I dont think this trend can be stopped by encouraging individual digital literacy (though that helps), fundamentally it needs legislation, equivalent to the way basic standards of water and food hygiene were established but I cant see anyone doing that.
The idea of legislation to dictate which views, opinions, theories and beliefs can and can’t be published or shared is frankly terrifying. If nothing else, can you imagine such laws in the hands of someone like Trump or Farage?
Optimistic of you to think the lack of those laws would impede Trump or Farage in any way.
I dont think this trend can be stopped by encouraging individual digital literacy (though that helps), fundamentally it needs legislation, equivalent to the way basic standards of water and food hygiene were established but I cant see anyone doing that.
The idea of legislation to dictate which views, opinions, theories and beliefs can and can’t be published or shared is frankly terrifying. If nothing else, can you imagine such laws in the hands of someone like Trump or Farage?
But the whole point is that Trump and Farage spread misinformation *without* those laws. Both of them believe themselves to be above the law anyway. Why do you think Trump would obey a ban on spreading misinformation?
Do you think legislation to dictate what quality of food can and can't be sold is terrifying? If not, why is unsafe food hygiene a problem but misinformation isn't?
Just like eg the Food Standards Agency, fact-checking would involve many people to assess a statement. The whole point is that it's not in the hands of an individual. It's not like one person does all the food hygiene ratings.
I dont think this trend can be stopped by encouraging individual digital literacy (though that helps), fundamentally it needs legislation, equivalent to the way basic standards of water and food hygiene were established but I cant see anyone doing that.
The idea of legislation to dictate which views, opinions, theories and beliefs can and can’t be published or shared is frankly terrifying. If nothing else, can you imagine such laws in the hands of someone like Trump or Farage?
But the whole point is that Trump and Farage spread misinformation *without* those laws. Both of them believe themselves to be above the law anyway. Why do you think Trump would obey a ban on spreading misinformation?
I took @Marvin the Martian to be talking about what would happen if Trump or Farange were the ones making, or calling on the legislative body to make, such laws, labeling speech they don’t like “misinformation” and prohibiting that speech. It’s hardly a stretch, for example, to imagine Trump wanting to label information about climate change and global warming “a hoax” and “misinformation.”
I dont think this trend can be stopped by encouraging individual digital literacy (though that helps), fundamentally it needs legislation, equivalent to the way basic standards of water and food hygiene were established but I cant see anyone doing that.
The idea of legislation to dictate which views, opinions, theories and beliefs can and can’t be published or shared is frankly terrifying. If nothing else, can you imagine such laws in the hands of someone like Trump or Farage?
But the whole point is that Trump and Farage spread misinformation *without* those laws. Both of them believe themselves to be above the law anyway. Why do you think Trump would obey a ban on spreading misinformation?
I took @Marvin the Martian to be talking about what would happen if Trump or Farange were the ones making, or calling on the legislative body to make, such laws, labeling speech they don’t like “misinformation” and prohibiting that speech. It’s hardly a stretch, for example, to imagine Trump wanting to label information about climate change and global warming “a hoax” and “misinformation.”
It’s hardly a stretch, for example, to imagine Trump wanting to label information about climate change and global warming “a hoax” and “misinformation.”
And before somebody says "Well, he's already doing that anyway", we're not just talking about, say, Trump ordering info about climate-change removed from government websites. Rather, a law such as has been proposed on this thread would regulate the speech of entirely private actors, eg. a newspaper could get prosecuted for saying climate change was real.
I'm always very leery of proposals to regulate speech. "Misinformation" is hard to define. I think about all the things we've been told are good or bad for us, and how many times that advice has changed. Is everyone who said a daily glass of red wine was healthy in trouble now that we're being told no amount of alcohol is healthy?
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
It's not "thought crime". Plenty of democracies have restrictions on lying. In court is an uncontentious one, but food labelling, advertising, and libel/slander are all areas where dishonest speech is restricted. It's not impossible to conceive a civil restriction on promoting information known by the speaker to be false or that they should reasonably have known was false (with a suitable range of defences).
It's not impossible to conceive a civil restriction on promoting information known by the speaker to be false or that they should reasonably have known was false (with a suitable range of defences).
Proving that the speaker knew it to be false would be virtually impossible without a direct confession.
That leaves only "should reasonably have known to be false", which is highly problematic. Does knowing a claim is false require knowledge that the counterclaim is true, or is having doubts about it enough? What is a reasonable standard of proof? What is a reasonable amount of doubt? What, for that matter, is truth (pace John 18:38)? Scientific consensus can be and has been wrong before. Popular opinion doubly so. And then there's the unpleasant fact that many of the things people consider to be indisputably True (human rights, say) are, in fact, nothing more than subjective opinion.
Let's not even get into which (or, indeed, whether) religious beliefs could and couldn't be expressed under such a law.
For the "suitable range of defenses" to mean anything (would "honest belief" count?) you'd be left with a law that could virtually never be prosecuted as any competent defense lawyer could drive a coach and horses through it, and that would therefore be bad law that shouldn't be passed in the first place. Alternatively, for the law itself to mean anything you'd have to create a situation where the government and/or the courts are in the position of dictating what is and isn't true or false and therefore what can and cannot be expressed publicly - which is to all intents and purposes Thoughtcrime.
In the case in the OP, prosecuting the mother for promoting batshit theories about curing cancer with coffee enemas would be harder than prosecuting her for exercising coercive control over her sick daughter.
There is ample evidence that she prevented her sons, Paloma's brothers, from visiting her. When Paloma had a rare trip out to have coffee with a friend on her birthday, her mother sat with them and monitored the conversation. She completely isolated Paloma from anyone who would disagree with her Gerson Therapy.
