[HN Gopher] Tech bosses are letting dictators censor what Americ...
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Tech bosses are letting dictators censor what Americans see
Author : moose_man
Score : 399 points
Date : 2023-04-21 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedailybeast.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedailybeast.com)
| damnesian wrote:
| Social media are entertainment platforms. Unfortunately, they
| have also become de facto news delivery platforms by sheer
| percentage of eyeballs. It's a bit like what happened with
| screwdrivers: people kept touching them to live electrical lines,
| so the wood handles with metal ferrules disappeared and the
| handles were redeisigned to insulate human hands from electrical
| shock. But no one is trying to fix social media so it can deliver
| news better- rather they are being retooled to compel users to
| instead consume more content more quickly. Which leaves the mind
| with even less time to question and consider. It's a recipe for
| disaster.
| dopamean wrote:
| Of the nine bulleted benefits at the beginning of the article at
| least five can be achieved when giving two weeks notice.
|
| Eliminate all stress from your job: the moment I've decided to
| leave a job, even if I haven't found the next one yet, I feel any
| stress dissipate almost immediately. Knowing that something
| unpleasant can end and that I'm going to take steps to end it is
| a relief.
|
| Get paid the same. Extend your benefits for longer. Vest more
| stock. Get your bonus: you can achieve all of these things by
| simply waiting to give notice. Wait until after you've vested to
| the amount you want. Wait until after you've received your bonus.
| And obviously you get paid the same regardless of when you give
| notice so this is a weird benefit to cite.
|
| Take unused vacation time: I've always taken a bunch of vacation
| before giving notice. Arguably that's less offensive than telling
| everyone, "hey my last day is in eight weeks and for a quarter of
| that time I'll be on vacation."
|
| I'm sure there are companies that will wait several months for a
| new hire to start because they want a long petering out period
| with their current gig but I've never worked anywhere that would
| allow that for anyone other than executive or very, very high
| level engineer. This also seems risky because what if something
| happens to that job in the two to three months notice you gave?
|
| If this had been posted three weeks ago I would have thought it
| was an April Fools joke.
| harrymit907 wrote:
| Why is your comment under this article?
| dopamean wrote:
| I had a bunch of tabs open and went back to the wrong one
| when I wanted to comment. Now I cant delete it :(
| kneel wrote:
| Tech companies can choose to obey laws of a foreign country to
| gain access to their populace. I don't really see the
| controversy, US first amendment rights don't apply beyond our
| borders. This article is an incredulous take considering the
| increase in censorship within the US media-sphere which actually
| violates the law.
| short_throw wrote:
| The founders of the United States thought it was too dangerous
| to let a democratic government influence the media, which is
| why we have the first amendment.
|
| Rival nations with totalitarian governments are now exercising
| control over US media to cover up terrible human rights abuses
| and influence US politics...and your only feeling on the
| subject is "meh not illegal"?
|
| Foreign propaganda is an existential threat to a democracy, we
| can't look the other way as us media giants cede control to
| other nations.
| falcolas wrote:
| The problem, IMO, isn't that they blocked a tweet in India
| based on a request from India. The problem is that Twitter
| blocked a tweet _globally_ based on a request from India.
| simiones wrote:
| First of all, from a purely legal perspective, the first
| ammendment has nothing to say on whether a private company can
| or can't censor speech.
|
| Secondly, the article is saying that tech companies are
| starting to censor speech in the USA that dictators in China or
| authoritarian leaders in India don't like.
|
| It is positing a slippery slope where you may one day soon be
| banned from Twitter globally for posting an image of Winnie the
| Pooh, which would be done in order for Twitter to gain and
| maintain access to the Chinese market.
| bmelton wrote:
| > the first ammendment has nothing to say on whether a
| private company can or can't censor speech
|
| Yes, but the first amendment _does_ bear on whether or not a
| private company can or can't be compelled by the state to
| censor speech, which is what OP was referring to.
| kneel wrote:
| Ok fair enough.
|
| Doing 3 minutes of research on this topic lead me to the
| Indian posters page, in which he doesn't even remember the
| context of his tweet and has reposted the screenshot. He has
| dozens of tweets discussing censorship, they're all up and
| available.
|
| Tbh this just sounds like incompetence rather than
| malevolence, which considering Musk's bungling overhaul of
| Twitter shouldn't surprise anyone.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Sufficient incompetence can be indistinguishable from
| malice. For example, it's possible Elon may have fired all
| the teams that review and push back on government
| complaints -- effectively ensuring that any large
| government can report and block tweets through a portal
| that has no reviewing staff. Even if true, the fact that
| Elon did this through ineptitude would not change the final
| result, namely _that foreign governments can now block
| Tweets in the USA at will, with little oversight and
| pushback from Twitter._
|
| Perhaps such incompetence will be corrected. But it is
| definitely worrying that Twitter has continued to keep the
| content blocked even after multiple news articles brought
| it to public attention. To me that takes it from "whoopsy
| daisy we made a mistake" to "we do not intend to/are not
| capable of correcting this mistake." One can apply the
| principle of charity too liberally.
| simiones wrote:
| Very possibly, which is why I was only saying that the
| article is _positing_ such a slippery slope, not that they
| have proved it in any way.
| paxys wrote:
| The first amendment directly powers section 230 of the
| communications decency act which gives these companies the
| legal right to host whatever they want. So the first
| amendment has everything to do with what a private company
| can or cannot say.
| paddw wrote:
| I have no problem with companies that censor for their
| international audiences, since asking them not to do it is akin
| to asking them to simply be banned in an overwhelming number of
| places. I think the advantages to having American companies
| operate abroad in many places is probably worth making this
| trade off.
|
| I DO think we need legislation stop this censorship from
| affecting Americans though, because that's a tradeoff not worth
| making. And companies have a very clear profit motive in these
| cases to comply.
| spaceheater wrote:
| If you are in the US better be careful or else you would charged
| with `malign influence campaign` by the land of the free
| government.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/18/us-charges-russians...
| elliekelly wrote:
| As near as I can tell conducting a "malign influence campaign"
| isn't an actual criminal charge that can be brought against
| someone in the US. The people in that article were charged with
| illegally acting on behalf of a foreign government without
| registration. Americans continue to be free to conduct malign
| influence campaigns to their hearts' content so long as they
| aren't doing it on behalf of a foreign government. Between
| politics, lobbying, social media, and general advertising, we
| have a massive and thriving malign influence industry here in
| the land of the free.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Given how willing people are to believe that
| [russia|china|insert other boogey man] are behind every bump
| in the night, that leaves you only one "person familiar with
| the matter" away from serious trouble.
|
| E.g. Elliekelly's comment had all the classic earmarks of
| russian disinformation campaigns, said an unnamed expert
| familiar with the matter.
| rcme wrote:
| Yes, that's good advice. Be careful not to act on behalf of
| adversarial governments.
| vkou wrote:
| Acting on behalf of adversarial individuals and NGOs, on the
| other hand, is fine.
| rcme wrote:
| NGOs generally need to register. The complaint here is that
| these people did not register as foreign agents.
| CircleSpokes wrote:
| Acting on behalf of adversarial governments is fine too if
| you register with the government. In the case linked above
| they didn't do that and conspired to keep the fact they
| took orders from Moscow hidden.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I think we would all agree on that, but don't you see a risk
| that this labeling could be abused pretty easily to punish
| dissidents or any other enemy of powerful people?
| govolckurself wrote:
| [flagged]
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Is someone charged with drunk driving just "labeling"? What
| about manslaughter? First degree murder? Treason?
|
| Someone being charged with a crime is a completely
| different thing to someone "being labeled" and trying to
| downplay the severity of the former to try and extend it to
| this hypothetical is telling.
| blululu wrote:
| The Espionage Act has been on the books for a century now
| and it was definitely used to punish dissidents. In some
| sense nothing new. But don't be naive. There are plenty of
| countries waging various forms of attack against America at
| all times and there should be laws to thwart these attacks.
| The implementation and enforcement is key. Simply relying
| on abstract principles is the core danger of such a law,
| hence the need for a court that is itself accountable to
| the electorate. Either way the risks are abstract. The
| implementation is the key.
| loudmax wrote:
| To confuse matters, many of these attacks aren't so much
| against America, as against the concept of liberal
| democracy.
|
| To uphold liberal democratic values is to support the
| free speech that makes these attacks possible. The old
| 20th century style of propaganda was mostly ineffectual.
| The modern tactic of flooding public discourse with
| bullshit is much more effective. At some point people
| concede that maybe the shills and useful idiots working
| for the dictators do raise some valid points, so who
| knows what to believe.
| csomar wrote:
| When the West does it, it's called NGOs. When the East does
| it, it's called malign influence. Maybe it's time the West
| retire the free word from its world. It's two worlds at
| odds. And none of them is free (though in one you do
| definitively have a bit more rights and a semi-functional
| legal system).
| rcme wrote:
| In Russia, for instance, NGOs need to be registered as a
| foreign agent.
| rcme wrote:
| It's not a "labeling." These people are being charged with
| a crime and will have their day in court to defend
| themselves.
| [deleted]
| mikestew wrote:
| One need not "be careful". One simply need not act as an agent
| to a government adversarial to the U. S. I, for instance, have
| never "been careful" the whole time I've lived in the U. S.,
| and no FBI agents knock on _my_ door.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| It's illegal for foreign nationals to fund domestic elections.
| Don't participate in a conspiracy to influence domestic US
| elections by funding or directing them. It's pretty simple.
|
| It's rather hard for the government to make these charges
| stick, which is why there are so few prosecutions for this. So
| if someone's formally charged, they done goofed. Presumption of
| innocence aside, the government isn't going to move on this
| case unless there's compelling evidence it happened.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| You forget to include the exceptions to that rule that apply
| for, let's see, Israel, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine...
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| So you gonna show me where the law carves out specific
| countries? (4) Foreign election
| interference The term "foreign election
| interference" means conduct by a foreign person that--
| (A) (i) violates Federal criminal, voting
| rights, or campaign finance law; or (ii) is
| performed by any person acting as an agent of or on behalf
| of, or in coordination with, a foreign government or
| criminal enterprise; and (B) includes any
| covert, fraudulent, deceptive, or unlawful act or attempted
| act, or knowing use of information acquired by theft,
| undertaken with the specific intent to significantly
| influence voters, undermine public confidence in election
| processes or institutions, or influence, undermine
| confidence in, or alter the result or reported result of, a
| general or primary Federal, State, or local election or
| caucus, including-- (i) the campaign of a
| candidate; or (ii) a ballot measure, including
| an amendment, a bond issue, an initiative, a recall, a
| referral, or a referendum.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2708#k_4
| simiones wrote:
| And yet, people from those countries openly supporting
| various US candidates have not been similarly charged - I
| believe this is GP's point.
| hot_gril wrote:
| > is performed by any person acting as an agent of or on
| behalf of, or in coordination with, a foreign government
| or criminal enterprise
|
| I think the disconnect is that some orgs that people
| might think work on behalf of a foreign govt aren't
| registered as such because they don't receive funding
| from there, like AIPAC. This has been a contentious
| topic.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| What Americans see is _already_ censored - by Americans. If you
| want to know what a whichever prescribed political leader is
| saying, you are not going to get it from the local media
| establishment, you 're going to have to go to official
| transcripts from the government of that prescribed political
| leader, and no doubt risk ending up on an FBI database as a
| result.
