[HN Gopher] Right or left, you should be worried about big tech ...
___________________________________________________________________
Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
Author : DiabloD3
Score : 352 points
Date : 2021-07-18 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| SpywareThrow wrote:
| This is a ridiculous take. You will get censored no matter how
| much you try to "talk" about it. You're dealing with people who
| will nod, say uh huh, and carry on doing what they were doing
| regardless of what's written.
|
| Nothing has really been accomplished in the last decade. It's a
| one way ticket to surveillance and censorship.
| UncensoredNews wrote:
| There is a way to circumvent censorship. Read your news using
| RSS feeds.
|
| Shameless Plug: I do that and [recommend the best
| articles](https://UnCensoredNews.us)
| 0des wrote:
| "Crises precipitate change" - Deltron 3030
| leopaacc wrote:
| "never let a crisis go to waste" - someone
| defterGoose wrote:
| "I wanna devise a virus; to bring dire straits to our
| environment"
|
| _Groans in 2021_
| bitwize wrote:
| "Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real
| change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken
| depend on the ideas lying around." --Milton Friedman
| Nursie wrote:
| >First of all, the internet's "marketplace of ideas" is severely
| lopsided at the platform level
|
| The marketplace of ideas itself has been show to be a bust in
| recent years, IMHO.
|
| Better ideas, better models of truth and reality don't win out.
| People have not shown themselves interested in intellectual
| debate or argument. We do not see the 'best' ideas rise to the
| top. And before anyone asks who I am to judge the best ideas,
| I'll answer - nobody, but I can see that factually incorrect,
| scientifically illiterate, conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas
| gain legs in the online world we've created. Often at the root of
| these is a profit motive.
|
| Is censorship the best way to deal with it? Probably not. But we
| do need to recognise this as a problem _as well_ as getting het
| up about giant internet platforms deplatforming people.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| > factually incorrect, scientifically illiterate,
| conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas
|
| There are indeed some factual mistakes floating around, mostly
| around covid-is-just-a-flu and the-earth-is-flat discussions.
|
| But usually shit hits the fan in social issues of poverty,
| homelessness, abortion rights and such.
|
| Alas, there's no hard science in most of these issues. There is
| a bunch of plausible-looking speculations, philosophical theses
| and general thoughts. Pretty much like 17-th century physics,
| in 18-th century biology or 19-th century medicine were.
|
| As for the ideas being harmful... What do we do with
| potentially harmful, yet factually correct statements, and does
| the same logic apply to beneficial, but factually wrong ones?
| Nursie wrote:
| I don't know, I genuinely don't have a good solution - I'm
| pretty sure "ban it" is not one.
|
| But I think we need to recognise, when we try to address this
| stuff, that our current picture of speech online is suffering
| not just from deplatforming, but also domination of some
| narratives by high volumes of motivated bullshit.
|
| > usually shit hits the fan in social issues of poverty,
| homelessness, abortion rights and such.
|
| flat earth is .... well I wouldn't put it with the most
| harmful ideas. It's clearly very silly, and not a great thing
| to propagate, but so far flat earthers haven't taken their
| beliefs out on the road, so to speak. Antivax, now that's
| harmful. There are certainly all sorts of grey areas and I
| wouldn't want to suppress discussion of safety, of risks from
| emergency approval or whatever, but when you get to "The
| vaccine makes you infertile" and "The vaccine will kill
| everyone that gets it" and "The vaccine contains 5G chips
| that _they_ are going to use to track you ", and such views
| actually start to impact the uptake...
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| I don't think antivax conspiracy makes a lot of impact.
|
| Current vaccination rate in the US is 55%.
|
| This is comparable with the number of people who, for
| example, do a dental check-up at least once a year, which
| is 60%, although there's no dentists conspiracy theory, at
| least not such a popular one.
|
| P.S. those downvoting, please feel free to, but I would
| highly appreciate a couple of lines on what's wrong with
| the message? Pure curiosity.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Agreed. I doubt that half the population thinks that the
| COVID vaccine is a conspiracy to kill them, render them
| infertile, or depopulate the earth.
|
| I'm not vaccinated, and I don't believe those things. I
| do see the dentist every 6 months though.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Tribal politics is probably a better predictor than
| fringe theories.
| peytn wrote:
| > and such views actually start to impact the uptake
|
| I'm not sure that's how the chain of causality works. We
| have 80s-style public health communication that isn't
| effective today. People are looking for a reason to reject
| it. If not the 5G chip stuff, it'd be something else.
| Nursie wrote:
| I think this just reinforces that the marketplace of
| ideas is a bust... personally. Because again, people
| aren't looking to evaluate rationally.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| People are turned off by appeals to authority logical
| fallacies.
|
| Trying to make them the only acceptable source of
| information is never going to sell.
| Nursie wrote:
| I'm afraid that people are also turned off by facts that
| go against their preconceived notions, and people are
| predisposed to accept, with little question, authorities
| with whom they already identify.
|
| In fact I'd go as far as saying your argument there is a
| logical fallacy, as I'm making no claim people should
| accept appeals to authority.
| ianai wrote:
| For good reason we don't accept people yelling "fire" in a
| movie theater. Anti-vax misinformation during a pandemic is
| definitely in the same vein as yelling fire in a theater.
|
| There are a few solutions. Don't know that any of these are
| possible, but sometimes solutions only get found in a
| listing of possible solutions.
|
| Any sourcing of the internet as a source of truth could be
| called into question on face.
|
| Or massive platforms could find a way to be less massive.
| Ie "we're just not going to host governmental agencies or
| politicians." Also bracketing the scope of posts and
| information on social media.
|
| Or who knows.
|
| Edit-one observation I've had is the internet is best when
| tied with another source of truth. Ie you can generally try
| recipes from a website and tell whether it makes palatable
| food by just making and tasting it.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >For good reason we don't accept people yelling "fire" in
| a movie theater.
|
| This meme persists, because it sounds nice, but the
| phrase is from a Supreme Court case where they ruled you
| can't distribute anti-WWI-draft flyers. Not exactly the
| precedent to be invoked, here. It was overturned (in
| part) to define that criminal speech under the first
| amendment is only speech that is determined to incite
| imminent lawless activity.
|
| >Any sourcing of the internet as a source of truth could
| be called into question on face.
|
| Which is why banning "misinformation" is a terrible idea.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| In a well-run theater yelling fire should lead to a
| prompt and orderly evacuation.
|
| It's called fire drill.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| like every marketplace, what matters is the entrenched
| interests in the market place and the amount of space needed
| for a new market.
|
| when the "too big to fail" market is filled with entrenched
| interests and bloat themselves to take up most real estate,
| then ideas only compete if the existing ideas accomodate them.
|
| this is where we derive the "Uber for X" marketting speak. as
| such, the market
| pankajdoharey wrote:
| Its less a "Marketplace of Ideas" and more a "church or private
| establishment" on the network. Even HN isnt spot on sometime
| bad ideas do rise up when they it appeals to peoples emotions
| more than sensibilities.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Social media (and the internet as a whole) are shaped by and
| promote the values of those who create it. They allow certain
| interactions and not others. (to what extent are the creators
| the leaders of the social media companies, vs. the users?)
|
| https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/51.
| ..
| wyager wrote:
| > I can see that factually incorrect, scientifically
| illiterate, conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas gain legs in
| the online world we've created.
|
| The fact that you phrase your characterization of incorrect
| ideas like this suggests with pretty high certainty that you
| don't exactly have a great birds'-eye view of the epistemic
| landscape yourself. People who characterize the "opposition"
| this way mostly get their ideas from NPR-tier Pravda
| publications, and aren't exactly better suited for picking out
| "better models of truth and reality".
| archagon wrote:
| The fact that you equivocate NPR and Pravda means you've
| huffed plenty of those fumes yourself.
| wyager wrote:
| > Voting Republican is to enact fascism and tear down the
| tenants of democracy in the US
|
| You seem like a skilled political analyst, so I defer to
| your expertise. One correction - it's spelled "tenets".
| Nursie wrote:
| I don't characterise "the opposition" this way. I
| characterise some of the more prominent 'fringe' stuff as
| this.
|
| I don't really have an 'us' for there to be a singular 'them'
| I'm talking about, I'm not American and I don't identify with
| any particular political party.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| It's ironic (or maybe appropriate) that this, talking about how
| better ideas don't rise to the top, is the top comment. The
| most abhorrent idea of all to me is that there are stupid, weak
| people that are worse than "us" that we need to shield from bad
| ideas because they are not smart enough (like we are) to handle
| them. Lots of support for this view in downstream comments
| (we're just intelligent apes etc).
|
| The strawman of the existence of factually incorrect content is
| irrelevant in my view. Everyone loves to jump on conspiracy
| theories or whatever other stuff is out there as proof that
| people (other people) are too dumb to be exposed to the world.
| First, I think the relevance and the number of serious
| adherents in the extreme version of these conspiracies etc are
| dramatically overstated because they reinforce a narrative.
| Second, I think most of it is an effect, not a cause, of people
| being told what to do and what to think. People uncomfortable
| with narratives that end in them giving something up will take
| shelter in alternative explanations. The problem is not the
| nutty theories being available, it's in the way that one group
| forces itself on another in the first place.
|
| All this to say, we can be adults and let everyone get the same
| information and make their own choice, or we can go the other
| way where someone who thinks they know more than us (and you
| hope it's you but it doesn't have to be) gets to decide.
| Frankly, the latter idea is ridiculous to me.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The most abhorrent idea of all to me is that there are
| stupid, weak people that are worse than "us" that we need to
| shield from bad ideas because they are not smart enough (like
| we are) to handle them.
|
| I find this idea abhorrent as well, but I'm curious if you
| find it abhorrent because you think the claim is false and/or
| unsubstantiated, or if you find it abhorrent because even if
| it's true it ought to be rejected due to some moral
| principle.
| totony wrote:
| (not parent) I think it is pretty easy to substantiate it
| (some people are actually deficient), but hard to
| substantiate to the degree that would justify the measures
| people propose. Yes, you can find a few nutjobs, but do
| they justify these truth-seeking policies for the general
| population? What suggests that these policies are even
| beneficial?
|
| But even if it was shown to be beneficial, I would still be
| against it on moral grounds I suppose (but I'm not sure
| since that might depend on how "beneficial" it is).
| pessimizer wrote:
| The best statements of this problem are in Public Opinion
| and The Phantom Public by Lippmann. You don't need to share
| his answers to those questions (which are an enlightened
| corporatism/fascism), to realize that to be serious about
| governance, answering them is a prerequisite.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| This post is pretty off-topic and unresponsive.
|
| A central premise of Doctorow's argument is the "marketplace
| of ideas" metaphor. Proceeding from that framing, he proposes
| that the ACCESS Act as an important middle ground that could,
| among other things, help stave off the death of Section 230.
| OP points out that our better angels don't always win in that
| marketplace.
|
| Let's get less abstract. The article envisions a market-based
| approach toward online censorship. The idea that a
| "marketplace of filters" would create a "live and let live"
| scenario seems extraordinarily naive to me. It seems much
| more likely that making it easier to choose filter bubbles --
| and introducing a profit motive into the construction of such
| filters -- would just escalate the appetite to censor, on
| both sides.
|
| _> All this to say, we can be adults and let everyone get
| the same information and make their own choice, or we can go
| the other way where someone who thinks they know more than
| us_
|
| You seem to be confusing _critique_ with _a proposal of some
| alternative_. Just because OP believes that the "marketplace
| of ideas" thesis is a farce and that the ACCESS Act is
| probably a non-solution to the wrong problem, doesn't mean OP
| wants to censor people.
|
| It's possible to both believe that Doctorow's argument is
| wrong and also not be a full-throated supporter of aggressive
| censorship.
|
| In fact...
|
| _> The most abhorrent idea..._
|
| You take rather flagrant liberties when interpreting parent's
| post, constructing an unrecognizable strawman out of a post
| that contains phrases like "Is censorship the best way to
| deal with it? Probably not." and "And before anyone asks who
| I am to judge the best ideas, I'll answer - nobody".
|
| _> The strawman of..._
|
| Those in glass houses...
| DSingularity wrote:
| Why is it ridiculous? You don't respect the potential
| injustice which can occur due to disparity in information
| and/or knowledge. Think about the popularity of crypto. How
| can you think your position of complete lack of regulation is
| moral? You think it's okay to allow the targeting of the
| economically vulnerable to continue without restrictions via
| ads or - my favorite - celebrity endorsements?
