A free and open internet also allows propaganda and hate to flourish which are two bedrocks of most authoritarian and nationalist regimes. It isn't as simple as ending censorship will allow everyone to be free.
> A free and open internet also allows propaganda and hate to flourish
I disagree. Sure there will always be some amount of misinformation on the internet, but a fully state-controlled media and internet (see - China) is far, far more effective at spreading propaganda and controlling the narrative.
This isn't a binary choice between a fully state controlled internet and a fully free and open internet. There is a spectrum. I believe the ideal internet rests much closer to the free and open side than the state controlled side, but existing at the extreme of free and open would be come with its own set of problems. Just look at all the most popular places on the web that champion their lack of censorship or moderation. Most of them end up as cesspools.
Is it possible that they become cesspools because poop isn't allowed to flow everywhere else? Is there a finite quantity of poop that could be diluted if it were spread out evenly, or is the supply unending?
The problem isn't quantity, but risk. There's a reason we restrict literal poop to a few designated places - while there's only a finite amount of excrement deposited any given time, you don't want every place you visit and interaction you're a part of to carry a chance of you witnessing someone defecating.
Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups.
There is also the immunity to bad ideas aspect; Its important that the propaganda is heard openly and argued against in public, as this makes people immune to these arguments. Censor these bad ideas and we make the next generation vulnerable to them.
I don't think we can offset this with education, as with drugs, we never give the kids the very best bad idea - argument when we try to teach the dangers of drugs, this is why so many are vulnerable to the dealers quiet persuasion. I really feel like the more we silence movements like the alt right, the more vulnerable our society becomes to their bad ideas.
>Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups.
This is repeated so much it is practically a meme at this point, but is there anything to actually back it up? Especially when users have the ability to control what they see. If someone is in a bubble of disinformation, it doesn't matter how many voices outside the bubble try to debunk those claims.
It seems like a more effective approach would to be to work on preventative measures so people are never exposed to these harmful beliefs rather than wait until these beliefs are heard and then try to convince them they are wrong.
The censorship of the good information is the problem. And it probably started with censorship of bad information that lead to the bubble in the first place.
>work on preventative measures so people are never exposed
This is where the analogy breaks down, its not a virus, its an idea, anyone can come up with an idea, good or bad. you want to protect people from themselves, you must immunize them from the bad ideas they could come up with. We know it works, it was the only vehicle from the dark ages to the enlightenment.
We also have the problem that if you set up a perfect system of blocking bad ideas, the people who run it can have bad ideas of their own. Hell the mechanism we have to even tell the difference between bad ideas and good ideas in society (open free discourse) will have been destroyed.
There are plenty of examples of people trying to do this around the world, tyrants and hell-holes created with the best of intentions.
>The censorship of the good information is the problem. And it probably started with censorship of bad information that lead to the bubble in the first place.
There is nothing nefarious about bubbles. They happen automatically when people are in control of what they consume. Imagine I join Twitter and I am given a list of people to follow. I don't like to hear from people with viewpoints that I think are crazy so I unfollow someone if they say something I disagree with. If some gets retweeted into my feed saying something I agree with, I might follow them regardless of the validity of their comment since I don't have the time or motivation to fact check everything. Wouldn't you know it, I am now in a bubble despite there being zero censorship of anything. If one of the people in my bubble repeats some false claim, am I going to see someone dispute that claim or will the disputing occur outside my bubble?
>This is where the analogy breaks down, its not a virus, its an idea, anyone can come up with an idea, good or bad. you can't protect people from themselves, you can only immunize them, we know it works, it was the only vehicle from the dark ages to the enlightenment.
Ideas do have virality to them. Something like QAnon is a prime example. Is isn't like "wealthy democrats drink the blood of children" is some random idea that multiple people reached through parallel thinking. It was a particular conspiracy theory that spread from one person to another. Stopping that message from spreading to more people seems like a more effective approach than trying to retroactively unconvince people who have already bought into the conspiracy.
I agree with the rest of your comment about the dangers of censorship. That is why I said I would have a preference for something that is closer to free and open than not, but that doesn't mean we can't recognize the specific situations in which completely free and open systems can go wrong.
