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Comment by bondarchuk | Hacker News Reader

>industrial-scale disinformation campaigns manipulating public opinion and discrediting every single thing you can imagine

This is just a fancy way of saying "people saying things I don't like".

>grinding the free exchange of ideas to a halt at every turn.

How so? Like GP said, you can just not use facebook and freely exchange ideas with your peers through other channels. Sure, some of your peers might have a different opinion than you, and (gasp!) you might even be unable to change their mind, but that's just how it is.

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You seem amusingly unaware of how various organisations of questionable intent have farmed microtargeting to influence elections and referendums.

If this was "people saying things I don't like" it would be absolutely fine. People say things I don't like on HN all the time, and I either ignore them or debate with them - which is how it should be.

But that's not what this is about. This is about political PR machines with unusual wealth lying to Facebook users on an industrial scale to control what they believe and how they act.

But perhaps you think lying to people on an industrial scale is ok?

>But perhaps you think lying to people on an industrial scale is ok?

Nobody seemed to have this much of a problem with propaganda back when the common man did not have access to it.

The common man?

Some of the problem is youtube promoting a 'common man' Alex Jones 15bn times because he drives youtube's advertising revenue. And some of the problem is russia running active disinformation campaigns and organising competing protesters to fight in the streets.

If this happened in the 70's, you bet people would have had a problem with it.

You bet this happened in the 70's.

Propaganda is bad, but I very much prefer easily identifiable propaganda that the absolute circus show we have now, mainly because the former is easier to counter.

> This is about political PR machines with unusual wealth lying to Facebook users on an industrial scale to control what they believe and how they act.

It doesn't control how people act, but for the rest this is exactly what mass media was always doing, influencing beliefs and opinions of the masses, never able to criticize powerful and wealthy where it truly mattered. Facebook only made this space a bit more diverse, actually letting some criticism in, weakening mass media influence. But it's ridiculous to think this affected "democracy", the US isn't even considered to be a democracy outside of the US, but more like a capitalist-ruled police country.

> This is just a fancy way of saying "people saying things I don't like"

Not just "I don't like", but things that "aren't true". There's a difference, and it's important.

> How so? Like GP said, you can just not use facebook and freely exchange ideas with your peers through other channels.

The how is that the constant exposure to lies makes people doubt everything. A lie is easy to fabricate, will create controversy, and social media will reward that controversy and show that lie to even more people. A truth usually requires more research, and given that more people agree with it it will create less controversy, less engagement and the platforms will not reward that content.

That's how you end up with what you have now: people living in completely different realities because the things that spread the most are lies. You can't have a free exchange of ideas if people don't agree in basic facts of reality.

We really can't ignore the damage that social media is doing to society by dismissing the concerns as "well it's just that people have different opinions". It's not about the opinions, it's about the type of content that gets rewarded now.

Maybe people wouldn't so easily believe in alternative narratives if people in power didn't also lie all the time? No one believes in the media anymore for a reason. People don't believe in scientists anymore for a reason. People don't believe in most government officials anymore for a reason.

You can find many examples of continued and relentless lies from all these classes of people over the years and decades. Is it really a surprise that people will stop listening to them?

Social media posts lie all the time, way more than politicians. Why do people believe those?

That depends on the post. For instance, I believe that democracy is a mistake and we should be ruled by an authoritarian king. You probably believe this to be a lie, and that I'm likely being manipulated by social media. But I believe what I believe through a series of reasonable and logical arguments from my perspective.

So why do I believe it? Because it makes sense to me. I would guess that it's the same for everyone else. By trying to prevent this lie from being spread you are rejecting the fact that I reached this conclusion in a valid manner because you don't agree with it.

> I believe that democracy is a mistake and we should be ruled by an authoritarian king. You probably believe this to be a lie

That's an opinion, not a lie. A lie would be saying "pigs grow on trees", "in a monarchy the king is chosen in an election every four years" or "the earth is flat", to put some examples.

> So why do I believe it? Because it makes sense to me.

What is it then, people believe lies because it makes sense to them or because other people lie?

>What is it then, people believe lies because it makes sense to them or because other people lie?

Because reality is not so clear cut as "pigs grow on trees". No one is claiming anything as ludicrous as pigs grow on trees in our political debates. Disagreeing with most of the narrative on climate change is not the same as saying pigs grow on trees, for instance.