|
| This is ridiculous.
| Nursie wrote:
| > The most abhorrent idea of all to me is that there are
| stupid, weak people that are worse than "us"
|
| Not what I said. However the idea that everyone is equally
| able to parse out good information from bad is absurd, and I
| make no claims to be one of the group of enlightened
| ubermensch who should be able to decide for the rest. Neither
| do I argue that such people exist or are necessary.
|
| > we can be adults and let everyone get the same information
| and make their own choice, or we can go the other way where
| someone who thinks they know more than us (and you hope it's
| you but it doesn't have to be) gets to decide.
|
| Or we can ditch bland cliches and false dichotomies and look
| at pragmatic steps that can be taken to, for instance,
| improve access to good information, improve education around
| critical thinking, and perhaps (as mentioned in other
| comments) re-examine things like automated algorithms that
| feed people ever more extreme content because it increases
| engagement levels, clicks and ad revenue.
|
| But no, of course, you're right, taking any action at all is
| akin to fascism. Totally.
| slibhb wrote:
| > I make no claims to be one of the group of enlightened
| ubermensch who should be able to decide for the rest
|
| I would say you did:
|
| > And before anyone asks who I am to judge the best ideas,
| I'll answer - nobody, but I can see that factually
| incorrect, scientifically illiterate, conspiratorial,
| harmful crank ideas gain legs in the online world we've
| created. Often at the root of these is a profit motive.
|
| You asked the right question (who are you to determine the
| truth?) but then you didn't answer it. You continued on to
| imply that, in fact, you are in a position to sort out
| what's true unlike those other, inferior people who fall
| for conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
|
| > Or we can ditch bland cliches and false dichotomies and
| look at pragmatic steps that can be taken to, for instance,
| improve access to good information, improve education
| around critical thinking, and perhaps (as mentioned in
| other comments) re-examine things like automated algorithms
| that feed people ever more extreme content because it
| increases engagement levels, clicks and ad revenue.
|
| "Improving access to good information" is usually a
| euphemism for some kind of censorship. As far as I'm
| concerned, all of these "problems" are not problems,
| they're justifications for controlling other people and
| expressions of impotent rage at the failure to control
| those people. I'm vaccinated and I voted for Biden but I do
| not understand why peope care that others decide not to get
| vaccinated or voted for the other guy. Part of freedom is
| the freedom to be wrong.
|
| I think these are not new problems. Democracy, pluralism,
| free speech, trial by jury, etc are our solutions to these
| problems. They aren't particularly satisfying solutions
| because, as you said in your first post, the truth doesn't
| always win. Rather they're tragic compromises. But I don't
| see any serious suggestions about how we should improve
| them.
| Nursie wrote:
| > You continued on to imply that, in fact, you are in a
| position to sort out what's true unlike those other,
| inferior people who fall for conspiracy theories and
| pseudoscience.
|
| You missed that I was drawing a distinction between what
| is commonly thought of as the market place of ideas - in
| which rational discourse and honest debate enables people
| to learn, compare, agree and disagree, find greater
| truths, learn, etc etc - and the spread of misinformation
| based on falsehood, often perpetuated for profit.
|
| We absolutely can, as a society, say that (for example)
| misinformation about vaccines, where we are dealing with
| matters of fact, is not on a level with actual vaccine
| science. This is not really up for honest debate. We can
| debate until the cows come home about what it means,
| whether any opinions should be drawn or any action taken,
| but motivated lies are just not on the same footing as
| factual information.
|
| > "Improving access to good information" is usually a
| euphemism for some kind of censorship.
|
| You assume bad faith here, again. I think there's a lot
| can be done by way of giving access to scientific
| information in accessible ways.
|
| > I'm vaccinated and I voted for Biden but I do not
| understand why peope care that others decide not to get
| vaccinated
|
| Well firstly Because that decision affects more than just
| those individuals, and puts others (including the already
| vaccinated and those who cannot be vaccinated) at risk.
| And secondly because some of those making the decision
| not to vaccinate, and putting themselves at risk, have
| done so armed with bad information.
|
| The nature of the problems may not be new, but the scale
| and severity seem to be.
| amelius wrote:
| > we can be adults and let everyone get the same information
| and make their own choice
|
| One of the problems is that we don't all get the same
| information.
|
| > or we can go the other way where someone who thinks they
| know more than us (and you hope it's you but it doesn't have
| to be) gets to decide. Frankly, the latter idea is ridiculous
| to me.
|
| You've bumped into the exact same problem that exists with
| our democracy. Do you want our future determined by a few
| well-informed, rational people? Or do you want it determined
| by an ignorant, short-sighted mass?
| version_five wrote:
| > You've bumped into the exact same problem that exists
| with our democracy. Do you want our future determined by a
| few well-informed, rational people? Or do you want it
| determined by an ignorant, short-sighted mass?
|
| Isn't this an argument for limiting the power we give to
| those in power? It's unrealistic to think that only people
| who are right will be in charge (I doubt I need to give
| examples). The realistic thing is strong controls on the
| power they wield, to that "short sighted masses" cannot
| take over. This idea underpins liberal democracy.
| [deleted]
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > factually incorrect, scientifically illiterate,
| conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas gain legs in the online
| world we've created
|
| I don't think this is unique to the online world. It's just how
| humans are. We are drawn to sensational, scandalous stories for
| some combination of entertainment and self-righteous
| outrage/virtue signaling to the others in our tribe.
| Nursie wrote:
| > We are drawn to sensational, scandalous stories for some
| combination of entertainment and self-righteous
| outrage/virtue signaling to the others in our tribe.
|
| While I agree, I think there's more to it than that, I think
| it's more serious than that, and I think the message
| amplification capabilities afforded to profit-driven (or
| ideologically driven) bad actors is something we've not
| really seen before. Certainly not at this scale.
|
| So while it is human nature, that's not to say the outcomes
| are desirable, nor that the marketplace of ideas concept is
| consistent with reality. In fact I think it might be the
| point, much like the perfect economic market, the concept of
| the well-functioning marketplace of ideas cannot exist,
| because of the humans that make it up.
| cratermoon wrote:
| "major platforms' amplification features have also caused
| or contributed to real damage in the world. At a societal
| level, they have spread misleading political material, to
| the detriment of democratic governance"
|
| https://knightcolumbia.org/content/amplification-and-its-
| dis...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I agree that the outcomes are not desirable. Many people
| over history have recognized this, and that is why we have
| religions that recognize our inherent flawed or "sinful"
| nature in this regard and give us a framework of rules for
| how to live. Look at the "Seven Deadly Sins" just as one
| example, it's pretty much what the social media algorithms
| select for when they promote content.
| spamizbad wrote:
| That's because the "marketplace of ideas" is being distorted by
| algorithms that are going to favor "provocative" ideas that
| drive clicks. Exciting lies defeat boring truths.
| [deleted]
| tlholaday wrote:
| It seems unfair to deprecate algorithms which "favor
| 'provocative' ideas that drive clicks" as a `distortion` of
| the marketplace of ideas.
|
| It seems more that by driving clicks, the algorithms are
| `facilitating` the marketplace. People are signaling the
| ideas they prefer, idea suppliers are producing more of such
| ideas, and the people get these ideas at ever-lower prices.
|
| How is that in any way a distortion of an ideal marketplace?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is no ideal marketplace of ideas.
|
| It takes years to fully develop an understanding of any
| particular ideology. How are you supposed to judge which
| one is better at interpreting the world on such a short
| term system?
|
| There is simply too much friction in the ideological
| marketplace for it to approximate even loosely an ideal
| market.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's an ideal "twitch" marketplace, not an ideal "deep
| thought" marketplace. "The marketplace of ideas" wasn't
| usually considered to be about gossip, rumor, or
| entertainment. Those are... something, but not "the
| marketplace of ideas".
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Speaking of, I wish hn would hide upvote counts. If I wrote
| something provocative and stinging here against social media,
| it would be karma city, and it feels good to see your number
| go up. Thats not a temptation I like
| trentnix wrote:
| The lab-leak hypothesis is provocative (and probably true),
| but got smothered anyway. It was just inconsistent with the
| _narrative_.
| root_axis wrote:
| It seems to me that it has been a popular meme since the
| start of the pandemic.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It didn't get smothered though. Since the early days of the
| pandemic I haven't seen any discussion of the pandemic of
| any appreciable length that doesn't contain mentions of
| that hypothesis.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| You believe in the _narrative_?
| justbored123 wrote:
| That tells you that "marketplace of ideas" is a dumb idea,
| because we already have proved a million times that people
| are not the rational creatures that we were sold we were for
| a long time. We are smart apes, but apes none the least:
| emotionally driven by our limbic system, very tribal and
| status seeking. Prone to rationalize all these basic impulses
| in a million different ways creating the illusion of rational
| individualism. The algorithms just shows us our true nature,
| don't make the mistake of shooting the messenger.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Or that a few algorithms created by a few companies does
| not constitute anything remotely resembling a marketplace.
| Natsu wrote:
| The usual idea of a marketplace is preserving people's
| freedom to go to alternatives. Yes, sometimes that
| freedom has to be preserved via intervention to preserve
| choices (e.g. antitrust laws), but it's always weird to
| me to see the critique used as a reason for less freedom
| rather than more.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| If the algorithm distorts conversation, then how can you be
| sure it more accurately reflects human nature?
|
| How does something that isn't a marketplace of ideas prove
| it's dumb? Or should this question be punished by your
| algorithm?
| notahacker wrote:
| The main agenda the algorithm has is selecting stuff
| human nature has a high propensity to click on...
| [deleted]
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Alternatively, it simply makes it easier to click on the
| presented content than to purposely seek out other
| content. Front pages and headlines dominate media for a
| reason.
| acituan wrote:
| Kind of like drug cartels having the agenda of producing
| drugs that human nature has a high propensity to be drawn
| to?
|
| In the face of hyperstimuli, we can't talk about mere
| human propensities as a justification, else we would have
| already turned ourselves into junkies many times over.
|
| How many years did it take for heroin go from a cough
| medicine to a schedule I drug? Amphetamines, cigarettes
| etc.
|
| There is a reason you can't put simply _everything_ on
| the marketplace, and that is OK. That doesn 't mean the
| idea of a marketplace is broken.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the
| timescale you want or with the tradeoffs you want while the
| truth settles out, but I think these claims that it doesn't
| work are hasty.
|
| Furthermore there isn't a better alternative. Right now
| censorship from platform owners is abusively used to skew
| political discussions, using the pretense of factuality. I
| regularly see fact checkers make mistakes or make
| misleading claims or they inconsistent apply scrutiny. I
| see trusted organizations like old newspapers and health
| organizations (like the WHO) regularly make mistakes or
| sell their own speculation as incontrovertible truth. Trust
| cannot be given to a few lone entities. The marketplace of
| ideas doesn't have this problem since it is decentralized.
| mandmandam wrote:
| >The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the
| timescale you want
|
| I'm astounded anyone can say that with a straight face.
|
| The misinformation for profit strategies employed by big
| tobacco, oil, military, pharma etc. have proven
| extraordinarily effective, time and time again.
|
| The timescales are nothing to do with "what I want" and
| everything to do with the fate of people's lives.
|
| From losing relatives to cancer and COPD caused by
| smoking, to the extreme and rapid and irreversible loss
| of species, this idea that we can trust in invisible
| forces to save us from demonic ultra-wealthy cunts with
| no conscience whatsoever is baldly stupid, to the point
| of criminality.
|
| That said - censorship from platform owners *is*
| abusively used to skew political discussions, and indeed
| I'd agree "trust cannot be given to"a few lone entities."
|
| But the record shows quite clearly that the marketplace
| of ideas, as such exists, is corrupt, perverted,
| poisoned, bought, sold and not fit for purpose.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| How can you say that with regards to tobacco? It's all
| but illegal, completely banned in most public places, you
| can basically only use it in your home or outdoors alone.
|
| "Not on the timescale you want" is the salient point.
| tshaddox wrote:
| But timescales actually matter. Without any expectation
| of a specific time scale, you can claim that anything is
| actually working perfectly and just hasn't worked _yet_.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| If the system actually worked tobacco would actually be
| banned and not almost.
|
| Despite being only able to smoke outdoors I still see
| many young people in Spain taking up the habit.
