What happen when the Market Place of idea fails?

The market place of ideas has failed. In the market place of ideas money rules which through media monopolies "think" tanks, focus groups etc. ultimately pollute a lot of minds. Hence Q Anon, little guys worshipping billionaires and voting for Trump, tax cuts for folks many levels above their pay grade etc.

 

What are the signs of failure and what achievable measures are there to improve the situation?

I see talks of failure since the dawn of the internet where narratives are harder to pin down and can change at a moments notice.

Is that a justifiable reason to wind down the ideal of unlimited free speech?

We went through a lockdown period in the name of preserving our healthcare system and "flattening the curve". But even with a deep flattening from a year ago and mortality rates declining, we still have groups who want to isolate and contain because of their incompetence and fear of responsibility/culpability.

The Government has long feared its own people and our right to choose. Look no further to the surveillance state they fought tooth and nail to litigate and deny before the Snowden Leaks. They rammed its existence down our throats under the motto, "you shouldn't care if you have nothing to hide.".

Now people are led to believe that free speech is dangerous and divisive. This itself can mean many things. I thought diversity of thought and race led to better outcomes within working groups? What is the existential threat that compelled unity in the marketplace?

It may be that we're at an economic precipice that inflames populism and magnifies differences between haves and have nots. Government leaders are likely terrified of this and the limits of their own competence to dig out of it.

The other issue is the internet itself. It catalyzes anything and everything which makes the marketplace more quantifiable in what is winning and what isn't.

That's not really an exact root cause to a problem though. Kardashians being billionaires point to a problem but they aren't the problem.

So these challenges weren't given answers by the researcher because the researcher doesn't what the exact issue is.

I guess it's a good starting point for conversation but the implications from it's answers, such as curtailing speech, should be taken very seriously.

 

This is the flip side of the argument that we see many argue here that private media companies shouldn't be moderating content when the pressure is actually that they should be moderating more.. For that matter I highly doubt that many on the Right are actually for social media just allowing all content. The examples they bring up are about Trump and others on the Right getting their tweets and YouTube vids cancelled yet I've heard nothing about saying that Al Qaeda and ISIS should be allowed to have Twitter accounts or that YouTube should allow beheading videos from the Caliphate.

To the main point of this thread I understand the concern and clearly the internet has led to tribalism and division I don't think it's all hopeless or that the marketplace of ideas has failed. If we look at that the social media is restricting QAnon as they restrict ISIS they are doing so less because of government regulation but because they realize it effects their profitability. People are voting with their dollars or at least threatening to vote with their dollars and Facebook, Twitter and YouTube far more fear that their profitability will take a hit than any ideals of social cohesion.

This is the ultimate irony of the Right that long championed the rights of corporations that are finding themselves losing to "wokeness". Corporations aren't getting woke they are sensing that their market is.

 

So, Judoka, you are satisfied with the regulation of content dictated primarily by corporations deciding what maximizes their profit?
I hope you support limits on tobacco advertising for instance?

I still think that when it comes to speech the biggest problem is that without regulation you allow a small group to own the means of speech NBC, FOX, all the few remaining Newspapers, Twitter, Facebook etc and drown out speech that does not support their profits.

Political speech is difficult, but I do wonder what gives Murdoch, Fox and Friends the right to lie about Covid Virus in support of Trump. Experts believe these lies will ultimately have lead to around 500 k excess deaths.

 

We need more accountability.... maybe changing the libel laws.... definitely need a bill of rights for the 21st bill of rights.

 

During the second Iraq War, 70% of Americans believed Saddam was behind 9/11.

What was behind that, and are the root causes similar to the points of failures you listed?

I can agree that civility and even consensus over reality has gone over the wayside, but I suspect the driver or intent to change is more about supression than overall reform of our institutions.

For example, you claim you have deluded family members, what is the solution or metric of success to that? Less deluded family members per annum through re-education camps? I wouldn't mind enrolling some of my own until there's a growing and loud group to nominate me.

Or maybe it's privatizing media or hosting a state solution. Sounds reasonable for a clearinghouse of info. Would you always trust it? Maybe another Trump/Bush corrodes it's hard fought credibility...

