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Comment by ibbibby | Hacker News Reader

"Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth."

Those of you claiming that "democracy" depends on authorities preventing the spread of misinformation are ipso facto saying that democracy requires the government, or megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government (as Psaki made clear is happening), to define what counts as "truth" (a Ministry Of Truth if you will) and to stamp out what they've defined as "false."

It's insane, and it's amazing to me how many of you have your heads so far up your assessment with partisanship that you can't see that the recent media hysteria over "misinformation" is a blatant example of the contrived "emergencies" that all totalitarian regimes in history have used to seize control over free societies.

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> "Misinformation" is just another word for "falsehood" or "untruth."

That’s not sufficiently true. In fact, asserting untrue propositions is one of the easiest-to-counter ways of misinformation.

Real pros use humbuggery; of a set of n true propositions, pick a subset m to lead the audience to your conclusions and you haven’t even “lied”.

That’s why “fact checking” is such a popular way of narrative laundering, because truthiness of individual propositions alone never reveal if someone was bullshitting you.

That’s also why the courtroom maxim is “truth, nothing but the truth, and the whole truth”. Only those 3 properties in combination would exclude misinformation. (Not saying courtrooms necessarily live up to this maxim.)

I agree with the spirit of the rest of your argument.

> Real pros use humbuggery; of a set of n true propositions, pick a subset m to lead the audience to your conclusions and you haven’t even “lied”.

I've never heard the word humbuggery before, but I completely agree with the rest. Before social media we used to call that "choosing what to cover". It's also called a "lie of omission", so any censor who suppresses true information can reasonably be accused of lying (or misinformation) themselves.

As others have said, it's not new, but now, for the first time in US history, the media moguls are censoring not only their own broadcasts, but everyone's communications. Could America have ever developed as it has if the postal service or phone company had done that?

Though that's what happens, I don't think people call that misinformation but rather bias. Isn't misinformation factually wrong in the common meaning?

People rarely go and read the actual article so the headline must be accurate on its own or you misinform the public. Reversing or strongly altering the statement made in the headline in the actual article doesn't mean it is no longer misinformation, the damage is already done as the masses read the headline and now thinks it actually happened that way. Yet this seems to be completely acceptable even in most reputable news-sources.

The problem is not the existence or propagation of misinformation, disinformation or lies or truth. The problem is the attempt to control any of it by decree. You cannot trust anyone with the power to be the sole arbiter of truth. Everyone is human and everyone is fallible no matter how educated or credentialed. Democracy is the best of all the imperfect forms of government because it allows a plurality of opinions and convictions to exist and for everyone to freely choose among them. Governance can swing from one set of ideas to another peacefully and with the legitimacy that a majority have decided that things should be done a certain way for a limited amount of time after which we all re-evaluate the decision and can make changes if needed.

I think it's less about being factually wrong, and more about leading people to factually wrong conclusions with truthful statements.

Even just saying "X sells stock Y before event Z" imples that X knew about event Z and that it would affect the stock price of Y. People will read headlines like this and walk away assuming there was insider trading, but that may not be the case. Nothing in that example headline has to be false in order for it to spread falsehoods.

A lot of this type of misleading rhetoric often boils down to simply exploiting that many humans mistake correlation for causation and our education system really hasn’t don’t enough to hammer in not confusing those two.

Sure, that's a common technique, but would you really call it misinformation? I would call it misleading. Otherwise most of the financial press is misinformation and the word becomes kind of meaningless.

> That’s not sufficiently true. In fact, asserting untrue propositions is one of the easiest-to-counter ways of misinformation.

Tell that to the children ICE detained separately from their parents.

(I confess I replied in a knee-jerk reaction to your set-up, rather than your main point. Sorry for that. Your main point has meat on its bones and seems worthy of further discussion.)

What about American citizens who are separated from their children when arrested?

Wouldn’t you just need “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”?

It's actually worse - the "truth" necessarily implies that there is but one, and that everything else in false.

Does this sound familiar ? This is exactly what religious loonies say in order to take control.

Science necessarily involves keeping your own ignorance, epistemic and otherwise, in mind while dealing with things, but it's quite worrying that the West is going back on what was won with blood and sweat.

The lab leak theory was discarded as false and conspiracy thinking, now many experts believe this to be the case... What is a conspiracy one day can eventually be the truth, e.g. the Tonkin Incident.

I am not aure about the US but here in Germany most experts didn't say it was a conspiracy theory, but that those who claim this is the truth lack the data to back it up.

I could also argue that there is a invisible unicorn orbiting the solar aystem. As long as there is no real proof for it we have to accept that it is just a theory. And the more facts align with my theory the more motivation there should be to check my theory by trying to disproove it.

SARS-1/MERS was prooven to stem from bats in the same region, so assuming that instead of a lab leak theory was more in line with known/knowable facts than a lab leak theory. When the facts changes theories change, that is science.

That's just the point: How could you ever assemble the data to turn a theory into truth if you are not allowed to discuss it?

Who wasn't allowed to discuss it and by whom? Again I am not from the US, but afaik it wasn't helpful that the "CHINA-VIRUS"-fraction of your political spectrum (which is quite frankly not known for their truth seeking behavior) were the first one who really wished this to be true.

Serious scientist have to remain open for all possibilities no matter who wants them to be true, but it really doesn't help if there is a irrational coloration to it including people being assaulted in the street because of how they look.

Societies with a calmer political climate can react calmer to things. Which is why the German Fauci equivalent explained when this theory first came up "sure that would be possible — it just doesn't seem plausible by our current information".

And the idea that "you are not allowed to say that" seems just a bit... weird to me given that this was a hot topic many people discussed. Scientists explained on public television why they don't deem it likely, that is pretty much opposite of "not being allowed to discuss it". It just happened that the side which believed it had no real evidence that could have been discussed, so at one point the discussion found its natural end without any new data. I remember the situation back then: People back then wanted this theory to be true really hard without any supporting facts. Sure it being true was an option, but people weren't calm about it, they were nearly desperate, as if the only way they can make sense of the pandemic was to blame it on someone act of mallice by some (evil) actor.

Maybe it is because I live in Germany but I am quite frankly allergic to this kind of behaviour. It has caused Genocides before (and probably will do so in the future). When you want some comforting truth or some story to be true so much, you stop caring whether it is actually true or likely you are lying to yourself. And when you lie to yourself just hard enough everybody is able to become a monster.

it waste allowed to be discussed publicly. it was labeled a racist fringe debunked conspiracy theory, and that sent all the signals you needed to chill scientists from using their platforms and expertise to gain attention to this idea. for example, when the head of the CDC mentioned it during a hearing he was ridiculed. based on largely opinions published in the cause social media companies to limit and censor information, which Twitter and Facebook did, for example the whistleblower that appeared on tucker Carlson's show.

of course there were a few brave scientists that spoke the truth of the viability and likelihood of the lab leak hypothesis, but that only proves how severe the suppression of discussion was.

people let your political opinions dictate what discourse is acceptable and which is not. if one imagines that your political opponents "wished it to be true" and seem to think of even labelling the virus from china as some sort of wrong think then one can be happy to pick and choose whichever truth you want to accept. scientists both hear and abroad where able to dismiss that lab leak is not plausible, based on lack of evidence. but the same thing could be said for the wilderness human contact. fauci said based on history lab leak is unlikely, in spite of the fact that lab leaks had occurred in the past.

I personally have no doubt that China s messaging was to suppress support for the lab leak, and they have succeeding in avoid any pressure to come forward with the truth about the actives of that lab in Wuhan . I also think that there is an entire field on scientific study that needs much more regulation and discipline, and they have also avoided any significant scrutiny.

I will await the discussion from mainstream virologists on tv and in medical and scientific journals demanding transparency and reform. but I will not hold my breath.

>I will await the discussion from mainstream virologists on tv and in medical and scientific journals demanding transparency and reform.

