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Comment by HNthrow22 | Hacker News Reader

except at the moment we're dealing with highly organized paid misinformation campaigns and widespread propaganda under the guise of free speech. This will not be popular on Hn but in my opinion holding users and platforms responsible for the messages they distribute to millions is the inevitable evolution and future of social media, society has demonstrated the inability to responsibly handle anonymous unchecked mass communication - anti vax is just one example and those consequences (Measles is back) are just the tip of the iceberg.

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I strongly disagree. There are many ways to combat misinformation that do not involve censorship. There is nothing to applaud about oppression driven government censorship.

Can you list those methods of combating misinformation?

Not trying to be confrontational, just curios to know as I don't know of many and haven't done the research.

Answering for GP:

1. Education (how to form solid arguments and how to view topics from multiple sides)

2. Plurifomity. By combining people from different social-economic groups. Basically an anti divide and conquer which state sponsored media have driven us towards.

3. Acceptance. Everyone picks their fruits of freedom of speech. Just because the fruits of one are the pains of others does not mean we should throw the baby away with the bath water.

4. New policy and law. The anti-vac movement indicates the necessity of new laws and policies. Perhaps vaccines should be mandatory. Perhaps we should let the anti-vaccers pay for the damages.

5. Work on the public perception of that which is embattled. In this case of anti-vac it is science as a whole.

In my opinion we should do loads and loads more of #2, but it seems everyone and everything is in its own filter bubble. We need much more social cohesion.

This is impossibly naive. Large social media companies are highly incentivised to derail any of these utopian efforts.

#6 discourage the use of those platforms. Disable your accounts; Meet face to face; use & promote alternatives (Mastadon, Signal, Scuttlebutt); collectivise and lobby against them.

All if these ‘utopian‘ concepts have been successfully implemented in the past by governments and social organizations. The only naive part of my narrative is if we expect the change to come from the social networks. We need to step outside of that sphere and influence via other channels such as work, sports, spiritual life, books and the public sphere.

I think the best example to consider is the tobacco industry. Smoking is by any measure a scourge on society. Untold numbers of people have suffered and died because of it. Healthcare systems haemorrhage money they don’t have treating conditions that basically don’t exist without smoking.

The tobacco industry pulled every trick in the book to maintain their own interests. Society spends even more money on public messaging, education etc etc to try and reduce smoking rates.

Do we want more of the same, but with social media this time? They do us harm. The rule is we do not let anyone make money by doing us harm.

Funny, I argued similarly 11 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665221

We do ourselves harm because we do not understand the power of the interactions we are part of. Children should be protected. Adults should know better.

The "problem" with your #2 is that only one side wants that.

The other side fears losing their privilege/capital/power/reputation and cares not a whit for those they consider sub-human.

Putting some foxes into the henhouse won't go well for the hens when it's dinner time.

Well, obviously we can effect change outside of the social networks. We can invite people into dialogues. We can provide them with vision and narrative based on higher principles.

> The "problem" with your #2 is that only one side wants that.

If this were true, only one side would have wedge issues.

Do you honestly believe conservatives want an open, honest, inclusive dialogue in which both sides of all issues are considered with respect for every viewpoint?

Their "gotta get mine before anyone else gets theirs" attitudes and beliefs are absolutely antithetical to such a thing.

So I stand by my statement: Only one side is willing to have a productive conversation about any given issue.

If I may use a bit of reduction, isn't the logical conclusion of freedom of speech that truth simply doesn't matter?

If every idea is acceptable, and I cannot face consequences for anything I say, then what difference is there between the statements "Apples are fruit" and "Apples are the square root of 45"?

Certainly, that's not the level of free speech we're at, but all this clamouring for unrestricted free speech makes me almost as worried as the threat of censorship.

You can certainly face consequences, just the government cannot be responsible for imposing them. I'd much prefer that bad and dishonest ideas be dismissed and the speakers censured by their community rather than jackbooted thugs forcing silence at gunpoint.

It's obviously not a perfect way of going about things, but I think it definitely errs in the right direction.

It's just that on the scale of the internet, the breakdown tends to be: 3X of people come out in support of your ridiculous idea, X people actively disagree and 100% - 4X ignore it, where X is some small number.

To an outside observer, you must have a good idea, after all, you have so many more people in agreement than detractors!

Which basically makes it impossible for "the community" to hand you any consequences.

I’m not sure I agree. When they debated how our democracy should function, they were actually quite aware of the power of the mob. How easily swayed and passionate people can become. They built safeguards for it everywhere.

But at the end day they agreed that freedom of speech is too important even with all of its dangers.

Still better than highly organized misinformation campaigns that you must agree with or go to jail, forced labour camps or death

Bear with my perhaps unusual opinion. If we want to preserve our freedom, every generation needs to have it threatened to realize its importance, and learn to fight to protect it. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

If the current generation needs to undergo a propaganda war, it will either fail or rise above like the generations before. And then we will be protected from that particular attack, like our national immunity has grown stronger from a particular type of sickness. If we try to avoid the problem we at best are just weakening ourselves for the next attack, at worst we give up our freedoms in the cause of maintaining them.

Fight it out, good ideas kill bad ideas. Live free or die.

All mainstream media is also guilty of running misinformation campaigns and widespread propaganda all the time as well, so who exactly are we going to hold responsible here? To me it seems like a recipe for giving more power to the people who already have the most.

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