Is it now forbidden to be wrong?

[Patooka]

I don't think people get thrown out of bars for that

Believe what you want. I don't recommend going the West Ryde Hotel on Victoria Rd in Sydney then, if I were you.

I mean this isn't hard - if you're going to be a cunt, just accept that there are consequences.

 

[Swammerdami]

One reason I call myself a centrist (albeit it a radical centrist!) is that all ideologies are flawed. Adults should understand that politics must be about solving practical problems, not fantasizing about some utopia.

In our fantasies we might like maximum freedom: the right to lie as much as we want, to drive our car when drunk, and to have sex with 13-year olds who say Yes. But practical societies put limits on behavior.

Freedom of speech sounds like a good idea, and many Americans treat this right as almost as sacred as the right to bear arms. But however many examples of trouble-free lies you come up with will not change the fact that in post-rational American society, lying has become a nearly trillion-dollar industry that threatens our democracy and — some say — threatens civilization itself! If you think these are exaggerations, start a thread and make that argument. But to ignore these threats and be blinded by some ideological wet-dream about the right to lie is to elevate fantasy over reality.

In America, the government has little power to stop lies unless specific statutes, e.g. on fraud, are breached. But reputable newspapers have always refused to publish inflammatory bullshit in their Letters sections; this refusal does not violate the First Amendment. Facebook is also allowed to monitor its content, and we should hope they do even more to fulfill that responsibility.

 

[ZiprHead]

I don't agree. Everyone has a moral responsibility to seek out and teach truth, not falsehoods. It should not be "forbidden to be wrong", but no one should intentionally spread information they know to be wrong.

And IIDB, TF, etc... have long held the rule that you can't accuse members of lying, because you can't know the intent. People should not lie and should not spread misinformation.

The trouble is, in order to know you are spreading misinformation, you have to know it is misinformation. And probably most of the spread of misinformation is by the sheep swallowing their ivermectin. One isn't lying if they think it is the actual truth.

This is true. I don't think people should be thrown in jail for posting bad things on Facebook, nor is that what's happening. But I do think Facebook has every right to try and exert some manner of control over what gets posted on their platform, and if they know something is wrong, to halt its spread.

When I've posted something on FB and it turns out to be wrong they let me know why and link to a standard boilerplate correction.

 

[Politesse]

When I've posted something on FB and it turns out to be wrong they let me know why and link to a standard boilerplate correction.

And then you're fined, and sent to jail if you don't pay the fine. Right?

 

[ZiprHead]

When I've posted something on FB and it turns out to be wrong they let me know why and link to a standard boilerplate correction.

And then you're fined, and sent to jail if you don't pay the fine. Right?

It's the food in the jail that's the real punishment.

and the sodomy...

 

[Loren Pechtel]

By curating the content on its site, does FB become a publisher subject to civil liability?

In the Republican fantasy world they would be held accountable for things the QOP doesn't like.

In the real world section 230 applies. Without it there would be no social media of any type.

 

[Trausti]

 

[DrZoidberg]

Articles like this worry me:

Climate change: Facebook fails to flag denial, study finds

Researchers tracked thousands of posts denying climate change - and only 8% were marked as misinformation.

www.bbc.com

In a free society people have to be allowed to disagree and have arguments about stuff. Like we do on this forum. It's got to be allowed to be a climate change denier. I'm not. But I don't want my mere layman's opinion to be etched into stone (ie made law). That would be a terrible development IMHO.

Facebook has no responsibility for anything. They're under no obligation to protect us from ourselves. In fact, if we forbid dumb people from speaking, we all become dumber. The brain is like any muscle. It needs exercising. If we ban bullshit, we will lower resilience to the inevitable bullshit that does manage to slip through the cracks.

I don't like the way the article is formulated. I fear we're sliding into a world of well-meaning totalitarian censorship. A world without lies is soma in Brave New World.

Well first, the underlying post needs to actually be coming from a person, not a Bot before we say Facebook is censoring anything. If it is a person and they are just being stupid, there isn't much to control there.

One trouble with Facebook is the ease to disseminate fake information using Bots. And then it gets latched onto. There isn't much that can be done other than if an account isn't attached to a human or a transparent organization, all posts should be labeled as a Bot. This will only go so far though. Facebook created a monster they have no control over and there is little viable control to be had, other than ending the anonymity.

Ok, fine. So what?

In Egyptian tombs they wrote all the things that went well in the pharao's reign. They left out anything negative. We know the context. So we understand that ancient Egypt wasn't a never ending success story. We're aware that human biases shape how we express ourselves. That's not going to change. We also know that Abraham Lincoln didn't really say that we shouldn't trust everything we read on the Internet.