That exists. It's exactly what people mis-read as scientists supporting the lab leak hypothesis. Instead they support a more open attitude by China regarding investigations, which is neither evidence nor proof of either an artificial origin for the virus, nor for the lab leak theory.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-c...

First result after I google lab leak...

Senior Biden officials finding that Covid lab leak theory as credible as natural origins explanation

Dude, come on. FOX and Trump were running with this theory as fact, using it as a pejorative against the Chinese government, and kicking the shit out of Asians across the country while we were in the grips of a pandemic. Instead of focusing on things like "What can I as a citizen/political leader do to help the situation", it was just more hate-mongering.

Yes, the truth is important, and if the virus came from a lab leak, it should be known and dealt with. FOX and company weren't journalists looking for answers. They were hatemongers giving their viewers an "other" to blame for something out of their control, while telling them at the same time that the virus was fake and masks are tyrannical.

No one said you couldn't discuss it. No one was jailing you for talking about it. Stop the fake oppression.

Who’s the hate monger here? Maybe some of the people you are referring to understood the simple relationship between location of the lab and the outbreak as being valid evidence as well. And you call them “hate-mongers” for thinking so.

To answer your question, not me. To clear my point up, I am refering to the people putting the "Wuhan Flu" as the headline for months, Trump and Fox and the alt-right. No matter how valid the possibility, the discussion wasn't being had in good faith. Like, who gives a shit while we're dealing with the problem? It's like arguing if your stove had a gas leak as your house is burning down, except not only are you having the conversation at the wrong time, you're encouraging your friends to go kill the stove-maker's friends.

Let's just be clear on this: The "opinion" section of Fox "news" is one of the most dangerous organs of communication in society today.

What if it turns out the COVID did come from a lab. Will it still be “hate mongering” the “others” then? Or do we start embargo if the PRC?

The left likes to call anything they don’t want to talk about “hate” or “racist” these days.

This usually happens when upper middle class liberals get offended on minorities or “others” behalf.

The Orwellian newspeak is also not helping.

I don't know if you're intentionally misreading my post, or if I didn't make it clear enough - although I did clarify in a reply.

The hate-mongering is from the opinion shows that made themselves the heroic, oppressed "real-fact" people by constantly talking about it, by making it a conspiracy when it wasn't really, it just didn't matter at the time. Read my other reply, I'm not going to type it all out.

No, it isn't hate-mongering to wonder if the virus came from a lab. It's hate-mongering to play the victim, to scream "conspiracy!" as a strawman to millions of people, and have people going batshit crazy about it when it doesn't really matter. In other words, it's not the question that is the problem, it's the framing that Fox and Co. put around their narrative.

Don't even talk about "the left". It's not a monolith. I didn't talk about "conservatives" writ-large, my point is against the Fox op-ed cult - a very specific subset of the right. Please limit your assumptions as much as possible.

And really, it's makes zero sense to make the sweeping accusations against everyone on a side of a political spectrum. "The left" etc. is something to avoid. Much as I think the federal GOP is actively working against American values for the sake of its own power, I don't blame every conservative voter for their lack of options, nor do I think every Republican voter is literally Mitch McConnell.

On the contrary, no expert believes the coronavirus lab leak hypothesis is correct; a few do however say it should be investigated.

This is exactly this kind of misunderstanding that this whole thread is about.

What you are describing is just another manipulation of words by media that has caught you and others. Most scientists believe the virus had a lab in origin, and couldn’t have been natural, but whether that is due to a lab leak is completely speculation based on the fact it likely has a lab origin.

You need a cite for that, and some definition of 'scientist' that actually lends credibility.

"Couldn't have been natural" is especially a stretch, given that SARS and Bird Flu manifested naturally in the same part of the world a few years prior.

No they do not. Most believe it jumped from a wild animal to humans a short while before the outbreak in Wuhan.

Oh it most likely did jump from animals to humans. Lab outbreak theory does not refer to the virus being artificial, but on that the jump occurred inside the lab due to bad measures and then leaked outside.

GP referred to the virus being unnatural, whereas there is very strong evidence that it is natural.

As to a natural virus being accidentally leaked from a lab, there's no evidence for that scenario, except for the fact that the first major SARS-CoV2 outbreak happened in the same city. For what it's worth, this is not as implausible a co-incidence as might be claimed, since it is not uncommon for a virology lab to study viruses endemic to the region it is located in.

"For what it's worth, this is not as implausible a co-incidence as might be claimed, since it is not uncommon for a virology lab to study viruses endemic to the region it is located in. "

The bat virus that seems to be the progenitor of SARS-Cov-2 was isolated in caves in a different part of China, quite far from Wuhan. Plus, bats hibernate during the time that the spread began.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...

It's estimated that ~50 years passed since the time bat virus (RaTG13) and SARS-CoV2 diverged.

So it's certainly not a recent transmission, which is why an intermediate host is proposed, which could also be bat, or some other host species. Coronaviruses are endemic in that region of China.

I believe there is only one truth, and everything else is false.

But I also believe humans do not have access to it.

I call this thermodynamic truth.

And while it is the sole arbiter of truth, the moment something occurs that truth starts decaying via entropy. Photons fly away at light speed never to be seen by us again. The energy that remains starts mixing in ways that cannot be reversed. You quickly lead to scenarios where more than one initial state could lead to the current state we can measure.

And worse we can never exist in a system where we capture and keep this information. You either alter the 'experiment' by measuring it, aka chaos theory. Or, you bring about the premature heat death of the universe.

There are facts and there is the context of the facts and the impact those facts have on people.

One can argue the news should just report the facts, but they add additional context and information to explain why the facts matter.

Verifying the facts / truth is objective and clear (e.g. it rained 2 inches today). Determining whether the impact is properly reported (e.g. “devastating” flooding occurred) is murky. And the flooding could have been devastating - to one family, to a village, to a school. So it’s not untrue, it’s just more subjective as you move from numbers to impact. And the news cares more about reporting impact than facts and will tailor the narrative to explain the impact to their audience.

Look at the news service all sides. You can figure out the facts (e.g. a law was passed) then see what each side is saying about the impact. The impact may be true for both sides, just presented in a vastly different way.

I agree with this position.

The idea that there may be 'truths' sounds utterly bonkers to me. a ^ -a is considered a contradiction for a reason.

There is a lot of subtlety hidden in "a ^ ~a is a contradiction", because physical reality is more complex than it appears.

For example, one of the stunning consequences of Special Relativity is that there exist situations in which an observer says that event A happens before event B, and another observer says that event A happens after event B, and both are correct. Nature does not appear to be at all bothered by this "contradiction", however, and the world works just fine. Even more puzzling "contradictions" arise in quantum mechanics.

For all we know, it appears that reality is indeed dependent on the observer at a deep level. Maybe there is an even deeper level at which statements such as "a ^ ~a is false" hold, but so far nobody has been able to discover any.

I think the real difficulty is in human language. "a ^ ~a is a contradiction" is still perfectly applicable but apparently requires a "for observer A" clause. To supply all of the clauses necessary to make a completely unambiguous statement would be way too long to be humanly comprehensible. It makes me think of the Carl Sagan quote about needing to invent the universe before you can make anything "from scratch".

I'd argue that "event A happens before event B" is objectively true if and only if event A happens in event B's past light cone, and so there's no actual contradiction. The only weirdness you get is that if events A and B are space-like separated, none of the statements "event A happens before event B", "event A happens after event B", or "event A happens at the same time as event B" are objectively true. But you wouldn't say it's contradictory or paradoxical, just that it's a partial order rather than a total order.

