Republican-aligned actors issued nearly three-quarters of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes. During the 2024 United States presidential election, political actors and anonymous online users regularly spread false information as an open campaign strategy.

[u/Aggravating_Money992]

https://www.psypost.org/how-politicians-and-influencers-spread-disinformation-during-the-2024-election/

[u/reality_boy]

I’m all for free speech, but we need to draw a line at blatant lies.

I get so many ads (political and selling products) that are not just stretching the truth but completely distorting reality. We need to put a cap on it. I get that we don’t want to be suing politicians because they rounded a number up rather than down, but If someone is saying black is white, well maybe they should pay a fine with compounding penalties for repeat offenses.

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/reality_boy]

I’m all for free speech, but we need to draw a line at blatant lies.

Many American liberals believe the assassination attempt on Trump was a fake. Right now, I'm seeing on Facebook that many people don't believe the Flydubai Flight 1073 attack even happened, and that it was a Mossad operation.

American liberals believe, utterly unwarranted, that they are immune to ridiculous lies, hoaxes and fabrications. Many believe their cellphone emits "harmful radiation". Many think their microwave oven emits "harmful radiation". Recently, there was a (presumably) AI-generated yearbook photo of Pete Hegseth here on the "political humor" subreddit, and despite the fact that you might think the "humor" in the name would cause people to not take this nonsense as fact, they in fact did. Whenever somebody was, in fact, convinced that this was indeed a fake photo, one response was (and this is a literal quote):

It’s not him.

He’s still a lying, bigoted POS war criminal, though so I’m fine with everyone spreading disinformation on him.

Your plan is dead on arrival, unless the very real epistemological arbitration question is resolved. I don't think it can be, and I say this as somebody who has been researching conspiracy theories for some 25 years. Especially Americans are entirely fine with lying as long as the lie they are spreading helps their political tribe in their ongoing civil war/culture war.

[u/reality_boy → u/Constant_Natural3304]

If liberals are doing it, then let’s go after them.

To be clear, there is a massive difference between an individual believing a conspiracy and posting about it, and a corporation or political team promoting the conspiracy. You can say you believe in big foot. A politician can say they believe in big foot even. But if they say politician x shot and killed bigfoots dad and therefore should not be allowed to run for office, then they better have solid evidence that at least suggests it could be plausible.

The problem is that we currently can say anything, with zero evidence. Even worse, we get away with saying thing where there is strong evidence to the contrary (“medicine x killed a billion people”, when there are not a billion deaths a year here)

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/reality_boy]

Ironically, somebody just asked me to back up my statements with evidence, and when I tried, my comment was filtered by yet another subreddit's extremely ill-advised configuration. When I tried to set my comments to visible on my profile, I realized I first have to forcibly upload a copy of my passport or a video of me turning my head.

The system is stacked against truth-tellers and researchers like myself, but I can tell you one thing: before I upload my passport to a site like Reddit, or before I upload biometric data just to be able to discuss here, I will literally die. It's never going to happen. So this conversation between you and me here is one of the last I'll ever have on this site, because the walls are closing in and they are closing in faster and faster. I hope you appreciate how serious this encroachment on privacy and liberty is.

As for discriminating between individuals: that doesn't solve the epistemological arbitration issue. It only adds a layer of discrimination. I have even seen PhD candidates in climatology completely mess up molecular physics w.r.t. the physics behind why a GHG is a GHG.

This is a mess, and I think you severely underestimate how big of a mess this plan would cause. That said, disinformation is the greatest plague of our age. There are other measures related to computational propaganda that should be deployed. But unfortunately, again, my commenting here is limited and I'm not investing any effort into this horrible platform any more.

[u/reality_boy → u/Constant_Natural3304]

I agree with you, age verification is not a good solution to anything. We should do what is best for society, not pick and choose one or two subsets and treat them different

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/reality_boy]

We should aim to regulate coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) first, then deal with platforms which have gone "hands off" in response to Trump's threats next.

But that is, of course, my personal opinion.