Doing something to help people isn't virtue signaling. That's just doing something good. However, setting up an ad campaign that cost ten times what was spent on the actual doing of good to promote how awesome and virtuous you are is virtue signaling. It's also virtue signaling to push agendas and legislation that require others to sacrifice to achieve a goal that you are not willing to sacrifice or invest in yourself.

The key aspect of "virtue signaling" is the "signaling" part. It's advertising that you are virtuous rather than just being virtuous.

Ostensibly, it's the users who choose the stories. Practically, it's the corporate overlords and their advert buying masters.

If my argument is empty until the last few places like slashdot die off, then we already lost. You won't even be able to imagine an alternative when every site curates and controls user content.

You are conveniently ignoring the part where Facebook has become the internet equivalent of a public square on the internet. That puts them in the position where exercising their free speech rights to control what's on their platform infringes the ability of others to express their free speech rights in that public space.

Imagine if all of the spaces where people can legally protest and have an audience were sold to a private company who then picked which protests they wanted to allow based on political ideology. Is that still just a private business using their free speech rights?

That's why they have open back booths and rules barring cell phones and cameras in the voting booth area. It's not perfect, but still a lot more difficult to verify someone's vote than mail-in.

I know of a few people who tried to play the "every time someone interrupts or talks over someone else" version of the debate drinking game. I think they were responsible for the total increased consumption. My condolences go out to all of the similarly affected families who lost their loved ones to extreme alcohol poisoning.

You know what the vote was if you witness the ballot marking and the envelope being sealed. That's the reason polling stations and polling booths exist. There, you are the only one who can cast your vote and you are the only one who can see how your ballot was marked. Then you put it in a bin with all the others, anonymizing your ballot, which is sealed and watched by multiple parties to ensure it's counted.

That's why paper ballots are better. Human and computer readable for quick tallies and unambiguous recounts. Fully electronic voting is a really bad idea for the reasons you mentioned.

Seriously, the best voting method so far is in a polling place on a scannable paper ballot with open back voting booths and a simple photo ID check. It verifies that the voter is who they say they are, gives ballot access to only that voter while they mark the ballot and creates an auditable paper trail with anonymous ballots.

That same process can also be used to verify a bought or forced vote.

Unless there are also gross changes voter participation, then the total number of votes is similar and you would need to change a similar number of them to sway the election. That is easier to do with mail-in than in person votes.

Discovered by whom? The voter doesn't know that their ballot never showed up unless they go to the polls on election day and find they are still on the polling station list.

You're making it too complicated. Just collect the sealed ballots (by hand or through post office employees) and throw out ones from areas that predominantly vote for the other guy.

The problem is that it's all "deliberate misinformation, designed to suppress voters or give false information", a.k.a. propaganda.

So either ban all social media or allow it all. Picking and choosing which groups get to spread their propaganda is way too easily abused.

It is when you actively prevent the things from being done that are actually effective. Are you really in favor of actively clearing the undergrowth (which may impact some endangered species) or encouraging more logging (that thins the forest, making it more resistant to fires spreading uncontrollably)?

The fires are due to people moving into forested areas, aggressively putting out small fires, letting fallen debris and fast burning undergrowth accumulate and preventing active clean up and logging until there's so much dry fuel that the fires are unstoppable. Climate change contributed to triggering them now to some degree, but it isn't the reason these fires are happening. It's decades of bad policies that created the widespread tinderbox situation and then we had a year with a combination of wet and hot/dry weather that was enough to push it over the edge. Maybe that takes a few more years to happen without climate change, but the buildup of fuel would just continue to lower the threshold until these huge fires happen.

Yes, great idea. Lets implement more aggressive carbon taxes instead of manually clearing dry vegetation around buildings or doing control burns. Those huge fires will be really pissed when they see their tax bill.

Have you ever heard of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"?

This hyperbolic nonsense doesn't help "raise awareness". It just makes it look like you don't know what you're talking about.

Spell out the short, medium and long term impacts with language that has an appropriate tone for those impacts and you'll likely get more response. Maybe not the response you're looking for, but if that's the case, then what you are looking for is more politically than scientifically motivated.

Yes, only thoroughly vetted and approved authorities should be allowed to speak freely. Otherwise people might hear other people's lies too.