Taking on the 5G nutjobs

[Simon]

That wouldn't fly here, people take freedom of speech very seriously. Trying to silence someone like that would create an uproar and backfire by amplifying their message greatly.

well tell them to defame a person instead and see how fast they get sued!

[SilverSolder]

That wouldn't fly here, people take freedom of speech very seriously. Trying to silence someone like that would create an uproar and backfire by amplifying their message greatly.

I think the answer to that, in America particularly, is to sue those that publish false statements.  E.g. a cell phone company could sue a 5G nutcase for damaging their potential market through libelous claims -  even I, as a non-lawyer, could probably make that one stick in court with a jury trial.

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time! -  I am 100% certain that at some point, this kind of thing will be completely normal and the expected result of lying online will be that it is not "free" speech if your speech is untrue and also costs other people money!

[james_s]

That wouldn't fly here, people take freedom of speech very seriously. Trying to silence someone like that would create an uproar and backfire by amplifying their message greatly.

I think the answer to that, in America particularly, is to sue those that publish false statements.  E.g. a cell phone company could sue a 5G nutcase for damaging their potential market through libelous claims -  even I, as a non-lawyer, could probably make that one stick in court with a jury trial.

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time! -  I am 100% certain that at some point, this kind of thing will be completely normal and the expected result of lying online will be that it is not "free" speech if your speech costs other people money!

But that would just amplify it. Hoards of their believers would take that as an example of the big evil corporations trying to stamp out the truth in the relentless pursuit of profit. People like that dig in their heals and go on the defense, you can't stamp out a religion, you can't (directly) control what people believe. There is just no way to silence something like this through force. You can aggressively prosecute anyone who damages property, attacks anyone or advocates violence though.

[SilverSolder]

As I have said before the only way to stop this is laws, let them howl about censorship and free speech, if it's factually wrong then it should not be up. Those that go to great length to produce videos should be sued. The problem is that our legal system seem to care about money than anything else. If people can sue for defamation why can't science sue for defamation?

I think "they" actually can, it is just that in the past, the thought of doing that would be preposterous.   It isn't preposterous any longer!   

Sooner or later, a young and creative lawyer will see an opportunity.  They will probably decide to go after Youtube or Facebook for not preventing the garbage from being displayed, since they have all the money...   meaning, the big sites will have to get better and better at self censorship, effectively, in order not to be raked over the coals in court.

[SilverSolder]

That wouldn't fly here, people take freedom of speech very seriously. Trying to silence someone like that would create an uproar and backfire by amplifying their message greatly.

I think the answer to that, in America particularly, is to sue those that publish false statements.  E.g. a cell phone company could sue a 5G nutcase for damaging their potential market through libelous claims -  even I, as a non-lawyer, could probably make that one stick in court with a jury trial.

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time! -  I am 100% certain that at some point, this kind of thing will be completely normal and the expected result of lying online will be that it is not "free" speech if your speech costs other people money!

But that would just amplify it. Hoards of their believers would take that as an example of the big evil corporations trying to stamp out the truth in the relentless pursuit of profit. People like that dig in their heals and go on the defense, you can't stamp out a religion, you can't (directly) control what people believe. There is just no way to silence something like this through force. You can aggressively prosecute anyone who damages property, attacks anyone or advocates violence though.

You can definitely also go after the proselytising kooks by issuing take-down notices to the ISPs, and so on.   Why make it so easy for the proselytisers?  -  Make them work for it - make it harder for them to recruit new members.  Get them used to dealing with being taken down every month or so - it's just part of a kook's life!   Make it socially unacceptable - force them to use the dark web (which is, conveniently, probably the most monitored by the security services!).

Look at how the music industry dealt with piracy...

[james_s]

You can definitely also go after the proselytising kooks by issuing take-down notices to the ISPs, and so on.   Why make it so easy for the proselytisers?  -  Make them work for it - make it harder for them to recruit new members.  Get them used to dealing with being taken down every month or so - it's just part of a kook's life!   Make it socially unacceptable - force them to use the dark web (which is, conveniently, probably the most monitored by the security services!).

Look at how the music industry dealt with piracy...

Yes, that is an excellent example. They tried the hard line approach and it backfired, piracy exploded, customers got tired of being sued, virtually nobody sympathizes with the RIAA. The only thing that eventually reduced piracy is the availability of convenient online streaming services that give people what they want (being able to listen to a huge library of music on many different types of devices wherever they are) without jumping through hoops. The piracy is still out there though, anything popular will be widely available in torrents and is trivial to find. If streaming services got expensive enough or became less convenient the piracy will make a near instant comeback. The music industry utterly failed in their attempt to stamp it out, the pirates won and the industry capitulated after it became obvious that they were on the losing side of a war and allowed the streaming services to exist after years of fighting against them.

