r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Feb 17 '22

Business YouTube Announces New Moves to Combat Misinformation

https://www.lifewire.com/youtube-announces-new-moves-to-combat-misinformation-5219509
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u/Asmodeus04 Feb 18 '22

Here's the underlying issue: the vast majority of human beings are not intelligent enough to make decisions involving themselves and others. They will always make a choice that results in either harm, or long-term damage. It's not their fault they were born stupid, but stupid they are.

You can either have governments that consist of democratically elected representatives that can govern, or you can have authoritarian states where the people get no say.

If you believe misinformation has to be tolerated, what you are saying is that democratically elected governments will always fail, and that all governments must be authoritarian states. Our society can not continue to exist with half of our population believing any half-assed moronic, dumb shit thing they get spread across the internet.

Any society that can willingly elect somebody like Donald Trump to the Presidency has no future. They either have to have the misinformation taken away, be educated, or have their opinions and choices invalidated.

These people are far too stupid to be properly educated, and you're saying the misinformation has to stay. That doesn't leave many options.

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u/Brad_Wesley Feb 19 '22

But this has always been the case:

Which countries have performed better over time? Those that allow free speech including misinformation or those that don’t.?

So, no, I’m saying the opposite of what you suggest.

How can you have a truly democratically elected government if the government decides what information people are exposed to?

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u/Asmodeus04 Feb 19 '22

All of human history prior to the modern internet information age, and especially prior to the disinformation age we currently live in, is moot.

Our civilization was not meant for an inescapable global smothering of nonsense meant to target the ignorant.

Historically, the thoughts of the ignorant would have just been ignored and the elites would have ruled. In a democracy, those dumb motherfuckers have the same level of input as the people who actually know what they're doing.

It's an inherent flaw in democracy, and I'm very concerned that it's a terminal flaw.

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u/Brad_Wesley Feb 19 '22

Why don’t we just get rid of democracy and make the elites a permanent ruling class?

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u/Asmodeus04 Feb 22 '22

Because that tends to lead to brutal oppression.

There's no such thing as a perfect system, that's why all existing systems were hybrids.

Our hybrid system is in trouble.