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sexpig by night posted:the issue with this standard is it also means we can't post the NYT or WaPo or basically any major newspaper source, because it's been proven constantly that they've done active collusion with the US government to launder fake stories to absolute genocidal ends such as the Iraq war leadup being a constant cycling of 'anonymous sources' that turned out to be Rumsfeld's chosen mouthpieces supporting other 'anonymous sources' that turned out to be Cheney's all overtly working with the reports to launder a lie. How does that not make them as much a propaganda arm of the US government than RT is Russia's? This is false equivalence because state propaganda is RT's sole reason for existence. NYT and WaPo do occasionally (and usually unwittingly) act as mouthpieces of bad actors, but unlike RT, their primary goal is to act as the Fourth Estate. Indeed, they do frequently hold their own government to account, and do really important investigative work to expose the dark side of both government and corporations.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:43
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Jaxyon posted:If somebody is wrong, they are going to post wrong poo poo, and you can prove them wrong, you can post correct sources. This isn't remotely what they are saying, bud.
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Feb 1, 2021 16:12
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OwlFancier posted:I don't really think that is true. Propaganda is when people I don't like do it. Your definition of propaganda in this context is overly broad and misses the mark. Here's the short version: political propaganda almost always originates with official government sources, usually via a statement by an administration or one of its agencies or officials. State-controlled and/or state-funded media institutions (such as RT or Zvezda TV, in the case of Russia) take that propaganda and create messaging around it for various audiences, both domestic and international*. That messaging (which can differ or even be contradictory, based on its target audience) is then picked up by other outlets that have a global audience and may be aligned with, but not directly funded by, that government (such as News Front), and proliferates through both witting and unwitting agents of the narratives. From there, it is distributed to and weaponized for social media, usually in the context of undermining faith in institutions or amplifying civil discord. During that whole time, the reporting will be amplified and reinforced by sources both earlier in and at the same level of the funnel. That last bit, i.e. social media weaponization, is something we are very familiar with here in D&D: it comes in the form of both hot takes from randos or intentionally inflammatory misrepresentations from more well-known figures, who have swallowed the propaganda hook, line and sinker because it has been carefully crafted to infiltrate domestic discussions by aligning with certain worldviews (that are almost always anti-government and anti-institution in some form). This is not to say that all propaganda is foreign. What it means, though, is that simply pushing an agenda is not necessarily propaganda; they have overlaps, but also important differences. Propaganda always mixes facts with fiction, and its goal is always to sow discontent and mistrust and cause chaos amongst real or perceived adversaries. If you work for a non-profit whose mission is to promote fair working conditions, and you publish a white paper showing the benefits of increasing minimum wage, you aren't necessarily pushing propaganda. If you work for Breitbart and publish an op-ed asking "innocent" questions about Hunter Biden's laptop, you definitely are; there is no requirement for you to be aware that the story and its various narratives have originated elsewhere, or even that significant elements of it are false. You might just be an unwitting agent. Here is the important part that concerns D&D: there is absolutely zero reason to rely on propaganda sources to support one's argument. Zero. You don't get to say "well, they may be a bad source, but what they are saying contains some truth!" because the very nature of propaganda is about obfuscating the line between truth and fiction. If something is true, there will always be much more reputable sources reporting on it. The more independent the source, the better — but it's worth noting that lots of sources that claim to be independent are anything but. When in doubt, I've found that Wikipedia pages about those sources tend to do a reasonably good job of outlining potential issues with them. Honestly, I second the idea that we might need a thread that focuses on what propaganda is, how to identify the ecosystems where it originates and propagates, and how to resist it effectively and prevent its spread. ---- * This isn't to say that all state-funded media sources are propaganda sources, but that's a different subject.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:34
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A Buttery Pastry posted:How can propaganda meaningfully be said to originate from government sources alone? No part of what you laid out there can't be done by a private organization, for similar reasons. In that case the purpose might not be to turn a country's populace hostile towards its leadership, but instead against each other, as we see time and time again with for example the Murdoch empire. The notion that state propaganda is the only kind of propaganda that exists, or that only heavy-handed directions like you see in Russia count, is preposterous. Sorry, I should have been more clear: by "context", I was referring to the RT vs. NYT argument people were having earlier. Propaganda can definitely originate from non-governmental sources as well, such as a conservative think tank that pushes misleading or false anti-tax narratives. And you're right, there isn't a rule that says it cannot be positive; again though, RT is unlikely to spread pro-USA propaganda. 
