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Comment by chroem- | Hacker News Reader

The threats posed by disinformation are too broad and numerous for these smaller academic organizations to handle. We need to consolidate our efforts under a single entity that will have more power to fight disinformation and protect truth. A "Ministry of Truth", if you will.

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One of the frustrating things about political discourse is that, when conducted among a large enough audience, topics lose most of their nuance. Things tend to get reduced to A vs B. It's disappointing to see that when it comes to the subject of misinformation and propaganda in social media, for some people it seems, efforts to understand and reduce the spread of misinformation have become the enemy of freedom of speech and expression.

I don't understand why academics trying to understand the spread of misinformation on Facebook draws comparisons to the authoritarian government in 1984. Since when do we fear university researchers the same way we do oppressive governments? I get it, censorship is a problem, but seriously guys, "Ministry of Truth"? What the fuck.

Science is for everything that can be objectively measured, and politics is for everything else that people can't come to a consensus on. Bad things happen when you try to frame your subjective political opinions as objective scientific reality. "Misinformation" or not, you can't control what other people think, at least not within the confines of a free society.

So are we supposed to do, ban the study or research of topics that can't be objectively measured because the results might be interpreted as scientific reality by some people? The line between science and politics is not as clear cut as you might think. History and psychology can't be objectively measured. Anything, even hard science, can be politicized. The existence of climate change and COVID-19 are considered political opinions by a good chunk of the population.

Your premise that there are bad ideas that need to be studied and actively suppressed by authoritarian means is flawed.

You ignored my previous comment and replaced it with a straw man. No one is saying that the only way to combat bad ideas is through authoritarian means. That's a conclusion that you are drawing. How can you combat bad ideas in any way, if you don't first understand them, and how can you understand them if you can't study them?

And yes, I firmly believe there is such a thing as "bad ideas" in the sense that they are harmful. Can that be abused? Absolutely, but we can't over-correct and say that no idea should be labelled "bad". Take climate change. For years science told us it was coming. Misinformation about climate change has made it harder for us to do something about it, and now we're living the reality of extreme weather events. Why would we not want to know how that misinformation spreads, and how best to combat it?

It's not a strawman, because you said it yourself:

> Why would we not want to know how that misinformation spreads, and how best to combat it?

You don't get to suppress ideas in a free society, no matter how much you may disagree with them. You can discuss them and even try to win people over to your viewpoint through debate, but at the end of the day you can't force people to believe something without violating the social contract.

It absolutely is a straw man. There are many ways to combat something without resorting to —as you strawmanned their comment with–“authoritarian means.”

We combatted the ridiculous notion when masses of people thought they could cure diseases by burying a rotten fig under a dogwood tree on the 13th tuesday of the year if it was raining, and we did this by teaching people why that is ridiculous.

Understanding how and which absurd ideas enter people’s heads is incredibly important. And for many reasons that have nothing to do with “authoritarianism.”

The researchers we're talking about are in a spat with Facebook over the notion that Facebook isn't doing enough to censor ideas they disagree with. You're projecting your own bad faith arguments onto other people: we're not talking about burying figs under trees. We're talking about the kind of "misinformation" that includes the covid-19 lab leak or the current predident's son moonlighting for oil and gas companies in eastern Europe. You can't have institutions deliberately trying to narrow the window of acceptable discourse in a free society because there is nobody who will be able to watch the watchers make sure that they're not abusing their authority.

> I don't understand why academics trying to understand the spread of misinformation on Facebook draws comparisons to the authoritarian government in 1984.

Its because this "concern" over miss/disinformation is not isolated to academia, the ruling party has been pushing this narrative for some time now.

The ruling party has now aligned itself with the security state, the military industrial complex, and is now working on wrestling control of information away from big tech--all while expressing great concern over moms on Facebook getting their news from unauthorized sources as viewership of conventional mass media, which they have control over, continues to fall. I don't think it is unreasonable to view this as an authorization posture. Sure it's not Ministry of Truth status, but the comparison is there

Dude, what are you talking about. The ruling party? You mean Democrats, who have been held the presidency for less than a year? The ones that barely have a majority in congress, and the ones that appointed only 3 out of 6 judges in the Supreme Court?

What does it even mean that the "ruling party" is now aligned with the "military industrial complex"?

Democrats control conventional mass media? Because the behemoth that is Fox New's and the rest of Rupert Murdoch's media empire is, not mass media?

The democrats currently control two of the three branches of the federal government, the majority of Americans are democrats, establishment republicans are defecting a la Lincoln Project thanks to the fascist bent of the new Republican party, the democrats control the majority of the cities and the states with the most economic output and influence, and big tech workers and executives are overwhelming democrats. Sure it's not 100% but they are the ones in power rn and it has been growing for the last three decades despite setbacks at the federal level.

News Corp is the only major media corporation out of _six_ that is not aligned with the democrats. They happen to be the only one not pushing the disinformation narrative and are gaining viewers, not losing them like the others.

The military sided with the establishment, which is now embodied by the democrats as the republicans have become proto fascist populists, during January 6th. The military is now having hearings on equity and inclusion, requiring reading from liberal-co-oped leftist academics. The CIA recently put out that commercial trying to present themselves as holding progressive values. The democrats are talking about a new domestic war on terror and have acquired funding to expand the capitol police. The majority of officials in both the CIA and the FBI are democrats now. I could go on and on.

I'm not trying to say that all of this is bad or that the republicans are better, I am just pointing out that establishment power is aligning behind the democrats after the whole Trump fiasco and this whole dis/misinformation narrative has strong authoritarian undertones

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