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Online Misinformation Dropped Dramatically After Twitter Banned Trump (seattletimes.com) 265
The Washington Post reports:
Online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week, research firm Zignal Labs has found, underscoring the power of tech companies to limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate when they act aggressively.
The new research by the San Francisco-based analytics firm reported that conversations about election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several social media sites in the week after Trump was banned from Twitter... The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday, highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites — reinforcing and amplifying each other — and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference.
Kate Starbird, disinformation researcher at the University of Washington, also warned the Post that "What happens in the long term is still up in the air."
The new research by the San Francisco-based analytics firm reported that conversations about election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several social media sites in the week after Trump was banned from Twitter... The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday, highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites — reinforcing and amplifying each other — and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference.
Kate Starbird, disinformation researcher at the University of Washington, also warned the Post that "What happens in the long term is still up in the air."
Maybe just related to the timing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe just related to the timing (Score:5, Informative)
Two points for the FP sock puppet (Score:2)
I wasn't decided (per my longer comment), but your reply counts as strong evidence the FP was a troll.
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:5, Insightful)
You're either an idiot or a conspiracy theory kook.
The social media outlets have no incentive to ban most speech. The clicks and eyeballs that someone like Trump gives them are dollars in their pockets.
When it makes sense to ban people is when they become a liability, and potentially are going to cost you more than they're worth.
The optics of Twitter's brand being all over the evidence presented at trials for an attempted insurrection are not good. I see these too-late bans as a failed gamble on the part of the social media companies. They wanted to ride the lightning as far as they could go before shit went sideways, and they held on too long. The damage is done to their brand, and it's going to get worse as we get into investigations and trials. They've at least put out the fire, but you can be sure that they're scrambling behind the scenes to do damage control.
This wasn't political, and it wasn't out of some love for the country. If either thing was a factor in their decisions, Trump and a lot of other people would have been banned long ago.
This is pure damage control, to try to limit their liability going forward. You know, what companies base their decisions on every single day. Profit and optics.
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:3, Insightful)
You really havenâ(TM)t considered things much at all.
Self-preservation is a pretty impressive motivator. 230 or whatever the number is goes and so do most social media platforms. Drop Trump, trust that Biden and co will save them. Pathetically easy decision to make.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Mod parent up. I'll even skip the nits.
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:4, Funny)
You're either an idiot or a conspiracy theory kook.
The social media outlets have no incentive to ban most speech.
It's fascinating if you think about it. What we have is a bunch of people identifying as right wing who are (a) vociferously arguing that the free market doesn't work and (b) they need regulation providing communal access to private property.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that I don't care about evidence, it's that I'm not an attorney, and don't really know that much about the rules of evidence and court procedure. I have to rely on judges to deal with that sort of thing. They have spoken unequivocally more than five dozen times, telling Trump to stop whining and call U-Haul. That's good enough for me.
In terms of legal credibility, your opinion on the subject ranks somewhere between that of Jenny McCarthy and the Brothers Grimm.
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile in the real world everyone from Alexei Navalny to Angela Merkel and the ACLU are so horrified at your bullshit that they're openly calling it a threat to democracy, and the President of Mexico is leading an international coalition to break up or otherwise reign in the tech oligopoly.
Seriously doesn't it make you doubt yourself for even a moment that you fucked up so badly that even people who utterly despise Trump are defending him here?
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:2)
"The social media outlets have no incentive to ban most speech.
Twitter banned the NYPost article about Hunter Biden's laptop specifically because big tech wanted to put their thumbs on the scale of the election. Zuckerberg 500 million dollars on the election and is banning many conservative pages.
I could cite a dozen other examples. Recently Parler was deplatformed by Amazon. All these things would have had the entirety of Slashdot up in arms back in the day. Now for some unknown reason Slashdot is falling over themselves making excuses to defend it.
Slashdot has become
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Gee, so that would mean that you do not believe in the free market system.
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:2)
You might want to read the ruling in Marsh v. Alabama. That has a lot more to do with this than the free market system.
