Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Ah, you’re channeling William Henry’s defense of elitism here. I am sympathetic. Loved the book.

The problem is the arrogant people to whom I’m referring are not elites. They’re a different form of quasi-deplorable sold on the idea they are elites.

I don’t wish to read lies that manipulate fools. But what do I gain by having a different breed of fool police that?

Some us don’t want Trump but we also don’t want you playing ref. We resent having to pick from competing brands of dumb.

I don't know who William Henry is, but I find it incredibly telling and depressing that when I say that Facebook can and should do more to stop people from lying in political ads, you say the real problem is arrogant people and fantasize about telling them off. If that's not Trump Lite, what is? I don't want to play ref. Facebook already plays ref, and it makes a lot of money from it. I want a world where Facebook stops profiteering from disseminating political lies, *and* you get to fantasize about swearing at arrogant people. Why not both?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I don't know who William Henry is, but I find it incredibly telling and depressing that when I say that Facebook can and should do more to stop people from lying in political ads, you say the real problem is arrogant people and fantasize about telling them off. If that's not Trump Lite, what is? I don't want to play ref. Facebook already plays ref, and it makes a lot of money from it. I want a world where Facebook stops profiteering from disseminating political lies, *and* you get to fantasize about swearing at arrogant people. Why not both?

Let them fight. Stop trying to manage things.

It’s not Trump Lite at all. I’m leaving his followers to the wolves.

You’d wish to outlaw PT Barnum. Let the rabble fight it out. And I see through your bullshit. You want to filter the arguments, to redraft the accepted spheres of deviancy as you think they ought to be. If fools will vote for fools, well, go find a better fool to run and beat them at their own game.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Let them fight. Stop trying to manage things.

It’s not Trump Lite at all. I’m leaving his followers to the wolves.

You’d wish to outlaw PT Barnum. Let the rabble fight it out. And I see through your bullshit. You want to filter the arguments, to redraft the accepted spheres of deviancy as you think they ought to be. If fools will vote for fools, well, go find a better fool to run and beat them at their own game.

Not sure why you're an apologist for lying, but OK.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Let them fight. Stop trying to manage things.

It’s not Trump Lite at all. I’m leaving his followers to the wolves.

You’d wish to outlaw PT Barnum. Let the rabble fight it out. And I see through your bullshit. You want to filter the arguments, to redraft the accepted spheres of deviancy as you think they ought to be. If fools will vote for fools, well, go find a better fool to run and beat them at their own game.

Not all of us want to attend a circus.

I yield my time back to Ty and TM.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Not sure why you're an apologist for lying, but OK.

I'm not an apologist for lying. I'm leery of employing what I think is an authoritarian fix for it.

Free speech, the most important right we have, is built around the notion that ideas will compete with one another. The cure for one person lying is another person saying "That's a lie."

What you seek to do is prevent speech. You seek to use a referee to filter speech and ban lies from getting traction. The aim is noble, no doubt. But I don't need to tell you just how dangerous that thinking is to a free society.

And it's no excuse, or defense, to say, "Facebook already filters commercial speech." That the company sins in that regard doesn't mean the sin should be extended to political speech. (There's also an argument that filtering commercial speech is acceptable because it's just self-protection, as such speech could be defamatory, whereas political speech rarely rises to the level of defamation because the subjects are public figures.)

It is, however, a valid defense for FB to say "We can pick and choose what we want to filter and what we don't." FB has that right. Again, it should not engage in that sin, as I noted above, but technically, legally, it can do that.

I think FB should not filter any speech at all. I think that doing so, in any regard, risks normalizing the idea that certain speech should be precluded. And I don't want any speech precluded, for a simple reason: A human will have to do the filtering. And humans are biased, fallible, and yes -- arrogant.

I can be quite arrogant. I think I'm smarter than a lot of people in a number of regards, just like many of us here. A person like me should never be in a position to filter what speech others see. I'd seek to preclude that which I didn't like. Such a dishonest filter would bend free speech into propaganda of the most insidious form. It would also further infantilize an already childish and frivolous public. Look at these people on the left and right in this country. Look at the deplorables, and the people who think of themselves as elites. These people are to a large extent poorly informed, biased sorts. Joiners and opportunists of the worst stripe. You don't allow any one of these groups to acquire the power to filter speech. You let them battle it out - throw their dimwitted ideas at each other, fight over politics and lob their self-reinforcing data and media narratives at each other - and hope that out of the mess of competing bullshit, some mix of policies that keep the Republic rolling emerges.

I can't think of a world scarier than one in which people like us were awarded the power to filter what the people we think are below us should get to read. A world in which you or I was able to save the knaves from lies by limiting what they consume - on any platform - is a fucking horror movie. I'd rather live through a dozen Trump administrations.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Not all of us want to attend a circus.

