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HackDice t1_j7bw4bc wrote

What do you think content algorithms are. What do you think search engines have been since their inception? The prioritization of certain cites or information on Google was an issue for years with many legal cases involved.

You also need to consider whether being told something or not told something is the same as someone else deciding what you can know. Is knowledge being withheld from you if you don't actively seek it out? Should certain knowledge be put into the public space so that it is always presented to people, in order to avoid the potential that something may have been "suppressed" because nobody looked for information on it? Think of this like an extension of Freedom of Reach vs Speech arguments.

There is a lot more complexity to information and how it exists than what some free speech warriors will have you believe. Especially when most of the time their commitment to free speech seems to begin and end at the most infantile and useless forms of speech. While previous generations fought for our right to criticize our governments, hold the institutions accountable and speak truth to power, it seems more and more like now people are only interested in whether they are allowed to be derogatory to others.

You also need to consider all the cases where information can actually be incredibly hazardous to supply to people. Teaching people how to make bombs is a good example of that. Also divulging the locations of people is dangerous especially if given to people with predatory behaviour or stalkers. Is it 1984ish to want to protect your friend from a stalker by refusing to tell the stalker of your friends location?

The main thing to take away here is at least that we already kind of exist in this information environment. Machines and Algorithms have already been deciding what information we should look at for a while now and you can rightly criticize the companies that run these systems for generally not being trustworthy or open and very often abusing their position to advance their own positions. We shouldn't fetishize this issue as being more or less grave than the ones we already face just because it's an AI system. It is merely an extension of the problem that has already existed.

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