[HN Gopher] Moderation in Infrastructure
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Moderation in Infrastructure
Author : kaboro
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-03-16 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| unixhero wrote:
| Trump was an abomination and a troll. He should have been blocked
| from the platform a long time before he actually was
| deplatformed. The worls is a better place without thst eternal
| loser spewing lies out through Twitter. It's not okay.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| It's simply not possible to be a good human being and also
| downvote this. It's absolutely on-topic, absolutely critical to
| the subject of Trump's deplatforming, and absolutely
| irrefutable in terms of the facts of what the man has said and
| done.
|
| Anyone downvoting should be ashamed and sickened by their
| behavior, no matter what rationalization they are attempting to
| hide behind.
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| Quite frankly I am more ashamed and sickened by your
| behaviour and attempts to dehumanize other people. Stop being
| so toxic.
| ordu wrote:
| _> Anyone downvoting should be ashamed and sickened by their
| behavior, no matter what rationalization they are attempting
| to hide behind._
|
| Do you really believe this or it is some kind of a trolling?
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| It's not a matter of belief at this point. Trump's actions
| and the lasting racist, white supremacist, batshit
| conspiracy-as-justified-fascism damage he's done are so
| flagrantly severe that it's strictly impossible for a moral
| person to see it any other way. It's one of very few issues
| where moral relativism and gray areas just sincerely are
| not acceptable points of view.
| mehagar wrote:
| I understand that you're very angry about the situation.
| A lot of things Trump has made me angry. I'd like to
| express my anger in a way that doesn't involve trying to
| make others feel ashamed about their own actions or
| beliefs. It's not easy - it's very much part of our
| culture to call each other names and judge others as good
| or bad.
| clairity wrote:
| a person can think trump is a self-serving, sociopathic
| idiot, and still defend his humanness against inflammatory,
| repressive impulses like this. neoliberal media like npr and
| nyt have lost this perspective entirely and have thrown in
| with the pitchforkers, so it's unfortunately not surprising
| that this simplistic view has infiltrated this discussion.
|
| moreover, it's better for the future if we make the
| population aware of, and thereby immune to, his type of
| purely self-serving rhetoric, than try to erase him from the
| discussion, and thereby violate all kinds of human rights,
| let alone human decency. it's the same distinction as that of
| training an immune system for future infection vs.
| neutralizing one virus particle.
| minikites wrote:
| >his humanness
|
| Based on how he's treated everyone around him for his
| entire life, he doesn't have any.
|
| >it's better for the future if we make the population aware
| of, and thereby immune to, his type of purely self-serving
| rhetoric, than try to erase him from the discussion, and
| thereby violate all kinds of human rights
|
| Then why did threats and violence decline when he was
| deplatformed? Why did an insurrection happen on January 6th
| when he was on Twitter and why didn't one happen on March
| 4th (the other important date in this "conspiracy") when he
| wasn't on Twitter? I think you have your cause and effect
| backwards. Giving terrible people a platform doesn't
| inoculate anyone, it just spreads more poison. I don't need
| to be exposed to a particular prejudice to think that
| prejudice is bad.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Really, no.
|
| > a person can think trump is a self-serving, sociopathic
| idiot, and still defend his humanness against inflammatory,
| repressive impulses like this.
|
| You _can_ do this, it just equates to a significant basic
| moral failing.
| colllectorof wrote:
| Why should I care about what these CEOs are saying when recent
| history shows they a) gladly lie about this subject and b) suffer
| exactly zero consequences when caught lying about this subject?
| draw_down wrote:
| Lies are information too, of a sort. It matters _which_ lie a
| person tells, for example.
| hctaw wrote:
| It's useful to know what people are thinking when they are the
| ones making meaningful decisions. Even if you don't trust them
| to be honest (which I don't think is a valid criticism here,
| there's not much in the quoted text that could be construed as
| "lying"), if you want to take issue with their actions in the
| future or have insight into what they may/may not do it's
| useful to get something from the horse's mouth.
| naringas wrote:
| from a very broad conceptual viewpoint; "the law" exist from (or
| out of) written language (where "language" is seen as a social-
| technology).
|
| what computer technology and the internet (or for short:
| software) is doing to civilization is still at a very early
| stage. As I see this, the goal of "law" and the goal of "computer
| science" are quite similar.
|
| As I see these kinds of articles (stratechery focuses on exactly
| this), is that we're witnessing the 'adjustments' in society
| brought about by the invention of software. I put all of this on
| a level comparable to the invention of writing and the subsequent
| 'rise' of rule of law.
|
| having said this, the difficult thing to make sense of, and to
| explain to people with less software-experience is coming to
| understand what this article taps into in the section of "the
| global internet"; it's actually quite tricky to pin this down for
| me right now.
|
| I'm referring to that aspect (or quality) of software that causes
| several executives to say this kinds of things:
|
| >We have tried to get to what's common, and the reality is it's
| super hard on a global basis to design software that behaves
| differently in different countries. It is super difficult.
|
| >If you're a global technology business, most of the time, it is
| far more efficient and legally compliant to operate a global
| model than to have different practices and standards in different
| countries.