I yield my time back to Ty and TM.

Going to the circus is fun, but you get to leave and go home.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm not an apologist for lying. I'm leery of employing what I think is an authoritarian fix for it.

Free speech, the most important right we have, is built around the notion that ideas will compete with one another. The cure for one person lying is another person saying "That's a lie."

What you seek to do is prevent speech. You seek to use a referee to filter speech and ban lies from getting traction. The aim is noble, no doubt. But I don't need to tell you just how dangerous that thinking is to a free society.

And it's no excuse, or defense, to say, "Facebook already filters commercial speech." That the company sins in that regard doesn't mean the sin should be extended to political speech. (There's also an argument that filtering commercial speech is acceptable because it's just self-protection, as such speech could be defamatory, whereas political speech rarely rises to the level of defamation because the subjects are public figures.)

It is, however, a valid defense for FB to say "We can pick and choose what we want to filter and what we don't." FB has that right. Again, it should not engage in that sin, as I noted above, but technically, legally, it can do that.

I think FB should not filter any speech at all. I think that doing so, in any regard, risks normalizing the idea that certain speech should be precluded. And I don't want any speech precluded, for a simple reason: A human will have to do the filtering. And humans are biased, fallible, and yes -- arrogant.

I can be quite arrogant. I think I'm smarter than a lot of people in a number of regards, just like many of us here. A person like me should never be in a position to filter what speech others see. I'd seek to preclude that which I didn't like. Such a dishonest filter would bend free speech into propaganda of the most insidious form. It would also further infantilize an already childish and frivolous public. Look at these people on the left and right in this country. Look at the deplorables, and the people who think of themselves as elites. These people are to a large extent poorly informed, biased sorts. Joiners and opportunists of the worst stripe. You don't allow any one of these groups to acquire the power to filter speech. You let them battle it out - throw their dimwitted ideas at each other, fight over politics and lob their self-reinforcing data and media narratives at each other - and hope that out of the mess of competing bullshit, some mix of policies that keep the Republic rolling emerges.

I can't think of a world scarier than one in which people like us were awarded the power to filter what the people we think are below us should get to read. A world in which you or I was able to save the knaves from lies by limiting what they consume - on any platform - is a fucking horror movie. I'd rather live through a dozen Trump administrations.

You seem to be confused. Let me help.

- There's no authoritarianism here. No talk of government regulation. We're talking about how Facebook chooses to run its business.

- If you think that free speech enables ideas to compete with each other, you should be concerned when people spend money to pump lies into that marketplace of ideas. When it's advertising, which is all I've been talking about, the idea is not competing on its own merits -- it's buying an advantage.

- And again: lies. If free speech isn't a shibboleth to you, but a way to improve the interplay of ideas, how do lies enter into it? No one is talking about keeping politicians from lying, and getting their lies into the public discourse, where they can compete on the merits. We're just talking about people who pay Facebook money to push lies into to the discourse, and about Facebook enriching itself by taking that money to spread lies.

- You're afraid of referees. Why do you suppose pro sports all have them?

- Most media have editors. What do you think they do? Do you think they stop doing it when people say to them, "hey, you're stopping speech."

- The authoritarian hellscape that scares you is, in principle, how Facebook operated until a few months ago, when it dropped the rule that political ads (again: not speech -- ads) can't have lies. If you think that slope is so slippery, you'll need to explain how we climbed back up it.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Tuesday: Because if you're going to ban lies, you're going to ban a whole lot of what we call 'advocacy."

Wednesday: I'm not an apologist for lying.

We ban all sorts of lies, and filter all sorts of speech, in a lot of different contexts.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

We ban all sorts of lies, and filter all sorts of speech, in a lot of different contexts.

To the extent that by "We" you mean to suggest that we are all in this together with Zuckerberg, get bent. Otherwise, right on, brother.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

We ban all sorts of lies, and filter all sorts of speech, in a lot of different contexts.

I showed up at the circus once and yelled "they all have support wires" during the trapeze show and they told me I couldn't do that.

And it wasn't even a lie.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I showed up at the circus once and yelled "they all have support wires" during the trapeze show and they told me I couldn't do that.

And it wasn't even a lie.

I went to the circus once and a whole lot of clowns got out of a small car. It was like the Trump Administration, but in reverse.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am finding it hard to get any work done today. This Sondland testimony feels like a turning point.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

ZOMG

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

We ban all sorts of lies, and filter all sorts of speech, in a lot of different contexts.

Ty deletes all sort of stuff here- especially true stuff.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Ty deletes all sort of stuff here- especially true stuff.

I deleted the rest of this paragraph.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

We ban all sorts of lies, and filter all sorts of speech, in a lot of different contexts.

Reading back, I realize the "we" here is ambiguous.

I mean, you didn't really mean to imply that Sebby has a filter, do you?