I live in Hungary, there is a hungarian language COVID conspiracy group with 107k members atm. Reported them and nothing happened for weeks, they are growing easily. And I think nothing will happen.
> There is not even a category to report them because Facebook only has limited options (nudity, harassment, hate speech, unauthorized sales, violence)
It is the same on Twitter and YouTube, and probably on every other social networking site. There is an unending stream of blatant misinformation spread by accounts ranging from ‘misinformed loudmouth’ to ‘obvious troll’, and no options to report these posts or users. It is frustrating.
If these companies really want to tackle misinformation, the very least they could do is have a mechanism that collects reports for analysis.
While you may not get it censored, you can still fight it: You can write replies. Or you can approach your peers that seem to believe false information and try to enlighten them.
This is a response to an argument I did not make. I could choose to spend 24 hours a day replying to misinformation. This won’t get the misinformation off the platform even though it’s against the rules of the platform for it to be there in the first place.
They need public-facing mechanisms to report content so it can be removed, just like all the other disallowed content which can be reported. It’s not good enough to plaster “get the facts” banners above the comments section or in users’ feeds, or occasionally take sweeping actions against highly visible groups/accounts. My frustration is that no option exists to report misinformation even though (1) it’s banned content, and (2) the reporting mechanism is already there.
The peddlers of misinformation seem to have an uncanny ability to be presented with evidence that they’re misinformed and use it as an opportunity to double down and repeat their misinformation. I don’t know the right answer but I’m skeptical there’s an upside to engaging with them.
My understanding is that engaging is typically a bad idea because these folks typically fall into one of three buckets:
1. The person believes what they are saying strongly enough to say it openly and conspicuously. Attempts to correct them with facts triggers a backfire effect which causes them to believe the false information even more strongly[0].
2. The person is a troll. They don’t actually believe what they are saying. They are only saying it in order to make others (you!) upset because it makes them feel powerful[1].
3. The person is actually a bot or part of a coordinated disinformation campaign. Their goal is to create false division between people to create instability, and engaging only helps them achieve their objective[2].
In all cases, an action which causes people to feel the need to repeat false information may cause more people to believe the false information due to the illusory truth effect[3], which can lead to the sort of spiral we find ourselves in today. My understanding here is that false information existing is not a problem so much as the ubiquity of the false information, and from that perspective it’s more important to make it harder to find than it is to try to correct it.
I notice conspiracy groups are very popular atm. Couldn’t this be used to spread conspiracises that are not conspiracies and to educate people in more layman terms? I think a lot of people don’t understand science and are intimidated by it and turn to conapiracies because they are easily digestable and worded on their understanding.
> I think a lot of people don’t understand science and are intimidated by it and turn to conapiracies because they are easily digestable and worded on their understanding.
That's what makes it so difficult to 'package' truth as a conspiracy.
I see how my comment may be comfusing to you so let me explain what I had in mind: those conspiracy channels are flooded with crap that is fabricated in russian propaganda and misinformation labs or by white extremists or ehat not. I think it could be relatively easy to flood those channels with non-misinformation, very easily digestible news and information that is written simple for the lowest common denominator. It could make a positive difference imo
A few days ago our PM (Netherlands) did the first 'covid press conference' in a few weeks. I watched it on YouTube with live comments turned on, and it was off-putting.
Obviously YouTube comments are generally quite shit, but this was an unending stream of Bill Gates/5G/anti-vaxxer conspiracies. I've also already met a handful of them in my day to day life, and these were not particularly crazy or uneducated people.
> Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said, “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation."
"Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning. We identified several major knowledge gaps requiring further research, most fundamentally an improved characterization of the modes of person-to-person transmission."
> In an editorial published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), CDC reviewed the latest science and affirms that cloth face coverings are a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19 that could reduce the spread of the disease, particularly when used universally within communities. There is increasing evidence that cloth face coverings help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others.
> This review included two case studies out today, one from JAMA, showing that adherence to universal masking policies reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission within a Boston hospital system, and one from CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), showing that wearing a mask prevented the spread of infection from two hair stylists to their customers in Missouri.
The understanding of effectiveness did not change, what changed is that enough masks were being produced that the supply of medical masks did not need to protected any more. We were lied to at the start.
If you go through the literature, there's genuinely very little concrete useful stuff on mask efficacy pre-COVID. "We're not sure" was a pretty reasonable statement back in March.
"Masks don't work" like the US Surgeon General was tweeting at the time wasn't a very supportable statement, though.
(The lie didn't work, either, and likely harmed trust in public officials on the matter.)
Criminal liability is inappropriate for people spreading disease unless you can really prove intent. And, frankly, trying to prosecute 200k people is infeasible.
This is an argument in bad faith. Someone choosing to eat
a lot of sugar won't give you health problems, but someone that's sick and not wearing a mask could put you in the grave.
Yes it does, if you get diabetes you could kill me from your car, or take up critical health resources that lead to me not getting treatment. Sugar is dangerous.
"The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas."
Alfred Whitney Griswold
It is not your or Facebook's job to censor people. Btw. Sweden made most of the things work what this particular group is asking for (no masks). Do you want to ban Sweden too?
No, but if only one side is actually debating and the other is just trolling for reactions, there's no possibility for "good" ideas to ever even meet bad ones, much less defeat them.
"The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas."
? In the commons, there is limited ability to discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' ideas.
Among the crowds, the craziest ideas usually win.
Individuals are intelligent, but crowds are dumb.
Most people who push for ultra freedom of expression think of it in intellectual terms, you know, people having reasonable discussion, but it's not that, it's yelling, cursing, death threats, crazy ideas and 'actual racism' (and I mean the bad stuff like 'kill all those XYZ people, they are cockroaches').
> "The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas."
Weird how "let's not send the Jews to the gas chambers" didn't catch on in Nazi Germany. Good ideas sometimes get swamped by bad ideas pushed by effective people/propaganda. It's quite clear from human history that good ideas are neither a sure weapon, nor a fast one.
Theory: huge swathes of people are hugely dissatisfied with their lives; long hours, poor pay, lack of social mobility, poor education (as others have said) and they feel there must be some thing tangible to blame for this. It’s fertile ground for conspiracy theories to grow.
I think that's part of it. I have also noticed that it tends to satisfy a deep desire in susceptible people for "secret knowledge". They thrive on the idea that the world is more dangerous and mysterious than it actually is, perhaps stemming from the malaise and depression that comes from those things you mentioned.
I'm prone to consider "conspiracy theories" because something terrible happened to me that is adamantly denied by those in power.
The terrible thing that happened to me does not feel like "secret knowledge" or a "conspiracy theory" at all. It is very real and the consequences I deal with are relevant to every minute of every day of my life.
I don't feel depressed. My life is fulfilling and I find a tremendous amount of meaning in the work I do. I know many others who are prone to considering "conspiracy theories" who are the same.
> I'm prone to consider "conspiracy theories" because something terrible happened to me that is adamantly denied by those in power.
You seem to be confusing "people in power abuse said power and never face consequences" (true) with Hilary Clinton operated a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza place" (not true).
Where did I say: "people in power abuse said power and never face consequences" or "Hilary Clinton operated a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza place"? It is very misleading to use quotes like I said anything along those lines.
People in power face consequences all the time. I never denied that. It just takes a long time for a reckoning to happen. Often decades, or lifetimes.
And I doubt QAnon conspiracy theory is as simple as "Hillary Clinton operated a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza place".
