard of solid protection.
| Unfortunately, I have a few P100s sitting around and I can tell
| you that sleeping in one, or wearing one reguarly around town
| makes me feel I am living in a post apocalyptic dystopian
| future. Think 12 monkeys(1) minus the full chem/bio suit and
| crazy decon procedures.
|
| This whole ordeal has greatly shaken my faith in technocratic
| government.
|
| (1) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/
| redisman wrote:
| A mask someone could wear for hours will never block all
| smells. Even in a N99 you still smell gases and other small
| things
| omgitsabird wrote:
| You can wear a SCBA for hours. You can also find P100
| cartridges that eliminate smells from VOCs and "gases".
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I think what happened is capitalist forces looted the american
| middle class via immigration and money printing, then construed
| those political issues as leftist "for the common man" causes.
| People got swept up in that idea, the capitalist is now long gone
| from the public eye, and useful idiots are picking up the torch
| of middle class destruction, confused about the cause and effect
| of their politcal leanings.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| We don't have a trust problem. We have a _lack of trustworthy
| people in positions of power_ problem. I see how one can be
| easily confused. But we (the People) don't trust politicians or
| business leaders because they have show repeatedly they're not
| worthy of trust.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You could argue that one begets the other. I am not going to
| argue chicken an egg, but US has generally been very anti-
| government. If you poll Americans about their representatives,
| the responses are uniformly negative. And yet, we keep re-
| electing them in massive numbers.
|
| It is absolutely fascinating.
| ksdale wrote:
| I was under the impression that Americans overwhelmingly
| disapprove of Congress as a whole, but the individual
| representatives are about as popular as you'd expect.
| skeptical2 wrote:
| jltsiren wrote:
| That exactly is the trust problem. Why would trustworthy people
| even try to gain power, if the public assumes that those in
| power are untrustworthy and corrupt? And why would those in
| power remain trustworthy when the incentives are clearly in
| favor of abusing your power and the public assumes that you
| will do that anyway?
|
| It's a vicious cycle, but a virtuous cycle would also work in
| the same way. Reality shapes people's expectations, and
| people's expectations shape reality.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _But we (the People) don't trust politicians or business
| leaders_
|
| Part of the problem is bad grouping. I trust _some_
| politicians, and _some_ business leaders on _some_ topics.
|
| But it's too easy to raise your idols on pedestals where they
| can do no wrong and you trust them on everything.
|
| I've watched it happen to a significant proportion of the US
| population. Ironically, in those cases I've personally
| observed, it actually started from a _distrust_ of the
| "establishment".
| paulpauper wrote:
| As bad as twitter and Facebook censorship is, it's worse for
| other sites, like Reddit or probably any v-bulletin forum. Reddit
| subs have soooo much moderation, especially any sub that that is
| even slightly popular, so many arbitrary and hidden rules and
| content guidelines. On twitter I can call someone a jerk and the
| worst that may happen is the person may block me, but that will
| get your banned from many reddit subs.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Reddit subs have soooo much moderation
|
| Moderation I can live with. If some mod doesn't want me on
| their sub, I find another. It's the admin hammer bans of the
| subs I found that I object to.
| zionic wrote:
| Not when it's a major hub-sub for a topic. A rogue moderator
| can take something like /r/spacex and completely ruin it then
| ban anyone who disagrees, to the point that people have to
| make stuff like /r/spacexlounge to have a functional
| community.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I find this sentiment profoundly confusing. Admins are also
| just mods.
|
| Maybe it's because I run a few websites off of a machine in
| my basement, and those are where I say the things I want to
| say. If another website wants to ban me then fuck 'em I'll
| say what I want from my ownproperty. I have never felt
| particularly entitled to say whatever I want on other
| people's in-house implementations of vbulletin. I understand
| that platforms are different, and commented elsewhere on that
| stuff, but <img src="old_man_yells_at_cloud.jpg">
| paulpauper wrote:
| reddit admis have vastly more power than fakebook or twitter
| content moderators. for one, reddit does not outsource their
| moderation.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Who is being censored? Sure people are banned from communities,
| but that is nothing new.
|
| For most people, to host a blog, one can host a server at their
| house, through their own ISP, use the latest static website
| package, and share some links. It is a _very_ low barrier to
| entry.
