1y ago

It's not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media

It's not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media::One person’s content moderation is another’s censorship when it comes to Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on handling misinformation.

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Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes and whenever disinformation is desirable.
- It benefits Republicans, so the side it benefits would obviously desire that benefit.
  
  you're dense af if you don't think it benefits both sides. Russian collusion anyone?

Part of the problem is who decides what is misinformation. As soon as the state gets to decide what is and isn't true, and thus what can and cannot be said, you no longer have free speech.
- Don't worry, the person you responded to is conservative so they're doing their damnedest to finish off education
  
  And who decides what is being taught if this is to be solved with education? That still just falls into the same dogma enforcement that presupposes objective truth especially in political matters. it just turns from censorship to indoctrination of some kind. There can be no real discussion about political matters if it's presupposed that there is such thing as objective truth in some hard science sense in political discourse, because then every side in an argument from a position of objective truth and there is no way to compromise or approach the other side when everybody are either heretics or believers to your side.
- The state deciding on speech is a red line yes but that’s not even on the table here. This is about social media moderation. It actually seems really suspiciously disingenuous to bring that up here.
  OP: Thread about social media moderation
  You: The state deciding what’s true is the death of free speech!
  Actually your comment is one of the big problems in this debate. People can’t tell the difference between a private social media firm moderating hate content and the government taking away their freedom of speech. You just slurred the two together yourself by bringing this up here.
  
  Centralized for-profit companies policing speech doesn’t really solve free speech concerns. It doesn’t violate the US first amendment, but corporate-approved speech isn’t really free speech either. No person or organization is really suitable to be the arbiter of truth, but at the same time unmoderated misinformation presents its own problems.
- You do not have free speech on social media today, private platforms decide what they want to have.
  The state does not have to be the one to decide these things, nor is it a case of "deciding" what is true, we have a long history of using proofs to solidify something as fact, or propaganda, or somewhere in between. This is functionally what history studies are about.
  
  That brings up another thing. At what point does it become a "public space"?
  Theres an old supreme court case on a company town that claimed someone was trespassing on a sidewalk. The supreme court ruled it was a public space, and thus they could pass out leaflets.
  https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/marsh-v-alabama-1946/
  Imo, a lot of big sites have gotten to that stage, and should be treated as such.
- Nobody (besides maybe extreme conservatives) is advocating for "the state" to decide what "is and isn't true". That's not what this is about.
  Furthermore, "misinformation" and "disinformation" refer to things that can be true! Propogansists don't always need to invent false facts for them to be used in deceptive ways. To suggest that the goverment should stay out of the matter unless they utilze a perfectly foolproof fact-o-meter is IMO, shortsighted. "The state" makes policy decisions all the time with imperfect facts.
  
  If you want to deal with misinformation, at some point someone has to say what misinformation is. Someone has to make a judgement on every fact, every event, every story.
  And holy fuck my dude! "Furthermore, "misinformation" and "disinformation" refer to things that can be true!"
  Thats some shit straight out of 1984. Censoring true facts? Wtf is wrong with you?
- Uh, you know that happens regularly in courtrooms right? Like, almost every court battle hinges on what's true and what's not. And courts are an arm of the state.
  In some cases it's directly about the truth of speech. Fraud, defamation, perjury, filing a false report, etc. are all cases where a court will be deciding whether a statement made publicly is true and punishing a party if it was not. Ask a CEO involved in a merger how much "free speech" they have.
- Except there have always been limits on speech, centered mainly on truth. Your freedom of speech doesn't extend to yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, for instance.
  But we live in an age of alternative facts now, where science isn't trusted if it comes up with conclusions that conflict with your world view. Do you get a pass if you are yelling "Fire" because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire because you got the COVID shot and now the 5G nanoparticles can't transmit back to Fauci's mind control lair?
  
  Do you get a pass if you are yelling "Fire" because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire
  Yes. Anyone in good faith attempting to warn others of any potential harm that they believe to be true to the best of their abilities should have their speech protected.
  
  Technically, it's causing a panic that's illegal. Yelling fire is not. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28853/is-it-illegal-to-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre
  Different states have different laws, of course, and I am not a lawyer, I just googled if it was actually illegal. Don't actually go yelling fire in a crowded theater.
- Oh weird, you coincidentally are a conservative mod lol
  Gee so surprising you're mad about cEnSoRsHiP
  
  Well yeah, did you read the article?
  Fucking tankies thinking inalienable rights are bad things.
- Section 230 gets the state involved from the get go. Remove liability protections from the state and everything else will shake out. Make little tweaks from there as necessary. The broad protection of 230 is causing this issue.
- Isnt a grand jury enough to deal with this kinda thing? Like before damage is done but I don't see why that mechanism can't be useful here too?
  
