The rise of the "Misinformation Police"

[BrightonCorgi]

3 hours ago, Namisgr11 said:

But you don't have a right to reach out with that fallacy via any newspaper or internet editorial page or televised news show that you choose, as has been true and practiced in the US for hundreds of years now.

Why not?  Please explain. 

Just because what is printed you may not agree with does not make it illegal.  Is belief in God a fallacy?  One may not be able to prove there is God.  Should that be considered mis-information if one states that God created that world?

You do "have a right" to reach out with "that fallacy" and has been true in the US for hundreds of years.  Be "remember the Maine" or the denial & downplay of casualties in Vietnam or the existence of Concentration camps.  There's a long history of newspapers denials and purposeful misrepresentations of the news.  They have the right to publish news as they see it.  Free press.  Free speech. 

You don't like it when the opinion is differing from yours.

[Namisgr11]

28 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Why not?  Please explain. 

Ask, if you could, any of the many thousands of people who have served as editors of the Editorial and Opinion pages of newspapers since Franklin started publishing and editing Poor Richard's Almanac and the Pennsylvania Gazette.  So while there were places in Head House Square in old city Philadelphia where people could speak publicly on any matter they so chose (thanks to freedom of speech), editorial decisions kept out of widespread reach fringe opinions, fallacies, and lies.  Thus has it been in countries that support free speech for centuries. 

As to why not, the answer is obvious to me.  Not everything that spews out of the mouths, keyboards, and pens of people is consistent with fact or generally accepted knowledge.  So unless you want to blur what we know from what we don't, and have large swaths of the population believing that the planet is flat and the Holocaust never happened, or teach these and other fallacies to our children in the schools, there have to be standards involving information reach.  More often than not, the lines between information and misinformation, fact and fallacy are well established and firmly drawn, and certainly don't need government involvement to implement, just a societal covenant.

As if anyone needed further explanation why not allow unfettered misinformation and lies to spread indiscriminately, one need only be reminded of the violence that the spread of persistent and flammable misinformation caused less than three short years ago.

[Bijan]

11 hours ago, 99call said:

horseshit!

It's like Tucker Carlson whining about elites.......it's just utter farcical bullshit.    The last 20 years has been a A to Z l in the old WW2 lesson  of "accuse you enemy of that which you are guilty".      It's old.......it's boring, and........nobody it buying it. 

The right wing has crashed the western world into a swamp, and we are currently all looking at each other going,   "right!.....who's going to get us out of this mess?"

I just read an excellent book:

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

It's really about moral psychology how children construct their moral notions of right and wrong.

But in part 2 he explains that morality is not just about harm and fairness.

And gives 6 bases for morality. Care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation and liberty/oppression.

What he found via a questionnaire (the methodology of which I have criticisms of, but agree with the overall slant of the results) is that liberals favor: care, fairness and then liberty but don't care as much about loyalty, authority and sanctity, while conservatives care about all equally, with the one exception that to liberals fairness means equality and to conservatives it means proportionality.

Anyways what this means is that since liberals (in the sense liberal carries in the US context, but the left or progressive liberals everywhere else) don't think about the other bases, they have a blind spot when it comes to understanding the right/conservatives.

Again I don't fully agree with all his reasoning but I am fairly convinced of the conclusion that liberals have a rather uncharitable view of the other side.

[El Presidente]

1 hour ago, Namisgr11 said:

As to why not, the answer is obvious to me.  Not everything that spews out of the mouths, keyboards, and pens of people is consistent with fact or generally accepted knowledge.  

That confuses me.

It was largely generally accepted that the world was indeed flat. We could go on for pages on what was once consensus that proved incorrect. 

One shouldn't fear alternative thought/opinion. One should simply be prepared to examine and argue commentary on it's merits. Shine a light, question, investigate.

What we don't need is sanctioned government thought police. Even with best intentions, the threat is the morphing to a modern Spanish Inquisition 

 

 

[Bijan]

10 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Suppression of free speech is the foundation of a totalitarian regime.  Miss-information how ever that is defined is allowable free speech.  Whether someone or something thinks that information could harm someone else doesn't matter.

A lot of governments are moving away from free speech.  Like a saying in China, "if nail sticks up too high; it must be banged down". 

An easy fix to misinformation if governments cared about it, vs wanting to stoke populism for a power grab, would be to have official government posts/channels stating the "party line".

If it is stated in a non obnoxious way it would provide relevant and welcome information for those that trust the government. Or at least a counterpoint for even those who don't.

The real problem is that we have less trust in our governments than the Chinese have in theirs.

[Namisgr11]

28 minutes ago, El Presidente said:

That confuses me.

It was largely generally accepted that the world was indeed flat.we could go on for pages on what was once consensus that proved incorrect. 

