[HN Gopher] Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media
___________________________________________________________________
Nicholas Carr on how to fix social media
Author : conanxin
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-11-04 00:44 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenewatlantis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewatlantis.com)
| pjerem wrote:
| Can't we just go back to the era where the "feed" or the "wall"
| was just the posts of our friends / the people we follow sorted
| by posting date and not this horrible algorithm made to show you
| infinite content ?
| ghaff wrote:
| While very desirable that probably means that social media
| sites would have to be paid for at least in part by
| subscription fees.
| prepend wrote:
| Or it means they reduce costs to what's supportable by just
| inserting ads into RSS feeds every x items.
|
| This isn't very likely. But it's more likely than someone
| charging to aggregate IM statuses and put them in
| chronological order.
| d--b wrote:
| Unless someone regulates it, no! Of course FB has no interest
| in that...
|
| One has to realize that FB is only optimizing for profit (and
| Zuck not going to jail). The only times they curbed was when
| bad PR was threatening their profits (and Mark's freedom).
| josefresco wrote:
| Twitter stays closer to this idea than Facebook. I basically
| see only posts from people I follow. I can even turn off
| retweets. Not perfect but it's not "endless".
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| You only have to convince your friends to join you. Technically
| it is certainly still possible.
|
| I would expect most Fediverse applications don't have much of a
| ranking algorithm yet, or at least it should be configurable.
| samlevine wrote:
| I do this in Twitter with lists. They don't make it obvious,
| but lists actually make it quite usable once you've set them
| up.
|
| Facebook (or Instagram) don't seem to have good options for
| this so for the most part I don't use them.
|
| Discord works chronologically, for now at least, and as long as
| it does I'll be happy to keep chatting with my friends there.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| There is a chronological feed in FB but i haven't used it in
| years and they make it harder and harder to use. I've also
| heard of it not working for days on end.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I've yet to see compelling evidence that social media itself is a
| problem in and of itself (outside of teens but IIRC FB/Insta
| disallow kids until 13 to use their service per TOS).
|
| I see a lot of stuff like, "Terrorists use the platform to
| organize and plan attacks!", which is true...but that seems like
| you should be solving that by solving the reasons people want to
| be terrorizing, not by attacking the mediums they use. If you
| want to attack mediums, then you'd be just as justified wiping
| away USPS as you would FB/Insta. It just seems like FB is being
| used as a scapegoat for lawmakers to avoid actually solving
| problems instead of pretending to solve them.
| callmeal wrote:
| >I've yet to see compelling evidence that social media itself
| is a problem in and of itself
|
| You might be interested in this:
| https://www.wired.com/story/jargon-watch-rising-danger-stoch...
| stochastic terrorism: the use of mass media to incite attacks
| by random nut jobs--acts that are "statistically predictable
| but individually unpredictable."
| djoldman wrote:
| > ...A few large companies, free to set their own rules, wield
| control over public and private communications.
|
| This statement seems to have always been technically true. What
| does control mean?
|
| > Conversation and correspondence, far from being treated as
| confidential, are rifled through by marketers to extract
| sensitive personal data.
|
| It seems that the public doesn't really care about this.
|
| > Propaganda, lies, and defamatory attacks get broadcast to the
| masses, often by sources that can't be traced.
|
| This statement also seems to have always been technically true.
|
| > Rather than promoting an informed public, social media has
| promoted polarization, extremism, and, all too often, ignorance.
|
| I guess the questions is whether Americans want the government to
| tell them what they can and can't read or look at. Should that
| right be taken away? Shouldn't informed adults be able to make
| their own choices about whether or not they want to spend time on
| their Twitter or Facebook feeds?
| new_guy wrote:
| 1, It's extraordinarily American-centric. Most everything the
| author wrote doesn't apply to the hundreds of other countries or
| non-American social sites in the world
|
| 2, before people criticise social media(tm) they should come from
| a position of experience having run their own site or even just a
| forum
|
| That's the basic issue, an ignorant American jabbering on about
| something they have zero experience on.
| samlevine wrote:
| I don't want social media to censor me, people I want to
| communicate with or people I don't ever want to communicate with.
|
| I want tools that help me communicate with other people. Learn
| things, get exposed to new ideas. And we can't have that with a
| huge system designed to prevent people from saying the wrong
| things.
|
| Our ability to communicate and learn freely is dependent on the
| ability for people we disagree with to also have this ability.
| You will be censored if you want other people censored.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Funny, I'm not censored on any platform. Then again I don't
| make violent threats, spread misinformation, use racist
| language, or harass people. I feel free to have these
| discussions, and I do all the time. What's the problem?