|
| I think what people are actually saying is that they want the
| followers that these platforms provide them. They want to be able
| to push notifications and invade peoples' inboxes. They want
| entry into their day-to-day. You can't get that from your own
| host.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The problem is that accounts are tired to identities. Losing
| your Facebook or twitter account is a ban on the person; not
| only do you lose year's worth of contacts and content, but you
| are prohibited from making a new one, and if you do it may
| eventually be banned too.
| [deleted]
| plainsimple wrote:
| Society has good reason to miss-trust governments, corporations,
| media, the education system and the entire pharma industry.
| Society does not have a "trust problem". The problem is that
| leadership in all the pillars of society have been abusing their
| position by controlling what people are aloud to do and what
| people are aloud to say by demonizing and even criminalizing
| anything that does not support their agenda.
| alexashka wrote:
| I wish people didn't take every opportunity to self promote and
| pat themselves on the back.
|
| Substack is just another primitive blog platform, with a little
| 'pay' button attached, nothing more.
|
| It reminds me of that Chris Rock joke about black folks bragging
| about not going to jail, selling drugs, cheating on their wives
| or having multiple baby mamas. You're not _supposed_ to do any of
| those things, you dumb muthafaka!
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > It means we allow writers to publish what they want and readers
| to decide for themselves what to read
|
| I hope they stick to their guns. History suggests they won't.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Yeah, there's a reason for "protocols, not platforms"... And
| keeping jumping between platforms might not be that easy : see
| YouTube.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| Actually, the norm in the past many decades in the US was a
| very liberal press, where people could publish on subversive
| topics of all kinds. The "left" supported broad first amendment
| rights on practically any topic. Now, they actively seek to
| censor and silence those who question or criticize a narrative,
| and with regard to covid those who question government policy.
| It's a bizarre and disorienting shift.
|
| It's really the present day that suggest that substack won't be
| able to stick to their guns out of fear of organized opposition
| from "mobs". If they're able to maintain dependence only on
| subscribers, it's possible they can survive (and hopefully
| thrive) -- until somebody gets greedy.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Clearly, part of the problem is over reliance on experts. Somehow
| the professional class (empowered by Twitter and Social Media)
| has now convinced themselves that they're God's gift to to the
| world ... because they read a book. And is totally oblivious to
| how stupid some of those things they're advocating for are.
|
| When I go to a doctor, chances are he will prescribe me some
| drugs. Why? because thats what they're trained to do, rewarded
| for doing, and punished for not doing. If I go a mechanic, and
| ask him for a couch, he will probably offer me the back seat. If
| I ask my teacher, they'll tell me study hard and do my homework.
|
| There's a good chance I neither want or need pills, or a backseat
| couch, or do homework all afternoon. This might be their best
| professional advice. But ultimately, I have to use my own
| judgment to assess risk and benefit since I have to live with
| consequences.
|
| This is now somehow bad, and we're supposed throw out personal
| autonomy, and trust experts, newscasters and so on. But this has
| not worked out in the past, especially when there's coercion
| involved. By complying you're only empowering these people.
|
| The antidote is to assert individual rights and especially
| freedom of speech. Build parallel societies. And ridicule the
| authoritarians.
| mint2 wrote:
| if the problem is our culture trusting experts, perhaps we need
| some sort of revolution to get rid of those experts and elite,
| and turn to populism mass movements. Hold that thought, I seem
| to remember some historical trials of that path. How did they
| go? Strange how they ended up with even more censorship.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| yeah, well, I would argue it was a populist movement that
| brought France, and the US the bill or Rights and the
| constitution. So it worked at least sometimes. Not that I
| disagree that sometimes it did not work out for the better.
| Pol Pot being an example.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think that part of the problem is that we are under a
| disinformation attack. Russia did a lot around the elections, but
| I don't think they've gone to zero. I think both China and Iran
| are active. (The old Soviet "active measures" is what I have in
| mind - you get a number of sock puppets to all say the same idea,
| and it looks like that's what the consensus is, because people
| hear it from several sources.)
|
| That erodes trust. You have people you know (or think you know)
| online who say really out-there positions. You either adjust your
| position, or you don't. Either way, you now have to distrust
| people you trusted before. (And, I suppose, me saying this
| reduces trust, too - how many of the people _I_ respect online
| are actively sowing disinformation? How many are unknowingly
| passing it on?)