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Feb 1, 2021 20:18
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Jarmak posted:I'm not trying to be an aggressive dick but this is fantastically missing the point. Bad sources are bad specifically because they intentionally mix facts in with disinformation and dishonest context in order to push a false narrative. Making you think they sometimes have something valuable to say is literally how propaganda outlets push disinformation in the public narrative: treating it as something worthy of individual analysis elevates the disinformation to something that's "up to debate" by literally, again, attempting to play themselves off as simply "not mainstream". Yes. This is precisely why Breitbart for example openly and blatantly attacks "mainstream media", because being non-mainstream is a virtue for them. OwlFancier posted:Seeking to capture the moderation in order to restrict discussion to sources you like is weaponizing bad faith information. Because I absolutely do not at all believe that the people looking to do that are somehow "apolitical" and that their idea of what is and isn't an acceptable source has nothing to do with their political leanings. Nah, the only bad faith that is going on here is openly accusing people of wanting to prevent bad sources from being posted simply on the basis that they disagree with what those sources are publishing.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:25
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OwlFancier posted:If you want to convince me that you want to control sources with zero political intent whatsoever then I think the burden of proof is on you to do that, because literally nobody in history has yet managed it. If the effect of restricting access to certain sources ends up being that we no longer get regularly subjected to anti-US propaganda from monstrous totalitarian regimes, I would be okay with that. That is the extent of my desires on this topic, personally. I can't speak for others.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:33
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awesmoe posted:people don't like maggie haberman because she's a woman who tweets badly That is one hell of a claim.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:37
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OwlFancier posted:I have quite strong opinions about moderators feeling the need to stick their oar into places because the assumption that just because they have the ability to do things means they have to find things to do. I have repeatedly suggested that I think less moderation is better and that I also have almost never seen it actually improve anything. They get appointed, they have some big idea to change things because the appointment is seemingly a mandate to treat the forum like their own personal experiment, they make a bunch of changes, it achieves nothing, they burn out or end up getting kicked out because it turns out they were doing some minor atrocity or other on the side, we get another one, the cycle repeats. "Less government and fewer regulations" is a deeply flawed and self-centered idea that libertarians always push for, so I'm not surprised to see you, an apparent Libertarian thread regular, pushing for its forums equivalent. Of course, I don't know if you yourself are actually a libertarian, but the argument you are putting forth is. Suffice it to say that just because you personally have never seen moderation improve anything does not mean that it actually does not improve anything. It's also a meaningless statement to make because it is unfalsifiable. Your personal philosophy doesn't matter, and neither do the mini-treatises you have posted on political epistemology; what we are interested in doing in this thread is to come up with practical rules and policies that might make debates and discussions higher quality and less tedious. I'm not a moderator myself, but I'll go out on a limb and say that "Don't moderate" will probably never be D&D's moderation policy.
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Feb 7, 2021 00:13
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OwlFancier posted:And I would agree, I am entirely willing to exclude political positions like that from the forum because I disagree with them politically. Censorship I have no issue with as long as it is open, enthusiastic, and by common consent. Things like white supremacy and genocide denial are not political positions. The reason we don't allow them is not because we "politically disagree with" them. It is because we find them vile and immoral. Furthermore, the decision to not allow such content on Something Awful was not made based on common consent. The reason for that should be obvious: if common consent had been sought, there would undoubtedly have been posters who would have objected, even if purely on "all censorship is bad" grounds, and by your reasoning, that would have been sufficient to not censor that content. Meaning, at some point you as a moderator/admin/owner need to ignore dissenting voices and do what you think is best and right. You might end up being wrong, but such is life. It won't be the end of the world. With regards to this particular discussion, the question isn't "should mods maintain an extensive blacklist and probate people who ignore it?" I think most people, including the mods, think that is wildly impractical. Rather, the question is, should foreign propaganda outlets, which operate solely to advance the interests of monstrous totalitarian regimes at the expense of liberal democracies (who themselves aren't perfect, mind you), be accepted by posters as valid and credible sources in debate and discussion? If we think that those regimes are vile and immoral, then there is no reason to accept their mouthpieces as sources, and no reason to expect other posters to tediously and painstakingly try to refute them using counter-citations. Instead, the poster who is using them as sources should be dunked on and told to use a better source. And you know what? For virtually anything that is credible and newsworthy, there will almost always be one.