|
| You can communicate freely, but that doesn't mean there isn't
| consequences for things you speak and nobody has to host you
| while you're broadcasting it. I find this type of argument
| devolves into "I want to be a crappy person and not be judged
| for it or face consequences", which just isn't the reality
| we're living in.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I was thinking about this the other day: in public physical
| spaces, we often have police who step in when someone says
| something that breaks the law. In private physical spaces
| (e.g., a restaurant, store, bar, or house), we either have
| owners, managers, or private security who step in when
| someone starts breaking store policy or law. However, in
| public (or pseudo-public) digital spaces and private digital
| spaces, some of us seem to rebel strongly against any type of
| norm enforcement.
|
| I mean, I can see how sometimes the internet seems to promise
| even more freedom of speech than in physical spaces and also
| that sometimes there are not very clear written laws or
| policies for those digital spaces, paired with unclear or
| unfair enforcement of those laws and policies.
|
| Makes me wonder what the future of digital governance will
| look like. Do we have the digital equivalent of cops roaming
| semi-public spaces like Twitter and Facebook? If so, by whose
| consent are they governing? Do these orgs hire the equivalent
| of private security guards or bouncers? Have they already
| done so through moderators and such?
|
| Anyway, just got me thinking about some of the challenges in
| the governance of digital spaces.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Public spaces is the only place where the law regarding
| freedom of speech directly applies.
|
| What you can say under such circumstances is pretty
| diverse.
|
| A lot of content Facebook removes would be protected speech
| in a public space.
|
| In a private physical space its up to the owner. And there
| is a lot of racism, misogony, bullying, sexist, misandry,
| threats to public figures, drugs sold, hookers, evil
| gossip, conspiracy theories, fake news, bad medical advice,
| locker room talk, inside deals, threats that go on in pubs,
| gyms, bars, clubs, by people of all races, genders, and
| ages (once you are allowed in).
|
| If you owned a bar and you swore to avoid all of the above,
| you would need to kick out nearly everyone on a good night
| with lots of spirits and beer sold.
|
| "Ok Bob, I know we are in rural Arizona, but what you just
| said, well some academic in California could find that
| offensive, you have to leave now. "
| mc32 wrote:
| You may not have raised any questions about Covid provenance,
| spoken about Hunter Biden's cavorting the efficacy of Covid
| treatments, etc.
|
| I'm sure there are tons more actual legal things you cannot
| freely talk about on FB.
| wowokay wrote:
| If we want to go "there" then can I deem all nudity be
| censored? Your fixation on viewing things as either racist or
| not racist, as information or misinformation is opinionated.
| I think it is wrong that people can tweet pornography on the
| platform without any censorship. I doubt the Gay Comunity
| would be okay with that being censored, those are the posts I
| am subjected too. The point is any form of censorship will
| hamper someone's freedom of speech. Why can't everyone just
| block people that post what they don't like? The way I do on
| twitter? Otherwise if we are going down the block what I
| don't like road so will I!
| jeffrogers wrote:
| What do you call it when you make a post that you assume your
| friends can see and only some are presented your post?
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| What do you mean by presented? If I have a friend who has
| 4000 friends and I am their 4000th most important friend, I
| would sufficiently believe that a generic post of mine
| would not appear at the top of their feed and they might
| not see it.
|
| I get the idea of not having all the "so and so friend
| liked so and so's post" which feel low quality in a feed,
| but part of a custom feed is prioritizing updates from
| people you actually want to see updates from
| jeffrogers wrote:
| If you were making the choice as to which friends you
| wanted to hear from or updates you wanted to receive from
| you're friends, then I take you point. When someone else,
| or their algorithm, makes these decisions that is
| something else and it may actually veer into censorship.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Hm. This argument falls flat to me. A feed is considered
| editorialized by you, but nearly any combo of content is
| editorialized to some degree. A magazine makes editorial
| decisions on where in the magazine articles are placed...
| this does not mean its censorship, it just means you
| haven't read the whole thing.
|
| Also, the tools exists on all of these social media
| products to actually go and check on your friends' pages
| where you can see their updates. Nothing stops you from
| doing that and consuming the content you wish.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _I find this type of argument devolves into "I want to be a
| crappy person and not be judged for it or face consequences"_
|
| Whereas I find your counter-argument devolves into "Crappy
| people are those who disagree with my point of view and they
| should face consequences"...
|
| The truth is there are extremes on both sides; but the
| censorship seems to be overwhelmingly driven by one.
