
Stamos says the US must ‘come together to protect’ democracy from misinformation - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/17/18100385/facebook-alex-stamos-former-cso-op-ed-russian-misinformation-democracy-laws
======
noetic_techy
Oh please. The headline might as well have been:

We need to protect people from information and ideas we don't agree with.

Freedom of speech is not just about speech, its about ideas. Nobody should
ever be deemed the arbiter of truth. Not Facebook, not the government, not
anyone. Decentralize the social networks. Let everyone speak, even the bad
people.

Realize that you actually make the problem worse by suppressing information,
even bad information. Making information "forbidden" makes it that much more
appealing to people, enhancing the us-vs-them tribal mentality. Especially
when its a reasonable opinion or idea with some merit. Suddenly it sounds like
suppression of the truth.

~~~
hobs
Saying "everyone should speak" actually means "everyone should speak according
to their purchasing power in the market" right now - so I think your premise,
while well meaning, is not realistic.

Having liars with big pockets broadcast lies (propaganda) works very
effectively, no "black market suppression of the truth" is needed to weaponize
bad ideas.

~~~
harshreality
Propaganda from deep-pocketed individuals and organizations is a problem, but
the current cure is worse than the disease, particularly when the censorship
itself is biased. It takes more to be labelled fringe and justify censorship
for left-leaning speech, than it takes for right-leaning speech.

The root problem with modern discourse and social media is subtle, _unforced_
siloing of communication within subgroups, so that there's not enough
subgroup-bridging discussion. Overton windows shrink until subgroup-bridging
discussion is mostly impossible. That all happens without any active
censorship.

~~~
pjc50
> It takes more to be labelled fringe and justify censorship for left-leaning
> speech, than it takes for right-leaning speech.

That's because there's more harm-promoting speech, and more incoherent lies,
from the right? Saying there should be equal treatment of left and right
speech _regardless of the content_ is nonsense.

~~~
basurihn
I come from a very right-leaning area. I was quite surprised to find that
everyone I knew supported the daily killing and torture of Jews... because
that is what Nazis do, right?

I was also quite surprised to hear that my community wants to take away rights
from black people, which I heard in a radio ad not so long ago.

The left has its equal share of hobgoblins.

~~~
pjc50
> I was also quite surprised to hear that my community wants to take away
> rights from black people, which I heard in a radio ad not so long ago

Have you checked this? What's their opinion on, for example, Black Lives
matter?

~~~
basurihn
Most of them don't have the education to know the definition of a false
equivalence.

That you can seriously entertain Republicans would remove black freedoms if
not for Black Lives Matter just turned this thread into one where you can rant
away without my participation.

I'm learning to walk away from hate.

------
mrleiter
This is a classic example of shifting the blame. Yes, he admits that facebook
spent too much time trying to minimise the problem. And indeed they did. But
it's not only the misinformation that is the problem, facebook itself is at
the heart of the problem.

They are one of many, albeit facebook being on the more influential side,
platforms through which misinformation is spread. And of course education is
the main handle to push to stop spreading of misinformation. But facebook
earned I don't know how much money on this and they tried to minimise the
problem out of monetary concerns.

We thought the Internet would bring prosperity and an explosion of knowledge
growth. And it surely did. But it also connected millions of less educated
people who never knew that there were so many others out there - because they
never read what they believed in the newspapers. And now they know that many
others share their views. Again, education is at the core of a solution to
this misinformation crisis. So maybe call the structural problems the burning
embers and facebook the accelerant.

~~~
chrisseaton
Is ‘less educated’ code for people with views different to yours?

~~~
mrleiter
No, there are some less educated people who share the same views as me. But it
is no secret that the degree of education correlates strongly with certain
political views. And the people currently in power in America certainly know
that and play that to their advantage.

