Plum Ramble: Misinformation - Ban or Allow?

Following on from an earlier video on content moderation (linked velow) someone reasonably brought up the related subject of misinformation and that seemed like a subject worthy if exploring a little bit in a video.

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[LiquidSpiral]

I think this is my favourite YT channel

[Wind_Falcon]

Funny thing is that this whole problem with misinformation came about when people started taking seriously what people on the internet were saying. When everything is permissible (like it used to be on the internet before social media and smart phones) - no one takes anything as true on face value. I think this is the model we should strive for. Assume everything is bogus until sufficiently proven otherwise. Trying to moderate anything just brings further suspicion of trying to hide the truth.

[Dobermanator]

Allow, because I will never agree with whomever is assigned as the arbiter of truth. Even scientist's, those often felt as among highest educated cannot agree with each other, so how could anyone be the god of non-misinformation.

[rev]

Maximizing individual freedom is always best for society....anything else leads to tyranny.

[JohnStopman]

Mr. Plum: you never 'ramble' ...just stick to the truth, OR: stick to 'that' which comes as close to the truth as is possible ❤

[scatton]

The biggest problem with stopping disinformation is "According to which dictator?"

[army]

I wouldn't be inclined to police a social media platform to restrict misinformation, but I understand why someone might want to. It's undeniable that spreading misinformation can cause real-world harm; I personally take the hard-line libertarian view that in the long run, the good of free communication outweighs the bad of some people being deceived, but I can also sympathize with those who feel obligated to do something to protect the most vulnerable (i.e. gullible) members of society, or to prevent bad actors from using the ignorant masses as a weapon.

[thegoondockswarcouncil]

Another issue with the desire to ban misinformation is how is it determined what is misinformation. Noel briefly alluded to this by mentioning panels, but I think this needs more emphasis. Who is going to decide what counts as true and good for society versus not true and not good? And why should we trust them? Even if we were to assume good intent by all involved, mistakes will be made. And the reality is that good intent cannot be assumed—history has shown us that the “fact checkers” and “gate keepers” of truth are more likely than not to be partisan, biased, and in some cases down right dishonest. Moreover, although not absolutely necessary in theory it seems to always end up being the case in practice that the entity that is relied upon as the “source of truth” is a government entity—and that should be very scary for anyone who actually cares about the truth. The greatest sources of misinformation in our age are our governments. So many examples of government misinformation could be provided, but here are two to wet the appetite: WMDs in Iraq and the poke being highly effective at preventing the coof. Or taking the flip side, you can find numerous examples of things that were declared to be “misinformation” by the official sources of truth but which turned out to be true: H.B.’s laptop, the NSA spying on US citizens, etc. centralized sources of truth have a terrible track record, It turns out.

[lhemkendreis]

I'm glad to have your voice back on Youtube. You are like a drop of pure sanity, on my thirsty brain 😇

[tammyderouet]

🥳 My goodness Noel, where that hell have you been? It's JeTamme Derouet here. I haven't seen you in such a long time! Please come back and do lots more videos. Your arguments were always so well reasoned and thoughtful. And even when I've disagreed with you, which was rare, you were always so patient in untangling them.
As for misinformation, there has always been misinformation since the beginning of people. Mostly because as you say, many things we're discussing are not fact but opinion. But when we can't agree what 2+2 is, or what a woman is there's a problem.
But in a way the internet has become the world. And we can't control what information the world puts out there but we can control what our children are exposed to with apps that stop them being able to access certain sites.
Finally, platforms have to decide are they a publisher or not. They can't have it both ways.
That's the short version of my argument.
Thoughts?

[gulli]

This topic is interconnected to such an extend that, if I had to come up with a single big, coherent argument, I wouldn't even know where to begin. Instead, I'd like to provide you all with a brief anecdote to perhaps put this discussion into perspective:

Germany has two public-service broadcasters, ARD and ZDF. They eat up a combined 9.1 billion Euros annually, 6.3 billion of which are spent on the ARD. This makes the ARD alone (disregarding the ZDF) the most expensive public broadcaster in the world. The Institute for Media and Communication Policy (IfM) is an independent research institution funded by leading German public and private media organizations including ARD, ZDF, RTL, Sky Germany, Axel Springer AG and Der Spiegel.

