• Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    3 days ago

    Misinformation laws can quickly get 1984-ish. In the US both political parties have different ideas on what’s true and what’s misinformation, I don’t really like the idea of criminalizing “misinformation” when the accepted narrative will change every 4-8 years.

    Edit: Surprisingly, this is now one of my most downvoted comments ever on Lemmy. Do you guys really want the government deciding what you can or can’t say online?

    • snrkl@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 days ago

      I agree with the potential for Orwellian uses, and I agree with the need for SOME kind of repercussion for active misinformation peddling and manipulation of the masses. (As opposed to honest mistakes).

      Like all things in this world, I feel topics like this are nuanced and the current need to make everything into a chalk/cheese divisive issue is counter productive. I feel we need mature people who can navigate that nuance without the need for forced polarisation of the topics.

      I’ll also add some context for people outside of Australia:

      The Onion / Shovel headline is cunning, as locals with knowledge will tell you the target of the the parody article (Peter Dutton) is a well known user of defamation suits to go after people who say things about him he feels are untrue.

    • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yeah. To me the misinformation conversation just sounds like”why are the poors talking to each other instead of listening to US?”

      If we had a misinformation law in 2001, would it have applied to the news outlets or gov officials who were lying about the Iraq war?

      There is A real problem in how we sort out second hand evidence, it’s just that this problem didn’t magically start when social media became a thing and it won’t be fixed by returning authority to those same old institutions who were lying to us in the past.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      “can get” implies there’s examples of like misinfo laws becoming orwellian. I cannot find such examples. Laws that penalize people for knowingly lying for profit, clout, etc tend to curb bombastic discourse. These standards are common in defamation suits. Extending them to more media makes sense.

      What’s always orwellian is like anti terrorism laws where laws intended to curb oppositional rhetoric or groups become applied on large swaths of people.

      The actual laws they prosecuted Assange for, for instance were anti espionage laws if I recall.

    • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Sure, and this one probably wasn’t great but also the article shows why there’s of course a valuable line

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    This what they want…

    Their real crimes to be drowned out by bullshit, so voters just write everything off as misinformation when it’s a Republican, but “proof” if it’s about a Dem.

    Funny headline tho

    • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netOP
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      4 days ago

      This what they want…

      Their real crimes to be drowned out by bullshit, so voters just write everything off as misinformation when it’s a Republican, but “proof” if it’s about a Dem.

      Funny headline tho

      Peter Dutton is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, he’s an Australian politician.

      Funny comment tho

        • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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          4 days ago

          For someone that’s constantly in every US politics comments section talking shit, you don’t even know who is a US politician and who isn’t.

        • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netOP
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          4 days ago

          It’s okay to just admit you don’t know who Peter Dutton is and also don’t even know enough about US politics to realize who is and isn’t part of American political discourse.

          • TrippaSnippa@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            To be fair though, Dutton and the Liberal party are pretty closely aligned politically with Republicans, they just have to tone it down to not scare off the more moderate voters.

            • ZeroCool@slrpnk.netOP
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              4 days ago

              I did…

              No, you didn’t.

              But I don’t think any interaction we have is going to be productive

              There’s something we can agree on. Bye bye now 👋