US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3209

On April 30 2021 20:57 Liquid`Drone wrote:


Yeah, that really is the crux of the problem. Having some independent fact checker that accurately determines whether information that is being spread is accurate and then tasking that fact checker with checking all information spread on the internet and then flagging or cencoring stuff that is false/dangerous - that sounds highly useful.

But say the previous administration decided to implement such an independent fact checker.. Would I trust that fact checker when it stated that the election was stolen or whatever other hundreds of blatantly false statements made by said admin, and would I be happy about it when it censored contrary statements? Obviously, no - I would perceive this as one of the final stages of achieving a lasting dictatorship. Being Norwegian, I don't really suffer from the truth being politicized in this way - my current right-wing government bases their decision making on sets of facts that I myself accept as true. But if I were american, I'd be much more skeptical, because voting patterns are such a strong determiner of reality-perception.

Now, this doesn't mean that facts don't matter or that we should just let all opinions slide. Rather, it means that policing speech, be it in real life or the internet, is something we should be incredibly careful doing. I get that some European countries outlaw holocaust denial and I'm not necessarily disagreeing with their decision to do so (although it's also not something I'm really invested in defending, either). I'm happy Alex Jones is deplatformed. But I don't want the 50 year old woman who posts that vaccines cause autism and covid is 5g on her facebook feed to be censored.

Further, our understanding of truth and facts actually does change over time. I'm quite confident it'd be possible to make quite the comprehensive list over things accepted as true 30 years ago that no longer are true today without the actual facts changing, rather that this change in perception of truth and fact has happened as a consequence of an evolution of our ability to comprehend data.

In Norway, we have a national broadcasting company which for many Norwegians is their main source of news. I don't mind, at all. I find them highly reliable and trustworthy (more so than almost any private media actor I can think of). The same thing in North Korea is obviously unreliable. The same thing implemented by some american administrations could be good - but by other administrations, I'd be deeply distrusting. (That said, I have the impression NPR and PBS have generally been way more reliable and less partisan than many other american media outlets, but again, if their leadership is or can be politically appointed, then that's a dire balance to strike.)

As a Norwegian high school teacher, teaching my pupils to navigate through an increasingly complex media landscape is part of my job. I don't know to what degree this is part of the american educational system. I think I'm fairly adept at discerning trustworthy information from untrustworthy information, but I'm also certain that I've been fooled at times. I'm also skeptical towards determining that 'anti-vaxx' is deserving of special treatment in the truth-department. Imo, climate change still represents a threat to humanity several magnitudes greater than what Covid does. Recently, it was discovered that a group responsible for calculating Norwegian emissions had made some wrong calculations about emissions related to transportation of goods and wares, which made them inaccurately state that Norway's emissions had been cut (more significantly than what they actually had been). That's immensely harmful - but I actually believe it was a honest mistake on their behalf (even if it isn't a honest mistake on the behalf of Norwegian politicians that still repeat said wrongful calculation).

Again, I'm not opposed to arbitrariness - I think that's inherent to being a human and living in a society with other people. If I talk with people who argue for 'free speech is completely sacrosanct and all speech should always be permitted', I'm inclined to point towards examples of incitement towards violence and how difficult it can be to distinguish incitement of violence from just being a hateful asshole. My main point of contention is with anyone trying to turn this into a simple topic with an easy answer.