this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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The trouble with creating a ministry of Truth to approve what can and cannot be said online, is truth can be manipulated for political reasons.
There's no need to create a ministry of truth ... just a ministry of information technology.
And all it does is heavily regulate any company that handles large amounts of people's data and communications.
There shouldn't be an argument of what people say on the internet ... there should be a serious conversation about whether we should freely allow private companies to handle, process or manage so much personal data without regulation or public control.
Not having this conversation means that we are giving up the freedom and management of the internet and by extension our democratic society to private corporations.
That's correct in the abstract but we have a really serious problem with intentionally deceptive bad actors right now. It's better to have a ministry of truth that you can hold politically accountable.
We have a problem with bad actors in every sphere, including government. The only lasting solution that doesn't just further empower propagandists (of one or another stripe) is to raise healthy skepticism so people don't just credulously accept the first thing that "feels" right. Seeing as declining media literacy is a major reason our politics has been steadily going down the toilet, it should be clear no one source can be a permanent arbiter and no one point of view should be considered to always be correct.
I think it's terribly naive to assume it will hold people accountable just because it's done by the government instead of a company.
How many shitty things have politicians gone and gotten away with? Do you really trust them this time?
Politicians are motivated by re-election chances. Corporations are motivated by money. The question is not whether a Ministry of Truth would be objectively good, the question is whether it would be less bad than what we have now. And what we have now is a Corporation of Truth with no oversight and laughable regulation. Some oversight, some accountability, and some aligned incentives is better than no oversight, no accountability, and completely misaligned incentives.
And if they're in charge of the truth, what do you think they'll do to improve their chances?
Politicians are notoriously corrupt and will happily chase personal profits just as much as any company does. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that such a ministry would have any oversight or accountability just because it's politicians instead of business people.
And we can make the same demands for accountability and regulation regardless of who it is.
Teaching people early how to parse the truth and spot manipulative information would go a long way to lessening the problem, but it would also make it harder for politicians and corporations to manipulate people. So there's definitely negative motivation to doing anything that would make easy for people to spot spin on their own. (Edited typos)