I'm pro-management of information on platforms but anti-this sort of management for these purposes.
Public health misinformation, sure. News articles? Hm.
I think it is stupid to not vote for Biden over something like this. But, I also don't think the articles I've seen "debunking" the NYPost article have been very compelling.
whimsicalism says >"I think it is stupid to not vote for Biden over something like this. "<
IMO Biden's likely to pass away before he's elected and so I think it foolish to vote for him. He looks like a dead man walking - a paper cutout that Democrats move from one empty rally to another.
BTW who becomes the Democratic party nominee should Biden
a) die or fall very seriously ill before the election?
b) die on the eve of the election (i.e., halfway through the voting, when some votes have already been cast for the deceased)?
c) die after the election but before he's sworn in as President?
The road to hell (totally censored internet) is paved with good intentions (trying to clamp down on misinformation). But the road to hell (a society full of dangerously misinformed citizens) is also paved with good intentions (trying to keep the internet free of censorship).
I guess my point is that none of this is actually easy to navigate. Anyone saying "censor the story, it's no big deal" is missing the bigger picture. But IMO, so is anyone saying "disinformation is not a problem, it shouldn't be tackled".
It's not good intentions. The tech giants are attempting to throw an election and they don't care who knows at this point. For the 2012 election Facebook execs bragged about illegally assisting the Obama campaign by giving them practically the entire FB social graph, for free. That violates federal campaign finance laws. Nothing was done about it and you'll never get anyone on HN to go near talking about that fraud, which was entirely out in the open.
The media ran every possible baseless story they could about Trump the past four years, often with zero supporting evidence to the story in question. Every time they turned out to be fake stories, the media conveniently ignored it, refused to run retractions and moved on to the next fraudulent story. Twitter allowed max distribution in every single instance. Now a story blows up about Biden, and they go in to hyper overdrive to stop it, colluding with Facebook. You've got people inside of these companies directly working for the DNC and using company resources to violate federal campaign finance laws.
There is a growing list of people in big tech that need to go to prison for election interference.
If there were illegalities, you would think the Trump justice department would have gone after them. Do you have theories as to why that didn’t happen?
It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to pretend that one side of the political spectrum is being oppressed even as they control 2/3 branches of government.
You gonna cite some of these outlandish claims? Particularly interested in:
> The media ran every possible baseless story they could about Trump the past four years, often with zero supporting evidence to the story in question. Every time they turned out to be fake stories, the media conveniently ignored it, refused to run retractions and moved on to the next fraudulent story.
>You've got people inside of these companies directly working for the DNC and using company resources to violate federal campaign finance laws.
I mean the first one is well established fact. No one could argue in good faith that the quality of report first, fact check later stories on Trump is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. But it’s all just flame-bait I guess.
As for the second point, the people making these decisions at Facebook and Twitter factually did or do currently work for the DNC; for the DNC, on the Biden transition team, or worked for Harris.
> Facebook execs bragged about illegally assisting the campaign
I'm sure Chinese tech companies would brag about illegally assisting the CPC. And be happy to have the chance to do so.
BigTech is preparing us for a Chinese-styled political system. They've decided it's inevitable and "if you can't beat 'em, be the first to join 'em".
This has nothing to do with liberal vs conservative. There will be one party left standing and right now it looks like it will be the blue one not the red one, that's all it is.
Recently I've seen people invoking the term "slippery slope fallacy" to describe this phenomenon.
It's really frustrating to see this. I think there was some stupid "list of fallacies" infographic popular on Reddit a few months back that spawned this notion that there's no such thing as a "slippery slope" and calling anything a "slippery slope" means you're wrong and your argument can be tossed out.
But... that's exactly how rights are eroded. It is, in the purest sense, a slippery slope of gradual change.
I'm not sure how I feel about this specific instance (the Twitter/Biden thing) but I think the "slippery slope fallacy" fallacy is relevant here.
It is stupid especially considering that the people who are for this sort of censorship (or moderation, if you will) usually also agree with the notion that we are heading towards fascism. Which one is it then? Is it possible to take on step forward and stay put, or does every step forward indicate more steps in the future?
You can't have it both ways, it's either a fallacy or not. History tells us that it is not a fallacy, and that we should use all the warning signs we can find before it's too late to go back.
"slippery slope" is not a fallacy. It happens all the time. It happened with privacy. Do you not remember when a printer driver phoning home with usage stats was a national news story? Now you are a a bad company if you don't do this.