Filtering versus censorship? (Score:2)
Can't decide if you are sincere or just worried about having a soapbox for your own axe grinding. But I definitely think you are quite confused about the underlying issues.
Banal example, but none of us have the time to watch all of the new cat videos appearing on the Internet. Failing to see some cat videos is NOT an example of censorship. But if you actually want to spend all your waking hours watching cat videos, then you need filters to help you find cat videos.
What private companies legally do within th
Re: Filtering versus censorship? (Score:2)
I refer you to the opinion in Marsh v. Alabama.
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Telling the World that you are a pedophile, mass murderer and Ponzi scheme leader does affect you in a way that I can't claim free speech protection. My freedom to speak freely is limited by the rights you have. No right is absolute, because rights can conflict. The famous quote is that the right to move my fist freely ends at your face. And my right
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I'd like some of what you're taking, but in a smaller dose.
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>Your problem is that apparently you believe all must be open to all. If you want, you can start a website with an App that you will allow any and all messages to be posted.
Parler did that and were cancelled by their hosting service.
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I believe a case went all the way to the Supreme Court concerning how companies should have the right to decide with whom they want to do business... and with whom they do not. You know, Free Market Capitalism and all that?
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I believe a case went all the way to the Supreme Court concerning how companies should have the right to decide with whom they want to do business... and with whom they do not. You know, Free Market Capitalism and all that?
That would be the Masterpiece Bakery case, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . The Masterpiece Bakery refused to do a wedding cake for a gay couple, based on Religious beliefs.
However, the case had wider reaching effects, because in that 7-2 ruling, Judge Clarence Thomas also noted that while he concurred with the other judges on the face of it, that it was also an issue of free speech.
So in this ruling, while Amazon might have an issue with claiming Religion (by no means impossible however) as a ration
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That cake bakery did not have a monopoly on all cake baking and a near-monopoly on all baking in general, as well as the ability to control what every single person on earth placed into their own home ovens.
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That cake bakery did not have a monopoly on all cake baking and a near-monopoly on all baking in general, as well as the ability to control what every single person on earth placed into their own home ovens.
It is difficult to imagine that Amazon has any kind of monopoly on web hosting. Regardless that never had a bearing in the case - it was sales are at the discretion of the owner of the business, and a Free speech issue was part of that decision.
Parler might sue and try to take it to the Supreme court, but it won't be on monopoly status, and their ruling on another somewhat similar case will have to be invalidated by many of the same Judges who made the related decision. As well, I think the courts have a
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They should have gotten different hosting services then. Or possibly have stopped promoting themselves as the premier market place for seditious talk.
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They should have gotten different hosting services then. Or possibly have stopped promoting themselves as the premier market place for seditious talk.
Apparently they have been having great difficulty finding other hosts. Not terribly surprising given their content and clientele.
Maybe Fox News can host them.
Re: (Score:2)
The main advantage of AWS is reliability, breaching your contract with a customer by terminating services without regard to the contractual 30 day period to correct deficiencies and the 30 day termination period, doesn't breed confidence in your reliability.
Re: Maybe just related to the timing (Score:2)
Reliability is uptime. You are talking about contractual obligations. Completely different thing (unless a certain guaranteed percentage uptime is stipulated in the contract, which seems unlikely, but I have no idea).
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the problem with this is that the current platforms have no problem with posts supporting violence, protests and "anarchy"... look at 4 years of allowing anti-white racism, pro blm/antifa fascism and calls for protests and violence across America. Yet now... one day of protests is enough to ban mountains of people and a President, despite no calls for violence from the President? hypocrites.
You need to get your news from other sources. The documented data shows otherwise. And where exactly did you get the news that there was only one day of protest? Hell, there is video of your Proud Boys rioting with Washington Police on the evening before you single protest. Anyhow, I'm not wasting any more of your time, you can either look it up or continue. This is not the echo chamber you're looking for though, Brother.
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What are you talking about, there's proof. Someone was a bit too suspicious with their vehicle, and police discovered their hummer was used for deliveries of fake ballots... oh wait, these clowns are QAnon, who would be trying to cause fraud in favor of Trump. Either that or it's a poor quality false flag, but that's pretty much implying that the fraudsters are highly professional.