[bd139]

After reading all this I think the best outcome is to ridicule them and make them look stupid to their peers.

[tautech]

Don't overlook these nut cases are money driven and only leakages of their financial details will indicate if this is a fact. How to impact on their income stream is another matter............

Decades ago a very busy NZ activist's financial position was subject to bank worker official secrets act yet those in the know were shocked at the savings accumulated......can't reveal my sources. 

[Simon]

That wouldn't fly here, people take freedom of speech very seriously. Trying to silence someone like that would create an uproar and backfire by amplifying their message greatly.

I think the answer to that, in America particularly, is to sue those that publish false statements.  E.g. a cell phone company could sue a 5G nutcase for damaging their potential market through libelous claims -  even I, as a non-lawyer, could probably make that one stick in court with a jury trial.

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time! -  I am 100% certain that at some point, this kind of thing will be completely normal and the expected result of lying online will be that it is not "free" speech if your speech costs other people money!

But that would just amplify it. Hoards of their believers would take that as an example of the big evil corporations trying to stamp out the truth in the relentless pursuit of profit. People like that dig in their heals and go on the defense, you can't stamp out a religion, you can't (directly) control what people believe. There is just no way to silence something like this through force. You can aggressively prosecute anyone who damages property, attacks anyone or advocates violence though.

we are past that, it is now the norm to say what you you like and call the truth lies (fake news). We are at a bit of a point where we go down hill or stamp this shit out. Find a willing layer and crowdfund

[bd139]

Don't overlook these nut cases are money driven and only leakages of their financial details will indicate if this is a fact. How to impact on their income stream is another matter............

Decades ago a very busy NZ activist's financial position was subject to bank worker official secrets act yet those in the know were shocked at the savings accumulated......can't reveal my sources. 

That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. If you find something out confidential the simplest trick is to use parallel construction to lead to them exposing themselves either via the state or legal intervention. So look for mistakes they make and refer them to someone who gets revenue or purpose in reaming them a new arsehole. Hence why I usually dig around and set HMRC on ‘em first.

[PlainName]

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time!

Actually, it's because it's impractical. Take the current coronavirus thing, which I think you'd agree is important enough for the science types to treat very seriously. Yet they couldn't agree on whether masks were better or not for proles to wear. Whether lockdowns help or hinder. Even whether someone died from covid19 or just coincidentally happened to reach terminal age at the same time.

And that's with straight-up facts. Get onto opinions and how are you going to frame a law that penalises uneducated, or uncritical, thought said out loud? Instead of a video saying "Here is antigravity at work" just make it "Here's a strange effect I can't account for, kind of like antigravity". Sort that one out then you might be in shape to attempt the nod & wink kind next.

What you'd end up with is cancel culture on the scale of a state. See how even daring to think un-great things about the king works in Thailand.

[Simon]

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time!

Actually, it's because it's impractical. Take the current coronavirus thing, which I think you'd agree is important enough for the science types to treat very seriously. Yet they couldn't agree on whether masks were better or not for proles to wear. Whether lockdowns help or hinder. Even whether someone died from covid19 or just coincidentally happened to reach terminal age at the same time.

And that's with straight-up facts. Get onto opinions and how are you going to frame a law that penalises uneducated, or uncritical, thought said out loud? Instead of a video saying "Here is antigravity at work" just make it "Here's a strange effect I can't account for, kind of like antigravity". Sort that one out then you might be in shape to attempt the nod & wink kind next.

What you'd end up with is cancel culture on the scale of a state. See how even daring to think un-great things about the king works in Thailand.

it's not going after every twit but people that make up rather elaborate crap and put a lot of work into it consistently need stopping, not stopping them just makes them more right.

There is only one thing lbry is good for other than Dave's video's and those of a few others: porn! everything else is conspiracy crap. We are now at the point were everyone of them starts with: "I am not a conspiracy theorist but here's a really batty conspiracy theory".

[james_s]

The biggest problem with Covid is that it was brand new less than a year ago so at the start almost everything was pure speculation based on experience with other diseases thought to share similarities. Recommendations also had to take into account the irrational and self centered nature of people in general, whether masks are effective or not, if they were recommended early on enough people would have rushed out to buy up as many as they could get when there were already difficulties in getting enough for medical workers. Looking at it objectively, it makes sense that protecting medical workers should be higher priority than protecting the general population because any one medical worker could potentially save a larger number of lives of the general public. Even now we still have to speculate on many things because the disease is still new enough that we just don't have a lot of concrete facts, for that we will have to wait until years down the road when the entire history of the pandemic can be studied in detail and broken down. At that point I have no doubt that countless smug people with the benefit of hindsight will revel in how wrong so many experts were about this or that and how they themselves knew better.

