> I think he and the Cato Institute want to create a world where their funders can tell lies with impunity.
Free speech only makes it harder for people to tell lies with impunity since people are then free to discuss your lies and call them out for what they are.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant". By all means, get those lies out in the open so we can publicly tear them to shreds, even better when online platforms are themselves fact checking posts.
There's some truth to this, but what's the alternative? Do we design communication systems with the assumption that all people are incapable of telling fact from fiction just to make it easier for those who can't?
I think it's far better to give people the tools to work out what is true/false and to debate difficult topics (even those without a clear answer) in a transparent manner.
I'd agree that both governments and corporations would be thrilled at the idea of a population that has no choice but to accept whatever they are told, but I think that as a people we're better served when we have the option to develop the skills to think critically and online platforms can play an important role in that.
> There's some truth to this, but what's the alternative?
I propose we try something similar to what we did when there was an undesirably low level of literacy in society: mass education. But in this case, the subject would be philosophy.
> Do we design communication systems with the assumption that all people are incapable of telling fact from fiction just to make it easier for those who can't?
I would say yes, but I would drop the "just to make it easier for those who can't" and replace it with something like "because an undesirably low level of people in society have substantial skill in logic, epistemology, rhetoric, etc, and it is at least plausible that this state of affairs could have negative consequences, including with regard to 'existential' problems like climate change or the preservation of 'democracy'[1]".
A big problem is that people tend to have pretty strong beliefs about their capabilities in any given domain, and the source of this confidence is very often substantially based on intuitive self-assessment, the output of which is a function of the very skills in question.
> I think it's far better to give people the tools to work out what is true/false and to debate difficult topics (even those without a clear answer) in a transparent manner.
100% agree. Though, we already have tools that could support that activity (HN is one such example), but they currently have no means of insisting that people do it (unlike in a classroom where unruly/etc students who are downgrading the learning of others can be and are asked to leave, in an adequately skillful way (sufficient to accomplish the goal)).
> I'd agree that both governments and corporations would be thrilled at the idea of a population that has no choice but to accept whatever they are told, but I think that as a people we're better served when we have the option to develop the skills to think critically and online platforms can play an important role in that.
Oh, humanity certainly has this option, it is not prevented by the laws of physics anyways. But having an option available does not guarantee that it will physically manifest - someone has to actually make it happen. Ironically, in the past I've run some of these ideas by moderators here and they....didn't have a lot of (even abstract) interest in the idea....which to me is a sign of...something.
[1] With luck, perhaps some day some non-trivial/adequate amount of humans on the planet would rise to a level of ability that they would be able to competently and accurately discuss the degree to which our "democracy" is actually democratic, a highly contentious and rather important topic that is absolutely butchered in any conversation I've encountered.
Free speech is another excellent example of a topic where most people (including genuinely smart people) simply lack the training required to discuss competently:
It's tempting to think that preventing an idea from being discussed online means it will go away, but that's never been the case. It's much better to have it be challenged and corrected publicly.
It really can be difficult to keep up with all the lies being told, but automated fact checking can be a great help here, and the more a lie is seen the greater the odds it will be challenged (provided we have the freedom to challenge it)
When everyone’s shouting disinformation, fact checking often falls on deaf ears. There’s no evidence that sunlight is actually the best disinfectant; if anything, making it easier for conspiracy theorists to find each other has just expanded their echo chamber.
> There’s no evidence that sunlight is actually the best disinfectant;
We've never found anything that works better. For any given idea discussing and examining the positions for and against it is still the best way to get to the truth. The more transparent that process is, the better.
Conspiracy theorists don't care about facts or truth. They will act as they do regardless, but free speech ideals make it very difficult for echo chambers to exist because all ideas can be publicly challenged.
there were, numerically, basically no alt-right people 20 years ago. now regular assholes are being infected by this stuff and a huge percentage of the information storm coming at me every day is either angry, an outright lie, a reposting of something hateful or untrue, and "sunlight" isnt helping anything. we are creating an insane landscape of anger, loathing and unreality, and now more and more public figures are amplifying it, including the owner of a major social media site.
sunlight being disinfectant is not true. stochastic terrorism driven by media hyper engagement is definitely true.
> there were, numerically, basically no alt-right people 20 years ago.
Although it's never had a good one, for any reasonable definition of "alt-right people" this isn't true at all. It's the same racist far-right folk as always, just now online (like we all are).
> now regular assholes are being infected by this stuff
Not really. The idea of racist ideology as an infection is dangerous and simply wrong. You could spend all day every day listening to racist propaganda and hate speech and you'll never suddenly wake up thinking some people are better than others because of race. If everyone who listened to hate speech became mind-controlled into being "radicalized" researchers and anti-racist activists who do follow that stuff would have a massive problem, but it doesn't happen. There are people who are vulnerable to falling in with that sort of crowd, but even then it's not the message that hooks them.
> a huge percentage of the information storm coming at me every day is either angry, an outright lie, a reposting of something hateful or untrue and "sunlight" isnt helping anything.
the internet has enabled easy global communication and some of what we get is malicious and manufactured to deceive, but mostly it's a distorted reflection of what people are feeling in real life. Social media platforms encourage the worst in us, and reward exaggerated anger and extreme inflexible positions. That's largely to do with how social media platforms are designed and the algorithms that drive engagement. We don't need massive amounts of censorship to solve that problem.
Sunlight is helping!
I've seen people (even on this site) post information only to be corrected by others. I've even seen some of those people acknowledge that they were wrong and start to question their sources!
Having hate groups in massive online communities made it easier than ever to keep an eye on them. It's enabled us to see what lies were being spread and get fact checks published to increase exposure to the truth before many people were exposed to the lies (research has shown it's far more effective to inoculate people with education before exposure to misinformation than it is to get them to change their mind on something after they've been misled).
Because many of the traitors planning to attack the capitol on Jan 6th were on well known social media platforms like Facebook and Parler police and researchers were able to use those posts to identify and prosecute people they wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
It all comes down to this: You can't fight against something you aren't allowed to see. As long as people are able to communicate (online or offline) they're going to spread misinformation. We shouldn't just sweep it under the rug so that we can pretend the problem is solved. We have to confront it directly and openly even when it's uncomfortable.
How do you think the conspiracy theory community would rank in terms of who produces the most misinformation?
There are many different metrics that could be considered, so maybe that would be the best place to start if we were interested in having an actually serious discussion on the topic.
Free speech only makes it harder for people to tell lies with impunity since people are then free to discuss your lies and call them out for what they are.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant". By all means, get those lies out in the open so we can publicly tear them to shreds, even better when online platforms are themselves fact checking posts.