To be honest I was not aware that Facebook invited anyone to take out that data merely asking them to delete it shortly after. That's the part that's new and offending to me.
Meanwhile I tolerate political campaigns using targetted advertising. I just wish people were showing more competence when it comes to media consumption and the ability to distinguish between truthful reporting and obvious lies. The media illiteracy is the real problem I see with this issue.
And the solution to toxic ingredients in food is to make everyone a competent chemist who can analyze the stuff they buy?
While education certainly is a good idea, and helps make society more resilient than relying on centralized authorities, I don't think the successful strategy of collaboration in a society is to make everyone an expert at everything and have no consequences for trying to screw over other people.
> And the solution to toxic ingredients in food is to make everyone a competent chemist who can analyze the stuff they buy?
Well, you obviously don't have to be a competent chemist to buy healthy food in the same way that you don't have to be a journalist or experienced intelligence agent to conclude that Hillary Clinton probably doesn't run a child pornography organization from the basement of a pizza joint.
There's a baseline of minimum media literacy, or food buying skills, you're expected to exhibit and proper education helps to meet and exceed that threshold.
Additionally and in contrast to toxic ingredients, thruthful journalismus often isn't a clear, binary conclusion - it's hard to regulate a problem that is open to interpretation and operates with blurring lines, gray areas, deceiving narratives and ommitted details. I think it's an issue that can't be regulated away and suggest that we find ways to make it less effective by reaching an audience that is able to question those narratives.
> Well, you obviously don't have to be a competent chemist to buy healthy food in the same way that you don't have to be a journalist or experienced intelligence agent to conclude that Hillary Clinton probably doesn't run a child pornography organization from the basement of a pizza joint.
Well, or do you? If there was no regulation ensuring at least a certain baseline of both food safety and correctness of the labeling, how far would you actually get without being a competent chemist? And, well, yeah, it seems obvious to you, but the thing is, to a lot of people, it is actually an intellectual struggle to understand that that is bullshit, because they are constantly fed information that supports their world view and makes it seem coherent to them.
> There's a baseline of minimum media literacy, or food buying skills, you're expected to exhibit and proper education helps to meet and exceed that threshold.
Well, yes, but the question is not whether it is expected, but whether it should be expected. And whether the amount of media literacy is actually comparable to the expected food buying skills. I mean, just think about how hard it actually is to buy outright toxic food. Really, you can go into any restaurant or grocery store and buy anything they offer, and it just won't be toxic, it will almost all be perfectly fine for human consumption. Maybe not extremely healthy, but nothing that will make you ill in the short term, except for rare exceptions. Now compare that to well-known news outlets. It's completely trivial to get your news from a "news source" that is largely fabricated bullshit, it is just everywhere.
> Additionally and in contrast to toxic ingredients, thruthful journalismus often isn't a clear, binary conclusion
I don't think toxic ingredients are that much clearer than any other field of investigation. Yeah, there is stuff that will kill you instantly, that's easy, but what increase of cancer rates makes ingredients obviously toxic?
Is media literacy something that can solve this though? A society can educate its citizens (and should do so), but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to.
I've considered the idea of a course for general education that specifically teaches about these psychological traits and the ways they can backfire... a sort of anti-manipulation, bias awareness training camp.
Set up scenarios involving
- fake news about classmates and show everyone how they respond vs researching and being skeptical...
- personal info security vs pwnage / outing / fraud...
- scenarios invoking biases and showing explicitly how they affect decisions and actions
> but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to.
Isn't that exactly the kind of problem that education can solve? Of course that's a decade long process which doesn't happen over night.
Education can somewhat increase the percentage of people we would consider media literate, but there will always be a group of voters who simply can't reach that level of media literacy — some of whom are literally illiterate (a couple of percent in most modern democracies) and some who are literate, but can't (or won't) fully grasp the subtleties of media manipulation. Those are still a lot of voters.
Meanwhile I tolerate political campaigns using targetted advertising. I just wish people were showing more competence when it comes to media consumption and the ability to distinguish between truthful reporting and obvious lies. The media illiteracy is the real problem I see with this issue.