[PlainName]

everyone of them starts with: "I am not a conspiracy theorist but here's a really batty conspiracy theory"

How do you stop those without also stopping the debunkers or other legitimate discussions of same?

[PlainName]

The biggest problem with Covid is that it was brand new

That's missing the point: 'facts' change over time, and can have different interpretations at the same time. Covid being new is just an useful example of this that we all know of in recent history. Other, possibly less memorable, examples could have been used to make the same point.

[james_s]

That's missing the point: 'facts' change over time, and can have different interpretations at the same time. Covid being new is just an useful example of this that we all know of in recent history. Other, possibly less memorable, examples could have been used to make the same point.

That's how science works. "Facts" are never absolutely 100% certain, I can't even say with absolute 100% certainty that I even exist, all of the data I have access to suggests that I do but there remains a possibility however small that this is all some kind of dream or elaborate simulation. Facts are a best guess, using whatever information is available, with some degree of uncertainty and some facts are going to change as new information comes to light and we realize we were wrong about some things previously thought to be true.

[Simon]

It's one thing to have opinions about covid, it's another to claim it "de government controlling you"

[SilverSolder]

You can definitely also go after the proselytising kooks by issuing take-down notices to the ISPs, and so on.   Why make it so easy for the proselytisers?  -  Make them work for it - make it harder for them to recruit new members.  Get them used to dealing with being taken down every month or so - it's just part of a kook's life!   Make it socially unacceptable - force them to use the dark web (which is, conveniently, probably the most monitored by the security services!).

Look at how the music industry dealt with piracy...

Yes, that is an excellent example. They tried the hard line approach and it backfired, piracy exploded, customers got tired of being sued, virtually nobody sympathizes with the RIAA. The only thing that eventually reduced piracy is the availability of convenient online streaming services that give people what they want (being able to listen to a huge library of music on many different types of devices wherever they are) without jumping through hoops. The piracy is still out there though, anything popular will be widely available in torrents and is trivial to find. If streaming services got expensive enough or became less convenient the piracy will make a near instant comeback. The music industry utterly failed in their attempt to stamp it out, the pirates won and the industry capitulated after it became obvious that they were on the losing side of a war and allowed the streaming services to exist after years of fighting against them.

I don't think the music industry failed at all!  -  You can't just google and download a track like you used to in the "good old days",  nor can you just google and download software.   You have to work for it - you have to sneak off into the dark corners of the Internet.

That is what will happen to the kooks - eventually.   They will not be bestowed with the inferred legitimacy of appearing on the shelf next to the high quality material, if you see what I mean.

[james_s]

Well, yes, but there are always gonna be a few idiots out there. It's a religious belief, like any other. There have been preachers for as long as there have been societies, spreading their word for varying reasons. Some genuinely believe what they preach, others see it purely as a way of manipulating others, this is the same thing.

[SilverSolder]

The reason we don't already do this, is because the EEVblog forum is ahead of its time!

Actually, it's because it's impractical. Take the current coronavirus thing, which I think you'd agree is important enough for the science types to treat very seriously. Yet they couldn't agree on whether masks were better or not for proles to wear. Whether lockdowns help or hinder. Even whether someone died from covid19 or just coincidentally happened to reach terminal age at the same time.

And that's with straight-up facts. Get onto opinions and how are you going to frame a law that penalises uneducated, or uncritical, thought said out loud? Instead of a video saying "Here is antigravity at work" just make it "Here's a strange effect I can't account for, kind of like antigravity". Sort that one out then you might be in shape to attempt the nod & wink kind next.

What you'd end up with is cancel culture on the scale of a state. See how even daring to think un-great things about the king works in Thailand.

Here's the thing:  Some efforts deserve to be canceled!  - or, at least relegated to the bottom drawer, along with seedy magazines or worse.

We are not required to give kooks equal standing to "normal" people. 

Being a kook should be hard!

[SilverSolder]

Well, yes, but there are always gonna be a few idiots out there. It's a religious belief, like any other. There have been preachers for as long as there have been societies, spreading their word for varying reasons. Some genuinely believe what they preach, others see it purely as a way of manipulating others, this is the same thing.

I guess there is a factor of harmlessness in here somewhere too - i.e. a harmless kook without a big following is one thing,  but when the followers start to vandalise telecomms equipment and harass workers... they've crossed a line.

I realize there are few absolutes and I'm not used to arguing this side of the argument...        ...but there has to be some limit to what we tolerate. 

