<story><title>Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”</title><url>https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=%2Cmisleading-content</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickysielicki</author><text>The bigger problem that I have with the idea that misinformation kills democracy is that it seems to suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon or that the average person has been well informed throughout the history of western democracy.&lt;p&gt;Democracy thrived before the printing press. Democracy survived the invention of the printing press, which was mostly in the hands of magnates who could afford it. Democracy survived the invention of television and radio, which was (and still is) in the hands of a select few magnates. We build up terms like &amp;quot;journalistic integrity&amp;quot; and look at the past with rose colored glasses as if these mediums delivered pure objective truth.&lt;p&gt;If anything, what we&amp;#x27;re seeing with the internet is a more true democracy with a wider range of opinions, less controlled by small groups of plutocrats. If you don&amp;#x27;t like to see the death of that plutocracy, or you&amp;#x27;re happy to see a new group of benevolent plutocrats come in to retake control the narrative, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you don&amp;#x27;t really like democracy.</text></item><item><author>contravariant</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s something fundamentally flawed about the idea that censorship in the name of preventing misinformation is protecting the foundation of democracy.&lt;p&gt;You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they&amp;#x27;re right.&lt;p&gt;I should at this point note that Google doesn&amp;#x27;t directly claim to go quite &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; far in preventing misinformation, they mostly claim to disallow things that could harm the democractic &lt;i&gt;process&lt;/i&gt; (e.g. telling people to vote at the wrong place, their candidate has died, etc.). At least that kind of information is usually agreed upon (if not there are bigger problems than mere misinformation), though they seem to try to include claims of voter-fraud, which is a bit dangerous.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>I see a lot of comments misinterpreting this.&lt;p&gt;First, it&amp;#x27;s not about private files, it&amp;#x27;s about &lt;i&gt;distributing&lt;/i&gt; content.&lt;p&gt;Google isn&amp;#x27;t spying on your private files, but does scan them when you share them publicly. E.g. keep all the pirated movies you want on your Drive, and even give private access to friends, but the moment you make them &lt;i&gt;publicly&lt;/i&gt; viewable Google scans them and limits access accordingly. So no, this isn&amp;#x27;t applying to your private diary or privately shared documents.&lt;p&gt;And second, to those who claim absolute free speech with no limits -- notice that the two main categories here are related to &lt;i&gt;democracy&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;health&lt;/i&gt;. All our legal protections ultimately depend on a democratic foundation -- undo that with misinformation and you don&amp;#x27;t have anything anymore. Similarly, your rights don&amp;#x27;t matter much if you&amp;#x27;re dead. Companies aren&amp;#x27;t allowed to advertise rat poison as medicine and neither are you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acituan</author><text>&amp;gt; suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon&lt;p&gt;Misinformation in this shape and form is a new phenomenon. And it is not just the scale;&lt;p&gt;- the number of agents that push their version of misinformation is at least an order of magnitude higher than ever, depending on the particular topic. So-called culture wars have so many different sides.&lt;p&gt;- technology not only scales misinformation, but it also &lt;i&gt;accelerates&lt;/i&gt; it. The objective function of &amp;quot;increased engagement&amp;quot; meshes very well. Hard to grok, full fidelity facts don&amp;#x27;t get shared or recommended as much as rage-baiting or bias-confirming material.&lt;p&gt;- technology can on-the-fly piece together material to conform to whatever bullshit you want to hear, I want to hear or the other guy wants to hear. As it is optimized to increase engagement, it can efficiently generate personalized micro-narratives, which is ultimately a reflection of our personal biases.&lt;p&gt;The problems is it gets harder and harder for these narratives to &lt;i&gt;converge&lt;/i&gt;. More on that below.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If anything, what we&amp;#x27;re seeing with the internet is a more true democracy with a wider range of opinions, less controlled by small groups of plutocrats&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, original thoughts don&amp;#x27;t have the same propagation speed or reach as junk-infotainment, and you&amp;#x27;re just as subject to the narrative-shaping powers of those &amp;quot;plutocrats&amp;quot; as ever. They just blend in better.