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nradov 7 hours ago

There is no generally accepted definition of propaganda. One person's propaganda is another person's accurate information. I don't trust politicians or social media employees to make that distinction.

tensor 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What you think is propaganda is irrelevant. When you let people unnaturally amplify information by paying to have it forced into someone’s feed that is distorting the free flow of information.

Employees choose what you see every day you use most social media.

msandford 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Congrats! You are 99% of the way to understanding it. Now you just have to realize that "whoever is in charge" might or might not have your best interests at heart, government or private.

Anyone who has the power to deny you information absolutely has more power than those who can swamp out good information with bad. It's a subtle difference yes, but it's real.

tensor 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Banning algorithms and paid amplification is not denying you information. You can still decide for yourself who to follow, or actively look for information, actively listen to people. The difference is that it becomes your choice.

vintermann 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, this is about bringing back creators banned for (in YouTube's eyes) unwarranted beliefs stemming from distrust of political or medical authorities, and promoting such distrust. They weren't banned because of paid amplification.

I don't quite understand how the Ressa quote in the beginning of this thread justifies banning dissent for being too extreme. The algorithms are surely on YouTube and Facebook (and Ressa's!) side here, I'm sure they tried to downrank distrust-promoting content as much as they dared and had capabilities to, limited by e.g. local language capabilities and their users' active attempts to avoid automatic suppression - something everyone does these days.

vintermann an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

OK, but that's an argument against advertising, and maybe against dishonest manipulation of ranking systems.

It's not an argument for banning doctors from YouTube for having the wrong opinions on public health policy.

dzhiurgis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> distorting the free flow of information

There is no free flow of information. Never was. YouTube and FB and Google saying "oh it's the algorithm" is complete BS. It always manipulated, boosting whoever they feel fit.

refurb 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And propaganda by definition isn’t false information. Propaganda can be factual as well.

fellowniusmonk 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So many people have just given up on the very idea of coherent reality? Of correspondence? Of grounding?

Why? No one actually lives like that when you watch their behavior in the real world.

It's not even post modernism, it's straight up nihilism masquerading as whatever is trendy to say online.

These people accuse every one of bias while ignoring that there position comes from a place of such extreme biased it irrationally, presuppositionaly rejects the possibility of true facts in their chosen, arbitrary cut outs. It's special pleading as a lifestyle.

It's very easy to observe, model, simulate, any node based computer networks that allow for coherent and well formed data with high correspondence, and very easy to see networks destroyed by noise and data drift.

We have this empirically observed in real networks, it's pragmatic and why the internet and other complex systems run. People rely on real network systems and the observed facts of how they succeed or fail then try to undercut those hard won truths from a place of utter ignorance. While relying on them! It's absurd ideological parasitism, they deny the value of the things the demonstrably value just by posting! Just the silliest form of performative contradiction.

I don't get it. Fact are facts. A thing can be objectively true in what for us is a linear global frame. The log is the log.

Wikipedia and federated text content should never be banned, logs and timelines, data etc... but memes and other primarily emotive media is case by case, I don't see their value. I don't see the value in allowing people to present unprovable or demonstrably false data using a dogmatically, confidentally true narrative.

I mean present whatever you want but mark it as interpretation or low confidence interval vs multiple verified sources with a paper trail.

Data quality, grounding and correspondence can be measured. It takes time though for validation to occur, it's far easier to ignore those traits and just generate infinite untruth and ungrounded data.

Why do people prop up infinite noise generation as if it was a virtue? As if noise and signal epistemically can't be distinguished ever? I always see these arguments online by people who don't live that way at all in any pragmatic sense. Whether it's flat earthers or any other group who rejects the possibility of grounded facts.

Interpretation is different, but so is the intentional destruction of a shared meaning space by turning every little word into a shibboleth.

People are intentionally destroying the ability to even negotiate connections to establish communication channels.

Infinite noise leads to runaway network failure and in human systems the inevitably of violence. I for one don't like to see people die because the system has destroyed message passing via attentional ddos.

nradov 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Fortunately your biased opinion about what information has value is utterly worthless and will have zero impact on public policy. Idealized mathematical models of computer networks have no relevance to politics or freedom of expression in the real world.

ruszki 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There isn’t. Yet, everybody knows what I mean under “propaganda against immigration” (just somebody would discredit it, somebody would fight for it), and nobody claims that the Hungarian government’s “information campaign” about migrants is not fascist propaganda (except the government, obviously, but not even their followers deny it). So, yes, the edges are blurred, yet we can clearly identify some propaganda.

Also accurate information (like here is 10 videos about black killing whites) with distorted statistics (there is twice as much white on black murder) is still propaganda. But these are difficult to identify, since they clearly affect almost the whole population. Not many people even tried to fight against it. Especially because the propaganda’s message is created by you. // The example is fiction - but the direction exists, just look on Kirk’s twitter for example -, I have no idea about the exact numbers off the top of my head