You are oversimplifying my point, turning it into a false dichotomy, and assuming the QAnon conspiracy theory is only the idea that Hillary Clinton operated a pedophile ring. My point was that depressed losers aren't the only people open to controversial theories about people in power.
I don't know many details about QAnon, and I don't care much to research it and come to an understanding myself. I have much more important things to spend my time on. But I do know from random posts I've encountered by QAnon people is that there is a wide range of beliefs regarding who is involved and to what extent. Actually, I haven't seen anyone accuse Hillary Clinton of involvement in a few years now.
There seems to be a growing consensus that child sex rings exist, corruption is involved, and something needs to be done about it. But it also gets blown out of proportion by less careful minded people. Isn't Jeffrey Epstein and "pedo island" considered to be part of QAnon? Isn't Epstein's involved with child sex trafficking generally accepted as true now?
> And I doubt QAnon conspiracy theory is as simple as "Hillary Clinton operated a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza place".
> I don't know many details about QAnon, and I don't care much to research it and come to an understanding myself.
Cool.
> Isn't Jeffrey Epstein and "pedo island" considered to be part of QAnon?
No. They falsely took credit for bringing him down, when it was journalists in the "mainstream media" (specifically one reporter for the Miami Herald named Julie Brown) that broke the story and brought him down. To be clear, they had nothing to do with his downfall.
I agree they are dissatisfied with something missing in their lives.
I have workmate who is antivaxxer, thinks mainstream media lies and that most diseases could be cured with just good nights sleep and healthy food.
Yet he had all mandatory vaccinations and admitted that he would go to doctor if he ever got sick.
He is 30, healthy, no kids, not very highly educated, but makes good money.
Everything he is against doesn't affect his life one bit, its like hobby to him and it gets good reaction from others.
His conspiracy theory articles can be debunked in few minutes and then he throws in even bigger article and he hasnt even read those, so if you keep pushing he has nothing to say.
There's usually an explanation for this, though it may not be immediately apparent.
But typically the person feels like they have no control, so inventing this universe that makes sense to them allows them to retain some (fictional) control. Or they may feel worthless or low-status, and if they imagine they "know" things that most people "don't know" that would restore them some of their perceived status. Or they may completely disagree with how the world looks like and the direction where it appears to be going, so let's invent this other world that's more satisfactory.
I mean, if all of the above (and similar) explanations fail, you'd just have to assume the person is not very intelligent. I'm not sure what else could possibly explain it at that point.
I think the saying goes: The Queen doesn't say she is the queen, because everyone already knows.
The reverse is also true, if someone has to say they are important, then they are likely not actually important.
Applying this to the QAnon 'motto' of 'Where we go one, we go all', I think you can conclude that if they have to say it, then it's not true. Most adherents are then, mostly, alone.
The feeling of community and belonging that these people get is obviously missing in their lives otherwise. That they find these feelings via image macros, chat boxes, and videos speaks to the depth of loss they feel in their lives.
It's not an issue of misinformation, but I think, loneliness.
I never understood that as a moto. Right wingers are known for being hyper-individualistic, WWGOWGA seems like some quasi-socialist slogan.
But you are right, there are multiple crises of poverty, loneliness and poor education in the US. The thing that really baffles me are the "Q" followers that are none of these things, and aren't American.
Because there used to be a single coherent narrative of "conventional truth" called "mainstream media". Sure it had a lot of propaganda in it, and was fairly heavily controlled politically, but it took a long time for that propaganda to be discovered and acknowledged. By the time it was enough time had passed to say "oh sure, back then there were lies but only other countries put lies in their papers now".
Then the internet fragmented that, providing real time alternative narratives, around the same time that 9/11 and the wars afterwards happened. So people got very interested in the news and it was very obvious that the mainstream news was lying right now.
Now your entire worldview start falling apart, how do you know what's true and who's trying to kill you? You need to find someone else who can tell you what's happening. You aren't quite sure how this whole "critical reading" thing is supposed to work, never learned that stuff in school, but you did find some trustworthy folks who are a lot like you online who seem very confident about what's happening. Even more like you than the old people at the newspapers, and more certain about things, which means they are more likely to be right! This is great, now you will be safe and you actually understand what's happening, unlike those people who keep making things so bad.
Media and government does lie to you, but not about fluoride in the water. They tell you your life is sustainable (when it's not) and they cannot do anything more to help (while helping the 1% without hesitation).
QAnon (like all conspiracies) start with a grain of truth, but it seems to also want to frame Donald Trump as a savior of a sick and broken system instead of its greatest and more literal manifestation.
Right, good example. The government doesn't properly clean the water they are paid to, and the media doesn't report on it, but instead of talking about that, Alex Jones says fluoride is poison.
Conspiracy theorists have plenty of actual material, but they seem to like to make shit up instead of seeking the truth of the matter.
A lot of that kind of conspiracy stuff, Alex Jones and the like, has another level or two involved.
Since this need for alternative narratives is a media market you get grifters who say what makes the most money and not what they actually believe. Not surprising at all, so expecting Alex Jones to seek actual truth completely misunderstands what he is doing and what he knows he is doing.
But if you have a political plan and it requires some people to believe a specific thing, but it is hard to convince people (for example, because it isn't true) you have a problem. If you are smart you start to think about how there are these professional convincers who are very popular and their business model is "say things that make me money" and you come up with a pitch for them.
It's not exactly news that one of the most prevalent types of actual historical conspiracies involve plans to spread untrue conspiracy theories as propaganda, but it does have that perverse ironic flavor to it since it means saying things like "no, no, these conspiracy theories are spread as part of a conspiracy"!
Because reality is complicated, messy, nuanced, moves extremely quickly, is sometimes seemingly contradictory, and feels completely out of control.
The root of much of conspiratorial thinking is attempting to make sense of a chaotic world by assuming that everything is being organized and controlled by a small group. The feeling of being "in the know" about the "way things really work" gives adherents a sense of control.
Put another way: modern conspiracy theory could be seen a coping mechanism for information overload.
I think that it's at least in part rooted in epistemic heuristic, and I suspect that the reason people engage in conspiracy theory today is exactly the same reason ancient humans imagined the movement of the sun and the tides as being controlled by anthropomorphic deities. Of course this isn't the complete story, there are social aspects as well, but it is a very large part of it.
To take the religion analogy further, I think people use information, not just to support views they want to hold, but to organize. Q anon is a community. The accuracy of the information is much less relevant than the membership and the mission.
This hard pull towards conspiracy theories is happening in contrast to a period of about 100 or so years of relative enlightenment supported by mainly centralized liberal institutions(not saying that doesn’t have a cost), but this pattern is as old as civilization itself.
But why now? IMO it’s modern day mythology created by a tremendous lack of trust in fragmented and unreliable cultural and political institutions. Authority and expertise to explain and deal with the events around us been either drowned out by false prophets or ignored after committing enough reputation suicide as to be rendered untrustworthy.
It’s hard to see the path out of this dark forest.
With regards to my comment about the mask and medicine, what's not truthful about it? There are still people that don't believe that masks help, and that hydroxychloroquine will help them.
Not in regard to just that but to people in general. People are telling you the world as they perceive it. I don't live in the anti-mask-pro-HQwhatever world either, but I have found it much more effective to let people have their truths than to get in a never-ending fractal of battles that just make people dig their heels in and hate each other.
> If it's true why does it require censorship to defend?
It's not Fort Knox to need defending.
What really happens is - it turns out a significant portion of human beings are vulnerable to what, for lack of a better term, could be called bullshit. It's part just plain ignorance, part honest mistake, part willful deception. As long as only a few fall prey to it, as long as times are not too trying, as long as the bullshit doesn't make them do crazy and/or destructive things, then it's more or less okay - I mean, that's basically the default state of humanity since forever.