|
| This is true for all government systems, the more you dig into
| it, they are all just different flavours of a system of control,
| less Perl vs Python more PHP7.3 vs PHP7.4
| milsorgen wrote:
| They alter transcripts. The examples I have seen have been done
| to fix "flubs" of the Presidential Administration but a simple
| 'fix' done with care can subtly alter the message for future
| readers and I believe sets a dangerous precedent. However, for
| all I know this has been common practice for some time, but I
| have only seen evidence of this occuring recently.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| who is 'they'?
|
| I don't mind transcripts being altered if it reflects the
| officially endorsed position. Different matter of course if
| official transcriptions were altered by unauthorised parties
| UberFly wrote:
| "I don't mind transcripts being altered if it reflects the
| officially endorsed position."
|
| Can't you see how this "officially endorsed position"
| editing would be a dangerous thing? Transcripts should be
| an exact representation of what occurred.
| stametseater wrote:
| Decades ago, the American media colluded to hide FDR's
| physical condition from the American public.
|
| Many doubtlessly think this was good, because a physical
| disability shouldn't reflect poorly on his leadership
| abilities. But there is no guarantee that such collective
| blindness will always be done in the 'good' way, whatever
| that is.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| You can totally look up what terrorists or mass shooters say.
| Here's an interview given by Al-Al-Qaeda to CNN:
| https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/30/asia/al-qaeda-afghanistan...
|
| Censorship/cancel culture is bad but it's nowhere near what
| dictators do
| [deleted]
| croes wrote:
| You mean like European users aren't allowed to see female nipples
| on FB because of prudish US rules?
| octopoc wrote:
| It's not called nipplebook for a reason, although that would be
| a perfect idea for a European startup
| pb7 wrote:
| While I empathize, there's a big difference: Meta is a US
| company so it's going to follow the cultural rules of the US.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Those aren't government rules. But it's still a valid
| complaint.
| UberFly wrote:
| You can see nipples plenty of other places. Some shops used to
| sell porn on their magazine racks, some didn't.
| Reltih wrote:
| [flagged]
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _"Political satire in china is pretty not-okay," Holz posted on
| Discord_
|
| Tough shit. China will just have to grow up.
|
| > _He added that "the ability for people in China to use this
| tech is more important than your ability to generate satire."_
|
| No, it isn't.
| SN76477 wrote:
| I've observed that integrity and honesty have no concern for
| satire or mockery.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| at $8/month it is, to him
|
| a place with 1/3rd of the population has a hard on for one
| specific theoretical form of expression that they don't even
| use that much? easy ignore.
|
| Midjourney also retrains from all prompts free or paid, making
| it easier to get better results from simpler prompts. Access to
| that population of human nodes is definitely more important
| than placating some ideological position of a smaller group.
| drstewart wrote:
| >Tough shit. China will just have to grow up.
|
| Pretty funny reading the differences between this thread and
| the one from yesterday where Canada fined Google for not
| censoring information. In that one, people were all "Tough
| shit, Google has to follow the laws of countries they serve in!
| Not everyone is American, stupid Americans!"
|
| Turns out, countries will have laws you disapprove of too!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There is a difference between Canada requiring Google follow
| the laws in Canada while operating in Canada, and China
| requiring stuff be censored globally to operate in China. If
| you are unable to see that difference, that's on you.
| drstewart wrote:
| Follow the laws of countries you operate in. If you can't
| or won't, that's on you
| snapcaster wrote:
| Why not? Do you think that the customs of your tribe and island
| are the laws of nature?
| acomjean wrote:
| I becomes an issue in the global world and tolerance and
| intolerance...
|
| EG Danish cartooons of religious figures.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-
| Posten_Muhammad_carto...
| snapcaster wrote:
| So who should decide how this issue is handled? The Danish?
| product managers at facebook? techbros?
| mhoad wrote:
| We actually have already had this debate already and came
| to a whole bunch of conclusions on the topic
| https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-
| huma...
| gadders wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Definitely not the people who say that a non-believer of
| Islam cannot depict the prophet Muhammad. That's both a
| trample on my rights as an individual to do what I want,
| and a trampling of my rights to not participate in
| religion.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Do you think that the customs of China's tribe and island are
| the laws of nature?
|
| For that matter, in the era of nearlight communication around
| the planet, how important even are things like "island"
| anymore, and how is "tribe" defined?
| snapcaster wrote:
| No, i think the customs of chinas tribe and island should
| reign supreme in china and the customs of my tribe and
| island in mine
| rektide wrote:
| Should your tribe & China tribe have say over what every
| company online does? Should they have sway over what US
| companies do? Seems like you are saying no, that you seem
| to agree with the frustration shared by the article.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >No, i think the customs of chinas tribe and island
| should reign supreme in china and the customs of my tribe
| and island in mine
|
| Isn't that the point? The problem is that the customs of
| others is infringing on the customs of others. If some
| places insist on a policy for their people, that is fine
| for their people. But what we have here is an insistence
| that those people can control how other people outside of
| their place and people can see and access technology.
| rektide wrote:
| First we're talking about open versus closed societies, not
| tribes. The repression of spirit closed societies impose on
| their members is a humanitarian concern, imperils the soul,
| eats away at becoming ourselves. Open society all the way.
| Society has to be allowed to consider itself.
|
| Second, this isn't laws of the land. It's the internet, the
| unplace where different places can meet & connect. Your
| suggestion proposes that it's the pro-speech folk forcing
| themselves upon the world. Not so. What's actually happening
| in this story is the small authoritarian lowest-common-
| denominators of the world are imposing their views on all
| interconnectivity, on everyone else. They are constraining
| everyone else.
|
| And tech bosses keep letting it happen, keep letting
| ourselves be bullied. And the governments of open societies
| are not stepping up to illuminate & push these issues as the
| threats to open society that they are.
|
| Two absurd inconsistencies. Human rights are amazing. The
| suppression of humanity is dreadful. That's the "tribe" you
| are defending.
| snapcaster wrote:
| These are all your opinions and personal values. I agree
| with all of them on a personal level. Where I think we
| disagree is that this is some kind of "pro speech" vs.
| "anti speech" battle. I see it more as a global US led
| Imperium attempting to impose their opinions and personal
| values on people throughout the world regardless of what
| those citizens or governments think. I'm in the US, me and
| my countrypeople shouldn't get a say in what happens in
| Hong Kong. Just like China shouldn't get a say in what
| happens in the US. Why isn't that enough?
| rektide wrote:
| This is a atopical line of inquiry & ignores _what_ is
| happening. It 's an ad-hominem argument against the US.
|
| Open society is far more than the US. 43% of the nations
| of the world are democratic according to https://en.m.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_regime_ty....
|
| And it continues the filter of seeing this as open
| society being an imposition. If you have a closed society
| & the open society of the internet doesn't fit your
| society, you shouldnt be on the internet. Your closed
| society doesn't want to participate, then fine, if it
| must: go elsewhere.
| snapcaster wrote:
| You've decided "Open society" == good. This is a value
| judgement not a law of nature.
|
| "if you have a closed society... you shouldn't be on the
| internet"
|
| Again, according to you. what lengths would you be
| willing to go to impose this on other people?
| rektide wrote:
| I don't want anyone in a closed society and I'd go
| through great lengths to help people trapped in close
| societies have access to open connectivities like the
| internet.
|
| If a society wants to be closed though, your society has
| the onus of responsibility to enforce closing. Your
| society can't impose that position on everyone. Hence me
| saying the society probably shouldnt be on the most open
| connected free connectivity on the planet, one created by
| open society & which enables open social values.
|
| > _You 've decided..._
|
| It looks like you have decided here friend. I never
| openly said that, although heck the words I use build a
| pretty lopsided case. I think everyone should decide for
| themselves though, and come to their conclusions. To me
| the choice seems obvious & it's hard to see what is to
| respect about closed, but I'm open. I'm open to learning.
| andsoitis wrote:
| In a more open society, members can choose for
| themselves, i.e. they have more autonomy.
|
| In a more closed society, more choice is taken away from
| you.
| matthewrobertso wrote:
| The title of this post is "Tech Bosses Are Letting
| Dictators Censor What Americans See", the article is
| about China getting a say in what happens in the US.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " I'm in the US, me and my countrypeople shouldn't get a
| say in what happens in Hong Kong."
|
| This is only if you assume all people are not created
| equal.
| nradov wrote:
| We don't know what Chinese citizens think because it's
| impossible to conduct independent opinion polls on
| political topics. So, how do you know that the majority
| of Chinese _don 't_ agree with our opinions and personal
| values on freedom of expression?
|
| Countries always seek to extend their influence. The USA
| and China play the same game, just with different
| tactics. There will never be "enough".
| User23 wrote:
| We don't get a say in what happens in Washington either.
| Frankly, in the present day USA, it's a minor miracle
| when the county road commissioner will fill a pothole in
| a timely fashion.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| > ...people shouldn't get a say
|
| Perhaps people should get a say and the governments
| should take a turn being forced to serve the people
| instead.
| clouddrover wrote:
| No, not the laws of Nature, just Better.
|
| And made better through centuries of hard work and sacrifice.
| It's what it takes.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I also agree they're better (probably coincidence that I
| was raised in a society and education system praising them
| nonstop). But to what lengths are you willing to go to
| impose them on people who don't want them?
|
| edit: If we're comparing china, i'm not sure you want to
| use length of time the society was built as a metric
| demonstrating chinese inferiority lol
| shadowgovt wrote:
| China has had, in terms of national continuity, a couple
| millenia more hard-work-and-sacrifice-time than the US,
| FWIW, if those qualities are inputs to being "better."
|
| It may not be wise to categorically dismiss the shared
| philosophy and cultural experience of billions of people.
| We Westerners have a philosophical concept inherited from
| our ancestors that describes that attitude: "hubris."
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _China has had, in terms of national continuity, a
| couple millenia more hard-work-and-sacrifice-time_
|
| Yes, and China ended up very far behind.
|
| China's progress has come through Westernization. China
| needs more of it.
|
| > _It may not be wise to categorically dismiss the shared
| philosophy and cultural experience of billions of
| people._
|
| Billions more know better.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Very far behind what?
|
| China's got a better rail network than the US, more
| industrial capacity, and produces the world's electronics
| now. The gap in tech is measured in decades at most, and
| by that metric the world was behind England (until it
| wasn't) because England had the accident of thirst for
| coal and the use for automated, sustained drainage and
| pumping that allowed them the critical mass of tech and
| need to build and refine the steam engine.
|
| In terms of world history, the era of European / American
| tech ascendancy is a blip on the radar.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _China 's got a better rail network than the US_
|
| It's hilarious that the very first example you pick is
| the quintessential example of Western industrialization
| and infrastructure.
|
| Good old Westernization proceeds apace. You admit China
| needs more of it.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > It's hilarious that the very first example you pick is
| the quintessential example of Western industrialization
| and infrastructure.
|
| True. America's failure to maintain and update its rail
| infrastructure relative to other countries is downright
| absurd.
|
| The US may have had rail first, but you wouldn't know it
| to look at them.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > China has had, in terms of national continuity, a
| couple millenia more hard-work-and-sacrifice-time than
| the US, FWIW, if those qualities are inputs to being
| "better."
|
| The CCP has no continuity with the previous imperial
| government. They love to make that _claim_ when it 's
| convenient but it's bullshit. It would be like the US
| claiming they have a national continuity with Britain
| going back millennia.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The US does have a national continuity with Britain going
| back millenia.
|
| Half of jurisprudence is grounded not in writings that
| came after the Revolution, but English Common Law. We
| lean on the First Amendment for issues of free speech,
| but we lean on the Magna Carta for questions of whether
| you've produced the right magic slip of paper to prove
| you own the land your outhouse sits on.