You're simply misrepresenting what the actual statement with a truth value is in these cases. The fact that events happening close to each other temporally from fast-moving inertial frames can't be given a canonical temporal ordering doesn't undermine the existence of truth. A happens before B in the inertial reference frame of one observer and B happens before A in the inertial reference frame of a different observer are both true statements, and the converse of each is a false statement. The insight of special relativity is that there exists no God's eye reference frame independent of inertial reference frames. Nothing moves against some eternal static backdrop serving as a coordinate anchor. Things only move with respect to other moving things. That is in and of itself also a true statement, and the converse is false. Non-contradiction still holds everywhere. That you need further details and context to determine the truth of a statement doesn't mean it has no defined truth value.

The Special Relativity example you brought up is not a good example because it's about observation, not the truth of the order of the events.

Reality is not dependent on the observer, but we are observers, so that's why everyone thinks they have their own version of the truth. We are the weak link.

>Nature does not appear to be at all bothered by this "contradiction"

There is no contradiction. Our intuition for what 'A happens before B' means and implies is just bad/incomplete, as special relativity models.

>Even more puzzling "contradictions" arise in quantum mechanics.

I would bet a couple years of wage that what seems like contradictions will eventually be cleared up with some non-intuitive models, just like with special relativity.

I imagine the 'changes based on observer' problems of quantum mechanics will be more understandable once we decide what an observer is ( goddamnit people from physics, you don't add such a highly abstract variable to your model without giving it some good definition x( ), with some better experimental apparatus or with some deeper models of reality.

Please then tell me what is the one true religion? :)

Humans are not logical systems.

>Please then tell me what is the one true religion? :)

I dunno. I'm inclined towards none of the ones I know a little about being true since they really like to ask you to 'trust me bro, feel it in your heart' instead of just giving you good reasons to believe them.

Newton gave us far better arguments for universal gravitation than most people do for their religions, and he was ultimately wrong/incomplete.

>Humans are not logical systems.

Yes, that is a bug in the humanity system. Generally we try to diminish its effects when truth-judging (or maybe probable-truth-approximation-judging if you care about your epistemology). Recognizing this bug is useful to try and diminish its effect.

>Yes, that is a bug in the humanity system.

So the urge for flying to the moon is a bug? Climb a Mountain?

It depends on your utility function, of course. Will flying to the moon or climbing a mountain bring you closer to the things you value?

The urge is a bug if it doesn't match the things you value. The urge is not a bug if it matches the things you value.

With some fat margin for uncertainty around 'matching the things you value' because that's hard to quantify.

Utility functions can have 'axiomatic values' in them. Not everything you value is deduced from underlying principles.

Try cocaine (saying this could be deleted by Google if it hosted this message)

And see for yourself whether we humans have bugs.

Belief is independent of reality. There is only explanation of our origination that is true.

The one true "religion" is science. Once a religion is discovered to be true then science will include that religion.

Science is NOT religion, believes have no weight in science just proof.

Religion is the exact opposite.

>I believe there is only one truth, and everything else is false.

That is maybe true with science, but not with living breathing things.

Just one example:

What is the best system to live in? Capitalism, Socialism or a mix of Capitalism AND Socialism?

Often it is just not a question of truth when it comes to humans.

It just appears that there's multiple truthful answers to that question since you haven't fully defined what the word "best" means.

If you rigorously define what you mean by that word in this question, then there will be one and only one answer.

Of course, whether we're capable of finding that answer is a separate question.

>It just appears that there's multiple truthful answers to that question since you haven't fully defined what the word "best" means.

That's exactly what i mean...humans and everything that comes with them are not systems....let alone logical ones.

Hell even science makes a difference (hard science and soft science)

>That is maybe true with science, but not with living breathing things.

Are you saying living things have some irreducible complexity that's unexplainable or undetectable by scientific methods?

>Just one example: What is the best system to live in?

It's a pretty bad example. There's necessarily an answer which, if nothing else, is the best for the largest number of people. People aren't infinitely variable.

>Are you saying living things have some irreducible complexity that's unexplainable or undetectable by scientific methods?

No i said Humans are not logically describable systems.

>There's necessarily an answer which, if nothing else, is the best for the largest number of people.

Having Slaves because it's an easier life for the larger population for example?

>People aren't infinitely variable.

Try to mathematically proof that ;)

>No i said Humans are not logically describable systems.

Arguably they're equivalent statements.

>Having Slaves because it's an easier life for the larger population for example?

Yes. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it couldn't be the "best". By the way, historically, slave-based economies needed the majority of the population to be slaves. It makes sense, since the slaves are consuming their own production and are expending more energy than the non-slaves.

>Try to mathematically proof that ;)

Humans don't grow arbitrarily large or small, nor do they grow arbitrary numbers of limbs, nor have arbitrary numbers of bones. A person chosen at random from anywhere in the world isn't equally likely to hold any opinion from the infinity of opinions they could conceive of. For example, I could confidently say no person has ever simultaneously believed that Google should be subject to more regulation and that the current pharaoh is a living deity.

Nog sure about the intent of Google (and as they say, the road to hell is paved with good ones) but you’re reframing. It’s not a matter of censoring deviations from orthodoxy, rather one of removing disinformation and demonstrable falsehoods, often used for propaganda and to setup victim scenarios.

Those engaging in widespread censorship create disinformation and falsehood, by omission.

In history, it has always been those engaging in widespread censorship who turn out to be disastrously and/or maliciously wrong.

The science now being censored has become so well-established, that at this point, Google/YT et al, has and will delete and suppress the sharing of peer-reviewed science published in mainstream journals and indexed in PubMed.

That 100% ends their credibility. I deplore anyone expecting an explanation as to why.

Anyone yet standing by such incredulous, irresponsible and/or actively-malicious action, reveals themselves as same, for all to see.

Uh, I’ve read plenty about CIA techniques to overthrow undesired governments and a favorite trick is propping astroturfing campaigns claiming the wildest tripe and alt-truth against the soon-to-be “liberated”.

So please, come up with proof or yours is just another case of trumped up claims

I honestly can't make head nor tails of what you've said here, and am left wondering if you're a bot?

I made a statement, on-topic, about the nature and history of censorship, Google's credibility as arbiter of truth, and how naked they appear now as a result of how extreme they've become in that self-appointed role.

If you're not a bot, maybe try reading it again with that understanding?

Bot? Please step down that high horse of yours.

This thread ends here

> Companies aren't allowed to advertise rat poison as medicine and neither are you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin

In fact, they are and they do. (Ok, not you unless you run a pharm company). The best known rat poison is warfarin, an anticogulant used world wide as a medicine under various names.

As to your main point, how do you or others on SM, define misinformation? Do you believe the shadowy folk (qualifications unstated) who pontificate at FB, Twitter, Google and Wikipedia? That has to be absurd and shocking. Anyone who wants to (and wants to seems to be the issue), can see the fatuity of this after searching for overturned consensus views as supported by the SM platforms mentioned. The search should include the peer-reviewed literature.

A most recent volte-face relates to Covid origin, In April it was undoubtedly of natural origin as we were authoritatively informed by the Lancet. Now in July, the previously regarded conspiracy theory is taken seriously by people able to make a judgment. Who does one believe, the unknowns at SM or someone like Peter Palese, https://labs.icahn.mssm.edu/paleselab/) who was among 27 scientists who had earlier signed the Lancet letter denouncing as “conspiracy theories” the notion that the coronavirus could have escaped from a lab — or even be man-made. He now disavows that claim as do many others of similar status.

Except the term "misinformation" appears nowhere on the page https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505

Instead it refers to "misleading information".

Absent a specific definition of "misinformation" from Google's lawyers -- who likely authored or at least reviewed this page -- we are left to consult the dictionary.

The dictionary defines "misinformation" as "information that is incorrect". There is no requirement of intent. The information may or may not be misleading.

That is, the term "misinformation" may apply to any incorrect information regardless of intent.

