
The ‘Silicon Six’ spread propaganda. It’s time to regulate social media sites - d99kris
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/25/silicon-six-spread-propaganda-its-time-regulate-social-media-sites/
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DHPersonal
I saw an article on Techdirt about this, which presented a dissenting view.
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191122/00412943432/sacha...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191122/00412943432/sacha-
baron-cohen-is-wrong-about-social-media-wrong-about-section-230-even-wrong-
about-his-own-comedy.shtml)

~~~
mthoms
It's a dissenting view that I'm somewhat inclined to agree with, but fails to
propose any alternative remedies. I don't think the status quo is tenable.

~~~
Nasrudith
While there is a temptation to "do something" just because someone is sane
enough to recognize that an approach is doomed to failure doesn't mean they
have all of the answers.

I have seen that asserted but I haven't heard explicit answers. Why do you or
others think it isn't tennable? How do you think it will collapse with lack of
action?

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Nasrudith
I can't help but think "holy projection Batman" when I see that term. They may
be shady but I trust vested interests and scapegoaters even less.

They do damage to their own credibility with their incessant pushing on a
flimsy and selective basis.

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exabrial
No thanks. I don't want to government regulating anything, especially as
something as sensitive as free speech online.

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Apocryphon
It's interesting how social convention itself causes some social media
problems to not arise. Despite its infamy for being a spammy place of
careerist self-promotion, LinkedIn doesn't suffer from any of the problems of
these other social networks, simply because it isn't designed for that
context. I've seen some terrible low quality content posts on LI, but even at
its worst, they are simply asinine life/career inspirational thinkpieces
intended for a professional audiene. Not dissimilar to low quality on Quora.
Yet both places host material that have a general higher standard than on
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter.

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ilaksh
Conflating conspiracy theories, propaganda, and racism is very problematic.

Propaganda is most often used to motivate state goals, such as war, with
falsehoods. Government and government/industrial partnership is the main
source of propaganda. Conspiracy theories are generally anti-propaganda in the
sense that they contradict the official story.

Its true that there are many conspiracy theorists who are racist. However, its
certainly not all of them. I would be considered a hardcore 'conspiracy
theorist' by most but I'm not the least bit racist. I am a white man who dated
asian women and lives in Mexico. I don't pretend to know anything about people
who I don't know. Conspiracy theories are also extremely popular with black
Americans.

The problem with large companies or the government "regulating propaganda" is
that, as I mentioned, they are the biggest sources of propaganda. What you
will end up with is something along the lines of Chinese government
information control.

I do, however, believe that we should make an effort to reduce the propagation
of racism, and extreme views that are deliberately false. But whatever form
this takes, it must not be monopolized by one organization or establishment,
and must be structured in the context that I described, rather than a false
context where anti-establishment views are automatically censored. One
possibility might be to use the legal system. For example, some legal action
could disqualify political candidates who blatantly lie about their opponents.
Of course, this is extremely challenging, since that would disqualify all
candidates in the current system.

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meowface
I agree with (most of) the description of the problem - the rise of conspiracy
theories online - and agree it's a serious issue. I think the proposed
solution would make the problem much, much worse, though.

"What are _they_ trying to hide by controlling what we say and censoring our
attempts to expose the truth?"

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peterashford
There's a huge difference between regulating what is not ok and "telling
everyone what to think". Americans seem to jump on any kind of regulation as
equivalent to Big Brother thought control which is just a bizarre
overreaction. Any kind of international agreement over regulating speech is
going to be very mild by the nature of consensus - you won't get all the
governments in the world agreeing to something extreme. You might get
agreement around "don't publish lies" and "don't publish racist stuff"

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moretai
I like that name. Sounds sinister.

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mthoms
I also liked " _Freedom of speech_ is not _Freedom of reach_ " though I
suspect he didn't coin that.

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chrisco255
Curious why you think consumers and producers of speech are not free to make
their own decisions about what speech is acceptable.

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mthoms
Huh?

I liked this expression because people regularly conflate the right to speak
freely with the supposed right to have their speech amplified and distributed
(at zero cost), which isn't a thing. I made no mention whatsoever about what
speech is, or isn't, acceptable.

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chrisco255
Yes it is a thing. All these platforms were built on people sharing their
thoughts, pics, feelings, etc with their friends or with their subscribers.
The platform was built on consent. If you don't like what someone has to say,
unsubscribe or unfriend. The desire to deplatform is just censorship.

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mthoms
What I said was:

> "the supposed _RIGHT_ to have their speech amplified and distributed ...
> isn't a thing"

No such _RIGHT_ exists, period. End of sentence. That right isn't "a thing".

I've never made a comment supporting "de-platforming", or anything of the
sort, so I'm not sure where that came from. All I did, was point out the
confusion people have regarding their actual _rights_. Somewhat ironically,
your response perfectly illustrates my point. So, thank you.