|
| ... hell, many of the states have a right to _grant_
| exclusive ownership of that land that 's fundamentally
| rooted in a king having granted them that right.
|
| And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can't ignore
| that we're mostly speaking English for _some_ reason...
| giantrobot wrote:
| Basing laws off laws of another country isn't national
| continuity. The British didn't just accept the
| Declaration of Independence and remove their agents from
| the US. The CCP wasn't formally recognized by the
| imperial government as the new government of China.
| There's no continuity of government in either case.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It really depends on how one defines "nation" (which is
| kind of a modern and made-up concept).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That's a favorite trope but they haven't had a continuous
| unbroken culture. The last dynasty wasn't even Han.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| England is considered to have a continuous culture going
| back to Londinium and huge numbers of their kings and
| queens weren't even born in the country.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| And Italian Americans are part of a culture extending
| back to the Estruscans?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Todays China is only about a century old now. Current
| leaders have done much to erase ideas and icons from the
| past.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Tough shit. China will just have to grow up.
|
| Turns out that they grew up and they don't really care about
| the same values that we do.
|
| Tough shit, indeed.
| rektide wrote:
| The point of this article isnt to disagree with their insular
| close mindedness & lack of ability to process criticism or
| satire.
|
| The point is that because of economics we keep letting their
| conservative close minded views dictate what happens in the
| Western Democratic world. These conservative authoritarian
| approaches should have no quarter here, go against the values
| & rights the creators & owners of these sites arose from &
| should be supporting.
|
| It's a sad development & China should be the one having to
| eat tough shit.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > The point is that because of economics
|
| Economics is all that matters in this world. It feels even
| silly to have to spell it out when we are on a website
| funded by the pinnacle of capitalism, where money overrides
| principles day and night.
|
| China will not have to eat any tough shit while the
| economics is on their side.
|
| And before you object, I ask you to consider the device you
| are using to reply to me. I know where mine came from.
| Paianni wrote:
| > I know where mine came from.
|
| I doubt it, the sources of materials and stages of
| manufacturing for most advanced electronics are spread
| all over the world. I know my motherboard was made in
| Taiwan, my processor from Malaysia/Germany, but that's
| just the start.
| [deleted]
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Economics is all that matters in this world._
|
| It isn't. Ukraine is a current demonstration of that.
| qtzaz wrote:
| You mean the proxy war that the US is funding through
| NATO to make Europe stop buying Russian gas and buy
| American LNG instead? That very much sounds like
| economics to me!
| clouddrover wrote:
| No, I mean the war Russia created for itself when it
| invaded Ukraine for reason no better than Putin's vanity.
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| The US is supplying the Ukrainian side for:
|
| A) Money B) Bleeding Russia for as long as possible,
| which will allow it to more easily make... C) Money in
| the future
|
| The economic elite that control the foreign policy of the
| modern powers do not decide to wage war for any other
| reason than money.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I can hardly think of a war more related to economics.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Yes. Your incoherent self contradiction is amusing.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Well unfortunately, the people power (and many regular
| citizens for that matter) have decided that China's money
| is much more important than Western values.
| rektide wrote:
| Indeed. Invisible Hand strikes again.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Their authoritarian government doesn't ask them about how
| they want to live.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Eh, they? Have you talked to them? They hate it.. every
| second of it. In the words of someone i knew there "It sucks,
| we are treated like children."
|
| If they had a choice, the party would hang in rank and file
| from the street laternposts.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Turns out there are billions of Chinese and they are not a
| monolith. I know many, many who are extremely supportive of
| the CCP.
| bllguo wrote:
| laughable assertion. I can find people equally dissatisfied
| with the US. in the aggregate the Chinese people approve of
| their government at a level westerners literally cannot
| comprehend. These include studies from western institutions
| like Harvard, and are so readily available that if you
| claim to not have heard of them you are either 1. arguing
| in bad faith or 2. completely unqualified to comment on the
| Chinese people.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I don't believe we are talking about the same "they"
| clouddrover wrote:
| The Mayans valued the practice of human sacrifice to appease
| their gods.
|
| That was also a stupid idea.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| And it has nothing to do with the reason why they
| essentially disappeared.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _disappeared_
|
| Why would that be relevant? "Apt for survival" does not
| imply "with good principles".
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _grew up_
|
| The poster did not seem to mean "grow taller".
|
| Edit: now that was an ambiguous use of '<<they>>'. For
| <State>, hence "rule", one would have used 'it'. But 'they'
| suggests at least the possibility of plural, hence "the
| people". And that the people share the same view of the rule
| is not a given.
| gadders wrote:
| Douglas Mackey got jailed in the US for political satire. The
| moral high ground of the US is eroding rapidly.
| myko wrote:
| That is factually incorrect:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/31/far-right-
| influence...
| gadders wrote:
| [flagged]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| You are calling it a <<meme>>, the judges recognized it
| as <<fraudulent actions cross[ing] a line into
| criminality>>. The color does not count.
| mhoad wrote:
| Just in case your not already aware this account you are
| responding to is very "out there" and hard to take in
| good faith. It's just one thing after another of
| absolutely nonsense points like this.
| gadders wrote:
| What a sheltered bubble you must live in to never come
| across anyone even vaguely right wing.
| myko wrote:
| The takes you have posted in this thread aren't moored to
| reality, and have nothing to do with left vs right wing.
| I hope these comments influence you to reevaluate things,
| but I am done engaging with you.
| gadders wrote:
| It has everything to do with it. I have posted from a
| pretty standard right wing perspective. Apparently you
| have so few people in your life that disagree with you
| politically that you can't even recognise this.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| In that case, dear Mhoad, let us hope that some calls to
| good sense sooner or later will find a fortunate moment
| and give the poster some clean sight.
| [deleted]
| infamouscow wrote:
| I think you're forgetting some major facts about that
| case.
|
| FWIW, I'm not on the left or right. My comment history
| establishes that in spades.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Can you please explain which portion of his messages
| encouraging voters to "vote by SMS" constitute satire?
| gadders wrote:
| You seem unfamiliar as to how memes work. Have you never
| seen people post "Vote early, vote often"? It's the same as
| that.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It's possible that Popehat's Law of Goats applies here. Even
| if Mackey was totally joking about what he was doing, he was
| still engaged in voter suppression.
| gadders wrote:
| Then apply it equally and lock up anyone that has ever
| tweeted "vote early, vote often" or "Party X votes Tuesday,
| Party Y votes Wednesday" (when the election is on Tuesday).
| Of course, with all these politically motivated
| prosecutions it only goes one way.
| augment002 wrote:
| [dead]
| Reltih wrote:
| [flagged]
| srj wrote:
| It says tech bosses but this seems to just be about twitter.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Agreed. It's pretty myopic to think that foreign censorship
| laws only impact tech companies.
| potamic wrote:
| See people, this is why free speech must be absolute. The moment
| you let someone become the gatekeeper, they will absolutely use
| that leverage for their own benefit, at your expense.
|
| What is worse? Allowing fringe boneheads to spew hate and lies or
| allowing powerful people to do evil and damage livelihoods with
| zero culpability?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Can you have it while still controlling outright malicious
| messaging? Incitement for example.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > See people, this is why free speech must be absolute.
|
| No, it's why, in a lot of cases, free speech doesn't really
| work the way you think it works. Private interests have all
| kinds of ways to influence speech that don't require the threat
| of violence.
| vharuck wrote:
| >Allowing fringe boneheads to spew hate and lies or allowing
| powerful people to do evil and damage livelihoods with zero
| culpability?
|
| Powerful people can do evil and damage livelihoods with zero
| culpability under free speech absolutism. Fox News just paid a
| large sum because they harmed a company's business with
| (repeated and knowingly false) speech.
|
| We don't even need absolutism to see zero culpability. I
| personally believe my representative shares blame in the deaths
| during the January 6th riot, because he disgustingly egged on
| the "stop the steal" movement. Despite that, he won't be
| charged with anything because of freedom of speech. I'm not
| okay with this specific result, but I do accept it because the
| alternative is a frightening world (people are convicted for
| kicking off a chain of dangerous events because "We just know"
| they understood the consequences).
|
| Everything, including speech, is used by powerful people to
| benefit themselves at your expense.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Show me one country where free speech has ever been absolute.
| At a minimum "fighting words" and libel/slander usually have
| criminal or civil penalties against them. Then there's stuff
| like IP law where reproducing certain speech can have civil or
| even criminal penalties.
|
| Statements like "free speech must be absolute" are basically
| zero content because they don't engage with the nuance of the
| debate, but they sure sound good.
| splitstud wrote:
| [dead]
| potamic wrote:
| We most certainly don't, but it's an interesting thought
| exercise whether it's a better model than everything else we
| have seen so far. Of course, it asks for very different
| trade-offs. For instance, you should be willing to forgoe
| libel/slander laws and allow people to smear the shit out of
| each other. It means people will need to figure out for
| themselves whom to listen to, but honestly, I don't think the
| situation is any different today.
|
| It also means scrutinising things like copyright and
| questioning whether they are a net value to society. These
| policies have since forever been driven by corporations to
| serve their own interests. There's good arguments to be made
| that their concerns about loss in revenue are largely
| overblown. You can implement policies that restrict
| monetisation of copyright content without putting
| restrictions on what individuals can express.
|
| Of course these are fairly naive ideas, and there are likely
| many more problems we haven't touched here, but the point is
| that there are options. It is worth thinking about them
| because the alternative as we see doesn't seem to be working
| out. There's a trend around the world where countries are
| moving more and more towards authoritarianism. At the same
| time, the wealth gap is ever increasing and I don't think
| these two are unrelated. I think the common people are
| getting an overall raw deal on this planet and really need to
| think through what policies will benefit them most.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| > For instance, you should be willing to forgoe
| libel/slander laws and allow people to smear the shit out
| of each other. It means people will need to figure out for
| themselves whom to listen to, but honestly, I don't think
| the situation is any different today.
|
| Anyone who's had a conversation with someone who was
| relentlessly bullied should know this is how you increase
| suicide rates and/or mass shootings.
|
| These are perspectives that you, personally, are
| comfortable with. I, however, am not. It would be unfair to
| advocate that myself, and many others, are subjected to
| what can be considered a living hell.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Both of those choices put us in the latter situation.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Good thing we have a "free speech absolutist" running Twitter.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > this is why free speech must be absolute
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| > What is worse? Allowing fringe boneheads to spew hate and
| lies or allowing powerful people to do evil and damage
| livelihoods with zero culpability?
|
| Was this meant to be sarcasm?
|
| How about a third option: no space for hate and lies and also
| no dictators.
| [deleted]
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| To be clear, the "Tech Bosses" censored the Hunter Biden laptop
| story at the behest of US government affiliated people.
|
| This is nothing new.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Midjourney CEO David Holz announced last year that his program
| would explicitly forbid users to create images of China's Xi
| Jinping. Users who attempt to do so are threatened with a ban.
| "Political satire in china is pretty not-okay," Holz posted on
| Discord, according to The Washington Post. He added that "the
| ability for people in China to use this tech is more important
| than your ability to generate satire."
|
| It is not about the ability of people in China to use their tech
| that is more important than our ability to to generate satire --
| it's Holz' ability to make money.
|
| And if he thinks that some people's ability to use it at all is
| more important than all user's ability to use it freely (without
| CCP's blessing on every pixel), I'd suggest he needs to rethink
| freedom vs authoritarianism.
|
| Fork that.