It is entirely possible to be so open minded that the contents fall out! 

[Simon]

quite, a crank is one thing, a crank with a following is another.

[james_s]

I don't think the music industry failed at all!  -  You can't just google and download a track like you used to in the "good old days",  nor can you just google and download software.   You have to work for it - you have to sneak off into the dark corners of the Internet.

That is what will happen to the kooks - eventually.   They will not be bestowed with the inferred legitimacy of appearing on the shelf next to the high quality material, if you see what I mean.

It's still just as easy now as it was then, it just got shifted elsewhere, there are several fairly well known websites which are essentially the google of torrents, it's even easier to find a lot of this stuff than it ever was before because it's all in one place. You may not see it and that is the point, it moved just a little deeper underground than the legitimate streaming services that now exist but it has not gone away at all and few people care, because virtually nobody is sympathetic to the music industry or looks favorably on the extortion they were doing, demanding people suspected of downloading pay up or be taken to court to potentially have to pay far more. The only reason the total amount of piracy has dropped and it has fallen out of the public view is that alternatives appeared that offered most of the convenience people wanted at a reasonable price. Make no mistake, if the music industry had won and got their way you would not be able to subscribe to a streaming service. You would still be buying CDs at full retail price, the CDs would all be infected with rootkits and other draconian anti-piracy technologies that make the life of legitimate users a pain. If they had the ability to, they would prevent you from ever selling or loaning CDs and charge you money for each and every time you play a song, and make you buy an additional copy for each device you want to listen to. The can't do this though for a range of reasons including laws against things like rootkits that surreptitiously infect users computers, and partly because piracy is impossible to stop.

[SilverSolder]

I don't think the music industry failed at all!  -  You can't just google and download a track like you used to in the "good old days",  nor can you just google and download software.   You have to work for it - you have to sneak off into the dark corners of the Internet.

That is what will happen to the kooks - eventually.   They will not be bestowed with the inferred legitimacy of appearing on the shelf next to the high quality material, if you see what I mean.

It's still just as easy now as it was then, it just got shifted elsewhere, there are several fairly well known websites which are essentially the google of torrents, it's even easier to find a lot of this stuff than it ever was before because it's all in one place. You may not see it and that is the point, it moved just a little deeper underground than the legitimate streaming services that now exist but it has not gone away at all and few people care, because virtually nobody is sympathetic to the music industry or looks favorably on the extortion they were doing, demanding people suspected of downloading pay up or be taken to court to potentially have to pay far more. The only reason the total amount of piracy has dropped and it has fallen out of the public view is that alternatives appeared that offered most of the convenience people wanted at a reasonable price. Make no mistake, if the music industry had won and got their way you would not be able to subscribe to a streaming service. You would still be buying CDs at full retail price, the CDs would all be infected with rootkits and other draconian anti-piracy technologies that make the life of legitimate users a pain. If they had the ability to, they would prevent you from ever selling or loaning CDs and charge you money for each and every time you play a song, and make you buy an additional copy for each device you want to listen to. The can't do this though for a range of reasons including laws against things like rootkits that surreptitiously infect users computers, and partly because piracy is impossible to stop.

Agreed.

So the summary of this sub-conversation is probably this:   a less than 100% victory over the 5G kooks (and similar) is probably "good enough for Australia".   

What does a less than 100% victory look like?   Having them "auto banned" by some suitable AI will create a lot of work for them on family friendly sites like Youtube, Facebook, etc., driving them elsewhere.  That is good enough for me.

Someone going to Piratebay or whatever definitely know they are not being good boys or girls... make the same kind of thing apply to kooks...   "you read that WHERE?  Seriously?"

[Specmaster]

The more I think about this problem, the more I keep coming back to the same thing, surely people like this Mark Steele who is clearly putting false information out into the public domain and also attending mass rallies and having a microphone in his hand and yelling at people telling them to go away and get organised, recruiting more followers and be prepared, telling them that 5G is a secret weapon, Covid is a conspiracy to get schools emptied etc so that they can install 5G equipment ready for activation. Telling people that the vaccines are to be loaded with microchips that will be triggered by the 5G signals when they switch it on, is really just plain simple old Terrorism surely and ought to be reported as such. That alone will increase the numbers at risk of catching Covid-19 because those people will refuse to be vaccinated for fear of the none existent killer microchips in it.

As already mentioned at the beginning of this thread, an Open Reach engineer has been attacked and stabbed multiple times because he was probably installing fibre cables. Add to this the multitude of 5G towers and related infrastructures that have targeted by fire etc and destroyed putting people at risk as a result. Will the authorities wait until people are actually killed by such action?