| version_five wrote:
| What if people don't share your priorities and would
| rather smoke despite the health consequences. Where does
| this line of thinking end? Why should someone else get to
| tell us how to prioritize pleasurable activities vs
| health and longevity.
|
| The argument about misleading advertising I understand,
| and if you'd said "advertising portraying smoking as safe
| would actually be banned" then I think there's a clearer
| argument (despite my being uncomfortable with the idea of
| "misinformation" being targeted, we have lots of
| reasonable precedents for statement you can make about
| products you sell). But legislating what people's health
| priorities should be is authoritarian and not a power
| government should ever have.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kbelder wrote:
| There is a marketplace of ideas. That's not anything that
| is ever going to change. Concepts spread and are accepted
| or they don't.
|
| The question is only how. Is it going to be by dictate? Is
| a church or government or institution going to enforce
| which ideas spread, or is it going to be free, spreading at
| the level of the individual?
|
| There is no moral alternative to the free exchange of
| ideas. The only alternative is a restricted exchange...
| censorship and punishment.
| Nursie wrote:
| > or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of
| the individual?
|
| And what are the consequences of that?
|
| When people talk about the marketplace of ideas they tend
| to think of good, beneficial, ideas winning out over
| foolishness, conspiracy and just plain inaccuracy.
|
| This has been shown up as naive lately. And if we really
| are talking about the "marketplace of ideas" being raw,
| Darwinian, strongest wins, then are we prepared to deal
| with the fallout of the fact that loud, motivated, well
| funded bullshit merchants will continue to have a huge
| grip over the public dialogue?
| worker767424 wrote:
| I actually think algorithms are more likely to promote things
| that either reinforce your existing beliefs or incite
| outrage.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That is an idea extremely unlikely to be contested, given
| what we've known for a few years now.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't think there is a marketplace of ideas that can be
| separated from the algorithms used to promote them.
|
| Every ordering of content is going to favour something, even
| chronological.
|
| Somebody will find a way to abuse any sorting mechanism you
| use
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| That is no doubt true (about how the algorithms work). At the
| same time what we see is that there is a market, demand, for
| misinformation. And some people are making money from that.
|
| Why is there so much misinformation about Covid vaccines and
| vaccines in general? Because people want to believe in such
| misinformation and because that allows websites to make money
| from their readership. Therefore the peddling of
| misinformation continues.
|
| It is not so different from what publications like National
| Inquirer and Weekly World News have been doing for a long
| time. But instead of paying for National Inquirer you can now
| get such misinformation for free on the web, because you are
| paying for that by spending your time seeing the
| advertisements. Information wants to be "free" whatever that
| means, but people want misinformation, to give them the
| feeling they are right about their prejudices.
|
| SEE: https://fortune.com/2021/05/14/disinformation-media-
| vaccine-...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Weekly World News_
|
| This has always been obvious satire.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Because there are sociopolitical actors who can extract
| direct benefit from OTHER people believing misinformation
| to their detriment. You are omitting this motivation, and
| it's a significant factor, worth spending money and energy
| on if your motivation is to harm a population that you see
| as your enemy.
|
| This assumes a global marketplace of information
| propagation. That's the new factor here: the actual
| motivation isn't all that new.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Nursie wrote:
| That may well be a big factor, and that's something that
| needs to be looked at more closely. Lots of people describe
| being drawn down the rabbithole by algorithmically driven
| suggestions which nudge them ever more extreme.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's not good to both observe that crank ideas rise to the top
| due to the profit motive, and to think the solution could be
| that the people who are best at profit should get to censor
| speech.
|
| Maybe we attack should sleazy commerce rather than speech?
|
| The reason people go in for crank ideas is because they
| recognize that the people who sell them things are constantly
| manipulating them. They _work_ so they don 't have time to
| investigate everything themselves, so as a proxy many tend to
| believe marginal people who they don't know at all due to the
| signal that their speech is being suppressed by known liars who
| are never called out because of their power.
|
| Meanwhile, the upper middle-class people who provide the
| infrastructure and strategy for the biggest frauds are smug in
| the belief that their betters are being honest about what is
| true and false, because their income depends on it.
|
| The problem with people is that they are unmoored, with
| absolutely no sources of information that are not trying to
| squeeze cash out of them. They come up with sketchy heuristics
| to give them some semblance of stability between shifts at work
| and climbing pointless complications in their lives created by
| rent-seekers.
|
| The problem with the comfortable upper middle-class is that
| they are _too moored_ , _too sure_ they 're at the end of
| history. Too sure that they know what is true between stitching
| together half-remembered NYT and WaPo headlines with their
| discussions with each other at restaurants and dinner parties.
| Too sure that truth can and should be dictated by people who
| have a better degree than they do. As if maintaining that
| comfort is not an interest, as if bias towards themselves as
| "the middle" is actually the definition of being unbiased.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Often at the root of these is a profit motive."
|
| Big Tech is DOA if the web is not open for commercial use,
| i.e., advertising. But the web is definitely not DOA if all
| advertising ceased. Look at the enormous growth of the
| internet, the vast number of users with internet subscriptions
| today, billions of them using the network on a daily basis for
| a variety of non-commerial uses, hundreds of millions uploading
| content for others to consume. (Big Tech middlemen pervert this
| recreational usage for their own commercial uses.)
|
| The internet was not created for the purposes of advertising.
| (There was none in the beginning.) That is only one use. Look
| what happens when we allow ads without any rules. Yikes.
|
| Even if advertising were regulated, the web could still be used
| for commerce, e.g., processing commercial transactions.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Better ideas, better models of truth and reality don 't win
| out. People have not shown themselves interested in
| intellectual debate or argument._
|
| This is plausible, so people believe it. Fortunately, it is
| false. Compare the state of the world regarding germ theory,
| human rights, smoking, racism, education, the belief in
| violence to solve problems, or the delusion that is theism to
| the world 100 years ago.
|
| It used to be way, way worse. The better ideas _are_ winning.
|
| Things are improving tremendously. It just takes time.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Those are all pre-internet. Not sure they are good examples
| of how the marketplace works in social media.
| cdirkx wrote:
| But are those ideas winning because people are rationally
| chosing to believe in them in the marketplace of ideas, or
| just that we grew up with them and the people with contrary
| beliefs are dying out.
|
| There is a saying that "science advances one funeral at a
| time" because even professors etc., one of the most rational
| group of people on the planet I would think, have biases
| against new theories despite evidence supporting them,
| instead sticking to what they already know even if it would
| be disproven.
| [deleted]
| ideata20592510 wrote:
| Missing from this discussion is the understanding that speech
| is an inalienable right.
|
| It does not need to be justified on consequentialist grounds,
| nor on the basis of the more pernicious metric of harm
| reduction.
|
| Pointing a gun at someone to silence her is a form of
| censorship, and so is quietly erasing her from the most
| prevalent communications channels (deplatforming).
|
| Figure out a way to achieve harm reduction without grotesque
| violations of natural rights. Until then, there will always be
| people who prefer dangerous speech to the safety of slavery.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The internet has been a beautiful experiment to find out how
| what crank ideology aligns best to the human default
| instinctive nature.
| amelius wrote:
| > We do not see the 'best' ideas rise to the top.
|
| It's the same with the economy. Not the best products win, but
| the ones with the biggest advertising budget.
|
| We should try to dampen the effect of these counterproductive
| forces.
| [deleted]
| TheFalun wrote:
| "But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an
| opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as
| well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the
| opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is
| right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error
| for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a
| benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of
| truth, produced by its collision with error." -- John Stuart
| Mill couldn't disagree more.
| seizethegdgap wrote:
| You're using the quote of someone who lived and died before
| the invention of the telephone, and also ignoring that he
| also advocated for a 'harm principle'
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle) which states
| "...that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests
| of others, the individual is accountable, and may be
| subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if
| society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite
| for its protection."
| Nursie wrote:
| It is this attitude which appears to be based on an
| idealistic assumption that people care about exchanging error
| for truth.
|
| This is what I am arguing is not really the case, as
| demonstrated amply by the world around us.
| rektide wrote:
| I tend to agree with this article: we all should be worried about
| being dependent on having only a few core systems where speech
| happens, especially when network effect & switching costs are
| very very high.
|
| I believe platforms have the right to moderate themselves as they
| see fit. They get that freedom, and we're better for letting
| private systems regulate themselves. Or, (as mentioned) as
| Twitter is floating, creating an "app store for moderation",
| making moderation an interoperable layer rather than integrated.
|
| And I agree with where Cory eventually brings the discussion to:
| what makes everything all feel so impossible is that switching
| costs are astronomical. If we leave the one network our friend is
| on we lose all digital connection with that friend, lose the view
| we'd get of them interacting with others. Competitive
| Compatibility is needed, to let us allow private companies to
| create their own rules, but to not keep each of us restrained &
| restricted within a handful of supersized networks.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > "app store for moderation"
|
| One amusing possibility about this approach is that if Twitter
| implemented it and governments decided that they didn't like
| Twitter's default censorship regime, Twitter could say "That's
| fine, just provide your own censorship system and write a law
| forcing that system onto all users in your country."
|
| I suspect at least some governments would be reluctant to incur
| the financial and political costs of maintaining their own
| (inevitably imperfect and controversial) censorship regime, and
| would then find it harder to act at arms length and say
| "Twitter has to do more" as they do currently.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _If we leave the one network our friend is on we lose all
| digital connection with that friend, lose the view we 'd get of
| them interacting with others._
|
| Ever since I started using the Fediverse, I haven't had this
| problem. Sure, most of my friends aren't there, but I'm happy
| to IM or email them instead.
| ctoth wrote:
| "Hey man, I really enjoy our friendship but I just can't do
| Facebook anymore for mental health reasons, what's your email?"
|
| What people are really saying is they know it's bad but can't
| stop, they can't turn away, they can't say "no, I don't want to
| participate anymore." Then they blame their friends, "oh I'm
| just going where they go." I wouldn't want to "lose all digital
| connection with this person" well why not reach out to them?
| Said another way, if your friends and you don't maintain
| connections regardless of the underlying social systems, are
| you really friends? I've somehow carted a group of random
| online people along with me across various networks,
| fragmenting messengers, good old email, phone numbers, going in
| and out of contact since at least 2002. The underlying
| protocols might change but they're the same people. What
| prevents you from doing this?
| rektide wrote:
| Your friend is actively broadcasting to the world (except
| you) their photos, they're sharing articles & their opinion,
| they're writing on other friend's wall (and you can see).
| Social _places_ are filled with activity. They are broadcast
| mediums that beget further broadcast interactions, which
| beget yet more broadcast interaction.
|
| This cruel small hearted tough-love view of social you
| present reads as extremely unempathic to me. I don't see how
| you can miss so clearly the core idea of Metcalf's law, that
| the value of a network rises according to the square of it's
| nodes. And each interactable interaction, in my view,
| constitutes it's own node, is it's own potential for
| something new to start amid the network. Not being in that
| place can be enormously detrimental, and imo, Competitive
| Compatibility is absolutely an obvious, sensible public
| policy to insure that you can still be with your friend, even
| if you don't want to be with Facebook.
|
| Reducing this to "why don't you stay in better touch" is
| like, "oh you don't speak the same language, why don't you
| two invent one?".
| ctoth wrote:
| Why does any part of this need to happen in public? Not in
| a text group? Random discord server? Is it just some sort
| of underlying exhibition drive that Myspace originally
| tapped into? To me, my friends are the 15-20 people I've
| grown to know and like. From reading what you said here, it
| seems as though to you the word friends captures your
| entire extended network, with friends of friends, old
| coworkers, etc. If your question is how do you show off to
| these people, if you're optimizing for the number of
| 'interactable interactions' or something, we've left
| friendship far behind and turned this into a 'numbers go
| up' game. I'm not less friendly with my best friend because
| I didn't see her latest comment on some random meme an
| acquaintance from school 10 years ago posted.
| rektide wrote:
| You propose replacing public commons with something
| different, immediately showing you have gained no sense
| of what Metcalf's Law implies or what value social
| networks enable.
