2021-03-24
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Just listened to "Your Undivided Attention" podcast with Camille
Francois about disinformation. While I find the podcast usually
quite useful, it has started to feel too much focused on the idea
of censorship as the defacto tool for just about anything that is
seen to be wrong with the internet. In this episode, the guest
is talking about tracking disinformation campaigns during the 
2020 election in the States and the question about the line
between a citizen engaging in rightful political action versus
spreading disinformation does not come up. It seems to me that
lying has always been the bread and butter of politics. How can
you make this call to call some lying disinformation and other
lying rhetorics?

At another point the host and the guest laugh about Parler saying
that comment moderation is hard and expensive after being deprived
servers. They refer to "alternative social networks" Gab and
Parler, but never mention Fediverse, Matrix or Mastodon. So,
apparently "alternative" means the political right?

It seems to me like what is called content moderation might soon
mean something quite political, if it doesn't already.

In other news, Trump is apparently starting his own social media
platform. For fucks sake, I really don't know which of these
directions is more horrible.

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