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[TempAcc]

What exactly guarantees that those kind of outlets won't be smashed under the glorious government ran news filter in favor of whatever the fuck it wants you to know and think about?

[Frumple]

OH MY GOD IT'S STILL PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND

Now imagine it playing in the background pretty much non-stop. More or less the entire day. Sometimes literally the entire day, with people leaving it on while they sleep. Something approaching that isn't terribly uncommon among conservative households.

And from what you mentioned it sounds like you tuned in for one of the less out there bits. It gets worse :V

_{^{and then realize that talk radio can go an order or two of magnitude beyond fox's average worst
welcome to entertainment news, american right-wing edition}}

[Lord Shonus]

What exactly guarantees that those kind of outlets won't be smashed under the glorious government ran news filter in favor of whatever the fuck it wants you to know and think about?

What will prevent them from being "trampled" is the fact that they are NOT FAKE NEWS. If all reports of something go to Wikileaks, that is enough to suggest that there's a possibility of it being accurate, and major media will have a good chance of digging out more information if they pursue the story. Because Wikileaks doesn't have a history of making up every single thing they've ever said, unlike the sort of things that are being targeted.


Your argument has no validity whatsoever.

[TempAcc]

Alright, lets start over again, a little bit slower this time.

First question:

Who gets to define what is fake news and what is not?

Second question:

Assuming there is some sort of authority that is able to define what is fake news and what is not, what guarantees that said authority will be run by peerless, nigh angelic magical beings who are not only totally impartial, but also have all the ability and resources to analyse news and determine, with full certainty, it is fake or not?

Third question:

Assuming said authority exists and isn't run by super angelic beings with all the necessarity ability and resources to determine with full certainty wether a news outlet is publishing fake or real news, what happens if said authority makes a mistake, attacks and supresses news which is later confirmed to be true? Do they say "oops, sorry guys lol"?

[Sergarr]

What exactly guarantees that those kind of outlets won't be smashed under the glorious government ran news filter in favor of whatever the fuck it wants you to know and think about?

What will prevent them from being "trampled" is the fact that they are NOT FAKE NEWS. If all reports of something go to Wikileaks, that is enough to suggest that there's a possibility of it being accurate, and major media will have a good chance of digging out more information if they pursue the story. Because Wikileaks doesn't have a history of making up every single thing they've ever said, unlike the sort of things that are being targeted.


Your argument has no validity whatsoever.

Funnily enough, I've been hearing mass requests to stop considering Wikileaks as legitimate source of news (which presumably would make them fall under the "suppress fake news" policy) due to the now apparently widespread opinion that they're an outlet for Russian intelligence services, and thus anything they say is either fake, or misleading/doctored due to selective/targeted release of information.

The apparent problem here that I didn't see at first is that the process of determination whenever some site has only fake news is itself subjective, because there's no objective method of proving whenever a certain piece of news is true or false, which makes this whole procedure subjective and thus very much vulnerable to being abused as censorship.

[Lord Shonus]

Let me explain more slowly.

Sites that peddle exclusively made-up news are trending wildly on Facebook.

Much of that made-up news is political in nature.

Obama believes that spreading such stories is extremely bad for the state of the American political system.

Obama is suggesting to Facebook that Facebook block news from such sites from their platform.

This is the entire "controversy".

Your fears are without merit.

[TheBiggerFish]

OH MY GOD IT'S STILL PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND

THEY'RE CRITICIZING OBAMA FOR SAYING FAKE NEWS AND PROPAGANDA SHOULD BE FILTERED OUT BECAUSE IT'S "CENSORSHIP" WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE

That's actually pretty reasonable - there's currently no objective and reliable method for determining whenever the news are indeed "fake" or "propaganda", it's basically all subjective, and filtering out certain news based on subjective opinions is, indeed, censorship, because there's no way we could certainly know that they're doing it because they're fake or because they simply don't like them.

Now, if we had such a method for determining whenever something is objectively truthful, then we could talk about suppressing fake propaganda news without the fear of it being abused for censorship.

*looks at Snopes*

Also:

Let me explain more slowly.

Sites that peddle exclusively made-up news are trending wildly on Facebook.

Much of that made-up news is political in nature.

Obama believes that spreading such stories is extremely bad for the state of the American political system.

Obama is suggesting to Facebook that Facebook block news from such sites from their platform.

This is the entire "controversy".

Your fears are without merit.

[TempAcc]

I generally dislike the idea of people telling me what kind of content I can access as an adult in full use of my human right to information. Its kind of a far larger and scarier slippery slope than you imagine it to be.

Whats funniest about this is that this is somehow considered completely ok, even now 'murica is under the Trump and GOP administration, which the very people in this thread fear more than a 12 ft tall demon dressed in a KKK outfit carrying a bloody flaming cross. Surely no abuse or anything bad can come from any of this, right?

