I completely agree, and this is a prime example of when government intervention is absolutely necessary:
Consumers cannot protect their long term interests and someone is taking advantage of it.
There are many reasons why they can't. Sometimes there's competition that forces you to only consider your short term interests. Other times a limited resource (ie time, expertise) is required to evaluate a set of choices and the consumer can't afford it on it's own. Or maybe the widespread adoption of one thing creates a monopoly and makes other choices impossible.
Whether the end result is nutritional deficiencies from unenriched food or complete and total misinformation, someone needs to intervene, and the only organization that has the obligation and means to do so is the government.
The governments all across the world need to stop this cancer of misinformation and deception from spreading any further. We need to make them stop it.
"The governments all across the world need to stop this cancer of misinformation and deception from spreading any further. We need to make them stop it."
The irony is, a good number of these govs persist because of misinformation and deception. Until a tool like FB actually undermines that status quo the odds of change are low.
Look at the alleged Russian interference in the USA. The USA's spin was on the order of "we would never do that." Obviously, we know, that's no true. The US has been "protecting American interests" for ages.
But Facebook does seem to have undermined the status quo in the US and Britain, if we attribute anything to fb. Actually, what they have to do is almost undermine the status quo but not quite, and still look threatening. If the status quo is undermined, the new people have no motivation to change it.
1) The rich and powerful have gotten more rich and powerful since the birth of FB.
2) Cyber-surveillance by state and non-state actors has increased since the birth of FB.
Yes, on one hand it's correlation (but on the other it's an assessment of the status quo). If 1 depends on 2 then FB is not to be considered on the side of the people.
> Consumers cannot protect their long term interests
If that's really true, then consumers are doomed. Nobody else can protect your interests if you are unwilling to do so yourself.
> the only organization that has the obligation and means to do so is the government.
Governments are subject to all of the same misaligned incentives that ordinary people and corporations are. Only it's worse with governments because they make the laws.
In other words, governments "solving" these problems is a "cure" that's worse than the disease.
So what you will about the accuracy of the claims of the prophets and other scriptural authors, but it's hard to call them news today. They will very clearly not be locked up just for that alone. (As for atheists, don't assume they'll get off any easier than believers when all the facts are known.)
Consumers cannot protect their long term interests and someone is taking advantage of it.
There are many reasons why they can't. Sometimes there's competition that forces you to only consider your short term interests. Other times a limited resource (ie time, expertise) is required to evaluate a set of choices and the consumer can't afford it on it's own. Or maybe the widespread adoption of one thing creates a monopoly and makes other choices impossible. Whether the end result is nutritional deficiencies from unenriched food or complete and total misinformation, someone needs to intervene, and the only organization that has the obligation and means to do so is the government.
The governments all across the world need to stop this cancer of misinformation and deception from spreading any further. We need to make them stop it.