Is it possible to have incorrect information ("misinformation") that is not intended to or does mislead (~ "misleading information"). Your answer: ___

Is it possible to have correct information (~ "misinformation") that is intended to or does mislead ("misleading information"). Your answer: ___

No need to answer this question. The technodemocratic complex has already answered it. It's tawdry, but the hunter biden laptop was "misinformation", because it was intended to mislead people away from Biden.

Doesn't matter that it was correct, the evidence was good, and it was published by major newspapers. The technical elite agreed with the political elite, and it was struck from the internet.

Amazingly, when it was raised at the presidential debate, real-time polling suggested that the majority of the populace had no idea what was being talked about. The suppression was effective.

We live in dangerous times.

>It's insane, and it's amazing to me how many of you have your heads so far up your ass that you can't see what is obvious and how are you so dumb bla bla bla

Clearly, since this is the most upvoted comment in the entire thread, you're not the only freethinker in an ocean of sheep.

I don't know, this lecturing tone is quite aggravating.

Youre absolutely right and the Ministry of Truth reference couldn’t be more chilling

"Ministry of Truth" references are the opposite of illuminating; they're reflexive association of any attempt to arbitrate truth with totalitarian oppression.

The fact is there is no such thing as rule of law without lots of institutions and individuals (private and public) taking responsibility for arbitrating truth. And there's no freedom of speech without allowing them to do it.

This is not true at all. The rule of law, within the confines of the judicial system, does NOT define truth. The system weighs evidence and determines whether the preponderance of evidence indicates guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Someone could murder someone, but due to lack of evidence they are found “not guilty”. But that’s not the same as “the truth is this person did not commit murder”. It’s simply a finding that the state didn’t prove its case.

> The system weighs evidence and determines whether the preponderance of evidence

A formal process of examining evidence marshaled in the service of arguments supporting/refuting a claim sounds practically equivalent to most forms of determining truth. Because it is.

Not only that, but there are segments of the law where truth is explicitly invoked, ie "truth is an absolute defense against defamation."

But truth isn’t always black and white or falsifiable, so that’s why reasonable doubt comes into play.

If you believe so strongly in the ability of institutions to ferret out untruth then surely you’d be ok with the application of such knowledge. We have the ability to do real time analysis in communications such as email, text and cell phone calls so why not just delete any offending words from those communications in real time so that lies never spread? That way you have perfect freedom of speech, it’s just that your phone calls will be edited in real time so the other person never hears the banned words. Better yet, instead of just deleting then it could reword it ina simulation of your voice so that they only ever hear the accepted truth.

Sometimes I wonder if Google is in the business of giving out all these free services because of the awesome political power it gives them.

That depends how you draw the lines around the selfhood of Google. Did 2004 Google have the same intentions as 2021 Google?

Organizing information and making it useful sounds altruistically anti-misinformation. And maybe the search engine of the past was a net good against misinformation. And then maybe the ship attracted folks with less than ideal intentions over time, making your premise more and more true. Maybe 2031 Google will be much worse.

Having a government backed monopoly is the best business to be in.

Well, yes. "GovTech" is the ultimate startup pivot.

So much of the populace has a digital IV drip of constant connection to algorithmic political slogan propaganda machines. If people consume propaganda all day everyday you can't blame them for being highly propagandized.

What else can we possibly expect than this to happen?

I honestly see no evidence that open society is compatible with modern digital communication networks. An authoritarian contagion almost seems an emergent natural property of the network.

The cyberpunk religion I use to believe in couldn't have been more wrong.

I just take solace that I will have been born and lived at the perfect time and place in history. I will have got to be part of this very short lived religion that the internet is the greatest thing for liberalism and freedom ever created when it is really the complete opposite.

I can even zoom out enough to see the historical beauty in such a historic mistake.

Hard to live in more interesting times than right now.

There's plenty of room for the cyberpunk heroes, but I can't name a single such story where the hero was a megacorp.

Google is a mega corporation. If the world is trending cyberpunk, they're going to be the Arasaka of the story, not the Hiro.

I think we should be wary of enforcing a particular truth or narrative. I think society should be vigilant against government punishing people for what they think or say - that is anathema to the freedom guaranteed to us in the 1st Amendment.

However, your analysis doesn't acknowledge the very real war on truth being fought daily on a multitude of fronts. There are many actors, and many reasons they are doing it.

Some people just want to watch the world burn (troll armies, 4chan-like people, alt-right, etc). Some people want to keep ignorant people in their place, and pit people against each other (cable 'news", especially Fox).

People are being exposed to misinformation (deliberate lies about the state of current affairs) more and more easily than ever before.

It's like saying we have a freedom to hold whatever rocks we find on the ground, then someone finding a block of uranium. Sure, we have that freedom, but there is a very real danger and we need to figure how to deal with the more dangerous aspects of it. Censorship/government enforcement is a heavy hammer and I don't think it's the answer - but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

Indeed. When the founding father created the system the US has today, it was entirely intentional that powers be separated and check each other, that the house, senate and President were required to pass legislation, etc. The founding father recognized that the default is a slide towards authoritarianism, that’s just human nature. The system works when no one person can gather enough power to take over.

That answers the question of many about historical examples: "how they couldn't see they are being manipulated by totalitarians? why didn't they do something?" The same reason our current society thinks it's ok for the government to ban people for "misinformation" (the latest directive from White House demands internet-wide bans of whoever was accused of "misinformation" - without any due process of course, just on the word of White House, confirmed and implemented by the faceless army of Facebook underpaid overworked "moderators" team). Yes, there are people who are shocked and appalled by it - and they are speaking up. But the society largely either ignores them, or dismisses them as paranoid naysayers or partisan operators. That is going to cost us. And our descendants would wonder "how couldn't they see they are being obviously manipulated to cede control over their speech to the government-big tech oligarchy?!" How indeed.

thank you sir. you have my keyboard. i was expecting the top comment to be the exact opposite of what you said.

From the top of the post: "We need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide these services."

Google has lawyers to minimize its legal liability. Turning some vapid terms of service clause into a slippery slope argument for the onrush of totalitarianism is taking things too far.

Google's lawyers #1 task should be fighting for their employer's own rights.

> democracy requires the government, or megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government

Who says that individuals or business institutions making judgments and using their resources to arbitrate truth -- especially institutions like Google whose business is about information -- are acting "as proxies for the government" instead of taking responsibility for honestly arbitrating truth as they understand it?

And the idea that any attempt to arbitrate truth is equal to totalitarian oppression is exactly wrong. Every institution and individual has to do it. Certainly any society based on rule of law does; you can't apply law without a consensus about what the facts to apply it to are.

Some will be giving their honest assessment and some won't. The latter may be a less serious problem, but it's still pretty damn serious.

Imagine a society that censors the disinformation/propaganda that trans women are women out of a sincerely held belief that this is indeed disinformation. Oh wait, Russia already does that.

Why would American attempts at suppression be any better? Or any better than what happened during the McCarthy era?

LOL "McCarthy era?" -- like, what are you actually referring to here? Is this just bad thing word salad? The primary problem with the McCarthy era wasn't censorship, it was actually that McCarthy's BS accusations about communism got such wide play and buy-in when they should have been squashed by responsible people.

"American" attempts would be better... because in most cases this appears to be voluntary and where the state is involved it appears to be officials actually persuading some private actors on the merits of the idea rather than compelling people by force.

The government is actively telling social media companies which posts need to be taken down. That makes them state actors.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-administration...

If I flag something on Twitter or Facebook as violating site rules, or an FHEO official tells Craigslist they're aware of posts violating housing discrimination rules, that doesn't make any of these sites my actor or state actors. It makes them people who care about either keeping that stuff off their site or keeping the law.

You clearly didn't read the links I posted. Please read the links I posted.

Also your logic falls apart considering the courts ruled last year that Trump wasn't allowed to block people on Twitter. You "flagging" or "blocking" something is very different from the government doing it or pressuring companies to do it. That makes them state actors as has been ruled multiple times in the past.