|
| Then there's domestic disinformation. Both political parties (and
| their satellites) at least. Conservative and liberal think-tanks.
| (Don't kid yourself that only the other side does it.)
|
| You could even consider regular commercial advertising to be
| disinformation, though I wouldn't go that far. But big
| corporations _do_ engage in disinformation - think about the
| tobacco companies and "no, smoking doesn't cause cancer".
|
| It's really hard to trust when people are _actively, deliberately
| lying to you for their own advantage_.
| indymike wrote:
| Freedom of press and freedom of speech exist exactly because
| government could not be trusted, and eventually, lies have to be
| covered by making it illegal to expose those lies. Censorship
| seems like a good idea until you realize the end game looks a lot
| like "Best Korea".
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I try to read alternative media from all spectrums to get all
| the perspectives on what is truth, and the angles so regularly
| unmentioned.
|
| However, this newly engorged and incestuous relationship
| between big Government, Big Media, and Big Tech, engaging in
| rampant deplatforming and counter-narrative suppression, is a
| civil liberties disaster of epic proportions.
| rdiddly wrote:
| It's sad that Substack has to sit there and explicitly explain
| that "Here is where you go when you want no censorship and to
| have all different views in a big melting pot where it's up to
| you to sort them out through rational interrogation, thought
| and/or debate." Even in my lifetime I seem to recall that place
| was usually just called "society." Granted I was young and am
| partly remembering what I was told the world was like, rather
| than having experienced it directly. Nonetheless, they did bother
| to tell me that. That interrogation/debate process was understood
| to be an essential prerequisite for democracy.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Meh. It's consistent with their business model. And talking
| publicly about it is also consistent with their business model.
| The entire debate is a red herring.
| timoth3y wrote:
| Too many people are confusing "censorship" and "content
| moderation".
|
| Content moderation is when you determine what is published on
| your platform. Censorship is when someone else tells you want can
| be published on your platform.
|
| Substack is probably making the right business decision, but the
| claim in this article is completely backwarrds.
|
| Trust 100% requires content moderation. Good scientific journals
| are trusted because they exercise extremely tight control over
| what gets published. Good news sources are trusted because they
| moderate content and exercise strict editorial control. Facebook
| is a untrusted cesspool of misinformation specifically because
| they moderate so lightly.
|
| The idea that trust comes from lack of content moderation or
| editorial control is logically and empirically wrong.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Trust 100% requires content moderation. Good scientific
| journals are trusted because they exercise extremely tight
| control over what gets published.
|
| Editorial endorsement and evaluation of content can be entirely
| decoupled from publishing. This is what "overlay journals"
| based on repositories like ArXiV do: they provide independent
| endorsement of papers published elsewhere.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| The problem is the government and traditional media have been
| caught lying again and again. Once that trust is broken I don't
| know how you rebuild it.
|
| Hell people I commonly talk to still believe a police officer was
| beaten to death on 1/6 and that people, other then the women shot
| for trying to enter the chambers, died directly due to the riot.
| All because of that what the news reported and quietly fixed days
| later without ever really owning up to it.
| steelstraw wrote:
| 2016 election. Rittenhouse. Covington. Russian collusion.
| Bounties on US soldiers. Lab-leak theory. Jussie Smollett. The
| Pulse shooting. The Atlanta shootings. Hunter Biden laptop.
| Inflation. Steele Dossier.
|
| Corporate media got every single one wrong. While constantly
| banging the drums about how independent media has a
| misinformation problem and should be censored.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The most egregious of all is suppression of Lab Leak theory
| from the beginning. Emails between Collins and Fauci are
| absolutely chilling. Do yourself a favor and look up unredacted
| versions (Alina Chen's Twitter) through FOIA requests. Holyshit
| was my reaction. The Lancet letter was also riddled with
| misinformation, suppression and conflicts of interest (Dr.
| Drazdak).
|
| I expect more from our leaders.
| indymike wrote:
| > I expect more from our leaders.
|
| You should, and you should be free to discuss and write about
| exactly what your expectations are and how those leaders
| failed you.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I actually believe in Institutions with a capital I and
| want them to succeed, build trust and help educate people
| of their reputation, historical significance and their
| importance in society. I've worked with NIST for many years
| - brilliant people doing good work.
