AOC isn’t exactly wrong. We’ve had this occur in my country just a few months ago.
There was a mass stabbing in England where three children were killed. False claims that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker spread online and led to white supremacist riots across the country. The suspect (later named because the court lifted an anonymity order) was later revealed to actually be a British born teenager with Rwandan parents. He wasn’t even a Muslim.
Oddly enough, the person who first posted the misinformation was traced to be from Pakistan.
Rule 6: Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it’s a major figure or a politician.
Thank you for pointing that out and then providing the link. People don’t always read the sidebar. This also brings attention to it.
It chapps my ass that most clients obscure the rules and so it’s really easy to forget to review them, especially if it’s a community you rarely post to.
Thankfully, I haven’t run into any reddit style mods on Lemmy… Yet.
Obv, this is a skill issue, but it’s clear enough that it’s not just me. I feel like there’s a better way. Perhaps worthy of a feature request to the dev of my client (jebora).
Could?
Online propaganda has literally killed millions of people already.
Not enough people know about the Facebook genocide https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html
You’re right! That’s why it’s so urgent to take action against disinformation. I just left a comment with some ideas for what people can do to deal with the Twitter problem. As you just said millions are getting killed. What I suggest could just take a minute or two of your time and it will help slow down the spread of disinformation.
Welcome to “we won and don’t have to hide it anymore” fascism. It’s gonna get a lot scarier.
I think they are giving it their all because they think it’s their last chance. If we stay strong, united and focused we can defeat it.
Those who fought against and lived under Nazism are gradually passing away. The living memory is dying as well as a result and the first hand experience isn’t getting passed on. After all, the growing supporter of the right (not necessarily far right) are actually aged 18-34, despite the stereotype that youths are more liberal. The housing crisis exacerbates the social tension because young people feel competition with migrants. And migration crisis will also worsen because of climate change. Worsening drought and decreasing water levels make agriculture unsustainable, which catalyses social upheaval and migration. Many historical settlements in the past have either collapsed or abandoned because of changes in local climate.
It’s not really because it’s their last chance, but because it is their best chance in the foreseeable future. One of their key allies, Russia, is close to falling under the weight of the economic consequences of its war, they are about to get complete reigns again in the US, in no small part to voter manipulation, and all they need is to stuff government a bit more to make it as much of a “democracy” as Russia’s.
Not that I’m arguing against it being “their last chance”, a lot of democracies are slowly wising up in their slow bureaucratic timescale about what’s actually happening, how social networks are getting exploited, how just having one case against Cambridge Analytica did not so much stop the problem as acted as international advertising for its services, and how any advantages they thought they were getting are being undermined by those same networks propping up fascist on a global scale locally.
The US turning fascist is basically a whole globalist oligarchy turning on itself, and they know that they can no longer follow status quo or they will be toppled from down under by the those on top. The new populist fascist drive powered by the ultrarich wants to make the world eat itself before it eats them as we get closer to the consequences of global warming, resource scarcity, and population growth reaching its limits, not directly as a conspiracy but as a consequence of that’s how they have always acted but now on a macro-scale.
the ultrarich wants to make the world eat itself before it eats them as we get closer to the consequences of global warming
Which is why some of them are building bunkers and hiring experts to make them self-sustaining. They somehow think they can weather the coming storm safe in their shells, the way they live their lives completely sheltered from the consequences of their actions.
It doesn’t matter how secure a bunker is, heat is going to get through, it is a slave to thermodynamics. Every bunker is a cooking opportunity.
Do you prefer your rich roasted or broiled?
That’s a really good analysis! I totally see what you mean!
This country hasn’t been united or focused during my lifetime.
We don’t need everyone, just enough. Also there can be a time it happens.
So glad I got off Twitter a few years ago.
After seeing AOC’s post I feel Twitter should be banned. Until that happens there are things we can do that are simple and effective:
For people who have a Twitter account:
- Switch to Bluesky and make a Tweet saying you are now on Bluesky and no longer post on Twitter. Note that per Furball’s comment if you use the word Bluesky in your Tweet it will be hidden. Be sure to censor the word or use a screenshot.
- If you have no choice but to use Twitter install an adblocker such as uBlock Origin. Also review your privacy settings.
- Leave a 1 star review on the app store for the “X” (Twitter) app.
Things everyone can do even if you don’t have a Twitter account:
- Help your friends who are still on Twitter migrate away.
- Urge companies, governments, organizations, celebrities and other large accounts to make a Bluesky account and phase out the use of Twitter. They can start by posting on both to make the migration easier.