Nor are we talking about stuff which "breaks the law" here. By social media's own proven standards, they kept the lab leak theory off their platform for 1.5 years. They are censoring women who oppose men competing in their sports or entering their private areas like spas and bathrooms. Palestinians get censored under the guise of "anti-semitism" and Israelis/Christians get censored under the guise of "islamaphobia" depending upon which political side has power. If we had such big social media back in 2000s, they would be censoring anyone who spoke out against the war or there not being any WMDs. If you spoke out against the Syrian gas attack hoax, you would'd get censored too.

From Supreme Court of the United States opinion couple months ago:

> "But whatever may be said of other industries, there is clear historical precedent for regulating transportation and communications networks in a similar manner as traditional common carriers. Candeub 398–405. Telegraphs, for example, because they “resemble[d] railroad companies and other common carriers,” were “bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination." ... "Internet platforms of course have their own First Amendment interests, but regulations that might affect speech are valid if they would have been permissible at the time of the founding. See United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 468 (2010). The long history in this country and in England of restricting the exclusion right of common carriers and places of public accommodation may save similar regulations today from triggering heightened scrutiny—especially where a restriction would not prohibit the company from speaking or force the company to endorse the speech." ... "The similarities between some digital platforms and common carriers or places of public accommodation may give legislators strong arguments for similarly regulating digital platforms. [I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of ”digital platforms." ... "For example, although a “private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” Halleck, 587 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 6, 9), it is if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint. Ibid. Consider government threats. “People do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around.” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U. S. 58, 68 (1963). The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly. See ibid.; Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991, 1004–1005 (1982). Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital platform if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats. The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him. But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smoth- ered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves."

> "As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition, unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them."

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-197_5ie6.pdf

A good democracy depends on its citizens being able to discuss issues with one another. If we disagree on basic incontrovertible facts, such as where someone was born, or what the measured efficacy of a treatment for a disease is, conversations with each other do not have value and we cannot have a democracy.

This is just the free market doing its job.

that's not accurate at all. look at the misleading medical information definition from Google

"Misleading content related to harmful health practices: Misleading health or medical content that promotes or encourages others to engage in practices that may lead to serious physical or emotional harm to individuals, or serious public health harm."

not only do they use the term misleading to define the term misleading, they clearly state any information that could cause serious public health harm is misleading. when people are screaming about vaccine misinformation they are often talking about discussing side effects of the vaccine, which causes hesitancy and therefore harm. if pressed for an example, they will pick up an absurd claim like 5g caused covid, but not the typical claims that the covid vaccine has reportedly killed thousands and injuries many more than that.

the labels disinformation, misinformation, misleading, potentially harmful are very orwellian, as many can take them to mean false information, but in fact these labels can be placed on perfectly true statements that are simply dissenting.

Ok I'm not pro censorship, but I'll bite your bait.

Firstly, this is a content policy, this is separate from actual enforcement. I would doubt that google enforces this proactively, rather they want a possibility to shut down what has now been dubbed 'fake news'.

Secondly, reading this with an open mind their focus seems to be on dangerous falsehoods, think things that can get people in prison (double voting?), health issues ('bleach anema for 3 year olds cures autism', 'vitamin D prevents covid', 'covid is an invention of the deep state', ...), or manipulated information that claims to represent another's view ('manipulated media ... that may pose a risk of egregious harm', e.g. I'd imagine a fake NYT article saying that masks are harmful).

Third, this is a private platform, not a government body enforcing its views.

Last, there are some dangerous lies. In Germany its illegal to state the holocaust never happened. You can discuss details and question parts of the narrative but not doubt that it ever happened. You can't have neo-nazis claiming that its all a big conspiracy and that others were at fault - which, if you know your history, is one of the very ways the nazis justified WW2. This law was an essential tool to counter similar tendencies after Germany lost WW2. In contrast, in Poland its illegal to state that Poles contributed to the holocaust, which is however a true fact that is just politically unwelcome. So the issue here is not whether there is a truth, and also not whether lies can be dangerous (bleach anema to get rid of your kids' autism!), but rather who does and how truth is arbited. A government/company shouldnt be able to shut down every dissenting opinion but I can't believe anyone honestly believes that there should be no way to challenge and limit the spread of dangerous lies. You can think and discuss what you want, but if you broadcast your views to a wide audience you should also be held to a higher standard. The real issue is who does the accounting.

I wish there were a way to indicate disagreement without hiding comments. Having "dislike" and "disagree" be the same arrow causes problem like hiding this.

I'm doing to take issue with your "dangerous lies" classification as not being a useful one. Every bit of censorship can be argued to be censoring dangerous lies. From Russian LGBT censorship to China's censorship of things undermining the narrative of Chinese greatness to older censorship of criticism of the king (in all his chosen by God glory).

"Every bit of censorship can be argued to be censoring dangerous lies."

This. Former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and its secret police (StB) did not say "we are evil and we want to suppress information that contradicts whatever we need you to believe". It was a necessary struggle against Western ideodiversional centrals that were sowing lies among naive young population for nefarious purposes, of course.

Every censorship system will cloak itself in righteousness and necessity. Has been tried for hundreds of times. If anybody still accepts this argument at face value, they are likely ignorant of history.

> You can think and discuss what you want, but if you broadcast your views to a wide audience you should also be held to a higher standard. The real issue is who does the accounting.

It is exactly because you, nor anyone else, can come up with an acceptable solution to your last point, it is surely a lesser evil to have free speech, however "dangerous" it may turn, rather than have a benevolent accountant with the speech monopoly turn on us.

> Firstly, this is a content policy, this is separate from actual enforcement. I would doubt that google enforces this proactively, rather they want a possibility to shut down what has now been dubbed 'fake news'.

Discretionary enforcement power is part of the problem, not a mitigating factor. The policy itself simply gives them carte blanche to remove content with which they disagree:

> When applying these policies, we may make exceptions based on artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific considerations, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content.

Even if we give Google the benefit of the doubt and grant that initial enforcement could be judicious, wise, and a net positive for society (pretending like "a net positive for who?" is an easy question to settle), "substantial benefits to the public" is not a limiting principle.

History has taught us that without real, adversarial constraints, this power will always be mishandled and abused. Eventually, Google will make mistakes. In their zeal to prevent misinformation and harm, they will bury a promising drug therapy and it will cost lives. They will disallow evidence of a crime, and they will make exceptions that happen to benefit their biggest markets.

They have the right to do this, but it is surely wrong for us to delegate our judgement to them.

I'm sorry to see one of the more nuanced comments downvoted. Looks like the hacker news free speech anarchist task force is busy today.

Funny how they demand radical free speech, but downvote/flag anyone who disagrees, while using a forum where comments with too many downvotes are hidden automatically.

downvotes are free speech

Indeed, free speech includes freedom for anyone to make himself look like an idiot. We're not usually stopping people hell-bent on doing just that.

> I would doubt that google enforces this proactively

Google is absolutely already blanket banning stuff on Youtube. There is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

> there are some dangerous lies

Yes, and the WHO has committed to dangerous lies as well.

Hell, in your own example, you're saying the Nazis justified WW2 with lies.

Government officials provably cannot be trusted to disseminate "the truth".

>private companies

These are not normal private companies. Citing GP, these are

>> megacorporate cartels with a monopoly on public speech most likely acting as proxies for the government

The government is actively telling social media companies which posts need to be taken down. That makes them state actors.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-administration...

Here is a partial list of scientific consensus "deniers" proven right which this sort of censorship will either silence by big tech or due to self-censorship:

1. Ignaz Semmelweis, who suggested that doctors should wash their hands, and who eliminated puerpal fever as a result, was fired, harassed, forced to move, had his career destroyed, and died in a mental institution at age 47. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with...

