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Should I join "free speech" alternatives?
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Asklemmy
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Good luck man, you're about to learn how easy it is to get banned on those free speech alternatives. Still funny though.
Be careful however. No matter what, you're still just a brain in a flesh jar. You are susceptible to false information and lies as your brain can't really differentiate between false and correct info that well.
You are not immune to propaganda
I never understood this argument. How is it any different for leftist propaganda? This just feels like telling someone to stop thinking because you're on our team now and we want to make sure you don't leave.
It's not. In no way, shape, and or form. Once more, you are not immune to propaganda.
Again, I'm not stating you shouldn't seek out people who disagree with you, I seek these people out often, but you need to understand what your brain will do.
You should generally be cognizant of bias and the fact that you will, inevitably, accept without confirmation some information or internalize information you've confirmed incorrect. This is not only true to one group, and is just as true for those under the umbrella of "leftist" as much as under the term "alt right".
I will state it's less dangerous to be less cautious here than a free speach absolutist community. Here, we value truth. There, they value all speach even objectively false. Here, you'll see false info removed there, definitionally, or is not.
Lastly, for fascism, death of truth is a defining reality. To paraphrase Mussolini let not truth stand on a pillar except insomuch as it assists in our goals. In the places where absolutist freedom of speach reigns fascists, famously very good propagandists, thrive. This is a danger above a left winger repeating false statistics around racism in the police force, or the rates of spousal abuse. Or even myself lying about that Mussolini quote at the beginning of this paragraph
Thank you for the responce however and the respectful tone you took, I hope I clarified>
So if I understand correctly, you're saying that
So first of all, how do you determine that #1 is true? I've seen my fair share of misinformation on Lemmy and the left-leaning parts of Reddit getting highly upvoted and vice versa. But I'm basing this on what I personally know (and who knows if I'm right?) and in general, there isn't much objective info going around. It's mostly people sharing their sentiments on a topic with little to no factual information (e.g. "fuck [entity X]").
#2 also assumes that you're right to begin with and that sharing these false statistics would lead to a better world. Take false statistics on police racism for example. This can be a problem in many ways. Let's say hypothetically that there is no police racism, but we say there is and we convince everyone that we need to fix it. This can divert resources away from other problems (e.g. working on reducing spousal abuse), and thus making problems worse elsewhere. Moreso if the police force is tasked with handling spousal violence and they're now tied up in internal investigations, maybe losing funding, and thus reducing their capabilities. It'll also be fuelling an unnecessary conflict (possibly violent) between people who should otherwise be allies in the struggle that is life. More people get hurt, more people can die. That's a pretty dangerous outcome.
I'll go over this again later when I have more time, but for now, I just want to say that I don't appreciate spending so much time trying to understand what you've written only to be met with accusations of having deliberately done the exact opposite. I may not be particularly smart, but I'm putting in the effort.
So my efforts didn't yield the correct understanding. I recognize that it happens and that's why I put a short summary of my understanding right at the start so that you can easily correct it without having to read through everything else and expend unnecessary energy trying to parse it out. If you don't want to continue the discussion, that's fine. I can find my answers elsewhere. There's no need to be a dick about it.
Your argument seems to suggest :
I fear, looking at the millions of people who are not well informed about some things (say privacy + GAFAM), that this is wishful thinking. Remember the experiment with people in the cinemas where some soft-drink images were almost invisible merged into the movie and made people thirsty and buy more drinks during the break ? In my opinion the human brain is unfortunately not as powerful as people make it believe it is. And I have no big issues in general with leftist propaganda as I'd like to see the planet saved rather than destroyed.
It isn't about the greater idea, it's about the small lies you don't know you're accepting. Of course that isn't to say you can't engage at all with this content (I certainly seek out people who disagree with me.) as you say, with constant effort and confirming everything you'll catch most of it. No matter what you're going to end up believing something without confirming it or even realising it. Good propaganda goes unquestioned. It seems like something obvious, small, and in some base way unquestionable.
In a torrential downfall there's no way to catch each raindrop, no umbrella that can block it all. You are going to get wet, even just a little.