- If you’re writing an article or posting on Lemmy, Reddit or other websites prefer linking and screenshooting Twitter alternatives such as Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads instead of Twitter when possible. This is also good for your readers because Twitter makes it hard to read Tweets without logging in.
- Contact people in your government and urge Twitter be banned.
I don’t think the government has the power to ban twitter, and it probably shouldn’t. But individual users should stop using it.
Unfortunately, people are emotional little bags of shit and just want to see their funny memes.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Too many people are basically toddlers and cannot delay gratification.
On the other hand, the government probably could have Musk killed. That’s kind of scary and I don’t really want to have a government that would do that, but do I want that asshole to die.
Also, don’t use the word Bluesky in the Twitter post. Twitter hides post with that word
Gotta love President Musk’s brave defence of free speech just make sure you don’t want to share a link, mention any competitors, use the word cisgender, or track his private jets
Truly the freest of platforms
Hypocrisy is their secret handshake, fascists are not ashamed of it.
Thank you for letting me know about that. I updated my comment.
Threads is as bad at Twitter.
Mastodon my friend
Ban Twitter? Are you serious? Which law is Twitter breaking, and how could a politician get it banned?
Can you think of any examples where a website has been banned?
Brazil banned it for roughly a month earlier this year, but that was due to the company deciding to ignore the law and refusing to pay fines.
No idea about USA, but other countries could claim it’s being used to spy on their citizens, much like USA is accusing tiktok.
The other way to ask for a country wide ban is to make a very, very, very strong case for how much the disinfo spread through there is harmful for the stability of the country. Then again, you’d have to apply that to whatsapp and telegram as well, there are thousands of groups that are all about sharing rage bullshit
Tik tok?
Literally being banned unless it is sold by the foreign company that owns it.
How much of Twitter belongs to Saudi Arabia due to their massive investment for Musk (South African) to buy it?
Pretty sure you could push the same foreign interference line.
TikTok hasn’t been banned. I live in the USA, and I can go on TikTok right now.
Did I say it has been banned? No, I said that it is being banned, meaning still in the process. That is unless the owning entity sells it to another company that doesn’t have significant foreign government controls.
Read critically.
It’s almost like it’s been a news story for the last year or so…
Yes, and I asked for an example of a website that has been banned. Past tense.
The law has already been passed to ban it. It takes effect in 2025. So while it is still accessible, it has in effect already been banned.
I guess since it has to already have been banned, then I could just trot out Napster, pirate Bay, Wikileaks, and Megaupload…
deleted by creator
That is straight up the purpose of Twitter
Is getting?
Always has been, it’s just souch more visible now
Crazy how the response to Twitter hate-campaigns has been muted to the point of silence, while we’ve had college Presidents called in to Congress to be chewed out over anti-war protests.
Not crazy at all, considering how much money Congress is getting from AIPAC and other Zionist groups.
So, working as intended?
Guy worth $400 billion buys Twitter for $40 billion (and not even all his own money) and watches its value drop to $20 billion while turning this major information outlet into a right-wing propaganda megaphone and helping to get trump reelected. “Ha ha look at what an idiot Elon Musk is!”
He may have lost 20bn dollars, but he is set to get a lot of political power by becoming trump’s new daddy (or his new bitch)
Oh look, another blanket statement that appeals to emotion without substance.
Articulate specifics on pressing issues or shut the actual fuck up. Anyone calling for silencing discussion is a coward with a weak, insecure worldview.
Regardless of who she is and who you think she is, the fact is she is correct in her assessment and there is a mountain of evidence to substantiate her claim, from her own country and the world over.
And this isn’t exactly rocket science. Arguing that disinformation doesn’t present a significant threat to our way of life is like arguing the world isn’t round. There isn’t really any debate on this in the scientific/expert community.
Settle down, this seems like rage bait. I’m going to give you a day to cool off.
She’s trying to drum up support for diminishing the first amendment. Gotta come in with vague, subjective reasoning for that.
AOCia carrying water for the intelligence sector, as usual.
President Unelect Musk is doing fine with that all on his own.
Yep. Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same fascist coin. We need to stop them both.
Good fucking luck with that lol. Being a whiny sanctimonius tyrant won’t convince anyone but the most loyal rage bait addicts.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her say anything poignant or pick apart any specific issue - she’s always just throwing around empty platitudes that she knows a certain audience likes to hear.
lol
AOC gathered all that from a ‘peek’? Lol. She’s not a journalist with well-researched revelations. She’s a politician gathering steam to censor twitter/X contrary to your constitution. Why are people applauding this? Do you really want the govt to be the arbiter of truth?
