I'm pretty anti-censorship; specifically I believe that sunshine/debate is the best disinfectant. However, we aren't having a healthy debate right now because the election fraud conspiratorialists are shouting their message without regard for the rebuttals. I think there's something to be said for bringing the volume down to manageable levels so that we can actually have a debate. That said, I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence that will convince these people that there wasn't election fraud--it feels like arguing with flat-earthers or blank-slaters or whomever--which isn't so much to vindicate 'censorship' (in general or in particular) as it is to express sadness at the state of our collective intellectual and political well-being.
Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation.
It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills. None of those is true of Americans en masse.
>when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation
>It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills
This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, artificial, astro turfed, propagandized etc.
Think of for example the Iraq war push, and evidence provided for it. There are always unknown unknowns, and so your "first principles" cannot be assumed to be true
So ultimately you prioritize what might be described as "collective health" over generalized notions of freedom. Is that "pretty anti censorship", as this question of negative externalities is always the point of contention for censoring anything is it not?
I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health. I think it means simple frameworks of censorship, free speech, and facts cannot be generalized or universalized, as ultimately many of these will run into value judgments that aren't easily answered by questions of objective truth.
>I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence
And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence. Or which debates or opinions are healthy or which are off limits. We see this with COVID where it's hard enough to assess the specific health risks while balancing the trade-offs of other health risks and economic impacts of lock-downs etc. "true" is too broad to encompass all the variables.
> So ultimately you prioritize what might be described as "collective health" over generalized notions of freedom. Is that "pretty anti censorship", as this question of negative externalities is always the point of contention for censoring anything is it not?
I'm not falling hard on this. I'm presently living in the tension between free speech ideals and collective political health, and I don't purport to have any great answers.
> I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health.
Agree, I think this is completely valid and I think we see a lot of this already in the cancel culture movement--lots of perfectly reasonable, healthy debate is suppressed as "possibly harmful". It's a real concern.
> And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence.
I don't buy this. I think even conspiratorialists are perfectly capable of reasoning (reasonably) well when it doesn't conflict with their political allegiance. In my opinion, the issue is that some people know full well that they're being dishonest, but they simply don't care--they value the truth less than they value their political tribe. And please note that I think there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who put party above truth--this isn't me punching at Republicans or conservatives or whomever while pretending that my ideological compatriots are perfectly behaved (that would make me quite the hypocrite!)--although it wouldn't be appropriate to litigate that here.
Ugh. I'm very anti-censorship and I'm right there with you. It's hard to not acknowledge that we have a serious problem - half of the political establishment is hallucinating a different reality, far beyond the normal out of touch hubris pushed by both teams. I believe the raw energy is coming from being fed up with the looting and control by the plutocrats (like everyone), but they're being goaded in a completely nonsensical and destructive direction.
Every semi reputable editor (even Fox!) has put the brakes on this disinformation campaign, but it seems that doing so just makes the people believing it move on to even less credible feeds. Ultimately I think the hallucination can only die down on its own, but on the timescale of several years. Meanwhile the damage is being done right now. I just hope it's all just so Trump can continue grifting and developing political capital to try avoiding jail, rather than some larger plan like deliberately inciting a civil war.
Previously if one ventured into Internet conspiracy theory land, their new belief would be tempered by their social circle. Now whatever wild thing manages to get enough attention also creates its own social proof. We're essentially dealing with a violent mixture of the old and the new where digital non-natives are tuning into raw memetic noise while giving it the trust of the 1990's evening news.
I would be curious to see how this played out in a parallel universe where section 230 had never existed, the MITM business never gained popularity, new media ("tech") companies had to editorialize more like old media, and the anti-establishment action stayed on p2p nets with a higher barrier to entry.
I think the actual issue is that the claims of fraud are not being evaluated. I've watched tens of hours of testimonies thus far, seen the evidence, reviewed the data myself, and there's definitely something to all this.
The issue, is that the concerns are not being evaluated, both sides are not being interviewed, etc. We really need a trial. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, in almost any of these "hearings". The lawsuits are dismissed due to "standing" or procedural issues, not on the merits.