|
| But when they continue to lie to public, suppress facts,
| have a political agenda, and media is along with it, it's
| becoming harder.
|
| I still think CDC does good work. Just that the leadership
| needs to come out clean and apologize the public for being
| partisan.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _I still think CDC does good work. Just that the
| leadership needs to come out clean and apologize the
| public for being partisan._
|
| Why are you saying "partisan" rather than "incompetent" ?
| It's surely convenient to blame the institutional
| incompetence on a strawman "other side", but the fact of
| the matter is that under administrations from both
| Parties they've repeatedly dropped the ball.
|
| Distributing free rapid tests and finally recommending
| N95's after most everyone has stopped caring about
| pandemic is just icing on the cake. Biden's inauguration
| would have been a great time to break from and disown
| previous dubious recommendations, but the political
| narrative of "the pandemic is over thanks to vaccines"
| had to play instead. Which when you think about it is
| from the same exact vein of overly optimistic denial as
| "it'll be gone by Easter", just preached to a different
| choir.
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| They may have some details wrong, but do you think their
| overall impression of the event is wildly inaccurate? There was
| significant violence perpetrated during that event, even if it
| didn't result in death. Police officers were beaten. When these
| mistaken people are corrected and told no one died at the hands
| of rioters, but 150 police officers sustained injuries some so
| bad they were still out of work six months later, does their
| opinion significantly change?
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >quietly fixed
|
| Note that, while I didn't personally consume any sources of
| news making these mistakes about this event and therefore can't
| reasonably comment on them, this specific wording is used
| extremely commonly as an uncharitable attack on those who are
| opposite to one's own political leanings. I.e. corrections are
| always described as "quiet" despite frequently being published
| in the same manner as the original material.
| creato wrote:
| > The problem is the government and traditional media have been
| caught lying again and again.
|
| These two things are _huge_. They are not monolithic entities
| that "lie" or "don't lie". I think a big problem is such blind
| cynicism. Especially when the alternatives people are turning
| to are hilariously worse. I'd be more sympathetic to the claim
| that traditional media is terrible if they weren't using that
| to direct influence towards crazy uncles on facebook instead.
|
| I think many things people think are "lies" are just
| uncertainties. The pandemic is full of these. There are a ton
| of confounding variables and we don't have any perfect control
| groups from which to make any conclusions. Basically every big
| issue that gets debated by the internet armchair experts is
| badly affected by this: COVID severity, the effectiveness of
| vaccines, masks, Ivermectin. Every damn thread is full of
| people speaking as authoritatively as they possibly can
| pointing to individual studies or data points without
| understanding the context, scale, or confounding factors.
| geekpowa wrote:
| I search "Jan 6 Deaths" and very first hit is this NYT article.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/us/politics/jan-6-capitol...
|
| The article contradicts your claim "reported and quietly fixed
| days later without ever really owning up to it". Firstly it is
| the first hit so hardly quiet. Secondly it outlines that
| initial reporting of Sicknick's death was simply reporting what
| capital police said, later revised by medical examiner. All
| front and center in this article.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am just learning this. I thought all deaths were due to
| rioters and knew about Ashley's death when she was fatally
| shot. I read liberal media, all day, everyday - subscribed to
| WaPo and NYT.
| selwynii wrote:
| Corrections get a tiny single digit fraction of the views of
| the original. There is no button to make sure everyone who
| saw the original sees the correction, assuming one is made.
|
| All you need is a few other places making the same claim,
| sourced to NYT, and only the people that care enough will
| even click through to read the source. NYT isn't putting
| corrections on headline news for the same visibility as the
| nice fresh off the press article.
| remarkEon wrote:
| This largely has to do with the social media ecosystem in
| which these traditional companies find themselves, where
| social media is the primary vector for information access for
| the majority now (HN is an extreme outlier where people may
| actually read things beyond their "news" feed).
|
| "quietly fixed" in that sense means "NYT reports one thing
| and it goes viral, corrects/updates/adds context later post-
| virality and, because it doesn't fit the existing narrative
| established by the initial viral story, most don't see it".