|
| None of this sounds in any way realistic or like a viable
| replacement for what we are right now stuck with. Giving
| people broadcast, in public capabilities is different,
| it's easier. I wouldn't necessarily say it's better, but
| the ease & ambience of broadcast is a huge advantage, and
| leads to far more interesting mixing. Nothing you've
| proposed sounds in any way similar. Your words continue
| to amount to: withdraw from the public. I for one do not
| see that as a likely or desireable counter-conclusion for
| myself, for my friends and family, or for society.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| This idea of "the public" is a distorted, commercially-
| mediated fantasy. Facebook is a product, it is not a
| public square.
| Isamu wrote:
| Does anyone remember the days when internet media companies
| didn't want to censor anything? Because after all it costs more
| and puts them in a position where nobody is satisfied?
|
| And do you remember when they were called onto the carpet by
| repeated congressional committees for...
|
| Allowing copyright violations?
|
| Allowing terrorists' messages?
|
| Allowing misinformation relating to elections?
|
| Allowing hate speech?
|
| Now censoring misinformation?
|
| Do you remember when you were incensed by the inaction of media
| companies and demanded action, and now are dismayed that they are
| acting?
| jsnell wrote:
| This all sounds very nice, but there's a bit of sleight of hand
| here since the article goes out of its way to avoid details. That
| way everyone reads into exactly what they want, and it's totally
| non-obvious whether this is actually a workable proposal or not.
|
| But what's the concrete proposal here? How would things actually
| work? Will the services be forced to accept whatever unmoderated
| feed of filth the linked to service sends their way? If not, how
| is this supposed to fix the moderation problem?
|
| How are you supposed to link together applications with totally
| different data, interaction, and identity models? Obviously you
| couldn't link e.g. say Discord to Instagram and have the
| interactions between the systems make any sense. Are we just
| going to have a predefined ontology of possible social networkign
| apps, populated with the currently existing models, and define an
| API for all of then? When and how does that ontology get
| redefined? Or define a single lowest common denominator covering
| everything? What happens with features that don't fit into the
| models? They're entirely forbidden? They need to go through a
| multi-year public review bureacracy?
|
| Who exactly will be forced to interoperate, and who gets a free
| pass?
| Nursie wrote:
| > Will the services be forced to accept whatever unmoderated
| feed of filth the linked to service sends their way?
|
| I was kinda wondering that. If a user gets banned, and moves
| off-platform to continue the behaviour there, but is somehow
| magically still linked to everyone they were linked with
| before... has anything really changed? Will facebook be forced
| to show its users the same nastiness it just booted off,
| because of the interop necessities?
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > Will facebook be forced to show its users the same
| nastiness it just booted off, because of the interop
| necessities?
|
| Facebook should be forced to show me the feeds I choose to
| subscribe to. I'm perfectly capable of deciding for myself
| whether I find something nasty, and I find the idea of
| Zuckerberg as an arbiter of morality both absurd and
| dystopian.
| clucas wrote:
| I think this gets you into really weird places really
| quickly.
|
| How do you not end up with a censorship department of the
| government, that is tasked with writing moderation rules?
| It probably wouldn't be _called_ a censorship office, but
| that 's what it would be: a government office determining
| what can and can't be posted on social media. This seems
| entirely antithetical to the idea of the first amendment.
|
| Do you have any other way to implement your idea of forcing
| Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to?
|
| EDIT: Just saw in your profile that you might not be from
| the USA - feel free to substitute "the idea of free speech
| in modern liberal democracies" for "the idea of the first
| amendment" as needed. :)
| stale2002 wrote:
| > How do you not end up with a censorship department of
| the government
|
| That department of censorship will exist no matter what.
| Internally, it is called the trust and safety department,
| at most big companies.
|
| The only question is do you want to have the decisions of
| that department to be limited by judges and rights that
| are laid out in the constitution, or do you want it to be
| an unaccountable free for all, where they can do whatever
| they want?
|
| > Do you have any other way to implement your idea of
| forcing Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to?
|
| Well, phone companies are currently forced to allow most
| people on their network. We could do it the same way,
| that phone companies are required to do so.
| Nursie wrote:
| You seem to want some sort of aggregator ... ? I'm not sure
| facebook's the best model to start with there. I think
| you'd be happier with a third-party service that could
| receive from FB, and then we wouldn't get into forcing
| facebook to carry stuff.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| I don't want to force FB to do anything. I want to
| require all social media companies to allow aggregation
| (though ActivityPub etc) but if Zuckerberg/Facebook
| decide they don't want to be in that industry, I would
| have no problem with them simply closing down.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _I find the idea of Zuckerberg as an arbiter of morality
| both absurd and dystopian_
|
| This is a very common characterization that I find
| frustratingly absurd. Zuckeberg is not "an arbiter of
| morality" in any respect, the contents of Facebook is a
| corporate business decision, not a reflection on morality.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| If FB are blocking things that they deem bad, then they
| are clearly setting themselves up as arbiters of
| morality, even if they say they aren't.
| root_axis wrote:
| Facebook has opinions about the type of content they'd
| prefer not to facilitate on the Facebook platform, that
| doesn't make them "arbiters of morality", it just makes
| them curators of their product identity.
| justbored123 wrote:
| So, you are in favor of things like pedophilia/child
| grooming online, revenge porn, defamation, false
| advertisement, fraud, etc. because YOUR moral may approve
| of it regardless of laws or harm to others. Got it.
|
| The idea of no-regulation free for all is childish/sick
| nonsense. If you want to have your own nazi-phedo
| site/feed, host it yourself and face the cost and
| consequences yourself, don't force private for profit
| companies to do it for you for free at the expense of their
| brand and their advertisers.
| djrogers wrote:
| There's a huge gap between 'legal but morally
| unacceptable to some' and 'blatantly illegal'. Making an
| argument against the latter while ignoring that the
| discussion is largely about the former is the very
| definition of a straw man.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Characterising people who want free speech as the
| criminals who will use that speech for the worst ends is
| no different to people who opposed a fair trial for all
| because criminals would want a chance to avoid jail.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Why not platform-specific moderation? All social media content
| is available for consumption by a set of platforms the user
| authorizes. Those platforms are free to filter or moderate the
| content as they see fit. While not explicitly spelled out in
| TFA, this seems like the trivially obvious implementation.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Don't we already have platform specific moderation? Isn't
| that what people are complaining about?
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| >But what's the concrete proposal here? How would things
| actually work? Will the services be forced to accept whatever
| unmoderated feed of filth the linked to service sends their
| way? If not, how is this supposed to fix the moderation
| problem?
|
| Does gmail block emails from your friends containing
| misinformation?
|
| Why should facebook be allowed to do the same thing?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Google is apparently going to be doing that with content on
| Drive. Not sure what they've said or not said about gMail but
| what's the difference, really?
| shrimpx wrote:
| The difference is that gmail isn't publicly serving your
| emails to an open audience. The restrictions on Drive are
| only for publicly-served content.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| So they say. For now.
| clucas wrote:
| I think it's OK to say (1) you are allowed to send
| pornographic magazines through the mail from your place of
| business, but (2) you are not allowed to put a pornographic
| image on the front of your building.
|
| I also think it's fair to carry this analogy over to the
| internet, and the difference between an email and a social
| media post.
| jsnell wrote:
| Gmail does all kinds of filtering on the incoming messages,
| such as detecting spam, malware and phishing. So it certainly
| isn't the case that they're just delivering every email to
| your inbox. Do they block misinfo? I genuinely have no idea.
|
| But if it's not happening, it seems pretty obviously like an
| explicit product decision rather than some kind of regulatory
| requirement.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > Does gmail block emails from your friends containing
| misinformation?
|
| No, but they actively block emails from many legit servers in
| order to enforce an email oligopoly. Note I'm not talking
| about servers who can't DKIM sign or are on well-known
| blocklists.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| Why does a town square need moderation?
|
| You can't just ignore the fact that social networking has
| become the new town square because its inconvenient
| owisd wrote:
| The town square analogy would be fine if there was a 'net
| neutrality' for social media: they have to show me everything
| I follow in chronological order with no filtering or
| recommendations. As it stands it works more like the letters
| page in a newspaper, where an editor is deciding what gets
| included and what doesn't.
| claytoneast wrote:
| What's wrong with: anything a user can do on your app in the
| interface must also be doable via API call by that user.
|
| You don't have to map everything so the platform interactions
| are the same, simply make them equal-access via API call.
|
| It seems flawless to me but I also only spent the time I took
| to type this thinking about it, so it may be 98% flawed.
| LoveLeadAcid wrote:
| Just do what smart people have been doing for years - stop using
| big tech. Stop using Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Microsoft. Buy
| a used computer and install a Free OS and just check out of the
| entire big tech ecosystem.
|
| Otherwise you get what you deserve. And let's all disabuse
| ourselves of the incorrect notion that it's big tech alone which
| is ordering censorship. It's our own governments, who use the
| many secret laws and intelligence agency relationships (all of
| big tech is basically In-Q-Tel) to get what they want.
|
| Make it difficult for them. Don't play nice. Dissent. Stop using
| PRISM platforms.
| blfr wrote:
| I use Linux, discuss political ideas on private, members-only
| forums, and share memes over Signal. This is an excellent
| setup... if you want to have conversations with your fellow
| computer janitors.
|
| This is no way to connect to other people. And these people
| might also have interesting ideas, ideas I might want to hear
| before some bot at Facebooks deems them against "community
| standards" or whatever they call their censorship that is
| totally not censorship.
| shrimpx wrote:
| It's an honorable call but most people can't follow it -- like
| my dad. They're too entrenched.
|
| It's not reasonable, in a connected world-system like today's,
| to put all the burden on individual people to instantly switch
| away from bad providers, no matter the level of entrenchment.
|
| Isn't one important role of government to protect constituents
| from corporate encroachment? Have we given up on electing
| governments that work for us?
| smoldesu wrote:
| This right here is it, for the most part. I see a lot of people
| who lament how terrible the takeover of "big tech" is, but they
| still use Facebook on a regular basis and don't go out of their
| way to seek alternatives. It's like complaining that Kraft has
| taken over your local supermarket aisle while you're buying 10
| boxes of name-brand mac and cheese.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Well, that Mac & Cheese is free cuz you're giving them your
| phone number so they can call you and sell you a gym
| membership.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Not really. There's a gradient of entrenchment. Your example
| doesn't work at all if we're talking about deeply-
| entrenched/natural-monopoly products like electricity or
| internet access instead of a trivially-switchable product
| like a brand of mac & cheese or ranch dressing.
|
| The question is where does Facebook fall on that gradient?
| It's certainly not on the "product on the supermarket shelf"
| end. It's closer to the middle somewhere.
|
| I gave up Facebook in 2013 and more or less lost any
| semblance of an ongoing connection to a dozen childhood
| friends from my home country. Many people aren't willing to
| give up that type of thing. This isn't whatsoever like
| swappable supermarket products.
| bitwize wrote:
| Yes, censorship is bad, but which is worse: admitting a little
| bit of censorship, or Nazis? Because uh, right now, we have
| Nazis.
|
| In Germany, if you express Nazi views you will be arrested and
| thrown in prison. Germany is, according to many metrics, freer
| than the USA. Perhaps _because_ of its laws that put Nazis in
| prison.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >Because uh, right now, we have Nazis.
|
| We do not, in fact, have Nazis.
|
| Allow me to re-phrase:
|
| _Yes, censorship is bad, but which is worse: admitting a
| little bit of censorship, or Islamic Terrorists? Because uh,
| right now, we have Islamic Terrorists._
|
| At least one was real in the last couple decades.
| bitwize wrote:
| It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed
| by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists
| since 9/11.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| A little off topic, but wouldn't an easier fix for some of the
| addiction and misinformation bubbles be to legislate, by law,
| that all "feed apps" always show things newest to oldest and
| require users to consciously click, everytime, to show "top" or
| "hot". This would help a lot to fix the "zombie feed scrolling"
| in my opinion and prevent engagement algorithms from only showing
| polarizing content.
| devwastaken wrote:
| I'm not concerned. If I ran a platform serving out qanon BS I'd
| ban and log their details. Terrorists don't get protections from
| a private company, nor should they. People don't understand just
| how insane these groups of people have become. Without FBI
| interference these terrorist groups would have murdered multiple
| state governors and carried out plenty of bombings. I'm not going
| to "be neutral" to such people.
|
| 1. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...,
| "The Wolverine Watchmen group had been recruiting members on
| Facebook from November 2019 until June 2020, when Facebook began
| purging all boogaloo-related material."