They know full well that their proposed solutions won't work a bit, but
instead make them richer along the way. But the less educated people don't
know that, they are being abused and mislead. I am not against conservative
people and also not against people with different views. We live in a plural
society and that is a good thing. It becomes a problem when some of those
people can't tell the difference between truth and lie.

~~~
kingofhdds
While it's probable that formal education levels correlate with political
choices, it doesn't necessary imply that higher degree leads to better ones,
or even reduces possibility of being manipulated.

Also, every major player of every political fight knows, and has tools to
"play to their advantage", it's not like some bad vs good fairytale.

And if you are against all major players then you may want to consider that it
is exactly yours opinion which eventually will be censored if the idea about
mandatory purging of "bad information" wins.

~~~
mrleiter
Exactly. I was referring to formal education. And I didn't mean that a higher
degree leads to better choices. But it does reduce the possibility of being
manipulated through fake news. And while talking about education, we should
also overhaul the way it is mostly taught - from simple memory functions to
actual critical thinking and understanding. Go check any authoritarian or
reactionary government - they cut spending in education, fighting poverty and
social welfare. For exactly that reason: gaining more voters in the long term.

~~~
kingofhdds
>it does reduce the possibility of being manipulated through fake news

I'm sorry to say, but there's no evidence it's true. Formally more educated,
and formally less educated belong to different social tribes, and react to
different information stimulants, and that's all. Advertising industry
successfully pushes peoples choices of all sorts of education.

Also, I believe your idea of authoritarianism is not wholly correct. I was
born, and raised in a real dictatorship which provided free tuition (probably,
at least partially because it makes a great influence, and control apparatus
once nationalized) as well as cheap health, and communal services. In fact,
all left dictatorships did/do it to some extent to have an ideological selling
point. Also, dictatorships often care less about one's voting pattern, because
they can count it properly. What do they always care about? Information. They
all restrict freedom of speech.

~~~
neltnerb
What kind of evidence would convince you that education results in less
susceptibility to propaganda? This seems facially true to me, but if someone
studied it formally would you believe the results since the researchers are
educated?

------
platz
> the ultimate ‘last line of defense’ will be users who are willing to
> question ‘what they see and hear’

Nobody cares because they're more interested in their team winning, by
whatever means necessary, than being charitable.

> who recently stepped down from his role as Chief Security Officer

... But couldn't make that argument or be effective in that capacity while
employed. That is why we need something like codetermination - so that,
completely internally, workers can have influence on what to produce, how to
produce, and where to produce it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Nobody cares because they 're more interested in their team winning, by
> whatever means necessary, than being charitable._

I'd say that few people have a reason to care about the truth _at all_ at this
level. Take natural world: people will believe whatever bullshit someone sells
to them, because unless you're a scientist or engineer in a field that
requires you to be right, the lie has zero first-order impact on your life.

What people do want to do in general is to be likable, feel accepted in the
groups they belong to, and feel OK with themselves. If a belief helps
facilitate that, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.

I'd say at least half of the problem is that most of the information people
need to vote well - even for their own interest - has little first-order
impact on their lives. I.e. it's an artifact of specialization. Because when
you look even at those uneducated people, in the areas of life they deal with
daily, they turn out to be pretty smart and have accurate beliefs.

~~~
pjc50
> Take natural world: people will believe whatever bullshit someone sells to
> them, because unless you're a scientist or engineer in a field that requires
> you to be right, the lie has zero first-order impact on your life

There's a substantial alternative medicine / anti-vax movement where believing
this bullshit will have real negative consequenses for people's health.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I know, and I believe it's because the consequences are still not direct
enough. Diseases strike at random, and curing them is a complex process (often
involving the illness going away on its own, or actual medicine not working).
The temporal separation between cause and effect is large enough to allow some
people to believe in altmed/antivax nonsense.

------
swsieber
Fake news is a symtpom, not a cause. To fight fake news, we'd have to go to
the sources (note: this is mostly off the top of my head):

* Fight partisanship/polarization. Not sure how to do this. But taking a big step back and trying to discuss things without labels would be a good start. And who knows... maybe a different voting system to encourage more parties to exist? There's a lot to do here.

* Fight corruption. The U.S. system is corrupt. Corrupt leaders thrive on partisanship.

* Stop emotionally framing things. An article frames something with lots of emotion? I'd be wary that they're telling you how to feel so you don't worry about what they're trying to achieve (what to think, or just views for money)

* Reject online advertising. Online advertising equates views with money. The more inflammatory something is, the more money it brings in. Be equally wary of any micro-transactional news / article service.