But when those conditions are not true anymore, some feedback loops need to be activated.
It doesn’t. We don’t see that in practice, either. We see deliberate misinformation censored. It just so happens that the authorities on topics are also right a good amount of the time. Misinformation necessarily has to attack authority. You don’t need to be spreading misinformation to challenge authority.
Because this particular kind of conspiracism feels likely to get people killed. Not just the pizza parlour, but a lot of this stuff gets cited by mass shooters (+), and racial misinformation in particular, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in onwards, has been involved in most genocides of history.
(+) What happened to mass shootings? Have they just vanished from the news cycle from outside the US, or vanished under the high covid death rate, or been ended by lockdown?
I don't think they're dissatisfied with truth of any kind. They're dissatisfied with their own position and status relative to that truth. There's little glory to be had from saying "yes, the experts know what they're doing and they got this right" even when those experts are highly regarded. But if you get in early to become your local peer group's representative for an unconventional or controversial position, and it turns out to have merit, there's a huge social-status payoff. Everyone's playing the thought-leader lottery. They keep bleeding little bits of credibility, over and over again, in the hopes of some day hitting the jackpot that will make all those losses seem tiny. Getting in first is an essential part of the game, so people range far and wide to find what they think is the perfect balance of possibility and payoff.
The 40-year project to undermine expertise and specialization of all kind magnifies this effect in some, and brings it out in others for whom it had only been latent, but it's not the real driver. The real driver is that people feel slighted and ignored, operating in a supposedly egalitarian public sphere and seeing other "ordinary" people gain extraordinary status, but unable to do so themselves without taking risks.
It is more comforting to believe in big cabals and shadow figures than to know that crazy pandemics that can cripple the entire world in months and just a handful of evil people can fly planes into buildings and kill thousands, are just things that can happen and you can't control or stop any of it.
Who has time to peruse dozens of papers of technical jargon on COVID? Who's got the time to read a book by Chomsky, compare and contrast with a conservative writer on the same topic, a historian, while looking at the experts' interpretation of these things?
Out best understanding of things is just as fragmented as the wild conspiracy theories, with the difference that the experts debate minutiae that requires deep knowledge and patience.
We cannot deeply research more than a couple of things at a time, at best. We crave easy answers and grand narratives.
Anecdote: I am in a privacy group where everyone likes to talk about the three letter agencies and big companies in a grand manner. Some of it is possible, other seems plausible and some part is a joke. I don't think everyone knows which part is which though.
To quote T.S. Eliot: "Human beings cannot bear very much reality". To expect anyone to strive towards truth is just not realistic. That's what makes genius so special.
That's not how conspiracy theories and magical thinking work. I grew up around folks who thought fluoride was in the water to brainwash us. I had an English teacher who thought the major news
media was hiding the fact that we discovered the remains of Noah's Ark.
Humans have thought patterns like this by default. We invented things like science to _prevent_ us from falling into those traps.
Flat earth, anti-vax, Qanon, etc. are more of the same. If there's a difference it's the scale and speed afforded by social media.
Scale is the truly terrifying variable here. We’ve always believed in ghost stories when we couldn’t explain the phenomenon. But now those ghost stories are displacing explanation and at massive speed and scale. So worrying.
In many cases they aren't seeking it out. It just shows up in their social media feed. They get a mix of real news, fake news, satire, comedy, all tossed together and it is mix up which is which. Plus they get a lot of it indirectly, because it was liked by a friend, and that indirect version is even less likely to be clearly labeled.
Worse, for a lot of people their social media feed is their main or even only source of news.
If a low-information voter is having to face criticism for supporting a particular candidate, I can imagine it would be appealing to be presented with a story saying that the candidate in question is secretly dismantling a global ring of child traffickers. It's a way to reconcile cognitive dissonance and make them feel like they made the right decision.
Equal rights means lessening the privilege of some. They’re having something taken away from them and need some way to convince themselves they are in the right to push back. You need to do some serious mental gymnastics to seem just in wanting to maintain an unjust advantage.
I think you need to be clearer about what you think of as "rights". Unfortunately that word is used to mean many things but at least at the level of "natural rights", it isn't a zero-sum game.
Some people benefit from subjugating a minority. It isn’t necessarily economic. If you believe you are above others then you will push back against being told that you are not. Taking away those privileges by giving equal rights to the minorities is a zero sum game.
I see what you are saying but I'm having a hard time understanding why there is a prerequisite to "take away ... privileges" in order to ensure individual rights are being protected. I guess I just wouldn't use the word "privilege" to describe something that is an impediment to protecting the individual rights of any individual.
I realize that "privilege" is a very overloaded word these days so perhaps I'm just not understanding its use in this context.
African-Americans have faced disenfranchisement consistently since reconstruction. That is why they are poor. Being able to afford college is a privilege. Being able to pull yourself out of poverty is a privilege. The “American Dream” is that there is a fair meritocracy at play. We’re finally making moves towards that and those who benefit from it are pissed off.
I don’t have hard laws to point towards, but laws are made based on culture. The US is in the midst of a cultural revolution. The majority is realizing that we should have a society that treats people fairly. That is pissing some people off.
I imagine the answer to that question is complex. One aspect, I think plays a role is having people's attention divided, as they argue and polarise, allows the powerful actors in the globe, to take actions that fly underneath the radar.
I believe that's a good point. Most times I talked to someone that I found to be "out there" (and I have somewhat of a tolerance in that regard), they seemed to go from obvious-ish lies/corrupt deals etc of politicians to "now they and their apparatus have zero trustworthiness". Essentially they jump from "Iraq's WMD were a lie" to "everything the federal government says is most likely a lie".
Be careful with “conventional truth”. From Epstein alone we learn that our government does conspire (conspiracy) against us. We’re only finally starting to learn the truth about that situation and Q people have been talking nonstop about it for two years.
How quickly would you get back in touch with those you actually keep up with? And those that aren’t actually your friends just people whose memes you like? Do they really add that much to your life?
Yeah, they do. Someone I barely hang out with anymore works at a company that is moving into the offices we're vacating and saw a picture of me on the wall. They messaged me on FB Messenger to say hello.
So that is one random example and I am sure you’ve had a lot more experiences that were chance interactions that weren’t facilitated by Facebook. Also note that Facebook provides a huge negative impact on our society because of stuff like the Qanon group mentioned in TFA. Do you really think your specific experience of a chance encounter with your friend makes up for all the negative things it facilitates? And how many meaningful real life experiences have you missed out on because you and other people spend so much time on FB? I am not going to argue that social media is evil and how the new generation just wants to stick their noses into their screens. Look at the father blocking out his family with a newspaper every morning for a proof that this isn’t a new phenomenon by any means. But I will argue that as far as social networks go, Facebook is a shitty one and better ones already exist.
I work from home and have a disabled wife plus a 5 year old doing remote learning. I never leave the house except for needed things. Losing social media would isolate me even more.
First off, hope you and your family are keeping yourself sanity through all this. As someone with kids about that age, this is rough.
I will point out that there are many really good social networks that don’t also have the same problems as Facebook. Things like instant messaging groups, subreddits, Discord servers, phone calls, Imgur, etc. Every medium and platform has its drawbacks but I find that using multiple networks that aren’t FB has been a huge boon to the quality and quantity of meaningful experiences I’ve had.