|
| 2. AWS datacenter attack,
| https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/amazon/aws-data-center-s...,
| "Management has warned Amazon data center staff to be on the
| lookout for any suspicious activity following a comment on Parler
| that suggested "someone with explosives training" could "pay a
| visit to some AWS data centers,""
|
| 3. Sovreign citizen movement + violent plots,
| https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...
|
| 4. Jan 6th : Pauline Bauer - https://youtu.be/rvgwR4kfQVs,
| Participated in the insurrection because "Democrats are behind
| pedo rings" - this is fabricated propaganda perpetuated on the
| net that we can how see has actual, real world harm.
|
| 5. 8Chan, https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-
| for-8chan/, hosted many form of illigal, harmful and predatory
| content, namely directions/links to CP, animal abuse, Revenge
| porn, coordinated harassment of groups and people for the
| purposes of suiciding other people. This is still there on their
| new site, but it is now a heavy hotbed of conspiracy nuts that
| believe they're the victims.
|
| Plenty more that I can't remember off the top of my head.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >Plenty more that I can't remember off the top of my head.
|
| You should familiarize yourself with the rest of post-War 20th
| century history in the United States, then. Far, far more
| deadly and dangerous "conspiracy theories" existed before the
| internet and caused actual deaths of sitting politicians. It's
| the Presentism of all of this that is making people forget how
| pernicious it is, letting these powerful organizations have
| this authority to ban "misinformation".
| jmull wrote:
| I don't see what the argument is that the marketplace of ideas
| isn't working.
|
| Facebook doesn't prevent you from using Twitter, or Reddit or a
| small new network. All kinds of people can and do engage with
| multiple networks, big and small, at their own inclination. All
| of the platforms are accessed on the same internet using the same
| protocols and clients, and it's _trivial_ -- completely trivial
| -- to find alternate content or all kinds (at least in the US).
|
| People aren't abandoning the big platforms in droves because they
| generally like those big platforms. (Probably almost nobody
| thinks they are great, but that's not the standard. The standard
| is better than the alternatives.)
|
| As the article points out, the marketplace of ideas is leading
| Twitter to more flexible moderation mechanisms that let users
| choose their own level.
|
| Seems crazy to change the rules, force companies to break their
| business models, when the system is working fine.
|
| Doctorow (and others) may not like it, but many, many people like
| Facebook and Twitter a lot more than they dislike them.
|
| Protective regulation should come into play when the affected
| populace is not in any position to consent to (or decline) the
| situation. E.g., because alternatives aren't available, or
| because the issue requires special expertise to understand, etc.
| But generally this doesn't apply here. (I do think there needs to
| be recourse for people who are banned or otherwise lose access to
| something they've invested in.)
| s9w wrote:
| No. Only the right gets censored, so the left reinforces this
| whenever they can
| croes wrote:
| I think that's why Cyberpunk as a fictional genre is dead, it's
| too real.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I've been waiting for @cstross to finish the Halting State
| series but at last update, he appeared to opine that fiction
| was getting too close to reality. Thus he has declined to
| finish the series.
|
| I felt this was a bit of a cop out at the time. The Halting
| State series had us _thinking_ about these issues, which I
| think is better than not thinking, writing, and debating them.
| If reality is catching up to fiction, then write about reality,
| don 't be afraid of it.
| [deleted]
| cratermoon wrote:
| Probably a good place for reposting this:
| https://publicseminar.org/essays/why-we-should-outlaw-oppres...
| cornel_io wrote:
| That's basically just saying that racism and hate speech are
| super ultra _duper_ bad and we should outlaw things like that,
| as well as vastly expand what we consider beyond the pale so
| that it captures what are fairly mainstream opinions. I (as
| well as many others) disagree, and in fact I think that the
| people that argue for hate speech laws are far more dangerous
| than the tiny handful of actual white supremacists out there
| who are just losing their battle slowly over time.
| mindslight wrote:
| The long term threat of big tech censorship is that it is priming
| governments with an expectation that all online communication can
| (and therefore should) be policed - the exact opposite of the
| decentralized permissionless Internet dream. The longer they
| maintain bearable levels of censorship, the longer governments
| have to cozy up to the idea and expect to apply it to
| communications technology that lacks the centralization
| vulnerability. So ultimately, the faster Big Tech implodes and
| goes the way of Digg, the better. We should cheer when they stay
| well ahead of what governments want to censor - it makes it clear
| they are more like TV channels than letting them claim to be
| manifestations of "the Internet".
| [deleted]
| vsareto wrote:
| >The promise of the ACCESS Act is an internet where if you don't
| like a big platform's moderation policies, if you think they're
| too tolerant of abusers or too quick to kick someone off for
| getting too passionate during a debate, you can leave, and still
| stay connected to the people who matter to you.
|
| Use any number of other communication methods or services that
| brilliant humans have invented to allow us all to talk to each
| other within seconds?
|
| How have we reached such technical ineptitude that we can no
| longer consider other options other than big tech platforms when
| communicating? As if folks weren't stringing wires up across
| countries 100+ years before so we could send beeps at each other.
| Now we're going to write laws so your crazy relatives can talk
| about their conspiratorial alternate reality because losing their
| friends list is such a painful burden? I think I'd swallow a
| bullet before being asked to work on any technical features for
| this act. I know that's absolutely going to suck and I can't
| think of a worse place to end up after dealing with the
| difficulty of learning CompSci and programming.
|
| This is going to be a waste of everyone's time and resources for
| no good social benefit. Literally go fix a bridge with this time
| and money and it'll do more good for the world.
| mousepilot wrote:
| Still there are folks that cannot deal with anything outside of
| Facebook, ie., cannot run a regular browser because they simply
| don't know how.
|
| We have CLEARLY reached such technical ineptitude.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Ineptitude might be the correct description assuming that one
| should have a certain level of tech savvy to participate
| online but should that really be the case? Apple not long ago
| ran a "what's a computer?" ad because participation in the
| use of computer powered tools no longer requires an
| understanding of how those tools work under the hood. While
| that might be disappointing to us geeks, for most people it's
| a good thing. I'm glad I can drive my truck to the National
| Forest without knowing anything about the correct ignition
| timing. Should an understanding of web browsers be a
| requirement to use the Facebook app?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Censorship is a symptom. It is a means. The ends is control. "The
| Age of Surveillance Capitalism" changed my understanding and view
| of not only Big Tech, but the broader political context as well.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capi...
| FranchuFranchu wrote:
| "Whoa, it's the guy in that one xkcd comic!"
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| I love Randell but he was never right on that issue.
|
| The United States Constitution doesn't own the concept of free
| speech. The concept existed before the constitution was
| written, it will exist after the usa falls.
|
| While he is correct, in that somebody arguing a social network
| site censoring them has validated the first amendment, is
| fucking stupid.
|
| He is not correct in arguing that all references to free speech
| refer to the 1st amendment, and the fact that the 1st amendment
| only applies to government censorship _doesn 't restrain the
| broad concept of free speech to only applying to government
| censorship._
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Not that Cory is wrong but his words would hold more weight if
| boingboing hadn't been engaging in the behavior he decries for
| over a decade. Memory holing people who they no longer feel "are
| wonderful" and removing vowels from posts they don't agree with
| are just two examples of the type of activity they've long
| engaged in. These aren't cases of off-topic discussion, threats,
| or other attempts at derailing discussions, they're personality,
| romantic, or ideological disagreements that aren't allowed to
| exist.
| varelse wrote:
| Enragement equals engagement.
|
| If that's the world you want, good news, that's the world we have
| now. And the magic of AI and recommender systems has disrupted
| that old and stupid model of if "it bleeds it leads" to get you
| outraged faster and with far less effort than it used to take in
| the old and stupid days.
|
| But that's not the world I want to live in personally and if it
| takes some imperfect even sometimes ham-fisted regulation to get
| us to a better place I'm willing to deal with that rather than
| embrace the status quo because it sucks and it's just getting
| worse as the tools to hack social media have been democratized at
| scale.
|
| Ideally I'd love to let the free marketplace of ideas work this
| out (and it eventually will and I am a huge believer in weakly
| efficient marketplaces), but unless I get a 1000 plus year
| lifespan, I only have so many years left in my lightcone so I
| side with being more proactive.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| You can't censor the left. You might be able to silence them for
| a time, but reality has a liberal bias and the same ideas will
| always resurface. It's ironic that they are called the
| conservative ones really since their schemes perpetually change
| to suit themselves.
| daenz wrote:
| Take what you support and imagine it used against you in the
| worst possible ways. Do you still support it? If yes, then it is
| worth supporting. If it's not, then maybe you're only supporting
| it because of who it currently helps or harms. This exercise also
| works with things that you don't support.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| ...which is exactly how I concluded that the censorship we see
| online is basically necessary. The worst possible ways that
| online speech can be used against me include being murdered by
| a lone-wolf terrorist who received instruction online. The
| worst that can happen to me from censorship being imposed is
| that I will not be allowed to say certain things online or
| challenge those in power, or possibly that I will be excluded
| from these social networks entirely because the people in power
| do not like what I said -- which is certainly bad, but not
| quite as bad as being dead.
|
| The unfortunate truth is that terrorist organizations use
| mainstream social networking sites to recruit and radicalize.
| We are sitting here talking about how power has been
| concentrated and how everyone is subject to censorship -- as if
| we did not just spend a decade watching ISIS and violent white
| nationalist groups amplify their messages by evading the
| controls that existed in legacy media outlets. "This is why we
| can't have nice things" is the expression that comes to mind...
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| You certainly must love the way things are going in Belarus
| then.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| I prefer the way things are run in countries like France
| and Germany, where people understand the value of free
| speech in debating politics and spreading new ideas while
| also recognizing that some limits are necessary (e.g.
| limits on speech that promotes a resurgence of nazism).
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Every startup wants to be a new Facebook. Every modern
| society wants to be a new Sweden. Turns out that
| replicating successfully run communities - with their
| traditions, history and lifestyle - is extremely
| difficult, if ever possible.
| eloff wrote:
| Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up
| essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety,
| deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
|
| I will not sacrifice free speech for added protection from
| terrorists.
| sbuk wrote:
| This quote is taken out of context - see
| https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-
| famou...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Franklin used that line in more than one context. He also
| said "The Massachusetts must suffer all the Hazards and
| Mischiefs of War, rather than admit the Alteration of
| their Charters and Laws by Parliament. They who can give
| up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety,
| deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
|
| https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=21&page=
| 497...
|
| I think less important than the nuance of what Franklin
| meant in any specific statement, is that what most people
| mean when they use that quote is its literal meaning, and
| that if you look at Franklin's life and body of work he
| was clearly a staunch defender of the idea that Liberty
| is a God-given (or inherent) right of mankind, and one
| worth defending.
| eloff wrote:
| Interesting. So he wasn't saying what people today think
| he was saying.
|
| Let me fix it:
|
| Those who would sacrifice freedom for temporary security
| will eventually lose both and deserve neither.
|
| - me, 2021
|
| Doesn't quite carry the same weight with my name behind
| it, but I stand by it nonetheless.
| sbuk wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, in part, but I see this
| quote used in this context so often, that I felt that
| it's worth pointing out.
| eloff wrote:
| Yes, it was interesting to read about the historical
| context, thanks for pointing it out. I also think the
| contemporary interpretation of literature, or a quote in
| this case, often matters more than what the author
| originally intended - it can take on a life of its own.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I suppose it is somewhat natural that "abolish the
| police" would be a stance a freedom-lover such as
| yourself would take.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I have read all of these explanations multiple times and
| have always had trouble reconciling everything here.
|
| What do the words "liberty", "purchase", and "security"
| mean in this quotation?
|
| As best as I can tell:
|
| - liberty: the right to be sovereign and able to defend
| oneself
|
| - security: safety from having taxes levied
|
| - purchase: the guys being taxed said instead "look,
| we'll give you money this one time instead but we don't
| want you to have the right to levy taxes"
|
| Okay, I guess that makes sense.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Free speech absolutism has not worked very well. Usenet was
| overrun by neonazis and all the interested discussions
| moved to moderated newsgroups/mailing lists/forums. A
| genocidal terrorist organization made effective us of
| various social media platforms to recruit large numbers of
| people to their cause and the world is a better place now
| that they have been banned.
|
| Right now we are missing one of our best chances to end the
| COVID pandemic -- widespread vaccination -- because too
| many people are spreading lies about the vaccine on social
| media.