| quantified wrote:
| "Tech Bosses" is two examples, hardly the universe and
| misleadingly steering an assumption that it's just in tech.
|
| Sony let North Korea censor what US audiences saw, for a while.
| Hollywood, especially Disney, otherwise censors itself to be able
| to show movies.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Sony let North Korea censor what US audiences saw, for a
| while.
|
| This is a _very_ bad mischaracterization of what happened:
| North Korea _blackmailed_ Sony over The Interview, threatening
| retaliation. Sony didn 't censor themselves to make headway
| into the North Korean market.
|
| If I provide services to a dictator because the dictator is
| giving me a boatload of money, that makes me a bad person. If I
| provide services to a dictator because the dictator says
| they'll kill my family otherwise, that makes me a victim.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| And the movie was released anyways, so there wasn't much harm
| done. At least, done to the public. Sony got hurt bad with
| the hack.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| On Reddit, whenever China is even remotely applicable you will
| see the top comments mocking and flaming Xi. India is less
| extreme (not on random posts) but the vast majority of
| https://reddit.com/r/India criticizes Modi as well (and on
| random posts there's general India negativity and sometimes
| even racism in other subs). Other platforms I'm on (including
| HN) also give no sympathy to dictators.
|
| So it's definitely not every platform
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| This article is another example that reeks of American
| nationalism.
| tarruda wrote:
| > Sony let North Korea censor what US audiences saw, for a
| while
|
| Source?
| wincy wrote:
| They're talking about the movie The Dictator and the North
| Korea hack of Sony.
| umeshunni wrote:
| The Interview, not The Dictator. The Dictator was the Sacha
| Baron Cohen movie.
| setgree wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview
|
| > In June 2014, the North Korean government threatened action
| against the United States if Sony released the film. As a
| result, Sony delayed the release from October to December and
| reportedly re-edited the film to make it more acceptable to
| North Korea. In November, the computer systems of Sony were
| hacked by the "Guardians of Peace", a North Korean cybercrime
| group. The group also threatened terrorist attacks against
| theaters showing the film. This led to major theater chains
| opting not to release the film, and Sony instead releasing it
| for online digital rental and purchase on December 25, 2014,
| followed by a limited release at selected theaters the next
| day.
| tzs wrote:
| Disney also includes stuff that gets them banned in some
| countries that could have easily been omitted without harming
| the story at all.
|
| "Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness" was banned in a few
| Mideast countries because in a brief scene that has a character
| from a different universe showing how she ended up traveling
| between universes she is seen with two women and refers to them
| as her two moms.
|
| "Onward" was banned in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia
| because a female cyclops minor character mentions her
| girlfriend.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| In both of those instances, I'm pretty sure the references in
| question were intentionally easy to remove so they could be
| submitted to the Chinese authorities for approval. Laughably
| apparently there was an Epoch Times newspaper box in the
| background of Doctor Strange MoM (Because it's NY and of
| course there is) and that got the movie rejected.
| blatant303 wrote:
| Including the U.S. government.
| whitemary wrote:
| Bosses _are_ dictators.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| It's understood there is no universal truth, so the news here is
| not that these platforms are becoming distorted where they were
| not before. It's that social media platforms in the democratic US
| are increasingly moderating content to align with dictators for,
| one assumes, money. Perhaps it's to increase platform reach in
| those countries, but what is the side-effect going to be on US
| politics with an online media landscape that now skews more
| heavily toward #dictator? Will US states legislatures begin to
| request the same 'moderation services' to support their own anti-
| democratic agendas? If so the country will change, the economic
| environment will change here, and not for the better.
| Retric wrote:
| There is a universal truth. However, a great many people have
| vested interests in convincing people otherwise.
|
| The most you can say is people prioritize truths differently.
| What you ate this morning matters very little to anyone but
| yourself.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Write a book and share this universal truth, translate it
| into all the languages, you'll make a fortune. Last I
| checked, a half-billion authors are still trying to establish
| it.
|
| EDIT: I see you edited your comment about 'universal truth'
| after I answered it. I love the irony. Hail to the internet.
| Retric wrote:
| There's little money in Math.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I see. You are asserting axiomatically consistent systems
| are 'universal truths' in the context of things that
| people say online. However, math is about processing
| statements, and does not make an assertion about the
| truth of those statements in the real world, just on
| whether they were processed correctly.
| Retric wrote:
| Not quite, I am saying universal truths aren't inherently
| something you are going to make a great deal of money
| from.
|
| A list of previous baseball games listing just dates and
| teams isn't particularly interesting even if it's
| absolute truth. Meanwhile a less accurate list of future
| games with teams and dates is something people might
| actually care about.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > EDIT: I see you edited your comment about 'universal
| truth' after I answered it. I love the irony. Hail to the
| internet.
|
| In case anyone wonders, I believe (heh) the comment read
| simply "I disagree there is no universal truth."
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Can you give an example?
| Retric wrote:
| Math
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| 1 + 1 = 2
|
| What does that even mean? What's "true" about that? It's
| agreed that it's true, therefore it's true.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I have never understood the relativism about math
| fundamentals. What does it matter what we "agree to" or
| not? Either it is true or not. There is like no room for
| "kinda true but really it ..." in '1 + 1 = 2'. And I am
| not talking about notation semantics here.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > kinda true but really it ...
|
| This isn't what I'm talking about. The agreement means
| it's not "universal". It's only true because we agree
| it's true. Can you prove that 1 = 1 or do we have to
| agree that 1 = 1? If you can't prove it, is it a
| "universal truth"? I'm asserting that a truth which
| requires an agreed context[0] is not "universal".
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom
| Retric wrote:
| The universal nature of mathematical truth isn't
| dependent on agreement. Instead it's only universally
| true when you include all those seemingly unspoken
| "agreements."
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > isn't dependent on agreement
|
| It is by definition. If you disagree, go write a
| mathematical proof that 1 = 1. There are many in the
| world who would love to see it.
| Retric wrote:
| Hardly, there are sets of axioms where 1 = 1 which
| already show this in exquisite detail.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by this, particularly this
| phrasing: "sets of axioms where 1 = 1". 1 = 1 _is_ an
| axiom, not something that 's proven by any set of axioms.
|
| But I'm willing to believe I'm simply naive here. You say
| there is some set of axioms which prove that 1 = 1. Are
| those axioms not agreements? Since you seem to be
| familiar, what are those axioms?
| Retric wrote:
| What you are missing is 1 = 1 isn't inherently true on
| it's own.
|
| There are sets of axioms where 1 = 1 is false, different
| sets where it's undefined, and finally sets of axioms
| where 1 = 1 is true.
|
| However, for a given set of axioms there is no choice and
| nothing to agree upon. That's what makes math universally
| true.
| Retric wrote:
| The foundations of mathematics are deeper than that basic
| assumption. I can for example say 1 + 1 = 10 in base 2,
| but people imply the base when when saying 1 + 1 = 2 as
| well as a great deal of other details few people actually
| care about.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > foundations of mathematics
|
| This is the agreement that happens and why it's not
| universal. We have to agree that "1 = 1" for any
| statements like "1 + 1 = 2" to even make sense, let alone
| be true. Per your point, we have to agree that we're
| talking about something other than base 2 in order for "1
| + 1 = 2" to be true, despite my intentions for it to be a
| potential example of a universal truth. Even "math" isn't
| universally true.
| Retric wrote:
| The above is false, math isn't independent of axioms so
| there is nothing to agree upon beyond conventions where
| Math is simply the result of axiom choices.
|
| I have a longer answer here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659676
|
| = 2 @ + 1 1 is a different notation, but the underlying
| math is unchanged. So if you explain the notation
| difference an alien that might use = 2 @ + 1 1 they would
| also agree that in an our notation 1 + 1 = 2. The same
| relationship is true of the choice of axioms.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > math isn't independent of axioms so there is nothing to
| agree upon beyond conventions where Math is simply the
| result of axiom choices.
|
| > 1 = 1 isn't inherently true on it's own
|
| This sounds a whole lot like "math isn't a universal
| truth". I guess we need to take a step back, since it
| seems this is where the disagreement lies: what does it
| mean for something to be a universal truth?
|
| My position is that a truth is universal if it is self-
| evident; that is, it does not require an agreement
| between observers. These axioms are that agreement and
| therefore Mathematics, which stems from such axioms, is
| not universal truth.
| Retric wrote:
| Axioms don't somehow superseded Mathematics.
|
| Axioms are just another aspect of Mathematics and
| changing them has utility for mathematicians. Euclidean
| geometry for example uses one set and a wide range of non
| Euclidean geometry systems use different sets.
|
| The universal truth that in Euclidean geometry the
| interior angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees is
| not diminished because the interior angles of a triangle
| can add up to different numbers in spherical geometry.
| It's just two different systems but they all fall under
| Mathematics.
| confuseddesi wrote:
| So is the only universal truth that there is no universal
| truth, and if so, why?
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Maybe. Post it somewhere highly visible online, to check if
| everyone agrees with it. Make other statements like it. See
| how many you can make that remain disagreement free. I'll
| save you some time. As long as people engage with what you
| say, you'll just keep finding alternative ways to view
| things, no matter what you say.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| FWIW, information regulation has been an aspect of how things are
| done online since at least Web 2.0. Google has an intricate
| fabric of policy-modifiers to tweak what people can and cannot
| see based on their geolocation, up to and including the details
| of national boundaries. Twitter, pre-Musk, had "banned in
| Germany" / "banned in France" flags on tweets and accounts that
| were even API-accessible (which was kind of neat; they served as
| a proxy signal for "Not saying this guy's a _Nazi_ , just saying
| Twitter has found it legally expedient to suppress his ability to
| broadcast his thoughts to people in Germany").
|
| ... but the services that we'd expect to be mature enough to
| support those levels of nuance are starting to fall over on their
| asses, and that's concerning. Midjourney's a bit of an outlier
| (and, not to be a conspiracy theorist, but given Hotz's attitude
| on the topic I think it'd be worth it to follow the money on
| them). But Twitter, in particular, has seen a massive backslide.
| I always thought their ultimate goal was untenable (one flat,
| mass public forum is probably not a viable model for human
| interaction), but under Musk's _dictat_ it has utterly imploded.
| itg wrote:
| I guess it's only OK when Americans get to censor what the rest
| of the world sees.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's the rest of the world's own decision to use US websites.
| If I went to a China-based forum, yeah I'd expect censorship
| about Xi Jinping. But using Midjourney??
| valdiorn wrote:
| funny, because the one thing AI image generators famously
| can't or won't do is create pornography.
|
| Guess which country is super sensitive about porn? It's not
| China. It's not anywhere in Europe...
| hot_gril wrote:
| I feel like it's most places. But what does this have to do
| with what I said? Midjourney is based in the US, I expect
| US laws rather than Xi Jinping censorship.
| pb7 wrote:
| I don't know, which one?
|
| >It's not China.
|
| >Any kind of sexually graphic content has long been illegal
| in China, whether it's visual or literary.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.scmp.com/abacus/news-
| bites/article/3092512/china...
|
| >It's not anywhere in Europe...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/17/a-uk-wide-internet-porn-
| ban-...
|
| https://cybernews.com/editorial/anti-porn-laws-in-europe-
| bri...
|
| https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/france-to-
| fin...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-business-europe-
| ger...
