Well, are you sure you don´t confuse the right for "free speech" with the right for "spreading lies" ?
I am a little bit amused that you take a german politican as the headline while 95 % of your text is concentrating on british circumstances.
About Nancy Faeser:
In my eyes, it is free speech to claim that Nancy Faeser gives a fuck about free speech. It is not free speech to make the impression in social media that Nancy Faeser herself said that she "hates free speech". This is simply not true.
German social media is immensely attacked by russian bots spreading fake news about german politicans. Russia for example paid three german people to fill the exhaust of 43 german cars with construction foam and leaving stickers that gave the impression that this has been done by green activists. This happend during the german election campaign.
I don´t know if you are familiar with german circumstances but fake news campaigns in social media reaches a worrying level since the russian war on Ukraine. This is hybrid warfare and in my opinion it has nothing to do with surpressing free speech to pillory fake news.
Free speech does not include the right of intentionally telling untruth...
I have had virtually the same conversation with a Sikh friend over the Indo-Pakistan war. The weaponisation of misinformation, even here in the UK, is one of the biggest dangers we face today. It is so bad, AI, which of course scours the internet for information and collates it to create responses to questions, is becoming fascist in its responses because so much Right Wing rhetoric is now being used.
The reason for the rise of fascism is simple - it is deliberate manipulation of the people. For power, for money, for votes. Boris Johnson that master manipulator of British media, along with other Conservatives like David Cameron worked out early on that if you flood the 'airwaves' with 'news' people can only absorb so much and will tune out the rest, allowing them to 'get away with' much they want to remain unseen. Add on Johnson's 'Dead Cat distraction' technique which introduces something so outrageous people are looking at that rather than the thing they should be looking at. We know that Johnson right now is in the US advising Trump and his minions with all these little tricks. Many times, they are used to 'test the water' to see just how far these politicians can go. If people don't react, then the policy goes through. If not, they U turn and the story gets buried.
Plus there are the outright lies, withholding of pertinent information, D Notices, the use of NDAs, frivolous SLAPP lawsuits, the mis-use of Data Protection regulations, and on and on it goes.
The tricks are many and diverse. It is a full time job just keeping up with them.
I would argue that Substack writers should be held to a higher standard, and due dilligence in research is essential. After all, this is a community of writers, philosophers, scientists, free-thinkers and yes, Politicos; It behoves us to do our homework. .
Let's give Pontifex Minimus some slack, I for one do not believe any deception was intended.
Fake news can confuse anyone. I have seen many people i would suppose to have the same political attitude that i have linking fake news they thought of being facts. Sometimes a research of only two minutes was all it took to prove that these “facts” has been fake news.
My advice:
Question every single link whether from friend or foe. Everybody can be fooled, everybody can be careless.
Social media made it so much easier to spread lies, so social media is part of the problem. And the greatest part of the problem are billionares owning social plattforms so that they are able to spread their own lies at first. No one should be on X anymore, but it might be a part of human nature that people often prefer hearing lies instead of hearing the truth. It is soo much easier to see the own prejudices confirmed. I see this every single day, even here on substack and it starts to affect my own life. I just can´t stand all these lies any more…
Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, LIz Truss, Priti Patel, Jacob Reese-Mogg, Kemi Badenoch, would all, I would argue, think free speech should be banned if not say it out loud. They all have ‘Trumpist’ Traits.
Regarding the picture, clearly it is fake because no politician would hold up as sign saying "I hate free speech". And because it is clearly fake, there is no intention to deceive, so that makes it OK IMO.
As for Russian bots and Russian influence, I think Germany and other European countries are not acting anywhere near tough enough. Why not have a law saying Russia's the enemy and saying anything pro-Russian amounts to treason? That's what I'd do.
Well, are you sure you don´t confuse the right for "free speech" with the right for "spreading lies" ?
I am a little bit amused that you take a german politican as the headline while 95 % of your text is concentrating on british circumstances.
