
It's the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech - jgraham
https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/
======
whatshisface
> _John Stuart Mill’s notion that a “marketplace of ideas” will elevate the
> truth is flatly belied by the virality of fake news._

Wow. I think this sentence is a great example. The author makes no attempt to
convince us that fake news is actually winning out over real news - they just
assert it along with their primary claim in the hope that we will be carried
along into both by the momentum of their article.

Yellow journalism goes back to the beginning of press freedom and lying goes
back to the beginning of speech. We've had ways of combating these things for
generations - ways that _can 't be used to make false statements_ \- but
people have always wanted to reach over and silence their opponent through
(sometimes abstract) force. The problem with that? Your opponents can
sometimes do it to you, too.

~~~
optimuspaul
I think the article spells out the problem very well. Entities can craft fake
news that appeal to very specific audiences and target them so directly that
the majority doesn't even know about the fake news. The message can be tweaked
slightly for different audiences to push or pull them from one view to
another. This is a huge problem. There is no mechanism that can verify the
messages are true. It was widely reported that this is exactly what the
Kushner organization did during the Trump campaign. I'm not saying Kushner
created fake news, but his organization did in fact push highly targeted
messages that influenced people in ways that one might consider dishonest.

It is a problem, the article lays it out. It could do better (as could I) to
convince, but I find it hard to believe that someone like yourself can't
convince yourself with the data available. Fake news is real, but it's not
what Trump says it is.

(Fake news is real, lol)

~~~
Goladus
> Fake news is real, but it's not what Trump says it is.

It's also not what this Wired author says it is.

    
    
        ===
    

Originally, the term "Fake News" was created by mainstream news organizations
(aka old media) to denigrate all competition (legitimate or not) from social
media. It was a branding campaign meant to poison the well against outside
sources. Trump just turned the language against them, since he benefited from
new media.

The reality is that the only thing that will work is for individuals to apply
critical reading skills and evaluate the content for what it is. Big news
brands don't want that, though. They want people to think "real news is us,
fake news is them"

------
DanAndersen
There's a bit of amusing irony in the article due to how a lot of the
article's reasoning could be enlisted against the concept of democracy itself
rather than the "democracy-poisoning" free speech. Analogous to the article's
concerns about how everything is "optimized for engagement," one could say
that the democratic values promoted by the author "optimize for
votes/reelection/contributions." The dismissal of Mill's "notion that a
'marketplace of ideas' will elevate the truth" could similarly dismiss the
idea that the masses voting would elevate the best leaders or reasonable long-
term policy.

The common refrain might be that it's the worst form of government except for
all else that's been tried. I'd invite the author to explore similar critiques
for democracy, or else to consider the idea that societal taboos against
restricting free speech exist out of concern of the alternative.

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mcguire
" _Here’s how this golden age of speech actually works: In the 21st century,
the capacity to spread ideas and reach an audience is no longer limited by
access to expensive, centralized broadcasting infrastructure. It’s limited
instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute attention._ "

That is probably the best description of the changes in culture since the
Internet revolution began that I have read. There are no gatekeepers; instead
limited attention from the audience is the bottleneck.

But on top of that, there is the next sentence:

" _And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured, to a vast
and overwhelming degree, by just a few digital platforms: Facebook, Google
(which owns YouTube), and, to a lesser extent, Twitter._ "

These companies, the ones who control modern culture, do so by selling
_attention,_ and do so knowingly, self-consciously. They know attention is
their product and whatever that attention is currently focused on can be
damned.

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smallnamespace
"Why? When the human condition was marked by hunger and famine, it made
perfect sense to crave condensed calories and salt. Now we live in a food glut
environment, and we have few genetic, cultural, or psychological defenses
against this novel threat to our health. Similarly, we have few defenses
against these novel and potent threats to the ideals of democratic speech,
even as we drown in more speech than ever."

In the past, mass speech was difficult, expensive, and centralized. Now it is
cheap, universal, and everyone can partake -- so the limiting factor becomes
the attention of the audience.

Memes that grab people's minds spread through the population, and oftentimes
the most extreme and unreasonable ideas spread the most quickly, just like
weeds can grow quickest first.

------
Overtonwindow
A provocative title for what is more an opinion piece, lauding the value of
Twitter, and other methods of speech communication.

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leepowers
> Today, even the most powerful elites often cannot effectively convene the
> right swath of the public to counter viral messages.

Let's imagine this was implemented. For every post on Facebook, Twitter, et
al, a counter-point from the other side was included. Would this change
anything?

Maybe not. The narrative right now is that the social giants are forcing
people into media bubbles because this drives engagement. Including counter-
points would burst the bubbles and we should expect a drop in engagement on
the major social media sites. But would it lead to a drop in engagement
overall? Wouldn't people still seek out the news that reinforces their pre-
existing views?

The narrative should be inverted: the reason Facebook is massively popular is
because it allows the masses to construct personalized bubbles. If Facebook
loses it's "bubbleness" users will simply construct their bubbles on different
platforms or in different ways. The space will fracture. You'll have a
conservative Facebook clone, a leftist clone, a libertarian one, etc.

------
lemagedurage
Digital surveillance: encryption,

Attention-­channeling: skepticism,

Harassment: thicker skin,

Data collection: not sharing private data,

Algorithmic decision­making: what's the problem?

------
GCU-Empiricist
It's always relevant to look at what the root cause of the failure state is.
In a phrase it seems to be "outrage culture" relevant video: CGP Grey "This
video will make you angry"
www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DrE3j_RHkqJc&usg=AOvVaw19LNbXnWxQ6ChEZfLZ5kGn

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iamcasen
Honestly, I think the only hope for the future is open source AI that can read
and digest the vast landscape of "truth" on the internet, and help the average
citizen be more informed by corroborating facts.

It's very true: no one has the time or attention span to deeply analyze
everything we see/read/hear. We used to trust what was given to us, but now
that's impossible.

~~~
DanAndersen
It's hard to see how placing trust in a giant AI would solve the issue. Just
offering "fact-checks" that don't deal in context leaves so much open to
interpretation. The major leftist/rightist media networks do what they do not
as much through blatant lying (though that happens) as with technically-
defensible interpretations of factual events, selective coverage/reporting,
and twists of terminology (democracy vs populism, government vs regime,
article vs screed, etc). When people call upon services like fact-checkers or
find individual studies to wield in argument, the goal ends up being to find
mental stopsigns to be able to dismiss the opponent's argument and totem-like
symbols of legitimacy to prop your own arguments up.

I don't know what the way out is, but I can't imagine externalizing our
thinking/reasoning even more would be the way.

~~~
iamcasen
Note that I said "open source AI" with the implication that how it works is
transparent, and how it is trained is transparent and verifiable.

There is simply no skirting around the fact that our brains are not equipped
to deal with the astounding volumes of information being jammed through our
every sense every minute of the day.