If reality is not so clear cut, then a constant exposure to lies would not help anyone to better understand it. Which is my point: it's not that people are now trusting an alternative source of information because they lied previously, it's that there's so much misinformation and lies that people don't even know what they can trust, and even basic facts get doubted. That is serious damage for democracy.

That's fine. Humanity has survived much bigger problems in the past, and I'm sure we'll be able to get by just fine now. And as an added note, as I personally have no appreciation for democracy, in my opinion anything that diminishes its power in people's minds is eminently desirable.

Maybe you are the one who has been constantly exposed to lies, and doubt everything that is true?

The only way you can have a free exchange of ideas is if people are allowed to disagree, and yes this includes basic "facts" of reality.

You think speech should be censured, removed, and controlled? Okay, your speech first.

Where did I say that I wanted speech censored and controlled and people not allowing to disagree? I'm saying that I disagree with social media incentivizing the spread of lies and controversy. I'm not discussing what is a lie and what is not, I am just saying that by the nature of social media the content that gets more visibility is the content that generates more engagement, not necessarily the content that is more true or has more consensus.

In other words, do I think you should be able to say that "the earth is flat"? Yes. Do I think that social media should give more visibility to content that says "the earth is flat" than to content that says "well it is not flat" just because the first generates more engagement? No. It's not the speech that's harmful, is the selective amplification that social media does.

You are not discussing what a lie is, and what is not, but someone will have to, if measures against the "selective amplification" of lies were to be implemented. That is a fact.

> You are not discussing what a lie is

That's precisely the point I'm making, nobody needs to decide what is a lie or what is not. Social media amplifies lies not by knowing what is a lie, but because of their nature. Lies generate more controversy and more discussion, true facts generate agreement but not a lot of discussion and engagement. Reduce the importance of "engagement metrics" in the algorithms that show you content, make them as straightforward as possible (chronological order for example), reduce or eliminate suggestions of "content you might like" and only show content you explicitly subscribed to. At no point anyone needs to say "this is a lie/truth", you just need to change incentives.

>That's how you end up with what you have now: people living in completely different realities because the things that spread the most are lies.

If we would put restrictions on social media and let the big media companies decide what is "consensus reality" like they are so vehemently arguing for, then everybody would also be living in a fake reality, the only difference is that it would be the same for everyone, which might obscure the fakeness for a while. I agree it's a difficult subject but I genuinely think the current situation is at least a little bit better.

Restrictions on social media doesn't mean that it is big media companies the one that decide, necessarily. I think it would actually give more power to the people to decide what is the consensus reality, but this time organically: instead of giving importance to ideas that generate engagement, give importance to ideas that people agree with. If those ideas come from an independent group that manages to grow via people agreeing with it instead of generating controversy for the sake of it, so be it.

Of course it will be difficult and not straightforward, and there will be challenges to control big media, but at least we align the incentives in the good direction. The current situation is awful: chaos and a push towards polarization, because that's what generates engagement.

I think this over simplifies it.

People are being (unknowingly) manipulated and the sheer quantity of misinformation is being mistaken for evidence of truth.

Why isn’t subliminal advertising considered free speech or free exchange of Ideas?

If people are unknowingly being manipulated how do you know you aren't being manipulated also? There are plenty of examples of manipulative and fake news coming from both traditional and alternative media.

I may be in various ways.

But that isn’t a counter argument for stopping people being manipulated.

Is your point: you could be exposed to misinformation as well so we shouldn’t stop misinformation?

(If it is. That is absurd)

If everyone is being manipulated how do you stop misinformation in a fair manner? We can't even agree on what is information and what is misinformation. Surely you understand how stopping misinformation is bad if people can't agree on what it actually is, right?

There are some pretty easy non controversial ones. Controversial ones can prove themselves with facts/science.

I didn’t agree that everyone is being manipulated, nor did you show that.

There is objective truth, that is the bar for misinformation.

>Controversial ones can prove themselves with facts/science.

The details matter, but as a rule I disagree with this. Some facts are obvious, like pigs not growing on trees, but others aren't, like climate change. Science has been corrupted for decades and I don't believe it to be a proper arbiter of truth in certain areas, particularly ones that can't be tested against reality easily, such as climate change.