You’ve been reported as a troll and judging by how people are reacting to your posts, I think many agree. I’m not going to remove your comment, because there is great discussion counteracting what you’re saying. I am going to ban you for a couple of days though. If you come back trolling, I’ll ban you permanently. Thanks for understanding.
Gotta say, I don’t read their posts as trolling. Perhaps some mildly trollish language in the first comment, but in the context of their further responses they do seem to have a critical but genuine and insightful perpective on the topic at hand.
Many countries around the world have been experiencing legislative overreach brought in under the guise of prohibiting racism/violence/antivax/etc, but written to effectively create a framework for suppressing any protest and discourse which any government of the day (and by extension their sponsors) can use to crack down on whatever they define as wrongthink.
That kind of predicted result strongly prompts the need to wrack our collective minds in search of a better solution, which I believe the commenter was trying to encourage.
I only banned him for a day. He can definitely have that opinion and have measured responses while not being aggressive and trying to get the other person to start arguing. I did hesitate, but like I said, it’s only for a day and I’m trying to keep the trolls from seeing this place as a fertile ground. If they’re genuine, they’ll understand.
the journalists and researchers are saying the same thing though
I’m not saying there’s no misinformation on X. There’s misinfo everywhere. I’m saying AOC’s rhetoric is dangerous in using that to crack down on your constitutional rights, again. No government, elected or otherwise, can be trusted to regulate truth. The answer to ill-informed speech is more speech. A crack-down will only embolden those trying to mislead.
The answer to ill-informed speech is more speech
It’s not and due to a simple reason: people with ill intent do not play by the same rules. People throwing conspiracy theories, lies, distorted truths and all sorts of disinformation don’t care about being right, they care about reach and strong emotional responses. People that want to spread the correct information want people to know and learn. Two completely different end goals. Not only that, it takes significantly more time and energy to explain why some bullshit is bullshit, than it takes to just spread it.
Put it another way, disinformation is a machinegun and trying to fight it with more speech, like fact checking, is wearing a bulletproof vest. It’s better to make sure no shots are fired than praying it doesn’t hit an uncovered spot.
The answer to ill-informed speech is more speech.
It really doesn’t feel like that is the case. It feels like the more speech we produced on the internet the more of it turned out to be bullshit. We need to turn to quality over quantity.
Where I agree with you is that this isn’t something we’d want to entrust to a government. We need non-profit news outlets that are publicly and internationally founded with transparent decision-making.
It feels like the more speech we produced on the internet the more of it turned out to be bullshit. We need to turn to quality over quantity.
That’s a really interesting point. The question to me becomes: what facilitates quality over quantity? What encourages earnest dialectic dialogue over raging and trolling? I don’t see the twitter format as the answer. Lemmy I feel is somewhat better at facilitating such a culture.
We need non-profit news outlets that are publicly and internationally founded with transparent decision-making.
Non-profit, public, transparent, those are all things any government body should be. What it seems you’re describing is a centralised government body for determining truth/falsehood. To the exclusion of all others?If you want to know what’s going on in the world, read from at least 4 news sources from different parts of the world with different slants and ideologies. Note: they will contradict each other.woops sorry, I misread outlets, thought it read outlet…
The question to me becomes: what facilitates quality over quantity? What encourages earnest dialectic dialogue over raging and trolling?
Yeah that definitely is the question. And I’m not going to claim that I have the definitive answers.
I think one aspect is that it used to take a lot of effort to publish something. So there was an incentive to only publish stuff that was worth publishing. That doesn’t mean it was necessarily close to factual or even strictly objectively “better”. But it was harder to unleash a shitstorm on small things and, since a lot less was published, there was more time to consider the things that were.
I think that ties into the second point, people had more time to process stuff. We are racing from headline to headline and only processing using emotions not rational thinking.
But I also have to admit that manipulation and propaganda obviously were a thing and worked in the past too so maybe that’s all just romanticism for a time that wasn’t actually better, just different.
Edit: I think Lemmy is better only because we are still in relatively small spaces and many instances are relatively quick with banning trolls (and even defederating entire instances). So maybe smaller but diverse spaces with harsh moderation on trolling/intentional misinformation are the answer?
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. - Sartre
Thank you! This is a great quote to ponder.
Fast-forward a little and the anti-semites in Germany were banning any and all press except their own and burning books in bonfires. This was a bad thing for public discourse and the public’s access to truthful information. This paved the way for the Holocaust.
Censorship is inherently a fascist trait. This is not controversial.
Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
- Sir Karl Raimund Popper, speaking on The Paradox Of Tolerance.
So tell me about how the restrictions against free speech designed to promote public panic and hazards “fire in a crowded theater” isn’t precedent for this?
I smell a fascist
AOC is a lapdog. She isn’t going to do shit.
