I have to wondered how we "fix" our current internet situation.
On the one hand, censorship appears to be appealing to stop the tide of misinformation. Anti-vaxx garbage is a prime example of something that should be censored into oblivion. It is actively harmful to the public.
But, on the other hand, who pulls the levers of censorship is equally terrifying. I don't want a world where a dissenting opinion is censored because it doesn't fall in line with whoevers ideology. For example, Chinese censorship of the Tiananmen square incident.
How on earth can we fix this? Social media has created a world of bubbles. Some of which are FILLED TO THE BRIM with misinformation. Penetrating those bubbles is nearly impossible. They've always sort of existed, yet somehow it feels like they are more extreme now-a-days.
Just musing. I really don't have a solution to this but am certainly interest to hear any proposals.
Perhaps the solution is really as simple as better public education?
personally, I don't think there is a fix to the fact that people will be interconnected and seek stuff that fits their worldview one way or another - draconian eavesdropping and censorship will only make those circles tighter and more extreme
I think we have to embrace the fact that there are layers of informational warfare and hope for some degree of stability once hyper-connectivity has seen off a couple generations
people have to be more willing to debate ideas they find crazy and be patient because the opposite strategy is a losing one
of course governments and big tech will suppress information and even prosecute people for saying the "wrong" things, but this has a limited scope and the backlash is more of that stuff happening in closer circles/bubbles
The problem is that the scales are completely unbalanced when it comes to information vs misinformation.
There is political and financial incentives at play to spread misinformation. It isn't as simple as "the best ideas win" as most social media platforms make it REALLY easy to manipulate the narrative.
For example, if some politician will negatively impact my business, I can hire a BUNCH of people to go out and write nasty comments about that politician. I can create fake media pages to support whatever narrative I want against that candidate. I can do all of this for relatively little money. We see this phenomenon come up time and time again when it comes to review websites. Most people "in the know" don't trust amazon reviews because they know companies astroturf them like crazy.
Climate change is a place where this also happens a LOT. Man made climate change is a nearly undisputed fact in the scientific world, yet roughly half of Americans either don't believe in it or are unsure about it. Why? Because there's big incentives behind the fossil fuel industry to spread FUD and misinformation about climate change. On the flip side, there's just not the money or resources available to climate scientists to correct that narrative.
I can buy that "some censorship doesn't work" however, it appears that a free for all is equally broken.
Population size and distrust of authority have a fairly linear relationship. The bigger we get, the further from power and decision-making we feel we are. This makes a great case for no censorship.
Of course, the gremlins created by the above scenario makes a great case for some censorship.
Until authority can be coaxed into becoming more transparent and, thereby, creating trust, we will keep having this conversation.
That sounds like saying we cant have laws which forbid things I don't like, and no laws against things I do like.
We have final arbitrators of truth, they are laws, judges and juries. It isn't a perfect system, and it might not scale, but I see no need to abandon the idea some things are fundamentally incorrect, and get rid of those things.
Then there's all the law enforcement agencies, the FBI, CIA, TSA, DoD, NSA, and more.
Then there's the side effect of laws, how many problems are we dealing with presently from supposedly good gov't laws from years or decades ago? A whole lot.
Social engineering via laws and judges is a simple minded solution and should never be considered the best or final solution.
The US has fallen a great way from the spirit of the first amendment when laws, judges and juries are not just a necessary component of a well ordered society, but are the "final arbiters of truth" on political questions.
On the one hand, censorship appears to be appealing to stop the tide of misinformation. Anti-vaxx garbage is a prime example of something that should be censored into oblivion. It is actively harmful to the public.
But, on the other hand, who pulls the levers of censorship is equally terrifying. I don't want a world where a dissenting opinion is censored because it doesn't fall in line with whoevers ideology. For example, Chinese censorship of the Tiananmen square incident.
How on earth can we fix this? Social media has created a world of bubbles. Some of which are FILLED TO THE BRIM with misinformation. Penetrating those bubbles is nearly impossible. They've always sort of existed, yet somehow it feels like they are more extreme now-a-days.
Just musing. I really don't have a solution to this but am certainly interest to hear any proposals.
Perhaps the solution is really as simple as better public education?