|
| There is plenty of room for legitimate political debate,
| where people passionately advocate their preferred policies
| on various issues, without having to give a platform to
| people who are not arguing in good faith and whose real
| purpose is to advance a violent agenda. The cost of "free
| speech" is not "giving terrorists a platform to recruit and
| spread propaganda" and the politicians of Ben Franklin's
| generation actually did understand that (shortly after his
| death Congress passed the Sedition Act, which banned false
| statements about the US government to prevent foreign
| agents from destabilizing the newly formed country).
| TheFalun wrote:
| And how many people did those neonazis actually effect?
| How many more people saw that and immediately criticized
| the neonazis who wouldn't have seen them before?
| cartoonworld wrote:
| The answer to your questions are very many, and some. The
| numbers are of course relative, but consider the
| following:
|
| During the 1980's early internet, white supremacist
| groups were among the first[0] to being using the new
| medium for organization and racist information purposes.
| They used it then to publish among other things a list[1]
| of "race traitors" etc including name, address, phone
| number, promulgate misinformation, gaslighting
| established norms and history (ex: Holocaust Denialism),
| and develop strategies for what can really only be
| described as terrorist indoctrination in many respects.
|
| Some of the group involved killed a man with automatic
| weapons and hijacked an armored car with millions in cash
| to finance a separatist uprising. One of these was Louis
| Beam[2] who was a quite violent seditionist, and
| developed the "lone wolf" militia cell structure which is
| familiar today. Beam used these
| telecommunication/internet networks to create and
| distribute a lot of white separatist information. His
| activity goes on and on, it is quite vile in all
| respects. He has been charged and acquitted of sedition.
|
| In this academic piece by Chip Berlet[3], he recounts
| attempting to counteract the white supremacy BBS with an
| anti-racist BBS at an Anti-Klan symposium. The
| understanding of BBS was quite poor at the time. By the
| 1990's the white-supremacist BBS network had grown quite
| a bit, distributing newspapers and operating file
| transfer and messaging services into a national network
| of neonazi BBS including Stormfront[4], which is of
| course still in operation, and is quite influential. They
| successfully transitioned to the ordinary internet and
| also AOL, using them as very effective recruitment tools.
|
| Neonazi/white supremacist/separatist/seditionist groups
| have used the internet very effectively pretty much from
| the beginning. Perhaps this is an effect of Johnathan
| Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[5] as well as
| some kind of operationalized Poe's Law--race rallys
| thrive in protective shade. KKK marches and the like are
| routinely confronted by anti-racist counter-protests, but
| the current nature of online discourse continues to
| provide an asymmetric advantage to these types of
| activities. The old "Filter Bubble" doesn't lend many
| opportunities for normal people to insert themselves in
| the radicalization process...this could possibly be
| better than worse.
|
| The literature on this is vast, exploring how a normal
| person can become radicalized into a racist white
| separatist is a strange rabbit hole to descend.
|
| There exists a kind and inspiring man named Daryl
| Davis[6] who is pretty good at converting
| KKK/supremacists (he has many surprising success stories)
| away from this kind of behavior, but notice how his
| methodology requires a personal touch and much
| compassion. How many "more people saw that and
| immediately criticized the neonazis who wouldn't have
| seen them before?" is not a very good discriminator for
| this activity at all. Effectively, "None" is the real
| answer to your question.
|
| The fact of the matter is that toxic memes and divisive
| trolling are consumed by people while on the can, idle-ly
| (or perhaps compulsevly) skimming social media and
| whatnot. The uncritical ingestion of this kind of thing
| simply habituates people to these kind of beliefs. I
| don't think a person who has fallen for this stuff is
| necessarily _bad_ at first blush, and surely have many
| possibilities for redemption, but the effort required is
| really not the kind that is easily rallied.
|
| It's a complicated notion, but it boils down to the fact
| that you have to fight Hate with Love.
|
| [0] - https://timeline.com/white-supremacist-early-
| internet-5e9167...
|
| [2] - https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-
| files/indi...
|
| [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/15/us/computer-
| network-links...
|
| [3] - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=1
| 0.1.1.552...
|
| [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormfront_(website)
|
| [5] - (original source unavailable) https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Penny_Arcade#%22Greater_Intern...
|
| [6] -
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/18/daryl-
| davis-bl...
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The argument that we should let neonazis/etc. parade
| their ideas around in public so that the world can see
| them for who they really are has become a lot less
| convincing because neonazis have refined their tactics
| (see e.g. "boots for suits"). They are _not_ parading
| their hatred. Today they start with softer language,
| focusing on the supposed struggle of white people in
| America, how non-white people seem to be getting a leg up
| at the expense of white people, etc. Once they have drawn
| someone in, someone who for whatever reason found that
| the "great replacement" or "white genocide" theory
| resonated with them, they start to give the "explanation"
| for all the problems -- out of sight, away from people
| who might criticize them.
| eloff wrote:
| > Right now we are missing one of our best chances to end
| the COVID pandemic -- widespread vaccination -- because
| too many people are spreading lies about the vaccine on
| social media.
|
| That's mostly a trust issue. If you silence their
| concerns you're just going to confirm that it's a grand
| conspiracy theory. You have to fight misinformation with
| the truth, with dialog, not with censorship.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's a trust issue for some; others simply don't want to
| be told what to do. The more you shove the "get
| vaccinated" message in their faces the more they dig in
| and reject it.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Not that context ever matters to extremist:
|
| "It is a quotation that defends the authority of a
| legislature to govern in the interests of collective
| security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of
| what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to
| the opposite than to the thing that people think it means."
|
| https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-
| famou...
| eloff wrote:
| > Not that context ever matters to extremist:
|
| Are you calling me an extremist?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Isn't it the same concept (giving up freedom/power in a
| shortsighted way), just a different population
| (government liberties vs individual liberties)?
| cortesoft wrote:
| > which is certainly bad, but not quite as bad as being dead.
|
| This sort of reductionist argument doesn't work. If you start
| from the premise "any chance of dying is not worth it", then
| you won't do much of anything. Driving to the store could
| kill you, so now you can't go to the store?
|
| You have to look at probability when assessing risk. Is a
| 0.0000001% reduction in your risk of death worth sacrificing
| all your personal freedom? I think most people would say no.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Except that it is not a miniscule chance of some violence
| occasionally being committed. ISIS nearly succeeded in
| establishing a new country in the territory they captured
| and it is absurd to pretend that they had not exploited
| poor moderation on major websites to recruit large numbers
| of people to their cause. White nationalists and neo-nazis
| have been equally effective in their use of social media to
| recruit members and to spread their propaganda.
|
| We are not talking about isolated incidents or hypothetical
| scenarios. Extremists in the US and Europe are becoming
| part of the political mainstream because so many people
| believe the extremist propaganda they are reading on social
| media platforms. Those same extremists have inspired an
| increasing number of terrorist attacks as their propaganda
| has spread. For someone like me, someone who is part of a
| minority group that is frequently targeted by those
| terrorists, that represents an immediate and growing
| danger.
|
| Really though, this entire debate is poisoned by extreme
| positions on free speech. I remember watching as
| unmoderated Usenet groups were overrun by neonazis;
| everyone fled to moderated newsgroups or off of Usenet
| altogether to some better-moderated platform. Free speech
| absolutism has never worked well and it is juvenile to
| pretend that the choice is between "sacrificing all your
| personal freedom" or taking an absolutist approach to free
| speech.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _The worst that can happen to me from censorship being
| imposed is that I will not be allowed to say certain things
| online or challenge those in power, or possibly that I will
| be excluded from these social networks entirely because the
| people in power do not like what I said -- which is certainly
| bad, but not quite as bad as being dead._
|
| In the censored system, people in power can kill you, censor
| any talk about it, and no one will ever know.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This approach only works if you expect other people to do the
| same. I don't want to be thrown in prison for my beliefs. I'm
| not certain that "hey, we let you march in public" is going to
| stop fascists from throwing me in prison or outright killing
| me.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That can only happen if you gave government the ability to
| throw you in prison for that, and then somehow a tiny
| minority got into government and abused the power you gave
| them.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > That can only happen if you gave government the ability
| to throw you in prison for that
|
| Why? The universe won't stop anybody from doing that just
| because laws exist. Authoritarians will not be halted by
| existing laws or norms. _That 's_ what I'm worried about.
| And that's why things like preventing fascists from
| organizing in public has merit.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This applies to policing in general of all kinds? Isn't this
| literally an "abolish the police" argument? After all, imagine
| the police used against you in the worst possible way ..
| pueblito wrote:
| Surely one can conceive of effective ways to limit to damage
| the police can do to people short of abolishing the police.
| For example, disarm the police and they can't shoot you.
| TheFalun wrote:
| Or just have public audits of police forces and provide
| accountability and transparency into cases as necessary.
|
| In addition good policing should be rewarded with
| significant bonuses.
|
| Incentivizing good behavior will always Trump criticizing
| "bad" (often never defined) behavior.
| Smeevy wrote:
| I personally would rather see disciplinary action akin to
| what's done in the military. Not that that isn't without
| its issues, but the machinery that makes it work is
| larger and more independent from the people being
| disciplined than what you get at the state and local law
| enforcement level.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| You still are paying the same under your plan.
|
| You abolish them and then move that money/power into some
| other entity like social services until the power / money
| corrupt them.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, yes, that's kind of my point; strawmanning all sorts
| of scenarios distracts from taking a look at what's
| actually happening and creating meaningful checks and
| balances.
| radley wrote:
| This makes the false assumption that authoritarians won't abuse
| the system simply because non-authoritarians didn't.
| Authoritarians gonna make up their own authority regardless.
| prepend wrote:
| > Authoritarians gonna make up their own authority
| regardless.
|
| I think they'll try to, but not always succeed. They will
| definitely use and abuse any existing powers.
|
| So I think it's logically unsound, and quite sad to me, to
| argue that it's pointless to resist allowing powers that can
| be exploited because authoritarians will do it anyway.
| radley wrote:
| > They will definitely use and abuse any existing powers.
|
| They'll also abuse new powers, particularly known-but-
| unused powers.
|
| My point is that it's better to make the best rules you can
| for now, rather than limit yourself simply because a bad
| guy will someday make it worse. They'll make it worse
| regardless.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > They'll also abuse new powers, particularly known-but-
| unused powers.
|
| Sounds recently familiar. I watched my state, city, ward,
| public health office and everyone in between or
| associated to "discover" new powers as a result of Covid.
|
| My state did not do comparatively well over 2020. All we
| had to do we what was logical and we could have made
| these decisions early.
| musingsole wrote:
| I really appreciate your points on this. I've come to
| believe it's impossible to create an incorruptible
| system. People have choice and can change anything. The
| harder you fight it, the more subtly it happens.
|
| The best system is one that continually generates a
| numbered and capable enough cohort unified in a common
| enough purpose to shepherd it long enough to create yet
| another generation of shepherds.
| buu700 wrote:
| That's a great approach. I like the concise way of stating it.
| I'll apply it to a couple things that are popular topics right
| now.
|
| ---
|
| Automated fact checking:
|
| The negative consequences are pretty obvious. It's easy to
| cheer when the target is neo-Nazis who want to overthrow the
| government. Well what if the shoe were on the other foot, and
| Republicans had been able to compel social media companies to
| flag posts disputing Trump's claims of election fraud as
| misinformation? It's not exactly censorship, but it's a
| ridiculously powerful lever for manipulating public opinion.
|
| On a more mundane level, clamping down on non-mainstream
| opinions could cause a lot of low-level chronic harm. For
| example, it's not hard to imagine social media "fact checking"
| disrupting discussions on fitness and/or nutritional science to
| promote the food pyramid and the importance of a low-fat diet
| for heart health, or to shut down conversations about medical
| uses of cannabis because the DEA still has it listed as
| schedule 1.
|
| Maybe there's a reasonable middle ground, but it's dicey either
| way.
|
| ---
|
| Killing or reforming the filibuster:
|
| The obvious negative consequence (from a center-right to left-
| wing perspective) is that Republicans will regain a trifecta of
| power and find themselves with carte blanche to pass all sorts
| of wildly unpopular laws eviscerating civil liberties.
|
| Even so, I say do it. The filibuster is _massively_
| advantageous to Republicans because it gives them the ability
| to complain about problems while offering few or no solutions.