2. Alfred Wegener, the geophysicist who first proposed continental drift, the basis of plate tectonics, was berated for over 40 years by mainstream geologists who organized to oppose him in favour of a trans-oceanic land bridge. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener#Reaction

3. Aristarchus of Samos, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, brilliant minds and leaders in their field all supported the heliocentric model. They were at some point either ignored, derided, vilified, or jailed for their beliefs. All this because they went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Controversy_ov...

4. J Harlen Bretz, the geologist who documented the catastrophic Missoula floods, was ridiculed and humiliated by uniformitarian "elders" for 30 years before his ideas were accepted. He first proposed that a giant flood raked Eastern Washington in prehistoric times, and who suffered ridicule and skepticism until decades of further research proved his thesis. All this because he went against consensus science. He was eventually awarded the Penrose Medal.

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/bretzs-floo...

5. Carl F. Gauss, discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry, self-censored his own work for 30 years for fear of ridicule, reprisal, and relegation. It did not become known until after his death. Similar published work was ridiculed. His personal diaries indicate that he had made several important mathematical discoveries years or decades before his contemporaries published them. Scottish-American mathematician and writer Eric Temple Bell said that if Gauss had published all of his discoveries in a timely manner, he would have advanced mathematics by fifty years All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Personali...

6. Hans Alfven, a Nobel plasma physicist, showed that electric currents operate at large scales in the cosmos. His work was considered unorthodox and is still rejected despite providing answers to many of cosmology's problems. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfvén

7. Georg Cantor, creator of set theory in mathematics, was so fiercely attacked that he suffered long bouts of depression. He was called a charlatan and a corrupter of youth and his work was referred to as utter nonsense. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor

8. Kristian Birkeland, the man who explained the polar aurorae, had his views disputed and ridiculed as a fringe theory by mainstream scientists until fifty years after his death. He is thought by some to have committed suicide. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Birkeland#Legacy

9. Gregor Mendel, founder of genetics, whose seminal paper was criticized by the scientific community, was ignored for over 35 years. Most of the leading scientists simply failed to understand his obscure and innovative work. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel#Initial_receptio...

10. Michael Servetus discovered pulmonary circulation. As his work was deemed to be heretical, the inquisitors confiscated his property, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and burned him at the stake atop a pyre of his own books. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus#Imprisonment_...

11. Amedeo Avogadro's atomic-molecular theory was ignored by the scientific community, as was future similar work. It was confirmed four years after his death, yet it took fully one hundred years for his theory to be accepted. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Avogadro#Response_to_th...

Most humans are inherently closed to disruptive ideas that challenge their basic world view.

It may be a survival trait, in fact. Not all of us are brilliant mavericks, so we have to rely on group think and past practices. Some disruptions are indeed harmful and must be suppressed firmly for the good of the species, for example inbreeding with siblings and parents.

What's happening right now with the attempted suppression of "hate speech" and "dangerous misinformation" is a classic imposition of majority consensus on a restless, information-empowered population.

It is an attempt to regain control. Never before have humanity had so much decentralized power to disseminate information; anyone can quickly and easily put their ideas out to a vast audience.

Probably a certain amount of control is necessary to maintain order, but obviously, how much is still up for debate.

The suppression of innovation that you have outlined is likely a small fraction of the total. How much might we have advanced, had these people's ideas not been suppressed? How much human suffering might have been averted?

Or would we have merely developed the tools to destroy ourselves and our world that much sooner?

Idk where you live, but here in Florida that "dystopia" sounds like a bit of an improvement.

Exactly. What is misinformation? What you define as misinformation right now could be information in a few months.

Entire discussions on things like ivermectin to treat covid were banned from YouTube as “misinformation”. Now some studies are coming out that might show that it’s not. At least it deserves a discussion but it has been censored as misinformation. So we lost an entire year of treating people around the world because SOMEONE deemed ivermectin misinformation??

What about the Wuhan lab origination? Last year that was derided as conspiracy theories and misinformation, but now it’s basically accepted as fact.

Who determines what is misinformation? What if Trump wins again or someone worse like Tom Cotton? And they set up a government panel that they decide is misinformation and companies like Google need to follow it? Who determines who is spreading misinformation now?

10 years ago a low fat diet was deemed “heart healthy”. Now that is classified as misinformation. Should low fat diets be censored by Google?

This is the problem. What you thought was misinformation is only really a few studies away from being flipped around.

> What you thought was misinformation is only really a few studies away from being flipped around.

To be clear, that matters because by censoring "misinformation" you are killing these studies, therefore we are by definition stuck wherever we are right now.

New science and "misinformation" as defined by our digital overlords intersect.

> This is the problem. What you thought was misinformation is only really a few studies away from being flipped around.

The big tech companies are destroying the value and credibility of our information ecosystems, by treating the first draft of history and science like it's the last. The day after an event [0], elite opinion becomes "information" and anything that contradicts that is "misinformation."

[0] I meant this as a slightly comical overstatement, but in many cases it's quite literal.

We aren’t talking about something as basic as truth and untruth.

This is Integer and float vs malformed code.

Misinformation is code. It’s designed to specifically take advantage of gaps in our society and spread in such a way that makes it harder to challenge it.

In a free society, people must be allowed the ability to discern for themselves which information is useful, true, or otherwise. We do not need a state or its proxies to tell us which information is correct.

> people must be allowed the ability to discern for themselves which information is useful

Including people who run institutions like Google.

If they can be compelled to disseminate content they think of as irresponsible, so can you.

Google has a monopoly on searching for information, which makes it as different to me as a nuclear bomb is to a butterknife. They need to play by different rules

Not only does Google not hold a true monopoly on search (they hold top mindshare, but there are several other easily available search engines one of which I use frequently), this particular brouhaha is about hosting, not search, on which they don't hold anything that could even be reasonably confused with a monopoly.

It's even more alarming that the host of my data is actively scanning those 1s and 0s for signs of deviation from truth and sending those 1s and 0s it views as untruths down a memory hole. I mean, why stop there, why not just correct the untruths? Flip a few 1s here that should be 0s. This strikes at the core value proposition of tech and who is who is boss of what data.

One can agree they should not be compelled while ALSO thinking it would be much better for society that they stop censoring. Just because setting up an institution to compel would be worse than the censorship we're trying to fix doesn't mean the censorship is good.

That's a nice fantasy. People don't get enlightened by banging rocks to start fires for 18 years then becoming a philosopher.

The art of thinking critically and using logic takes training, and far too many people don't seem to have those skills, due to an inadequate education system in the United States.

Free people should be "allowed" to listen to, and say, what they want. I don't even think Tucker Carlson should be silenced by the government, no matter how much better I think society would be without him on the air.

I think there is a space for content to be labelled as "bullshit" by the people hosting it. Youtube labeling anti-vax lies as "misinformation", the FCC disallowing Fox from using the term "News" on its marquee during their "Four Hours of Hate" from 5-9pm.

Just as fast food is allowed to be sold to people, but they're required to disclose nutrition data - people should be allowed to listen to and spout bullshit, but it should be labeled.

That's so naïve.. If only sufficient amounts of people were capable of discerning for themselves which information is useful, true, etc.

The rise of batshit crazy and easily demonstrably false conspiracy theories like Qanon, flat earthers, 5G, Covid is fake/a Chinese bioweapon/etc. Pizzagate, what have you, and clearly empty populist politicians and political movements across the world show that way too much people struggle with that. And the choices they make impact all of us.

I honestly don't think there's a solution for this. Any authority on "truth" will be abused, but what we have now doesn't work either.

Yes we do. It is only more important that the state is first correct, and doesn't persecute when either it or you are not.

Well yes, if we had a perfect Oracle of Truth we wouldn't need the freedom to discuss and find out the truth. We don't and governments not only do not have such an Oracle, they cannot have such an Oracle due to the pressures on governments and the people that make them up preventing them from being unbiased (e.g. the tendencies for institutions such as government components to grow larger, defend their power and push to continue to exist).

