GP's quote implores the reader to do the balancing. When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias.
That's not to say that a good counter argument shouldn't be presented in the article, just that a moral mandate to include both sides often creates that false balance
> When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias.
But that's also why the condemnation of balance is misdirected. Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. It isn't choosing how to spend its own words in a newspaper with a finite number of pages or a news channel with a finite amount of airtime, it's choosing what other people can say in a medium with effectively unlimited carrying capacity.
It also has a big problem because the platform is simultaneously a medium for the dissemination of information to the public and a medium for the debate of nascent ideas.
Suppose that tomorrow we got a claim of widespread election fraud that could actually be substantiated, given a sufficient amount of crowdsourcing or collaboration between experts in different fields. Now they can't even discuss it because the effort to substantiate it involves putting forth a theory that hasn't been substantiated yet?
Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform.
That's just mincing words. Facebook is very much a communications platform that determines what its users get to see. In that sense, Facebook exercises editorial control over its content, and to its users it makes no difference whether that control is automated or manual. Therefore it doesn't matter whether we classify Facebook as a "journalist", the damage done by Facebook's editorial control is the same.
It isn't. A journalist is choosing what they themselves say out of their own mouths. Anybody attributing everything that third party speakers say via Facebook as the official position of Facebook is false.
Ah, yes... that only works if we are not being actively manipulated.
In ideal world all people would be weighing evidence, try to think logically and appeal to timeless, basic principles.
Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and (what a shocker) half of people have less than 100 IQ.
While it is easy to see through most lies most of the time (the logic just isn't there), the goal is not to fool everybody. It is enough to fool just enough people to sow confusion.
Although my quote rather questions whether there is always something to balance in the first place. If you try to find the middle ground between truth and a blatant, confident lie that was pulled from thin air to sow doubts on that truth, you get a half-lie — or truth casted in doubt, which was exactly what the lie was made for.
Find a fringe case about a dead body voting and you can sow doubts about a whole election. Call out a politician lying once and suddenly it does not matter anymore whether you are lying every day to the casual onlooker.
I am absolutely not sure whether censoring such content is the right answer, but I'm pretty sure providing an open microphone and an uncontrolled echo chamber to narcisstic sociopaths backed by Wall Street interests and foreign bot armies isn't either.
> We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information. Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair.
The system you are referring to is called our discerning minds, and it is already in place. By removing any piece of an argument you are removing the ability of a discerning mind to make a sound judgement.
And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention?
There's a reason why advertisements work, and it goes hand-in-hand on why ads are regulated.
> And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention?
Good question. Of course, there is no individual human mind capable of such a thing, and so why should such a mind be permitted to decide what the masses get to see?
Why do we need courts anyway when we can use our own discerning sense of vigilante justice?
Individually humans are quite helpless. That's why we build systems to are able allow us to cooperate and tackle problems that are bigger than any one of us.
The justice system, government, private enterprises, the media, etc. We should make sure that all of them are doing their job and weeding out the bad actors accordingly. We then give input to these systems to ensure that operate within their remit.
> Why do we need courts anyway when we can use our own discerning sense of vigilante justice?
You're still talking about humans though, right? Does that system not count as part of "our discerning minds"? What is a jury if not a group of discerning minds?
To be clear, I agree that human systems are necessary (the justice system, military, etc), but when it comes to squelching speech I disagree with that approach. When real people have real concerns and those concerns are silenced by an opposing group, that is oppression plain and simple.
Is satire to be suppressed because it makes exagerrated or nonsensical claims? Where do we draw the line, and who gets to decide when satire crosses the line to become incendiary?
What would be the end goal of your proposed system that filters speech that you consider "noise"? To prevent a tyrant from taking power by spreading false information? The truth is that once we live in a society where free speech is suppressed then we are already living under a tyranny.
> Is satire to be suppressed because it makes exagerrated or nonsensical claims? Where do we draw the line, and who gets to decide when satire crosses the line to become incendiary?
Deciding what to publish is itself a system to disseminate information.
Free press and free speech doesn't mean you can force other people to publish your speech. It just means that government is not allowed to suppress it.
>What would be the end goal of your proposed system that filters speech that you consider "noise"? To prevent a tyrant from taking power by spreading false information? The truth is that once we live in a society where free speech is suppressed then we are already living under a tyranny.
Don't use silly slippery slope arguments. The US already has limits on speech that directly cause harm to others.
> Free press and free speech doesn't mean you can force other people to publish your speech. It just means that government is not allowed to suppress it.
That's a fair point. This has been an interesting exchange. I'm still not sure if we've actually been agreeing with eachother without realizing it (due to me misinterpreting your meaning), but I've enjoyed the discussion. It's helpful to talk about this sort of thing if for nothing else than to reaffirm our own positions. I appreciate that you came back to the conversation to continue the engagement over the course of nearly a week, like a long game of chess. Your argument did cause me to reassess my own positions in a few cases, and that alone made the exchange worthwhile.
Allowing governments and corporations to be that filter is incredibly dangerous given how much the interests of those institutions and individuals can diverge from yours.
Though admittedly, it might not be much worse than the current system (the interests of news orgs definitely diverge from yours).
Government has certain duties, but the media should absolutely be held to certain standards by the public. We (as in the public) can't just allow media outlets to spout lies completely contrary to the truth. Free speech is protection from government interference. But the public absolutely should be able to seek redress from bad media, including those that facilitate bad actors.
That's not to say that a good counter argument shouldn't be presented in the article, just that a moral mandate to include both sides often creates that false balance