[Criptfeind]

There's a load of difference between the government squashing sites and suggesting, not even ordering, facebook that they should cut access to fraudulent sites.

[Lord Shonus]

I generally dislike the idea of people telling me what kind of content I can access as an adult in full use of my human right to information. Its kind of a far larger and scarier slippery slope than you imagine it to be.

Nobody's trying to stop you from going to Now8News to look at their made-up crap. They are just trying to get Facebook to stop giving sites of that sort legitimacy by tricking people into thinking a veterinarian got shot for not gender-reassigning a dog.

[Sergarr]

Let me explain more slowly.

Sites that peddle exclusively made-up news are trending wildly on Facebook.

Much of that made-up news is political in nature.

Obama believes that spreading such stories is extremely bad for the state of the American political system.

Obama is suggesting to Facebook that Facebook block news from such sites from their platform.

This is the entire "controversy".

Your fears are without merit.

That's what Obama suggests. But the administration for the next 4 years is going to be Trump's one. I'm pretty sure that Trump doesn't give a fuck about what Obama intended for that suggestion to do, and could very well use this precedent to push for real censorship.

After all, in dictatorships, "suggesting" is an euphemism for "do it, or suffer my wrath"...

OH MY GOD IT'S STILL PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND

THEY'RE CRITICIZING OBAMA FOR SAYING FAKE NEWS AND PROPAGANDA SHOULD BE FILTERED OUT BECAUSE IT'S "CENSORSHIP" WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE

That's actually pretty reasonable - there's currently no objective and reliable method for determining whenever the news are indeed "fake" or "propaganda", it's basically all subjective, and filtering out certain news based on subjective opinions is, indeed, censorship, because there's no way we could certainly know that they're doing it because they're fake or because they simply don't like them.

Now, if we had such a method for determining whenever something is objectively truthful, then we could talk about suppressing fake propaganda news without the fear of it being abused for censorship.

*looks at Snopes*

It's still not objective/cannot be proven to be objective, though it's probably closer to the ideal than the most, because, while all the internal argumentation logic may be completely sound and all source in correct order, there's no way to tell if the authors didn't forget or "forget" about some important additional piece of information that significantly changes the overall meaning and result.

To make it more objective, you'd need to come up with an automatic algorithm for gathering data. But that still wouldn't make it completely objective, because the news-site may only cover some selective subset of subjects, using that selectiveness to push for a certainly colored narrative (like, debunking only pro-liberal news, to make it look like liberals are all lying).

To fix that, there would need to be an algorithm for automatically selecting the subjects for fact-checking, too. Which would still not make it completely objective, because the overall combination of algorithms is going to be so complex as to evade common understanding, thus making it opaque and potentially allowing the people with required technical knowledge to slip bias inside of them.

Objectiveness is hard.

[TempAcc]

Hey, when you run into a guy armed with a revolver holding some girl hostage, the average person would generally try to save her, and not tier her up even more while also giving the guy an AR-15.

But hey, I'm not the kind of guy to question anyone's faith or fetishes.

Now, lets see how people react when Trump decides that said system is a little more elastic than originally conceived, and censorship starts being a thing. He'll turn around and say "hey, I'm only continuing obama's work". By the way, obama isn't exactly a saintly figure, keep in mind what kind of weapon he'll be putting in Trump's hands for the next 4 years.

[Sheb]

What exactly guarantees that those kind of outlets won't be smashed under the glorious government ran news filter in favor of whatever the fuck it wants you to know and think about?

You know that bolding irrelevant stuff doesn't make it relevant? Obama wasn't talking about government-run filters, or anything governemental.

[Lord Shonus]

After all, in dictatorships, "suggesting" is an euphemism for "do it, or suffer my wrath"...

The US has never had a dictator, unless you count Abraham Lincoln, which would be a stretch. There's nothing about Trump's presidency that suggests that will change. Bush II had Republican control of both houses of Congress for most of his tenure, after all. I suspect that the history of your own country is coloring your perceptions.

[TempAcc]

What exactly guarantees that those kind of outlets won't be smashed under the glorious government ran news filter in favor of whatever the fuck it wants you to know and think about?

You know that bolding irrelevant stuff doesn't make it relevant? Obama wasn't talking about government-run filters, or anything governemental.

Government asks biggest social media ever to cut down certain content outlets under a big, open and generic definition that can be called "fake news".

Said social media goes "lol k" and does it.

It doesn't have to be entirely run by a government to have equivalent practical effects, specially when said government itself is causing it to happen.

Is this all actualy irrelevant or just inconvenient to certain narratives?