There's a difference between beliefs without basis in fact and scientific information.  There were no critical experiments performed in ancient times providing compelling evidence that the planet was flat or that the sun orbited around it.  These ideas were supported by beliefs, along with the misinterpretation of casual  visual information that was never tested critically.  People looking out over the horizon saw flatness - if they'd done the same overlooking the Grand Canyon, they'd have easily seen the Earth's curvature.  But once carefully collected and controlled information became available inconsistent with a flat earth, for instance conclusive evidence for its curvature, the general consensus had the information required to change.  After the globe was circumnavigated back in the 16th century, the general consensus was solidified to the point that continuing to hold the notion that the planet was flat was an extremist and virtually certainly fallacious idea.  The same can be said for the evolution from beliefs to evidentiary knowledge of the Earth's orbit.

This BBC video does a nice job of explaining how the old belief of a flat earth arose and how it was disproven once evidentiary information became available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVMFOvxaxW8

[Bijan]

2 hours ago, Namisgr11 said:

But you don't have a right to reach out with that fallacy via any newspaper or internet editorial page or televised news show that you choose, as has been true and practiced in the US for hundreds of years now.

What you have to realize is there's no judges from up high that can enforce this. This is a result of the decency of the people/public rejecting such garbage.

Look at most Western history honestly and a lot of what you say can't be said in the respectable press was said, at least until the end of WW2 and probably the late 60s early 70s.

[BrightonCorgi]

2 minutes ago, Namisgr11 said:

There's a difference between beliefs without basis in fact and scientific information.

Is evangelizing the gospel propagating mis-information? 

[Namisgr11]

7 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Is evangelizing the gospel propagating mis-information? 

What do you think the general consensus is on the matter?

As for me, I suspect that the general consensus is that religious beliefs are just that, beliefs.  They stand on their own, neither having nor requiring nor contradicting the involvement of science, until they impinge on our knowledge of the natural world, for example, on the question of the age of the Universe, for which there is a lot of evidentiary information.

[BrightonCorgi]

3 minutes ago, Namisgr11 said:

What do you think the general consensus is on the matter?

As for me, I suspect that the general consensus is that religious beliefs are just that, beliefs.  They neither have nor require nor contradict the involvement of science, until they impinge on our knowledge of the natural world, say, dealing with the age of the Universe.

Yes or No response to my question would be appropriate. 

[Bijan]

41 minutes ago, Namisgr11 said:

As to why not, the answer is obvious to me.

Be that as it may.

To me it is equally obvious that editing was necessary because newspapers have limited space for content and only so much room on the front page.

[Namisgr11]

3 minutes ago, Bijan said:

Be that as it may.

To me it is equally obvious that editing was necessary because newspapers have limited space for content and only so much room on the front page.

It's in the nature of the editing that Franklin and the editors and publishers after him performed that is the core of the matter.  Just as it is in a society's best interest to focus the limited time of a school year on generally accepted knowledge at the expense of generally accepted fallacy.

[Fireball]

Misinformation is becoming a serious problem likely to get worse, but I don't want government deciding what is or isn't. I do want to see social media eliminate anonymity and require proof of age, identity, and country/location of users.

Exactly. Government should not have any control in speech. But the misinformation problem is real.

Realistically, the modern free societies that exist around the world are relatively not that old. With advent of the internet and mass communications, it will be interesting to see what happens. The long term viability and existence of these free societies are not guaranteed.

[Bijan]

To agree with @99call's assessment of conservative bias (though often from liberals, let's think of Blair's labour party) in media:

 

 

[BrightonCorgi]

3 minutes ago, Fireball Ron said:

The long term viability and existence of these free societies are not guaranteed.

Globalism and free societies cannot co-exist together.  Liberty is an outdated notion that is dangerous to the individual if wants to toe the line.

[Bijan]

46 minutes ago, Namisgr11 said:

It's in the nature of the editing that Franklin and the editors and publishers after him performed that is the core of the matter.

Yes but the topic of this thread is governments setting up anti misinformation task forces.

Franklin did that out of his own personal convictions and was successful (to whatever extent he was) because people were satisfied with the news he provided.

The claim here in the original is that "bad actors" are providing presumably compelling "fake news", that has to be banned or banished. Not the same thing.

 

46 minutes ago, Fireball Ron said:

Exactly. Government should not have any control in speech. But the misinformation problem is real.

As they say in IT support: PEBCAK

Problem is between chair and keyboard.

Healthy and happy people shut off the news when there's crazy propaganda, not turn up the volume and binge it.

Edit: liberals will say Fox news is biased and fake news, and conservatives will say CNN is biased and fake news. But likely more upset the other side agrees with what is being said and how it is being said.

[Fireball]

39 minutes ago, Bijan said:

Problem is between chair and keyboard.
Healthy and happy people shut off the news when there's crazy propaganda, not turn up the volume and binge it.
 