| avgDev wrote:
| The whole "cancel culture" concept has literally be around
| for years, it was just marketed now and used for politics.
| Humans have been cancelling people and things for eternity.
| People with extreme views that did not align with the
| majority were always pushed away. This even happened in
| medicine and science.
| Krasnol wrote:
| You are right, it's been around since we evolved into
| civilized human beings actually. We even have places
| where people are being "cancelled" out of society. We
| call it "prison".
|
| The only new thing is that it's labelled "cancel culture"
| which makes it somehow "bad" for some people.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think the problem is the "democratization" of
| cancelation. Someone says something mildly controversial
| (some talk radio host said something terse about a
| neighbor) and people start lodging complaints against the
| employer and the hosts advertisers.
|
| It's idiotic.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm simply not convinced that cancellations of mild
| controversiality represent a significant proportion of
| total cancellations without evidence.
| klyrs wrote:
| As if this hasn't been happening to gay people who got
| outed until extremely recently. It wasn't exclusively
| democratic, of course: the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy
| was only repealed a decade ago. Cancel culture isn't
| remotely new; only now it's punishing bigotry, not an
| instrument of bigotry. And, no shit, bigots are pissed
| about that.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's not new. The ability for people with little context
| whatsoever to cancel something just because is new. The
| democratization is the problem. There is usually little
| due process, if any. It's not different from East Germany
| where is you wanted your neighbors bigger apartment you
| convict a story about them listening to west German radio
| programs.
|
| It's stupid.
|
| In Korea they use this to cow people into behaving
| "properly" whatever the fuck that means. There is no
| reason to maintain the belief it will only be used to
| smoke out the "bigots".
| shadowfox wrote:
| > The democratization is the problem. There is usually
| little due process
|
| In context of what the parent post, are you under the
| impression that gay people were cancelled after going
| through some due process?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| So how does this work? Some one is crappy for thinking
| violence, racism, misinformation, and harassment should
| never be tolerated? What's extreme about that? Please do
| enlighten me...
|
| There is nothing extreme about getting booted from facebook
| because one can't behave like a reasonable adult. As noted
| above if anyone did any of this in a setting like a
| restaurant they would be asked to leave, coupled with
| assistance from law enforcement and even possible arrest
| for trespassing and disturbing the peace.
|
| So who's wrong here? The businesses that don't want to be
| subjected to certain types of speech from customers because
| it impacts their business or the people that feel they have
| the right to say whatever they want free from consequence?
| Why can a McDonald's ask a customer to leave their
| establishment because they used the N word in front of
| customers, but Facebook can't? And let's be clear, in both
| cases no censorship occured, there was just consequences
| after the fact. Looking forward to your reply.
| _3u10 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v
| ._R...
|
| In American constitutional law, this case established two
| important rules:
|
| under the California Constitution, individuals may
| peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts
| of private shopping centers regularly held open to the
| public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the
| shopping centers
|
| under the U.S. Constitution, states can provide their
| citizens with broader rights in their constitutions than
| under the federal Constitution, so long as those rights
| do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights
|
| So far the court has rejected the application of
| Pruneyard to the online space, but it might change with
| more sympathetic plantiffs
| bena wrote:
| Only point I would make is to say that censorship has
| occurred.
|
| But that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are times
| and places to censor and be censored. Not all things
| should be said at all times.
|
| I think the problem is that we see censorship as
| something bad, so anyone quelling speech inappropriate
| for the setting can't be censoring because they're doing
| something good, not bad. But censorship isn't bad in and
| of itself. It's the reason for the censorship that makes
| it good or bad.
|
| Censoring people because they are criticising you? That's
| bad. Censoring people because they are talking about
| hockey on a basketball forum? That's good.
|
| So I would say, don't fall into the trap of getting into
| an argument about defining censorship. Keep the argument
| focused along the lines of kicking assholes out of
| McDonalds. Have them explain how its different from that.
| _3u10 wrote:
| bastardoperator, would you also say that you don't denigrate
| people based on their parents marital status online?
|
| On YouTube just saying your name would get your videos
| demonetized and I have a feeling your username banned.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| You should do some additional research then:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/BastarD/videos
|
| Being demonetized is not censorship.
| tasogare wrote:
| > Then again I don't make violent threats, spread
| misinformation, use racist language, or harass people.
