this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Actually it is. The social contract with news organizations is that, as long as they report facts and analysis in as neutral and factual a manner as they are able, they can continue to report those facts and analysis. The social contract with pundits is that, as long as they adhere to at least the broadest set of shared values common to the majority of Americans and disagree in good faith when they do not adhere to those shared values, they can continue to share their editorial opinions.
Fox has violated both of those contracts by their own admission, so we are no longer bound by those contracts to welcome their content as news or analysis in public spaces, or to allow their content as news or analysis in spaces we control.
tl;dr: they have decided to stop presenting news, which means that we must no longer treat their content as news.
Im sick of hearing about the fucking social contract this social contract that. The social contract is a construct that exists purly in the subjective. I have no problwm calling u a cunt munching retard and have no proboem u call me the same or worse. I can say fucked shit to u and u can say fucked shit to me there are people who would say thats part of the social construct there are people who wouldnt. Unless u want to write said contract on paper and get everyone to sign it (is that not what laws are?) its purly subjective if not usfull way to explain the actions of people.
Lets take it all the back to the basic concepts of a liberal society. There exists the marketplace of ideas anyone or thing is welcome to add whatever they want to this marketplace like any other marketplace demand then governs the rest. There is a demand for fox by many people they are theirfore a valid (not nessasarilly correct) viewpoint. To ignore this view and/or to ban it is to ignore a vast amount of peoples demand for such ideas within the marketplace.
So you're a sociopath.
No, that would be a normal contract. The reason we have a social contract is for the generally-accepted rules and mores of polite and productive public society; deviations from it have to be mutually agreed upon, or else the person deviating will face some real or social consequence.
No. Laws are a stopgap that puts our more important social contracts into an enforcement structure, but most of them we just live by. Don't call a pregnant woman fat. If someone asks for directions, don't lie to them. When you're waiting in line to order food, figure out your order before you get to the counter.
No. It's pretty generally agreed-upon. That's why, when you see someone violate it, you can generally make eye contact with someone else who saw it, and share a reaction of surprise or disgust.
So you want to change the social contract.
The free market only works to self-regulate when all actors (the company, the employees, and the public) have generally equivalent levels of power. The public does not have the same level of power as Murdoch's empire, in any way, shape, or form. Self-regulation may work when businesses are at the scale of a town or even a region, but the corporation gains too much power when they've grown beyond that size and soon becomes resistant or even immune to market pressures. So Fox would've been competed out of business if they were a local business, but they're too big to be affected by those pressures at their current scale.
There's also a demand for cannibalism by many people. Is that therefore a valid viewpoint? There were 18,456 murderers walking the streets in 2023. Should we consider their viewpoints valid and entertain them without government regulations?
Fox has created that demand, though; through fearmongering and misinformation. They've flouted the social contract in order to increase viewers. It's like saying that the guy who controls the town's water supply and has been putting extra salt on everyone's food has a "vast amount of demand" for his product. No, he's hurting people to drum up business and he should have that monopoly taken away from him.
nope, we are currently disagreeing about the social contract hence proving we have different subjective understanding of what it includes. also calling someone a sociopath doesn't seem like a good faith argument.
no shit Sherlock that would provide an objective contract thus solving the whole subjective issue.
sure so laws are the objective part of the social contract a majority of people have agreed (people still disagree about what laws should be)
that's called an opinion ones uses them to shift the social contract to better fit their subjective viewpoint
The marketplace of ideas in the conceptual gives every single person or organization an exactly equal level of power through the concept of free speech. I would argue lemmy has captured this ideal far better than anything yet by implementing censoring we destroy that equality we have sought to create. If fox's ideas stop being supported/downvoted they fall out of the marketplace of ideas at which point they either adapt or die.
absolutely we should let them speak and their ideas will be filtered by the marketplace.
Doesn't the first amendment literally prevent the government from regulating said viewpoints isn't that the whole fucking point? Let people have an opinion and express that opinion as they wish. I fully support your right to advocate for cannibalism or murder (as long as its not directed at a particular person or group) i will most certainly down-vote it and call you a fucking evil monster but I support your right to say it.
That's called good marketing
Fox doesn't have a monopoly in the marketplace of ideas nobody in history has ever had a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas to acheive that u would need to drive out every single person or organization capable of independent thought, or just start censoring people what you are actively arguing for
At the end of the day the social contract is just that a SOCIAL contract so in reality its not really a contract is it but a convention most people choose to obey. If it is beneficial to disregard it people will disregard it that's how evolution works. its your choice what parts of the social construct you want to follow. If you live strictly adhering to it then you are playing life at a disadvantage. Think about it this way your actions are being controlled by subjective contract that nobody else has to obey I would call that NPC behavior.
I don't know that we are. It seems to me that we agree on what's in it, but disagree on whether or not it's valuable.
I assign no moral judgement to that assessment, it's just a statement of fact: a sociopath shows disregard for the social structures and mores that govern society. You literally said as much. But a lot of very successful, very moral people have an antisocial disorder.
No. They're just the most important parts of the social contract; the ones which are simple to break but have greater consequences for society. The majority of people do generally have to agree with them (at least in a functional democracy), but that's not the reason they exist. Outside a democracy, laws exist without a majority of people agreeing with them, but they still serve to maintain a societal structure. And, most importantly, a social contract still exists in those societies; it's just significantly different.
You can't unilaterally decide to shift the social contract. Sure, it's amorphous, but it's not a free-for-all. If you want to change how we do things as a society, you still need buy-in from others.
This has never, in the history of humanity, been how a "marketplace of ideas" works when a massive power differential exists.
Maybe. It remains to be seen. The night is young.