About Nancy Faeser:
In my eyes, it is free speech to claim that Nancy Faeser gives a fuck about free speech. It is not free speech to make the impression in social media that Nancy Faeser herself said that she "hates free speech". This is simply not true.
German social media is immensely attacked by russian bots spreading fake news about german politicans. Russia for example paid three german people to fill the exhaust of 43 german cars with construction foam and leaving stickers that gave the impression that this has been done by green activists. This happend during the german election campaign.
I don´t know if you are familiar with german circumstances but fake news campaigns in social media reaches a worrying level since the russian war on Ukraine. This is hybrid warfare and in my opinion it has nothing to do with surpressing free speech to pillory fake news.
Free speech does not include the right of intentionally telling untruth...
I have had virtually the same conversation with a Sikh friend over the Indo-Pakistan war. The weaponisation of misinformation, even here in the UK, is one of the biggest dangers we face today. It is so bad, AI, which of course scours the internet for information and collates it to create responses to questions, is becoming fascist in its responses because so much Right Wing rhetoric is now being used.
The reason for the rise of fascism is simple - it is deliberate manipulation of the people. For power, for money, for votes. Boris Johnson that master manipulator of British media, along with other Conservatives like David Cameron worked out early on that if you flood the 'airwaves' with 'news' people can only absorb so much and will tune out the rest, allowing them to 'get away with' much they want to remain unseen. Add on Johnson's 'Dead Cat distraction' technique which introduces something so outrageous people are looking at that rather than the thing they should be looking at. We know that Johnson right now is in the US advising Trump and his minions with all these little tricks. Many times, they are used to 'test the water' to see just how far these politicians can go. If people don't react, then the policy goes through. If not, they U turn and the story gets buried.
Plus there are the outright lies, withholding of pertinent information, D Notices, the use of NDAs, frivolous SLAPP lawsuits, the mis-use of Data Protection regulations, and on and on it goes.
The tricks are many and diverse. It is a full time job just keeping up with them.
I would argue that Substack writers should be held to a higher standard, and due dilligence in research is essential. After all, this is a community of writers, philosophers, scientists, free-thinkers and yes, Politicos; It behoves us to do our homework. .
Let's give Pontifex Minimus some slack, I for one do not believe any deception was intended.
Fake news can confuse anyone. I have seen many people i would suppose to have the same political attitude that i have linking fake news they thought of being facts. Sometimes a research of only two minutes was all it took to prove that these “facts” has been fake news.
My advice:
Question every single link whether from friend or foe. Everybody can be fooled, everybody can be careless.
Social media made it so much easier to spread lies, so social media is part of the problem. And the greatest part of the problem are billionares owning social plattforms so that they are able to spread their own lies at first. No one should be on X anymore, but it might be a part of human nature that people often prefer hearing lies instead of hearing the truth. It is soo much easier to see the own prejudices confirmed. I see this every single day, even here on substack and it starts to affect my own life. I just can´t stand all these lies any more…
> Let's give Pontifex Minimus some slack, I for one do not believe any deception was intended.
Clearly there is no deception, since quite obviously no politician would hold up a poster saying they hate free speech.
Not meaning to be flippant given the gravity of the conversation, but I wouldn’t put it past Trump at this point! ;o)
Trump is erratic, and in many ways not a typical politician.
Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, LIz Truss, Priti Patel, Jacob Reese-Mogg, Kemi Badenoch, would all, I would argue, think free speech should be banned if not say it out loud. They all have ‘Trumpist’ Traits.
Regarding the picture, clearly it is fake because no politician would hold up as sign saying "I hate free speech". And because it is clearly fake, there is no intention to deceive, so that makes it OK IMO.
As for Russian bots and Russian influence, I think Germany and other European countries are not acting anywhere near tough enough. Why not have a law saying Russia's the enemy and saying anything pro-Russian amounts to treason? That's what I'd do.
"I disagree with Corbyn on policy, but think he's basically a decent person.
Starmer is different: he's a snake. He reminds me of Stalin."
Remind me to buy you a drink sometime ;o) Well said.