Tony L
Administrator
It is clear that bullshit propaganda is having an increasing influence on politics the world over at present. Blatant lies and misinformation used to fuel prejudice and xenophobia etc and turn ugly sentiment into votes for far-right and other extremists. As someone who has been online since before the WWW even existed seeing how the most ugly political forces have grasped control and the damage they are doing to this world via “our” platform really is hugely depressing.
By saying that the internet’s biggest strength has always been that it is open, free and absolutely out of reach of any authoritarian states. It is bigger than they are. This means no matter how awful, bigoted and untruthful the alt-right etc propaganda we see I’m reluctant to see anything at all that attempts to regulate the internet itself. It needs to remain far beyond the control of any state and I remain a full supporter of net neutrality etc. What I’d like to see in its place is proper national political accountability, i.e. if a political party, affiliated pressure group or dodgy paid data mining company produces lies to sell a political party, side in a referendum or whatever then they, or whoever funded them, can be sued for false advertising the way an insurance company or bank would be. Leave the internet itself well alone, it needs to remain exactly what it is. We should however be able to sue the likes of Arron Banks, Nigel Farage, Steve Bannon, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson etc etc out of existence as their whole modus operandi is lying to the public. If they were selling any financial product, insurance, car or whatever the way they sell politics they would all be in jail right now.
PS When I started typing this I merely wanted to link to and briefly comment on the recent Parliamentary Select Committee findings on ‘fake news’ and see what we all thought, but it turned into a bit of a rant! Here’s the ever-wonderful Carol Cadwalladr in The Guardian making some good points, but I think we need to be very careful to keep state authoritarianism well away from the internet and attack political liars, shills and con-artists directly, not the inherent freedom of the platform. Here is the parliament.uk link.
By saying that the internet’s biggest strength has always been that it is open, free and absolutely out of reach of any authoritarian states. It is bigger than they are. This means no matter how awful, bigoted and untruthful the alt-right etc propaganda we see I’m reluctant to see anything at all that attempts to regulate the internet itself. It needs to remain far beyond the control of any state and I remain a full supporter of net neutrality etc. What I’d like to see in its place is proper national political accountability, i.e. if a political party, affiliated pressure group or dodgy paid data mining company produces lies to sell a political party, side in a referendum or whatever then they, or whoever funded them, can be sued for false advertising the way an insurance company or bank would be. Leave the internet itself well alone, it needs to remain exactly what it is. We should however be able to sue the likes of Arron Banks, Nigel Farage, Steve Bannon, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson etc etc out of existence as their whole modus operandi is lying to the public. If they were selling any financial product, insurance, car or whatever the way they sell politics they would all be in jail right now.
PS When I started typing this I merely wanted to link to and briefly comment on the recent Parliamentary Select Committee findings on ‘fake news’ and see what we all thought, but it turned into a bit of a rant! Here’s the ever-wonderful Carol Cadwalladr in The Guardian making some good points, but I think we need to be very careful to keep state authoritarianism well away from the internet and attack political liars, shills and con-artists directly, not the inherent freedom of the platform. Here is the parliament.uk link.