Why have you put yourself in that position? It’s trivial easy to avoid, even if your friends are scattered across the planet. If Facebook is a solitary lifeline for your social contacts, you need to dramatically reconsider your choices.
I'm going to level with you: that's the kind of things that are easier said than done. When you meet people you often end up communicating with whatever means of communication you have at that point in time, and then you move out and things change, and you talk less frequently, and people change their phone number, and address, and so on... really what remains is usually their facebook account.
I don't have my uncle's phone number, because I'm in the US and he's in Australia and it's costly for me to call/text it. I keep in touch with him via Facebook primarily.
Be careful conflating "I don't do X" with "no one does X".
I should qualify my statement by saying this rule is true for younger generations. Boomers use FB messenger as a primary communication tool, you're right.
It is often assumed, including by several comments here, that membership in a group implies agreement with some or all of the content within the group. This is false and harmful. This faulty assumption can be used to exaggerate the popularity of niche beliefs, and ironically it may have self fulfilling effects - “can 200,000 people be wrong?”
In the physical world, where attending rallies or meetings costs time and physical effort, the assumption may be more valid. In the digital world, where group membership is almost costless, it fails.
QAnon popularity is definitely not exaggerated. It is a conspiracy theory that hit the popularity-lottery jackpot. It's a lot of potential energy that could be manipulated.
When the argument ceases to be about the thing, and is instead about the group of people, it's lost.
With Covid, people were having scientific discussions around R0, transmission of viruses, etc. Then it became about hating "anti-maskers" and all that stopped.
Once it became about hating a group of people, all intelligent discussion immediately stopped. This same pattern plays out in almost every major news story in America.
GP's point comes off like an argument against pro-maskers which makes the point disingenuous. Their criticism is that scientific discussion stopped when the topic became politicized, but they're taking a political shot at the same time.
GP doesn't subscribe to any of the recent hate-this-group media tropes: anti-maskers, Karens, incels, protesters.
In case it wasn't clear from my comment, I think this stuff is at the very core of anti-intellectualism. People who rail against "pro-maskers" are just as inane as those who rail against "anti-maskers."
Please don't sign me up for either side of your made-up societal divisions.
Maybe a bit overstated, but yes. When media outlets orient their offerings toward particular groups, it is in every outlet’s interest to publish ingroup vs. outgroup pieces and exaggerate the conflict. This collective action problem is ignored by the media outlets because it is how they make money.
It is a good first step. I am tired of the reasoning that Facebook is somehow some sort of "common square" because "all my friends are there" and therefore their actions should be constrained by legal language.
One of the great things that the Internet does is make it possible for any group to make their own echo chamber (see Parler as an example), and complaining that people don't show up says more about the people who created it and less about the regulatory environment.
I’m surprised that you’ve been downvoted. It actually isn’t that hard anymore to create your own little space where you can be as retarded as you wish.
Both chapo trap house and the Donald that were banned from Reddit quickly created their own websites.
What people are demanding is not just freedom of speech but the right to appear in everyones newsfeed no matter how dangerous or bigoted their views maybe. We tend to conflate the two freedoms.
I am not surprised by downvotes, it is an emotional topic on all sides. That makes up / down voting more emotion drive rather than perhaps argument driven.
Reputation systems like HN and Reddit, lack nuance in their expression. Does a downvote mean "I don't agree?", does it mean "I don't like you?", does it mean "This makes me mad?", does it mean "This comment doesn't add value?", or maybe "This comment is inaccurate."?
Because this sort of voting is such a blunt instrument, I don't see a lot of value in trying to tease out the "why" of up votes or down votes. At the end of the day, does it matter? Any comment on this site with regards to a link is just a data point amongst many from which the reader may develop an understanding.
This removal is a conspiracy in a literal sense. The decision to interrupt the communications of 200,000 people was made in secret by an unknown group of Facebook personnel.
Even Ma Bell, in its most powerful and abusive days as a monopolist, would never have dreamed of enacting such hostility towards its users.
It's worth asking, for how long will people tolerate an increasingly unreliable communications infrastructure?
You don't have any right to use Facebooks platform that is against their TOS, that they likely can change at any time. Ma Bell was regulated as as utility, Facebook is not a utility.
If this group wanted to communicate in secret then using a Facebook group for clandestine conversation in 2020 feels like the equivalent of using bullhorns in 1990.
I don’t think they really care about secret conversation, though. I think they want to recruit new followers. Every new recruit reaffirms that they’re “correct” in their thinking and solidifies the sense of belonging.
Facebook is not a 'communications infrastructure', is not a 'public square' and they have no obligation to do anything other than act lawfully, and then, to act roughly consistent with their own guidelines, which is what they are doing.
The comparison to 'Ma Bell' is irrelevant.
'Verizon or AT&T' - the actual modern incarnations of 'Ma Bell' are not intervening here, nor will they.
If you want to make up stories about people raping children in basements, then yo can do that on your own website.
" for how long will people tolerate an increasingly unreliable communications infrastructure?"
This question is upside down.
The real question is 'How long will most people tolerate a social network full of stupidity, make up stuff, fake news, and other garbage'?
QAnon is not the reason people use FB, it's the reason they leave.
> Facebook is not a 'communications infrastructure', is not a 'public square' and they have no obligation to do anything other than act lawfully
De-facto it is both a 'communications infrastructure' and a 'public square' - due to the simple fact that it is used as such by hundreds of millions of people.
The fact that they get away with pretending that they aren't is unfortunate. The fact that so many people are eager to defend this is sad, to say the least.
They absolutely not a public square, and it's sad that anyone thinks they have any right whatsoever to propagate invented lies about 'child molestors, secret rituals and anti-vaxx' information in any controlled community.
Facebook has always had policies concerning content, that was never up for debate.
There's really little to argue about here.
If you want to talk about Lizards in control of the White House, you can make your own web site.
No, it isn't. Also, censorship is bad, and the fact that there's so much public demand for it nowadays is sickening. Even here at HN there are plenty of people who'd praise FB for this move.
HN "censors" posts all the time. There are moderators who go around deleting posts, and even the users here dare to downvote, suppressing the speech of others!
Indeed, I'm just perplexed by people being so concerned with this specific instance of censorship. I would expect people to only get outraged by more mainstream stuff getting banned at this point, considering reddit and youtube started banning much more benign content ages ago (e.g. most gun related content).
Facebook isn’t necessary infrastructure for communication. It’s an ad platform.
Anyone using it accepted an arrangement where Facebook is under no obligation to permit them to continue to use Facebooks property (Facebooks servers).
You should really climb out of the web and read up on the laws that you tacitly give control over you by your ignorance of how they work.
The historical root of power in America is owning real property. The masses seem happy to sign theirs over to employers and banks.
230 protections protect companies who make editorial decisions from being treated as speakers of the remaining content they do allow on their platforms. It's entire purpose is to sanction and protect exactly what actions happened here. It's design is to have your cake and eat it too.
> A Facebook spokeswoman said the group was removed for "repeatedly posting content that violated our policies".
At this point Facebook, Google, and all other operators of similar platforms should be viewing their hoard of user data, not as a gold mine, but as a superfund site.
The demise of these companies starts with demands to purge the platforms of "content violating policies." The only problem is that these polices can never quite be pinned down. So the takedowns will be all over the map, guided only by the prevailing wind.
These calls inevitably will lead to even more urgent calls to track the users of the objectionable content. After all, if the group was dangerous, so must be its users.
The problem is that there are infinite ways for humans to be offended. Each takedown ensures that the next round of calls will be that much louder and more insistent.