Isn't it better to teach people how biases work, rather than to try to change the entire world. What the first option has going for it is that it's cheap and people have an incentive to get themselves educated. The other one is expensive and turns adults into children.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Articles like this worry me:

Climate change: Facebook fails to flag denial, study finds

Researchers tracked thousands of posts denying climate change - and only 8% were marked as misinformation.

www.bbc.com

In a free society people have to be allowed to disagree and have arguments about stuff. Like we do on this forum. It's got to be allowed to be a climate change denier. I'm not. But I don't want my mere layman's opinion to be etched into stone (ie made law). That would be a terrible development IMHO.

Facebook has no responsibility for anything. They're under no obligation to protect us from ourselves. In fact, if we forbid dumb people from speaking, we all become dumber. The brain is like any muscle. It needs exercising. If we ban bullshit, we will lower resilience to the inevitable bullshit that does manage to slip through the cracks.

I don't like the way the article is formulated. I fear we're sliding into a world of well-meaning totalitarian censorship. A world without lies is soma in Brave New World.

Well first, the underlying post needs to actually be coming from a person, not a Bot before we say Facebook is censoring anything. If it is a person and they are just being stupid, there isn't much to control there.

One trouble with Facebook is the ease to disseminate fake information using Bots. And then it gets latched onto. There isn't much that can be done other than if an account isn't attached to a human or a transparent organization, all posts should be labeled as a Bot. This will only go so far though. Facebook created a monster they have no control over and there is little viable control to be had, other than ending the anonymity.

Ok, fine. So what?

Okay, so you are having trouble agreeing with me accepting that moderating individual opinions isn't a positive thing? Do you feel that you just need to be disagreeable?

I think moderating individual opinions is morally reprehensible. I don't have a problem with kicking out spam bots or obvious trolls. Facebook has special interest groups that are moderated by the people who created them. Facebook doesn't need to do anything.

 

[Bomb#20]

I don't agree. Everyone has a moral responsibility to seek out and teach truth, not falsehoods. It should not be "forbidden to be wrong", but no one should intentionally spread information they know to be wrong.

I don't think anyone has that responsibility. The only responsibility we have is to seek bliss on our own terms. That's it

At least Crowley added "an it harm none". You're not the only person in society whose rights matter.

No he didn't. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". Your bit was a Wicca add-on many years after Crowley died.

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't agree. Everyone has a moral responsibility to seek out and teach truth, not falsehoods. It should not be "forbidden to be wrong", but no one should intentionally spread information they know to be wrong.

I don't think anyone has that responsibility. The only responsibility we have is to seek bliss on our own terms. That's it

At least Crowley added "an it harm none". You're not the only person in society whose rights matter.

No he didn't. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". Your bit was a Wicca add-on many years after Crowley died.

See this is the classic blunder of the conservative. They think the first gobshite to open their mouth and talk about a thing as if they knew it actually did know it.

That's not how it works. That's not actually how any of this works.

Why should it matter who added a rule when? What is important is "why was it modified?' and here the answer is "because to do as ye wilt sets us against one another, and so for the fall as we trip ourselves."

"An ye harm none" takes the selfish solipsistic garbage position and makes a world where we can build something without having it torn down.

Take whatever you may from this, but I have yet to see a single virtual world where "do as ye wilt" without "an ye harm none" yields anything but a fucking mess, without a regular reset of the system.

This is the very core concept of "maturity", in fact, that you are not actually allowed to be wrong without consequence.

It is forbidden to remain wrong; when someone can only ever remain wrong, they are expected to have oversight and mitigation for their wrongness.

In ways we can all only ever be wrong, we are at least expected to admit it maturely that we are still wrong despite acting "as if" we are not.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Articles like this worry me:

Climate change: Facebook fails to flag denial, study finds

Researchers tracked thousands of posts denying climate change - and only 8% were marked as misinformation.

www.bbc.com

In a free society people have to be allowed to disagree and have arguments about stuff. Like we do on this forum. It's got to be allowed to be a climate change denier. I'm not. But I don't want my mere layman's opinion to be etched into stone (ie made law). That would be a terrible development IMHO.

Facebook has no responsibility for anything. They're under no obligation to protect us from ourselves. In fact, if we forbid dumb people from speaking, we all become dumber. The brain is like any muscle. It needs exercising. If we ban bullshit, we will lower resilience to the inevitable bullshit that does manage to slip through the cracks.

I don't like the way the article is formulated. I fear we're sliding into a world of well-meaning totalitarian censorship. A world without lies is soma in Brave New World.