There's also ample evidence that at the outset of her illness, before she returned home to be cared for by her mother, Paloma had sought medical advice for her symptoms, had had all the tests recommended, and had intended to have chemotherapy. Her only initial qualms about chemo was her fear of becoming infertile in her early 20s, as she had hoped to have children.
It's not impossible to conceive a civil restriction on promoting information known by the speaker to be false or that they should reasonably have known was false (with a suitable range of defences).
Proving that the speaker knew it to be false would be virtually impossible without a direct confession.
That leaves only "should reasonably have known to be false", which is highly problematic.
But we already have libel laws that apply to print media and slander laws that apply to speech. And in these cases it doesn't matter whether you knew the information to be false. It just has to be false and damaging to the libelled person.
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
It's not impossible to conceive a civil restriction on promoting information known by the speaker to be false or that they should reasonably have known was false (with a suitable range of defences).
Proving that the speaker knew it to be false would be virtually impossible without a direct confession.
That leaves only "should reasonably have known to be false", which is highly problematic. Does knowing a claim is false require knowledge that the counterclaim is true, or is having doubts about it enough? What is a reasonable standard of proof? What is a reasonable amount of doubt? What, for that matter, is truth (pace John 18:38)? Scientific consensus can be and has been wrong before. Popular opinion doubly so. And then there's the unpleasant fact that many of the things people consider to be indisputably True (human rights, say) are, in fact, nothing more than subjective opinion.
Let's not even get into which (or, indeed, whether) religious beliefs could and couldn't be expressed under such a law.
For the "suitable range of defenses" to mean anything (would "honest belief" count?) you'd be left with a law that could virtually never be prosecuted as any competent defense lawyer could drive a coach and horses through it, and that would therefore be bad law that shouldn't be passed in the first place. Alternatively, for the law itself to mean anything you'd have to create a situation where the government and/or the courts are in the position of dictating what is and isn't true or false and therefore what can and cannot be expressed publicly - which is to all intents and purposes Thoughtcrime.
Using flat Earth beliefs as an example - it is very easy to prove that the Earth isn't flat. It is something that an adult of normal cognition should reasonably know, and doesn't affect anyone's religious beliefs. Yes, scientific consensus has of course been wrong before, but the non-flatness of the Earth is also observable with the naked eye. Do you think that scientists shouldn't be able to say that the Earth isn't flat because they might be wrong?
It's simply not true that having scientific standards for correct and incorrect statements would be Thoughtcrime, unless you think that the existence of the Food Standards Agency has also created Thoughtcrime. Is it Thoughtcrime to say that food manufacturers can't label food incorrectly?
Is it Thoughtcrime to say that food manufacturers can't label food incorrectly?
Well, two scenarios...
1. There is a cookie with peanuts on the table, and I know it has peanuts. Someone asks me if it has peanuts, saying that he won't eat it if it does because he has a peanut allergy. I tell him no, it doesn't have peanuts.
2. Smoking is harmful, and I know it is harmful. Someone asks me if he should quit smoking to avoid an early death, and I tell him, no, all that stuff about smoking being unhealthy is just propaganda designed by the Illuminati to bankrupt hard-working tobacco farmers, so he should feel free to continue smoking.
I personally don't think the lying in these two situations would be treated as equivalent by the law, and there are very good reasons for that.
Do you think that scientists shouldn't be able to say that the Earth isn't flat because they might be wrong?
Of course I bloody well don't. This isn't (at least not for me) some kind of either/or scenario where if one side is allowed to present their view as truth then the other side isn't.
The difference is that, if I've understood you correctly, you would want the Flat Earth Society to be banned from publishing any and all of their beliefs on the grounds that they're not Officially True.
I mean I don't think that I said anything that would suggest that they should be treated the same.
Well, I was under the impression that you wanted the dissemination of medical misinformation(as in the OP) generally criminalized, and were using the existing bans on false labels as a precedent for why that would be acceptable.
So, I thought the example of lying about the cookie was equivalent to false labeling, and lying about the effects of smoking was equivalent to spreading misinformation generally.
Do you think that my counsel on the supposed harmlessness of smoking should be in ANY way illegal?
I am listening through Mariannas podcast series. It is interesting. She takes it from a perspective of conspiracism, not health or anything else.
What its interesting (both series of her podcasts are good) is how easy it is to fall for these conspiracies. How even sensible educated people can be fooled. Not least because so many people are skeptical of the authorities (and I think Johnson in the UK and Trump in the US have some responsibility for this).
If you reject the authority of "experts", then you are liable to find something else to follow blindly instead.
Want to point out respondents to this thread perpetrated a conspiracy theory regards Jehovah Witnesses refusing blood transfusions. There are alternatives to blood transfusions available, as this article points out. Many of these alternatives can be quite acceptable to a JW. Many of them are used when the blood supply is short too.
1. There is a cookie with peanuts on the table, and I know it has peanuts. Someone asks me if it has peanuts, saying that he won't eat it if it does because he has a peanut allergy. I tell him no, it doesn't have peanuts.
2. Smoking is harmful, and I know it is harmful. Someone asks me if he should quit smoking to avoid an early death, and I tell him, no, all that stuff about smoking being unhealthy is just propaganda designed by the Illuminati to bankrupt hard-working tobacco farmers, so he should feel free to continue smoking.
I personally don't think the lying in these two situations would be treated as equivalent by the law, and there are very good reasons for that.
I am not so sure that there is a fundamental difference between those two scenarios. It is more a matter of the degree of causation.
In scenario no. 1, suppose the person who asks me the question me eats the cookie, has a anaphylactic shock and dies. That strikes me as at least manslaughter if not murder. They have asked me a question. I have deliberately or carelessly knowingly given the wrong answer. As a result of following my advice, they die. Even if I were to get a good lawyer and get off the charge, ethically, I still ought to see myself as morally responsible for causing the death.
The only difference in scenario no. 2 is that there is a more complex chain of causation. That would make it very difficult to prove that it was mine that was the critical agency.