If you wanted to engineer the boringest platform possible, this is how you'd do it. Ad revenues will follow the departure of users for greener pastures.
I would suggest that there is an element of fear involved when subscribing to the majority of conspiracy theories. Critical thinking and emotional intelligence are necessary, but fear supersedes intelligence and is easily manipulated.
It's a good step, but what the US needs the most at the moment is a stronger education system. Most of what we're seeing today is really just a symptom of a deeper issue.
How does more education prevent conspiracy theories? I’ve witnessed many highly educated friends (including some from outside the US) succumb to crazy conspiracy theories on Twitter.
This seems more like an emotional intelligence problem than anything else.
> How does more education prevent conspiracy theories? I’ve witnessed many highly educated friends (including some from outside the US) succumb to crazy conspiracy theories on Twitter.
Degrees are often conflated with education. People need to be able to think critically, something that is only partially practiced at a modern institutions. There's plenty of people who can tell you the facts of some field without being able to explain what a theory is, or how evidence works.
You are onto something very important. No one can be expert in every domain. So, one has to trust judgments of the people from other domains and institutions. However, if people with authority (not institutional authority) conflate science with policy positions, these 'authoritative' people and institutions lose their authority. That's how conspiracy theories emerge. Authoritative people and institutions have 'abused' their positions.
People in power, in the West, are disproportionately lawyers with humanities skills, or business types with no skills (lol). As our society increasingly fails, knowledge of math and science is increasingly important to convey truth. Politicians have long repeated repeated what experts tell them (when they are telling the truth), but now that they are repeating something they cannot well understand themselves, it just comes us stale / on faith alone.
Lawyers are paid to defend their clients. Every politician is a lawyer by trade. What do they do? Defend the sectional interests of their sponsors. That's what we see in the West: general interests are subordinated to the corporatist/sectional interests. This is the expected result, anyway; it is just a matter of how long does it take to reach the state of "sectional interests taking over general interests".
I'm sorry but this just reads as vague pessimism to me
> Lawyers are paid to defend their clients. Every politician is a lawyer by trade.
No, that would be true if "people paid to defend their clients are Lawyers". Lawyers offer a specific service to client, distinct from bodyguards and others who provide defense.
Politicians do want to get reelected, but there are many ways for that to be.
Nothing about politics is inherently sublimely, or sleazy things like ALEC inevitable. It rather the due to very specific problems in the US such as terrible voting systems.
I think you touched on a great point here. Thinking a lot about this lately and I'm convinced the authority figures don't just don't understand why people have stopped trusting them. Trump's election was a perfect symptom of the problem.
You need the right type of education. Being a highly trained engineer does not necessarily help, but you don't see a lot of historians falling for this type of stuff.
The existence of the term "Polocaust" would like to disagree with you.
A lot of this, I think, is driven by people badly wanting or not wanting things to be true. Religious history is another good spot where you can see highly-trained researchers buy into their community's biases, but in the last many years, we've gotten better as a society at acknowledging that religion is the sort of thing that can go sour like this. We haven't gotten good at acknowledging this about other forms of allegiance to a community. Most of the QAnon stuff is driven by patriotism gone sour, and with the benefit of hindsight, we've absolutely seen historians write to fit their worldviews, but we're not as good at seeing it in real time, when it matters.
One issue is the truth of late in West has been more statistics and less theory based.
Never mind that theory alone and statistics alone are both recipes for bias (either flat out fictional narratives (Freud) or p-hacking and over fit crap (bad science).
At least when we erred on the side of theory, it was more "catchy" and better fit our narrative brains. Theory-based truths also derive more from subject-matter-specific reasoning, whereas statistics based truths derive more from subject-matter-agnostic reasoning.
I'm guessing most people you interact with are highly educated, and therefore most people you see spouting conspiracy theories are also highly educated. If you sampled the whole population though, I'm pretty confident you'd find a lower percentage of conspiracy theorists among college grads than the general population.
Science gives us a very sharp razor blade to separate emotions from facts. Even in western societies only 5 - 10% of the population is trained about people like Karl Popper and their knowledge.
Not a silver bullet, but some focus on Informal Logic would at least help people to identify a claim, the premises for the claim, and typical fallacies.
While I agree with that sentiment (and as you say, "not a silver bullet"), I despair over something I see more and more lately: people who do have at least some understanding of logic, and make "logical" arguments... but they've chosen the outcome they want to believe in advance, and are just using logic to rationalize / justify their belief.
And yes, that's more or less exactly what logic is in a sense... except the people I'm talking about skip the part about checking the base premises they are building their argument on - because they so badly want to arrive at a specific conclusion.
Yes, "knowledge" is so broad that even if you have lots of learning you can choose subsets that support your predispositions. That's an understanding of human nature we've had for some time, giving rise to things like double blind randomized studies and the (too often ignored nowadays) need to reproduce results. But in less scientific environments (everyday life) we don't have easy workarounds for that aspect of human nature.
I don't know the answer. I don't know how you get people in general to plow through emotional reactions first and then give in to them only after a thoughtful process.
Education seems to help though, and lacking some other solution it seems a reasonable thing to focus on. Yet even that is now more of a political issue than it has ever been.
Critical thinking skills immunize you against the disbelief of provable facts and rational thought processes (assuming reasonable mental health state). Emotional intelligence is a component though, for sure.
You need both the skills and the desire to seek the truth versus accepting whatever information galvanizes your preexisting belief and value systems. High hill to climb.
Being smart and successful doesn’t mean you can think critically and challenge your belief and value systems. They are mutually exclusive. Kanye West is successful, you make what you will of the rest of his personality.
Quite the contrary, many successful people believe they and they alone are responsible for their success, despite their contribution being less than that of others.
The same could be said for a non insignificant amount of the population. It’s far more common than one might think, and it’s important to internalize to understand the environment one is operating in.
GP's statement was "You need... the desire to seek the truth" instead of reinforce what you already believe. In other words you, or let's say people, will choose, based on your desire, or let's say want, to believe one way or another.
Your statement was "People believe what they want."
I think you're conflating contrarian thinking with critical thinking. Believing in conspiracy theories does not imply a well-reasoned path to belief. Critical thought requires not only analyzing a position from contrary points of view, but also judging the objective likelihood of each point of view being true, and then picking the view that is most likely to be true. Stopping at picking a contrary point of view is more like subscribing to a religion than performing critical thought.
> Critical thought requires not only analyzing a position from contrary points of view
I don't disagree with you, I'm just stopping right here. Like you said, it's a requirement. So contrarians are more likely to have it.
It's just a technical truth. It doesn't mean they're more likely to be right or that they have a better grip on reality. They just have one of the prerequisites, so they're more likely to have the thing.
I think it's an example of the old addage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I agree with you that conspiracy theories require a degree of critical thinking. But it's necessarily flawed or incomplete thinking. If someone understands (explicitly or intuitively) Bayesian reasoning for instance, they're going to be less likely to believe conspiracy theories than someone who thinks 'less critically'.
I think the term "conspiracy theory" is most commonly used to refer to untrue conspiracy theories. That's how I meant it in that comment. Obviously yes, conspiracies do sometimes exist, and one could have theories about them.
Despite knowing the flaw of scientific institutions, I still trust scientists in general for ground truth facts, even when they get things wrong.
Hell, when I follow a known expert lecture and followed the citations for just the first lecture, I found minor errors or discrepancies.
I don't understand the major theories at the gut theories. I don't have degrees or the knowledge needed to understand them. I haven't followed the citations and look at the facts.
