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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

This is valid opinion but it really is a strong negative to just spout something like this as if it's self-evident, and that any disagreement is obviously just so stupid you don't even need to spend the extra 30 seconds or so to justify it.

The biggest and most obvious question is who gets to decide what qualifies as "disinformation" - including what the difference is between disinformation and just being wrong, and how is that protected from changes in the political landscape?

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Unfiltered, anonymous speech on major social media platforms is the equivalent of a supervirus. Bad, poisonous ideas spread more quickly than truth and logic can catch up, and no one is silenced or held to account when these bad ideas keep spreading.

I don't know what the solution to organized disinformation is. I don't know if the "cure" would be worse than the disease of disinformation. But it's naive to think nation-states are not using social media to leverage peoples' negative emotions and dividing society and making people disrespect really important things that should be held in really high regard in society, like truth and science.

Interestingly the biggest purveyors of organized disinformation are governments. Anyone else remember how the US government had a massive disinformation campaign that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and then orchestrated an invasion?

Even more revealing is that the disinformation campaign was aided and abetted by US media including such supposed stalwarts as the New York Times.

I think there is more trust to be had in the stalwarts still than in the alternatives I see my mother watch and read, notably fox news and OANN and Investmentwatchblog.com .

Nonsense, but even if this is all true, the solution is more education, more debate, more speech, not heavy-handed government imposition of what can and cannot be said in what contexts.

Eventually, the people - or person - wielding that heavy hand will not have your best interests at heart.

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