I have given advice which is wrong and which I either know is wrong or ought to know is wrong. However, if the smoker were subsequently to die of lung cancer, possibly years later, it would be next to impossible to demonstrate that my victim carried on smoking directly in reliance on my advice and so for a court to fix me with responsibility for inducing the consequences of listening to me rather than either to other people or just smoking because he or she liked the taste of tobacco.
The difference is not so much in my moral responsibility responsibility for dispensing foolhardy and bad advice so much as the extent to which it is my advice rather than any other person's expression of opinion that caused the result.
Going back to the sad case of Paloma Shemirani, it seems to me very arguable that her mother's monopolisation of her daughter's last months make her role in her daughter's death much more substantial, and irrespective of whether provable in court, virtually impossible morally to excuse.
Likewise, going back to scenario no. 2, my involvement would be much more blatant and serious if I had a very influential position in the smoker's life, repeated my advice over and over again, and used my position to protect the smoker from hearing any other views.
I mean I don't think that I said anything that would suggest that they should be treated the same.
Well, I was under the impression that you wanted the dissemination of medical misinformation(as in the OP) generally criminalized, and were using the existing bans on false labels as a precedent for why that would be acceptable.
So, I thought the example of lying about the cookie was equivalent to false labeling, and lying about the effects of smoking was equivalent to spreading misinformation generally.
Do you think that my counsel on the supposed harmlessness of smoking should be in ANY way illegal?
I don't think that, for want of a better word, interpersonal lying is the same as false labelling on commercial food packaging for eg. Likewise I think there is a difference between spreading misinformation for profit (whether directly for money or so that it makes people more inclined to buy something from you for eg) and running a weird Facebook group. I also think there is a difference between making something a crime and having eg social media companies hold certain standards wrt science and healthcare. I have no interest in sending someone to prison for running a misinformation podcast for eg, but I also think that podcast/streaming companies should be held responsible for the shows that they host on their platforms. There are places in-between "totally fine with zero restrictions" and "a crime".
Do you think that scientists shouldn't be able to say that the Earth isn't flat because they might be wrong?
Of course I bloody well don't. This isn't (at least not for me) some kind of either/or scenario where if one side is allowed to present their view as truth then the other side isn't.
The difference is that, if I've understood you correctly, you would want the Flat Earth Society to be banned from publishing any and all of their beliefs on the grounds that they're not Officially True.
I should have clarified that my question was rhetorical and I wasn't sincerely asking you that - sorry if you thought otherwise.
I think that the Flat Earth Society should have to explicitly state in any and all of their published material (whether online or in print media or whatever) the ways in which their beliefs contradict established science. I'm thinking something akin to how psychics have to state that their services are purely for entertainment purposes and are not actually able to predict the future. Likewise in UK schools, you can't teach Creationism as science because it's not science - religious schools are perfectly able to teach Creationism in religious education classes, but they can't claim that it is a scientific fact when it isn't.
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
Sure.
President Trump believes the same thing about trans people. He has issued executive orders imposing his biologically naive opinion of sex and gender. If he had the power to make claiming that trans people existed a crime, do you not think he would use that power?
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
Sure.
President Trump believes the same thing about trans people. He has issued executive orders imposing his biologically naive opinion of sex and gender. If he had the power to make claiming that trans people existed a crime, do you not think he would use that power?
I don't think anything I've said has suggested giving Trump such power (and I actually don't think that Trump is personally transphobic or homophobic in the same way that I don't think he personally is a Christian - it's just something he can exploit for votes).
I don't understand how "social media should be held to account for hosting misinformation" has been spun into making unintentionally spreading misinformation into a crime involving prosecution. It was @Louise who actually made the suggestion of legislation, and nothing in her comment suggests anything that justifies the kind of feverish panic over protecting facts from "alternative facts" in this thread. Do you think all legislation involves making something a crime? Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria? Do you react the same way to restaurant hygiene ratings?
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
Sure.
President Trump believes the same thing about trans people. He has issued executive orders imposing his biologically naive opinion of sex and gender. If he had the power to make claiming that trans people existed a crime, do you not think he would use that power?
I don't think anything I've said has suggested giving Trump such power (and I actually don't think that Trump is personally transphobic or homophobic in the same way that I don't think he personally is a Christian - it's just something he can exploit for votes).
I don't understand how "social media should be held to account for hosting misinformation" has been spun into making unintentionally spreading misinformation into a crime involving prosecution. It was @Louise who actually made the suggestion of legislation, and nothing in her comment suggests anything that justifies the kind of feverish panic over protecting facts from "alternative facts" in this thread. Do you think all legislation involves making something a crime? Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria? Do you react the same way to restaurant hygiene ratings?
Well, if a German right-winger in the mid-1970s were to say "Herbert Marcuse and all his left-wing academic toadies need to be held to account for inspiring the terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof Gang", should people assume a priori that the guy is 100% NOT advocating criminal prosecution?
I would suggest that if this right-winger wishes to avoid suspicion of wanting to turn police power against leftists, than he clarify precisely what he DOES mean by "held to account". Marxist profs denied tenure? Sued in civil court? Or...?
I dont think dictators are restrained by stuff being illegal and not having powers on paper. When they've convinced the stakeholders they need, they just ignore whether anything is/was 'legal' and there are no consequences because the people who could theoretically stop them agree with them.
Tackling their most effective propaganda machines before it gets to that point is key.
I see a difference between switching on the TV and getting stuff which, though not perfect, was regulated/ quality controlled/ had norms to the point where it wasn't easily confused for a Nazi rally and the situation where someone who wants to see what their local history group is doing, get DIY tip videos or keep in touch with Great Aunty Madge gets algorithmically spammed with stuff you'd previously have had to seek out at a BNP meeting (and be the kind of person who'd do that in the first place).