| I say we call their bluff, and risk giving them the opportunity
| to pass their agenda.
|
| Either they'd still do nothing (in which case they'd lose a lot
| of single-issue voters), or they would do the things that they
| claim to want to do (in which case they would lose the next
| election in a landslide and never hold power again).
|
| As-is, they're stuck in between a rock and a hard place trying
| to appeal to:
|
| * Pro-life Christians
|
| * Gun owners
|
| * Right-leaning libertarians
|
| * "Selfish"/anti-tax rich people
|
| * The alt-right / neo-Nazi / Q cultist crowd
|
| * Populists (who may not necessarily be conservative, as
| evidenced by the overlap in support for Trump and Bernie)
|
| * People with conservative social/cultural values
|
| * Typical center-right conservatives (to the extent that they
| still vote Republican consistently, or at all)
|
| That's just what I can think of off the cuff, but even that is
| a pretty diverse coalition. All they really have in common is
| that they oppose (or, in some cases, believe they oppose)
| various parts of the Democratic agenda (both real and
| imagined). Their continued unity depends on the GOP remaining a
| superposition of all the different values they each
| independently project onto it. The second the GOP actually gets
| a chance to pass a major law along partisan lines, whether they
| choose to do it or not, the superposition collapses and shoes
| will start to drop.
|
| What do you think will happen if they take power and proceed to
| ban all abortions, remove every form of gun control, repeal the
| Affordable Care Act, take federal action against vaccine
| development/distribution during a pandemic, pass or shoot down
| a relief bill during a pandemic, escalate or deescalate the
| Drug War, dramatically increase or decrease environmental
| regulations while a climate disaster affects a red state,
| and/or dramatically alter regulations on the Internet / social
| media / E2EE / cryptocurrency? What if, with a legislative
| majority and in the absence of the filibuster, they _don 't_ do
| any of those things? I suggest that any action or lack thereof
| would be a huge blow to their support in some of those groups;
| they would have to pick their poison.
|
| The wildcard here is if they were to use such a trifecta
| combined with their current dominance of the Supreme Court to
| enact anti-democratic reforms to prevent any further transfer
| of power. However, seeing as this is already the direction
| we're heading in, I would say that it's vitally important to
| override the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation now
| so that we have a stronger chance at remaining a democracy,
| rather than accept the massive gamble of doing nothing.
|
| The greatest threat facing humanity today isn't climate change.
| It's the current Republican Party, and the prospect of world's
| most powerful military and nuclear arsenal ending up in the
| hands of a hypothetical future theofascist America.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I think you are waging political warfare on HN, and violating
| the guidelines of "Please don't use Hacker News for political
| or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
|
| It is important to never demonize your opponents too much, if
| you are going to try and remain civil with them.
|
| >* Pro-life Christians
|
| >* Gun owners
|
| >* Right-leaning libertarians
|
| >* "Selfish"/anti-tax rich people
|
| >* The alt-right / neo-Nazi / Q cultist crowd
|
| >* Populists (who may not necessarily be conservative, as
| evidenced by the overlap in support for Trump and Bernie)
|
| >* People with conservative social/cultural values
|
| >* Typical center-right conservatives (to the extent that
| they still vote Republican consistently, or at all)
|
| This smacks of making a list..
|
| > The greatest threat facing humanity today isn't climate
| change. It's the current Republican Party, and the prospect
| of world's most powerful military and nuclear arsenal ending
| up in the hands of a hypothetical future theofascist America.
|
| Please reconsider how you post in the comments section
| buu700 wrote:
| _Please don 't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle. It tramples curiosity._
|
| I didn't attack any particular ideology. I politely
| described my opinion on a specific organization that
| attempted to overthrow my country's government, first via a
| soft coup and then by force, as it related to the current
| discussion.
|
| _This smacks of making a list.._
|
| And? Are you suggesting that HN is anti-lists?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > The greatest threat facing humanity today isn't climate
| change. It's the current Republican Party
|
| > I didn't attack any particular ideology.
|
| Well, sorry, my fault, it just seemed that when you
| aligned anyone right of center with neo-Nazis that some
| people probably took it that way.
| buu700 wrote:
| Again, not what I said. I personally support many
| political ideas that might be considered right of center
| in America, for example I'm in favor of liberal gun
| rights and imposing a limit on late-term abortions.
|
| When I use the term "neo-Nazi", I mean it in a literal
| sense, not as an insult directed at conservatives. In
| fact, I went out of my way to distinguish between the
| center-right and neo-Nazis.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Your example that Republicans are the big tent party doesn't
| make a lot of sense to me. All those groups venn together a
| lot. Tell me how well LGBT, Muslim, Jew, Union blue collar,
| Black, Hispanic, costal elite, youth, and big tech get along
| if you lock them in a room together if all you have is "at
| least we aren't Republicans!".
|
| >Republicans will regain a trifecta of power and find
| themselves with carte blanche to pass all sorts of horrible
| laws eviscerating civil liberties.
|
| >Even so, I say [kill the filibuster].
|
| Ok, seems like you know it's short sighted but want to "win"
| just to do so, even if temporary and potentially
| catastrophic.
| buu700 wrote:
| _Your example that Republicans are the big tent party
| doesn't make a lot of sense to me._
|
| It shouldn't, because that isn't what I said.
|
| _Ok, seems like you know it's short sighted but want to
| "win" just to do so, even if temporary and potentially
| catastrophic._
|
| I also didn't say that.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Those who's looking to censor the information for the sake of the
| greater good:
|
| USA. Little to no censorship (yet). Vaccination rate: 55%
|
| Russia. Mass media is controlled by the state. Vaccination rate:
| 20%
|
| Hmmmm...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nah, I'm actually totally on board with big tech censorship so
| long as the government doesn't act as an authority to fuse
| censorship across all platforms and instead acts to ensure that
| cartelized blackballing doesn't happen I.e. a ban from Facebook
| shouldn't cause an auto-ban from Twitter.
|
| Otherwise, I don't care. Kick me off your platform. It's your
| house and you have a right to not share it with me.
| chroem- wrote:
| > so long as the government doesn't act as an authority to fuse
| censorship across all platforms
|
| They literally discussed how they're doing this last week
| during a white house press conference.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| When you consider things like Venmo facilitate social
| connections and interactions, this spills into payments
| pretty easily too.
|
| And remember when Google launched Google+? They referred to
| email as the largest social network of all.. which is why
| they just started people's G+ connections with their most
| frequently emailed/emailers.
| knownjorbist wrote:
| Did they?
| chroem- wrote:
| Yes.
|
| > We are in regular touch with these social media
| platforms, and those engagements typically happen through
| members of our senior staff
|
| > https://www.newsweek.com/biden-administrations-admission-
| the...
|
| Psaki also discussed how they're building blacklists of
| people so that if you get banned on one platform, you also
| get banned on all of the other platforms.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yes, that's why I mentioned it. I am against that.
| drstewart wrote:
| It was certainly weird to see all the "they're private
| businesses, they can do what they want!" takes from the internet
| when Trump and Parler were banned, after the same people have
| been yelling for years that these same corporations have too much
| power over the public narrative.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It was certainly weird to see all the "they're private
| businesses, they can do what they want!" takes from the
| internet when Trump and Parler were banned, after the same
| people have been yelling for years that these same corporations
| have too much power over the public narrative.
|
| Why?
|
| Its not inconsistent to argue, as many on the left have, both
| before and after the right-wingers started whining because they
| lost their excessively favorable treatment from Twitter,
| Facebook, et al.: (1) Free speech means that private actors
| should have the right to control the messages their resources
| are used to relay. (2) A subset of the tech companies right-
| wingers complain about to justify trying to impose state-backed
| mandates to carry right-wing content on internet providers
| generally are overly dominant monopolies and have excessive
| power over public communication because of that, which is a
| problem that is should be dealt with by dealing with the
| monopolies, not curtailing the freedom of speech of private
| actors.
| yokem55 wrote:
| This - the solution isn't to compell overly large websites or
| web hosts to carry speech that they don't want. It's to use
| antitrust law to break them up so more smaller websites can
| viably carry whatever they want.
|
| Now there should also be a clear demarcation of what internet
| services need to be a common carrier vs not. Let's say
| bandwidth, colocation, ip address allocation, and domain
| registration services were required to take all comers. Then
| if you want to have your gay commie gun club forum, you could
| get a domain, buy your own hardware, put it up in a colo
| facility, get bandwidth and ip addresses, and then have an
| uncensored presence on the net.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > excessive power over public communication [...] should be
| dealt with by dealing with the monopolies, not curtailing the
| freedom of speech of private actors.
|
| That sounds like a nice idea. However, I'm seeing it for the
| first time. While (1) and (2) aren't inconsistent, typically
| only (1) is brought up.
|
| Take your average thread about how, say, Google is now
| beginning to censor X thing. It makes little sense to defend
| big tech censorship with point (1), leaving out (2), if you
| actually hold both opinions (1) and (2). The latter kind of
| implies that you agree big tech censorship is a problem. The
| former in isolation points toward the opposite. Therefore, I
| don't think most people who argue (1) actually believe in (2)
| as well.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Prior to Trump getting banned, an outrage was mounting over
| Facebook/Twitter banning all kinds of content that was seen as
| far less dangerous, yet continuing to enable what was seen as
| extremely dangerous content from Trump.
|
| It was outrage over _inconsistent policy_ it wasn 't your
| cynical read that people are just self-interested morons.
| Pxtl wrote:
| The reason that centrists support private censorship now is very
| simple:
|
| We are now facing disinformation campaigns that have apocalyptic
| consequences, and normal legal channels are quite ineffective at
| battling them.
|
| "Well of course, it's not the government's job to decide between
| true and false, nor to enforce it!" you say.
|
| Bullshit, I say.
|
| Slander is illegal. False advertising is illegal. Fraud is
| illegal. Defamation is illegal. Perjury is illegal. Filing a
| false report is illegal.
|
| There are a plethora of torts and laws where you will get sued or
| jailed for lying about something important (like a court matter)
| and in those cases the truth is a defense! That means a court
| _decides what is true and what is false_.
|
| So we've admitted that we're willing to abridge free speech to
| protect truth. That's now established. But we're only willing to
| do it for cases where somebody can show clear damages, and where
| there's a clear target to sue.
|
| A diffuse, widespread misinformation movement against a _concept_
| and not a person? Like climate change, or vaccines, or covid, or
| Judaism at large? Those aren 't protected at all. And why not?
| Because there isn't a shareholder of climate change who can show
| that your misinformation has unjustly damaged his share price?
|
| So given this legal vacuum, is it any wonder that the reality-
| based community has embraced private censorship? Nobody _loves_
| this solution, but the alternative is letting one third of the
| population doom the other two thirds by obstructing the kind of
| actions we need to survive.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >Like climate change...
|
| The problem here is that there is not some clear-cut answer to
| "what is to be done" about climate change, and unless you
| restrict yourself to the benign observation that "the climate
| changes", everything else can be categorized as
| "misinformation" if you have a political objective. Agree that
| climate change is happening, but don't agree with a massive
| spending project to address it? Too bad, you've just committed
| misinformation.
|
| >Nobody loves this solution, but the alternative is letting one
| third of the population doom the other two thirds by
| obstructing the kind of actions we need to survive.
|
| I just don't get this at all. What doom? Are you implying the
| vaccine doesn't work and you can still catch COVID if a bunch
| of other people don't take it?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > There are a plethora of torts and laws where you will get
| sued or jailed for lying about something important (like a
| court matter) and in those cases the truth is a defense! That
| means a court decides what is true and what is false.
|
| Yes. Courts do that. They decide on what the facts are, and on
| how the law applies to those facts.
|
| I don't have a problem with a court doing that. I have a
| problem with _Facebook_ doing that. Even more I have a problem
| with some government agency _telling_ Facebook to do that
| (unless the government agency is a court, and they have a
| finding of fact on that particular issue).
|
| And, "the reality-based community"? Was that the community that
| agreed that masks wouldn't help? Or was it the exact same
| community a month later, that said that masks would help? I
| mean, it's good that they're trying to follow the evidence. But
| no, I won't let them censor, because they've been wrong before,
| and will be again.
| okareaman wrote:
| thought experiment: If I have a megaphone rental company and I
| become aware that one of my clients is using it to walk through
| neighborhoods annoying people by loudly proclaiming Covid is a
| Democratic Party hoax and Republicans are fools for not
| acknowledging Donald Trump lost, can I refuse to rent my
| megaphone to that person and not be guilty of censorship? I own
| all the megaphones in town and no one else rents them.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| Mandating interoperability, with ActivityPub and similar
| protocols, would help.
|
| In the long term I'd like to see a future where it's a normal
| thing for people to roll their own social media platforms, by
| putting a Raspberry Pi on their local network, downloading and
| configuring some open-source software, and the local nodes all
| talk to each other and doing so gives someone the same level of
| functionality that they today have with a
| Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Tiktok/etc account.
| pfraze wrote:
| I've been writing a bit about that idea
| https://paulfrazee.medium.com/productizing-p2p-bff5aed95f6a
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That'll never happen for the same reason why basically nobody
| runs their own online services today. Most people strongly
| favor the convenience of existing SaaS services, which is why
| dropbox beats out all the self hosted alternatives by orders of
| magnitude.
| roody15 wrote:
| meh ... dropbox really?
