I suggest you re-read the article/listen to her speak because she is clearly taking a side. What she’s speaking to is not limited to that day, to the best of my knowledge. If you disagree with the coverage or find it inaccurate, feel free to point out the inconsistencies or distortions.

It’s pretty clear that this is a denial, I suggest you listen to her speak.

From the article:

“It’s not just the usual suspects. It’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand,” she claimed, adding, “A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50% of young people in America get their news from social media.”

Clinton complained that when she tried to talk to young people “to engage in some kind of reasonable discussion, it was very difficult because they did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”

The former first lady concluded, “So just pause on that for a second. They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information.”

If that’s not a denial, what is? Even if there is some amount of propaganda, it’s undeniable the horrors that have occurred. It’s not pure propaganda and she failed to speak to what actually has occurred.

This is literally the same thing as holocaust denial. She’s claiming to be an authority of the history of the region, when in reality the history doesn’t invalidate or excuse what has occurred for over two years against an occupied people.

If somebody was denying the holocaust and making this point in the context of that denial, would you respond the same way and say it’s a totally fair point?

This will end up releasing private info in some form, right?

For most people, the best case scenario is vacuuming their floors with offline options.

If the truth is in between, it’s because we’re arguing different things.

Not necessarily! Sometimes the truth or a greater understanding can emerge even from two or more seemingly paradoxical or conflicting statements or ideas.

i.e. Dialectical reasoning

Thesis + antithesis = synthesis (which is likely still an inkling of the total truth, but nonetheless)

You make valid points, but I feel the truth lies somewhere in between your comment and the people in the chain that you are responding to.

I just don’t think it’ll ever be anything close to 99% effective given that this is a website. I explained why previously.

Thanks for engaging though - I do understand and appreciate the necessity of bot prevention and I’ll be sure to keep an eye out as a user.

As another user suggested to me in the past, there could be government-run social media that requires ID at sign-up. Maybe a service like that would appeal to you if our government (apologies if you aren’t US-based) wasn’t labeling certain speech as terrorism.

I trust instance owners and software developers to sort this out in a privacy-respecting way. If a specific instance breaks my trust, I might find it necessary to block it.

I don’t support violations of privacy and I appreciate some level of pseudonymity and anonymity in social media.

Who is going to vet the vetters? What if they become compromised or were compromised from the beginning? What recourse is there for users if there are data breaches?

If there was an actor behind a handful of accounts that are mostly run by LLMs (which mimic human input and interaction) it’d be easily viable for state-level or professional actors to pull such an operation off at scale and successfully manipulate a small platform like the fediverse - especially with some level of manual input or confirmation. Even taking believable selfies of real people that fit the profile is possible and can be anticipated if the actor or the organization behind them are resourceful.

I’m not entirely against instance-level detection that attempts to understand user patterns and prevent or flag abuse to mods and admins, but I do believe that humanized input and interaction can already be effectively emulated and will only advance as time passes.

I believe that increased scrutiny of users in a centralized manner is a privacy violation. I picked my instance intentionally and I give some level of trust to the instance owners, but I wouldn’t consent to them (or the software they choose to use) handing over my PII or usage patterns to a third-party group that suspects me (even through purely automated mechanisms). I would discontinue using the service in such a scenario.

To support my point that bot detection is mostly futile on the fediverse, I’d like to draw your attention to a parallel to this situation in gaming with humanized aimbots - which are already incredibly viable and are implemented in a variety of ways.

There are usually actual human actors guiding input to some degree, but the aimbot/etc. is designed to mimic human input to achieve believable results. I believe this technology could still advance quite a bit and there are new methods popping up as every day passes.

The key difference between gaming and the fediverse, is that the fediverse is not software running on our computers at the kernel-level (as with most anti-cheat) - it’s a website running in a browser.

Ultimately, I feel it boils down to just blocking instances that you disagree with the operation of to curate your experience - which is already available on Lemmy.

I disagree with the notion that we need a centralized list or that such a list is desirable. Again - I trust instances to sort this out.

As LLMs and deepfaking technology advance, the likely result will be completely undetectable bots that effectively mimic human behavior, even with advanced and potentially automated defenses.

See: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/17/pentagon-ai-deepfake-internet-users/

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to have to e.g. take a selfie in a specific way to be able to use the fediverse and have the ability to reach a broad audience - just because I am hypothetically suspected. Such a list will also likely chill participation, as an unintended effect.

None of that data proves anything besides potentially identifying bots, as you suggest.

It’s just an exercise in group paranoia - and would likely be abused by actual state/professional actors attempting to silence users/create bubbles.

Personally, I trust that the mods and admins will sort the bots/vote manipulation out. As for the bad actors, we can counter their propaganda with our good faith participation and our efforts to lead others to the truth.

You’re suggesting a public blacklist with thorough vetting, I just thought it’d be fair for you to step forward in such a hypothetical scenario. But you’re right, it’s not feasible - nobody can definitively prove that they are an independent actor.

Would you volunteer to be vetted first?

Okay, now split into at least 4 different companies and compete with each other - if we want the illusion of a free market and competition to exist in the minds of those living under capitalism.

🤯

It would be wise to make openly manipulating social media systematically (with or without AI) illegal, immediately.

Social media is for real people to freely engage and share their viewpoints, not for bot farms and other forms of organized astroturfing to shape opinion by appearing as independently-affiliated real people.

Discourse is an incredibly valuable tool for humanity, and we can’t let this be taken away from us - especially by those making a killing off of it or those paying for the privilege.

Capitalism is the best economic system we’ve ever invented.

If you limit yourself to only seeing the first-world (ignoring its class-based inequality) and forgetting the exploited third-world countries that produce the majority of first-world goods and in some part first-world resources, sure.

…guess we also ignore that e.g. your cell phone was made with resources derived from child slave labor (unless you bought a product like the Fairphone).

Out of sight, out of mind - am I right?

Democracy is the best political system we’ve ever invented.

Even in the best case scenarios, we’re still exploring how to implement democracy and have it actually reflect the spirit of the concept. Representative democracy (in its current iterations) is truly a farce and is far too corruptible. Increasing levels of direct democracy or decentralized governance would likely be desirable. Having our most qualified experts empowered to solve our problems would be desirable, as well.

Problem being, both need serious guard rails.

Democracy needs less guard rails and capitalism needs more - if we can continue to justify its existence as the dominant economic system.

The electorate has to be educated as to systems and morals.

Indoctrinated would be a better way to put it. Indoctrinated that capitalism is the best system ever (so people don’t hope for a system where they aren’t fundamentally exploited), indoctrinated to unquestionably accept fundamentally broken systems (and allow themselves to be dominated by hierarchy), and indoctrinated to identify with state-proscribed morals. Sounds like an amazingly free society that you are advocating for.

People are far less stupid than you let on - we need open and fair discourse, we need to ensure there is fair media, we need to cut out partisan tribalism, and we need to stop acting like anything we’re currently experiencing is desirable or even close to being “the best”. It isn’t - unions and trust-busting governance won’t save us.

Doesn’t really make much sense for me to switch to a flip phone unless it was specifically built for privacy/security. SMS and regular voice calls are insecure, it likely could connect to fake cell towers uninhibited, it likely doesn’t have hardware switches to disconnect various features e.g. modem, microphone, or camera.

It’s absolutely heart-wrenching to see human potential being snuffed out, to see this level of suffering.

Truly, the only things we stand to lose by incentivizing positive action is our dysfunction. Good riddance.