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Comment by idiotsecant | Hacker News Reader

Sure, great. Now suppose that a very effective campaign of social destabilisation propaganda exists that poses an existential risk to your society.

What do you do?

It's easy to rely on absolutes and pithy quotes that don't solve any actual problems. What would you, specifically, with all your wisdom do?

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Let's not waste time on idle hypotheticals and fear mongering. No propaganda campaign has ever posed an existential threat to the USA. Let us know when one arrives.

Have you seen the US recently? Just in the last couple of days, the president is standing up and broadcasting clear medical lies about autism, while a large chunk of the media goes along with him.

I have seen the US recently. I'm not going to attempt to defend the President but regardless of whether he is right or wrong about autism this is hardly an existential threat to the Republic. Presidents have been wrong about many things before and that is not a valid justification for censorship. In a few years we'll have another president and he or she will be wrong about a whole different set of issues.

I hope I’m wrong, but I think America is fundamentally done, because it turns out the whole “checks and balances” system turned out to be trivial to steamroll as president, and future presidents will know that now.

By done I don’t mean it won’t continue to be the worlds biggest and most important country, but I don’t expect any other country to trust America more than they have to for a 100 years or so.

A lot of people thought that America was fundamentally done in 1861, and yet here we are. The recent fracturing of certain established institutional norms is a matter of some concern. But whether other countries trust us or not is of little consequence. US foreign policy has always been volatile, subject to the whims of each new administration. Our traditional allies will continue to cooperate regardless of trust (or lack thereof) because mutual interests are still broadly aligned and they have no credible alternative.

> whether other countries trust us or not is of

some consequence. Not all consuming, but significant.

> Our traditional allies will continue to cooperate regardless of

whether they continue to include the US within that circle to the same degree, or indeed at all.

Trump's tariff's have been a boon for China's global trade connections, they continue to buy soybeans, but from new partners whereas before they sourced mainly from the US.

> turned out to be trivial to steamroll as president, and future presidents will know that now

... when the Presidency, House, and Senate are also controlled by one unified party, and the Supreme Court chooses not to push back aggressively.

That rarely happens.

They are spreading this nonsense in part in order to hide from the fact that they refuse to release the Epstein files, something that seems to include a rather lot of high profile/high importance official potentially doing really bad things.

It's called flooding the zone, and it is a current Republican strategy to misinform, to sow defeatism in their political opposition, default/break all of the existing systems for handling politics, with the final outcome to manipulate the next election. And they publicized this yet people like you claim to think it's non issue.

"You cannot trust basic statements of fact coming from POTUS, HHS, FDA, CDC, DOD" is absolutely an existential risk.

I won't attempt to defend the current administration's incompetent and chaotic approach to public health (or communications in general) but it's hardly an existential crisis. The country literally existed for over a century before HHS was even created.

Among other major problems, the logic in your comment implicitly assumes that the worst a badly-run (incompetent, malevolent, or some combination) central authority can be is equal to the effect of no central authority.

Another important error is the implicit assumption that public health risks are constant, and do not vary with changing time and conditions, so that the public health risk profile today is essentially the same as in the first century of the US’s existence.

It doesn't have to be national threat. Social media can be used by small organisations or even sufficiently motivated individuals to easily spread lies and slanders against individuals or group and it's close to impossible to prevent (I've been fighting some trolls threatening a group of friends on Facebook lately, and I can attest how much the algorithm favor hate speach over reason)

That's a non sequitur. Your personal troubles are irrelevant when it comes to public policy, social media, and the fundamental human right of free expression. While I deplore hate speech, it's existence doesn't justify censorship.

It is of course subjective. For you hate speech does not justify censorship but for me it does. Probably because we make different risk assessments: you might expect hate speech to have no consequences in general and censorship to lead to authoritarianism, whereas I expect hate speech to have actual consequences on people life that are worse and more likely than authoritarianism. When I think about censorship and authoritarianism, I think about having to hide, but when I think about hate speech I picture war propaganda and genocides.

There are twin goals: total freedom of speech and holding society together (limit polarization). I would say you need non-anonymous speech, reputation systems, trace-able moderation (who did you upvote), etc. You can say whatever you want but be ready to stand by it.

One could say the problem with freedom of speech was that there weren't enough "consequences" for antisocial behavior. The malicious actors stirred the pot with lies, the gullible and angry encouraged the hyperbole, and the whole US became polarized and divided.

And yes, this system chills speech as one would be reluctant to voice extreme opinions. But you would still have the freedom to say it but the additional controls exert a pull back to the average.

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