I don't disagree, but I also don't know what alternative works without weaponizing our own ideals against us. Free speech is wonderful, but, as irrational apes, it can also amplify divisiveness. I worry that the alternative at a technological scale requires a civically engaged and rationally-minded populace, and my optimism is waning. So what do you suggest as a workable alternative?
Or, alternatively, maybe that's the how the veiled power-grab is being framed. But we'd probably still need to undermine that claim about irrationality to offer an alternative.
I expect that what those studies really measure is how well social media users align and agree with the researchers
The talk about controlling the flow of bad information is a naked power grab, and always has been ever since the first governments tried to do it in the ancient era. What history has taught us is that the truth always catches up eventually, and that it is better to provide people with more information than less. I honestly don't think that the social media era has changed that at all, and it would require some very strong evidence that it did (which is completely lacking).
Remember that before Facebook, news/gossip junkies were subscribing to papers and tabloids of varying quality. We have just eliminated the dead trees. The content was just as bad, emotionally-charged, and false, and there were so many of these papers that you could create a Facebook-style information bubble.
It seems like you either need to make the case that:
1) humans aren’t irrational or
2) the risk of such irrationality at scale is not really a major risk or
3) social media isn’t uniquely poised to capitalize on that risk or
4) we already have tools capable of mitigating that risk
It sounds like you’re debating 3) but there seems to be some evidence that social media tends to spread “bad” information faster and farther than “good” information by hijacking innate human psychological traits more easily.
Also, to some degree, 1 is fairly true. You see this in economics, for example, where individuals are generally irrational about their choices, but modeling populations as a whole by treating them as 100% rational individuals gives pretty similar results to real life.
This is exactly the point being made (although I’m not sure I am completely convinced). The analogy could be “people have always killed each other. Nuclear weapons just make it faster to kill lots of people. Hence there no need to ban nuclear weapons.” The idea being there is a tipping point where the scalability of technology outpaces our biologically evolved innate sense to control it.
I agree with #1 but only in some domains. You can see it with guessing the weight of a bull at a fair or the number of jelly beans in a jar. But there’s other examples where it breaks down. In economics we have bubbles that are destructive when corrected. I’m not sure we want that short term extreme volatility in something like governance.
Really? Maybe small lies. But not bigger ones.
"The election was rigged" is a binary statement that should be resolvable. In 2022[1], when asked about the 2020 US election, more than 25% of US citizens polled thought it was rigged. More than 55% thought it was not. (Some were unsure). Certainly it's not "easy to spot" lies in that basic example.
[1] https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/axios-january-6-revis...
So the majority of people seemly are able to discern lies by that data.
Which is a good thing for free speech and democracy.
Suppose 40% of voters think social security should be eliminated, 35% of voters think social security should be saved, and 25% voters vote to save social security because they think lepricons are poisoning babies, and only the social security save party is willing to do something about it.
This would show that social security's future is now now determined by who tells the best lies about lepricons.
Whatever this thing is, I don't think "good" is the right work to describe it.
Regardless if it is in a Democracy, Republic, Monarchy, etc.
Regardless of it's means of resource distribution such as capitalism, communism, socialism, etc.
America for example, despite at times in the past having slavery being legal, committing genocide, segregation, the stealing of land, etc.
Despite being majority one religion.
Still expanded the vote. Expanded freedoms. Expanded access to education. And has shown an ability to let people that were previously expected to hide to live out in the open and freely.
If we are going to really take one survey result at one moment in time as gospel to say that American voters can't be trusted seems counter to the examples of the past where despite majority of Americans voters feeling one way, opinions were changed and progress was made. Slowly. Painfully. Yet still some positive direction.
Thanks for reading my rant and I'll leave with one last thing:
The public trust is sadly a fragile thing. When that trust is abused and poisoned by the very elected officials that have sworn to protect it the voters faith in the system becomes erroded. It unfortunately then takes longer and more work to rebuild that trust again. To move back to a society where arguments were made in good faith; not to just to troll or wage culture wars.
The point I make here is that the issues are more fundamental than e.g. China or Trump or whatever else. We're like flagellants of the ancient times looking to the Heavens for the cause of the plague, while the answer lay somewhat more mundanely on the rats scurrying about their feet. So what IS causing the massive declines in trust? It's no more complex than those fleas, it's the government behaving in an untrustworthy way. The decline started shortly after everything around the assassination of JFK ended up being shrouded in secrecy and lies, which was just the start of a never-ending series of deceitful-looking, if not plainly deceitful, actions.
And now? The en vogue "solution is supposed to be censorship, even more authoritarian levels of social control, and a borderline obsession with making sure people can only access the "right" message, which is little more than a euphemism for propaganda kept at arm's length. Do you genuinely think these sort of things will help improve trust? Look to the countless countries which were able to execute such mechanisms in times of far less externa influence, like the USSR. The government had complete control not only over absolutely all messaging, but even if who could enter or leave the country. And resulted not only in extreme distrust, but a system that predictably collapsed [long] before even reaching its centennial.
Quite simply, if the government wants to regain trust, the best way to do that is to start acting in a transparent and trustworthy fashion. Yet we're going in the exact opposite direction, hard.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust...
As for what's causing divides, the one thing I'd observe is that if it were the internet then we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case. Some Western democracies, such as Norway, are even becoming less divided. They have no censorship whatsoever besides a handful of file-sharing sites being blocked, and universal access to the internet. Beyond this there are so many possible, and completely viable, explanations for the divisions in America that I think it turns into a Rorschach test. It's like trying to explain the fall of Rome.
>we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case.
I'm not sure if this premise holds. For one, I think it's missing the nuance about the size and heterogeneity of the U.S. Take, for example, the thesis that the country is more accurately comprised of multiple different dominant sub-cultures.[1] I think when you expand the other Western democracies similarly, we see analagous divisions (see: Brexit).
[1] https://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-state...
Does gerrymandering count as rigged?
As far as I can tell, the only unreasonable position is that US elections are always completely and perfectly clean. People commit fraud to win county clerk elections - every more significant position almost certainly has some dirty games.
Gerrymandering has no impact on presidential elections, so it does not count for this survey.
Do not ever limit freedoms of your own citizens under false pretense of "saving the children". As George Carlin said on this particular subject - fuck the children. Rights supposed to be increasing if you are healthy society.
If you do not like China you can kick them out. You already have enough laws an discretions to do so. There will of course be consequences but that's the price.
Or, in the words of Jefferson, "The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."
That's the claim being made by lawmakers: that certain trade constitutes a threat to national security. I'm not really seeing much debate about that claim.
If I understand your point correctly, you're instead saying we already have the tools to ban TikTok (presumably under commerce laws) and we don't need any other means.
>"the Constitution isn't a suicide pact."
Acknowledged long time ago - do not yell fire in a cinema example.