Having principles hurts sometimes. Sometimes they require you to do things that are painful with the understanding that the alternative is even worse.
I'd gladly take a world with disinformation over a world in which an unaccountable third party determines what is truth, and therefore okay to say. I can work around the first problem with some effort much easier than the second one.
> a world in which an unaccountable third party determines what is truth, and therefore okay to say
We already have that - and have had for centuries - the people who control the press control what gets presented as "truth". Look at Fox or any other Murdoch property for a perfect example.
(cf "History is written by the winners" for another angle.)
And is Fox successful in determining what is okay to say? Do you see ordinary people afraid to say something because Fox said it was wrong? Facing social, professional, and even legal consequences for expressing disagreement with Fox?
There is competition in establishing the truth. Not as much as I'd like, but a decent amount. Reducing that competition would be bad.
That is exactly the problem, though, isn't it? Unaccountable third parties are literally currently controlling the truth, via disinformation. An alarming number of people are convinced in conspiracies and untruths like the deep state, QAnon, anti-vax, flat earth... How is the ability to freely and massively distribute misinformation not a means of controlling the truth?
Is there anything new about an alarming number of people believing in untruths? The trade off seems to be how much you trust normal people to correctly parse information and sort the truth from untruth, and how much you trust organizations to parse and dictate truth.
The Downside of the common man having too little oversight is more people believe things that aren't true (Flat Earth), and the downside to too much oversite is people believe different things that aren't true (PRISM, Nayirah testimony, Tuskegee Syphilis Study). The trade off of which is worse varies, but generally most individuals are fairly powerless but there are many of them, and organizations are few but wield much more influence.
Controlling the truth via disinformation.? I admit I have horrible comprehension skills but it sounds like a smart enough statement when you repeat it enough, I just can't grep any meaning in this. Do they know the truth? You throw in the conspiracy groups and you have made yourself half a statement.
They're bad we get it, Id rather be able to hear how bad they are in the light. Who was accountable when we spread lies about WMDs in Iraq? That caused magnitudes of more damage than these groups, yet no one is held accountable even with Public figures. Do you want everyone accountable for misinformation silenced or just those you disagree with?
But the alternative doesn’t stop at misinformation. This propaganda is helping elect people like Trump who has expressed a desire to silence his critics through whatever means he has. I’d rather be censored by Facebook than the government.
I mean yes having principles hurts but leaving social media as it is doesn’t make you Rosa Parks.
We see a problem, we try to fix it.
They’re not unaccountable. This whole thing is about holding them accountable!
If they were completely unaccountable then they wouldn’t do any of this. Why is Facebook taking action against QAnon now when it hasn’t in the past year? Do you think they haven’t seen the polling data for the president, house, and senate races? They’re preparing to fight for their life as a conglomerated monopoly.
What does holding them accountable look like to you?
Why should Facebook (or any other platform) be accountable to anyone in particular for what the users of the platform say?
I get that, now, they've hoisted themselves by their own petard after years of inconsistent policies and enforcement, but I mean in a general sense.
>What does holding them accountable look like to you?
The opening paragraph of section 230 of the CDA, to wit:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"
There be far worse dragons than disinformation down the other roads. Let's take this to its logical conclusion - you've got people on the left upset about "conspiracy theories" (which is, itself, a pejorative term with problematic origins rooted in thought control), you've got people on the right upset about "bias" against their stances.
When both sides of the political aisle are demanding tighter control over speech for any reason, the intended result should terrify the hell out of you.
The problem you speak of is not "people say false things" (which is not solvable), the problem should rather be seen as "people demand the ability to censor people they disagree with". The solution to that problem is telling both sides to pound sand and take responsibility for their own beliefs, not foisting that responsibility off onto third parties in a way that necessarily restricts freedom of speech.
I'd gladly take a world with disinformation over a world in which an unaccountable third party determines what is truth, and therefore okay to say. I can work around the first problem with some effort much easier than the second one.