Comment on Petition calls to ban Elon Musk's X in Europe
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 4 days ago
I’ll rather choose myself which social media platforms I use rather than let the authorities decide for me. Banning things you don’t like is not a solution because soon the things you do like are getting banned too because someone else doesn’t like them.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 days ago
I think it’s important for groups of people to be able to choose to ban propaganda and misinformation, because propaganda is not simply information being imparted, it’s an entire ecosystem of deceptive methods to disseminate information and to alter your perception without you realizing.
If it were calling for the EU banning X solely because they don’t like Musk’s shitty personal opinions, I’d agree with you, but they cite the disinformation, misinformation, and outright propaganda that the platform is being used to spread, and I think that’s perfectly valid.
Take 2 scenarios:
5 million actual people telling you that ‘x’ political view is common and popular, causing you to doubt, or at least temper your own personal beliefs.
500 thousand actual people, plus 4.5 million bot accounts telling you that ‘x’ political view is common and popular, causing you to doubt, or at least temper your own personal beliefs.
In reality, you don’t even need the bot accounts to outnumber the real users if you control the algorithms that determine what people see, which is exactly the situation that X is in right now.
tl;dr This isn’t about banning the viewpoints themselves, it’s about banning a platform that deceptively alters visibility of viewpoints to manipulate people.
Tell that to Musk; X bans TONS of people over their viewpoints.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 3 days ago
This isn’t misinformation. Lemmy gives you skewed image of what political views are popular. Truth social does the exact thing but from the opposite perspective. These are just groups of people self selecting onto platforms they most feel comfortable at. Having opposing political views to that of yours is not misinformation.
Again, not in any way exclusive to twitter. Go take a look at lemmy.ml modlog for example. These are both privately owned and the people running them are free to moderate however they desire. If you don’t agree with it, then do go there. That’s what I do with .ml instances too.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 days ago
Right, the other example was. The whole point is the difference between propaganda (the bots) and legitimate political sentiment.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 3 days ago
The other is the same thing said differently. Not misinformation either.