Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Former Judge Luttig - https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/opini...tig/index.html

Re: Song of the Day
 

If a platform knows that a story is heavily promoted, inorganically (whether via technological intervention or just good old-fashioned grassroots organizing) in the run up to an election with the obvious hope of influencing the outcome of that election, should it do anything?

That seems like a really hard question to me. Seems like whether it is technological or organizing probably makes a difference, but in a world that includes bot farms and nearly costless sharing, that may be a very difficult thing to distinguish.

Re: Song of the Day
 

I don't see why it's newsworthy, I didn't know about it, and I don't care. But there are obvious differences between the stories about the FBI investigation and stories about the laptop. Legit news organizations don't run things unless they think they are true. It is obvious to all involved that Giuliani, the source for the Post's laptop story, is a liar engaged in manufacturing evidence. If you were publishing a newspaper, would you run anything Giuliani said, whether or not it seemed true, simply because some people would want to hear it?

The next time I'm watching porn, I'm going to remember that you think it's newsworthy.

Re: Song of the Day
 

FWIW, the network effects of the supercharging network are the only thing here that sounds like a moat that would make Tesla more valuable in the long run than other car companies.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

A big 2 to what he says, and I just cannot believe how badly the Democrats are fucking this up. At the end of the day, the answer is politics, and they just don't want to engage in the politics of it.

Re: Song of the Day
 

Why is it a hard question? If you assume that a platform only exists to make money for its investors, maybe it's an easier question.

Re: Song of the Day
 

For selfish reasons I hope they lose E-vehicle market share to another OEM, but I kind of feel cars are sold more by brand and buzz that unique tech.

Re: Song of the Day
 

It is unclear to me which course of action benefits investors. What other criteria should I then apply?

Being weaponized in the 2016 campaign seems to have had only very marginal negative consequences for Facebook, for example.

Re: Song of the Day
 

It's hard, but imagine that the people running the company are human beings who care about doing the right thing by other people more generally, as opposed to just maximizing financial returns for their investors. You know, as if "should" implied some broader sort of morality, the sorts of things our ancestors believed in.

Re: Song of the Day
 

This is where you get into trouble. One man’s suicide bomber is another’s freedom fighter. “Doing the right thing” is rarely “doing the right thing for everyone.”

Personally, I’d like to preclude anti-choice folks. But I also have to grasp, though enforcing their own views on others in a manner I find repugnant, a lot of these people believe they are in an existential fight for human lives.

And then I recall, it is allowing their views to be pilloried in the marketplace of ideas that best destroys their positions.

Re: Song of the Day
 

I think to avoid what we have today, a belief among a significant number of voters that the media and big tech put a finger on the scale for Biden, I think there should be no preclusion of any stories regarding candidates. If you don’t let it rip, you get what we have now - a persistent argument that the President is illegitimate.

We’ll see this in reverse in November, when the Rs take the house, possibly in a landslide. A significant number of voters will believe that was somehow fixed. And that will be based in part on legitimate arguments re: GOP gerrymandering and fixing election rules to tamp D turnout. But an equally significant number will base this belief on nonsense they read on Twitter or FB.

There is no way to fix this. It’s what happens when the general population is unable to separate the fantastic from the real. And yeah, we’re there.

ETA: I’d submit if you believe the election of 2020 was fixed, you’re irredeemable. Limiting the crazy shit you absorb isn’t going to make much difference. Nothing is improved by stopping a man from having 30 shots of whiskey but allowing 29. (Maybe Dylan Thomas’ death, but that’s an extreme outlier.)

Re: Song of the Day
 

There are many, many people who think that Biden was not legitimately elected, but let's not pretend that it has much of anything to do with Twitter. Those people are being told attractive lies by fools and knaves.

And four years earlier, a significant number of voters thought that the media put a finger on the scale for Trump. Her emails! I'm old enough to remember when it was clear that the media was jonesing for a youthful George W. Bush and couldn't stand Al Gore. But you are of course correct to hint that the right wing runs on grievance in a way the rest of us can barely grok.

Re: Song of the Day
 

yes, the gop is bad that way!

Wow and more cases per capita than NY
 

Sign me up for Covid zero!

Re: Song of the Day
 

Correct as to first sentence. Partially correct as to second.

Some of the people saying Biden is illegitimate are fools and knaves. Some aren't. Some are lying and putting out false information on purpose. That group would be manipulators, propagandists, political operatives, etc.

This highlights a danger in moderation. Words are replacements for brute force and violence. (Unless you're Putin.) Manipulation is a way for men to try to get what they want by getting others to agree to it, or by tricking them. Advocacy and promotion often involve lies. Modern advertising is rife with lousy, sleazy tactics. And one of the bedrocks of our culture, religion, is based on telling people fabulous bullshit stories.

Within the concept of "moderation," or akin to it, is this idea that "misinformation" should be banned. As you note, platforms don't want to get into that. But a whole lot of people who "think they know best" and the politicians that pander to them definitely want to find ways to stop "misinformation" from spreading. (Just this week, Biden's admin [not Biden, but people below him] started a task force on "misinformation" in response to Musk buying Twitter.)

This thinking elevates words to the level of actions. They are not the same thing. (Eazy E was not actually killing people in Compton. Bret Easton Ellis may have given some serial killers some ideas, but he is not one himself. The Anarchist's Cookbook is not the same thing as a pipe bomb built using its schematics.)

Words are different from actions, as is the absence of them (silence is not violence).

No one may yell fire in a crowded theater. But that's a very limited form of exception, based on immediate fear of imminent arm. "Misinformation" regarding elections is not within that exception. It is, in fact, something politicians have been using since politicians have existed. LBJ famously joked about accusing an opponent of being a pigfucker to win a Congressional seat.

People are not going to stop doing what they want to do to get what they want. Take away the right to lie and manipulate and they'll simply revert to violence, the thing they used before advocacy and manipulative behaviors replaced it as instrumentality of combat among civilized people.

It did. I remember seeing that story hit. The media wanted a nailbiter, and it did everything it could to make it close.