How do you not get that this is the exact point? “Experts” in the US government and the “intelligence agencies” declared forcefully that it was true. You—-not an “expert” and not a member of “authoritative” US intelligence agency—-claiming that it was just “propagandistic patriotic fervor” would be “misinformation” stated “without evidence”. Stopping people from questioning the narrative is fundamentally against free speech and having a small group of people presume to be the final arbiters of truth with the power to suppress contrary speech is dystopian to the max. You want free speech when you agree with it and suppression when you disagree with it. That’s deeply unprincipled.
So corporate media can spew out disinformation for years without consequences but when someone anonymous online spreads disinformation it warrants the fbis involvement to deem it national security?
Where does it stop, sounds like suppression of freedom of speech and thought, attempting to steer the narrative.
Someone who downvoted me and flagged me, please tell me where I'm wrong with what I said?
They're always spewing propaganda about everything, though. How does that eliminate the need to provide evidence about a claim?
Or are you just saying the best geopolitical response to unsubstantiated propaganda is more unsubstantiated propaganda volleyed right back at them?
This is similar to people who accuse the CIA of orchestrating every big event or crime. They say they don't need to provide evidence, because the CIA is untrustworthy and tries to deceive people. But this is a completely bullshit argument.
You claimed to write about “false information that has real world impact, like yelling fire in a crowded theater.” That example is from the real world when the government acted against private parties that engaged in what the government characterized as sedition. Do you withdraw your example?
You keep misrepresenting what I'm saying. Please stop. The claim was that evidence is not being suppressed and I've presented that the research of the subject is being deplatformed. In your attempt to undermine this simple fact you had to go as far as to make up conspiracy theories about "dog-whistling". It doesn't make any sense.
You are right and you are wrong. Legally, you are right. Practically, there is evidence that various elements in the US Government have at times coerced people into making untrue statements.
How does that at all rebut what the person you're responding to has said? I've read your quote multiple times trying to see how it at all presents a "credible proposal to only allow the government approved version of truth."
The number of people repeating misinformation isn't really relevant. You really seem to leverage many various fallacies, like slippery slope and argument from incredulity. My exact statement was, in context to the facts about white supremacy and far right extremists, both groups having a well documented presence at the attempted coup, that when social networks' legal/liability or moderation teams take action on the precise content that was used to foment a coup, it's not terribly shocking from a legal perspective. You seem to be shocked though, why is that?
Confirmation bias is definitely in full effect... My comment was on the technical aspects of the story and specifically highlighted the non-technical evidence as substandard. Joe Random bloggers who I've seen repudiate the government have by and large been well-known security experts compared to the nameless hand-waving of the FBI. I think what it comes down to is the question of whether educated people, after Snowden, WMDs, torture, and so on are better off presuming the accuracy or inaccuracy of the government's statements.
That's a horrible way to go about modeling reality.
What the government says is only tiny portion of the information we have on any situation.
We also have what 200 other governments say, what academics say, what thousands of different journalists say, what historical precedent says, and what your own logic and intuition says.
Your obedience to the government narrative makes you the perfect tool of those in power.
Stop with this bullshit. Evidence is evidence and people should be taught to expect evidence rather than blindly believing words.
Even your statement here is an evidence of propaganda. Just because you repeat a lie does not make it true it makes it commonplace. Much like the earth is flat and the many hundreds of years of things said by the various churchs.
You do nothing to improve the situation and only seek to destroy information and belittle people into treating them like mere children incapable of discerning information themselves. That's what's called propaganda and you're taking part in it.
Treat people like adults who have the mental depth to actually have a conversation not open vats where you can just throw info in enough and assume anything said becomes true.
You know what really works when you repeat a lie enough times to make it believable? When you delete anything that calls into question that statement. Which you happen to be for and yet you should be against it because it makes it so "authorities" are able to say things and be automatically trusted and assumed to be fact, can't argue that they're wrong now, can you?
You literally cannot defeat racism, fascism, or oppression using racism, fascism, or oppression. It just flips who the fucking person or group fucking doing it.
The overarching accusation is plausible but many of the claims to support the story are observably false, as outlined in the linked article. And yes, as per your innuendo I’m clearly an agent of the state here to shut down your free thinking.
With all of the outrage being expressed from those in media and government about the dangers of free speech because of the potential for "disinformation", it would be nice if everyone took a step back and examined how this report is being discussed.
We're under attack by the Russians(again), according to anonymous sources(again) that are purportedly government officials. Where is the skepticism? Are we simply to, yet again, blindly accept evidence-free assertions made by anonymous government officials? As technically literate people know, it can be very difficult, if not impossible to determine who exactly intruded into a network, even in the best of circumstances. As historically literate people know, evidence-free government assertions of attacks by our "enemies" are often baseless, deliberately misleading, or outright fabrications.
The Treasury may very well have been hacked, and the culprits may have been Russians, but its madness to believe any of this without evidence that be scrutinized. There's been a lot of recent outcry for "gatekeepers" that sift through disinformation and decide what people are allowed to see and hear. As illustrated with this article(and the reception it has received), the problem isn't the existence of evidence-free assertions, its the uncritical acceptance of these evidence-free assertions. We need to maintain our skepticism and maintain the same demands for evidence regardless of what assertions are offered or who they are offered by. Lies and unsubstantiated statements are just as bad (if not worse) whether they come stamped with the approval of officially designated gatekeepers or not.
By what chain of reasoning did you go from what I wrote to that response?
Of course state propaganda is as invalid as anyone else’s! And all states equally, too!
Neither attempting to block nor failing to block solves the problem of discovering what the truth is. The former because it presupposes you already know the answer, the latter because it’s trivial to algorithmically create endless variations and combinations of lies and truths so that there literally isn’t enough time to decide what to believe.
Even intelligence agencies fall for fabrications. What hope do the rest of us have?
So, you're accusing me of being a part of a huge conspiracy where we are coming to lie to you Americans about some propaganda material from election time? OK.
All you have to do is understand that their propaganda machine works... and can fool most people... and it fooled you when you were not prepared. That's ALL you have to do... and you are foreever liberated from it... or you can dig yourself into a even deeper hole and everyone is out to get you. You do you. Have a nice day.
The best thing you can do is your own research. Come to your own conclusion. Do not let someone dictate the narrative.
To be clear, nothing is what it seems on the surface. For example, the FBI promoted and pushed a narrative on 8chan [1] and either directly participated or incited great violence. However, instead of sanctioning itself, it claimed the site was full of terrorists and produced only the FBI’s own posts as evidence. It even then sent a memo stating users of 8chan, Voat, etc. we’re terrorists. Anyone who states truth appears to be deplatformed [2].
That said, the world is absolutely as gross as these new “reports” are indicating.
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