Wielding the baton of "misinformation", or in general, fear of falsehood/insecurity etc, to whack those who the ruling class disagrees with is also code designed to specifically take advantage of the gaps in a healthy bureaucracy and seize control over it in such a way that makes it hard to challenge it.

"Misinformation is code. It’s designed to specifically take advantage of gaps in our society and spread in such a way that makes it harder to challenge it."

Are you aware that ideas like abolition of slavery, civil rights or acceptance of gays had to spread precisely in the same way, through gaps in the contemporary societies that made harder to challenge them, often because open declaration of such ideas would mean major trouble for the speakers?

Do you think that our current society is perfect in this regard and thus can suppress further functionality of such mechanisms without adverse consequences down the line?

If not, better not touch the gaps.

No, this is bafflegab. You're creating what is at best a contrived, vague, and inaccurate metaphor to make a distinction without a difference between misinformation and falsehood, so that you will have a fig leaf to pretend that you are acting in an objective manner with clear delineations when banning information you don't like as "misinformation."

Except you won't be doing the banning, and it's not going to end well for any of us after you help to give the people who will be doing it the power they want with rationalizations like this.

Only for pretty creative definitions of misinformation. It could also be just, you know, wrong information.

Or indeed, correct information that contradicts an officially recognised position.

People can figure out the truth, and if they can't, we have bigger problems. I'd like to live in a world of common sense vs "elite" judgements

The amazing thing about these super political fights is like 90% of people are on the sidelines going "what's wrong with both of you?" The people that always end up looking like idiots are the idealogues

You're proving ibbibby's point here

Who would ever oppose scientific socialism? It is scientific. Thus, rejection of science is unscientific and should be prohibited.

I call my organization the good people group. Who would oppose the good people group except the bad people group?

Agreed, its important to note that these modern day, illiberals couch a lot of their phraseology in sophomoric nuance.

"XXXX statement is misinformation, because it lacks context" "XXXX statement is misinformation, because it is still up for debate" "XXXX statement is misinformation, because it is offensive to class YYYY" "XXXX statement is misinformation, because it is unfair to person ZZZZ"

These are logical fallacies presented as civility. Applying them uniformly would me desperately wrong. Having double standards, and applying them based on partisan bias is nothing short of evil.

Glenn Greenwald said it best. If you are okay with these practices, you are a political authoritarian. No other information is needed to determine this about you.

It's amazing the way the political left has savegely gone against greenwald. We need more journalists like him not less. He has all the proper credentials (gay, liberal), he just happens to speak the truth so, apparently, fuck him. If we had more greenwalds the world would be a much better place

Your argument lacks any nuance, to the degree that it makes it flat out wrong.

No one is suggesting regulating truth generally, but rather specific cases that are deemed dangerous [0].

Now, you could make a slippery slope argument starting from there and that would be a valid, but different discussion.

The slippery slope argument sometimes applies and sometimes it doesn't. It depends on the specific situation. There are examples around the world of governments that very selectively suppress narrowly defined types of speech, in order to protect other values believed to be equally fundamental, but defend the freedom of all others.

[0] Within the bounds of the freedoms that a private company has to operate as it sees fit, or by means of democratic decisions.

It's true that the US government has always compelled private platforms to remove speech if it is illegal as determined by the legislative branch or common law (e.g., hosting child porn). What's unique about the current situation is that what's being censored has direct influence from non-legislative bodies such as the executive branch and the CDC, and what is out of bounds lacks specification and is subject to change according to the whims of a small handful of people.

This is a big change because the legislative body is significantly constrained in what it can censor through multiple mechanisms. The slippery slope concern falls flat in that old context, but not in this new context where 1 or 2 people (who we don't see and who may not have even been directly elected) can label something as misinformation and have it scrubbed.

"generally do this in specific cases."

I think I see what you're trying to say even if you're doing so very obliquely - the point is that this never was and never will be an issue that it makes sense to think of in absolutes.

Speech has never been free in this absolute sense anywhere, because, at the very least (!), there are cases where speech has obvious, immediate, terrible consequences.

That means that the difficulty lies in figuring out where exactly to draw a line along a blurry boundary. Hence the slippery slope issue.

This isn't a government entity.

Government: can imprison, fine, and enslave you. Corporation: can ban you from online platform.

Companies absolutely and always have enforced their own version of "truth". While Google says this thousands of other companies of similar size are regulating their version of "truth" internally. As we speak lobbyists are paid to make sure senators will vote along their version of "truth". There is no such thing as neutrality, and never has been, only the illusion of inaction.

American society has been slowly convinced, and then the rest of the world by extension, that this was absolutely necessary to combat the next big threat.

First it was to "combat hate", that speech was limited according to what partisan big tech companies decided was fair. It was said it had real-life consequences. Harm. So it should be banned.

Then anything from certain parties or ideologies became hate if labeled so by the tech giants. So out they went.

Now, anything questioning the authoritarian narrative of the pandemic is labeled as such.

The slippery slope that people tried to deny with claims of "private companies" has gotten higher and keeps going deeper.

Talking about freedom, freedom of speech or human rights gets you mocked in certain spaces. It's mind-boggling.

U.S. barely has "hate speech" laws, so I don't know what you're talking about there.

"Big tech" decided to ban people for being hateful to others on their platforms. Those platforms don't exist for your protection against government actors. Nor should it.

What you're saying is "a company banning certain forms of speech on its platforms does not constitute censorship", which is true at least in the strict definition of "censorship", but does not contradict what the GP is saying. What the GP is talking about is a shift in American attitudes that leads to the acceptance of such policies, whereas in earlier times they might have been rejected or the companies in question might not have even thought to implement them.

I don't at all believe people would reject it. People have been censoring content for a long time in far worse manners. Early 90's had plenty of "obscenity law" enforced, Ronald Reagan and regulation of content in games and music was a thing. People cheered it on, and that was actual government censorship, not corporate.

People agree with censorship if it's in in agreement with their belief.

To be clear, I don't necessarily agree with isaacremuant.

Obscenity laws are kind of different, since it's perfectly possible to add or remove obscenities from an utterance without substantially affecting the message. I'm not saying I agree with such laws, just stating the facts. What are examples where specific types of messages were banned? E.g. hate speech laws, blasphemy laws, lese majeste laws, etc. In Western democracies, the only examples that come to mind are recent.

>People agree with censorship if it's in in agreement with their belief.

Agreed, generally speaking.

Geez, what did I say that was so disagreeable? This is why I don't have a permanent account here. Whatever.

I think you're arguing a strawman and didn't really address anything I said.

Of course, my point is seemingly unpopular in very partisan websites where it's seen as a rep/dem or left/right issue (US centric) but the fact that we see more and more of these types of articles (today an EFF one) shows there's more of us, concerned by this arbitrating of truth by a certain group of ideologes and the people who agree with them where they leverage their power to prescribe what speech is worth transmitting and which is worth censoring.

It’s also important to understand that the only reason anyone is talking about misinformation right now is because the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th, a direct attempt to “seize control over free societies”. (Admittedly a poor attempt at it though) which was sparked by wild accusations, unsubstantiated assertions, and a mountain of failed litigation by “the previous guy”.

No amount of whitewashing or misdirection of what happened that day or the factors that lead up to it will change that certain “free speech” said by the right mouth, believed by an angry undereducated group can lead to actual loss of our free society. Just look at the insane amount of legislation being passed in certain red states, all based and cheered on by the exact same lie..

We can all argue the merits of google, but that’s just a method to control the conversation by those who seek our society for there own dystopian Handmaids Tale version, and deflection from what put us in this sitaution. A lie, perpetrated by the president, enabled by his supporters, and a Ministry of Truth style belief in what that government said, that’s leading to voter disenfranchisement and loss of faith in the very foundation of democracy. Period.