Re:Maybe just related to the timing (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/fbi-bulletin-armed-protests-state-us-capitol/index.html
https://globalnews.ca/news/7580744/capitol-protests-states-trump/
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/law-enforcement-officials-brace-for-pro-trump-protests-at-state-capitol-buildings
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This. What happened is that by banning Trump, a massive pipeline linking the right-wing fever swamps to the mainstream media has been slammed shut.
Re:Maybe just related to the timing (Score:5, Interesting)
This. What happened is that by banning Trump, a massive pipeline linking the right-wing fever swamps to the mainstream media has been slammed shut.
Exactly. They've run their course, their leader's whacked out conspiracies had reached the point of making nothing believable for the cult. When you get to the point where it was supposedly Antifa behind the riots, but that somehow Trump and his lackies encouraged Antifa, and the Brave and peaceful magas just stood there, horrified and powerless against the left wing kooks who had infiltrated their ranks, and apparently the new congresspeople had encouraged the antifa, so they must have been antifa as well, along with the Vice President, then you've reached peak conspiracy, and enter a divide by 0 state.
Which is the end state of conspiracy based ideology, they fall apart in the end because nothing is real any more.
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You do have proof of course, right? Or just name calling is it?
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There are no planned protests.
Speaking about misinformation. This is far left organizations claiming there will be protests.
Oh really? [foxnews.com]
It's the FBI, not news organizations, who are saying there are planned protests at all 50 state-capitols.
And BTW, "far left" does not mean what you think it means. But I'm sure I'm wasting bits telling you that.
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Just a coincidence, of course (Score:2)
Hmm... Seven-digit UID. Probably young identity. Vacuous FP with empty Subject. Is it a fresh sock puppet? Or just a feeble bid for attention?
Anyway, I came to the discussion looking for the obvious joke about stifling the biggest BSer and improving the SNR ratio for everyone. (Hence my Subject.) Less Trump = less BS.
But the deep question underlying the joke is whether the incentive structures of social media can be changed to disfavor misinformation. I hate to be my usual bummer self, but I'm not even imag
Just like a river (Score:2)
Cut off the source and there ain't no river, perhaps a drip remaining.
'and key allies' (Score:2)
So at least he can do something! (Score:2)
May as well crown him "The King of Lies" and make that his main achievement for this life!
Trump's Legacy (Score:5, Informative)
Trump's Legacy will be the guy who complained non-stop about "fake news" while being the greatest source and propagator of disinformation.
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A lot of it was from other sources who had an interest in him staying in power.
Obviously there is the GOP, but also the alt-right/far-right, and of course the people making a packet off QAnon conspiracy theories. Lots of money to be made there.
Then you have state level actors spewing out misinformation, particularly Russia. Now their guy has lost there is a lot less incentive to do it, at least until the next big opportunity comes along.
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He didn't so much as complain but whined. A screeching, keening whine that usually is connected to lost unlamented spirits. It is as though we have been through a torturer using finger nails on a chalk board for 5 years and is now silent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
NAFTA is still NAFTA. Little more than the name changed.
Peace to the middle east is laughable.
ISIS still exists (wtf?).
The Korean War thing is a flat out lie.
The peace prize was a nomination from a single far-right Norwegian politician with the same weight as if you or I had nominated him.
Only about 35 miles of new border wall have been installed (at the cost of billions of dollars).
The trade deficit with Chin
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/1... [nytimes.com]
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/2... [cnbc.com]
https://www.npr.org/sections/h... [npr.org]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:2)
AC's are busy on this thread.
When Trump tweeted
“In certain swing states, there were more votes than people who voted, and in big numbers” - DJT
This was a tweet from the exhaulted office of POTUS for crying out loud! The Truth was something that Trump rarely stumbled upon. This and dozens of Trump statements were easy to fact check and determine they were a complete pants-on-fire lie. Did you need a newspaper in Soviet Russian to help you out with facts?
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If a political party becomes a propagator of destructive lies, I applaud its silencing
Re: Trump's Legacy (Score:2)
How do the rest of us benefit from allowing Trump to spew lies 24/7? What's in it for us?