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| While America is holding the global power, you can freely write
| you shitty opinion on the internet and get away with it.
|
| If China or Russia would replace America, you will be mining
| uranium in a gulag / re-education camp, counting days until
| you'll be dead, comrade.
|
| You choose.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| False dichotomy. It's not like China would magically start
| having international hegemony over the media and the internet
| if the US didn't. Almost the entire world is subject to
| social media rules and values that are mostly coming from the
| US, and a pretty specific part of the US too.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Each of us builds capabilities used for both good and evil.
|
| The modern extent of government power and private influence would
| be unthinkable even decades ago. Personal rights have failed to
| keep up, in part because it requires constitutional or
| legislative action that's basically impossible because of
| politics or jurisdiction (international).
|
| As a practical result, we can't really absolve ourselves of
| responsibility by saying that it's legal, or that it's for
| another country to decide, or that it's necessary to gain access
| to a market.
|
| No one doubts that IBM/ACM was morally culpable for providing
| systems they knew would be used for "organizing" undesirables by
| the Nazi's. It's much less clear whether doing devops at twitter
| helps or hurts Modi, or if that's a bad thing.
|
| But it helps to have some smell tests. Mine are:
|
| - Everyone worldwide should be treated with the same respect -
| American or not.
|
| - It's better for speech and commerce to be free, when it's
| aiming for true understanding and mutual benefit.
|
| - Every technology should be openly assessed for who it benefits
| or harms, who decides its use, whether it can be safely managed,
| and whether it corrupts or improves those it affects.
|
| Analytically, the notion of commercial franchise is quite
| helpful: twitter has the franchise for a current event stream,
| Modi has a franchise over legislation in India, etc. All tech
| companies build their own franchise (with moats, etc.), and may
| coordinate in mutually-reinforcing teams. Franchises are not only
| bargaining power but also a whole ecosystem self-organizes around
| them. The stronger and more relevant the franchise, the bigger
| the payday, and the more enticing it is to take over. That
| creates very strong incentives to hold your nose (and be used as
| a tool), or to steer well clear (and be, well, irrelevant).
|
| I salute those who struggle with these difficult questions.
| lovvtide wrote:
| Nostr
| valdiorn wrote:
| hahaha, welcome to feeling what it's like living in "the rest of
| the world".
|
| Since the inception of the internet and social media, what is and
| isn't acceptable to post online has been governed by American
| culture standards. Murder and violence? Absolutely fine. My wife
| showing partial nipple on a picture of her breastfeeding on
| Facebook? Instant ban!
|
| Personally, I think the only way for social media companies to
| play this and not lose, is to hand over the reigns of censorship
| to each country, to govern for themselves.
|
| If India wants to ban some content; cool, Facebook gives them an
| API/dashboard, and they can remove that content themselves.
|
| An American state wants to ban nipples and LGBT content? Cool.
| Florida government can dedicate some headcount to combating that,
| Reddit/FB/Google just give them some tools for self service.
|
| Of course, the effect of that censorship is only applied to
| requests coming from IP addresses within that region, and doesn't
| affect the rest of the world.
|
| Social media companies; stop letting random governments of the
| world hold you accountable for censorship. Put the onus on them,
| provide them the tools, and blame them for their own failing
| strategy that they can't enforce.
| jzb wrote:
| "Social media companies; stop letting random governments of the
| world hold you accountable for censorship. Put the onus on
| them, provide them the tools, and blame them for their own
| failing strategy that they can't enforce."
|
| I mean, it seems like China does a pretty good (not perfect)
| job of censoring things. Not _too_ long ago[1] Cisco (IIRC) and
| other companies were taking heat because they were providing
| China with tools that could be used for the "Great Firewall."
| Now we want to make it self-service...
|
| The kick in the teeth about letting other countries censor /
| require censorship by U.S.-based companies is that we have been
| told over and over again that free trade and globalism was
| going to lead to a freer society.
|
| Basically - full steam ahead on capitalism and trading with
| oppressive regimes, we'll have a good influence on them and
| wear down censorship, etc.
|
| The opposite has happened. U.S.-based companies have become
| reliant on trade with those regimes to the point that they'll
| generally bow to censorship instead of pushing human rights.
|
| (I'm very well aware that "American culture standards" are
| deeply imperfect, particularly as implemented by Facebook, _et
| al_. I 'm not in favor of bowing to the most puritanical and
| hypocritical forces in the U.S., either...)
|
| [1] https://archive.is/1ube2
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Or just stop banning content entirely.
| ncphil wrote:
| Or, govern this stuff under international treaty. Internet
| traffic _is not_ like truck traffic. It's more like radio (in
| some places it is radio). It's the Ross Sea, not I-95. What
| gives any one nation (or subdivision, like a certain US state
| known for its leading position at the Darwin Awards) the
| right to meddle with a global resource like that? Well, as a
| practical matter, they rarely do. Instead, they usually let
| the oligarchs who own the ruling elites (as well as the
| infrastructure) in each country do it: except when it's more
| convenient to use government as a hammer.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| The radio spectrum is a finite resource that can only be
| (reasonably) consumed locally. The internet is for all
| intents and purposes infinite.
|
| One of the purposes of government is to oversee the
| distribution of scarce resources in a way that avoids the
| tragedy of the commons.
|
| This use case clearly applies to the EM spectrum allocation
| and clearly doesn't apply to the internet so I think
| comparing the internet and radio is a flawed analogy.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| If we'd stop mixing up private communication with global-
| scope broadcast "platforms", that'd probably help.
|
| Not that it's the users' fault--it's that these platforms
| have structured themselves that way.
| rglover wrote:
| This. With all of this AI/image recognition stuff, it'd be
| relatively easy to allow people to maintain a list of
| filters and when someone posts nudity, profanity, etc.,
| just obscure it in their feed and present a "this is
| something you asked us to filter out <keyword>, proceed
| with caution" or just hide it entirely. Put the individual
| in control, and force them to create a list (if they wish)
| on next app open with a timestamp of if/when they declined
| to set something.
|
| As for the concern about disinformation, ignore the content
| and watch the action. If some guy in the hills of Arkansas
| wants to think "them dems are lizard people" but doesn't
| show any signs of taking action, who cares (rhetorical)? If
| they show signs of action, follow the usual path of legal
| recourse/escalate to the proper authority.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > This. With all of this AI/image recognition stuff, it'd
| be relatively easy to allow people to maintain a list of
| filters and when someone posts nudity, profanity, etc.,
| just obscure it in their feed and present a "this is
| something you asked us to filter out <keyword>, proceed
| with caution" or just hide it entirely. Put the
| individual in control, and force them to create a list
| (if they wish) on next app open with a timestamp of
| if/when they declined to set something.
|
| Or even without AI tools. All this stuff is a complete
| non-issue on my extended-friend-group WhatsApps and my
| family text message threads. It was never a problem when
| I ran a private forum for people I knew, years and years
| ago. Mixing private communication with people you know
| with a global broadcast system seems to be what causes
| the problem to exist in the first place. Ordinary actual-
| humans-you-know communication channels don't need some
| 3rd-party censor, and for the most part don't even call
| for end-user-tunable censorship tools, beyond being able
| to leave & form groups or maybe set images to click/tap-
| to-view or something. Nothing sophisticated, certainly.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That wasn't even viable for 4chan.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| But why not? They weren't threatened with legal action (and
| if they were, the correct solution would be to undo the law
| that they were threatened with). They were attacked by the
| same moral busybodies who have been clutching their pearls
| over violent video games since at least I was a kid. The
| correct solution here is to _completely ignore_ those
| people and _keep ignoring them_.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| You don't need to be threatened with legal action for the
| law to be a threat.
|
| If they allowed so much sexual assault material to
| continue to be shared on their platform they would
| inevitably run into trouble.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > run into trouble
|
| By what law? Because that law does violate the first
| amendment, and that can be addressed when it becomes an
| issue.
| [deleted]
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Images of child pornography are not protected under First
| Amendment rights, and are illegal contraband under
| federal law. Section 2256 of Title 18, United States
| Code, defines child pornography as any visual depiction
| of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (someone
| under 18 years of age). Visual depictions include
| photographs, videos, digital or computer generated images
| indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images
| created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an
| identifiable, actual minor.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-
| fede...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ah, yes, 4chan, notably terrified of "moral busybodies".
|
| It turns out even 4channers largely don't want to see
| some categories of shitty things.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Easy solution - give the users tools to filter what they
| don't want to see individually rather than decide for
| them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You and I have different definitions of "easy" solutions.
| yifanl wrote:
| It takes one mildly determined person and 30 dollars to
| rent a server farm to post 150 threads of garbage, and
| there goes everything else on the catalog.
|
| edit: actually, in the world where there's _zero_
| moderation then you probably wouldn't even need the
| server farm since there wouldn't be any risk of being IP
| flagged.
| vharuck wrote:
| That's already available. Turns out, admin moderation is
| still necessary to make the website tolerable.
|
| Besides, boards generally have just 150 threads running
| at once. If the majority of the live threads are just
| spammed crap, that makes everything worse. If there are
| 100 topics with lively discussion and 10 or so spam
| threads that haven't been culled yet, no problem. If
| there are 80 spam threads, then there's going to be a ton
| of churn as everyone competes for the other 70 threads.
| Each new one bumps another off the site. There'll be
| discussions started anew, with the same crap filling it
| up because people think they have to say it every time.
| This is what happens on fast-moving boards.
|
| And one could ask "Why not change the number of live
| threads? Or never retire threads?" To which I'd respond,
| "If you have to keep recommending changes to fix what
| your other changes cause, maybe the original change
| wasn't good."
| asdff wrote:
| Filtering is a game of constant whack a mole. That's why
| mods and janitors are used to do it, because it would be
| overwhelming if it was on each and every user and, you'd
| spend the bulk of your time online seeing egregious
| content and updating your filters, as well as dealing
| with the stress of actually seeing that graphic stuff.
| graeme wrote:
| Then you're left with two scenarios:
|
| 1. Users themselves have to see the stuff to filter it.
| This kind of work has burned out scores of classifiers.
| There's some really, really horrible stuff out there
|
| 2. The job will be left to people to make content
| filters. And those people would need to look at the stuff
| to filter it. And face legal consequence to doing so. And
| probably not get much compensation
|
| Who or what group would fill #2? It would either be a
| group that sought to profit from it, or a group funded by
| governments, or a group that wanted to be at the node
| point for the spread of such material, or a group that
| wanted to influence society (e.g. for spam, or a foreign
| government seeking to mess with a society, etc)
|
| It is hard to fathom the sheer volume of horrible content
| our filters deal with unless you've done any sort of
| moderation. And usually if you're doing moderation you're
| well downstream of the worst bits.
| [deleted]
| hot_gril wrote:
| Facebook is based in the US, so of course it'll go by US
| standards. The tech companies in the article aren't based in
| India or China.
|
| As an aside, I don't know if there's any US law against showing
| adult nudity on a website. Maybe there's a rule about users
| being over 18.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Meta are dominant in their sector across the globe. Of course
| they follow American standards, but their dominance insures
| the rest of the world goes by American standards.
|
| Indeed there's no laws in the US that protect violent images
| whole covering the body, but that is the cultural standard
| which has been exported around the world.
|
| I get that you're making a point that, why give control
| abroad to governments when I'm the US companies self censor?
|
| First, what goes into the hands of companies versus the state
| also various culturally, and the US does have content laws
| other than the one you highlighted.
| hot_gril wrote:
| About the cultural standards, what would be normal in some
| other parts of the world? At least in the US, parents don't
| want porn showing up on kids' social media, and a sizeable
| number of adults at least don't want _other people_ to see
| it on their screen. Big social media site like FB probably
| has to encode this as a "no nudity" rule.
