this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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...and if nobody is aware of this due to dis/misinformation...?
Walk me through your thinking on that. You believe that the world governments, the greatest purveyors of disinformation and propaganda on the planet, are going to allow everyone to know the truth by outlawing disinformation? You really, truly believe this?
I'm not arguing specifically for governments to outlaw disinformation. I'm arguing that those who want to perpetuate capitalism use disinformation, quite effectively in the US, to ensure it is perpetuated. That absolutely includes those in government.
If everyone thinks capitalism is the best option and that every other alternative ever conceived leads to a dictatorship or destitution/famine, then capitalism is here to stay.
I'm in favor of combating disinformation and misinformation as a priority. I'm not at all opposed to starting with the topic capitalism.
Edit: Also, this from very early in the linked article:
It's not calling for government or laws. It's calling for coordinated collective action.
So then who decides what is and isn’t disinformation? I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen governments claim that people were spreading disinformation, only for it to come out years later that the people pushing against propaganda were not wrong at all. Does Iraq’s WMD’s ring a bell?
Calling for a global censorship authority is by far worse. So much worse. I don’t understand why you think that makes it better.
I really don't understand what is so hard to understand.
People who take part in collective action against the false information?
...so you are saying that if a bunch of upset people around the world collectively organized the dismantling of the Iraq WMD propaganda, that would be... worse somehow?
Collective action is not a global authority any more than a union is a labor authority. I do not see this as a call for a UN Information Authority. I see this as a call for people, like you and me, to organize and coordinate effective campaigns against disinformation and misinformation. Normal people, or maybe people educated on the topic, acting collectively. Collective action. Like workers organizing a general strike, or activists organizing protests, but instead of not working or protesting in the streets the participants are coming up with and disseminating organized facts on the internet and anywhere else it might be deemed effective.
Can you source any explicit mentions of government being recommended to handle this responsibility in the article or are you just reading it that way?
This is such a level of naivety, I gotta believe you’re just trolling. As if the majority position is not often wrong, or that peer pressure and mob mentality won’t take the reins. Or that a bot network won’t just rule over it.
The best option we have is free speech, uncensored, with trusted institutions critically verifying positions.
Is that not what literally happens and is happening right now?
That's also already happening right now. I'm not saying this article contains The Solution™. My entire original point was that capitalism is feeding disinformation en masse through every available channel to brainwash the masses into believing capitalism is the one and only system that won't lead to disaster and that it the world would fall into ruin without it. How do you stop capitalism without breaking through the disinformation?
Holy tap dancing Christ. That's literally, literally what is being called for. The hope is to organize so that the criticism ends up being more than some scientist being talked over by a corporate thinktank employee on some "news" debate show.