~~~
lustysocietyorg
> To fight fake news, we'd have to go to the sources

True. But many people do not check sources and do not want sources. The more
sources you link, the more likely your message is ignored or downvoted or
considered spam. Some comment section tools even refuse posts with too many
links.

The EU fights against sources.

Macron vows to tighten media control because 'fake news threatens democracy'
[https://www.rt.com/news/414945-macron-france-fake-news-
law/](https://www.rt.com/news/414945-macron-france-fake-news-law/)

Senator Demands More censorship From Facebook & Youtube
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goNDSUZsQ1c&t=181](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goNDSUZsQ1c&t=181)

Out-of-control censorship machines removed my article warning of out-of-
control censorship machines [https://juliareda.eu/2018/08/censorship-machines-
gonna-censo...](https://juliareda.eu/2018/08/censorship-machines-gonna-
censor/)

> Fight partisanship/polarization.

This is what every party/camp is fighting for. Maximize the own party/camp,
minimize the party/camp of the others.

I agree that much could and should be done. E.g. voting with paper ballots
every 4 years like centuries ago should be replaced by secure online voting
that gives decision power to every citizen at any time for any political
decision.

> Fight corruption.

At least in the USA, voting for Democrats or Republicans is voting for
corruption. Corruption is a sign of quality for US voters. The more connected
with the industry and the more money for campaigns, the better and stronger
and more real and more competent the party appears to voters. Too few US
people vote for the poor unknown parties with no coverage by the mainstream
media that calls itself the reasonable truthful trustworthy non-fringe
mainstream media.

> Stop emotionally framing things.

I doubt that this is a solution. E.g. too many US Americans do not care about
their evil actions in the world. Maybe they know about them but they do not
care enough. The US military is considered as a trustworthy glorious
organisation instead of a tool of and for evil persons to promote death and
misery worldwide.

Recent example after decades of war crimes:

\- Yemen: Tackling the world’s largest humanitarian crisis
[https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020232](https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020232)

\- Pompeo Backed Yemen War For Weapon Sales Profit
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azx90nHiIeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azx90nHiIeg)

US Americans refuse to remove misery and poverty even in their own country.

UN Head: US Has 'Morally Wrong' Healthcare System Because Of Corruption
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrCu9dt9JpI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrCu9dt9JpI)

Although US Americans might care, they still behave as if they did not.

Fox Viewers Overwhelmingly Approve Med4All By 73%
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX5GSClA8z4&t=349](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX5GSClA8z4&t=349)

CNN’s Jake Tapper Caught Lying About Med4All - Lies Again
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1jZNepTx80&t=35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1jZNepTx80&t=35)

> Reject online advertising.

I do not think that lack of money improves communication and reporting.
Survival and work requires money. Money is received either by random
advertising or by direct sponsorship by companies or by an existing paying
loyal audience with a certain world view or by a revolution of the economic
system that guarantees economic human rights and safety for all.

[https://lustysociety.org/money.html](https://lustysociety.org/money.html)

~~~
swsieber
It's not the money that makes bad reporting - its the direct tying of eyeballs
to monetary reward. That incentivizes creating of very clickbaity, meme-like
reporting.

~~~
lustysocietyorg
Any content is quickly recognizable as what it is unless it looks serious and
not clickbaity and was created to promote lies.

E.g. the Yugoslav war lies and the Iraq war lies and Libya war lies or Syria
war lies and Russia "war" lies promoted by certain governments that where
published by all "serious" mainstream media to justify and promote war; the
worst of all crimes. Every war is a war crime.