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > Most people strongly favor the convenience of existing SaaS
| services
|
| If it was more convenient to roll your own, then I contend
| that many people would, and many more would have accounts on
| friends' servers. The difficulty shouldn't be any higher than
| the cost of a Pi server and spending an hour setting it up --
| all of which is perfectly possible to achieve technocally.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| There are really 2 options here:
|
| 1. Live with the first amendment at section 230 as. That means
| things stay mostly the same. Big tech will continue to censor too
| many of the things I like and too few of the things I don't like.
| And we wait for the pre-internet generation to die off and be
| replaced so society can progress.
|
| 2. Restrict the 1st and force fact checking, fairness,
| neutrality, etc. This would get us back to a functional
| media/societal/democratic state a lot faster. But it would
| require pretty radical change. Also, the biggest losers wouldn't
| be big tech. They would be Fox news and similar orgs.
|
| I don't see any other option here. I don't see that "regulating"
| (wtf that means, different things to different people for sure)
| Facebook but not Fox is productive or fair or possible even
| really.
|
| Personally, I don't trust the current system to do anything other
| than beat tech companies with a stick for no reason but that they
| exist and don't pay enough in "lobbying". I don't see Fox or
| similar, much bigger propaganda/censorship orgs being touched.
| Certainly not on a bipartisan basis (and that's what's needed to
| do more than sneeze in Washington).
|
| So here we are, and I am glad the right and left and (stupidly)
| fighting each other...
|
| Thanks for reading, you may now downvote these inconvenient
| truths...
| version_five wrote:
| I didn't downvote but I read twice and I don't understand what
| you're saying. Maybe you could try and rephrase to make your
| point clearer?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| * Problems with fake news, censorship etc are much bigger
| outside of big tech than inside (media monopolies and
| propoganda like fox news for a start).
|
| * so if you actually care about those issues (rather than
| just hating big tech) you need to fix things beyond big tech
|
| * that means reform of the 1st amendment
|
| * I suspect that no one actually wants that, they just don't
| like Facebook etc but they're used to Tucker Carlson or Joe
| Rogan
|
| Is that any better :)
| version_five wrote:
| Yes I understand now thanks!
| LatteLazy wrote:
| No worries. I was pretty wordy the first time so it was
| good for me to summarise. :)
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| > force fact checking
|
| Just remember that less than a year ago it would have been your
| worst enemy appointing the fact checkers.
| duemti wrote:
| Nothing is "inconvenient truths" from what you said, you've
| just showed yourself as an ignorant fool, that's all.
|
| At least try and read half the article next time before
| engaging in conversation.
| colordrops wrote:
| Option 2 implies that there is some truly unbiased entity
| without conflict of interest that could both be able to handle
| speech vetting and also be allowed to do it. This is extreme
| fantasy.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Such a vetting would be (1) extremely expensive and (2) in
| most cases the decision would "well... We don't know for
| sure"
| noxer wrote:
| The worst part is that people will be told "You don't know
| for sure" rather than people using their brain and come to
| the conclusion that they dont know for sure. Which is
| actually the default for any critical thinking person. And
| it helps a lot to not fall for extremist views or ideas
| which are usually presented oversimplified and thus fool
| people who usually quickly pick sides rather than accepting
| the default of not know for sure.
|
| Rather than a fact checker maybe an algorithm could find
| opposing content and present this. That would force the
| user to make some "fact"-checks aka to think. needed to say
| that such an algorithms could/would be biased as well.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Rather than a fact checker maybe an algorithm could
| find opposing content and present this. That would force
| the user to make some "fact"-checks aka to think. needed
| to say that such an algorithms could/would be biased as
| well.
|
| What do you think of a small social network composed of
| vetted (and always subject to review) reasonably
| trustworthy and fairly unbiased but definitely open
| minded users who decompose, fact check, and _deeply_
| debate very small volumes of stories, using a platform
| more sophisticated than nested discussions with voting?
| Something with _structures like_ a "points for" and
| "points against" format, among many other novel (as far
| as social media goes) features, where "it is not really
| known for sure" is a perfectly acceptable conclusion,
| subject to review as new information becomes available?
| noxer wrote:
| Almost everything will be "not really known for sure". So
| the next step to make it useful would be somehow
| count/vote and get "an X is more likely true than Y".
| Maybe even add % and now you essentially have "mob-fact-
| checking". Needles to say that the majority isn't a
| source of truth, especially not if you have a broad range
| of topics and a broad range of people so that for any
| given topic only a fraction of the people have deep
| knowledge and "the truth" is actually defined by the rest
| (mob) who dont have deep knowledge about the topic.
|
| What you actually would need is a peer-review like
| system. Where people familiar with the topic do the fact-
| checking. But this just moves the problem to another
| place because someone would need to defined who is
| familiar with a topic, but without putting people with
| aliened views together, its just as impossible as the
| fact-checking itself.
|
| Lastly if we actually would be able to create a working
| fact-checking system, once that system has been used for
| one of the long time controversial topics like for
| example fact-checking a statement about abortion being
| murder, then almost everyone who disagrees with that
| fact-checking would loose trust in the system which
| render is essentially useless. You now have a "source of
| truth" but a significant portion of people (roughly 50%
| probably) don't trust it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I won't pretend I know what it would look like or how it
| should work. That said, it's not impossible to at least
| improve the current situation: removing at least some
| demonstrably false statements would be a start. Requiring
| "right to reply" and equal air time to different parties
| would be too.
|
| Again, I don't really support this approach, I'm just
| pointing out it is what people presumably want since Option 1
| is out of favour and that only really leaves option 2.
| wmf wrote:
| https://oversightboard.com/ is trying to do this.
| noxer wrote:
| >force fact checking
|
| Its not possible, period. You can remove this option.
| FB/Twitter/YT all have "fact checkers" and they are neither
| neutral nor do they get it right. Even if outsourced it still
| fails miserably. On top of that people should not be told what
| the "facts" are for complex thinks. It removes the need to
| think and build an opinion. This is essential because for
| almost everything controversial there is no way to find the
| absolute truth. People need to learn what it means to accept
| that we dont know something and likely never will know what the
| truth is.
| notatelloshill wrote:
| im just not worried at all ... this problem is only a problem for
| people that think social networks matter. They dont. These
| connections are vapor, their importance is only granted by the
| person that believes it to be.
|
| To think that social media is important is to think being famous
| is important. Its the same mindset that makes people feel more or
| less confident based on how many likes they have.
|
| Step away from the social media. Do something active in the real
| world. Learn a craft. Make a connection with someone in your
| area.
|
| Please like this comment.
| politician wrote:
| It would be workable to designate these social platforms as
| public spaces, removing liability for speech entirely off of the
| proprietors and onto the courts if we also implemented mandatory
| licensing for use of these networks.
|
| You can't drive without a license and identification. It's not
| dystopian to suggest that, as a society, we're at a point where
| we need to insist on public places on the Internet and personal
| accountability for speech.
|
| We can't abdicate our responsibility to regulate this space to
| tech companies and pretend that billions of people interacting is
| somehow magically beyond the point of governments.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| >You can't drive without a license and identification. It's not
| dystopian to suggest that, as a society, we're at a point where
| we need to insist on public places on the Internet and personal
| accountability for speech.
|
| ay yo you got a license for that speech?
|
| ya, no, it _is_ dystopian to suggestion people should have to
| have a license to speak.
|
| And you will never sell me that speaking on the internet and
| speaking in the public are different enough to justify it.
|
| social media sites have become the new town square. General
| public speech has moved from afk to on the internet, you can't
| just ignore this because its inconvenient to your view point.
|
| The same protections we have for speech in an town square
| should exist for speech on the virtual town square. ie: only
| moderated by the courts under protection of the 1st amendment.
|
| I'm not going to accept less.
| politician wrote:
| They're completely different. On the Internet, no one can
| grab you by the cuff and arrest you on the spot. On the
| Internet, you can disappear into a fake profile, a
| pseudonymous account, and create continue to create chaos. On
| the Internet, Sybil attacks are a real problem in a way that
| is completely foreign to speaking on your soapbox in the
| park.
|
| Speech on the Internet is more like a hit-and-run.
|
| It's dangerous foolishness to pretend otherwise.
|
| But we agree that this speech should be handled by the
| government and the courts, and removed from the sham
| jurisdiction of big tech "terms of use".
| wmf wrote:
| More "real names" policies won't do anything about
| misinformation. People are already mostly accountable for their
| speech, but since misinformation is legal that accountability
| doesn't do anything.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Alex Jones was able to post disinformation on the radio under
| his own name for years before he finally overstepped into
| defaming the Sandy Hook parents.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| The people on the "right side of history" are usually fighting
| for freedom and liberty, not censorship and re-education camps
| tomjen3 wrote:
| The people on the right side of history in WWII locked up their
| own citizens based on their ethnic heritage.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Quite. The UK also had a formal censorship regime; America
| managed with an informal one voluntarily carried out by media
| organisations: https://censorshipissues.wordpress.com/2010/09
| /21/censorship...
|
| (See the varied career of William Joyce:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw from informing
| against the IRA to British fascism to German propaganda
| broadcaster; he was eventually hanged for treason.)
| worker767424 wrote:
| FDR's track record on individual rights is rather poor.
| Seizure of gold, censorship, and internment come to mind.
| britch wrote:
| Winners usually frame their fights as ones for freedom and
| liberty, and emphasize their enemy's use of censorship and re-
| education camps.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Something is either being censored or it's not. Regardless of
| the issue, I'll side with the side that is not censoring
| information.
| jayrice257 wrote:
| That's not the point he's making, any winner can
| historically write what they want so you don't really get
| to choose from a history of facts.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| A quick perusal through history will show that conflicts
| where one side is censorious and the other is not has
| basically never happened. Usually the winning side sweeps
| their misdeeds under the rug afterwards.
|
| See: US behavior towards communists and left wing groups
| during the Cold War, or censorship during WW1 and WW2. The
| whole "fire in a crowded theater" trope comes from the
| unanimous Supreme Court decision _upholding_ the conviction
| of someone peacefully distributing fliers protesting the
| draft in WW1[0]. Funny how that one usually doesn 't make
| it into the history books.
|
| 0 - Schenck vs. United States. Thankfully no longer good
| law.
| khawkins wrote:
| Most people are openly taught about the misdeeds of the
| McCarthy era in schools and in public discussions. This
| wasn't swept under the rug, most people agree that it
| happened and wasn't a good thing.
| notahacker wrote:
| How much do they learn about the Office of Censorship set
| up following Pearl Harbour and the role the federal
| government thought it played in defeating Hitler and
| Japan? Or the history of battles over "obscenity" laws,
| often upheld by constitutional courts?
|
| Learning "censorship is unAmerican, here's an example of
| how we tried it once and it was _really_ bad so we ended
| it " is the _definition_ of sweeping the nuanced reality
| of speech battles in the US under the carpet in favour of
| the free speech version of American exceptionalist myths.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| People on the right side of history are the ones who won the
| war period.
| thirdreich wrote:
| return to 1930-1945 germany it looks like?freedom of speech is
| such an important right and privilege, it needs to be saved, and
| so does democracy! let's not repeat the past
| teslaberry wrote:
| worried? I am embracing our new overlords. if you don't love your
| overlords, than leave, go to china with less freedom or africa
| with more freedom.
|
| amerqua fuqu yes!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-18 23:00 UTC)