| Most people don't go back and check to see if a story they
| read 6 months ago has some new details that fundamentally
| change the impact of that story.
|
| Whether NYT knows about this phenomenon, and (ahem "quietly")
| tunes their reporting to that phenomenon is a separate
| question.
| geekpowa wrote:
| Are we blaming traditional media companies for the content
| overload shitshow we now find ourselves living in?
|
| If NYT could provide a remedy, what would that remedy even
| look like?
|
| Wikileaks' ascendancy was on the narrative that traditional
| media is broken and untrustworthy. At the time I brought
| into that and the premise that they were disrupting this
| traditional industry and remaking it better. Now I realise
| like alot of IT focused disruption (including disruption
| I've worked on directly myself as an IT practioner), all
| they achieved was recreate the very thing they sought to
| disrupt, but poorly and generally worse version of it.
|
| Older and wiser now and I realise personally that the trust
| problem is something much more than something for 'others'
| to step up and fix, but substantially in how I myself
| consume content.
| flyingcircus3 wrote:
| > traditional media
|
| I see this distinction made all of the time when this topic
| comes up. The mainstream media is untrustworthy. Corporate
| media has an agenda. Legacy media is corrupt. These qualifiers
| all imply that there is some non-traditional, non-corporate,
| non-legacy media that does not have these problems. Yet
| whenever the people making these distinctions are asked
| who/what these superior alternatives are, the answers are
| always underwhelming, or outright laughable.
|
| So who are these beacons of truth you allude by contrasting the
| "traditional" media?
| ziroshima wrote:
| No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of
| intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if
| you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding
| the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. I
| just don't understand the shortsightedness, the naivete, or the
| willingness to discard the principle of free speech.
| ameminator wrote:
| I doubt that, in a decent number of cases, these censors have
| the best of intentions.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But if we let people decide for themselves, they might decide
| wrong! And our position is clearly and obviously right! But
| people are stupid and will listen to lies, so we have to remove
| the possibility of them being exposed to those lies!
|
| /s, in case it wasn't obvious...
|
| People are more certain of their own position than is
| warranted. This is true in politics (as C. S. Lewis said, in
| practice no policy can be more than probably correct). It was
| true with Covid ("trust the science" when not enough science
| had been done yet; people talked as if the correct course was
| obvious and certain, and they were often wrong in hindsight).
| And it will be true again, and again, and again.
|
| And from that false certainty, people regard contrary
| opinions/interpretations of the data as not just _false_ , but
| _morally wrong_. And then they regard people believing the
| "obviously wrong" position as a sign that people are stupid and
| not to be trusted with the facts. (Unlike themselves, of
| course, who clearly _can_ be trusted with the facts, because
| they reached the right answers!)
|
| And people don't see the dichotomy between "people are stupid
| and evil, and can't be trusted with the truth" and "we (who are
| also people!) _can_ decide what is true, and can be trusted to
| only tell them the truth ". When you point a finger at someone,
| four finger point back at you...
| paulpauper wrote:
| The argument I sometimes see is that censorship is justified to
| prevent indirect harm of misinformation. If you want to be
| unvaccinated, that is your choice, but posting anti-vax content
| may have externalities , such as convincing other ppl to not be
| vaxed.
| usernomdeguerre wrote:
| Except that it works. In fact it works for a population of 5
| times our size (China). So it seems to me that the only people
| who have their heads up their asses are us, who seem to think
| that censorship is a childs model for maintaining power and
| influence. In our technological society censorship can work
| better than ever before.
|
| Frankly, imo, in the absence of effective accountability for
| ones' words or deeds, censorship becomes one of the only few
| remaining tools for stability.
| ksdale wrote:
| I think it's far too early to pass judgment on whether it
| works in China. Lots of very oppressive states have lasted
| for decades, apparently successfully, until they implode
| spectacularly.
|
| Less than a century ago, many in the West sang the praises of
| communism as (unkown to them) a million people died in the
| Gulag. Things aren't always as they appear.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| The status quo is a messy conflagration where initial beliefs
| were the brush, a combination of mental health issues and
| social frustration were the trees, and the perverse incentives
| of engagement metrics provided the high winds.
|
| So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-
| productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also
| believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even
| so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely
| by accident.
|
| (I'm not arguing against the argument against censorship...