Well first, the underlying post needs to actually be coming from a person, not a Bot before we say Facebook is censoring anything. If it is a person and they are just being stupid, there isn't much to control there.

One trouble with Facebook is the ease to disseminate fake information using Bots. And then it gets latched onto. There isn't much that can be done other than if an account isn't attached to a human or a transparent organization, all posts should be labeled as a Bot. This will only go so far though. Facebook created a monster they have no control over and there is little viable control to be had, other than ending the anonymity.

Ok, fine. So what?

Okay, so you are having trouble agreeing with me accepting that moderating individual opinions isn't a positive thing? Do you feel that you just need to be disagreeable?

I think moderating individual opinions is morally reprehensible. I don't have a problem with kicking out spam bots or obvious trolls. Facebook has special interest groups that are moderated by the people who created them. Facebook doesn't need to do anything.

Don’t need to do anything but kill the Bots and trolls that is.

 

[Bomb#20]

I don't agree. Everyone has a moral responsibility to seek out and teach truth, not falsehoods. It should not be "forbidden to be wrong", but no one should intentionally spread information they know to be wrong.

I don't think anyone has that responsibility. The only responsibility we have is to seek bliss on our own terms. That's it

At least Crowley added "an it harm none". You're not the only person in society whose rights matter.

No he didn't. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". Your bit was a Wicca add-on many years after Crowley died.

See this is the classic blunder of the conservative. They ... open their mouth and talk about a thing as if they knew it actually did know it.

Not sure who you're calling a conservative, but I guess it hardly matters since you use that word as a catch-all for everyone who disagrees with you. But I'm not a conservative, Politesse isn't a conservative, Crowley wasn't a conservative, the Wiccas who changed his rule weren't conservatives, and "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" isn't a conservative sentiment. It's pretty much straight up anarchism.

Why should it matter who added a rule when?

Um, because the guy who said "Everyone has a moral responsibility to seek out and teach truth, not falsehoods" was teaching a falsehood.

What is important is "why was it modified?' and here the answer is "because to do as ye wilt sets us against one another, and so for the fall as we trip ourselves."

"An ye harm none" takes the selfish solipsistic garbage position and makes a world where we can build something without having it torn down.

Lecture it to somebody who thinks Crowley was the prophet he believed he was. The guy was a certifiable whackjob. "An ye harm none" takes Crowley's idiocy and, in anachronistic language to give it an air of ancient wisdom, morphs it into content-free pablum. Pretty much everybody thinks whatever he wants to outlaw counts as "harm" and whatever he wants to authorize is harmless.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Which side is all about censoring curse words?

 

[Politesse]

Which side is all about censoring curse words?

Only harmless curse words. If it's an ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious slur it's fine. Not only is that kind of word fine, but it's even against the 1st Amendment for someone to react negatively to you saying it.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Instead of censoring out the misinformation, the correction should be to post a rebuttal along with it which is conspicuous enough that the reader cannot miss it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Which side is all about censoring curse words?

Only harmless curse words. If it's an ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious slur it's fine. Not only is that kind of word fine, but it's even against the 1st Amendment for someone to react negatively to you saying it.

Ehe... just ask Chinese dissidents how censoring words work. People switch to eufemisms. And the the eufemism becomes the new bad word. The Chinese government then censor those words. This is why 18th century newspapers are so hard to understand today. In order to avoid banned words people had to dance around the topic and implying, without saying. But did that stop those newspapers? Nope.

This idea of helping groups by avoiding bad words is well suited for our modern Internet age. It's a super easy way for individuals to quickly identify the people who are evil online. But it's an illusion. You're not helping anyone more than thoughts and prayers ever did. Instead it makes communicating convoluted and only hampers communication. Since every group now has specialized ingroup language (you need to master or be seen as evil) it drives groups apart.

We need to keep repeating the mantra "it's ok to be offended". It is ok to be offended and it is ok to offend. Not only does the Internet allow quick global communication. But it also allows us not to see things we don't want to see. Nobody needs to see anything they don't want to.

Researchers love counting keywords because it's quantifiable. But what does it prove? A computer scientist friend of mine was on a research project financed by the Swedish government to track homophobia through keywords (he was himself gay). They tried correlating the use of homophobic slurs online and violence against gays. They did this Internationally. I only know of this because I was talking to him throughout this process. I don't know if it got published. But what he told me is that whatever metric used for homophobic slurs used in a culture does not lead to to anti gay violence in any way that is comparable between cultures, or even within cultures. It was highly specific and regional. Which suggests that it's more complicated than that a straight correlation can be used.

 

[thebeave]

Which side is all about censoring curse words?

