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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 1 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.308s | source
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itchyjunk ◴[27 May 20 13:42 UTC] No.23323027[source]▶
Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment.

Is there no way to consider social media as unreliable overall and not bother fact checking anything there? All this tech is relatively new but maybe we should think in longer time scale. Wikipedia is still not used as a source in school work because that's the direction educational institution moved. If we could give a status that nothing on social media is too be taken seriously, maybe it's a better approach.

Let me end this on a muddier concept. I thought masks was a good idea from the get go but there was an opposing view that existed at some point about this even from "authoritative" sources. In that case, do we just appeal to authority? Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view?

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Beltiras ◴[27 May 20 13:45 UTC] No.23323084[source]▶
There's a big murky middle where you can't really tell but in the case of what Trump is complaining about an informed observer would come to a conclusion really quickly.
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zaroth ◴[27 May 20 13:59 UTC] No.23323316[source]▶
Voter registration rolls are pretty notorious for being out of date and unreliable.

Personally I don’t have a problem with anyone who wants to vote by mail being able to request a ballot. Most states already allow no-excuse absentee ballets.

I think the problem arises when the State automatically mails ballots to every registered voter at an address.

If too many ballots show up at a house because someone requested it, there’s a paper trail. If too many ballots show up at a house automatically, there’s zero paper trail to be able to tell if they were all filled out and mailed back, besides the overall voter participation rate going up, which surely it will do.

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michaelt ◴[27 May 20 14:31 UTC] No.23323881[source]▶
Seems to me the solution there is to fix the voter registration rolls, rather than to make voting harder for people who are already on the rolls.
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1. zaroth ◴[28 May 20 04:15 UTC] No.23333326[source]▶
It’s quite possible that “fixing the voter registration rolls” actually is worse at “making voting harder for people on the rolls” then simply letting people who want an absentee ballot to request one as they have always had to do.

Voting is a responsibility and a civic duty. It need not be effortless, and in fact it should not be effortless. It should be economical, practical, predictable, safe, and secure.

Registering to vote is one step in the process. It’s something anyone who wants to vote can and should know about. Typically cities/towns will send out a census every year which if you do not complete will result in you being removed from the voter rolls, but I’m sure it varies by state.

Once you’ve registered I think most people would expect they can lookup their designated polling time and place and arrive then to place their vote. You would not want someone who has registered and expects to be registered to be unexpectedly removed from the rolls, for example, and only discover this at the last minute.

This also doesn’t address the auditability concern. I would be extremely wary of any system which can associate a serial number on a ballot with who it was mailed to. Such a system is totally unacceptable in my opinion.

By comparison, I have absolutely no issue keeping a list of who requests a mail in ballot, just like I have no issue with keeping a list of who votes in person. Obviously people who receive a mail-in ballot cannot also vote in person, right?

So I don’t particularly like the idea of banning in person voting either. I’m sure many people will find voting by mail convenient, but I’m sure there are also people who find that physically voting in person is both an important ritual and more reassuring that their vote actually is being counted, but also could be more convenient for them.