|
| It's that thing sowftware does in which special cases worsen
| software complexity.
|
| Software (and computing, and even industrial automation) are all
| about doing the same thing, no matter what. It's all about
| finding ways to avoid special cases; to avoid code repetition;
| and all that.
|
| I'm sure that most people in Hacker News, due to our hands-on
| experience with software, are quite able to intuitively grasp
| this. But it's not so easy to explain and this 'quality of the
| digital' is (and will continue to) forcing contemporary
| capitalism to be re-evaluated (or something along these lines).
| kodah wrote:
| The whole free speech argument is tired. I think people
| selectively draw from it and draw lines in it when it suits them.
| The point being, that as long as people don't acknowledge that
| private entities play more of a role today in free speech than
| they did in the past, it's not worth arguing. You'll need to wait
| until both sides have been affected by this perspective for it to
| become taboo.
|
| A couple things I've been learning more recently in order to have
| more productive political discussions:
|
| - Set goals for political discussion. If it's just to learn, then
| you don't need to debate. If you're going to debate, set ground
| rules so cross-political friendships are not lost. (This has been
| more important to me, but there's certainly people who put their
| political leanings on their dating profile.)
|
| - Don't make points about bad faith actors or that collectively
| acknowledge their existence. The left has them, the right has
| them, we've likely all been affected by them, but the majority of
| each party are just normal people championing their favorite
| political football team.
|
| - Citing morals is pretty low brow. Morals differ in different
| geographies due to a myriad of influences. Topics that center
| around this are an impossible hill to climb.
|
| - Don't state your party affiliation (or lack thereof). I learned
| in 2016 that being anything other than Republican or Democrat
| invites reductive conversation, or put more directly it invites
| people to 'other' you which changes the trajectory of the
| conversation.
|
| - Always assume good faith. Most people don't act in bad faith,
| yet in political discussions it's easy to reach for that branch.
| People I've assumed this about I've usually discovered lived a
| very different life from me, so their perspectives and worldviews
| align to things that don't make sense at all.
| alexashka wrote:
| This is a bit of a meta point but does anyone else feel fatigued
| by the sheer amount of text stratechery has been using to make a
| point as of late?
|
| I'm an expert level skimmer and even I can't make sense of what
| this is about by simply skimming it. They taught me in highschool
| back in the day: make your point in an introduction, give
| supporting arguments in the body, conclude by repeating the
| point.
|
| This seems to follow a 'trail of thought' style that just keeps
| going, as if it's a given that everyone's got 30 minutes to spare
| to find out if you're saying anything at all.
|
| Trail of thought is fine for poetry and literature, this seems to
| attempt to make rational arguments? If so, the format's a
| disservice to that end.
| draw_down wrote:
| Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it works for him though,
| his audience see themselves as "readers" and I think the
| prolixity adds a certain sheen of "seriousness" to his writing.
| I don't think he would hold the status of emerging thought-
| leader/authoritative thinker that he has in tech circles if he
| wrote quicker, punchier pieces.
| dave_aiello wrote:
| I don't understand the lines that Patrick Collison, the CEO of
| Stripe, is trying to draw in this interview with Stratechery,
| https://stratechery.com/2021/interviews-with-patrick-colliso....
|
| I believe Collison's argument is that certain organizations
| affiliated with ex-President Trump should have been and were
| suspended from direct use of the Stripe API for "incitement to
| violence" in the time surrounding the certification of Electors
| by the U.S. Congress,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_storming_of_the_United_St....
| But other organizations that were allied in some way with Trump
| were still able to use the API. So in effect, the Trump-related
| organizations could use the API indirectly.
|
| With that reasoning, shouldn't there also be organizations on the
| left in the United States, which is defined as the progressive /
| liberal / socialist part of the political spectrum, that should
| have received the same treatment during the period of the George
| Floyd Protests,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests?
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| You're expecting people to use the same standards for their
| ingroup as their outgroup. That rarely happens.
| maire wrote:
| Bertrand Russell was British.
|
| This is the difference between British law and American law.
| People often get confused with the definition of free speech
| since in America it refers to the 1st amendment which only
| applies to censorship by the government. Britain actually does
| allow the government to censor speech.
|
| The article does give insight into the Brit's definition of free
| speech. In America private companies can moderate their own
| platform since they are also liable for that platform. It is a
| thin line between the two.
|
| I am not sure which I prefer but I notice I get spooked when
| government gets involved in free speech.
|
| Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an
| establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
| thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
| the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| Here's one issue I see with American law... which is that the
| (US) government has, in the past, passed laws (such as the
| Sedition Laws) and it takes a long time for those cases to get
| to the Supreme Court, so if the government wants to curtail
| speech arbitrarily (albeit temporarily) they can.
| [deleted]
| MikeUt wrote:
| > People often get confused with the definition of free speech
| since in America it refers to the 1st amendment which only
| applies to censorship by the government.
|
| You think Americans are incapable of distinguishing between the
| idea of free speech, and the legal doctrine of the 1st
| amendment?
| graeme wrote:
| By and large Americans seem to be yes. This cartoon was
| enormously popular in America for years
|
| https://xkcd.com/1357/
| mistermann wrote:
| Usually one turns to xkcd for wisdom in such situations,
| which seems to well illustrate how confusing this concept
| is.