Hague Tribunal Exonerates Slobodan Milosevic Again [https://www.strategic-
culture.org/news/2017/12/07/hague-trib...](https://www.strategic-
culture.org/news/2017/12/07/hague-tribunal-exonerates-slobodan-milosevic-
again.html)

KOSOVO German 2008 documentary-It began with a lie PART 1of5
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_scokGJga8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_scokGJga8c)

Judgment! 1/3 - The Bosnian 'Death Camp' Accusation: An Expose
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xox7TR11evI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xox7TR11evI)

The Iraq War - TOTAL LIES and TOTAL PROOF - Part 1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNFDXSKh17I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNFDXSKh17I)

------
chiefalchemist
> Congress should update its laws regarding political advertisers, and social
> media users need to “adjust to a media environment in which several dozen
> gatekeepers no longer control what is newsworthy.”

What is happening as been happening all along, for years. The now difference
is who is doing the influencing; for what ends; and yes the how has changed
but that's not really what's causing the friction.

For Stamos to suggest more people need to think for themselves, that more need
to question authority more, sounds naive, at best. That is the last thing the
powers that be will allow. They're fine with misinformation, they just want to
sure it's their's and no one elses.

The irony is this latest "scandle" will ultimately be solved with less
individual free thought, not more. It will be a psychological / emotional /
intellectual nanny state. No human neuro activity too small to micro manage.

Yeah, it sounds extreme. But so would The Patriot Act pre 9-11. So would Ed
Snowden before we knew about Ed Snowden. Both of these were met with barely a
shrug of the shoulders. There's nothing to be fixed from Congress' pov
everything is as it should be. It just needs a slight bit of adjusting.

~~~
CM30
Yeah, I think it all basically comes down to:

The internet is destroying existing power structures, and giving control to
alternative media sources/platforms/whatever that people are starting to trust
more than the 'mainstream' ones.

So all the hand wringing and fake news paranoia and what not feels like a
desparate, last ditch attempt by those who did well before to try and cram the
internet/social media genie back into the bottle before they're made
irrelevant.

Does this potentially lead to authoritarianism and what not? Possibly, but the
answer isn't to try and shut down freedom of speeech/independent media/any
thought outside of an ever narrowing acceptable boundary, but to ask why these
views are on the rise and deal with the real causes.

~~~
chiefalchemist
> "The internet is destroying existing power structures, and giving control to
> alternative media sources/platforms/whatever that people are starting to
> trust more than the 'mainstream' ones."

Yes. But not only sources of info but __more importantly__ ways for people to
organize into groups. I'm not talking about protests and such but getting shit
done. Traditionally, this was the role of gov and other power structures. Yes,
there are now viable - and likely more effective - alternatives to such
traditions.

To your point, this explains all the divisiveness. Things are being taken to
extremes (by the DNC, Mainstream Media, GOP and their associated Big Inc
partners) in order to maintain a belief that they need to exist and continue
to hold so much power. The show also serves as a distraction.

Something has to give. But I feel history says it's going to get worse before
it gets better.

------
someguydave
If we assume that voters are unable to deal with misinformation then we have
already given up on democracy. The next logical step is to decide how to blunt
the will of the misinformed voter.

~~~
platz
Depends on what you mean by democracy. Suppose you get 100% voter
participation through free and fair elections. Are you still sure that fails
the definition of democracy? How hard is it to make that case?

What if the voters choose an outcome you just don't happen to like? Is that
all of a sudden undemocratic?

~~~
hannasanarion
And if the majority of those voters are opposed to democracy itself, and vote
for candidates who promise to take away votes from people they don't like, or
establish a theocracy? "America isn't and shouldn't be a democracy" is a
common Republican talking point. This has happened in Poland and Hungary and
its darn close to happening in the United States.

~~~
0x445442
Not sure what you’re implying with your statement about the Republican talking
point. The point of the point is the U.S. was designed to be a Constitutional
Republic which isn’t a democracy.

The Constitutional Republic is designed to protect the rights and freedoms of
the individual via the Constitution and bill of rights. If by Democracy one is
referring solely to majority rule, then protection against individual rights
and freedom are lost.

The U.S. should fear the latter, not the former.