In a week where I've discovered a group that exists to smear rape survivors as lying government agents and uses Facebook to do it, I am all out of spoons and patience for hypotheticals set in 1970s wherever-it-is. We don't live in the 1970s. Algorithmic social media didn't exist then.
Watching a nice elderly relative who has lived a long life of good being brain poisoned about 'immigrants' because he liked DIY videos and didn't understand about YouTube isnt hypothetical either.
Regulating their spamming algorithms and fining them if they won't, and having our supine UK media regulator do its job would be a start.
Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria?
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria?
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Are you opposed to the existence of the Advertising Standards Agency and OffCom's role in regulating broadcast content?
Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria?
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Are you opposed to the existence of the Advertising Standards Agency and OffCom's role in regulating broadcast content?
In some ways, yes actually. I agree that adverts for products shouldn’t be allowed to make fraudulent factual claims in order to convince people to buy them, but only where those claims can be proved to be false. The sort of “misinformation” people are talking about on this thread is more in the realm of belief than fact, which is a very different thing.
That riots are happening in our city when they clearly bloody aren't and somebody has been looking at falsely labelled video faked up to make them fear anyone who isnt white? It's pretty easily verifiable that it's a fact there were no riots here when our relative claimed this.
You might as well let the local caff spread cholera as let this stuff get so easily and casually onto screens so the companies carrying it can profit.
Big algorithmic social media companies are businesses that profit or attempt to profit from whatever brings advertising clicks and like polluters who ignore environmental regulations or food manufacturers who cheap out on hygiene in dangerous ways, they are a major social problem.
'Freedom of speech' isnt some magic incantation that makes spreading social harm for profit go away. These companies need regulated and they are regulated on stuff like child rape images - the idea that those images are harmful and depict crimes is of course, merely a 'belief' - an evidence backed one - and it doesn't mean there can't be bad or ineffective regulation in a good cause - but we generally accept the principle that some kinds of harmful material shouldn't be spread or profited off.
Widespread promulgation of racist/ misogynist, conspiracy etc. propaganda so that it's fed to people easily and casually through algorithms and they can be exposed to it without seeking it out is of course, something people can choose to do nothing about but we see where that's getting us...
Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria?
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Are you opposed to the existence of the Advertising Standards Agency and OffCom's role in regulating broadcast content?
In some ways, yes actually. I agree that adverts for products shouldn’t be allowed to make fraudulent factual claims in order to convince people to buy them, but only where those claims can be proved to be false. The sort of “misinformation” people are talking about on this thread is more in the realm of belief than fact, which is a very different thing.
I thought we were talking about provable claims, given the subject of the thread.
Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria?
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Yet upthread you're outraged at being asked if you believe that the Earth is flat - how can it be a fact that the Earth isn't flat if one person's truth is another's lies? If we know that the Earth is definitely not flat then misinformation is clearly not just a matter of opinion.
Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria?
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Are you opposed to the existence of the Advertising Standards Agency and OffCom's role in regulating broadcast content?
In some ways, yes actually. I agree that adverts for products shouldn’t be allowed to make fraudulent factual claims in order to convince people to buy them, but only where those claims can be proved to be false. The sort of “misinformation” people are talking about on this thread is more in the realm of belief than fact, which is a very different thing.
Can you point to some specific examples on this thread where misinformation is a question of belief rather than fact?
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
Sure.
President Trump believes the same thing about trans people. He has issued executive orders imposing his biologically naive opinion of sex and gender. If he had the power to make claiming that trans people existed a crime, do you not think he would use that power?
I don't think anything I've said has suggested giving Trump such power (and I actually don't think that Trump is personally transphobic or homophobic in the same way that I don't think he personally is a Christian - it's just something he can exploit for votes).
I don't understand how "social media should be held to account for hosting misinformation" has been spun into making unintentionally spreading misinformation into a crime involving prosecution. It was @Louise who actually made the suggestion of legislation, and nothing in her comment suggests anything that justifies the kind of feverish panic over protecting facts from "alternative facts" in this thread. Do you think all legislation involves making something a crime? Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria? Do you react the same way to restaurant hygiene ratings?
Well, if a German right-winger in the mid-1970s were to say "Herbert Marcuse and all his left-wing academic toadies need to be held to account for inspiring the terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof Gang", should people assume a priori that the guy is 100% NOT advocating criminal prosecution?
I would suggest that if this right-winger wishes to avoid suspicion of wanting to turn police power against leftists, than he clarify precisely what he DOES mean by "held to account". Marxist profs denied tenure? Sued in civil court? Or...?
Do you think that the CEOs of companies that make adverts that are then deemed to be misleading are jailed? Since when did a company being held to account automatically equal jail? I'm also puzzled as to why you can't just answer the questions in straightforward ways rather than making opaque references to other things.
Yeah, Nick, Stetson and Ruth get what I mean. It's not about whether Trump, Farage, etc. can make it legal for them to say whatever they want, it's about whether they can make it illegal for you to say whatever you want.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
Sure.
President Trump believes the same thing about trans people. He has issued executive orders imposing his biologically naive opinion of sex and gender. If he had the power to make claiming that trans people existed a crime, do you not think he would use that power?
I don't think anything I've said has suggested giving Trump such power (and I actually don't think that Trump is personally transphobic or homophobic in the same way that I don't think he personally is a Christian - it's just something he can exploit for votes).
I don't understand how "social media should be held to account for hosting misinformation" has been spun into making unintentionally spreading misinformation into a crime involving prosecution. It was @Louise who actually made the suggestion of legislation, and nothing in her comment suggests anything that justifies the kind of feverish panic over protecting facts from "alternative facts" in this thread. Do you think all legislation involves making something a crime? Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria? Do you react the same way to restaurant hygiene ratings?