>The lawsuits are dismissed due to "standing" or procedural issues, not on the merits.
Maybe they should hire lawyers who actually have a single clue what they hell they're doing and not Rudy Giuliani, who hasn't been in a court room since 1992 and doesn't know literally the first week of constitutional law.
What do you think all these lawsuits have been doing?
They have literally been going to court and not won a single time. These are not partisan judges. These are not Democrat secretary of states. These are Republicans.
They are throwing out every lawsuit so far. None have been substantiated, zero.
Balanced reporting of news during the election and of current president actions (for instance peace efforts in the Middle East) would probably have been a long way to not give credit to the idea that "the system" is pushing a particular candidate. Some people are thinking their voices are being silented, so censoring actions taken by Youtube or Twitter (NYP incident) are not only an additional nail in the coffin, they are actual validation of the fact a whole political side is being canceled.
I actually agree that the media in general is shamelessly pushing a particular candidate (even though I also voted for that candidate), and that that has contributed significantly to the degradation of trust. I believe the media harmed its own cause (and also my cause) which is getting Trump out of office (which is to say I think--though I can't prove--Biden could have won more easily if the media simply let Trump discredit himself), but it also harmed our collective political health, and I hope Karma lays low those responsible.
However, that doesn't excuse conspiratorialism. We still have a responsibility to find reliable trust channels and to sift through evidence, and when it becomes apparent that we're incorrect (e.g., when evidence is presented that weakens or invalidates our claims), we ought to admit our error and critically evaluate our sources who led us astray.
To put a fine point on it, the media should have to answer for its sins, but those sins don't license the rest of us to behave badly.
There was election fraud and I’m happy to link you some concrete evidence if you don’t believe me. That’s not the issue though. The issue is whether there was coordinated, systemic, and purposeful electoral fraud. That’s a much more difficult question to answer (probably a no lol). I would say that people like you who say that there was 0 electoral fraud are just as ignorant as the people conclusively saying that there was 1000% coordinated systemic electoral fraud.
> I would say that people like you who say that there was 0 electoral fraud are just as ignorant as the people conclusively saying that there was 1000% coordinated systemic electoral fraud.
You seem to have misread my comment. I'm not arguing that there is zero fraud. I didn't even say in my post that there was no conspiracy (though I'll say here that there wasn't). I only said the conspiratorialists aren't arguing constructively. I'm probably pretty aligned with you--I wouldn't be surprised if there were a handful of fraudulent ballots on either side, but there's certainly no evidence for a conspiracy.
To be fair, there are plenty of cases of _isolated, singular_ fraud (see the various people that tried to double vote and got caught). The OPs wording is quite deliberate.
> So in your case “pretty anti-censorship” means censoring what you don’t agree with is fine?
I like ideas that I don't agree with when debate is healthy. I don't like when people who hold those ideas just keep shouting the same thing over and over without actually engaging with the rebuttals presented--frankly I find that behavior reprehensible. I have sympathy for people who want to suppress that sort of behavior, which is what you're picking up on from my previous comment, but I'm far from convinced that it's a viable solution.
Mostly though, this conspiratorial content is so obviously damaging and in bad-faith, etc that I don't care so much about imperfections with respect to free speech ideals, just like I'm not very worked up that Germany bans holocaust denialism.
> About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
Because social media exists, and because the POTUS is using his enormous platform to the same end?
> This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to
This has always been the case. Traditional media is exactly this model.
It seems like the health of the debate has a lot to do with your opinion of the arguments presented. See how this works? What you're talking about is viewpoint censorship with extra steps
You're mistaken. The health (or lack of health) of a dialogue is completely orthogonal to agreement (I would have thought this was obvious, but I guess not). I could agree with someone, but their discourse could be completely toxic (e.g., I can love Linux but nevertheless it would be toxic if someone were just shouting "I LOVE LINUX ITS THE BEST LA LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU!"). I could (and frequently do) also find myself civily disagreeing with someone, but understanding their arguments (and my own) better as a result--this is an example of healthy dialogue. In this particular case, I happen to disagree with conspiratorialists and also object to their discourse, but again, those are two distinct concerns.