Nothing about QAnon is inherently viral, there's no real rhyme or reason to QAnon theories and they contradict each other half the time. QAnon is just the latest adaptation of solipsistic, uncritical, and delusional thinking that started long before the internet and will continue long after it dies. Ever wonder what happened to flat earth theory? That used to be the "viral" bad idea of the time, but if you look around now it's practically dead. It's dead because flat earthers have moved on to QAnon [1]. "Wealthy democrats drink the blood of children" is literally a random stupid idea that only spreads because these idiots all talk to each other. It could be anything; In a different decade they would instead be talking about the Freemasons, or a flat earth, or the Jewish agenda. The common theme is not the idea or the politics, it's the broken mentality that creates a worldview in which nothing is your fault, everything bad is caused by inhuman others, and you are one of the few smart enough to see what others cannot.
It's foolish to think that censoring these people actually solves anything. Because you never addressed the broken psychology that attracts them to this garbage in the first place, they'll continue finding other outlets, your attempts to censor them only feeding their delusions further. Censorship might help you avoid them on the internet, but let's see if you can avoid them at the polls.
> Propaganda is vulnerable to open discourse, promoters of false information are handicapped by the flaws in their arguments. The only way it can flourish is censored away into manipulative misdirection and secretive groups.
This is so false it's bordering on the absurd. Anyone with even a little experience with debate and techniques like Gish gallop, which are widely employed, know that rational arguments simply do not convince most people of things. Humans aren't purely rational beings. It's dangerous to assume we can just talk away propaganda because all evidence points to the contrary.
More than 80% of Trump supporters believe the election was rigged against their candidate despite there literally being no evidence supporting this claim. We're seeing propaganda succeed on such a massive scale because it's so widely spread and so difficult to counter. You've got literally millions of people who have been conditioned to label everything that contradicts their views as "fake news". There is a reason why Fox News viewers score lower on current information than people who don't watch any news at all. Their propaganda works and talking about it and pointing it out isn't helping at all.
Think of the last hundred years, the countries that supported some form of free expression and discourse are now the most progressive rational societies on the planet. And the ones that enforced moral standards and 'ministries of truth', usually religious, are the most regressive.
It doesn't matter whether you can change someones mind on the spot, it matters that your argument is superior and the public tend to repeat and re-argue the superior argument. And yes, things like election fraud, that might be possible, and has happened before, is harder to argued against than a flat earth. But these positions are also the ones where we might be wrong.
> More than 80% of Trump supporters believe the election was rigged against their candidate despite there literally being no evidence supporting this claim.
This is not accurate. Many non-Trump supporters also do not trust the results. I suspect you have not paid a lot of attention to the legitimate concerns.
> We're seeing propaganda succeed on such a massive scale because it's so widely spread and so difficult to counter.
This is true, but as of late, it’s going the opposite direction. It’s not that anything that contradicts their views is fake news, it’s the stuff that contradicts reality. See finepeoplehoax.org for a great example.
I'm curious -- what are you hoping that argument will accomplish?
Freedom of ANY kind allows bad things to happen. The most secure world is one in which we are all locked up, nobody ever interacts, and are only fed via tube from their government provided feeder in their government provided cube.
Since I'm fairly sure that isn't what you're advocating, please, explain what you're hoping to accomplish by stating that a free and open internet is a problem.
I was responding to a comment that stated an authoritarian/nationalistic movement would fear a free and open internet. I was pointing out that a free and open internet can be a tool of an authoritarian/nationalistic movement. I was hoping to open some people's eyes to how openness can be abused.
Also I don't know if this was intentional, but just letting you know that your phrasing of this post comes off as needlessly confrontational. You can ask for clarification without asking "what are you hoping that argument will accomplish" which sounds accusatory as it implies a nefarious motive.
That is why we need the education to identify and expose propaganda. Something most governments have either completely ignored or severely neglected in public education because of how useful and successful their own propaganda has been in shaping public ideas and narrative.
Exactly and this is the dirty little detail that people don't want to realize. People think you can just censor right wing misinformation but guess what happens? The right wing movements simply create their own websites and start blocking anything that is a counter argument. Biggest example is reddit which has focused on blocking right wing groups. /r/thedonald used to be big on reddit but they got banned. So they went on to create their own version of reddit and now that website has exploded in popularity. It is apparently in the top 500 most visited websites in the USA now.
It is very likely that moving forward, many right wing people will shift away platforms like facebook, twitter, and reddit. In fact, these platforms already exist. Gab is a replacement for facebook and parler is a replacement for twitter.