As for the medical information that I disagree with. If people want to believe in lies, I have enough “don’t tread on me” to let them. Personally that’s very much a game of “play stupid games win stupid prices”. None of my business have at it

You are saying that this is a lie as if that's math or physics instead of a debatable political point and then circling all the wagons around that determination.

The idea that the coronavirus came from a lab used to be one of those circle the wagons points that anyone could get cancelled for. The evidence is so overwhelming that you're now allowed to post that to social media without getting cancelled. How would that information have gotten out there if the cancel network had been perfect?

Where is all this overwhelming evidence that the virus came from a lab?

They can’t share it because they don’t have it. One scientist said it looked like it came from a lab and all the reactionaries latched onto this one statement as if it was the real truth being hidden from them. They promptly ignored when that same scientist admitted he overstated his position because that conflicts with their world view and censorship and persecution complex.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/scientist-...

My original post said absolutely nothing about the rona though yes it a physics or math problem. I’ve since amended it

Trump lied, period. And it lead to and is leading to a lot of negatives.

As for the virus personally I don’t care where it came from but people can believe whatever they want. We have a vaccine now, don’t want it then don’t, doesn’t affect those that chose to. “The big lie” however affects us all, and that’s a problem.

In the case of covid the math changes. Generally speaking if it affects only you, have at it. If it spills out and affects others, problem. Though I’m not gonna argue the pedantry of that, that can devolve quickly

I have never heard any "truth" so sacred in American politics that the other side had to simply refer to the people opposing this "truth" as believing in "the big lie." It's Poe's law level absurdity.

Trumpers I know tell me liberals are all in on a big conspiracy lie to prop up Biden, so, I certainly have seen it on the other side.

It's not unsurprising, this is a two sided political party war on information. One side is misinformed, one side is less misinformed. Which is it? Nobody can agree.

Just because someone shouted an idea without proof that later might turn out to be partially right doesn't make it OK if shouting that idea was dangerous.

If I shout fire in the cinema and 1 minute later a fire starts it was still a bad thing to do.

Note too that for this specific conspirancy, it was maybe 30% about the lab and 70% about the Chinese government spreading it on purpose as a bioweapon or for some other nefarious purpose, the latter of which is still not widely accepted even as a possibility (as opposed to a containment failure)

This is in itself misinformation.

> the only reason anyone is talking about misinformation right now is because the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th

Just as a point of fact, that's false. Usage spiked in late 2019. Nothing special happens on this graph in Jan 2021, and the term is surprisingly in decline right now:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=m...

Same with "disinformation":

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=d...

I saw a low-level riot with a few broken windows that was endlessly hyped over and over again ad-nauseam. So, no, the rest of the world wasn't horrified - we were wondering what was the fuss.

I was far more worried about the BLM riots which burned entire districts - since I had family affected.

Using Jan 6th as an excuse for government censorship is utter nonsense. What is misleading today can become fact tomorrow very, very quickly.

why are you lying about entire districts being burned down by BLM? Surely you can provide some actual evidence as to this happening. Right now is just looks like more completely unsupported right wing hysteria.

This is laughable. There were hundreds of buildings burnt down and you ask for evidence ? Please do your own research. I strongly suggest listening to some-thing other than cnn/nbc. I don't listen to either right-wing or left-wing media.

"In their wake, vandals left a trail of smashed doors and windows, covered hundreds of boarded-up businesses with graffiti and set fire to nearly 150 buildings, with dozens burned to the ground. Pharmacies, groceries, liquor stores, tobacco shops and cell phone stores were ransacked, losing thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise. Many were looted repeatedly over consecutive nights"

"Three hundred seventy-some miles south-east of Minneapolis and about sixty miles north of Chicago on Lake Michigan in Kenosha, the family-run car dealership of an Indian immigrant was burned down by the rioters. The owner, trying to hold back his tear, told reporters that BLM rioters burned his lot two nights in a row destroying all the cars"

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/indic-positive/may... https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-st-paul-buildings-ar...

> the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th

Umm, no. I’d rather say it was a mildly interesting event for the entire world outside of the US. For instance, I don’t remember myself experiencing horror really.

If anything it was funny to me and my friends and colleagues.

I was pretty horrified by it and the way Pence and Romney have been treated is just foolish by conservatives.

I think a better example though is Flat Earth ideas.

Suppressing people from communicating that the Earth is flat is far more dangerous than the idea that the Earth is flat.

All the West really has going for it is that we are able to entertain ridiculous ideas. This is what lets our creativity percolate on the network.

Once that is gone we have nothing. Just a small % of the global population, kind of lazy, kind of entitled.

This implies that being misled due to being under-educated on a topic is a choice. Otherwise, the "don't tread on me" argument kind of falls apart here.

No, the world watched in horror as American cities burned for an entire year while politicians and media whores, thoroughly protected by police and private security, did nothing.

Police were ordered to take a knee to the mob.

We were told that this was justice.

But the second those powerful people were even slightly threatened, the gloves came off.

Only one person was murdered on the 6th. A veteran and Trump voter named Ashli Babbitt, killed by the police. And Democrats celebrated her death.

She was trying to force her way into a chamber where she and the rest of the mob intended to do harm to elected politicians, and disrupt US democratic process.

That’s not really murder. And no, the rest of the world did not look on in horror at the BLM protests. They looked in horror at what caused them.

> And no, the rest of the world did not look on in horror at the BLM protests. They looked in horror at what caused them.

Speak for yourself - I am part of the world that looked on in horror at the media's sanction of open violence against the people by a violent minority.

Speak for yourself. The rest of the world mostly did not look, because the American media refused to objectively cover those protests.

I only know about it but following local independent outlets in Portland.

Speak for yourself. You didn't have family threatened by the BLM riots, nor property damage - all egged on by both the media and the left.

Why are you spreading more lies? You are explicitly part of the problem. What cities were burnt down? Can you name one city that was burnt? Can you name even one neighborhood?

> the only reason anyone is talking about misinformation right now is because the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th, a direct attempt to “seize control over free societies”

Regardless of if the riot on Jan 6 was an attempt to seize the government (it wasn’t), this line of reasoning doesn’t track at all since the concept of “misinformation” as a public enemy has been brought up ad naseum since at least 2016.

There’s a bit of nuance there though to isn’t there?

Let’s be honest, “misinformation” between 2016-2020 just meant “things written about me I don’t like”, it only came from one person/group.

> it only came from one person/group

I disagree. While dubbing things “misinformation” was extremely prevalent coming from democrats and those on the left, things like Trump and his supporters dubbing certain reports “fake news” show everyone has concerns.

The term “fake news“ itself came from the left.

That was about actual fake news, not news with a spin I don't like.

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/

Right, misinformation. Reasonable people can disagree about where the line between “actual fake news” and “news with a spin I don’t like” is.

Where have you been? Hall monitors at CNN and other outletd like Oliver Darcy have been shrieking about "misinformation," and successfully lobbying to get people censored on that basis, constantly for the last four years.

Recall that the "fake news" scare (and "post-truth era" etc) was actually started by the media before Trump appropriated it against them. And in most cases it was used against people for expressing skeptic towards favored conspiracy theories about the 2016 election.

" the entire world watched in horror at the events of January 6th, a direct attempt to “seize control over free societies”. (Admittedly a poor attempt at it though)"

Ask the rest of the world before you speak in their name. From the other side of the puddle, Jan 6th was a poorly executed riot that was mildly interesting mainly because of the obvious kooks (such as the Shaman) and their outlandish clothing. Don't try to repaint it as a surrogate coup just because polarized American society yearns for Big Defining Events. There is nothing to yearn for. And historical coups, even the unsuccessful-but-plausible ones look very, very different. Usually a lot more bloody, too.

But as far as Ministry of Truth goes, I am with you. Whatever institutions people build, they should imagine them in hands of their worst enemies.

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