@prologic you wrote _“discussing ideas openly and transparently on their merits should not get you banned”_. That **is not** what is happening. It is baseless misinformation with the intent to harm, confuse, and create chaos. It is subversion. It is ignoramus behaviour.

@prologic and people, just people spreading things they believe to be right, but aren't. "Brainwashed" people. Idiots, and the like. People with their own backward, erroneous, beliefs (white race is superior, jewish genocide didn't happen, and the like). Moderation (and yes, that includes banning), and what Twitter is disassembling now, is required.

@prologic I agree with you, we should be discussing ideas openly and transparently. Because it's though discussion that we can get the reality. As @bender says "people spreading things they believe to be right", maybe we are ourselves spreading false claims, without knowing, we can only know by exchanging ideas, and being open. The biggest question is what is "misinformation", I believe the answer change according your beliefs. Many times we have seen what was categorize as "official" misinformation, being actually real.

waiting for we define what is misinformation, I will continue dressing like :


Just to be sure (of course it's an attempt to do a joke)

@abucci good, and comprehensive reply, thank you!

> I don’t know what the answer is, but we can’t be naive and think that just by “debating” we are going to stop people from spreading bad ideas.

Indeed! It comes to mind the popular saying, "How do you deal with nazis? — You punch them in the face."

I still believe that debating is the most peaceful way to deal with disagreement because

@abucci, the point on debating in social network, is not stopping people from spreading bad ideas. Is to make everybody else that look at the debate think, and not fall on those bad ideas, by hiding the bad ideas, and not debating them, we may push others people to believe in them, and we may push people that already believe in them to stay in an echo chamber and become worse.

@bender the problem with that sentence is that if one day two people may disagree, and they may convince themself that the other is spreading hate speech,/disinformation or worse than the other is a nazi, and ask for physical harm.

@tkanos, you wrote *"I still believe that debating is the most peaceful way to deal with disagreement"*. At which point do you stop debating? If you were debating with Nazi Germany, at which point you stop, and take action? Don't be naïve. You can't reason—and, thus, nor debate—with most people believing, and spreading, misinformation. As @abucci wrote, I don't know the answer. Now endlessly "debating", and otherwise doing nothing, ain't.

@bender most of the people are not extreme, so taking an extreme example to validate a today's behavior it has no much point. But I will try to answer your question. First if I was in Germany during those times, I hope that I would have been in the good side of history (I hope so because I grew up around jews family), then if it had been the case I think I will have been arrested, and it is when I would have stopped talking (but at least I'm sure I won't have stopped).

@abucci I mostly agree with you in many points, I will read the points you are talking about. For the echo chamber, I tend to disagree a bit, becasue you may be in an echo chamber without knowing it, thus not being able to go out, if you don't see people debating in those echo chamber. One of the biggest echo chambers are the social network recommendation system, you may be recommended a lot of view like yours, and without knowing stay in that echo chamber (youtube is great for that, I mean for letting you around what you are comfortable with).

And each time I talk with people, I assume I am maybe wrong. How could I know that in some subject I may be wrong, if people doesn't debate with me, but just call for my canceling.
I can do research but :
- in some cases I may not do research because mostly I don't care, so I have a wrong view point, and I don't know.
- If I do research I may stay in my echo chamber, not even knowing where to search.
- Maybe some research will indicate me the right direction, but it will be very costly ( a simple debating sentence, may be more indicating)
- And people have the right to be wrong, people have the right to don't know everything, people even (if I stay in the law) have the right to be assholes (unfortunately)

thanks I love data.

For the echo chamber I'm doing a study on it. And for now see the opposite.

Example : Someone that is into flat earth "theory" (for example), thanks to the recommendation algorithm will find more content about it, and liking it, the recommendation loop will show him more and more till the point he is surrounded by that content (that part is already validated), then he will begin to see others "theory" near the "flat earth" cluster. I think that at the end (not yet there) that person will be looking (believing?) that the pope is an alien and he is the one ruling the earth. (at least he will know the truth about aliens :D joking of course)