You probably disagree with me, which makes my "bar for misinformation" different than yours. And I'm guessing that we won't be able to bridge that gap through reason and logic.

You seem pretty fine with accepting the corrupt science to deliver your message over the internet it invented.

You are right, we won’t agree, because you haven’t got a point. What you first replied to and where you’re at now are unrelated positions.

This is a classic “bring them to your level and beat them with experience” situation. You’ve moved the goal posts to climate change now. I’m not taking up that fight.

You’ve basically just said: reason and logic have been corrupted, so we can’t agree in mere reason and logic. You’ll find your position doesn’t take you anywhere nice. But I appreciate the discussion we’ve had up to this point.

>People are being (unknowingly) manipulated and the sheer quantity of misinformation is being mistaken for evidence of truth.

This is something you said that I originally replied to. We don't agree on what constitutes truth, so we can't have a reasonable conversation, and we also can't fairly judge what is and isn't misinformation, because we don't agree on the basics.

This is the point I'm making. I don't believe that climate science is nearly as valid as everything that goes into making my computer work, because my computer works. I have evidence in the real world that my computer works, so all the physics that went into it must be pretty solid. I don't have evidence that climate science works, because climate scientists can't run their models 100 years into the future, see what happens, then change a variable and run it again to see what changes (with the same accuracy that you'd have if you ran the experiment in real life). Their models are fundamentally less powerful than anything that went into making my computer work by the very nature of the discipline.

Most of politics falls way closer to climate science in terms of its power as a science than it does to the physics that goes into a computer. This, fundamentally, is why "truth" and "misinformation" when talking about politics is generally pointless. There are very few discussions in current day politics that are about truths as solid as what makes a computer work. Most of it are around fields like climate science, economics, social science, which are all softer (and thus more corruptible) fields.

The reason I said we won't be able to have a reasonable and logical discussion about this is because you probably disagree with everything I just said, and you likely won't really change your mind about it. I certainly won't change my mind about it, so we're forever stuck not being able to reconcile our different views of the world in regards to the relationship between politics and science, and thus we'll never be able to reach 'ground truth' from which we could then work up towards stopping the spread of misinformation. A general notion of truth itself has to be agreed upon before we can have reasonable and logical discussions about this subject, but that likely won't happen.

I think there is always common ground. There are always agreeable facts. I think there are two divergent points being made here:

- Facts and truth how we agree on them and how and why they influence policy decisions.

- Politics: what is the best way to convince (or unconvinced) people of a particular policy and progress a particular agenda (usually party or individual based).

I think anytime you find yourself stating “I’ll never change my view” I’d recommend a moment of pause.

Putting climate change to one side. Flat earth, 5G causing coronavirus, Bill gates trying to mind control your kids are all easily proved factually incorrect. Facebook could easily limit the spread of the this stuff. Sure we can save the more controversial things for later when more than 94% consensus is reached (in the instance of climate change)

Well, how do you know that 5G doesn't cause Coronavirus when it's February and no one knows anything about the virus? We now know that both subjects are unrelated, but I followed this virus from early January and it took the general population 2 WHOLE MONTHS to pick up on it. Those 2 months were filled with conspiracy theorists, and actually a huge number of them turned out to be right, like the very existence and seriousness of the virus itself.

Similarly, at the time masks widely agreed upon to be ineffective. Anyone seen with a mask outside was looked at weirdly, anyone buying masks or telling people to buy masks was called a conspiracy theorist. Reasonable people at the time were lied to by their own government into believing that masks weren't important, because the government didn't want to compete with their own population since they were running short on supply. https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...

The point is, out of your reasonable examples of things that are obviously false, I can already take issue with one of them because it depends on when you would apply the censorship. If it's February and you're applying censorship to "5G causes Coronavirus", you're also probably applying it to "buy N95 masks", and you're also probably applying it to "don't let Chinese people into our airports, avoid Chinese people altogether" because it's racist, even though that's the correct thing that should have been done, instead of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMdg4morQs.

My point is, facts and truth are fluid, especially in new situations that we don't know anything about. And especially when politics are involved. By June everyone understood that lockdowns and social distancing were good and necessary, except that the entirety of media, academia, and elite society in general decided to give up on this for the George Floyd protests. If truth can bend this easily once it's convenient, why should I take it seriously at all?