If you people would just stop BELIEVING those lies, it wouldn't be necessary to duct-tape his mouth shut to maintain civil order. At the end of the day Trump's idiot followers are the problem, not Trump himself.
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First, definitely not DJT of all people. He has proven himself unable to adhere to the truth, over and over again. He hasn't even been able to stick to his own lies consistently. When it comes to arbiter of truth, he is the least qualified person I can think of.
Second, there is no such thing as 'fake news'. That is just newspeak for lies, but most often when the person uttering the phrase is lying themselves and projects their own lies onto others in an attempt to distract and deflect. Can we put 'fake news
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We had a newspaper in Soviet Russia called "Truth". Guess what they published.
How do you know if we guess the right answer? I mean you clearly have a system for determining truth from fiction. Guess what so does anyone with a brain, and the name of the publication or some moron's propensity to tweet "FAKE NEWS" doesn't actually factor into this.
If you can't tell truth from blatant lies I highly recommend you hide in the basement. The world is a scary place for people like that what with autism, 5G, people wearing masks because of the common cold, and the chemtrails being sprayed over
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That's Completely Incorrect (Score:2)
You are confusing "news" with "facts". News is what happens when you absorb facts, incorrect facts, innuendo, opinion, bias, organizational predilection, and intended audience, and spit out the result. "News" is only tangentially related to "facts", and often is wildly divergent. News is ALL spectrum.
Re:Trump's actual legacy (Score:5, Informative)
Through four years as president he never jailed or silenced ANYBODY for speaking out against him, lying about him, insulting him, mock-murdering him, trying to overthrow him, etc... yup he was exactly the iron-fisted jack-booted fascist dictator the progressives insisted they could prove he was... so much so that not a single person feared speaking out against him.
Dude, are you an American? You do realize that Trump lacked any power to do those things... He didn't jail or silence anyone not due to a lack of desire but from a lack of power. Really weird you think that is a tribute to Trump.
Information Too (Score:2)
Try searching Google News for 'Raquel Rodriguez' and see how many corporate media results there are.
Re: (Score:2)
Your point is?
The one biggest surprise in the Trump era. (Score:5, Insightful)
Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.
Sure - people that sought them out could find them, and you'd still see the occasional link to snopes, maybe an occasional article mentioning Dawkins - but it was like the community surrounding them became crickets for a while.
It was like there was so much active lying, so widely accepted, there just wasn't that much to say at the ambitious level of full-on skepticism. Even the word just meant climate skepticism to most people - or even QAnon-level craziness.
Part of the issue is that the skeptical movement's ambition is to NOT be political - and a huge part of the audience are libertiarians... but the libertarian part saw their bread being buttered by instanity, and I think a large portion just saw those where those discussions would go in polite audiences, and took off to Q-land to be more comfortable.
Not all of them to be certain - Penn Jillette worked with Trump, and openly said exactly what sort of a dude he was the whole time - and a lot of the libertarians who saw how the Tea party was manipulated were very much against that cycle too.
But still, I think they balkanized into more libertiarian groups than skepticism groups - at least there was very little popularization efforts for general skepticism in these four years.
Youtube skepticism also basically disappeared compared to pre-2016. Plenty of free thought talk in places - but no movement, none of the bunker and overcome efforts I would have expected.
I think that was kind of part of the point of the Trump movement though - there is an enjoyment of cruelty as a form of humor that is at the heart of many kinds of Trump support - a push to support the absurd in ways that dishearten the organizations that bring their competition hope. Not really as a strategy - but as a pent up anger, an action of demagogue as old as society.
Here's hoping the skeptical community will get some time to recover and have its time in the limelight again.
Advancement in education, science, and rational skepticism are probably the most important things we have to making America Great Again whatever your politics.
Ryan Fenton
You're surprised people disengaged? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're overthinking things here. Rather than continually challenge the torrent of bullshit that was produced by Trump and his followers every day, a large percentage of the online community simply disengaged from the conversation and moved on.