In November 2019 the IfM organized a panel titled "'One-sided, expensive, superfluous...': Public broadcasting under criticism" to discuss what is wrong with public-service broadcasting in Germany and how to fix it. Leonard Novy, head of the IfM, was among the panelists. Firstly, he criticized a representation gap that renders Joe Smith in the street basically non-existent in media. Secondly, he criticized the sub-optimal allocation of money in the program. As an example, he mentioned that Oliver Kahn had been contracted for 1 million Euros annually to comment on the national football team, and he proposed that that money should rather be spent on two new Africa correspondents at 500k each.

Read that last sentence carefully, let it slowly sink in, realize that any approach to regulating misinformation is going to involve people like Leonard Novy, and then make up your mind whether or not you would want him in this role.

[TheGreatIndoors]

Who can you trust to filter out the correct mis- out of misinformation? And in what way could you overrule their decision if needed? What kind of institution would be needed so that this level of ban-power can be acted out? And would that not easily bleed into other forms of authoritarianism?

[DeconvertedMan]

Who decides what "misinformation" is? Do we ban talk of gods because god does not exist - but others say it does - so do we ban talks about that god does not exist? Whoever decides such things will be the last person you would want to do such a thing, as such all ideas must be free - else none are.

[robinkuruda]

Hello from the USA !!! Good to see you !! I just enjoy hearing your discussions …!!

[InventiveHarvest]

I don't see individualism and collectivism as mutually exclusive. Somewhat counterintuitively, what's best for the individual is what is best for society. When people trade, pursuing their individual self interests, both parties are made better off. As long as an action does not harm anyone else, at least one person is made better off. When an action would harm someone else, their rights are violated - and they need to be compensated enough where they would agree to the harm. For example, I would agree to someone breaking my arm if they paid me $million.

Such is the way with speech. The free trade of ideas makes people better off. If someone can prove that something someone said caused them material harm, they should be compensated. So while no speech should be illegal or banned, one could find themselves in civil court. Examples of speech that could harm others include: excessive harassment, doxing, and threats.

[badnewsBH]

Interesting topic, Jim. I have two takes on this.

1. I think the people who primarily rail against "misinformation" these days are the ones who want to be the only ones purveying it. They had the market cornered, and now everyone's in on it.
2. My main concern about misinformation is the proliferation of it. It can be very difficult to get straight answers when there are so many people throwing their crap against the wall in the hope that it sticks.

I don't want committees of people deciding what's "true enough" for us to hear, but I sure wish there weren't as many people willfully spreading garbage.

[zerotheory]

I think that's interesting that 50% of the schools in the UK are public and faith based while here in the US we have that hard line on separation of public schools and religion (though with it trying to gain influence of course, topics for another day). Yet the UK has a much higher % of the population atheist or just not interested in religion. It's like the goal of instilling religion through school backfired.

[radicalcentrist]

Spot on as so often the case, Noel. The reason this problem will never go away is the simple question of, who gets to decide? And how do we ensure the open-mindedness and wisdom of those people? Almost impossible, hence this problem is pretty much an eternal one - barring the most draconian of dictatorships.

[erebusvonmori]

I'd say the new phenomenon in regards to misinformation, at least respective to Trump, is that he normalized the use of misinformation, pre-Trump it was accepted that misinformation was a bad thing, people just argued they weren't lying, post-Trump the view seems to be that misinformation is fine as long as it supports your own views and that is a dramatic shift.

[AnthonyKellett]

Spot on. I feel anything I might add is likely to be superfluous, in the light of your thoughts on the matter.

Anything legal should be able to be put out there. My fear is what may eventually become illegal. Yeonmi Park has claimed her videos are censored and/or demonetised for highlighting the treatment of women in North Korea. Is that going to become illegal? Even if not, should it be permissable for these social media platforms - effectively the modern 'Town Square' - to censor such content; particularly given that they've been shielded from traditional media's content liability, by claiming they're merely billboards/platforms and not publishers?