So I reaffirm my point that I will absolutely not change my mind on this, and without giving it any pause. Truth doesn't exist when we're talking about politics, and trying to pretend that it does is naive. You're naive for believing that it exists. It's all about power and what's convenient for people in power (the media, academia and elite society), it's absolutely not about truth, and this year of all years should have woken you up to this fact.

I’ll go and enjoy my truth in a country with no outbreak.

The problems you speak of are US problems. Good luck on the way down, there is a long way to fall for you guys.

Some fun points for you to not change your mind on:

- China mandated masks in January (as did Taiwan). No conspiracy or confusion, that was a US thing...

- Radio waves causing a virus... there is zero evidence of that ever happening. So why would anyone believe it now... or ever

- actually none of the conspiracy theories were ever correct. Not one of them. Nor were they plausible to anyone outside of the lower educated half of the US.

It’s funny you turned out to be an example of why these things need to be fixed. Read some world news. Go look at New Zealand and Australia, or Taiwan or Korea if you want to see what countries that follow facts and truth rather than ... whatever fluid-truth mess you are trying to articulate.

>- China mandated masks in January (as did Taiwan). No conspiracy or confusion, that was a US thing...

Yes, and the US didn't for a long time because of no supplies. Chinese citizens bought out all masks in January and early February and shipped them to China, and while we were saying that this was going on and that the government should focus on not letting that happen, the media, academia and elite society called everyone racists for suggesting that and that masks weren't important.

>Radio waves causing a virus... there is zero evidence of that ever happening. So why would anyone believe it now... or ever

The theory was that it suppresses your immune system, not that it literally causes the virus to appear in your body out of thin air. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2020-00249...

>actually none of the conspiracy theories were ever correct. Not one of them. Nor were they plausible to anyone outside of the lower educated half of the US.

Factually false. But why would I bother explaining.

>It’s funny you turned out to be an example of why these things need to be fixed.

It's as I said previously, we won't be able to have a reasonable and logical discussion. I'm glad you finally agree with me. I will also say this: I will not have my views "fixed". The more you try to impose censorship, the more people will speak out against it. You are, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, by the very fact that you believe science can be used to accurately shape policy, part of an elite class of individuals in the world that is scared the "lower educated half" is coming for you, and they are, because your class is corrupt beyond belief and their time is coming.

You are repeating US domestic BS. There isn’t a lower half in my country. We have high minimum wage, free health care, and lots of masks even though Chinese live here too. No ones coming for me and my kind because we haven’t disenfranchised a huge portion of our population... instead we have compulsory voting.

Honestly, please read some Taiwanese news... why didn’t they have a mask shortage? Or HK or Singapore? You quote complete nonsense like it’s fact.

5G suppresses the immune system... so Wouldn’t the outbreak have been bigger in Shanghai and Guangzhou that have the largest 5G installation and population in the world... but no, instead they had one of the smallest outbreaks per capita. I’m happy to keep feeding you knowledge for the all the hair brain ideas you present.

Please do explain the factual nature of the conspiracy theories... your answer implies you don’t actually have an explanation.

> This is just a fancy way of saying "people saying things I don't like".

No it's not, unless you also think somebody aiming a high pressure fire hose at you is just a fancy way of moisturizing your face. There are differences in quality and quantity that you're just glossing over by claiming that some generalization applies.

I think OP is referring to things like coordinated propagation of articles/post about how Trump won this election, and that the election was rigged. Democracy depends on most citizens believing the election process is fair and free so if some organization is spending tens of millions of dollars and using psychographics to convince people otherwise, they are by definition trying to destroy the concept of democracy.

Democracy also depends on elections not being rigged. There's plenty of credible evidence that things were off this election if you bothered to look into the claims. There's obviously also plenty of false stuff, but that doesn't mean that all of it is false.

> There's plenty of credible evidence that things were off this election if you bothered to look into the claims.

If you have any, you should spread it everywhere. I haven't seen any at all. I have debunked a ton of crap though I've seen on facebook.

I haven’t see any credible evidence. Neither has the Justice Department. I wonder if it’s possible that a president who has a history of lying dozens of times a day is lying again...

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