And the thing is: nobody in the world have time to follow the citations and see if it match up with what everybody else said, let along actually verify the raw facts and follow the thought process of the original scientists.
That being said. I am pretty sure that the modern world is based on a system of rational thought and technology built on the accumulated knowledge of generations of scientists.
I hope you are being sarcastic because I completely disagree with what you are saying. Critical thinking requires you to gather data, analyze it, and come out with a logical conclusion. In addition when faced with new facts you should be able to re-evaluate your conclusion and change.
People who believe in conspiracy theories rarely, if ever, change their minds. Everything is controlled by some small group that is pulling the strings.
Concrete example: The slightly more frequent instances of fireworks in neighborhoods across the country leading up to 4th of July being a “psy-op” by the police targeting neighborhoods of color.
This was believed by a Canadian friend who has a PhD, who is also addicted to Twitter.
Anyone who has the skills to find /pol/ and interact on that board has the digital skills needed to find true information. You don't just stumble upon that.
there is no evidence for this. Achen and Bartels in Democracy for Realists[1] go through a lot of research that shows that education does not aid in combating disinformation and may in fact make the situation worse.
One notable example is climate change. Among Republicans in the US belief in climate change actually declines with increasing education.[2]. Higher education or reasoning facilities don't stop misinformation because misinformation isn't the result of a literal lack of information, it's a rationalisation strategy of adopting fact to preconceived beliefs, and if anything highly educated or capable people are more likely to be able to justify their assumptions.
This even literally shows up in the QAnon slogan which is "question everything". Conspiracy theorists virtually never lack the ability to critically think, if anything they think too critically.
I think it's more that "question everything" mainly becomes "question everything that doesn't line up directly with my beliefs". And then you also get a feeling of superiority, of having secret knowledge/understanding, when the things that you are questioning are widely held to be true.
I assume HN is probably one of the better educated and critical thinking populations, but there are no lack of conspiracy theories that pop up on here.
Bingo. It is not Facebook's responsibility to determine what is fact or fiction, and it is a bit terrifying that we increasingly rely on them (and other companies in this space) to do so.
People need to understand how to question, investigate, and challenge the sources of information they consume. If we can't do that, in the US or otherwise, then we are doomed.
Is it Facebook's responsibility to push paid political propaganda into my feed? Because I get no shortage of that, mostly from the Trump campaign.
Right now, they absolutely do discriminate on the information they feed me - most of that discrimination comes in the form of "Did the author of the information pay us?"
That’s their entire business model, so yes it is their responsibility. Their obligation is to advertisers that want to target very specific (or very broad) groups of people. If you don’t like that then close your Facebook account.
Ah, so Facebook has no moral obligation to control posts on whether or not they are true - just on whether or not they get paid to show them?
I shudder to think of what a world will look like, where the only things known to the public are things that their authors paid for. That'll certainly be a great improvement to the status quo.
People wring their hands over the fifty cent army, but I suppose the five-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-day political ad spend is just something we get to shrug our shoulders at.
> Ah, so Facebook has no moral obligation to control posts on whether or not they are true - just on whether or not they get paid to show them?
To sum it up like that reduces both the enormity and complexity of the problem they are faced with. You say you get spammed with Trump ads; how many of those ads make claims that you could prove are irrevocably untrue? Politicians and people designing political ads are often experts at dancing in the "gray area" of truth.
I don't think it is fair to deny the fact that Facebook takes this problem very seriously, certainly beyond what would be expected from them as far as business obligations go. (I'm even saying this as someone building a product that would compete with them.)
This isn't exclusive to older people, either. Regardless, it will be even more dangerous when these people reproduce and raise their children to believe this stuff.
> It isnt the kiddos who are getting sucked into this stuff, and I say this as an early stage graybeard.
I would hesitate to say this. There have been emergences of qanon adjacent conspiracies popping up out of tiktok, the Wayfair one being the most obvious example.
Some of the people falling for this are products of the education system of the 1960s and 1970s. The latency on "educational reforms" is enormous.
> Most of what we're seeing today is really just a symptom of a deeper issue.
Well, a whole cascade of deeper unresolved issues, plus a very modern Bernays-derived system for injecting nonsense into people and getting them to proliferate it.
Studies have found no significant correlation between intelligence and bias blind spot (inability to detect bias in one’s own thinking). Smart or less smart makes no difference in rational behavior.
Education may help, but it needs to be focused specifically on bias blind spot reduction. There is some evidence mindfulness training is effective. Mindfulness is presently not taught in traditional education.
>Smart or less smart makes no difference in rational behavior.
What does "smart" mean then? You write like everyone knows what the definitions are of the words you use, but the way you use them makes it clear that they all need to be defined before any understanding could happen.
I am completely apathetic about expert opinion and "studies" when I get a glimpse of some sort of community that just assumes everybody agrees on axioms and definitions.
This is an interesting question. I began using the internet at an early from 8th grade when things like Facebook didn’t even exist.
I remember spending a lot of time reading about the reptile conspiracy, 9/11 conspiracies. I actually spent a lot of time seriously considering whether some of this information was true.
The internet turned me into an atheist inspite of growing up in a religious setting.
Blogs on the internet were much more aware of the impending financial crash in 2008 and the fact that Iraq did not have WMD.
It takes a while of using the internet to learn how it works and the fact that any random lunatic can start a blog.
My heuristic these days is that 80 % of mainstream opinion is true.
The real world is quite complex and the internet is wonderful for doing your own research.
The "deeper issue" is the underlying racial tension in America swept under the rug in the wake of 1960s civil rights laws. No reasonable person would think you can declare "racism is illegal" and it will instantly go away, right? So where did it go in the USA after 1968? Here are some clues:
If people here give up on free speech, all is lost. This and other groups are just a symptom. The reason these groups flourish is because the legacy media (aka MSM) has lost all trust. Should you also ban NYT for the Russian interference conspiracy theory? If the legacy media deal in conspiracy, you should expect a reaction on the periphery of the political spectrum.
>Should you also ban NYT for the Russian interference conspiracy theory? If the legacy media deal in conspiracy, you should expect a reaction on the periphery of the political spectrum.
you can't compare some web forum to a paper that pretends to deal in actual news. Defend free speech above all or it is a slippery slope. and this is country sliding down that slope as we speak.
Clearly marking it, might be. Much like you can buy all manner of food supplement, but they don't pretend to be drugs, because they are marked with "efficacy is not clinically proven". (Even if "objectively" some of them are efficacious.)
But this ends up with an unsexy task of picking a conspiracy theory to pieces and marking unconfirmed pieces as such, logic contradictions as such, etc. I'm very grateful to people who take take the time to do that. But definitely there are fewer such people than conspiracy theory outlets.
It might be great to have a central repository of such analyses and refutations, crowd-supplied and peer-reviewed, like Wikipedia. The Lesswrong site could be part of it, but it has its own ...biases. TVTropes can be surprisingly useful for learning about and detecting common narrative devices used to drive the narrative and fiction, as opposed to trying to describe reality. But a level-headed, balanced site with systematic analysis of conspiracy theories either does not exist, not not publicized nearly enough.
There’s a long history of this issue in the US. If interested, in 1964, Richard Hofstadter wrote about this in detail in his book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”.
Who says it's stronger? It's OK at best. If you look at numbers, 200k people being in a group about some dumb thing from a country of >300mil people (I guess there are people from other countries as well) is not that much. Especially if you suppose that many of those are not seriously believing but just there for the laughs
It's what the Americans point to when they discuss reforms of their education system - and I am the one saying it's not really that strong, or rather, does not seem to be the actual solution.