Well, if a German right-winger in the mid-1970s were to say "Herbert Marcuse and all his left-wing academic toadies need to be held to account for inspiring the terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof Gang", should people assume a priori that the guy is 100% NOT advocating criminal prosecution?
I would suggest that if this right-winger wishes to avoid suspicion of wanting to turn police power against leftists, than he clarify precisely what he DOES mean by "held to account". Marxist profs denied tenure? Sued in civil court? Or...?
Do you think that the CEOs of companies that make adverts that are then deemed to be misleading are jailed? Since when did a company being held to account automatically equal jail? I'm also puzzled as to why you can't just answer the questions in straightforward ways rather than making opaque references to other things.
It wasn't clear to me that @Louise was refering to legal action against the CEOs themselves, or to the lower-level participants in on-line discourse(who are sometimes prosecuted criminally under hate-speech, at least in Canada), but I was probably assuming the latter. I believe that she has now clarified she meant "regulating algorithms", which I assume means going after the execs and the engineers
My main point, again assuming a law directed against low-level actors, is that when you say you want "legal action" against a group, but don't specify exactly what kind of action you want, it is somewhat foreseeable that at least some people will assume you mean criminal sanction.
Watching a nice elderly relative who has lived a long life of good being brain poisoned about 'immigrants' because he liked DIY videos and didn't understand about YouTube isnt hypothetical either.
Okay, so in your moral schematum, the tech-execs are the villains who need to be reined in, but your elderly relative is simply a helpless victim of their algorithmic machinations.
Sure, quite possible. But do you think EVERYBODY who, unaware of the algorithm, gets onto the internet and starts reading and adopting racist opinions, is equally deserving of the compassionate portrayal that you present of your relative?
I think the argument is analogous to the issues surrounding smoking.
The people running the companies know that their algorithms have a harmful effect on many of the people that use their products. Algorithmic social media is being identified as a contributory factor in deaths. The idea that these companies should be more heavily regulated is not novel. The glacial and haphazard progress on regulating them is also nothing unusual.
NB This is about the owners of the algorithms, the people running the companies that make use them, not the engineers or techs who implemented them.
Not everyone who smokes gets so addicted they can't quit, or end up with lung cancer. People have varying vulnerabilities. And then there's passive smoking where smoking harms non- smokers who have to share space with smokers.
Alcohol is similar - not everyone who consumes becomes an alcoholic or behaves violently but it has costs to communities and is regulated by licensing laws.
You can have quite an argument over what regulation should look like but almost nobody nowadays doubts that there are sound reasons to regulate smoking/ alcohol to some extent.
It's a relatively easy sell to limit harmful/ dangerous stuff by age - though that has its dangers - 'won't somebody think of the children' can be used to attack young people having access to things which have benefits for them but which some adults find scary.
A bitier kettle of piranhas is older age - for example laws on driving licence requirements were recently tightened in the UK because so many older people were driving when no longer fit. There was a recent horrible case here where a woman in her nineties who shouldn't have been driving veered onto the pavement and smashed into a 3 year old and his mum - killing the toddler.
If you decide to get in a car, people are more aware of their responsibilities- not to be drunk, to have a licence and pass the health requirements, to wear a seat belt.
But there used to be different attitudes on drink and seat belts - and there were some furores about 'freedom' when seat belts and modern anti-drink driving requirements were brought in.
If someone decides to get in a car after drinking half a bottle of whisky, whether they're 19 or 90, after years of public health education and laws being brought in and publicised, the offender knows or should know, they are doing wrong and endangering other people and that they are entirely culpable for doing that.
But I don't think we have anything like the scale of public health education or the legislation to back it for the dangers of Facebook, YouTube, X etc. There's been a lot of running scared of doing anything about it because the bad actors behind algorithmic social media cloak themselves in 'freedom of speech' and that means people aren't getting the kind of messages about these harms that they would get for drink driving or speeding or smoking. And the companies are allowed to create shocking and costly social harm without being reined in.
This is the kind of thing that is happening here in the UK
Sikh women are reporting levels of violent racism have gone back to 1980s levels.
It's not just social media of course, journalists and producers who marinade themselves in this kind of content and swim in social media waters where it's acceptable looking for stories, bring racist attitudes into the mainstream - either platforming them or treating them as an acceptable opinion for 'balance' or 'impartiality'. They may dogwhistle more, as there is some regulation in broadcasting and print, but it still shifts the Overton window.
There's a 'passive smoking' element to people who consume increasing volumes of distorted or lying racist propaganda online - they harm others by voting for racists and encouraging racism and behaving in racist ways. So this is more than an individual consumer choice - it is a social harm with real effects to real communities.
And of course it's not just racism - a lot of prejudices are being stoked using propaganda methods ( distortion, lies/fakes, cherry picking, treating outlier cranks as experts) with horrific social and human costs.
And this propaganda has become easier to deliver with the sugared pill of social media which gives people human connections and a stream of entertaining content - so it's spoonfed by algorithms to people who would not, left to their own devices, seek it out.
Some of these people are very vulnerable to it. Some of them should know better that YouTube is not a reliable source or that Facebook has helped spread genocidal propaganda and its owner removed even meagre controls on some forms of hate speech to please Trump or what Elon Musk's ownership of X means.
But where are the 'clunk click every trip' or 'Don't drink and drive' campaigns for online propaganda?
And where are the regulation and legislation to curb algorithms which feed propaganda to people because outrage = more advertising clicks and engagement - and never mind if those targeted are being raped, assaulted or are afraid to leave their homes?
Full discussion of this probably belongs in Epiphanies because many of those harmed by this are people from minority groups who are targeted by the propagandists who seek to further marginalise already marginalised people. It's the same thing with anti-vax and anti-mask and medical pseudoscientific conspiracy theories which are also spread this way by the same mechanisms ( hence these coming up on the same thread) - and there are also overlaps where medical pseudoscience/ eugenics/ conspiracy theory target trans people, autistic people, disabled people etc.