  Imo, not really. Juries are still problematic, in much the same way
- Well, here’s how that was framed for participants of this study:
  identified as misinformation based on a bipartisan fact check
  And even with this, Republicans didn’t care if it was true or not.
  We’re actually past the point of anyone being able to be considered truthful by Republicans. It either tickles their feelings right or it doesn’t and that is all.

I don't have any trust whatsoever for any company, or the government, to be the decider of what counts as "mis/disinformation".
Sometimes there are easy layups, like "the Holocaust did not happen" and "Vaccines have 5G chips inside them" which are obviously just wrong and I think most of us would agree not to have...
But what about "The Holocaust was overblown and the jews should stop whining about it"? I and probably 99% of people would say that's a stupid opinion, but is that "misinformation"? Should a company be allowed to ban you for saying it?
How about things like the 13/52 statistic? Should that be removed? What about "42% of all transgenders commit suicide"? That's used to attack that group a lot, should that be banned as well?
And, to be honest with you, the Democratic Party is absolutely obsessed with using clinical terms like those mentioned to stifle all discussion and act like they are the only voice on the issue you're allowed to believe. Republicans freak out about this for good reason.
It's always the Democratic side that gets conservative opinions that they think are bad (whether lies or otherwise), boot them off the platform, and then decide to trample all over their new platforms and get them killed off too. It's never just "pRiVaTe CoMpAnY tHeY cAn dO WhAt ThEy WaNt MaKe YoUr oWn WeBsiTE", it's "you are not allowed to have a place to speak this idea that I think is bad for society anywhere on the internet". I really, really do not want to embolden that sect more than they already are.

Just make a nonprofit third party that is as not biased as possible that you can search through with article links that can break down misinformation. Kind of like reverse image search but for articles that pulls up the article score.
- third party that is as not biased as possible
  First of all, humans inherently have bias. It's literally inevitable. What's more important is what your biases are, how aware of them you are and how they affect your reasoning and openness to new information that might conflict.
  Besides, not all biases are created equal and not all biases are completely unreasonable.
  Some people are biased against minority groups while others are biased against authority figures. Some are biased in favor of billionaires, others against them. Some will not vote for a candidate that receives corporate PAC money, others will not cosponsor a bill unless the PACs are on board
  What a third party needs is to be steeped in bias against corruption and demagoguery and in favor of transparency.

Well it's likely because both sides have seen instances where something that is absolutely true be silenced with a "disinformation" or "false news" justification. In recent memory, it has been more "left supporting" news stories that have been silenced than "right supporting" ones that have been falsely silenced. But in recent memory:
Joe Biden's son's laptop. Later confirmed to not be Russian and to be accurate.
Various emails from the Clinton Campaign being leaked. Claimed to be faked but largely proven accurate at the time of the leak (via DKIM) and with future legal action.
Several stories about Biden's declining health. Some of these during the primary pissed of the Bernie wing of the party for being silenced, some during the general pissed off Trump supporters. Biden is 80 years old. Everyone 80 years old has declining health but discussion of it was generally verboten.
"Lab Leak Hypothesis" Still not proven true or false but believable enough that several government agencies believe it to be credible.
Origins of the "Russia Collision" story being a person affiliated with Clinton/DNC.
And there's a long list of obviously biased "fact checkers" making obvious mistakes. Like claiming Romney was lieing when he accurately predicted the outcome of Obamacare a claim that they would call the lie of the year on behalf Obama for repeating in 2013. I pick on polifact for being left leaning but there's similar right wing "fact checkers" doing similarly biased fact checks.
- The only reason he accurately predicted the outcome of Obamacare is because as soon as Republican states no longer had a democratic leadership to contend with they gutted the programs and made them a hollow form of their former selves. Predicting that isn't exactly rocket science if you're the one causing it.
  As for all your other stuff I don't think we need to go farther than bringing up Clinton's emails to see that your arguments are reaching.
  
  The only reason he accurately predicted the outcome of Obamacare is because as soon as Republican states no longer had a democratic leadership to contend with they gutted the programs and made them a hollow form of their former selves. Predicting that isn’t exactly rocket science if you’re the one causing it.
  That's not actually true. Once the plans were no longer eligible to add new members in; they became plans that could no longer add news subscribers into; meaning that the Insurance companies would have an ever decreasing group of people to pool their money with; making the plans ever more risky. Most of those plans stopped being offered long before Republican governors choose to not expand Medicare coverage.
  As for all your other stuff I don’t think we need to go farther than bringing up Clinton’s emails to see that your arguments are reaching.
  https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/
  These emails are valid emails. They're not fakes. During the election; media outlets treated them as if they were fakes.

Remember when Internet censorship was a right-wing business friendly cause because it was mostly about copyright?
Now the Internet is so influential that many other excuses for censoring it have been invented, many of which are or can be left-wing, like "misinformation".
As someone opposed to censorship who thinks it is a good thing if we can exchange information through free association rather than having gatekeepers, I don't know anymore who my ideological friends are.

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