&lt;p&gt;But the larger issue is that you can&amp;#x27;t equivocate &lt;i&gt;mere plurality&lt;/i&gt; with a functioning democracy. Ultimately there is a &lt;i&gt;single&lt;/i&gt; reality, and even though we are in divergent positions due to having different entry points and framings, we should be - however little - converging in our narratives and understanding of that reality as time progresses.&lt;p&gt;But the opposite seems to be happening, we are getting dumber at scale, stuff makes less sense, institutional mistrust is at all-time-high. I am not putting this all on tech, but it certainly pours fuel on the fire of meaning-making crisis.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t take it for granted that we could survive this without it creating a larger crisis first.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”</title><url>https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=%2Cmisleading-content</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickysielicki</author><text>The bigger problem that I have with the idea that misinformation kills democracy is that it seems to suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon or that the average person has been well informed throughout the history of western democracy.&lt;p&gt;Democracy thrived before the printing press. Democracy survived the invention of the printing press, which was mostly in the hands of magnates who could afford it. Democracy survived the invention of television and radio, which was (and still is) in the hands of a select few magnates. We build up terms like &amp;quot;journalistic integrity&amp;quot; and look at the past with rose colored glasses as if these mediums delivered pure objective truth.&lt;p&gt;If anything, what we&amp;#x27;re seeing with the internet is a more true democracy with a wider range of opinions, less controlled by small groups of plutocrats. If you don&amp;#x27;t like to see the death of that plutocracy, or you&amp;#x27;re happy to see a new group of benevolent plutocrats come in to retake control the narrative, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you don&amp;#x27;t really like democracy.</text></item><item><author>contravariant</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s something fundamentally flawed about the idea that censorship in the name of preventing misinformation is protecting the foundation of democracy.&lt;p&gt;You cannot have true democracy if people cannot disagree with their governments, they must be able to disagree with &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; truth or opinion such a government might consider self-evident, just on the off chance they&amp;#x27;re right.&lt;p&gt;I should at this point note that Google doesn&amp;#x27;t directly claim to go quite &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; far in preventing misinformation, they mostly claim to disallow things that could harm the democractic &lt;i&gt;process&lt;/i&gt; (e.g. telling people to vote at the wrong place, their candidate has died, etc.). At least that kind of information is usually agreed upon (if not there are bigger problems than mere misinformation), though they seem to try to include claims of voter-fraud, which is a bit dangerous.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>I see a lot of comments misinterpreting this.&lt;p&gt;First, it&amp;#x27;s not about private files, it&amp;#x27;s about &lt;i&gt;distributing&lt;/i&gt; content.&lt;p&gt;Google isn&amp;#x27;t spying on your private files, but does scan them when you share them publicly. E.g. keep all the pirated movies you want on your Drive, and even give private access to friends, but the moment you make them &lt;i&gt;publicly&lt;/i&gt; viewable Google scans them and limits access accordingly. So no, this isn&amp;#x27;t applying to your private diary or privately shared documents.&lt;p&gt;And second, to those who claim absolute free speech with no limits -- notice that the two main categories here are related to &lt;i&gt;democracy&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;health&lt;/i&gt;. All our legal protections ultimately depend on a democratic foundation -- undo that with misinformation and you don&amp;#x27;t have anything anymore. Similarly, your rights don&amp;#x27;t matter much if you&amp;#x27;re dead. Companies aren&amp;#x27;t allowed to advertise rat poison as medicine and neither are you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shrimpx</author><text>What I’m seeing is a disintegration of the narrative, with a relatively small group of disinformation plutocrats bombarding minds at scale with conflicting positions.&lt;p&gt;A compassionate view of humanity would say that humans are basically accepting. This openness can then be abused by viral misinformation. We could take the view that humans should just be self protecting and if they got duped that’s on them. But IMO that’s a depressing view of the world, and tends toward something like mutually assured social destruction in the limit. We need to protect our shared narrative.&lt;p&gt;Also personally I find the view that “democracy prevailed before, it’ll continue to prevail somehow” deeply unsatisfying. Democracy is not built into nature. It has to be proactively maintained and refreshed.</text></comment>