The John Birch Society also didn’t cause the Black Plague, but In not sure what the point of mentioning that factoid would be other than to downplay the very real harm that segregationist propaganda does to our society.

Yes, information asymmetry is the greatest impediment to the ideals of democracy and free-market economics.

As an side - the second greatest is probably social inertia.

Generally, increase the transparency of corporations. Start by subjecting all corporations transacting business across state lines to the FOIA (or something like it).

In the context of this thread, require those certifying factual accuracy to verify their assertions or face removal of the opportunity to sew further disinformation.

No, I believe that discourse is not "free" when it is obstructed by malicious disinformation.



I don't, and I never said or suggested that I do.

I am aware of the filtering and other unsavory practices undertaken by journalism - selective reporting, deceptive headlining, unvetted scooping.

I would require news publications to make publicly available their non-commercial revenue sources and to caveat their degrees of confidence wrt their content.

What I would not do is require the NYT to run an Alex Jones editorial.

You've done a pretty good job of responding to most of my points, except for one glaring omission - the plethora of alternative platforms to FB. If FB had an actual monopoly on social media, I would be much more sympathetic to your position. Going back to your "town square" analogy, it is logistically untenable to suggest that the townsfolk meet on another town's square, but this is not the case with FB.


When you say "corporate dominance", are you bearing in mind that the various corporations are in constant competition with one another? That they are not a unitary force?

I don't know how you get to the suggestion that I "entrust the 1% with our democracy" from my position that "the owner of a platform should be free to exclude others from the use of that platform on a limited set of bases".

And I am not making FB my eyes and ears. Personally, I don't use Facebook and haven't for years. You are the one who said most people get their news from FB.



this seems fertile

not what I was suggesting

I was suggesting that property rights are important regardless of whether the owner is an individual or a group


I don't like the formulation that "corporations are people too", but corporations are ultimately comprised of people, and I think a lot of rhetoric obscures that fact.

Why can't I watch porn on ABC? Just declaring FB a common carrier doesn't solve anything really, it just kicks the can down the road in hopes that whatever regulatory body is given control over FB makes rules you agree with. The basic problem is people on the right have a hard expressing their beliefs without ****ting on other groups of people. It's almost like their's is a belief system based on hating others and helping themselves. Don't blame FB if you have a ****ty message.

A better analogy would be streaming services like Netflix. Would they be required to host Infowars videos? To promothe them? Who pays for the bandwidth and storage that will be required if you force them to host any and all content from anyone?

A good analogy is a monopolistic telegraph company. If the telegraph company doesn't want to transmit any messages about black lives matter, is that a problem? BLM can just write letters after all, what's the big deal?

Bandwidth, storage and promotion are all overhead and would be the cost of doing business. Are cable companies considered common carriers? I don't see anyone taking them to court when Tim Allen's series or Rosanne's get cancelled. Again, being a common carrier means they are regulated by an external entity like the PUC, or the FCC.

But that cost of business goes up if you’re forced to host mountains of content that may not be profitable. Does Netflix just eat the cost? Do taxpayers subsidize the content?

Dunno, it's not really that interesting of a question because it's all so cheap.

Seems relevant:

Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests

Hahaha this is so lit you guys, Facebook is the lead pipes to our Roman Empire.

Should we regulate a monopoly that uses a secret algorithm to determine what everyone sees on their pervasive and hugely influential platform? Naw dogg, don't be ridiculous, we just regulate important monopolies like the water company.

I'm all for public pressure on FB, the problem being that it seems to be shaping up as everybody wants to silence somebody else, more so than keep it open. But we are nowhere near treating FB like a county government that's not allowed to censor so public pressure is what we have. I'm not wedded to an particular approach, I'm sure the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are 1000x more advanced than my musings. I just believe we need to think big and not let sophistry about corporate property rights destroy communication.

Yes, alternatives remain, but the big media companies are still rendering discourse vulnerable, especially long term. Google's China censorship machine could easily be set up in the U.S. This might not even be especially controversial in the near future, judging from opinions expressed at 2+2.

And Wolf, I don't think corporate competition substitutes for open debate of ideas. They'll compete for market share while mutually excluding a range of ideas labeled extreme. That's how the legacy media has always worked. So the NYT might say the Vietnam war was a huge mistake, and the WaPo will say absolutely not, it was a limited mistake for understandable reasons. But both exclude what's rather obvious, it was a criminal invasion, not an oops.

That troll says:
You could have read the post you lazy sot, which made the point that it wasn't fringe white nationalists (which you want banned) who sucked the US into one of its worst crimes, that being Vietnam. Tonkin Gulf was the work of cruise missile liberals, and the legacy media that repeated without question the lies of LBJ and Robert McNamara. Saying my post was covering for nutcase Birchers is as loopy as they are. I'm guessing you don't even know the Birchers or the Tonkin Gulf resolution, but that didn't stop you.

Jesus, this reads like a bad horror movie from 2004

I also understand that William F Buckley wasn’t responsible for 9/11. Makes you think.

Postman not going into those neighborhoods, though.

Grunched my way through this thread and so far I have learned

a) Pakistan is in Europe

b) Forcing media outlets to publish retractions when wrong will improve the accuracy of their content in future

I'm trying to muster the enthusiasm to investigate how the example I gave of hate speech that should be illegal, somehow resulted in someone thinking someone believed that Pakistan is in Europe.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi on censorship: FB zapped anti-right rally.

maybe people should stop relying on facebook

Aww, shucks, let's just see if ole Lefty Bill's concern trolling here is providing you context

"FB zapped anti-right rally"

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/01/fa...e-the-right-2/

So it wasn't like, a content decision based on limiting free speech at all! They deleted a whole event because one of the organizers of the event was a fake account. That's the story there.

Why can't you be honest, Bill? Why do you have so little respect for your readers that you constantly ****ing lie?

The only explanation I can think of here is that Bill doesn’t think other people can use the internet and fact check his BS.

One of the six cohosts of an event, the creator but beyond that a co-host that had "absolutely no involvement" in the event was a bot. The organizers who had involvement were anti-racism/BLM groups. FB hired ex-CIA and Homeland Security personnel (The Atlantic Council) who shut this down. Also a Russian group spent 7 minutes as a co-host.

The real activists involved think FB sucks and owes them an apology. Matt Taibbi, who ostensibly read the article he linked to, thinks that FB in conjunction with the CIA should not just be saluted and thanked for their service here.

Fly, you score some points here on Bill and are probably about to score some on me, but it's obvious that Bill is a more authentic lefty than you are. You're a douchebag lawyer ffs. A poker boom to ****stain lawyer who plays 4chan/Reddit troll games on 2p2.

Micro, you know we can click on these articles and read them, right?

I did. It's looks like you didn't. That's how I know the organizers do blame FB. Do you think Matt Taibbi read the article?