This may just "prove" to them that there's a Big Conspiracy out to cove things up. It may be better to do things to slow it down -- shadow banning new posts (they appear for the poster, but nobody else can see them), delaying and losing a significant portion of posts, not putting it high in a person's feed even if subscribed, leaving it out of search results.
We talk about how bad censorship is in China and North Korea but now we're applauding it within our own country?
To be clear, I'm against everything QAnon has done and have had numerous debates to disprove their theories and it is _exhausting_.
But it everyone's right to have their own beliefs. This _is_ a form of censorship. Facebook is a private platform and so has the right to do as they please, and we have the right to choose another platform -- but we shouldn't mistake what we're doing as some sort of noble act.
The right to freedom of thought isn't about defending your right when you agree with it, it's about defending the right even when you _don't agree_ with it.
All true, but the QAnon folks are bullying people, doxing people, and have actually killed people. It's no longer just a cute conspiracy theory. It's a movement with real actors attempting to destabilize democratic processes.
It's not the conspiracy itself. It's the people holding it up and actively opposing anyone that disagrees with them in harmful ways.
There's a confluence of Q adherents and KKK/racist folks who are more than willing to get violent, especially with 45 egging them on. There is evidence of Proud Boys who've been caught starting the looting in Minneapolis and Portland because they want to "start the race war".
The whole Q thing is dragging our most vulnerable citizens into a conspiracy that is probably run by a few nerds from 4chan who are using it to make cash and have a joke.
I picture these dorks, sitting in a basement, smoking dope, playing video games, throwing out suggestions to further the conspiracy.
Nerd 1: "Hey! Let's tell them JFK, Jr is alive and will come back to help Trump!"
Nerd 2: "Holy shit that's brilliant."
Nerd 3: "Tell then Trump will replace Pence with JFK, Jr as VP. That will totally rile them up."
Nerd 1: "Brilliant!"
Nerd 2: "This is so much fun. What a bunch of idiots."
> Why are we against book burning but cheering moves like this?
Because this is not analogous to book burning?
People freely choosing which viewpoints they will use their resources to relay.
Freedom of speech is not (indeed, is opposed to) entitlement to others active participation in your speech. Freedom of speech means you need to convince others of the merits of your speech if you want them to help you spread it.
Because books are written by real people who have to live with the consequences of what they write.
Anonymous accounts run by various secret agencies, trolls, and even just ordinary people who are wrong can cause tremendous amounts of damage to millions of people. These should be banned.
Free speech is a complicated issue. Ideally I would like to see groups like this banned, but I can see how that can lead to issues with who says what content is ok and what isn't.
Fanzines and online BBS's hosted a lot of conspiracy-themed urban legends. That, plus word-of-mouth would generally do the trick. Obviously, the spread was a bit slower than what you'd get today with the Internet, but the cultural traits were the same.
I dunno. The Epstein conspiracy theories (that he blackmailed powerful people and politicians by filming them with underage teens) is starting to look a lot LESS theory these days.
Disclaimer: I had to lookup to see what QAnon was. Maybe there was more to the group other than conspiracy theories but theories are only that until supporting evidence is uncovered. How many scientific theories were just that until proven?
Also while theories political in nature are most likely believed by those they benefit the same but opposite holds true for those who would not like them to be true.
Allowing someone like Facebook to be an ‘unbiased’ ‘arbiter of truth’ is laughable.
> More accounts than expected discontinued using the site; those that stayed drastically decreasedtheir hate speech usage—by at least 80%. Though many subreddits saw an influx of r/fatpeoplehate andr/CoonTown “migrants,” those subreddits saw no significant changes in hate speech usage. In other words,other subreddits did not inherit the problem. We conclude by reflecting on the apparent success of the ban,discussing implications for online moderation, Reddit and internet communities more broadly.
Interesting. Have there been follow up studies to track where the members of the banned groups have gone since? I'm interested to see if groups reform and realign into new groups that conduct the same types of activities.
That example disproves your point. FPH lost a lot of traction after it moved to Voat and kept losing it. It has barely a fraction of the activity and views it had on Reddit.
It is an upsetting development for several separate reasons.
1. FB can do what it wants on its platform, but by cancelling this particular group it becomes a truth arbiter and/or censor, which is a scary proposition ( maybe not proposition, they have already been acting in this manner; QAnon is only significant, because of its size and overlap with R party ). I dislike censorship, but the fact that US population draws information from FB is scary to me.
2. It further undermines freedom of speech and association. It only pushes those voices further into.. not fringe exactly, but it does seem to amplify their determination and allows them to claim they are being repressed by the powers that be.
3. It implies that as humans we cannot survive sufficiently dangerous thoughts. This, to me, is horrifying. I believe we can. I believe the only way to allow humans to deal with the level of Qanon idiocy is to keep it in the light and not throw it into darkness where it only grows stronger. Just like with any disease we need to be able to build healthy immune system, our mind has to build healthy firewall to protect against idiotic ideas. It is not up to FB/gvmt. It is up to us and maybe parents. I would also accept critical thinking class as an answer.
It's worth noting that there definitely is such a thing as the 'deep state', it's just that it's not some crazy thing about lizards and aliens, rather, it's jus the simple fact that anyone outside the established consensus will be perceived with hostility and the operating organs of state will systematically move to reject them.
In Canada, we have something call the 'Laurentian Consensus' - which is basically Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal traditional, small-c conservative centre left, very establishment view of the world, propagated systematically by most of the bureaucracy, national banks, established systems, academia.
When you live in Ontario or Quebec, it doesn't seem obvious.
But when you live outside Ontario or Quebec, it becomes really quite obvious.
I do not believe a guy like Donald Trump has the best interest of the nation at heart, even if he thinks he does, and there's probably good reason the 'deep state' is rejecting his many appeals to authority. After all, the ultimate apparatus of the 'deep state' are literally things like 'the Justice System' etc..
But at least, theoretically, there is something to be said for it, and there are actual material concerns about individual expression vs. more statist and globalist forces.
The European Union bestows incredible power upon unelected leaders. Very few people vote in EU elections, their 'elected' MEPs do not really have a say in who the leadership will be. Not until the treaty of Lisbon were the elite even required to consult elected MEPs! Now, it's just ceremonial. Ursula Von Der Leyen, one of the most powerful people in the world was not on the ballot or even a known figure during the election. She was chosen after the election in back room, completely non-transparent deals by the French PM, German Chancellor etc.. MEP's cannot enact legislation, they have no say in executive level conduct. In the last 10 years, two elected leaders (Greece, Italy) were effectively overthrown without real legal and certainly no democratic legitimacy. So this is an example of where I think most of the elite do in fact have 'mostly good intentions', but wherein the lack of democracy and transparency lends very credibility to populist concerns of 'deep state'.
The 'nature of power' in politics and business is very opaque, and a little bit hard to understand without exposure to it, and there actually is no 'one power', nobody really is in control, it's more about understanding the memes that interest the elite than anything. Which is not an easy to communicate idea. Hence - Lizards and Aliens.
Insane populists, with a few bad actors who don't mind knowingly spreading falsehoods, take advantage of this and make stuff up.
I don't think this is a new phenom, it's as old as time, it's just that the 'rumour mill' has metastasised.
If the proles ever were truly 'educated' as to how our financial and political system worked, here probably would be a real revolution, maybe a 'good one'. But until then, it's a mess.
Finally - it's a serious issue. I have University educated friends asking me 'if I believe this stuff' trying to determine the legitimacy of it, without being able to write it off themselves.