It would be interesting to chart replies through Trump's presidency as I think you would see initially there was a large amount of push back and fact challenging which declined over time because there was no acknowledgement of the actual facts and the lies just kept coming. If there was push back in the later years, it was because the lie was so egregious (ie BLM protesters were making Trump Supporters look bad on January 6th).
The skeptics are still out there but are waiting for a more reasonable administration to challenge and engage with.
Re:The one biggest surprise in the Trump era. (Score:5, Insightful)
Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.
Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters? Trump continuously painted a fantasy world, starring himself and he did things bigger, better, more boldly than all who came before him while facing enemies far greater than any before. The Fox News late-night "entertainers" followed up each day reinforcing this fantasy. The false information overwhelmed any skeptical movement and none of his followers cared because cult mentality took over.
Advancement in education, science, and rational skepticism are probably the most important things we have to making America Great Again whatever your politics.
Now that is quoted for truth 5+. Trump has ultimately set back our culture because he fought against all those things daily and normalized lying, deceit, and hypocrisy.
Re:The one biggest surprise in the Trump era. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters? Trump continuously painted a fantasy world, starring himself and he did things bigger, better, more boldly than all who came before him while facing enemies far greater than any before.
In debating this is called the Gish Gallop, where you throw out so much bullshit your opponent doesn't have the ability to respond to all of it in the time they have. Then you can pretend it's true, since they didn't claim it wasn't, and build on top of it.
Skilled debaters know how to deal with this, but the media absolutely does not. It gets particularly challenging when you disengage, because supporters will claim (with validity) that you're not listening to the individual, so how do you know what he was saying? You're disagreeing with them as a person, not based on content.
It's very hard to navigate the firehose of shit without spraying it on everyone in attendance, or looking like you're so hostile that you're boycotting the person altogether. The media just pointed it at everyone and let it rip, which didn't help anyone.
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Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.
Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters?
This is it. Because literally everything Trump said was a deliberate lie (for philosophical reasons), it became impossible to keep up with "fact checking". By the time anyone had a rational response ready, that lie was already old news.
MAGA was a classic example of making someone think they're a victim so that you can play the hero rescuing them. America was already great; it probably still is even after being molested for 4 years by an elderly creep.
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Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.
Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters?
This is it. Because literally everything Trump said was a deliberate lie (for philosophical reasons), it became impossible to keep up with "fact checking". By the time anyone had a rational response ready, that lie was already old news.
This.
There's an old saying of uncertain origin, that is present in many forms, but one is: "a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on."
Re: The one biggest surprise in the Trump era. (Score:2)
In more modern terms, truth has to go by TCP while lies can use UDP broadcast.
Monetization caused that (Score:4, Insightful)
Not long after that they switched to right wing politics as a means of getting cash. There's a ton of money and free expertise from the billionaire funded think tanks out there. Guys like Sargon of Arkad & Computing Forever get funding from them as well as advice on how to grow their audiences from professionals who've been doing media manipulation since the 80s.
That's where your skeptic community went. They followed the money. And, well, that meant doing away with skepticism. Truth just doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't help that SJWs are putting out a ton of crap media (the New Star Trek, unfunny female Ghostbusters, a woman as James Bond when Bond is a male power fantasy, etc).
That shit pisses off the nerds and they look online for validation and to vent. SJWs make up a tiny, tiny portion of left wing politics (us Democratic Socialists don't particularly like 'em either) but you've got a multi-million dollar media apparatus handing them a microphone to make fools of themselves and by extension the left wing...
Heck, people have been talking about it as a major problem. Actual journalistic sites have subscriptions, meanwhile the fake news sites spouting "Stop the Steal" and claiming Anti-fa stormed the capital building are readily available. The truth is paywalled, the lies are free.
Maybe the opposite? (Score:5, Insightful)
underscoring the power of tech companies to limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate
Or, rather, the power of tech companies to SPREAD falsehood.
The tech companies are, now, doing nothing more than trying to reverse the damage they did, by refusing to take responsibility for years.
They are not heroes. They are doing the bare minimum after plenty of avoidable damage was done.