So true. A co worker and my self are politically polar opposites. Neither of us follow the cable news that much. We were discussing an sensitive issue where we totally disagreed with each other’s views on. During the discussion, I believe each of us were open and therefore learned something we may not have known before. Both of us grew a little bit, even if it didn’t change our opinions.

Talking with REAL people can have a real effect.

 

[Namisgr11]

41 minutes ago, Bijan said:

The claim here in the original is that "bad actors" are providing presumably compelling "fake news", that has to be banned or banished. Not the same thing.

I've already agreed with others who've argued that governments of free nations need to stay out of the information sifting business unless it's a matter dealing with information collected by the government, but it's an important business nonetheless.  I don't know what else I can tell you on it, so I discussed other aspects of the misinformation issue important to me, especially the vital and sometimes overlooked distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of reach.

It's already been made clear and decided in the courts that there are indeed bad actors with lots of reach purposefully spreading false information, and become readily apparent by public events over the past two plus years that the wide spread of false information sometimes produces dire and violent consequences.

[Cigar Surgeon]

37 minutes ago, Bijan said:

The claim here in the original is that "bad actors" are providing presumably compelling "fake news", that has to be banned or banished. Not the same thing.

Should foreign nationals be allowed to spread disinformation through campaigns in other countries? 

[BrightonCorgi]

14 minutes ago, Namisgr11 said:

It's already been made clear and decided in the courts that there are indeed bad actors with lots of reach purposefully spreading false information...

Which court cases are these?

[Namisgr11]

10 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Which court cases are these?

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/19/1170673893/there-are-even-more-2020-election-defamation-suits-beyond-the-fox-dominion-case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/26/1190173929/rudy-giuliani-georgia-election-workers

[BrightonCorgi]

9 minutes ago, Namisgr11 said:

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/19/1170673893/there-are-even-more-2020-election-defamation-suits-beyond-the-fox-dominion-case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/26/1190173929/rudy-giuliani-georgia-election-workers

None of these are verdicts so how can you conclude "It's already been made clear and decided in the courts"?  Fox was a settlement.  NPR as your source;  not Marxist Today?

Are you willfully spreading mis-information? 🤣

[Namisgr11]

15 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

None of these are verdicts so how can you conclude "It's already been made clear and decided in the courts"?  Fox was a settlement.  NPR as your source;  not Marxist Today?

In several of the cited cases, cash awards were accompanied by public admission of guilt by the defendants.  This includes but is not limited to Fox.  Rudy Giuliani serving as you-know-who's personal attorney has admitted to defamation in court as well, for instance.  And the court records are public, so any lame attempt to obfuscate the message by attacking the messenger has no basis.

In the Dominion defamation lawsuit, the courts ruled that Fox purposefully spread false information, and Fox acknowledged such as part of the mutually agreed upon settlement deal.  Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged the court's earlier ruling that Fox spread falsehoods about Dominion.

So it has indeed been decided in the courts multiple times now, with many more defamation suits involving the purposeful spreading of false information still being adjudicated.

Have fun, all, with the continuing discussion.

[Bijan]

42 minutes ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

Should foreign nationals be allowed to spread disinformation through campaigns in other countries? 

Again to me this is a problem of the receiver and not the transmitter.

It is a bitter truth that there are people in countries throughout the world that are receptive to what are more or less treasonous ideas/information. The same way that there are people ready to more or less commit suicide via opioids or whatever other drugs come in from abroad.

It's the easy way out to blame foreign powers/nationals, etc. Instead of fixing our countries.

Rhetorically:

Is there some benefit to having domestic disinformation? That we should not ban that but only the foreign kind?

Is there some benefit to people drinking themselves to death with domestic alcohol, or sniffing domestic glue? That we should not ban those and only foreign opioids?

[Cigar Surgeon]

1 hour ago, Bijan said:

Again to me this is a problem of the receiver and not the transmitter.

It is a bitter truth that there are people in countries throughout the world that are receptive to what are more or less treasonous ideas/information. The same way that there are people ready to more or less commit suicide via opioids or whatever other drugs come in from abroad.

It's the easy way out to blame foreign powers/nationals, etc. Instead of fixing our countries.

Rhetorically:

Is there some benefit to having domestic disinformation? That we should not ban that but only the foreign kind?

Is there some benefit to people drinking themselves to death with domestic alcohol, or sniffing domestic glue? That we should not ban those and only foreign opioids?

In Canada and the US we already put limits on what is considered 'free speech'.  The classic law example is yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre.

I don't see it as an either or problem.  There is a problem with foreign interference and there is a problem with domestic critical thinking skills.  Both things need to be tackled, in different ways.

The alcohol, glue, opioid conversation is a different topic but both the US and Canada are already actively putting in restrictions for tobacco, sugar.  In Canada required labelling for food packages and restaurant nutritional information.