Pissed at Propaganda

I'm getting to that, and believe me it all ties in. I don't have the energy to type that up right now though.

Wow, just wow. I re-evaluated my view of what kind of person you are. It would be nice if you could look at that sentence and really think about the concept. How is a sexual slur directed at someone NOT degrading? BTW there are a lot of women and men who've been conditioned their entire lives to have a low opinion of themselves, whether or not they deserve it. You have no idea of the kind of effect any kind of slurs could have on them.

Why go that far when you can find a way to take care of it without making it a show?

 

If they have been conditioned their entire lives to have a low opinion of themselves they may not even have the tools to recognise they need help. And even if they recognise they do need help, they might not have the means to get it. Social media can also be a life-saver for those who are isolated either willingly or unwillingly. Do you think slander and slurs only happen on social media? Did you ever go to high-school? Racism, sexism, sexual prejudice and all kinds of hate exist both inside and outside the internet. I have no problem with censoring lies, propaganda, and hate. It's better than perpetuating false belief and negative behavior, which in the end only causes more damage.

BTW, social media is only a shithole depending on who your surround yourself with, pretty much like the world outside the internet.

 

In regard to the statement you quoted

1. In serious matters, it should probably be a small group that is knowledgeable to recognise messages that perpetuate lies, propaganda and hate.

2. By allowing a messages like "The Virus Doesn't Exist." to perpetuate, they will be shared by the radical people that believe it and will be viewed by naive people who have not received the correct information. The disinformation will be shared, encouraging people to ignore protective measure and ultimately spreading the virus way further, when it could have been stopped by not allowing people to see the negative message in the first place.

3. Ok, I'll re-explain this to you. (BTW if I had the axe here I would have taken care of it myself) Sometimes it's not worth giving slander any kind of attention. Even if I'm correcting or pointing out the truth, the damage has already been done and it's essentially glorifying a negative statement.

4. I agree that can sometimes happen. The same fringe group of people will believe anything that gives their narrative fuel. Those people are less of a significant group than if they were also encouraging and spreading the lies to people who start to question things because they see a FALSE statement being perpetuated.

 

Your shorthand is even shorter than mine. You're very economical with the spacing and you stopped one number short.

 

I'm just gonna assume he meant never within the context of combating misinformation.

Censorship isn't a bad thing as is - several uses of censoring are things we should all be able to get behind, like filtering harmful/sensitive content and other things that go against a platform's guidelines;
But censorship simply for the sake of getting rid of an opinion that is inconvenient or to suppress a group from speaking out simply because they are misinformed and their values don't match to your own is considered a bad thing by a majority of people.

So taken in context i'd agree that misinformation should not be removed completely outright. Similarly in your hypothetical the content is clearly against the site guidelines and harmful since it's not simply stating information but a direct attack on your person so there'd be plenty of grounds to get the post removed/the person warned or banned.

With the huge amounts of online discourse and spread of information though, it's tough to say how much can be left in the hands of human moderation, and what kind of automated systems can/should be implemented. Especially since automated censorship might lack a certain soft touch - simply removing all content pertaining to a piece of (mis)information entirely .

Suppressing misinformation by removing it all might seem like a decent plan at first glance, but there's a real risk of overcompensating.
Hard censoring like this can lead to accurate and useful information being censored as well, or even reinforce the misinformation. Instead of allowing for discourse, blocking off one side entirely may only give them a false sense of legitimacy as they may spin the narrative of complete censorship into one of unjust persecution.

 

All good points Xosmi.

Although I used my hypothetical to try and make a point, the real and original issue has to do with censoring information on social platforms like Facebook. There has been a lot of harmful propaganda being perpetuated and when it gets out there and spread around some people start to question what is real. I want to write more but it'll have to wait until tomorrow because I'm off to see some family at our family campsite.

 

@Beren, it looks like a good source however you can't access it if you don't have a subscription to their site. I wonder if there's a way you can copy-paste the text or is that not allowed?

 

Thanks Tal, I didn't see it the first time I followed the link.

Thanks Beren. Very interesting article with solid examples.