|
| I'm not sure about the violent images. There are definitely
| rules against showing bodily harm on FB, but I have no idea
| where the line is.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Breastfeeding is not porn
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| What would be normal? Like the poster above said, if my
| family goes to the beach and we take our shirts off, my
| girlfriend would be censored on Meta services but I
| wouldn't.
|
| Notice that your comment equates nudity with pornography.
| Where I'm from it's not normal to do that.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I didn't equate nudity and pornography, and Americans
| don't do that. I'm asking if porn is normal elsewhere
| (answer was no) and saying FB moderation board might be
| lumping them together because there aren't fair ways to
| designate porn vs not.
|
| If there's a social media site in some other country that
| doesn't have those rules, that'd be a good example.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The cultural component is that the female body is deemed
| as pornographic while the male body is not.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Nah the difference is that our governments use the language
| that works for us.
|
| And they know that language because otherwise they wouldn't
| be in government.
|
| So the US wants Tiktok to change and uses the language that
| will resonate with Americans to ban it when Tiktok doesn't
| fold.
|
| China does the same with the companies it wants to change.
| That they listen is purely a financial decision.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I don't agree with the proposed TikTok ban. It's straight
| up protectionism, or govt censorship.
| tellitnow2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| time_to_smile wrote:
| "Tech Bosses" _are_ dictators and I 'm always surprised that most
| people have absolutely zero intellectual challenge suspending the
| values of democracy for 8-12 hours a day.
|
| Virtually all of the rights we learn about in grade school are
| suspended in the workplace. And while employees do have the
| ability to quit, they a.) still have to find some other dictator
| to work for and b.) are much more heavily impacted by a loss of
| income than the employer is the individual loss of skill.
|
| So the dictators we work for day in and day out are aligned with
| other dictators. You aren't entitled to free speech in your
| office, so why would you expect to the people running your office
| to care about your free speech after hours?
|
| edit: I'm still surprised that people are incapable of question
| the ideology that shapes your worldview. The very concept that
| "well you're working for someone else so the of course suspension
| of liberties is okay" is doctrine that you have been lead to
| believe since birth precisely because it benefits those people in
| power.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Virtually all of the rights we learn about in grade school
| are suspended in the workplace.
|
| Virtually none of them are suspended in the workplace. When
| you're at work, though, you are on someone else's private
| property and so some of your rights are constrained (just as
| some of the rights of people visiting your home are constrained
| while they're there). This is because there are competing
| rights involved, and it's logically impossible for everyone to
| retain their full sets of rights in those circumstances.
|
| But, as you say, if the restrictions on your freedom are more
| greater than you can tolerate, you can quit. If no workplace
| gives you the amount of latitude you need, then you can work
| for yourself.
|
| But, at the core, we live in a society with other people, and
| that inherently comes with certain restraints on behavior.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Working for money is doing something others want you to do in
| exchange for money.
|
| In the west typically 2/3 of your day is free, as are weekends
| (and I see plenty of people commenting during work hours too).
|
| I am a worker myself, but maybe because I have a past in actual
| physical labour I realize how much of a brat I have become now,
| being able to walk around, grab coffee, chat, stare mindlessly
| out the windows and browse HN while being paid handsomely to
| create software.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's a normal human tendency to consider our own particular
| situation as representing the "average" or "normal". It's
| quite common for people who live privileged lives (such as
| most people here) to not recognize that they are living
| privileged lives.
|
| It's very good to remember how lucky most of us are, and how
| unusual our circumstances are.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Last time I saw this mentioned on HN, someone had a mental
| breakdown and told people to stop bringing it up because
| they were tired of hearing "sob stories".
| JohnFen wrote:
| Strange that it would be interpreted that way. When I
| reflect on my good fortune, it's celebratory, not sad.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I think of it many times a year, how lucky I am to no
| longer need to showel manure or move wet grass using a
| pitchfork to earn a fraction of what I do today.
|
| And even back then I was lucky.
| asdff wrote:
| There are pros and cons of course. I am noticing my
| health declining somewhat since working inside versus
| physically. I am not as strong especially in weird muscle
| groups. I am more sore, prone to injury, and inflexible.
| I don't get as much sun exposure. My eyesight is
| declining quite a lot since I am bad about getting up off
| my desk and staring at something far away a few times an
| hour. My hands and wrists are going from spending a lot
| of time typing. Maybe I am monetarily richer, but
| certainly not physically richer. Maybe mentally I am
| poorer too considering the stresses of work follow me
| home now versus staying at the job site.
|
| It makes sense. We evolved to be laboring outside,
| staying in shape with physical work, keeping our bodies
| active, constantly moving, sleeping with the sun versus
| an alarm clock. Even elders in tribes that still practice
| traditional hunting are remarkably active compared to
| elders in the west. We didn't evolve to be troglodytes,
| unmoving in an artificial cave for 95% of the day, but
| ironically these are the types of work our society
| disproportionately rewards.
| asdff wrote:
| Is browsing hn so different than a clerk reading the paper or
| a book or chitchatting with a coworker during some down time
| in the 1940s? Probably not. Downtime is part of work unless
| you work by the piece. Even when I worked outside labor jobs,
| there was plenty of downtime e.g. waiting for the 1 skid
| steer to move some stuff before you could do anything else.
| That being said its not like 2/3 of your day are truly free,
| you are omitting the sleeping, the cooking, the eating, the
| washing the dishes, the commuting, etc, that quickly sucks up
| your time. I know someone who works 9am-7pm. Maybe 1-2 hours
| of their day are truly free during the week. Plus on the
| weekends thats when you typically play catchup, and do all
| the chores and errands you'd been neglecting during the week
| due to work.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| So true. I also remember how in school kids used to think all
| teachers were dictators and how kids think parents are
| dictators.
|
| /s
| mariodiana wrote:
| Related to this issue, an article in _Harper 's Magazine,_ from
| 2015, discussed the threat China poses to the United States, via
| the American businesses who have interests over there:
|
| "The New China syndrome: How Beijing shakes down foreign
| businesses"
|
| https://archive.harpers.org/2015/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2015...
|
| The article focuses on the idea of indirect lobbying: namely,
| China pressuring U.S. businesses to lobby in favor of China's
| interests, or risk losing the privilege of doing business in
| China. (Length: 6 pages)
| hot_gril wrote:
| "The ability for people in China to use this tech is more
| important than your ability to generate satire." - Midjourney CEO
| David Holz
| coldtea wrote:
| Tech bosses in the US are also letting the US government,
| 3-letter agencies, and "activists" also sensor what americans
| see.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I'm more worried about the media corporations themselves than
| "activists". What are activists censoring?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| [flagged]
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I find the idea of labelling Rupert Murdoch as an activist
| very interesting.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Those double standards are pretty funny. Compare western musk
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk to the weibo version (use VPN)
| https://weibo.com/elonmusk
|
| Behind language and technical barriers you can create pretty
| divergent versions of yourselfs.
| iosono88 wrote:
| [dead]
| codetrotter wrote:
| > weibo version (use VPN)
|
| Loads fine for me without VPN.
| huevosabio wrote:
| I bet the weibo version is just a managed account by a pr
| person.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah; ahem:
|
| "How did you spend the Spring Festival this year? Check out
| the bunnies' suggestions! [Lighting emoji], [music emoji],
| [microphone emoji] #tesla#Xin Chun partyKai Lai [call]
|
| #Te Bie Qin Guo Nian # , New Year's "rabbit" music [rabbit
| emoji] Tesla is willing to drive through every happy journey
| with you, bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, full
| of electricity for four seasons
|
| [Gift emoji ]Follow @ Tesla also brought the topic word #Te
| Bie Qin Guo Nian # forward this post on Weibo to post your
| "special" New Year moments, and draw 2 fans to send"
| eunos wrote:
| GOP congress seems love western musk so much.
| psychphysic wrote:
| The only solution is to flit around.
|
| Even editorially independent media is invariably heavily biased
| one way or another.
|
| Given the way people consume news you can be bias through the use
| of a subtly misleading but otherwise accurate headline, or a
| boring headline, or just not have it as a leader or bulletin.
|
| There is so much News these days that you could report on
| everything absolutely fairly and still have a strong bias just
| because of what you decide is worth showing people more often.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you're not always looking for independent alternative sources
| of information and cross-checking claims from different sources
| while also looking for internal self-consistency then of course
| you're going to end up with a skewed perspective on reality
| engineered by some group of professional propagandists. Whether
| these PR specialists are working for governments or corporations
| in China, Russia or America is sort of besides the point.
|
| There is a set of skills that's needed to objectively classify
| information that's found on the Internet or in other media
| sources (yes including books). Any rational democractic society
| would be wise to teach these skills to people from an early age,
| although certain groups (religious fundamentalists, corporate
| advertisers, government authoritarians etc.) would oppose this
| for obvious reasons.
|
| The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the
| unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a
| population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda
| from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who
| don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed
| to independently test claims for veracity.
| klysm wrote:
| I'm unsure why the word epistemology is omitted from these
| conversations so frequently. Fundamentally I feel that's the
| underlying thing that's difficult
| swayvil wrote:
| That is what we're looking at, in a word. The quality of our
| knowledge-getting.
|
| What we need is some kind of automated process for ensuring
| that the knowledge that the machine poops out is of the
| highest possible quality. Something that checks it every step
| of the way, from observation to cheeseburger.
| ravenstine wrote:
| This state of information isn't the least bit new, but for some
| reason many of us are treating it like it is. Wealthy families,
| corporations, politicians, banks, and so on have always had
| their hands in what we get to see. The very idea that foreign
| enemy nations use propaganda has itself been used as a
| propaganda tactic many times.
|
| What's troublesome for the public is that the culture does not
| instill a healthy level of individualism when it comes to
| interpreting information; we are encouraged to trust experts
| and to otherwise follow one of two distinct camps on any given
| topic. People don't _believe_ they have time to understand
| things on their own, nor do they _believe_ they have the
| capacity to do so. In actuality, this is nonsense, given how
| many people manage to at least pass through high school, and
| how much time adults spend consuming entertainment. In their
| defense, it takes an inordinate amount of work to sift through
| the detritus that makes up at least 80% of prose on the
| internet; most articles simply can 't get to the point, but I
| guess creative writing majors need something to do.
|
| I truly think the best thing for the average person right now
| is to _not_ take information-for-sale seriously. They are
| better off knowing _less_ , not _more_. The idea that
| information has a linearly distributed benefit is a fallacy.
| The more information, the more vectors for pathological
| information.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Specialization in one area of information can be kind of
| rewarding. I like commodity news (oil, food, minerals, water,
| etc.) and tech manufacturing so I try to keep up on those
| areas. Mainstream media isn't really that great for this, in
| comparison to speciality business journals, various websites,
| government reports and so on.
|
| Focusing on one area gives you a 'window on reality', but
| it's going to be limited, i.e. I really don't know what to
| think about all the culture war news, or general finance
| that's not specifically related to commodities and
| manufacturing, or anything in the 'true crime' world, or much
| in the way of electoral politics, geopolitics, etc. Still,
| knowing something reliable about how droughts and floods have
| affected rice production in China and why rice prices are
| rising makes me feel like I have at least some marginal grasp
| on what's going on in the real world.
| chc wrote:
| Do you believe it is possible for one person to understand
| multiple topics in different fields as well as the experts in
| those fields? That seems like a massive unspoken assumption
| in your point of view here. If not, it seems like some level
| of trust in experts is the only possible way to know much
| about the world beyond the rudiments.