We are entering a new ere wherein in the fiction of pop culture consciousness, nothing needs to be factual to have weight, and nobody is really in charge.
I really think that most libertarians and anarcho-socialists etc thought we'd have some kind of enlightened utopia, but really we get mostly Lizards and Aliens.
I'm following a conspiracy that QAnon is a conspiracy itself designed to take focus away from true conspiracies. Similar circles are all in agreement about Alex Jones as well being a deep state disinfo plant. Clearly according to most here, all conspiracies are false and the only source of truth is what they are told by the government and mainstream outlets. So, QAnon is an easy target for those looking to spend their time debunking conspiracies. The QAnon conspiracy, in that regard, is doing exactly what it was intended to do.
Someone from the deep state to distribute misinformation. A conspiracy theorist actor. A disinfo agent distracts the public away from the real conspiracies by clogging the airwaves with fake conspiracies. Q and Alex Jones are Trump's conspiracy media arm. If you are going to attack the actual media as fake, you need convincing counter-media.
This feels too little too late. QAnon is a “thing” now, Facebook allowed it to grow big enough that they can probably find other platforms to grow even further.
A person calling himself "Q" posts to a board on the site where all members call themselves "Anonymous". That is where the name "QAnon" comes from, and it refers to his posts on there.
In the early days it was Reddit that was crucial to QAnon taking off. A bunch of dedicated Q folks formed the sub and got it to take off(this was easy to verify because they all had Reddit account creations dates within a couple of days of each other). Reddit didn't do anything for a very long time.
While I don't subscribe to the QAnon related conspiracies, I feel even more strongly that Facebook is a bigger threat to society as it stifles discussion and dissemination of apposing ideas if they are not compliant with their policy.
Meh. When the discussion and dissemination of ideas doesn't go beyond "meme level", nothing of value is really being lost. The platform doesn't really lend itself to deep discussion. It's sound bites but now every crackpot on the planet gets the same voice as experts who have dedicated their lives to a subject.
It's hypocrisy that Facebook allows religious groups, but doesn't allow conspiracy theory groups. Conspiracy theory is a belief system. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant. You cannot allow religion and not allow conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories help people to make sense of the world, this is a fundamental human need.
I didn't see Facebook banning the Catholic church for its stance against contraception.
The rule about bullying and harassment seems to be selectively applied. It doesn't seem to matter when the target has the political views that oppose those of the Facebook employee base.
Facebook was responding to specific incidents from the specific people in that group.
Just because some members of a particular religious or social group do bad things, doesn't mean you should ban all members of that group. If it did, all of Facebook would have to shut down.
And while that might not be a bad thing - it's not the point in question here.
It is not fair to compare most religions to conspiracy theories. As a Catholic, I don't believe that the devil is behind everything wrong in the world, and I'm sure most rational people feel the same way.
One of the biggest problems I have with conspiracy theories is that nothing can be trusted because there's always something corrupt behind it all. I believe the United States' biggest challenge right now is the lack of trust of our most fundamental institutions like the CDC and the law. I think the lack of faith is due to people in trusted positions believing and promoting some of these crazy theories.
>You cannot allow religion and not allow conspiracy theories
It seems like the reason for the ban is that the group
"repeatedly posting content that violated our policies"
I assume that if a religious group also repeatedly violated policies, it would meet the same fate. But the article doesn't clarify what policies were violated.
Indeed, "religious" facebook groups that cross that line are candidates for banning as well. Problem with conspiracy theories in general is it inevitably ends up with demonising some group or other that's "suppressing" the "truth"?
Want to argue the world is flat? Fill your boots. Start to say there's a cabal of scientists with nefarious motives? You're heading toward the hate speech line. Plan breaking into prominent scientists homes to obtain evidence? The line's behind you.
It is worth noting that major religious groups are, and continue to be, designated as domestic (extremist) threats. Quakers were "extreme". It is very dangerous to give the gov. authority to choose which beliefs are extreme and which are not.
For people who actually believe in conspiracy theories this is not at all true. And there are some religious people who might think this way, but I would guess it's a small minority.
Go read Sapiens and tell me how humans don’t need beliefs. Religion is the reason us Homo sapiens and not some other species of humans are the only ones that survived.
I say this as someone who is deeply against any form of organized religion, but saying they don’t affect anything in the real world is like saying that violence never solves anything.
You are referring to the things that people do that are a result of beliefs, not the beliefs themselves.
I've heard theories that the sensation of early human consciousness was akin to feeling enslaved to a higher power in one's head, as a sort of summary of that person's internal drives manifesting as God.
Who is to say these things would not have happened if humans simply skipped the 'internal voice equals god' conclusion?
That theory was popularized by Westworld and is highly debated. But you can’t separate the two: you believe in things like money and corporations and ownership of property and transfer of property right? Those ar exist as fictitious and god or satan. You might believe in things like capitalism or communism: both are simply types of religion. You might believe in destiny or free will: both artificial constructs.
The point is that there is subjective reality (I feel anxious), objective reality (a tiger is chasing me), and intersubjective (I am a part of a village and we share communal property). The latter is what enables us to do things like build anything that requires more than one person. Beliefs in things like money are as real as a hammer and cannot be separated from their real world effects. The book Sapiens goes into a lot of detail about this and does a much better job explaining it than I can.
> you believe in things like money and corporations and ownership of property and transfer of property right?
That's twisting words. Belief in some cosmic, anthropomorphic entity is nothing to do with "belief" in money or corporations. How does one "believe" in those things anyway? They are here, they exist, and they're fucking shit up right now, and we can trace much of our woes to those forces. You cannot say the same about magical beings looking down on us from the clouds
No they don’t exist the same way a hammer exists. A corporation is nothing but a piece of paper that a high priest of our religion (Secretary of state) has brought into existence via a ritual (signing a piece of paper). That is all a corporation is. Money: it exists as a physical piece of paper. Our belief in its value is what gives it value. Not unlike our belief in the idea that consuming a communion cracker is like ingesting the body of Christ (ritual cannibalism). Most things you consider real live in the intersubjective and religion is no different.
The article didn't try to explain the details beyond quoting Facebook's "policies" phrase in literally an incomplete sentence. Couldn't the BBC journalist interact with a Facebook spokesperson via phone or email to ask for more detail? Which policies, etc.
Conspiracy theorists and deep state lunatics - great, ok, we got rid of them. But is no one concerned that we're putting a lot of trust in Facebook or Twitter or other companies mentioned to correctly deem what's correct and incorrect information?
If you go back in time, there have been countless cases of journalists uncovering important cases but who were suppressed by the authorities and institutions. Yes, they come off as "conspiracy theories." Until, later we're very thankful for their bravery and sacrifices.
Just because QAnon peddles silly theories, doesn't mean that we should clap and smile and puts our thumbs up at this, or the removal of people like Alex Jones.
Let's put on our creative thinking caps and consider what happens if someone who you happen to like, or a more obscure or unpopular group who thinks differently is muted.
A basic principle of pluralism of ideas is, yeah, some ideas are just not agreeable. That's up to us to bite our tongues and tolerate it. If you think the conspiracy theories die along with QAnon Facebook Groups then you've been living under a rock.
Has anyone here ever even read a post by Q? Is it really a conspiracy that powerful pedophiles are protecting people like Jeffrey Epstein? Pretty established fact at this point
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Normalis.Elethez.Ragaszkodok...
There is not even a category to report them because Facebook only has limited options (nudity, harassment, hate speech, unauthorized sales, violence)