| it's just that I think the censorship issue is mostly a massive
| red herring when it comes to the issues that are discussed in
| the article.)
| kolanos wrote:
| > So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's
| counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but
| also believing that lots of people are very easy to
| manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en
| masse and entirely by accident.
|
| Don't think it is an accident. The ruling class has set this
| stage by design. There is little to no critical thinking
| being taught in K-12. Create a malleable population, then
| push censorship to protect them from themselves.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| >that is appropriate for them to be exposed to.
|
| Once the idea of dangerous speech becomes aknowledged,
| censorship just becomes a game of degrees.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| This isn't at all true. Many free speech absolutists will
| happily concede the existence of dangerous speech and
| dangerous ideas.
| numtel wrote:
| > No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of
| intentions.
|
| I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention
| of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested
| in stock markets.
|
| Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries. A
| few years ago, Zuckerberg said that all problems would be
| solved if everybody told the truth all the time. It's not that
| simple though. There's a Greg Egan story about a couple that
| undergoes a procedure to experience all the thoughts and
| feelings of each other for a period of time, which ultimately
| results in their breakup.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I think this is absolutely right, and wish that discussions
| on this topic would focus more on the externalities of
| profit-seeking platforms than free speech principles.
|
| Free speech absolutists tend to jump to the defense of free
| speech and in the process ignore a real problem. Pro-
| censorship/content moderation folks tend to jump to the
| defense of censorship/moderation. In the process, the debate
| gets framed around "speech vs. censorship" instead of the
| serious issues with our political commons being dominated by
| sophisticated profit-seeking entities.
| autokad wrote:
| > Capitalism is a symptom of power and information
| asymmetries
|
| if you want to talk about power and information asymmetries,
| I suggest you look at Communist regimes.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" I would contend that profit is at least partially the
| intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who
| are invested in stock markets."_
|
| Profit is definitely one motivation for censorship, but there
| has been plenty of censorship in non-profit-centric
| situations. Communist countries and other government actors
| have been leaders in censorship, with no obvious profit
| motive.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| OP is clearly referring to censorship in the "admin bans
| you from their website if you say things they don't like"
| sense, not the "government throws you in jail if you say
| wrong thing" sense. These conversations tend to become
| unproductive and devolve when folks conflate these two
| senses of the word censorship.
|
| IMO, we should use "content moderation" for the former and
| "censorship" for the latter, congruent with historical
| usage. But people who are against content moderation will
| claim I'm being biased, even though I view the whole debate
| as a bit of red herring that distracts from the real
| issues. So I'd settle for "private-sector censorship" and
| "government censorship".
|
| But in any case it's almost always counter-productive to
| conflate the two, to the point that it's a logical fallacy
| which should be named.
| millzlane wrote:
| It's always funny to see uncensored writers talk about
| censorship.
| nomel wrote:
| A writer seeing the problems in the world slowly being
| censored, who hasn't been censored yet, is like a soldier
| writing about a war, who hasn't been killed yet. It doesn't
| seem that strange.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| I seem to recall reading "You either die an MVP or live long
| enough to build content moderation"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684250
|
| I hope substack can really change the game here because their
| business model delivers content you paid to receive rather than
| competing for your attention. More on that here:
| https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati...
| paulpauper wrote:
| I wish substack had better discovery features like Medium and
| fewer spammy emails. I signed up for Scott's blog and got like
| 30 emails in a week. Annoying
| gtsop wrote:
| Wait.. what? Society has a trust problem? Implying we should
| trust people in power (economic and state) that have repeatedly
| and shamelessly acted for their own benefit against the interest
| of the public while they control the media (tv and online) to
| censor and/or shaddow-ban criticism and alternate views?
|
| Yes, if that's what you mean. We have a trust problem because
| there are people in power who are not trustworthy. And yes, their
| acts of censorship will only make this problem worse.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| I reckon it's a human condition issue, bare metal type shit.
| People, in general, simply can't possess the merits of blind
| trust and _must_ be scrutinized. This striated opinion on a
| spectrum of trust, and in time resolution in to facts.
| Dialectics of account. Naive interventions only stand to
| exacerbate the condition, by my reckoning, and I don 't suspect
| there is a real way to make smart interventions at scale. I
| think the best resolution is to have modular multi-scalar and
| largely decentralized modes with far more outgrowths given the
| capacity for representation of their given polity.