| rektide wrote:
| > _What 's troublesome for the public is that the culture
| does not instill a healthy level of individualism when it
| comes to interpreting information; we are encouraged to trust
| experts_
|
| To be fair, the have been a lot of people with a lot of
| claims about experts being wrong & awful & lying, and a very
| large number of these people seem pretty batshit crazy.
|
| The not-trusters seem most likely to fall for your
| wonderfully stated second idea, which I love,
|
| > _People don 't believe they have time to understand things
| on their own, nor do they believe they have the capacity to
| do so._
|
| The most vocal mainstream resistance seems extremely quick to
| accept & deeply believe alternate portrayals, ones that
| happen to fit the constructed narratives they want to
| believe. I think the mainstream actually does a much better
| job of having skeptical takes, but wow, our tolerance for the
| dreck demagoguery trash that people adopt has worn real thin.
| chasing wrote:
| I believe the term for this kind of argument is "whataboutism."
| pphysch wrote:
| "Whataboutism" was invented during the Cold War by these
| totally-not-propagandists to deal with the uncomfortable
| parallels between imperial Moscow and totally-not-imperial
| Washington.
|
| It's an offense to intelligent discussion, and not an
| argument.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| How is a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their
| propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable
| sources' worse than a population of brainwashed zombies who get
| all their propaganda from, say, Newsmax and OAN?
| ChancyChance wrote:
| The unwashed masses that led J6 "did their own research" yet
| still qualify as brainwashed zombies. There's so much shit in
| the channels and so much polarization that appealing to people
| learning how to think critically will fix everything is one of
| the biggest myths of the 21st century. And in my opinion, this
| attitude is wildly elitist. Because lets face it, critical
| thinking is only something a small %age of humans are good at,
| and I don't include myself it that sub-population and I'm
| pretty goddamn smart, smart enough to know when I'm stupid.
| lysozyme wrote:
| If I may suggest a way to train yourself up on this, I'd like
| to suggest an approach which I learned from the writer Francine
| Prose in one of her composition courses.
|
| The method is simply this: for half a year, every week, go and
| find the same news story from three different publishers and
| read all three versions.
|
| Do this solidly 25 times and you will begin to see the outlines
| of exactly the set of skills that you need to objectively
| classify information that's found on the Internet. This is a
| simple and highly effective training technique that uses the
| mass variety of news sites on the Internet for an educational
| purpose. Once you begin to _see_ and _compare_ the narratives
| underlying most "news", they will be impossible to un-see
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| >go and find the same news story from three different
| publishers and read all three versions.
|
| The problem with this is, if the three publishers have been
| funded by the same pharmaceutical company, NGO, or
| intelligence agency, they are likely to produce nearly-
| identical stories on $PARTICULAR_ISSUE.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Alright, and what do you suggest? There seems to be some
| wild push to make people never believe anything and degrade
| the role of the press as things are in an authoritarian
| system. Very interesting derailments in this comment
| section about an article that speaks poorly of
| authoritarians such as Xi.
| overthrow wrote:
| Certain groups? I think everyone in government, in all parties,
| would oppose that education - because their own propaganda
| would become less effective too. Do you think those in power
| would ever go out of their way to help people learn about
| gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, or the pitfalls of a two-
| party system?
| tstrimple wrote:
| Except that they do talk about rcv and gerrymandering. And
| the two party system is intrinsically linked to our
| "preferred" voting method. If no one in power is talking
| about RCV how is it being implemented in various states?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-
| choice_voting_in_the_Un...
|
| If no one is talking about gerrymandering, why have some
| states implemented independent redistricting?
|
| https://redistricting.lls.edu/national-
| overview/?colorby=Ins...
|
| It was one political party which proposed and supported the
| Freedom to Vote Act and the For the People Act which would
| have made political gerrymandering illegal across the country
| and increased access to voting and exactly one of our parties
| who stood against it. I know people like to pretend they are
| above politics and will "both sides" everything to death. But
| all you have to do is look at what is being proposed and who
| is supporting what with their votes to see past that FUD.
| pydry wrote:
| >Do you think those in power would ever go out of their way
| to help people learn about gerrymandering, ranked choice
| voting
|
| They tend to be more fine with this sort of thing if the fix
| isn't on the cards politically.
|
| E.g. you will see some _nuclear_ attacks on the idea of
| raising the minimum wage from the media when it is being
| debated in Congress, while that same media will often fawn
| over political pipe dreams like basic income.
|
| The Russian bots will pull this trick where they set up, e.g.
| a facebook page for "proud Texan cowboy dads" and then funnel
| innocuous stuff they will agree with 99% of the time and then
| 1% of the time push stuff that _really_ matters to them (
| "why are we sending yet more money to Ukraine when proud
| Texans at home are suffering!").
|
| This isn't controversial to state. I think it's clear that
| they do this - what is controversial to state is that this is
| exactly what the rest of the "legitimate" media does _exactly
| the same thing_ on behalf of the oligarchy who own it.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| They did specify government "authoritarians". It's not much
| of a stretch to think that they don't believe "everyone in
| government" is an authoritarian.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation that a free and
| independent press either doesn't exist or if it does it should
| never be trusted. I regularly read opposing viewpoints or even
| self criticism in the _established_ media. Your claims are wild
| and impossible to disprove.
| alistairSH wrote:
| There may be a free press, but when the majority of the (US)
| public gets it's news from Fox, it doesn't matter.
|
| Nearly $800 million settlement over the lies they pushed
| about election fraud and nary a peep on their own network
| about their misdeeds.
| montagg wrote:
| It's not the free or lack of free press that's the problem.
| Fox's audience _wants_ to be lied to, and there are
| countless people in the US and elsewhere that are honestly
| just done thinking about the complexity of the world. No
| free press can break through that.
| lazyeye wrote:
| "Eveyone that disagrees with me is stupid and easily
| manipulated, not smart like me"
|
| I think alot of people watch Fox because its currently
| the only news channel that provides coverage of poor
| Democrat behaviour. That doesnt mean they agree with
| everything that is said.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| To be fair, they're guilty of not silencing a couple of
| their opinion hosts for a couple of days. Multiple anchors
| angrily shut down the story on-air on more than one
| occasion, and Tucker Carlson was so skeptical he made an
| enemy of Trump.
|
| Maybe someone should have gone after the politicians and
| media and filmmakers that claimed Diebold stole the Ohio
| election for Bush and this could have been nipped in the
| bud.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Eating up the manufactured consent.
|
| "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to
| strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow
| very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the
| more critical and dissident views."
| [deleted]
| switchbak wrote:
| There is a free and independent press, but they're not the
| ones owned by Bezos and friends. This leads into OP's point -
| that you need to always be doing the work yourself of
| triangulating on the best approximation of the truth. If you
| give that up, then you're a prime candidate for manipulation.
|
| Make no mistake, there are strong and concerted efforts by
| very powerful organizations to control what the masses see.
| And you will see some dissent even within places like the NY
| Times, but there are real bounds to expressible thought (all
| the news that's fit to print). Others have covered this
| ground for decades a lot better than myself.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| What specific claims are wild and impossible to disprove? I
| didn't see anything of that in the above statement. Only,
| don't rely on once source for your information. Also the
| article, paired with the tone of this site, causes me to
| second guess the premise because it looks like this site
| writes a lot of sensation pieces, similar to daily mail which
| does in fact, skew the facts to get people to be polarized.
| There is an article on Wikipedia banning source information
| from Daily Mail [1] that you would do well to read as this
| site seems to fall right under that spectrum.
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikip
| edia...
| switchbak wrote:
| That is true, but this particular author is from F.I.R.E. -
| a nonprofit free speech advocacy group. You can probably
| assume that such a group would present a particular kind of
| opinion.
|
| Quite the pivot for Sarah McLaughlin :P
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it
| when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd
| prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get
| all their propaganda from a government-provided list of
| 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive
| capacities and practical skills needed to independently
| test claims for veracity.
|
| How about this deluge of conspiracy claims?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah but that's not helpful for primary sources. For
| instance, if the NYT reports that WMDs have been found in
| Iraq and that a trustworthy source says so but Fox News says
| this is not the case, what do you consider the truth?
|
| For national security reasons, you can't look at the
| evidence.
| fatherzine wrote:
| > For national security reasons, you can't look at the
| evidence.
|
| If we can't look at the evidence, then it's probably highly
| distorted. Especially if it's for 'national security'
| reasons -- the ultimate 'ends justify the means' context.
| No matter what nation we are talking about.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation that a free and
| independent press either doesn't exist or if it does it
| should never be trusted.
|
| I don't think all journalists deliberately serve some agenda,
| but it's very easy to find instances of reputable medias
| being incorrect or extremely biased. It's not that they
| should never be trusted, but it's important to remain
| critical even with reputable new sources.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The media love to report on the media. There is no bad press
| and the self criticism praises as much as criticizes. 'How
| they got it wrong' is a common story you get to buy.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| [dead]
| pydry wrote:
| >>I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation...I regularly read
| opposing viewpoints
|
| >The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to
| strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, _but allow
| very lively debate_ within that spectrum.
|
| -- Noam Chomsky
| lostlogin wrote:
| If the last few years has demonstrated anything, it's not a
| lack of diversity of opinion.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I don't think your experience is mutually exclusive with
| theirs. Do you think "you're not always looking for
| independent alternative sources of information and cross-
| checking claims from different sources" as per OP's comment?
| winternett wrote:
| The battle is lost already in many ways... We have let many
| companies become so embedded that if they backed out there
| would be no other options for the services and infrastructure
| they provide (this even includes news services, and especially
| includes social media services).
|
| Right now ELon Musk is applying dangerously dictatorial tactics
| in turning Twitter from a free service into a paid service..
| Years after the entire world has become invested into it as a
| new and communication tool... Many will say it's his right to
| do whatever he wants, but those are the same people too short
| sighted to understand how Nestle controls water in foreign
| countries... We are all plagued by that short sightedness and
| greed, while there are far better answers to things like this
| while still operating in a capitalistic system.
|
| We all give far too much credit to the authoritarian elitist
| crowd. If you are born into so much money that you can fail
| multiple times and simply rebuild, you're NOT a genius. We need
| to stop deluding everyone with this supremacy narrative,
| because it's just fueling monopolies and inequality and
| destroying opportunity in our world.
|
| Just being aware about how news is being manipulated, and
| scanning multiple sources to determine truth isn't enough... We
| need to place proper expectations on government to reign in
| companies and tax the wealthy properly, while also reducing
| lower and middle class tax rates, otherwise, this is all a new
| version of covert mental control and opportunistic indentured
| labor. Get rid of "bosses" that ideal is far too outdated for
| progress, Not even the president is properly respected by
| congress anyway, so we need to update our business models to a
| more democratic leadership ecosystem.
| swamp40 wrote:
| > dangerously dictatorial tactics in turning Twitter from a
| free service into a paid service
|
| Don't you see that's the way to eliminate the power of the
| bots, which influence you by legitimizing tweets by the
| thousands.
|
| It's still free to join, but only paid users get influence.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Don't you see that's the way to eliminate the power of
| the bots
|
| That's the sales line.
|
| The reality is that "verification" now means nothing more
| than you have an email and a credit/debit with a limit more
| than $8, and you can claim to be anyone you want.
|
| Within hours, scores of fake "official" govt accounts are
| up [0]. If you don't think that is somehow beneficial to
| scammers and disruptive bots, I'd like to talk to you about
| some great oceanfront property in Kansas!
|
| There is also the Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum
| account being unverified while the account of a prominent
| Nazi propagandist is [1].