Only harmless curse words. If it's an ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious slur it's fine. Not only is that kind of word fine, but it's even against the 1st Amendment for someone to react negatively to you saying it.

Ehe... just ask Chinese dissidents how censoring words work. People switch to eufemisms. And the the eufemism becomes the new bad word. The Chinese government then censor those words. This is why 18th century newspapers are so hard to understand today. In order to avoid banned words people had to dance around the topic and implying, without saying. But did that stop those newspapers? Nope.

This idea of helping groups by avoiding bad words is well suited for our modern Internet age. It's a super easy way for individuals to quickly identify the people who are evil online. But it's an illusion. You're not helping anyone more than thoughts and prayers ever did. Instead it makes communicating convoluted and only hampers communication. Since every group now has specialized ingroup language (you need to master or be seen as evil) it drives groups apart.

We need to keep repeating the mantra "it's ok to be offended". It is ok to be offended and it is ok to offend. Not only does the Internet allow quick global communication. But it also allows us not to see things we don't want to see. Nobody needs to see anything they don't want to.

Researchers love counting keywords because it's quantifiable. But what does it prove? A computer scientist friend of mine was on a research project financed by the Swedish government to track homophobia through keywords (he was himself gay). They tried correlating the use of homophobic slurs online and violence against gays. They did this Internationally. I only know of this because I was talking to him throughout this process. I don't know if it got published. But what he told me is that whatever metric used for homophobic slurs used in a culture does not lead to to anti gay violence in any way that is comparable between cultures, or even within cultures. It was highly specific and regional. Which suggests that it's more complicated than that a straight correlation can be used.

Its amusing to watch Youtube videos that don't toe the line with regard to the leftist agenda. The speakers frequently use code words or make up new words so they don't get demonetized, or get their videos taken down. Words like rape & feminist set off the censors. Its just very bizarre watching them wink and nod around these words. Its very reminiscent of your discussion about Chinese censorship. I always thought we in the Western world were better than that, but I guess not...

 

[Jarhyn]

Which side is all about censoring curse words?

To be fair, it's not Trausti I see whinging about curses here. It's Bomb. Hence why when I respond concerning their posts I make sure to swear an extra bunch.

Which side is all about censoring curse words?

Only harmless curse words. If it's an ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious slur it's fine. Not only is that kind of word fine, but it's even against the 1st Amendment for someone to react negatively to you saying it.

Ehe... just ask Chinese dissidents how censoring words work. People switch to eufemisms. And the the eufemism becomes the new bad word. The Chinese government then censor those words. This is why 18th century newspapers are so hard to understand today. In order to avoid banned words people had to dance around the topic and implying, without saying. But did that stop those newspapers? Nope.

This idea of helping groups by avoiding bad words is well suited for our modern Internet age. It's a super easy way for individuals to quickly identify the people who are evil online. But it's an illusion. You're not helping anyone more than thoughts and prayers ever did. Instead it makes communicating convoluted and only hampers communication. Since every group now has specialized ingroup language (you need to master or be seen as evil) it drives groups apart.

We need to keep repeating the mantra "it's ok to be offended". It is ok to be offended and it is ok to offend. Not only does the Internet allow quick global communication. But it also allows us not to see things we don't want to see. Nobody needs to see anything they don't want to.

Researchers love counting keywords because it's quantifiable. But what does it prove? A computer scientist friend of mine was on a research project financed by the Swedish government to track homophobia through keywords (he was himself gay). They tried correlating the use of homophobic slurs online and violence against gays. They did this Internationally. I only know of this because I was talking to him throughout this process. I don't know if it got published. But what he told me is that whatever metric used for homophobic slurs used in a culture does not lead to to anti gay violence in any way that is comparable between cultures, or even within cultures. It was highly specific and regional. Which suggests that it's more complicated than that a straight correlation can be used.

Its amusing to watch Youtube videos that don't toe the line with regard to the leftist agenda. The speakers frequently use code words or make up new words so they don't get demonetized, or get their videos taken down. Words like rape & feminist set off the censors. Its just very bizarre watching them wink and nod around these words. Its very reminiscent of your discussion about Chinese censorship. I always thought we in the Western world were better than that, but I guess not...

<edit>

Obviously, yes, we ought demonetize people using a platform to endorse rape.

The only discussions we need to be having about rape are how to prevent it, and explicitly in that context; and how to simulate it without threat to any person's true agency for the purposes of sexual illusion.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Its amusing to watch Youtube videos that don't toe the line with regard to the leftist agenda. The speakers frequently use code words or make up new words so they don't get demonetized, or get their videos taken down. Words like rape & feminist set off the censors.

Rape and feminist... this is an odd pairing, especially when talking about using codes words to hide it.