~~~
siidooloo
The United Stares is a constitutional republic and a representative democracy.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and a representative
democracy. Democracy is not the opposite of a republic. Monarchy is.

~~~
0x445442
True as long as the representative democracy doesn’t infringe on the
individual’s constitutional rights. That’s where the democracy bit gives way
to the judicial branch. Of coarse with a politicized court you’re right back
to the ills of a democracy.

~~~
siidooloo
What you’re saying is still true in a constitutional monarchy. Being a
republic or democracy doesn’t matter. Its the constitutional part that’s
important.

~~~
hannasanarion
Republic and Democracy are not exclusive. There is no such thing as "being
republic or democracy". It's really simple:

Monarchy: yes king

Republic: no king

Democracy: yes votes

Autocracy: no votes

Constitutional: yes constitution

Absolute: no constitution

You can have these in any combination.

------
quotemstr
I strongly disagree with this approach. Ideology makes a slave out of reason,
so the temptation to label everything that conflicts with one's worldview as
"misinformation" will become irresistible. To determine to combat
"misinformation" is to appoint yourself the arbiter of what's true and false,
and that sort of thing never ends well.

The correct approach is to allow all legal content and let healthy debate
reveal what's true and false in the course of time, organically, and without
centralized and fallible oversight.

------
justsee
There seems to be a lot of concern trolling over democracy and Western
freedoms which soberly urge us to not be so concerned with democracy and
Western freedoms and instead accept new, deeper forms of censorship and
greater collaboration between state, corporate and intelligence actors
regarding the free flow of information in our society.

Stamos' piece in the Washington Post and statements elsewhere are vague, weird
and poorly thought-out assertions which demand we accept Russiagate and
WikiLeaks source attribution positions favoured by US intel agencies in full,
and then only obsess over a very narrow set of concerns.

Analytically-minded technologists are still asking what magical GRU-election-
swinging manipulations were just out of the grasp of the multi-billion dollar
domestic presidential campaign industry, and why for instance the revelation
of corruption within the DNC was the damaging issue, rather than the
corruption itself. Stamos says major media 'rewarded the hackers' by reporting
truth, and in The Verge's lazy retelling they transmute even this truth into
'misinformation'. It's low quality discussion and debate all around.

If an establishment paper broke the DNC corruption story first and naturally
refused to disclose sources, or received them anonymously and so was unable to
disclose them, what then?

Is Stamos and the 'Fake News Defense' movement saying we need to end all
anonymously-sourced journalism? All investigative journalism? Any journalism
which is damaging to key political, corporate and intelligence individuals and
entities within the US? Because surely there's a risk that type of journalism
may have been aided in some as-yet-unknown way by hostile foreign actors.

How could you definitively prove it was not?

Why not go even deeper into the 'fake news / foreign agents' madness:

Imagine the GRU _want_ the US polity to over-react and implement a draconian
press censorship reality 'immune from foreign influence'. In this scenario an
even-more-untouchable political / corporate / intelligence class arises and -
immune from scandals, consequence and the disinfecting power of transparency -
is allowed to ossify in a cesspool of increased corruption and incompetence -
weakening the state from the center.

Perhaps we can just go full-circle to this as a public establishment
conspiracy theory and have Stamos and intel agencies agreeing that free speech
as an inviolable principle is the best defence against whatever bogeyman is in
fashion.

------
crunchlibrarian
_" Tech will always need to act in a quasi-governmental manner, making
judgments on political speech and operating teams in parallel to the U.S.
intelligence community,"_

No, absolutely not Alex.

The fact that these massive tech monopolies are so powerful that it's now just
taken for granted that they are pseudo-governmental entities should be a wake
up call for everyone. It's high time we start talking about anti-trust and the
breakup of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and maybe others. This is completely
unacceptable.

Our laws are woefully out of date, they were written when the only foreseeable
damage from companies this large and powerful was pricing abuse. The damage
they have caused is far more extensive and severe than that, we need new laws
and aggressive anit-trust/anti-monopoly stances to undo this damage, hopefully
before it becomes too late to stop them at all.