Comments
Optimistic of you to think the lack of those laws would impede Trump or Farage in any way.
But the whole point is that Trump and Farage spread misinformation *without* those laws. Both of them believe themselves to be above the law anyway. Why do you think Trump would obey a ban on spreading misinformation?
Do you think legislation to dictate what quality of food can and can't be sold is terrifying? If not, why is unsafe food hygiene a problem but misinformation isn't?
Just like eg the Food Standards Agency, fact-checking would involve many people to assess a statement. The whole point is that it's not in the hands of an individual. It's not like one person does all the food hygiene ratings.
I’m with MtM on this one.
That was how I read @Marvin the Martian as well.
And before somebody says "Well, he's already doing that anyway", we're not just talking about, say, Trump ordering info about climate-change removed from government websites. Rather, a law such as has been proposed on this thread would regulate the speech of entirely private actors, eg. a newspaper could get prosecuted for saying climate change was real.
Thoughtcrime is not a concept that has any place in a free democracy.
Proving that the speaker knew it to be false would be virtually impossible without a direct confession.
That leaves only "should reasonably have known to be false", which is highly problematic. Does knowing a claim is false require knowledge that the counterclaim is true, or is having doubts about it enough? What is a reasonable standard of proof? What is a reasonable amount of doubt? What, for that matter, is truth (pace John 18:38)? Scientific consensus can be and has been wrong before. Popular opinion doubly so. And then there's the unpleasant fact that many of the things people consider to be indisputably True (human rights, say) are, in fact, nothing more than subjective opinion.
Let's not even get into which (or, indeed, whether) religious beliefs could and couldn't be expressed under such a law.
For the "suitable range of defenses" to mean anything (would "honest belief" count?) you'd be left with a law that could virtually never be prosecuted as any competent defense lawyer could drive a coach and horses through it, and that would therefore be bad law that shouldn't be passed in the first place. Alternatively, for the law itself to mean anything you'd have to create a situation where the government and/or the courts are in the position of dictating what is and isn't true or false and therefore what can and cannot be expressed publicly - which is to all intents and purposes Thoughtcrime.
There is ample evidence that she prevented her sons, Paloma's brothers, from visiting her. When Paloma had a rare trip out to have coffee with a friend on her birthday, her mother sat with them and monitored the conversation. She completely isolated Paloma from anyone who would disagree with her Gerson Therapy.
There's also ample evidence that at the outset of her illness, before she returned home to be cared for by her mother, Paloma had sought medical advice for her symptoms, had had all the tests recommended, and had intended to have chemotherapy. Her only initial qualms about chemo was her fear of becoming infertile in her early 20s, as she had hoped to have children.
But we already have libel laws that apply to print media and slander laws that apply to speech. And in these cases it doesn't matter whether you knew the information to be false. It just has to be false and damaging to the libelled person.
Saying that the Earth is flat isn't a thoughtcrime, it's just incorrect. It's a fact that isn't in any way political and can be easily proven.
Using flat Earth beliefs as an example - it is very easy to prove that the Earth isn't flat. It is something that an adult of normal cognition should reasonably know, and doesn't affect anyone's religious beliefs. Yes, scientific consensus has of course been wrong before, but the non-flatness of the Earth is also observable with the naked eye. Do you think that scientists shouldn't be able to say that the Earth isn't flat because they might be wrong?
It's simply not true that having scientific standards for correct and incorrect statements would be Thoughtcrime, unless you think that the existence of the Food Standards Agency has also created Thoughtcrime. Is it Thoughtcrime to say that food manufacturers can't label food incorrectly?
Well, two scenarios...
1. There is a cookie with peanuts on the table, and I know it has peanuts. Someone asks me if it has peanuts, saying that he won't eat it if it does because he has a peanut allergy. I tell him no, it doesn't have peanuts.
2. Smoking is harmful, and I know it is harmful. Someone asks me if he should quit smoking to avoid an early death, and I tell him, no, all that stuff about smoking being unhealthy is just propaganda designed by the Illuminati to bankrupt hard-working tobacco farmers, so he should feel free to continue smoking.
I personally don't think the lying in these two situations would be treated as equivalent by the law, and there are very good reasons for that.
Of course I bloody well don't. This isn't (at least not for me) some kind of either/or scenario where if one side is allowed to present their view as truth then the other side isn't.
The difference is that, if I've understood you correctly, you would want the Flat Earth Society to be banned from publishing any and all of their beliefs on the grounds that they're not Officially True.
Well, I was under the impression that you wanted the dissemination of medical misinformation(as in the OP) generally criminalized, and were using the existing bans on false labels as a precedent for why that would be acceptable.
So, I thought the example of lying about the cookie was equivalent to false labeling, and lying about the effects of smoking was equivalent to spreading misinformation generally.
Do you think that my counsel on the supposed harmlessness of smoking should be in ANY way illegal?
Saying the Earth is flat is science denial and as such it is definitely political.
What its interesting (both series of her podcasts are good) is how easy it is to fall for these conspiracies. How even sensible educated people can be fooled. Not least because so many people are skeptical of the authorities (and I think Johnson in the UK and Trump in the US have some responsibility for this).
If you reject the authority of "experts", then you are liable to find something else to follow blindly instead.
In scenario no. 1, suppose the person who asks me the question me eats the cookie, has a anaphylactic shock and dies. That strikes me as at least manslaughter if not murder. They have asked me a question. I have deliberately or carelessly knowingly given the wrong answer. As a result of following my advice, they die. Even if I were to get a good lawyer and get off the charge, ethically, I still ought to see myself as morally responsible for causing the death.
The only difference in scenario no. 2 is that there is a more complex chain of causation. That would make it very difficult to prove that it was mine that was the critical agency.
