> who do you think ought to be in charge of deciding who the idiots are?
Think about it. Engineering disciplines have mostly solved this issue. Lets take structural/civil engineering and something that affects many people - bridges. Through a combination of law, codes, and government, not any joe schome can build a bridge. Existing bridges generally work well and can be trusted. Sometimes bad things happen like the FIU collapse, but generally that's very rare.
I don't understand why there can't be a group of people, large or small educated and from diverse backgrounds, that can set basic standards on what is and is not misinformation, with due-process like things such as appeals, etc. It's not an impossible task.
> Those who want Facebook to regulate "misinformation" and gatekeep who (and what) is allowed on the site need to admit that they don't actually believe in free speech -- they believe in limited speech regulated by corporations.
If you're going to use a third party for communication and that third party is not owned by the people (i.e. a government entity) then it follows from the above statement that you don't believe in private property rights.
There is a difference between defining absolute truth and identifying obvious lies.
If a medication is approved and then a new risk factor is identified the issue goes from unproven to validated but if it wasn't based on nothing it was never a lie.
The covid vaccine containing a chip to track you was always a lie.
We don't need a ministry of Truth we need a ministry of obvious bullshit.
Under the -- very rocky -- assumption that a Ministry of Obvious Bullshit could still avoid scope creep into moderating truth, I still don't think this would fix things. People who actively want to spread bullshit will find a way. It's like spam vs. anti-spam, ads vs. ad-blockers.
Optimum number of murders is 0.
So we take steps to prevent murder.
This doesn't make the number of murders 0, but we take the steps because we want to reduce murder as much as possible, because we've agreed it's unacceptable.
Substitute "online misinformation postings" for "murders" above.
The point is just because something is difficult to eliminate is not a good reason to give up trying to eliminate it.
> I don't understand why there can't be a group of people, large or small educated and from diverse backgrounds, that can set basic standards on what is and is not misinformation, with due-process like things such as appeals, etc. It's not an impossible task.
This seems incredibly naive to me. It seems what’s happening there is we give people a list of important figures to bribe to allow their speech to be considered information (or for a competitors speech to be considered misinformation).
And even if these were incorruptible humans, there are several statements that are heavily under debate currently as fact or fiction, such as the validity of neopronouns, whether or not Spanish speakers anywhere use latinx, who is the bad art friend, if kyle rittenhouse should’ve been convicted for murder, do trans children exist and if so can they perform any transitioning or puberty delay, what is critical race theory, is the Covid vaccine rollout speed sinister and if trump lost the 2020 presidential election legitimately. And that’s just all in America.
Your comment can be loosely translated to the following:
"Authoritarianism can work. It's just the wrong people were in charge. If me and other people like me had the same power as Stalin/Hitler/Mao/Mussolini/Putin, everything would be better because they were dumb, but we know better. We can create Utopia when nobody else could. We are uniquely prescient and intelligent."
The amount of arrogance and utter lack of humility is shocking.
> who do you think ought to be in charge of deciding who the idiots are?
Think about it. Engineering disciplines have mostly solved this issue. Lets take structural/civil engineering and something that affects many people - bridges. Through a combination of law, codes, and government, not any joe schome can build a bridge. Existing bridges generally work well and can be trusted. Sometimes bad things happen like the FIU collapse, but generally that's very rare.
I don't understand why there can't be a group of people, large or small educated and from diverse backgrounds, that can set basic standards on what is and is not misinformation, with due-process like things such as appeals, etc. It's not an impossible task.
> Those who want Facebook to regulate "misinformation" and gatekeep who (and what) is allowed on the site need to admit that they don't actually believe in free speech -- they believe in limited speech regulated by corporations.
If you're going to use a third party for communication and that third party is not owned by the people (i.e. a government entity) then it follows from the above statement that you don't believe in private property rights.