Many of these grievances you listed came from the partisan frustration over the "Russia hacks". The most egregious came from hacking the DNC and Hillary's campaign which leaked classified info and soured just enough people to tip the election. Like Saddam and 9/11, the narrative morphed into outright election hacking (they did to minor success) and blowing up the reputation of Russia's troll army.

The media pushed these string of events fast and hard after feeling post election guilt for building up Trump with free publicity. They doubled down on the Mueller Report but couldn't tie the Russia angle together after the report dropped. The Troll Army angle was also galling in the sense that the reader is to assume those "ar-risk" and vastly underrepported groups were lower class or mindless rubes easily succeptible to brainwash or propaganda. I would assume they'd be a great audience for the media, should the media give them a little more credit to reach out to.

This doesn't mean Russiagate is entirely fake news, but it's a clear overreach and exactly the same failure in the marketplace that's incredibly difficult to resolve. In this case, the institutions we rely on for consensus or verification are blinded by their own biases and convictions. Which is mostly fine for a unified marketplace until they start purging and shaming their own reporters for reporting the opposite.

Democracy and free speech isn't easy. If we really want it, muting or shutting things down won't Save America. I'm also concerned over the speed of tech, such as deepfakes, but a looming fear of deepfakes shouldn't be license to throw out blunt legislation of oppression.

If it were all that simple, the first thing to pass would be a law demanding everyone to trust each other.

 

In a different thread, I'm ok with the idea of redefining internet companies as a form of common carrier. They have a murky status where they're not entirely liable for speech by its members but more or less retain ownership rights to the content (storage and marketing). Companies with "massive open marketspace free of physical and time barriers at a cost of nearly nothing" (large network effects) would apply here.

I do think the government would be overwhelmed by the amount and speed these companies have to process, so there's a steep learning curve when it comes to "dangerous tweets". I just think existing regulation that's been worked with for the past century could be starters for a more effective framework towards some safeguards people are worried about.

Overall, the extent and scope to which people normally process and parse information has largely been unchanged. Most wars generally come from an incident that was blown up or exaggerated such as the sinking of thr Lusitania or the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Even gold standards of journalistic integrity are fairly new. It popped up around the Vietnam War but most papers were known for muckraking and political alliances.

For starters, if everyone can post or report news, it should be mandatory for public schools to teach critical thinking in parsing and discriminating information. Maybe an hour of internet communication since it's so damn vital to the economy these days. The problem is that we want to make biology an optional myth and whitewash our history books, so a class like this does nothing for the establishment or the buy-now-trash-tomorrow economy,

Lets just place local ads for CNN in HS stadiums instead.

 

Trump and the radical Trump brown nosers and clones in the GOP are a perfect example of this.

 

the information warfare is making the smart people smarter and the dumb people dumber.

you got save investors making money of TSLA and AMZN and you got people using crazy glue on their hair on TikTok.
@Os Trigonum

people are easily manipulated by the media or worse, celebrities

be on the side of the smart people and you will survive

 

With tobacco that was false advertising as the state lawsuits showed that tobacco companies knew they claims they were making weren't true. In a sense like that certainly laws regarding proof in adverting should be enforced but if it was left to me I would be fine with advertising for more products including the tobacco. I will also note that we've seen a lot of advertising too against tobacco funded by all sorts of groups.

I find it interesting how both the Left and the Right talk about how media and social media are consolidated, which is why I was speculating we might actual see something done about them, but I doubt that you agree with some of our Right leaning posters that they should be regulated so that they cannot moderate speech by people such as Alex Jones or QAnon conspiracies. At that point then this cry for more regulation has to be determined as, regulation for what end and by who?

On one hand there is an argument that more content needs to be blocked / moderated and that these media outlets shouldn't be just allowing content on for profit while on the other hand there is call that media outlets shouldn't be moderating content and for free speech purposes they should allow content even that which many find offensive whether it affects their bottomline or not.

 

I will also point out the irony of complaining about size of social media companies on a site that isn't a Twitter of Facebook. It is still possible to have other social media forums and more reason to contribute to Clutch.

 

My issue with companies like Facebook is their buying off of competition like Instagram and WhatsApp.

 

The flea market of ideas is open every weekend.

 

Yes all those people who don’t contribute and are just leaching should contribute or leave immediately