[HN Gopher] Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn aga... ___________________________________________________________________ Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism Author : gigama Score : 67 points Date : 2021-12-11 22:25 UTC (34 minutes ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | MichaelMoser123 wrote: | i think one key passage from Muratov's Nobel lecture is the | following: | https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/muratov/lecture... | | ""Peace, progress, human rights - these three goals are insolubly | linked to one another." | | These words are a quote from the Nobel lecture of member of the | Academy of Science Andrei Sakharov, a citizen of the world, a | great thinker. | | His wife Elena Bonner read it out here, in this place, on | Thursday, December 11, 1975. | | I felt an urge to repeat Sakharov's words here, in this world- | famous hall. | | Why is it important today for us, for me? | | The world has fallen out of love for democracy anymore. | | The world has become disappointed with the power elite. | | The world has begun to turn to dictatorship. | | We've got an illusion that progress can be achieved through | technology and violence, not through human rights and freedoms." | cletus wrote: | > How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity | of facts? | | This one is easy. There is no integrity of facts. No matter what | standard you use you will have cases where reasonable people | disagree. Historians argue about interpretation of facts all the | time. There is no universal objective truth. | | You can argue that you don't need absolute integrity and just | clamp down on the fringe stuff but that just shifts the problem. | You will find a boundary where reasonable people disagree about | action being needed. | | Election integrity actually has more to do with politicizing the | elections process, which is so incredibly dangerous. The whole | "ends justify the means" is a symptom of a siege mentality, which | is deliberately created by those who personally benefit from it. | | So what could the US do? Three things: | | 1. State independent commissions to run elections, draw | boundaries around Congressional districts and certify elections. | This should not be done by the legislature; | | 2. Move voting to Saturday and Sunday; | | 3. Make _appearing_ at a polling place mandatory. This one is | controversial. This is the system Australia has. You don 't have | to vote. You simply need to show up and get your name crossed | off. That's it; and | | 4. Preferential or ranked choice voting. | | Optional voting is nothing more than a tool for voter | suppression. Stripping citizens of voting rights, (historically) | tests on literacy to be able to vote, some districts requiring | you to queue for hours to vote and so on are all designed to | suppress the vote. | | I don't care if someone was a felon or you think they're not | informed enough (who decided that?). The absolute death of | democracies is where a small minority dictates what happens to | the rest of the country and that's where the US is hdeaded. | | The tech giants have very little to do with that. | mc32 wrote: | Facebooks lawyers claimed that their fact checking was opinion | (not fact). So there is that too! | | Facts can be opinions instead. | cgriswald wrote: | > 3. Make appearing at a polling place mandatory. This one is | controversial. This is the system Australia has. You don't have | to vote. You simply need to show up and get your name crossed | off. That's it; and | | How is this enforced? | echelon wrote: | This issue is so complicated. | | Yellow journalism existed in the 1920s. It's nothing new. There | will always be people that want to consume these materials and | believe them. | | The alarming thing are the calls for censorship. | | Look at how bad the media has been about covid. Lab leak, adipose | inflammation, and other fairly innocuous lines of research were | censored. Imagine centrally purging such discussions. | | When you censor, it isn't just the thoughts you dislike. Soon | they'll censor women's health issues. | | Censorship is a threat to democracy. | toss1 wrote: | Active amplification of disinformation is just as much a threat | to democracy. | | Sure yellow journalism existed. But it had anything resembling | the scale, scope, reach, and speed as current technology (which | is why it is taking over). Trying to trivialize this new reach | would be like trivializing using everyone's iPhone/Android GPS | to hand out speeding tickets - sure it's the same law, but an | entirely different regime when you can get a new ticket every | minute. | | Despite free speech laws, it has always, and under pretty much | every legal system, still been illegal to utter certain types | of speech, such as yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, or | inciting riot. It is never absolutely free. | | If all you do when any hint of managing dezinformatsyia arises | is cry "everything must be free (as in speech) and anything | resembling censorship is horrible", you are being too | simplistic. (and leading with it's "so complicated" and moving | to censorship alarms is no less simplistic. | | People and companies need to be responsible for the | consequences of what they spread. Wildly amplifying | disinformation based on engagement, without anything resembling | a moral compass is not sustainable. | anjbe wrote: | > Despite free speech laws, it has always, and under pretty | much every legal system, still been illegal to utter certain | types of speech, such as yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded | theater, or inciting riot. It is never absolutely free. | | And that sentiment--that very example, even--has been used to | justify expansive restrictions on speech that nobody would or | should put up with today, such as opposing the military | draft. | | "When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in | time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their | utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that | no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional | right." | | -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, _Schenck v. United States_ | dragonwriter wrote: | > Sure yellow journalism existed. But it had anything | resembling the