[pavanky]

You say this while half the country believes random people on Youtube and Facebook, refuse to wear masks in a pandemic that is killing people by the thousands.

I was young and believer in open internet once (and still am mostly) but the society as a whole has underestimated how much people are susceptible to being deceived and the cost differential between spreading and refuting false information.

I don't see this as anything other than an extension of anti-spam over email efforts of early 2000s.

[fumar]

Marketing works and that means propaganda works. Constant messaging can and will influence people's behavior.

Consumer Reports studies consumer products, product marketing claims, and real-world use. That enables consumers to make more educated purchase decisions. Is there anything like that for political news or news in general? If news is a form of entertainment which is a product, then it deserves some level of critique to measure its accuracy.

[googlryas]

So if that is the mental state of half the country - is democracy worth defending? Why not just ban wrong-think and come out and admit that authoritarianism is the best, since too many people are too stupid to make the right decisions?

[pavanky]

Because we are faulty creatures with faulty institutions. Let us work with what we have. Authoritarianism is mostly never better than democracy. Absolute democracy isn't always better than authoritarianism. And in this case it is largely irrelevant because the government is not the one censoring people.

The arguments about if and when companies can exercise these rights are good to have otherwise we may end up in one of the extremes.

[Solvitieg]

"The idea that half the population has lost its mind while you have retained a perfect grasp of reality is unlikely."

[oblio]

That quote would work with "the entire population".

Instead, now he's not alone, the other half of the population supports him and holds the opposite opinion and I'm quite sure the first half the grand parent comment mentions (Covid denying crowd) has lost its grasp on reality. Or they have other motives to deny it... Which makes things worse.