|
| You didn't did it _yet_. All of those are moving targets, and
| moving extremely fast especially in the US. I could say a
| dozen of totally non controversial statements in my country
| of residence (Japan), half of which being controversial or
| labeled some kind of -ist in my own country (France) and all
| of them warranting me cancellation in the US. At this rate
| what you are writing now will be categorized racist,
| threatening or harassing in a few years or so. Even your
| nickname could already be considered some kind of harassment
| as it single out kids born out of wedlock and is thus
| enforcing "the patriarchy". (Think it's far-fetched? Have a
| look at GitHub renaming the master branch)
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I disagree and if you look at my profile I provide a
| explanatory url for the name. As a bastard child myself I'm
| not concerned and when used as noun the meaning changes. I
| do think it's funny that people still do not understand git
| well enough to realize that the default branch is whatever
| you want it to be. Even worse, this change/name is a click
| away in GitHub too. What exactly am I saying here that will
| be controversial in the future? I'm genuinely curious.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Then again I don't make violent threats, spread
| misinformation, use racist language, espouse unpopular
| political beliefs, mention atrocities committed by the
| government, attempt to peacefully organize against the
| government in power, or harass people. I feel free to have
| these discussions, and I do all the time. What's the problem?
|
| You left a couple use cases for censorship off your list, so
| I added them back in. I totally agree with you, I don't do
| any of those things either, so no big deal for the two of us.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| > Funny, I'm not censored on any platform. Then again I don't
| make violent threats, spread misinformation, use racist
| language, or harass people.
|
| There are a couple of problems with this line of reasoning.
| Cultural attitudes and mores and standards of decency shift
| constantly. Something you say today that seems within the
| bounds of good taste could be taken out of context or deemed
| racist/harassing later by different people. I trust you are a
| good citizen online and don't touch controversy, but you
| can't possibly know how language will evolve. I've seen
| simple and honest disagreements on Twitter turn into
| accusations of harassment in real time. The threat of
| misinformation is even more elusive and mercurial. I remember
| just a year ago when saying SARS-CoV-2 _might_ have
| accidentally leaked from a lab was WIDELY considered
| dangerous information that should be scrubbed from the
| internet. Now it 's at least acceptable to discuss in
| congress and on legacy media outlets. The "don't be a dick"
| model of speech regulation is full of traps and loopholes and
| problems that make it a bad guideline in many circumstances.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I remember reading articles that claimed that the China
| leak theory was racist against Asians and was dangerous
| because it would cause violence against asians.
|
| It was so incredibly stupid
| krapp wrote:
| It does cause violence against Asians. It adds fuel to
| the increasing hostility and violence that Asian
| communities have been experiencing ever since the
| outbreak began. This is the case regardless of whether or
| not any such theory is true, so that claim isn't
| incredibly stupid at all.
| wowokay wrote:
| Do you have studies you can link? Are they credible?
| Information is subjective.
| krapp wrote:
| I don't know what you consider credible, so feel free to
| do your own Googling. Since it's a widely reported on
| phenomenon, you'll find plenty of sources to choose from,
| and you can judge for yourself.
|
| Also, don't keep pasting the phrase "information is
| subjective" into your comments, it's giving the game
| away.
| MR4D wrote:
| > I'm not censored on any platform
|
| But your username is enough to get you kicked off of many.
| motherzucker wrote:
| >Funny, I'm not censored on any platform. Then again I
| don't... spread misinformation
|
| That's because you can't think outside the box. All the
| greatest iconoclastic truths in human history were labeled
| "dangerous misinformation" by the authorities.
| Krasnol wrote:
| What kind of argument is that? It's not like those people
| invented electrical power. They spread lies which cost
| lives. Every day. People DIE because of misinformation.
|
| Snake oil salesman were no heroes of humanity.
| wowokay wrote:
| Information is subjective. Do you care what the pin to
| unlock my door is? If someone had a post asking for a
| unlock code and I posted mine that would be information
| to me but could be construed as misinformation by them.
| If someone makes a post about religion wouldn't an
| atheist consider that misinformation?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| LOL, okay... best you can do is personal attacks? When did
| Facebook and twitter become the authorities? This is a
| prime example of why we can't have nice things.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > Then again I don't spread misinformation
|
| They cut the phone lines in Chernobyl for the same reason.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's a long article with an admirable examination of history.
|
| However, I feel Carr has made a mistake with his attempt to
| differentiate between private communication and broadcasting
| based on "number of followers".
|
| I think the better distinctions looks _something_ like:
| private communication is anything delivered ONLY to people to
| whom it is addressed or who have actively opted-in to receive
| communications from the sender. some authentication must be
| implied before they can read what I have delivered.
| any other communication, regardless of the medium, number of
| followers, etc. is considered to be public.
