The "propagandists" have unlimited resources compared to the individuals, filtering them on FB is a small battle in a big war. These individuals' "reality" is much more immediately in peril than some perceived danger of your reality being overwhelmed by propaganda. Teach people discernment if you are truly concerned.
Who decides what constitutes a "tenuous grasp on reality"? Is it those who said that Saddam had WMD? The ones who said that the Democratic primary wasn't rigged? The ones who said that it was ridiculous that the US government was spying on its own citizens? If the censors had their way, all of the above may very well passed into history as undisputed facts.
The ruling class decides of course. That's what all the hand-wringing over populist 'fake news' is about. The politicians, media, think tanks, and other powerful special interests are used to being the arbiters of truth, only allowing effective public debate on the narrow disagreements between them. They are as dishonest as anyone else, but have the resources and sophistication to be less crude about it. Instead of outright lies, they usually misrepresent the truth with selective emphasis, rhetorical tricks, and omitted facts and arguments. Now the internet threatens their control of information and they are trying to use their remaining power to protect their dominance before it's too late.
That's exactly right. The powers-that-be are absolutely terrified that they have lost control of the narrative. They have had almost total control over the "public debate" since 1917 when Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, the first official federal propaganda arm. Ever since they have used a variety of legal and illegal (from the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 to Cointelpro) means to keep an iron grip on public discourse. With the of the internet came the (mostly) free, unfettered, uncontrolled dissemination and spread of information. While this has been of utmost concern to the ruling class for several years now, their total failure with the collapse of the Hillary Clinton campaign, which had the complete support of every establishment propaganda arm, was a real shot over the bow (that their defeat came at the hands of a corrupt, carnival barker was salt in the wounds). These attempts at censorship and information control are a last gasp to control the narrative. Unfortunately, the outcome is still very uncertain, with the power of the propaganda of the ruling classes on full display among the multitudes who welcome their calls for censorship of "fake news".
A couple of good replies have already been written, but I'll add another, using the new gold-standard often used to advocate censorship: The Russians pushing out disinformation to help Trump win the US election.
Millions of Americans weren't instantly converted from open-border advocates to wanting to build a Wall and limit immigration, thus supporting Trump, because of a few Facebook ads.
Propaganda doesn't work in a vacuum. You already need an actual issue to be its catalyst. And censoring anyone who speaks of it, even if it is in an exaggerated way, is probably better in the long run than letting it fester until it really blows up with much more force.
I would same thing for this new idea of hate speech that some people prefer to ban.
And censoring anyone who speaks of it, even if it is in an exaggerated way, is probably better in the long run than letting it fester until it really blows up with much more force.
I'm guessing that this was mangled in an edit and some essential word was left out. Or are you saying censorship is the opposite of "letting it fester", and that if we can prevent issues from being spoken about we can prevent them from ever exploding?
Oh thanks - I did edit it, leaving it even more confusing.
I think censoring ideas will lead to groups moving to echo chambers where whatever issue they have, is magnified into something far more absurd than the original issue probably is. And that inevitably leads to violence.
It's better for society to allow open debate, even if its uncomfortable, than to just ban users or groups, make ad-hominem attacks, and hope it goes away.
Censoring modern propaganda greatly limits the damage it can cause, while protestors have more traditional ways of organizing their protests.
I am not a fan of censorship but it appears some fraction of credulous humanity requires it to maintain at least a tenuous grasp of reality.