There are a lot of assumptions in that sentence:
first, that banning bad actors from a site is an expression of censorship. It may be, but I'm doubtful.
second, that there is an inherent moral good in free speech that makes more powerful people harming less powerful people into an acceptable sacrifice. I vehemently disagree with this.
third, that allowing more powerful people to express their opinions on a platform alongside less powerful people is equality. I don't think it is; a powerful organization or person could implement coordinated inauthentic behavior to boost their viewpoint's reach far beyond where it could go organically. So there's already an inherent and intractable inequality to begin with. Allowing bad faith actors to use that goodwill to spread disinformation is not an expression of equality, but one which supports the bad actor at the expense of the people they are harming.
fourth, that bad actors' goals are aligned with those of us who want a generally equal society. Fox (and conservatives in general) has shown no signs of this desire, except when they're on the ropes. When their people are in office, they pound their chests and make a lot of noise about how important they are and how everyone should just shut up and follow them. They don't want an equal society, they want an inequal society where they are on top.
Again, this is not the way that the free market has ever worked when there is any substantial power imbalance. If Fox's ideas aren't supported, they pay for them to seem supported and sow disinformation until they gather enough traction to gain the appearance of pluralistic support. They don't need support in a purely equal system, because they have money and a platform.
Ok, but what if they're not? We have seen time and again the "free market" making decisions that harm a lot of people. What if cannibals aren't filtered out? What if blood sport is legalized? Is that level of intentional harm justified by the moral good of free speech?
Yes, that's reducto ad absurdum. So let's make it more grounded.
What if the "free market" decides that a candidate should be elected who thinks that Israel should drop a nuclear bomb on innocent civilians in Gaza, or who thinks all immigrants into the US (legal or not) should be deported, or who thinks that LGBTQ+ people should be put through a "therapy" which has been well-proven scientifically to be harmful to those who are subjected to it, or who supports a complete stripping away of privacy online and "real name" mandate, or who thinks that free speech should only be allowed to those who agree with him? These are all real viewpoints espoused by real politicians running for office today. What if the "free market" makes those viewpoints mainstream enough that they begin to be enacted?
Is the real harm they cause justified by the moral good of free speech?
This is not a reducto ad absurdum argument. These people are actually trying to get those things to happen, and with enough manipulation of the market, and enough apathetic or "neutral" people, they can probably get it done.
(Continued in next comment)
(I had to break up my reply to get it to fit in the character limit)
Yes. But time and time again, courts have ruled that the first amendment protections of free speech end when you use them to harm others.
Aha! So you do have a line. You do think that some things are too far. You do think that we should follow the social contract, and that there's a point beyond which first amendment protections should not extend. You just think that line is when it could harm a specific group, not when it could cause general harm. So you recognize the need for the social contract, and you would even enforce it, you just think that the line is closer to the abyss than me.
No, it's called lying. And if you're lying, you're not a news organization and shouldn't be treated as one.
No, they just have an obscene amount of money, which gives them the ability to move the market to their own whims, and to cast people who express dissenting views as evil, or demonic, or monsters. And they have the trust of millions of people to whom they have lied and scared into believing them. They have inauthentically manipulated the market into becoming a monopoly for a certain subset of the population.
Think about what you're saying and what conservatives are actually trying to do. They're manipulating the conversation to make it seem like every person or organization capable of independent thought is out to get the citizens of this society. They actively call for censorship of views or facts they don't like. They shut down stories at news outlets they own that would make conservatives look bad. They fire pundits who don't toe the line. They've got the power and the financial backing to be able to do all of the things you're talking about.
...yes. A set of standards and mores that people have mutually agreed make society better. The reason that it's called a "contract" is that it's reciprocal: act in good faith and you are extended the benefits of having acted in good faith. Act in a way that seeks to cause harm, and you are no longer allowed to participate in society at the same level.
We're sapient beings. We didn't have to live at the whims of evolution anymore. We can decide what we want to be. We can decide to shun people who want to harm others, and we can decide to uplift the oppressed.
That's pretty much the definition of sociopathy: thinking that you get to decide how you interact with society, which values and mores you follow and which you don't.
Or it's narcissism, thinking that you know better than others how they want to be interacted with. I guess it could be either.
I'd much rather live at a disadvantage and be a part of a community than cutthroat my way to the lonely top of a pyramid that society might well decide needs to be dismantled.
The stupid "NPC" thing again, eh? That's just inane "alpha-male" Andrew Tate drivel. Sounds like narcissism might actually be the right answer here, since you think you're the "player" and everyone else are just "NPCs" in the game that you're playing.
Throughout history, when humans advance and grow as a society, it's when we move beyond that brain-dead mindset and work together as a community to become something more. And every time we do, the person with the least power in the new structure has a better life than the person at the top of the old one.
Think about it. Early humans worked incessantly to get the sustenance to keep going and reproduce. Once they formed small farming communities, they were able to withstand bad weather and poor crop seasons, and suddenly they didn't have to work as hard; even the poorest farmer had a better life than the richest hunter/gatherer. Once the communities got larger, they were able to specialize, and some people didn't even have to specialize in hunting or farming; even the poorest artisan had a better life than the richest subsistence farmer. Once we developed cities and nation-states, we could decide to build infrastructure and even bigger works; even the poorest engineer had a better life than the richest craftsman in an agrarian context. Once we decided to democratize, we were able to focus on making life better for individuals; and then most people, even in the lower class, had a better life than the kings they dethroned.
We became modern humans by becoming social creatures.
So if you're going to keep on your free-market, Jordan Peterson/Ayn Rand tomfoolery, you might one day find yourself at the top of a dying civilization (though it's pretty unlikely, unless you happen to have been born very rich).
Or you could give up your adherence to the religion of the Free Market, and we could follow the proven track record of humans working together to do better things all the way to the stars.