this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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Technology

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4853256

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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 points 5 hours 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.

Banning things you don’t like is not a solution

Tell that to Musk; X bans TONS of people over their viewpoints.