|
| The result is that anyone running a bot/troll account can
| put up any face they want and purchase amplified reach (not
| merely speech) for $8/month - an astonishing deal
|
| Beyond effectively destroying the value of the Blue Check
| verification status to convey validation, it has now turned
| into a badge of shame that no serious person wants. Musk
| already knows this, and is trying to counteract it by
| leaving legacy valuable badges on certain celebrities, such
| as Stephen King, who explicitly denies paying [2]
|
| The Blue Check has become a toxic symbol, and this is
| reflected in new terms o service [3], where you cannot turn
| it off, even by cancelling the subscription.
|
| The economic reality is that Twitter's core value
| proposition was the presence of verified and active govt
| accounts, news accounts, and celebrity accounts. It was
| their content that people came to see and interact.
|
| By allowing anyone to pay a small fee to impersonate
| anyone, Musk has made verification worthless and even
| toxic.
|
| It literally renders nearly worthless the very thing Musk
| wants people to pay for.
|
| And, beyond doing nothing to suppress bots, this enables
| them as never before.
|
| Masterful strategy there... (/s)
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1649146273121857554
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/EladNehorai/status/1649262025296744450
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1649181726395052039
|
| [3]
| https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1649449653098668032
| noelherrick wrote:
| Something I've been chewing on is legitimacy by process vs.
| outcome (means vs. end). We have far too long said if the
| means are done fairly (Musk bought Twitter legitimately, Zuck
| founded and unilaterally controls Facebook mostly legally),
| then we have to accept the outcome, even if that outcome is
| detrimental to the wider society. We just have to stop
| accepting that. Corporate law, money, etc. are all made up
| and are sold to the wider population as net boons to society.
| Why can't we dissolve and/or nationalize companies when they
| cease to be beneficial or have distinct negatives?
|
| Copyright, patents, LLCs, publicly-traded companies, etc.,
| all nominally exist to benefit society at large. They're not
| supposed to be this game of "I called shotgun so suck it!"
| whythre wrote:
| This is so naive in the extreme. Who decides the 'societal
| good?' Some centralized moralizing force, that will no
| doubt be in disagreement with large swathes of the rest of
| the nation. Thinking that FB is some kind of powerful
| national threat that must be managed by the government
| seems absurd.
| majormajor wrote:
| Many of the alternatives to "a majority vote decides
| what's good or bad" are even worse. Lots of ink spilled
| on the downsides of kings or on anarchy vs some sort of
| democratic system.
|
| What the poster is proposing about cracking down on large
| powerful companies isn't even particularly troublesome
| Constitutionally in the US; but even then, as with any
| other sort of regulations, Constitutional restrictions on
| what the legitimate government can and can't do can be
| taken too far, or can get outdated.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Hacker News is one of the most communist leaning forums
| online, while at the same time strongly supportive of US
| government policy. How those two go together you'll have
| to ask somebody else. Any thread you read will have
| "regulation and government nationalization" as the
| answer. It's the modern day equivalent of "God will fix
| it"
| majormajor wrote:
| Media companies, including Twitter and Facebook and CNN,
| aren't _that_ hard to replace. The replacement doesn 't need
| to look exactly the same, or run at the same scale, or have
| all the same features, people will adapt just as they did to
| move to those platforms in the first place.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when
| the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have
| a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their
| propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable
| sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and
| practical skills needed to independently test claims for
| veracity.
|
| While I agree with you, I don't think challenging this is wise.
|
| A large number of people lack the fundamental intellect
| required for critical thinking. Give them a nugget of truth (or
| even a total falsehood) and they will extrapolate it to the
| point of an entire ideology (QAnon)...because they're smarter
| than the rest of us idiots, see. _They_ have critical thinking
| skills!
|
| Thanks to the internet anybody can appoint themselves a source
| of truth, which just results in chaos. A mentally-ill loudmouth
| can turn entire segments of the country against itself (and I'm
| not even taking potshots at anybody in particular). Fewer
| sources of information is better domestic policy for the
| masses.
|
| Let the critical thinkers seek out third-party sources to do
| their own verification. Let the masses eat from a common trough
| so they don't cause a stampede.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| One of my favorite quotes, Isaac Asimov:
|
| If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance
| that we can solve them.
| smolder wrote:
| It's very expensive (a lot of work) to be so rigorous in
| verifying information. Forgoing trust is expensive, whether
| we're on this subject or talking about Proof of Work
| algorithms. It'd be great if we had trustworthy institutions
| who could distill the truth for us (hah!) but of course if such
| an institution accumulates public trust, that naturally makes
| them a target for capture by propagandists.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| This is a genuinely fascinating[0] problem that's become more
| impactful with the ease of spreading messages and the
| importance of public opinion. I see both sides of it in how I
| want to believe[1] that I know truthful facts (which I
| attempt to accomplish with what I believe[1] to be healthy
| skepticism) and how effortful it can be to (attempt to[1])
| achieve that.
|
| [0] It feels a little wrong to say "fascinating" given the
| gruesome methods by which some choose to hold on to their
| control of information. It is nonetheless something which
| often captures my attention.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias So many
| possibilities!
| pydry wrote:
| Sadly there is practically no profit potential in solving
| this problem and capitalism has a tendency to drive it to
| ruin.
|
| People will pay you - both directly and indirectly - to
| shift the opinions of others. _That_ can be wildly
| profitable. People are reluctant to pay for access to
| informative and genuinely objective news and information,
| though.
|
| It either gets treated as a public good that is nurtured
| with public money or strict rules (e.g. fairness doctrine)
| or the river of information gets filled up with toxic
| sludge that becomes fertile breeding ground even for flat
| earth conspiracies.
| majormajor wrote:
| Thanks to very-forgiving laws on things like how accurate
| advertising has to be, and tolerance for pages and pages of
| legal terms required to engage in so many common activities,
| in the US the average citizen has so much to worry about just
| in terms of "am I going to get ripped off if I buy this /
| sign this contract" that there's gonna be even less available
| mental energy or care to give to "is this person making sense
| in their interpretation of the news" and such.
| emodendroket wrote:
| One of the points made in Manufacturing Consent is that it's
| so much work to cut through everything and become well
| informed on a subject it's a miracle if someone manages for
| one topic. It doesn't matter if someone nobody is listening
| to publishes the truth for the more sophisticated
| propagandist.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > One of the points made in Manufacturing Consent is that
| it's so much work to cut through everything and become well
| informed on a subject it's a miracle if someone manages for
| one topic.
|
| Sadly, the author of Manufacturing Consent became a great
| illustration of that point.
| ekanes wrote:
| I think a lot of that is a description of what journalism is
| and should be.
| [deleted]
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| A non-skewed perspective on reality requires knowing
| everything. Even if this was possible, no one has the time to
| do it. Not even the propagandists.
|
| What's important is identifying what is important _to you_ ,
| and understanding all of the factors and facts related
| primarily to that, and a few of the ones related secondarily to
| that. Then you can spot check some of these other factors and
| facts to determine their accuracy and validity.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Oh, how the tables turn.
|
| It's delicious when it does. Watch people backpedal! See them do
| linguistic backflips! Now try to put the tiger back into the
| cage! It's always the same sad circus when power shifts and
| suddenly what was okay to do to "those bad guys" is fearsome and
| troubling when it happens to them.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Is it any surprise though? When for-profit entities operate in
| overseas territories and wish to remain in business there, of
| course they are subject to their laws.
|
| This is why non-profit entities and decentralization are
| important.
|
| You can't have it both ways.
| swayvil wrote:
| If you didn't see it for yourself, or you didn't hear it from a
| friend, then you are probably sucking fantasy.
|
| One way of getting around this crap epistemology (to a degree) is
| science, of course. But who has the time for that?
| BirAdam wrote:
| Not a new problem. Powerful people and groups always have an
| interest in controlling narratives. They have also made effort to
| do so, and they always will.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This problem is way larger than tech companies and isn't new.
| Some examples:
|
| - Richard Gere got canceled for speaking out against China's
| human rights abuses to the Tibetans at the Academy Awards in 1993
| [1];
|
| - The Neil Armonstrong biopic "First Man" didn't have a scene of
| planting the American flag [2];
|
| - These are examples of a long history of Hollywood bowing to
| Chinese pressure and interests [3]. Modifying a movie for the
| Chinese market is one thing. Modifying the global release of a
| movie to keep China happy is something else.
|
| Now look at the mainstream media just this year. Some examples of
| stories that got zero or significantly delayed coverage include:
|
| - The train derailment and environmental disaster at East
| Palestine, Ohio. For a good week you wouldn't even know this was
| happening if you weren't on Tiktok. Consider the irony of that
| situation;
|
| - The massive French strikes and protests got almost no play in
| US media;
|
| Now consider the bias in media coverage:
|
| - Western media in general is unforgivably biased when it comes
| to Israel [4]. A common technique is deliberate use of active vs
| passive voice [5]. Example: Shireen Abu-Akleh was "killed" [6]. A
| more accurate headline would've been "Middle Eastern and American
| citizen journalist assassinated by Israeli sniper while wearing a
| blue press helmet and vest".
|
| - Media coverage is unbelievably biased towards the police in
| cases of brutality and death at the hands of police. Guests on TV
| will often be former or current police. What about civil rights
| lawyers or victims rights advocates?
|
| Remember this when the media writes stories about the bias in
| tech companies. While there might be truth to that, never forget
| that the media too is incredibly biased.
|
| [1]: https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/04/11/how-hollywood-
| destroyed...
|
| [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/06/if-anyone-
| can-m...
|
| [3]: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1081435029/china-hollywood-
| mo...
|
| [4]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/28/jerusalem...
|
| [5]: https://www.newarab.com/opinion/how-media-bias-serves-
| israel...
|
| [6]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61403320
| andsoitis wrote:
| Money talks.
| new_nana wrote:
| Why
| epups wrote:
| They are also letting US intelligence agencies decide what
| Americans see, sometimes with direct electoral consequences.
|
| I think it's past time we decide on an Internet Bill of Rights so
| that we can fight against any type of unreasonable censorship.
| Vikerchu wrote:
| I did care, until i realized it was talking about facebook. Idk
| what they are propagating, it's a private platform.
| [deleted]
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| yosito wrote:
| As someone who has spent the last 15 years living abroad in
| various countries, and socializing with local people, I've begun
| to realize that the things you see online are heavily controlled
| by many factors. Dictators are one party that I feel strongly
| shouldn't have the power to censor what I say do. But I also
| don't want Mark Zuckerberg or Capital One bank or Digital Ocean
| to censor what I can see, but they all do it and I don't think
| that's any better.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Browsing through the replies in this thread, it's apparent why
| we have tech boss censorship and always will - most people,
| sadly, actually do want censorship and defend and even advocate
| for it.
| new_nana wrote:
| Why do they lump India into this? Modi is democratically elected
| leader unlike Putin and Xi. Just because one doesn't likes
| ideology of opponent, one cannot dismiss them as dictator!
| twelfthnight wrote:
| Flip side is when Google left China in 2010 it opened the door
| for Baidu, which is completely state controlled and gave the CCP
| more power. Is that better? I think what we're finding is that
| the world is interconnected and authoritarianism anywhere is bad
| for everyone. It's complicated.
|
| Also, think it's important to note that the CCP is not China.
| Many Chinese citizens don't like the CCP but are powerless to
| resist.
| timcavel wrote:
| [dead]
| animalright10 wrote:
| To me, I think the issue is that people hear what they want to
| hear. It has nothing to do with censorship. Internet is huge, if
| ppl want unbiased view, they can get it, but for most ppl, echo
| chamber is better.
| tjpnz wrote:
| [flagged]
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