I can see this as valid correlation (Score:4, Interesting)
Trying not to generalize too much, there are basically three camps of Trump supporters:
1. Those who support him primarily based on party affiliation or religious adherence ("I'm a Republican, he's a Republican, therefore I need to support whatever he does to keep the evil socialist liberals at bay.")
2. Those who follow him on Twitter, love that he has no filter and sort of believe in his conspiracy theories and the like. ("I'm a Trump fan, everything he doesn't say is fake news. Here, let me like and retweet everything he says to show everyone how smart and non-sheep-like I am.")
3. The hardcore crazies who are intent on anarchy no matter who is in charge, or so far under his spell that nothing anyone says or does will stop them. ("Dear Leader has given me a sacred duty to stage a coup because he's the only one who can help defeat what QAnon is exposing and prevent Bill Gates from taking over our minds via 5G and the vaccine.")
Group 1 has mostly migrated to a "let's make life miserable for Biden now" stance, I think. Group 3 would listen to Trump's missives if he had to get on amateur radio and broadcast them using Morse code -- He's the Dear Leader and no one will convince them otherwise. The Group 2 group suddenly doesn't have a bunch of stuff to retweet, like, or follow. The no-mask-wearing Karen types we see on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram just have less of an easy way to instantly spread a message to everyone. It's easy being a keyboard warrior but there's a much higher bar to going down to DC and participating in a riot because your President insinuated you should. Group 2 represents a bigger crowd than Group 3.
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You missed the group that mainstream Team D and Team R have ignored for +30 years. Those who are economically poor and have limited opportunities, and live outside of major cities.
Re:I can see this as valid correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that 4th group isn't a thing and can't be a thing because he doesn't have political positions. He holds political positions like a toddler holds food.
For anyone who doesn't want to RTFA (Score:2)
Trump lost. Bigly. It's misinformation (e.g. a "lie") to suggest he won at this point. so I think the study's premise is fair.
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Re: (Score:2)
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Of course I'm being wildly, over-the-top sarcastic-as-fuck in the paragraph above, but the level of disgust I feel for the last 5 years (not a typo, I'm including the entire 2016 election season) has brought me to feeling this way. I'm weary, we're all weary, I think, and for fuck's sake, can it all just stop now?
You illiterate shit.
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There's one thing having Trump as President has done for us: it's brought all the shitbags in this country out from the rocks they've been hiding under all these years and into the light. Now we can stomp on them like the cockroaches they are, before they scurry back
abuse of power (Score:3)
So they can silence lunatics, but they don't use that power on anti-vaxxers, religious nutjobs or even on known islamic terrorist groups.
Wonderful guardians we have there.
I maintain: That was a demonstration of power. Trump simply gave them a nice excuse to do it, and reducing misinformation isn't on their agenda at all.
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Has the possibility occurred to you that perhaps they're allowing them to exist on social media so LEOs can keep an eye on them easier? That Trump was just a bridge too far for them?
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Has the possibility occurred to you that perhaps they're allowing them to exist on social media so LEOs can keep an eye on them easier?
That's why we've seen them disappear over the years... oh wait... no, we haven't.
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> Trump simply gave them a nice excuse to do it,
Well you have to admit, sedition and insurrection against the United States *are* a pretty nice excuses!
I'm jealous (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: I'm jealous (Score:2)
Her sister Meg has a cool name too. Who would have thought?
If this is so simple... (Score:2)
The land of be free (Score:2)
Hey US, here Europe.
You always told us you were the land of be free. Free speech?
Those days appear far in the past. Is there any reason why disinformation is so everywhere? You need to ban it. Can you just nod spread truth? Expect reality to overtake lies? Let the debate go on and then see. Is that not what democracy is about, having the talk in open space?
Well since you are shutting down entire services where free speech was possible, it looks like you are now officially a censored state. Wait, what, call
From the... (Score:2)
Brought to you by the "No Shit, Sherlock" department...
Maybe,,, (Score:2)
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Yeah... the entire planet is in on some mega conspiracy to make your fuck-tard savior "trump" look bad. There is no possible way you have an education.
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Just because Amazon pulled the plug on your safe space...
