Let’s just say this board is nonpartisan and somewhat benevolent and somewhat useful, best case. What is the cost of controlling and scanning for information at the federal level? It seems more difficult to do so than the war on drugs and we all know how costly that has been and not even done a dent on the issue. Probably also made things worse.
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Yeah it would be a ridiculously inefficient boondoggle at best, I’m sure.
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Let’s just say that I would trust organizations accountable to voters more than I do private companies. But none of us knows the specifics of what this board will do yet. So I’d still like to know what would be productive for them to do. But to do that we have get past the noise of anything they try to do would constitute propaganda, censorship, Nazis etc.
How much do you trust TikTok or Twitter?
What makes you say that? How would scanning sources of foreign interference be any more expensive than the war on drugs? Some dude sitting at a computer is going to cost more than the DEA?
Because we are talking about information, not physical products. This seems obvious.
Employing the thousands of people in the DEA, border patrol, ATF all of that is cheaper than researching information on the internet? Do enlighten how that could possibly be more expensive.
I don’t think I can when it couldn’t be more obvious there would be far more to comb through.
Let’s just say it’s half the budget of the DEA…which costs 2.9 billion a year to run. That’s still an incredible amount to spend a year.
Bureaucratic organs often have low levels of accountability. That’s a large part of the problem. I’d prefer government not to be so closely involved with it. If DHS needs to send accurate messages on social media to inform people, it should be easy for them to do without establishing an entirely new organ. As for private companies, they can make their own policies, I can choose whether to use their services or not, and I or anyone else can choose what to believe or not.
No you don’t. You just have to say what you think would do the trick. Or find someone who wrote about it. You don’t need to malign other points of view for those things to happen, at all.
I don’t have to. I don’t use either of them, for a start.
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I think you under estimate the efficiency of technology vs. employing thousands of people with all of their equipment all over the world. How much did it cost for the Russians to run a troll farm?
I think you underestimate the amount of info and the level of bureaucracy in place to make sure it’s not efficient in cost or results.
If the Russians are running a troll farm, then we have very well funded counterintelligence agencies who can and should deal with it, as well as other existing agencies who can promote accurate information.
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The government has a record of giving us the wrong info, sometimes even maliciously. I don’t understand how any freedom loving person would not be extremely concerned now they also want to look into disinformation.
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In comparison to what? Private or even public companies? I don’t really think so. Tesla seems fine setting up a factory in Xinjiang.
Let’s see government get away with something equally unpopular and last more than an election cycle.
I’d say that the board needs to clearly define what it is doing to make that judgement. I thought the same thing about Space Force. Why wouldn’t the air force just cover that?
You might want to research more on how companies get access to your data before you make statements that you are choosing their services. Often times you are not, at least consciously.
Let me rephrase I would like to find objective opinions not convoluted by partisan bias before I make judgment.
Refer to my previous comment on choice.
I refer to the CDC for health information, not Twitter. If foreign interference were occuring, I wouldn’t go to TikTok to find out about it.
Concerned they want to disseminate information? They have no operational authority.
If you are approaching this from the idea that everything government does will be inefficient or corrupt, then you are allowing ideology to supercede objective reasoning. I can’t meet you there. The world I live in is much more nuanced. Not all government is bad and not all private market is good.
Which is why it’s even more useless and costly.
Not will be, but highly probable. At the very least, I know it will be costly like everything they do.
Interesting to look at the European approach in the context of this discussion…
In a video Breton tweeted late Monday, Musk said the two had a “great discussion” and that he agrees with the Digital Services Act, which is expected to get final approval later this year. It will make big tech companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook parent Meta police their platforms more strictly for illegal or harmful content like hate speech and disinformation or face billions in fines.
I didn’t make any sort against comparison of private companies (??)
But now you mention it, there is clearly a difference. Twitter, Facebook, Parler, whoever have their own criteria for moderation, fact checking, flagging, removing etc. I’m not a fan of any of them, by the way. Same for news agencies, who often do fact-checking of political speeches etc. You have competition, and Fox News or CNN will reach different conclusions.
However, government is supposed to work for citizens and clearly yields far greater power than a tech company. Giving them some sort of fact-checking “authority” is definitely creepy in principle, but I guess we need to see how it pans out and exactly what their role is going to be. I think Glen Greenwald is a very reputable and balanced journalist and his article clearly spells out the problems here. One of them being that the government repeatedly lies for political reasons. The other is that this lady in charge is CLEARLY not un-biased. She is openly, rabidly partisan and has literally promoted multiple pieces of disinformation in the past. It doesn’t seem like it’s off to a good start.
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“I would like to see some transparency”
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I think you are loosely defining authority here as is Rand Paul. This is why I posted the comparison to Europe.
Certainly doesn’t write like one. If you need to use “quotes” for every paragraph to “persuade” the reader then you’ve already lost “credibility”.
European Law:
Digital Services Act.
The law will also force tech companies to make it easier for users to flag problems, ban online ads aimed at kids and empower regulators to punish noncompliance with billions in fines.
I mentioned previously that even in Taiwan you get a hefty fine for texting false information on covid or vaccines.
In the US, all the government is proposing is “maybe we can just tell what is bullshit and you can decide for yourself.” No they aren’t distributing fentanyl in vaccines. And the reaction is: “Fuck you Nazis! Don’t censor me.”
Reminds me of Jim Jeffries bit on gun control Australia vs. US. “Maybe we could just get rid of the big guns?” “Fuck you don’t take my guns!”
Glenn has a pedigree journalist background, a lot of integrity, and he is much more on the left wing than the right. I think the quote marks are fair enough given that a lot of the terms have been weaponized - like “disinformation”, “fact-checking” etc. Those are not implemented to the truest definition of the words, which is what he describes. Pundits in the media were simply re-labeled as fact-checkers, even though they were biased and selective/misleading in their fact-checking. And even just during the 2020 election, all the Hunter Biden laptop stuff was labeled Russia disinformation by everybody in authority, which itself turned out to be disinformation because the leaks were totally real. So the term “disinformation”, which is judged by somebody, absolutely deserves the quote marks because it is abused to use as a label for discrediting something you disagree with.
The EU is not America. Taiwan is not America. America has a formally codified right to freedom of speech and it’s deeply ingrained into society. There are many examples where, IMO, EU/UK have gone way too far in prosecuting people for freedom of speech.
Personally, I think Taiwan fining people for sharing things on LINE is a mostly terrible idea. But it all depends how it’s implemented. People should be totally free to voice opinions. Like if I think Covid rules are bullshit and the CECC sucks, I should be able to say so. Even if I say something wrong, like saying vaccines are dangerous and nobody should take one, that definitely shouldn’t be illegal. But obviously there are actual disinformation campaigns, some internally, and some from China, which are designed to create disruption in society. There needs to be some sort of mechanism or deterrent for those. It’s very complicated to try and balance the two, and unfortunately I find it really difficult to trust the government to do it.
The disinformation governance board is a working group from DHS (not a separate organ as TG suggested). They have no authority because if they did it would not be unconstitutional. Providing information is not limiting free speech or violating the constitution.
And none of the examples I provided from EU or Taiwan are even close to what the US is doing.
In the US you are.
In the US, you can.
It’s not.
Bingo! 
This is the purpose of the disinformation governance board. I’ll post a fact sheet in a little bit.