Should people also have the freedom of choice to buy snake oil that claims to cure cancer, etc? The opposite of freedom is not regulation. That’s a bunch of propaganda used by people when they want to change an inconvenient topic. It’s used, for example, when talking about the ACA and claiming that nationalized health insurance would rob the people of choosing their blood sucking middle man for health insurance.
Comment on Petition calls to ban Elon Musk's X in Europe
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
I don’t like Twitter, but I am also not for banning a service or application nationwide. This should be the choice of the user. Do not take away freedom of choice, regardless of your feelings, believes or what you like. Do not be like China or Russia.
Instead fight against the actual problem, like disinformation or whatever it is. I’m absolutely against such a ban.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
Bougie_Birdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
Are you defending snake oil? The pseudoscience con so uniquituously used to deprive the desperate from their money that it became the term used to describe “harmful bullshit sold for profit?”
Freedom of choice or not, I suppose you should be able to spend your money however you want.
But if someone is selling people lies under the promise of medical miracles, we need to throw the book at them.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
Are you
No.
spend your money however you want
Big fan of the Citizens United decision and money in politics, I take it?
Bougie_Birdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
Ah, I’m still waking up, so I must have misunderstood.
I hadn’t considered political spending, but I didn’t get the impression we were talking about super PACs. Those are abhorrent, and undemocratic.
My stance was that if a person wants to buy something that’s stupid, ineffective, but gives them some small degree of hope and doesn’t harm others, then they should be able to. However, I’m also of the opinion that regulators need to remove those products from the market because they’re lying to people about their efficacy.
Ideally we’d be teaching people that snake oil doesn’t work. But the current political climate suggests that Big Snake Oil has captured the regulation, so I don’t see that happening either.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
How is that even remotely equivalent comparison?
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
…banning a service or application nationwide.
I’m absolutely against such a ban.
Good thing you’re not going to be affected by such a ban, seen as no European would have made the mistake of saying ‘nationwide’ in reference to the EU as a whole. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
[deleted]princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I don’t really think it’s funny, at all.
jonathan@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
It had long since hit critical mass in Europe before it was bait and switched to serve as a US fascist tool of propaganda. Banning it is the correct response.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
except it’s literally state sponsored propaganda.
MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
Isn’t blocking a disinfo place a way of fighting disinformation? I don’t get it
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
Blocking an entire community, service or application blocks access to non disinformation and normal communication too. Instead fight against the specific issues. Or with your logic we need to ban every platform such as Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Discord and even Wikipedia. Because misinformation is everywhere.
I don’t want anyone decide for myself what to use. If I want to use Twitter, that should be MY decision, not yours, not the one with the campaign here and certainly not any government.
Hirom@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
Every service may be abused to spread misinformation. But here the complaint isn’t that people abuse a service, but that the service is operated to spread misinformation.
One way to address this could be to look at moderation. Is there meaningful moderation to limit misinformation? A service operated to spread misinformation wouldn’t moderate such misinformation.
halm@leminal.space 4 weeks ago
Now you’re talking.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
And Lemmy, Mastodon, Bluesky etc.
millie@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
I imagine that Twitter being blocked in Europe might actually lead to some of those sources moving elsewhere to continue to reach their audience. I’m not a big fan of blocking websites either in a general sense, but a I can see why countries would want to avoid having what’s happening to the US be repeated within their own borders, and that seems to be a distinct danger with Twitter. There’s a pretty good argument to be made that that’s literally its purpose at this point.
Dismantling legitimate governments with disinformation seems like a pretty viable power grab strategy for billionaires trying to create a megacorp hellscape where they get to do whatever they want until the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans some time after their own deaths.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Is there no disinformation on other social media platforms?
MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
No.