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Feb 7, 2021 02:00
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Discendo Vox posted:Prompt: I like this a lot!
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Feb 11, 2021 01:33
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Cefte posted:Irony aside, the assertion I suspect you're paraphrasing badly is this one: It doesn't matter if DV's paraphrasing it badly, because it is a false claim anyway. I used to moderate a political forum that saw much more traffic than SA back when the latter was at its peak, and I've seen what is possible with good, effective moderation. Its effect is actually the complete opposite of what you are claiming: well-moderated spaces encourage people to post high quality content, and discourage the opposite and punish it when it happens. Cefte posted:That's the crux for me, and the core source of negative outcomes that can outweigh the good, depending on implementation. The question remains open: what happens when someone (a poster, an idiot king, a mod) disagrees with credibility assessment provided by another poster? Presumably, the issue is raised (either via PMs, or in a subsequent iteration of these feedback threads, or in QCS if it's egregious and urgent), the moderetor's decision is compared against the written guidelines (which we are about to have, thanks to DV) and the system is fine-tuned. The goal is not immediate perfection, and just because immediate perfection is not possible is not an argument towards not even trying new moderation policies or working towards improving existing ones. Arguments from futility suck, especially when they come from an ex-moderator of the space.
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Feb 11, 2021 19:41
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Cefte posted:I would suggest that arguing for a balanced, even-handed and pre-defined ruleset is not an argument from futility, but then again, I was never a moderator. Hmm, it appears I got you mixed with... McCaine I think? Either way, apologies. I'm not as young as I used to be, and my memory gets hazier as times goes by.
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Feb 11, 2021 20:12
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Ghost Leviathan posted:That said though, agitprop is also happy to publish truth that's inconvenient for their enemies and give platforms to people they've been silencing rightly or wrongly. No. Having a bias is not propaganda. Having an agenda is not propaganda either. Propaganda has a very specific meaning. You don't get to redefine it just to do your false equivalence bullshit. Ghost Leviathan posted:What else could you call all the support for the Iraq invasion? It was a systematic failure of journalistic mechanisms and standards (rather than complete and total lack of them, as is the case with propaganda outlets). Specifically, individual journalists — many of whom had been personally affected by the 9/11 attacks — were feeling traumatized and hotblooded, not to mention under strong societal pressure to support an invasion. On top of that, their editors did not sufficiently question or challenge them due to a desire to publish the scoops as quickly as possible. This is what led to them reporting that Iraq had WMDs, for example, as well as them giving voice to many Iraqi informants and defectors who themselves desperately wanted Saddam gone. Those accounts were rarely verified, and even when they were, the follow-up articles were buried deeper in the paper, as opposed to making it to front page, because they weren't the types of stories that would attract reader attention. All of that was still not propaganda. Journalists failing to do their jobs, and their editors failing to do their jobs, is not propaganda. Just because an outlet publishes something or even a series of somethings in support of an administration or its goals does not make it a propaganda outlet. Propaganda has a specific meaning. What is worth noting about the New York Times controversy with regards to the Iraq invasion though is not that they failed do proper journalism, but that they admitted they made these mistakes and issued an extraordinary public apology (there is even a detailed breakdown of articles that were not properly verified before being published here). Further, their failings have become a textbook case of caution taught in journalism programs in the US and in Europe. You might argue that was too little too late, but the point is that an actual propaganda outlet like RT or Epoch Times or PragerU will never do this because they don't give a gently caress about truth or integrity at all; indeed, their sole purpose is to intentionally distort the former as it fits them, without any regard to the latter. I'm Middle Eastern. I was personally affected by the Iraq invasion and occupation, and I have a lot of disdain for both the Bush administration, and media outlets like NYTimes and WaPo that supported them at the time without doing their proper due diligence. And you know what? I can still tell the massive difference between them, and the god drat Russia Today or Epoch Times, and I find it deeply, profoundly sad when people suggest they are all the same, or even remotely similar, because it says a lot about their simplistic worldview, which apparently has no room for specificity or nuance.
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Feb 12, 2021 20:14
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