~~~
esotericn
Indeed.

The fact that we've let online speech fall in to a narrow set of patterns
defined by companies that are larger than some governments is completely
ridiculous.

We need platforms that are controlled by users. And no, we don't need to wait
for them before we kill the centralized data miners either. We survived before
Facebook, we'll survive without it.

------
qaq
It's hard to come up with good policy around this outside of educating people.

~~~
ThomPete
Being educated does not shield you from misinformation, unfortunately. I fact
I wouldn't be surprised that the well educated is part of the problem when
they get into politics because they abstract things and start to think too
much in statistics and lose a feeling for what it means to be most people in
this world. The end up creating their own misinformation filter.

The current political climate has no shortage of well-educated people on both
sides who have been doing more damage than good the last 40 years.

~~~
0x445442
Yes this and Joeri’s post are on point. Unless you’re in the realm of
mathematics or the physical sciences the more the education the stronger the
disputes over “facts”.

It’s hubris to think any group can be the objective gatekeeper of truth unless
they’re just reporting demonstrable facts like ball scores or weather.

~~~
zzzcpan
Of course more random education doesn't educate people specifically about
influence and propaganda. Why would it?

~~~
ThomPete
I don't think there is a specific education you can take that will shield you
from influence or propaganda.

In my experience, it's about something else. Something more fundamental.

~~~
zzzcpan
Currently it's part of political science / politology mixed with psychology.
It could change your worldview so much that it would completely destroy any
trust in governments, media, political systems. Which is actually a necessary
first step in order to understand how these things work. I guess this is the
fundamental thing you are talking about. Once you get there, you can start
learning more in depth about these things. It's something for life. You will
never be able to trust any government again.

~~~
ThomPete
"You will never be able to trust any government again." which is itself prone
to lead to you accepting misinformation.

That's the point though. You can't escape these things.

------
throw2016
This is disingenuous. 'Protecting democracy from misinformation' is
misinformation. How do you do 'protect democracy' without erecting 'ministry
of truth' structures and becoming undemocratic?

It's a bit sad many champions of democracy are realizing they can't handle
real dissent. They seem more comfortable with control, limits and useless
debates on media structures and platforms they can influence and control than
the kind of actual dissent provided by Assange, Snowden and the wider platform
of the Internet that allows people to freely exchange ideas.

Let's take it to the extreme, if citizens elect an flat earther or an
extremist running on hate then its not a problem with democracy but a
reflection of deeper problems with your society and education system.

Misinformation, propaganda, fake news are as old as human society and used by
all countries and special interests, and can be addressed well outside the
fundamental structures of democracy, free speech, dissent and free press.

------
alexandercrohde
I think every proposal I've read in this thread is incorrect.

I think the platform shapes the debate. A crowd with megaphones will never be
as good at decision-making as a jury. The websites we use are the platform
(even if it's the same people in the crowd as the jury).

The "megaphone platforms" (twitter/facebook) are very invigorating in the
short-term but will inevitably drive people away. The next step is for a
platform to be built that promotes and rewards the systematic advancement of
filtering ideas (downvoting/upvoting being the most basic form of this).

To a large extent, HN is superior to twitter because of this. Wikipedia is
also a shining example of platform. This attention toward facebook is
unwarranted, the platform will kill itself in 7 years.

The important thing is building a new platform that incentivizes productive
contribution rather than self-promotion or controversiality.

------
cryoshon
>‘the last line of defense will always be citizens who are willing to question
what they see and hear’

no. that is the first line of defense. realistically, it is the only line.

silly corporate attempts to prune information are the last line -- the line
that nobody should depend on or expect to even exist.

------
ourmandave
_“Congress needs to codify standards around political advertising,” he writes,
saying that existing laws are decades out of date and don’t cover the types of
platforms that exist today._

Here's an article of all the platforms political ad policies (from June 2018)
for advertisers.

[https://marketingland.com/the-big-list-of-political-ad-
polic...](https://marketingland.com/the-big-list-of-political-ad-policies-
from-leading-social-search-platforms-241669)

Most ad policies have been updated to stop foreign paid political ads. And the
FEC and states have laws on allowed content.