|
| But even in that case it doesn't fully rectify the problem,
| because at the basest levels information is imperfect in
| practical terms. It is in those terms that experts and
| professionals tend to be lost to public account - that is to
| say that making wide sweeping claims and saying it was some
| unexpected event that overturned their predictions frees them
| from being held accountable, and that is where trust is lost.
| If you tell me in 10 years that SPY will have gained 60%,
| versus if you said "Look I don't know, I can't tell you where
| the price is going to end at close today, let alone in 10
| years, but historically the odds look good, that's not without
| caveats, the fed, the government, the people are all constantly
| evolving against their peers and there's a lot of novel forces,
| so you could end up with negative yields." The latter case is,
| let's say hypothetically, realistic, and thus eschews
| liability.
|
| Now if the former case turns out to be true, certainly the
| latter form will be lambasted for the potential gains lost. In
| the latter coming to fruit, will the financier be celebrated?
| Will the former be able to excuse himself, despite bad calls?
| gtsop wrote:
| I like your statement overall but let me hone a bit on this:
|
| > I reckon it's a human condition issue, bare metal type shit
|
| I strongly disagree here. It is very common and easy (and to
| me, boring) to promote all hard-to-solve, ugly problems to
| concequences of the evil "human nature" without even any data
| to support it.
|
| Antithetically, humans want to trust. that's why a group
| operating within a trusted environment outperform a group
| operating in an emvironment without trust. Also, that's why
| trust is a possitive attribute.
|
| The issue causing this trust problem at this great scale is
| conflicting interests, emerging from the private-centric
| properties of the economy. Because if you really dig it, all
| these issues will lead you to economy. Noone lost trust in a
| government because the President lied about their favourite
| colour.
| kolanos wrote:
| > Will the former be able to excuse himself, despite bad
| calls?
|
| Apparently yes. For example, here's what Dr. Fauci was saying
| about HIV/AIDS in the 80's. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-
| news/corruption/fla...
| skeptical2 wrote:
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm not even sure if there is such a thing as a honest and
| trustworthy politician.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| The problem is we as a society have very few local level
| leaders. Most of the people who represent us often represent
| 1000+ individuals. At such a scale, the nature of
| leadership/politicians change...
| skeptical2 wrote:
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Trust in social media and traditional media is at an all-time
| low.
|
| Yeah, some of it is "people in power". And some isn't. But when
| you say
|
| > Yes, if that's what you mean.
|
| you sure look like you're trying to ignore what the article
| actually says, and twist the general idea to fit the axe you
| want to grind. _That_ kind of stunt is (part of) why trust in
| society is low.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I think some of this debacle is changing who we trust.
|
| Joe Rogan is rapidly becoming "the most trusted man in
| America". Russell Brand, another Leftist comedian, is moving
| from funny routines to scathing anti-corruption populist
| commentary. Tucker Carlson is now dominating Cable.
|
| The big Pharma ad-supported mainstream media is rightly
| terrified of this. The gravy train is at risk.
| gtsop wrote:
| > The big Pharma ad-supported mainstream media is rightly
| terrified of this. The gravy train is at risk.
|
| Spot on
| gtsop wrote:
| > twist the general idea to fit the axe you want to grind.
|
| From the article just after the line you quoted:
|
| > Trust in the U.S. federal government to handle problems is
| at a near-record low. Trust in the U.S.'s major institutions
| is within 2 percentage points of the all-time low.
|
| I can't possibly buy that fact that society has a problem if
| my aunt mary doesn't trust what plumberRob23 post on their
| instagram, so forgive for bothering only with the bigger
| issue at hand, which is systemic mistrust.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yes, it's the major institutions. And it's the mainstream
| media (I guess those count as major institutions). _And_ it
| 's social media.
|
| I object to your trying to paint it as if it's _only_
| mistrust of major institutions. It 's untrue to the article
| to limit it like that.
| nathias wrote:
| It's not a problem, it's learning. We should have absolutely no
| trust in the current institutions. When people are openly lying
| in your face without any repercussions, openly stealing from you
| and just pay a small fine etc. why would anyone trust them?
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