Subject: Re: Ministry of Truth
bighairymike: Perhaps even stationing some FBI agents at their facility to make those discussions easier. Or the platform making special API's available to the government to facilitate the government submitting helpful suggestions so the platform can better understand (expand) the scope of that which the platform already wanted to ban but may not have realized it until the government pointed it out. This seems dangerous to me.


Seems silly to me.

Looking through the judge's opinion, he writes that "Flaherty acknowledged receiving Facebook's detailed report and demanded a report from Facebook on a recent Washington Post article that accused Facebook of allowing the spread of information leading to vaccine hesitancy. Flaherty emailed the Washington Post article to Facebook the day before, with the subject line: 'You are hiding the ball,' and stated 'I've been asking you guys pretty directly, over a series of conversations, for a clear accounting of the biggest issues you are seeing on your platform when it comes to vaccine hesitancy and the degree to which borderline content as you define it -- is playing a role.'

So the White House pointed out a Washington Post article that argued Facebook is intentionally allowing disinformation on its site which is resulting in an increase in vaccine hesitancy.

Flaherty writes: "I am not trying to play 'gotcha' with you. We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy -- period. I will also be the first to acknowledge that borderline content offers no easy solutions. But we want to know that you're trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you're not playing a shell game with us when we ask you what is going on."

Hhhmm. Doesn't sound, as the judge claims in his preface to the quoted material, like a "demand". Sounds like the White House is saying this is complicated, we both know there are no simple solutions but we're ready to help you if you'll give us information that lets us help you.


The White House also suggests that social media platforms have a responsibility to their users: "We're asking them to consistently take action against misinformation super-spreaders on their platforms."

No, the judge writes: "Each United States citizen has the right to decide for himself or herself what is true and what is false."

Well, umm, what?


bighairymike: I read something that helps me understand the seemingly endless opposition of views, paraphrasing,

"The difference between the factions is that progressives fundamentally trust whatever the government is saying whereas the conservative fundamentally is skeptical of whatever the government is saying."

That I think explains our differing views on the Government/Corporate alliance with respect to what is <mis>information .

Nope, not me. Rather, I suggest this: "Conservatives like to paint with a broad brush and generalize haphazardly."