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| I think most Americans are incapable of telling me what a
| right is, let alone a specific one. This is intentionally
| left out of public education.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The UK didn't have a formal legal guarantee of free speech
| until the Human Rights Act 1998, and even that comes with some
| qualifiers that Americans are uncomfortable with.
|
| At the time of Russell's speech, 1922, all the old apparatus of
| censorship was still in place; the theatre was under the
| censorship of the Lord Chaimberlain until the 60s, as were
| books prior to the Lady Chatterly trial. Meanwhile, free speech
| haven the US was passing one of the Comstock Acts that made it
| illegal to distribute information on contraception.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws#cite_note-5
|
| I'm just old enough to remember when an elected UK politician
| (Gerry Adams) was legally barred from speaking on television
| _at all_.
|
| Section 5 of the Public Order Act makes it an arrestable
| offence to swear in public. This is very very selectively
| enforced.
|
| (As for the other bit of the first amendment, can't get much
| more British than an establishment of religion; it was one of
| the things many of the colonists were specifically fleeing)
| bstrand wrote:
| The definition of free speech is not at all limited to the
| absence of legal constrictions. Russell addresses this quite
| directly in "Free Thought...":
|
| >>When we speak of anything as "free," our meaning is not
| definite unless we can say what it is free from. Whatever or
| whoever is "free" is not subject to some external compulsion,
| and to be precise we ought to say what this kind of compulsion
| is. ... Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the
| least of the obstacles to freedom of thoughts. The two great
| obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It
| is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain
| opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also
| that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a
| controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as
| possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be
| discovered by diligent search.<<
| maire wrote:
| I see all the time in modern discussions that people use the
| same words but have different definitions in their head of
| what those words mean.
|
| It might be that in the UK when people say "Free Speech" they
| mean Bertrand Russell's definition. I give the article that
| leeway since I don't know. But in America when when people
| say "Free Speech" they mean the 1st Amendment which predated
| Bertrand Russell and is more common.
|
| When two people are communicating using common words the
| definition of those words need to be common otherwise
| communication does not happen. Otherwise you are just using
| jargon.
| bstrand wrote:
| I don't agree that "freedom of speech" in the US is only
| and always equated with the First Amendment. Even if it
| were, the article is unambiguously concerned with the
| broader principle, so we should consider the article in
| that context.
|
| I pushed back on your mention of the distinction mainly due
| to a growing tendency in which people dismiss concerns
| about constraints on freedom of speech/expression/opinion
| by arguing such concerns are only valid insofar as the
| First Amendment applies. (Not to say you were doing that
| yourself.) At best it's a tiresome debate tactic; to the
| extent it's believed, it's a dangerously narrow
| misapprehension of one of our fundamental social tenets and
| civil rights.
| twic wrote:
| > But in America when when people say "Free Speech" they
| mean the 1st Amendment which predated Bertrand Russell and
| is more common.
|
| John Locke's 'A Letter Concerning Toleration', which also
| deals with free speech, predates your 1st amendment.
|
| It is indeed common to conflate free speech with 1st
| amendment protections in the US, but it is still an error
| to do so.
| nullserver wrote:
| Much of American constitution idea were conceived by 17th
| century British hipsters.
|
| John Locke, Adam Smith, etc.
| maire wrote:
| This might be my imagination - but I think you changed
| "Free Speech" to "Freedom of Expression." If so, this
| change makes a lot of sense. This change captures the
| intent of your article without confusion.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > when people say "Free Speech" they mean the 1st Amendment
| which predated Bertrand Russell and is more common.
|
| But "free speech" predates both Russel and the 1st
| Amendment. And, how do you know what they mean? It's not
| like the debate is settled and there's no controversy
| around the issue.
| maire wrote:
| We are talking about a company based in San Francisco.
|
| I am pretty sure they changed the phrase to "freedom of
| expression" and removed the passage that said this was
| the original definition of free speech so in my mind they
| corrected the article enough to get their point across
| without getting bogged down.
| MikeUt wrote:
| Wouldn't changing the phrase to "1st Amendment" get their
| point across even better, if that's what they meant? It's
| 8 characters shorter than "freedom of expression", so if
| anything it's the latter that's bogging things down.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > in America when when people say "Free Speech" they mean
| the 1st Amendment
|
| Isn't it quite presumtive of you to assume that everyone
| means the same thing by "Free Speech". That seems highly
| unlikely to me.
|
| > When two people are communicating using common words the
| definition of those words need to be common otherwise
| communication does not happen. Otherwise you are just using
| jargon.
|
| Yes, but that doesn't mean that words or phrases have a
| single globally umambiguous meaning. Typically maintaining
| productive communication means avoiding using
| contested/controversial terms like "free speech" in an
| unqualified way entirely and creating and exaplaining new
| terms to disambiguate exactly which version of the concept
| you mean.
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