I have given advice which is wrong and which I either know is wrong or ought to know is wrong. However, if the smoker were subsequently to die of lung cancer, possibly years later, it would be next to impossible to demonstrate that my victim carried on smoking directly in reliance on my advice and so for a court to fix me with responsibility for inducing the consequences of listening to me rather than either to other people or just smoking because he or she liked the taste of tobacco.
The difference is not so much in my moral responsibility responsibility for dispensing foolhardy and bad advice so much as the extent to which it is my advice rather than any other person's expression of opinion that caused the result.
Going back to the sad case of Paloma Shemirani, it seems to me very arguable that her mother's monopolisation of her daughter's last months make her role in her daughter's death much more substantial, and irrespective of whether provable in court, virtually impossible morally to excuse.
Likewise, going back to scenario no. 2, my involvement would be much more blatant and serious if I had a very influential position in the smoker's life, repeated my advice over and over again, and used my position to protect the smoker from hearing any other views.
But saying that the Earth *isn't* flat isn't political.
I don't think that, for want of a better word, interpersonal lying is the same as false labelling on commercial food packaging for eg. Likewise I think there is a difference between spreading misinformation for profit (whether directly for money or so that it makes people more inclined to buy something from you for eg) and running a weird Facebook group. I also think there is a difference between making something a crime and having eg social media companies hold certain standards wrt science and healthcare. I have no interest in sending someone to prison for running a misinformation podcast for eg, but I also think that podcast/streaming companies should be held responsible for the shows that they host on their platforms. There are places in-between "totally fine with zero restrictions" and "a crime".
I should have clarified that my question was rhetorical and I wasn't sincerely asking you that - sorry if you thought otherwise.
I think that the Flat Earth Society should have to explicitly state in any and all of their published material (whether online or in print media or whatever) the ways in which their beliefs contradict established science. I'm thinking something akin to how psychics have to state that their services are purely for entertainment purposes and are not actually able to predict the future. Likewise in UK schools, you can't teach Creationism as science because it's not science - religious schools are perfectly able to teach Creationism in religious education classes, but they can't claim that it is a scientific fact when it isn't.
Sure.
President Trump believes the same thing about trans people. He has issued executive orders imposing his biologically naive opinion of sex and gender. If he had the power to make claiming that trans people existed a crime, do you not think he would use that power?
I don't think anything I've said has suggested giving Trump such power (and I actually don't think that Trump is personally transphobic or homophobic in the same way that I don't think he personally is a Christian - it's just something he can exploit for votes).
I don't understand how "social media should be held to account for hosting misinformation" has been spun into making unintentionally spreading misinformation into a crime involving prosecution. It was @Louise who actually made the suggestion of legislation, and nothing in her comment suggests anything that justifies the kind of feverish panic over protecting facts from "alternative facts" in this thread. Do you think all legislation involves making something a crime? Why is wanting to prevent the spread of misinformation so wrong that it inspires this level of hysteria? Do you react the same way to restaurant hygiene ratings?
Well, if a German right-winger in the mid-1970s were to say "Herbert Marcuse and all his left-wing academic toadies need to be held to account for inspiring the terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof Gang", should people assume a priori that the guy is 100% NOT advocating criminal prosecution?
I would suggest that if this right-winger wishes to avoid suspicion of wanting to turn police power against leftists, than he clarify precisely what he DOES mean by "held to account". Marxist profs denied tenure? Sued in civil court? Or...?
This really is on par with Oliver Wendell Holmes comparing antiwar speeches to shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Tackling their most effective propaganda machines before it gets to that point is key.
I see a difference between switching on the TV and getting stuff which, though not perfect, was regulated/ quality controlled/ had norms to the point where it wasn't easily confused for a Nazi rally and the situation where someone who wants to see what their local history group is doing, get DIY tip videos or keep in touch with Great Aunty Madge gets algorithmically spammed with stuff you'd previously have had to seek out at a BNP meeting (and be the kind of person who'd do that in the first place).
In a week where I've discovered a group that exists to smear rape survivors as lying government agents and uses Facebook to do it, I am all out of spoons and patience for hypotheticals set in 1970s wherever-it-is. We don't live in the 1970s. Algorithmic social media didn't exist then.
Watching a nice elderly relative who has lived a long life of good being brain poisoned about 'immigrants' because he liked DIY videos and didn't understand about YouTube isnt hypothetical either.
Regulating their spamming algorithms and fining them if they won't, and having our supine UK media regulator do its job would be a start.
Because “misinformation” is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s truth is another’s lies, and what one person considers a good outcome someone else may consider a great harm.
Are you opposed to the existence of the Advertising Standards Agency and OffCom's role in regulating broadcast content?
In some ways, yes actually. I agree that adverts for products shouldn’t be allowed to make fraudulent factual claims in order to convince people to buy them, but only where those claims can be proved to be false. The sort of “misinformation” people are talking about on this thread is more in the realm of belief than fact, which is a very different thing.
You might as well let the local caff spread cholera as let this stuff get so easily and casually onto screens so the companies carrying it can profit.
Big algorithmic social media companies are businesses that profit or attempt to profit from whatever brings advertising clicks and like polluters who ignore environmental regulations or food manufacturers who cheap out on hygiene in dangerous ways, they are a major social problem.
'Freedom of speech' isnt some magic incantation that makes spreading social harm for profit go away. These companies need regulated and they are regulated on stuff like child rape images - the idea that those images are harmful and depict crimes is of course, merely a 'belief' - an evidence backed one - and it doesn't mean there can't be bad or ineffective regulation in a good cause - but we generally accept the principle that some kinds of harmful material shouldn't be spread or profited off.
Widespread promulgation of racist/ misogynist, conspiracy etc. propaganda so that it's fed to people easily and casually through algorithms and they can be exposed to it without seeking it out is of course, something people can choose to do nothing about but we see where that's getting us...