scale, scope, reach, and speed as current | technology | | _As a share of current events information_ , it was greater, | often virtually monopolistic, for not just "yellow | journalism" generally but often a fairly unified single | viewpoint of yellow journalism. (In terms of divisiveness, | the actual problem today isn't greater proportional influence | of yellow journalism, but that there are _alternatives_ , | both opposing equally yellow journalism and less-yellow | journalism, with widespread reach.) | philjohn wrote: | How much of that was people passing those things off as fact, | when there wasn't the evidence to back them up? The problem is, | everyone thinks they've become an epidemiologist and virologist | over the last 18 months, people jump onto pre-prints that | haven't been peer reviewed to push whatever narrative they want | - some of the trials that claimed to show Ivermectin as a | wonder drug were plagued with badly designed trial protocols, | and flat out suspected fraud. | | Claiming that it was definitely a lab leak because of furin | clevage - saying it with certainty, is most definitely | misinformation, the truth is we don't know (and may never). If | people say "it could have been a lab leak" (and many people | did, without being "censored") that's different. | mantaraygun wrote: | > _Soon they 'll censor women's health issues._ | | Surely you mean "people who menstruate" | karl11 wrote: | Just to make sure I understand this -- the argument is that in | order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should | censor more content? | anjbe wrote: | That's how I read it too. It's interesting to see how | platforms' freedom to moderate as they please is being | assaulted from all sides--some groups are claiming they must be | forced to moderate more or be punished for what their users | post, while others are claiming they must be forced to moderate | less (or not at all) or be punished for what their users post. | roenxi wrote: | The people calling for that have really not thought their | positions through. The SV companies have a lot of flaws, but | they do appear to be genuine in their belief that their | censorship is helping. That is arrogant and not good enough | ... but there isn't going to be a better option than that. | The alternatives to them having control enable people who are | more arrogant, less able and do more damage when mistakes | inevitably get made. | philjohn wrote: | What's your solution then? | chroem- wrote: | Nobody is "saving democracy" by denying people the right to | participate in the democratic process. In fact, it does quite | the opposite by destabilizing the political discourse. The | "solution" is to stop trying to control people. | philjohn wrote: | How is content moderation "denying people the right to | participate in the democratic process"? | vimy wrote: | Ironically, the title on HN made me think they were warning | against Silicon Valley censorship. | gorwell wrote: | No worries, this time is different. We are the good guys who | want to censor you. We'd never abuse such power. We're saving | you from the bad guys. Pinky swear. | kaplun wrote: | The problem is not that everybody can access information. The | problem is that click-bait false information is pushed by | ranking algorithms more and more in front of the eyes of people | who are ready to believe in them. The information bubble then | is making people more and more radicalized. | hugi wrote: | Not to mention that we now have literal armies dedicated to | spreading propaganda and disinformation. | toss1 wrote: | Refraining from wildly amplifying is not censorship | seneca wrote: | It's a bit unnerving to see this stuff so often, really. | Demands to censor speech you don't like, and which almost | uniformly comes from your political opponents, in the name of | fighting authoritarianism is blatantly contradictory. It'd | startling how popular this sort of thinking has become. | chroem- wrote: | Correct. I am absolutely done with this level of doublespeak. | smt88 wrote: | A better interpretation would be that Silicon Valley should | stop algorithmically promoting anti-democratic, pro- | authoritarian content. | 1cvmask wrote: | If they were going to give their award to a truly deserving | recipient it would have been the tortured and imprisoned | journalist Julian Assange who is an advocate of free speech and | an independent media and voices. Instead they gave the awards | deliberately to censorship advocates. It's the journalistic | equivalent of giving war criminals and killers of children Nobel | Peace Prizes like Kissinger and Obama. | | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doctors-without-borders-bombi... | mc32 wrote: | That would be impossible. Can you imagine: United States | imprisons Nobel prize laureate. | 1cvmask wrote: | I can imagine them imprisoning Nobel Prize laureates as they | have bombed Nobel Prize recipients as well. | | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doctors-without-borders- | bombi... | whitepaint wrote: | Aren't governments (especially Germany and Australia for what | they are doing at the moment) way more scarier than big tech? I | am not scared of Google or Facebook at all. I am, however, scared | of governments. Especially seeing how the pandemic was handled | and how little resistance the handling got from the citizens. | smt88 wrote: | Those governments (and the ones in the US) are at least | beholden to voters. | | Large companies have no accountability, and if they disrupt the | democratic process, they have no consequences either. | | Mark Zuckerberg is the authoritarian ruler of an extremely | powerful entity that, in some countries, is more powerful than | any local government. | ForHackernews wrote: | At least governments (in a democracy) are subject to public | scrutiny and accountable to the electorate. As far as I can | tell, the big tech firms aren't answerable to anyone. | missedthecue wrote: | I agree. Facebook can try to show me target ads, but that's | pretty benign compared to what my government can do to me with | absolutely zero recourse. | grover35 wrote: | That was the same "authoritarianism" that saved us from a violent | insurrection and another Donald Trump presidency. | playguardin wrote: | Trump 2024 bitch ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-11 23:00 UTC)