EU and UK politics [OT]

[RolStoppable]

LegitHyperbole said:

RolStoppable said:

Social media isn't a marketplace of free thought. It's rigged with algorithms and bots, so it's a marketplace for manipulation of free thought. The lack of laws against lies, deception and manipulation have allowed it that radical positions could be spread and normalized, so if governments continue to sit idle, then democracies will crumble one after another because too many voters cannot tell apart fact from fiction anymore.

If the solution to that should be education instead of more requirements and laws pertaining to social media platforms, then it's a lost cause. You can't educate people who are stuck within a bubble and will therefore never see material that helps them to do some critical thinking. We are already at the point where it's necessary that the bubble must be popped. Simply put, all social media platforms should be required to weed out lies, deception and misinformation, or otherwise they'll be banned from doing business.

In the world of Metal Gear Solid they had the same problem, an AI had a plan to control the flow of information. You know what Solid Snake done? He, Along with Raiden went and destroyed GW (The AI) anyway, thwarting the AIs plans because... it's a terrible idea. 

People are not as stupid as the media who want to control information for their own gain and profit would have you believe. There are many other ways to solve the problem like teaching media literacy in school, how to spot sponsored content and initiatives along this line that are preemptive without taking people's rights away. 

Free speech is the most fundamental of human rights and one we have only had for a very short time, even decades ago there was soft barriers on free speech created by social norms in the US and in much of the rest of the world by the Catholic Church or Islam. Do you have any idea how long it took us to get that free speech in society, how much it cost and how insanely bad it would be to start restricting speech now with the communications technology we have? If you bring in these kind of restrictions and they expand over time to clamp down on more and more they are NEVER coming back until our civilization fails cause there is no where to fight to get them back. The powers that be would simply be too powerful and use the flow of information against us, to confuse us and divide us... like what's happening right now with the main stream media.

Think of how someone in the LGBT community could be affected by this if it was turned the other way. Perhaps the new leadership doesn't like us so hey, they'll shut LGBT out and censo... oh wait, that's happening right now in America isn't it.  

Who decides what is right and what is wrong? Cause it only takes one leadership shift for those decisions to turn around and effect. Look what Trump has done in 30 days, now imagine that but the rules for misinformation and restrictions on it are in place and for him to decide. Again, there are many, many more intelligent but slightly more difficult ways to implement ways to combat this without going full on Orwellian. 

What a confusing post of yours.

Indeed, the USA shows us - meaning us in the EU and the UK - where the social media madness leads us. The far-right hijacks the platform, gets elected due to a sizeable chunk of the population being unable to tell apart truth and lies, and then proceeds to oppress free speech on a government level. If us here in the EU and the UK would already be at that point, then it would be too late to act. But that's not the case, because we still have leaders who respect science and facts. That is why the time to act is now instead of allowing the American far-right to play the same game in Europe too and influence our elections for the worse.

Always remember that free speech is not absolute because just about every EU country and the UK have hate speech laws, and they have them for a good reason. And the reason why the vast majority of any given country has no problem with hate speech laws is because they have no desire to vomit such crap, so it doesn't affect their right to free speech at all.

Freedom does not work without rules. The key principle of freedom is that everyone must respect the freedom of everyone else, so there must be certain things that have to be deemed off limits in order to secure the freedom. That is the entire reason why wannabe oppressors - a.k.a. the far-right - complain about being oppressed all the time: Because the idea of everyone being equal is disturbing to them, and it hurts them even more that their mindset does not constitute the consensus of the majority.

So how can the thought of mandatory clamping down on lies, deception and misinformation on social media sound like a bad thing to you? It's the logical thing to do to protect free speech as well as all the freedom that has been achieved up till now, because the far-right absolutely wants to turn back the clock and they will exploit everything they can to accomplish their goal.