I thought we were talking about provable claims, given the subject of the thread.
Yet upthread you're outraged at being asked if you believe that the Earth is flat - how can it be a fact that the Earth isn't flat if one person's truth is another's lies? If we know that the Earth is definitely not flat then misinformation is clearly not just a matter of opinion.
Can you point to some specific examples on this thread where misinformation is a question of belief rather than fact?
Do you think that the CEOs of companies that make adverts that are then deemed to be misleading are jailed? Since when did a company being held to account automatically equal jail? I'm also puzzled as to why you can't just answer the questions in straightforward ways rather than making opaque references to other things.
It wasn't clear to me that @Louise was refering to legal action against the CEOs themselves, or to the lower-level participants in on-line discourse(who are sometimes prosecuted criminally under hate-speech, at least in Canada), but I was probably assuming the latter. I believe that she has now clarified she meant "regulating algorithms", which I assume means going after the execs and the engineers
My main point, again assuming a law directed against low-level actors, is that when you say you want "legal action" against a group, but don't specify exactly what kind of action you want, it is somewhat foreseeable that at least some people will assume you mean criminal sanction.
Okay, so in your moral schematum, the tech-execs are the villains who need to be reined in, but your elderly relative is simply a helpless victim of their algorithmic machinations.
Sure, quite possible. But do you think EVERYBODY who, unaware of the algorithm, gets onto the internet and starts reading and adopting racist opinions, is equally deserving of the compassionate portrayal that you present of your relative?
The people running the companies know that their algorithms have a harmful effect on many of the people that use their products. Algorithmic social media is being identified as a contributory factor in deaths. The idea that these companies should be more heavily regulated is not novel. The glacial and haphazard progress on regulating them is also nothing unusual.
NB This is about the owners of the algorithms, the people running the companies that make use them, not the engineers or techs who implemented them.
Not everyone who smokes gets so addicted they can't quit, or end up with lung cancer. People have varying vulnerabilities. And then there's passive smoking where smoking harms non- smokers who have to share space with smokers.
Alcohol is similar - not everyone who consumes becomes an alcoholic or behaves violently but it has costs to communities and is regulated by licensing laws.
You can have quite an argument over what regulation should look like but almost nobody nowadays doubts that there are sound reasons to regulate smoking/ alcohol to some extent.
It's a relatively easy sell to limit harmful/ dangerous stuff by age - though that has its dangers - 'won't somebody think of the children' can be used to attack young people having access to things which have benefits for them but which some adults find scary.
A bitier kettle of piranhas is older age - for example laws on driving licence requirements were recently tightened in the UK because so many older people were driving when no longer fit. There was a recent horrible case here where a woman in her nineties who shouldn't have been driving veered onto the pavement and smashed into a 3 year old and his mum - killing the toddler.
If you decide to get in a car, people are more aware of their responsibilities- not to be drunk, to have a licence and pass the health requirements, to wear a seat belt.
But there used to be different attitudes on drink and seat belts - and there were some furores about 'freedom' when seat belts and modern anti-drink driving requirements were brought in.
If someone decides to get in a car after drinking half a bottle of whisky, whether they're 19 or 90, after years of public health education and laws being brought in and publicised, the offender knows or should know, they are doing wrong and endangering other people and that they are entirely culpable for doing that.
But I don't think we have anything like the scale of public health education or the legislation to back it for the dangers of Facebook, YouTube, X etc. There's been a lot of running scared of doing anything about it because the bad actors behind algorithmic social media cloak themselves in 'freedom of speech' and that means people aren't getting the kind of messages about these harms that they would get for drink driving or speeding or smoking. And the companies are allowed to create shocking and costly social harm without being reined in.
This is the kind of thing that is happening here in the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/08/midlands-attacks-walsall-sikh-womens-daily-lives
Sikh women are reporting levels of violent racism have gone back to 1980s levels.
It's not just social media of course, journalists and producers who marinade themselves in this kind of content and swim in social media waters where it's acceptable looking for stories, bring racist attitudes into the mainstream - either platforming them or treating them as an acceptable opinion for 'balance' or 'impartiality'. They may dogwhistle more, as there is some regulation in broadcasting and print, but it still shifts the Overton window.
There's a 'passive smoking' element to people who consume increasing volumes of distorted or lying racist propaganda online - they harm others by voting for racists and encouraging racism and behaving in racist ways. So this is more than an individual consumer choice - it is a social harm with real effects to real communities.
And of course it's not just racism - a lot of prejudices are being stoked using propaganda methods ( distortion, lies/fakes, cherry picking, treating outlier cranks as experts) with horrific social and human costs.
And this propaganda has become easier to deliver with the sugared pill of social media which gives people human connections and a stream of entertaining content - so it's spoonfed by algorithms to people who would not, left to their own devices, seek it out.
Some of these people are very vulnerable to it. Some of them should know better that YouTube is not a reliable source or that Facebook has helped spread genocidal propaganda and its owner removed even meagre controls on some forms of hate speech to please Trump or what Elon Musk's ownership of X means.
But where are the 'clunk click every trip' or 'Don't drink and drive' campaigns for online propaganda?
And where are the regulation and legislation to curb algorithms which feed propaganda to people because outrage = more advertising clicks and engagement - and never mind if those targeted are being raped, assaulted or are afraid to leave their homes?
Full discussion of this probably belongs in Epiphanies because many of those harmed by this are people from minority groups who are targeted by the propagandists who seek to further marginalise already marginalised people. It's the same thing with anti-vax and anti-mask and medical pseudoscientific conspiracy theories which are also spread this way by the same mechanisms ( hence these coming up on the same thread) - and there are also overlaps where medical pseudoscience/ eugenics/ conspiracy theory target trans people, autistic people, disabled people etc.