Freedom of Speech

[bligslick]

My position is, I believe, similar to Elons. I knew the Laptop story was being suppressed. Who knew why, until the Twitter files investigation showed that the government was having meetings about such things and explicitly asked old Twitter and Facebook to suppress.  Then the 51 govt officials saying it was Russian disinformation.  Which it wasn't.  Elon was tired of the BS and as the left kept saying "build your own free speech platform, this is ours" and he bought it to end the suppression of these sorts of things. Sure, there's plenty of unmoderated bs on Twitter. Always has been. But the left should be able to spew their bs as well as opposing opinions.

Community Notes was setup to argue against mis/dis information.  Is it perfect? No. But it's trying to be fair. Of the Twitter staff that donated to political parties, 90% if I recall correctly, donated to Dems, as is their right. But it certainly shows a bias. Again, they're right. So Elon bought it, so political opinions would not be suppressed.

I was always in line with this thinking, Twitter didn't persuade me to have the opinions I had. I was seeing repeatedly that it wasn't Americans who were posting these opinions, that it was Russian interference.  Due to cancel culture I chose to stay quiet as one never knows what the price is of having a different opinion with a lefty.  Let's just say in the past I kept quiet for fear of losing friends and opportunities.  I did lose at least one friend. Sad that he couldn't/wouldn't argue positions and policies. He just clammed up And basically de-friended me. Again, sad.

Everyone has a right to an opinion on a subject And if they are to be persuaded, it helps to argue one's positions using language that isn't inflammatory.  I mean, once I get pissed off, I can say pretty derogatory comebacks. I have written things a few times and decided not to hit the post button.

I do like that many of you add links in support of your positions.  That being said, I'm very wary of most sources. I don't trust any media sources anymore. And certainly not big government.

I like many if you and don't enjoy Thinking poorly of anyone because they have a different opinion. It typically happens when it's never ending battles.  We need to get along.

I lived through the last administration and I hope you all survive this next one.

[HighStepper]

Community Notes was setup to argue against mis/dis information.  Is it perfect? No. But it's trying to be fair.

X's Community Notes crowd-sourced moderation approach you say it is not perfect, When looking at how it has been operated, it is not even close to being good. The best fact-checkers, in Musk's view, are the people themselves, but if those people are turning their back on actual evidence, that seems like a flawed approach.
 
In 74% of cases where a Note was proposed, and the CCDH found it to be an accurate request for amendment, the Note was never displayed to users in the app. The CCDH also notes that posts with misleading claims about the 2024 U.S. election identified within its data set have been viewed in the app more than 2.9 billion times.

Reports Find Community Notes Is Failing To Address Misinformation on X. Social Media Today is primary source. Bias and Credibility

[bligslick]

So, it's clear this system isn't ideal. Was it better before when a team of fact-checkers could suppress information based on their own opinions? What if those fact-checkers disagreed with your views and suppressed them in favor of opposing perspectives, with no recourse for you to challenge or discuss the suppression? Who gets to decide what content should be filtered?

Take Reddit, for example. It still removes users from subreddits for participating in forums that the moderators don't approve of. Let's say you're banned from Forum X simply for posting in Forum Y. If you continue to have "violations" that the moderators disagree with, your account could eventually be banned.

HS, you and I worked together to validate claims made by posters before. We tried our best to be fair and impartial, even though it was far from perfect. I can think of two cases where some people felt we were wrong until the very end. Maybe we were.

In the end, all we can do is try our best. But perhaps, if people were allowed to voice all sides of an issue openly, it would be easier to arrive at the truth. I also wish Twitter had sorting options, like Reddit does, so you could view results by most upvoted, most recent, etc. That way, people could see things from multiple perspectives. But alas, Twitter remains a chaotic free-for-all, which, in my opinion, is one of its worst aspects.

It's a complicated issue, but suppression doesn't seem very American or aligned with the principles of free speech to me.

[bats]

All of us are susceptible to confirmation bias. For example, we might read something that aligns with what we believe to be true and subconsciously ascribe an extra dose of credibility to it. It's one of the ways our brains try to make sense of things.

When right-wingers learned that Twitter and FB were suppressing the story in the NY Post about Hunter Biden's laptop, apparently at the direction of Biden Administration officials, their prior belief that the Left was in cahoots with the media to slant the truth was, in their minds, confirmed. Hey, it's just as Trump's been saying! Those bastards really are the enemy of the people!

What right-wingers forgot is that government officials of all political stripes, including White House officials, have long communicated informally with media outlets about stories, or parts of stories, that are about to be published. Obviously, the officials want to influence the media outlets in a way that makes their side look good (or at least less bad) but they do not, and cannot, have final say.

The government can only request that something be done (or, usually, not done), and that's what happened in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Yet, Trump and his followers reacted as if it were an egregious violation of their First Amendment rights.

Y'all acted like it was the Pentagon Papers or something. Nope. These kinds of requests are routine, and the Trump administration made them, too.

Maybe the fact that it involved social media made it seem different, but it wasn't. Since Twitter was a private company, its "censorship" of the laptop story was never implicated on First Amendment grounds.

Look, I believe most right-wingers are good and decent people. But for reasons I don't think I'll ever fully comprehend, they've subscribed to a movement that has elected as its leader a hateful liar who aspires to be a dictator.

I can't get on board with such an anti-American program. 

[HighStepper]

It's a complicated issue, but suppression doesn't seem very American or aligned with the principles of free speech to me.

It sounds to me, what I think I'm hearing, is that a seriously flawed process (X's Community Notes) is better than what is considered to be an even worse process for combating the dissemination of misinformation. BTW, as reported above, 74% of cases where a Note was proposed to give the other side a voice, X suppressed it.

Using social media, has led to a lot of misinformation being spread on the internet. Online users can upload and share news without verification. According to a Pew Research survey in 2021, about half of Americans get their news on social media.

Social media business models involve using algorithms to determine what kinds of content a user will connect to. The clickbait articles that stir the emotions of hate and violence get the most action.  Algorithms value engagement by users over accuracy or diversity of viewpoints. Users having limited exposure to alternative viewpoints, adds to political polarization and creates "echo chambers."

People decry "mainstream" media as being fake news and not to be trusted, then go to YouTube, Twitter, now X, Meta, TikTok, etc. I like these platforms for music and jokes. I'm don't give them any credence for serious world events. There are a number of media sources that can be fact checked.

[Hobby]

In my opinion a public social media platform can set rules and censor their site providing of course the site is privately owned.  On our site here it's pretty much open for free speech but we do have limits to what members can post. I think our founders wanted freedom of speech to allow citizens to protest our government and not so much that freedom of speech entails today. Today freedom of speech is abused.

[HighStepper]

The government can only request that something be done (or, usually, not done), and that's what happened in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Yet, Trump and his followers reacted as if it were an egregious violation of their First Amendment rights.

Y'all acted like it was the Pentagon Papers or something. Nope. These kinds of requests are routine, and the Trump administration made them, too.

During the Cold War the press "suppressed" news about the flying of spy planes over Russia, training exiles to invade Cuba to depose Fidel Castro. The press didn't expose claims of "containing Communist expansion" with Middle East policy designed to preserve Western access to oil fields.  The press didn't report the Central American policy to make the region safe for United Fruit. source article

[bats]

During the Cold War the press "suppressed" news about the flying of spy planes over Russia, training exiles to invade Cuba to depose Fidel Castro. The press didn't expose claims of "containing Communist expansion" with Middle East policy designed to preserve Western access to oil fields.  The press didn't report the Central American policy to make the region safe for United Fruit. source article

Tons of interesting stuff in that article. Thanks for sharing it.