<story><title>Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2023/indian-government-fact-check-delete-social-media/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SomeCallMeTim</author><text>Ten years ago I would have agreed.&lt;p&gt;Today? I&amp;#x27;m not sure you&amp;#x27;re right about which is the greater threat.&lt;p&gt;Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a &lt;i&gt;known&lt;/i&gt; threat to Democracy &lt;i&gt;today&lt;/i&gt;. Right now.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure what the real answer should be. If &amp;quot;the market&amp;quot; manages to get the propaganda farms&amp;#x27; misinformation under control, then great. If they &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt;, the only answer I can see is for government to step in.&lt;p&gt;As they say, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Dying to protect absolute freedom of speech when bad actors are abusing it to destroy the country is not wise.</text></item><item><author>autoexec</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>citizen_friend</author><text>How do you reconcile the premise of democracy (that the general public will be able to discern and organize for good) with calls to supervise what opinions they can be exposed to?</text></comment>
<story><title>Indian government empowers itself to “fact check,” delete social media posts</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2023/indian-government-fact-check-delete-social-media/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SomeCallMeTim</author><text>Ten years ago I would have agreed.&lt;p&gt;Today? I&amp;#x27;m not sure you&amp;#x27;re right about which is the greater threat.&lt;p&gt;Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a &lt;i&gt;known&lt;/i&gt; threat to Democracy &lt;i&gt;today&lt;/i&gt;. Right now.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure what the real answer should be. If &amp;quot;the market&amp;quot; manages to get the propaganda farms&amp;#x27; misinformation under control, then great. If they &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt;, the only answer I can see is for government to step in.&lt;p&gt;As they say, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Dying to protect absolute freedom of speech when bad actors are abusing it to destroy the country is not wise.</text></item><item><author>autoexec</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not even opposed to flagging posts as “fake, false or misleading” because abusing those flags will cause them to be ignored, but removing content is a problem. State censorship is a much bigger threat to Democracy than false or misleading tweets and facebook posts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thewanderer1983</author><text>&amp;gt;Yes, state censorship can be abused. But promoting misinformation is a known threat to Democracy today. Right now.&lt;p&gt;State Censorship is being abused today right now. State Censorship is also a threat to Democracy. It&amp;#x27;s giving the most powerful institutions the tools to attack Democracy.&lt;p&gt;Who gets to decide what is mis&amp;#x2F;mal&amp;#x2F;dis information? The government? We as human beings are constantly weighing up information and evaluating details to inform our actions. Why do you think they have better tools to decide this for you? 
Who are these individuals in Government that have worked out all the truths of the world and why do you buy into them deciding this? Has anyone here worked for Government?&lt;p&gt;All the worlds information isn&amp;#x27;t easily summed up into Scientific truths that can be instantly fact checked by Government and everything else. This power your giving the government to decide what information you can see and not. Doesn&amp;#x27;t empower you the citizen to make good decisions. It allows government to sway your information to guide the outcome they want. Which is known as Public Policy, and they have decided that Public Policy is no longer up for debate for the plebs.</text></comment>