Unfortunately parent is part of the remaining 27% (Score:2)
Interesting that Zignal Labs was contracted by the RNC: https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
I guess if a company reports information that you don't like then they fall into the "Leftist" bucket.
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The people who claimed to love and understand the US Constitution the most apparently understood it the least. Even Senator Hawley, a graduate of Yale law school, whose bio brags about him being "recognized as one of nation's leading constitutional lawyers" complained that a private company declining to produce his book was "a direct assault on the First Amendment"!
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I especially enjoy hearing Trumptardzs go on and on about their "freedumbs"
One of my favorites is hearing them talk about how supportive of the police they are [tumblr.com], then go and beat a police officer and claim it's the only remedy [cnn.com], or even beat one to death, then say we all need to move on because an attempted coup is no big deal.
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Re:How are we defining misinformation? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, look an AC pushing disinformation.
Every case was dismissed on some of the flimsiest procedural grounds ever.
Nope. Trump's lawyer did little arguing for fraud in court. In one case in particular in PA when asked by the judge if this was a fraud case Guiluiyahoo said No it wasn't. Most of Trump's cases were NOT about fraud but about voting rules and procedures that violated State constitutions concerning mail-in ballots.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t... [wsj.com]
States said they should be federal cases, federal court said they were state cases. How does that work?
It doesn't work because that wasn't the case. You are just straight-up lying. The Supreme court of various States gave judgments you can go read them, none of them said this was a Federal case. The attempt to bring a case before the SCOTUS was stupid as the SCOTUS doesn't rule on cases involving a State's constitution. Trump and his lawyers just thought that since they stacked the court they would get some pro-quid-pro.
Re:How are we defining misinformation? (Score:5, Informative)
I think you gave a fairly good summation of what "misinformation" is, a bunch of statements presented as facts with no evidence that came from a telephone game of lies spread by influencers and bad actors that eventually spread across the landscape.
Your statements about the Capitol and the court cases are provably incorrect (No evidence of leftists agitator; no proof of fraud presented in the court cases, they were not in fact simply dismissed on technicalities, in many of the cases once they were in front of a judge the lawyers had to walk back the fraud charged since they had no actual proof, and affidavits are a type of evidence but far from proof and not nearly enough alone to get action of the type they were demanding) but yet they have made it to this post on this website and you are repeating them with some degree of authority even though you have presented no source for your positive claims. Textbook misinformation.
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For example, the media keeps pushing this narrative that evidence of election fraud was "debunked in court." Not true: the evidence has never made it to court.
No one is saying the evidence was debunked in court. What they're saying is that when the courts asked for evidence nothing was produced other than that someone had made the baby Donald cry and that should be illegal.
Or the fact that we've since learned that, not terribly surprisingly, it wasn't Trump supporters that initially stormed the Capitol: it was leftist agitators that initially broke in, and the mob outside simply followed them.
"Since learnt" meaning "Trump's team has invented".
But it's still just a narrative, that doesn't make it "information" just because it's telling you what you want to hear.
Didn't score highly in "self awareness", did you?
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Funny)
The endless stream of (biased) propaganda on Slashdot is alarming.
Good news! Your dissenting opinion has been heard. Both sides are now represented.
Recent Slashdot articles have been biased towards fact, evidence and science. We understand how frustrating that can be for those not interested in those qualities but no changes are planned at this time. You may find forums dedicated to topics such as Scientology, homeopathy, and Big Foot to not be biased the way Slashdot is.
Best wishes, fellow human whose opinion is exactly as valuable as mine, despite being utterly incorrect.
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So you think there is a relationship between the alleged president and one's sexual preferences. Ya, I always thought that was something we should worry about.
Re:No shit (Score:4, Insightful)
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A conservative majority supreme court and Trump appointed judges who belonged to the Federalist Society tossed out all the lawsuits. That should tell you something. The next reply from someone will be about the courts not allowing due process. A judge can't let a case proceed without evidence!
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He explicitly said as much two years ago (speaking of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018):
“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china-idUSKCN1GG015 [reuters.com]
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Bullshit, they are free to speak, but media just invoked their freedom not to spread their lies. Buy your own soapbox, cheapskate.
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