But paid ads are one thing. Fake accounts posting lies and mis-information are
another.

~~~
chiefalchemist
> "But paid ads are one thing. Fake accounts posting lies and mis-information
> are another."

IDK. I just sat through 4 - 6 weeks of political ads (here in central NJ) and
it was difficult to tell fact from fiction. To say nothing of the fact most
did not disclose even their declared party. As for the super PAC ads. Those
were more twisted informion with the source being far from transparent - not
even a URL.

Point being. Same lies as always. Same misinfo as always. None of it done by
Russians.

Let's not be naive. The system is optimized for bad info from bad actors. The
difference is, the actors are not our (so called) representatives.

------
ovatsug25
The best thing they could do for news is just go to a chronological timeline.

Cuts out a lot of the bullshit.

They don’t need to censor. They need to stop curating.

------
kuyaab
The world is in the midst of a critical thinking crisis exacerbated by the
gutting of humanities education.

------
sova
Damn I thought Uncle Jesse (from Full House) finally had a coherent thought on
the matter

~~~
robotmachine
Have mercy.

------
ThomPete
After the Trump election where I interestingly enough found myself agreeing
with a lot of the critique of the current political system coming from both
Sanders and Trump even though I would normally consider myself part of the
liberal political spectrum (pro-abortion, against the death sentence, couldn't
care less if gay people get married etc)

I started digging into things I had taken for granted such as Breibart being
this racist place that only does fake news, Ben Shapiro probably was pretty
extreme because he was alt right etc, Milo was a racist homophobe, Bannon was
a white supremacist etc.

It ended up being a 6-month journey where I actually sat down and listened to
what they had to say, which luckily is now possible because of the long
interview formats that's been popping up on youtube like Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin
etc.

And I must say that while I am still pro-abortion, pro gets married to
whomever you want etc. I have a much better appreciation for what people I
disagree with actually are saying and I can listen to it and actually argue
without shaming them simply for being on the "wrong side". None of those
people were the moral monsters I would normally read about whenever the alt-
right was described. They were mostly people who actually could argue for
their positions, positions I didn't always agree with but at least now
understood better.

I have personally experienced now being shamed and people trying to go after
my business simply because of some of my comments, even on HN.

The real danger of misinformation is the one we create for ourselves when we
listen to what others say and interpret that.

I like the term strong-manning instead of straw-manning i.e. trying to
position the argument of whoever you are debating in the strongest possible
position rather than trying to go after their morals as the first thing.

In other words, most misinformation is the way we interpret things ourselves,
not what was said or meant.

I would encourage you anyone to try just once in their life to take the "other
sides" arguments seriously, hear them out and then figure out what exactly you
disagree with them about and whether it's actually as much as you think when
all comes to all.

~~~
noetic_techy
Exactly. You and I have gone down the same rabbit hole and realized that its
not as clear cut as they claim.

The pompousness and shaming has to end in order for us all to come together.

Blaming everything on this false spectre of "misinformation" is nonsense. It's
a veiled attempt to treat everyone who disagree with you as stupid.

~~~
acct1771
Jumped this shark some time ago.

Divisiveness is the number one enemy to personal freedom and free societies.

------
mo3gut
Mr Stamos is unhappy with Russia, mentioned repeatedly. Their "activity" needs
to be "dealt with".

AIPAC, "America's Pro-Israel Lobby", isn't worth a mention. Israel apparently
does nothing that needs to be dealt with.

Are you Americans on this forum grateful that people like Mr Stamos decide for
you which countries should have influence?

~~~
dahdum
Israel is an ally, so their influence is both expected and accepted.

~~~
mo3gut
Sounds like a "Yes". Thanks for the reply, dahdum.

------
douglaswlance
We need a proof of stake blockchain system to verify information where the
highest stakeholders are the most trusted sources.

------
sparkling
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI)

/thread

~~~
sverige
This is true for most topics the legacy media (print and broadcast) produces.

