Thoughts on a better Britain

The confluence of influence and responsibility

The problem, of course, Willy old boy, is that this will not end well. Not without a lot of work from all of us. It’s easy to say that we live in unprecedented times. That new technologies have completely changed the game. That AI couldn’t possibly be understood nor controlled.

We don’t.

Technology provides the tools, but people wield them. The reach of the “ordinary” person is now greater. The ability to spit out words, texts, scripts, and print with AI assistance is definitely new. But the capacity to lie, or to mislead, is old. So old that we already have rules in place against it.

Enter the ASA

Since the 1960’s, the Advertising Standards Agency has been regulating what an advertiser can and cannot say. When this was adopted as law is a little harder to track down, but The Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations 1988 seems like a good start. Incidentally, that’s an implementation of an EU Directive.

Not much here that you don’t already know except maybe the dates. What’s the point? The point is that for about 60 years we’ve had guidelines for what you’re allowed to show to, or tell, the public that state:

Advertisements must not mislead or be likely to mislead, deceive or confuse consumers, abuse their trust or exploit their lack of knowledge. This includes by implication, inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, unrealistic claim, omission, false representation or otherwise.

ASA Rule 2(b) – Truthful presentation

They also give this definition for an advertisement:

“Advertising and Advertisement(s)” means any message, the content of which is controlled directly or indirectly by the advertiser, expressed in any language and communicated in any medium with the intent to influence the choice, opinion or behaviour of those to whom it is addressed.

Well that certainly sounds good! I don’t want someone selling me little blue pills that actually don’t hel Uh. I mean. I don’t want someone trying to sell me a car that doesn’t actually transform into a giant robot, by making me think it does. That’s better.

My way or the highway

I couldn’t decide what to title this block. I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going but I’m torn between social media and politics. Both?

Are politicians allowed to lie? – Yes

Are “influencers” allowed to lie? – Yes

Am I allowed to lie? – Yes

Are media outlets in general allowed to lie? – Sort of yes

Legally? – Still yes

It’s entirely legal for a political candidate to lie to get you to vote for them – as happens with populism. Sorry. I’ve misused that paper. They explicitly state that populism isn’t driving misinformation. Let’s look at the full quote:

In short, when it comes to misinformation, the main problem is not populism but radical-right populism.

Great. Now I feel better. Radical-right populism. Much better.

Remember that bit where I said I love my country? Well, I still do – but we need to work to keep the grubby mitts of Reform et al. off it. Their chance that they’ll do anything other than plop the country right in the toilet and flush is exceeded only by the chance that they’ll collect all the excrement they can possibly blast out of their mouths, pour it over the country, and use that as a reason to hit the flush button. Twice – for good measure, we don’t want any pesky rights left floating.

Should we tolerate public figures lying?

No.

Am I alone in this? Also no. The Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, has been considering a ban on lying in the run up to elections. In fact, it’s been proposed just before I hit publish here – glad I checked!

It will be a while until we see if this manages to bring things back in line. No doubt we’ll be in the middle of a different catastrophe and we won’t notice. It’s worth talking about the argument against banning lying:

Freedom of speech

I opened talking about advertising standards because they’re generally considered to be a good idea. They are, of course, a limit on absolute freedom of speech.

A ban on lying for political candidates is absolutely a restriction on freedom of speech. It’s also a restriction on an incredibly dangerous slide. Here’s the thing – the candidates who care about integrity and honesty, are somewhat unlikely to be lying. That means that they have to have policies that they can back, and policies that they actually intend to carry out.

The candidates who are happy to lie, however, face absolutely no requirement to do anything about what they’ve said. That poses two problems:

1. They face little-to-no backlash for it (“Oh it was a metaphorical wall”)
2. They force politicians who don’t want to lie to up the ante – because the must compete with an attractive lie, or lose.

That last one is covering all manner of sins. By cheating in a game (and be under no doubt, willfully lying to gain votes absolutely is cheating) you force other players to take increasingly morally grey, black, and/or bankrupt choices to keep up. Then, all they need to do is push the lie further – thus the spiral begins.

This is related to the Paradox of Tolerance – in which tolerating all speech will eventually lead to the rise of people who ban speech. The paradox is that to maintain open discourse, you must regulate speech a little. Not misleading people is a pretty solid regulation, I think. We must maintain discourse, but it must be in good faith – i.e. operating in truth.

Truth or Consequences

Is there a more apt game show depicting the campaign trail?

We must have truth. There must be consequences for lying. We cannot continue to allow public figures to willingly mislead the public for their own power. We’ve accepted this for adverts. We must accept it in politics.

We should, in fact, accept it for all forms of publicly available media – including this blog (this is why I started on this topic – although I find it hard to believe that the readership will be more than about π). That includes social media, that includes newspapers, that includes billboards and banner adverts.

AI is not the problem.

Social media is not the problem (this time).

The internet is not the problem.

Lying is the problem. Punish the people. Use the tools. Discuss.