|
| So, if I tweet about something, since anyone could read my
| tweets, they are all public. If I DM someone on twitter, that's
| private.
|
| If I post something on my own private blog that requires a
| subscription to read, that's private communication. If I post the
| same thing on a medium where it can be read by anyone, that's
| public.
|
| If I email my family about something, that's private; if I post a
| comment on a tiny open wordpress site with less readers than I
| have cousines, that's public.
|
| This differentiation says nothing about what the difference in
| regulation between public and private should be. There are good
| arguments for many different schemes, some of which involve zero
| regulation for either form. But to discuss the merits of them, we
| need a clear distinction between private & public communication,
| and I think Carr's is wrong and mine is (roughly) right.
| austincheney wrote:
| The solution is simple. Exchange the client/server model for a
| peer-to-peer model. By peer-to-peer and I mean literally IP to IP
| and not something like instant messenger that bounces messages
| through a central server. Only then can you assure a fix to
| interference.
|
| This requires:
|
| * Routes - both parties to be on IPv6 or either party to have
| something like port address translation on a IPv6 interface.
|
| * Identity - This will require a combination of CA and STUN. The
| certificate from the CA and corresponding key pair associated
| with that certificate ensures a user is who they say they are and
| their keys are respectable. The corresponding key exchange
| ensures the data is confined to the two parties. The STUN server
| correlates the unique user ID, such as that which is certified by
| the certificate, to an IP address.
|
| Anything less is just another game for some media company to use
| you as a product.
| JoshCole wrote:
| Calling the problems faced by social media simple is the sort
| of hubris that only comes about because of the Dunning-Kruger
| effect. You're underestimating the complexity of the problem
| because you're under-informed. Some aspects of your proposal
| have been tried before. They aren't new. History indicates that
| your proposal fails to achieve long term product-market fit. It
| also fails this entirely because of being decentralized and
| associating IP addresses with people and having high friction -
| not because of corporate dystopia.
|
| Let's raise the level of discourse by reviewing our history.
| There are and have been in the past decentralized social
| applications. One of the most notable of them in terms of
| adoption was Skype. It was acquired by Microsoft. In the past
| it was normal to use Skype in gaming communities. It was a
| competitor to Ventrillo and TeamSpeak. Skype moved away from
| decentralization.
|
| It's really common at this point for people who are
| simultaneously paranoid and outraged to start exclaiming with
| indignation that clearly corporations are evil. This failure to
| engage with reality is common online. Putting aside that social
| companies only discovered a few years ago that connecting
| people had disastrous consequence and have been devoting
| billions to try to address these so-called simple problems ever
| since it became clear these problems existed lets try to see if
| we can find a non-paranoid good-faith reason for Microsoft to
| have moved away from decentralization.
|
| What do you know, but Discord displaced Skype for a reason
| within gaming communities!
|
| Why did gaming communities move away from Skype? I've been in
| gaming communities. I've heard people express some of their
| problems with Skype. One of the issues that Skype had was
| that... it was decentralized and that could lead to the leaking
| of your IP address. Therefore if a streamer or even another
| person accidentally showed their Skype they could get DDoSed.
| At high levels in various competitive games this was a severe
| problem, because as you might guess... in social media you tend
| to be connected with people who are socially connected to you!
| So you leaked your IP address very often to just the sort of
| people with the incentive to capitalize on that by DDoSing you
| so they could beat you in a game.
|
| Now Skype isn't decentralized, but it didn't matter. They
| didn't do a good enough job to serve some segment of the
| community. So Skype was doing just what you suggested. Being
| decentralized. And they had a higher friction process than a
| competitor, which is the case for your solution. And as a
| direct result of these things... (and others, mind, but we have
| to simplify reality at least a little to understand it)...
|
| Discord found product-market fit in the gaming niche! And it
| grew increasingly popular. And now everyone in the gaming
| communities is on Discord, not Skype. Moreover, Skype has lost
| share even outside of gaming as it executes the standard niche
| to general playbook that so many social companies have found
| success executing.
|
| Congratulations: your simple solution has already failed. You
| thought it was simple, but you were just ignorant of the actual
| challenges. But now we get to the real problem. The problem you
| completely missed. All of what I just said? It isn't the real
| problem. Those are details. They are suggestive of the real
| problem, but you need to step back and think about this from a
| level higher to see the true problem. It isn't technical. It is
| social. It's in the name. Not technical media, social media.
|
| The true problem is so complex that it is almost certainly
| impossible to solve in a way which will please everyone. I'd go
| as far as to say it's probably fundamentally unsolvable.
|
| Here is the real problem outlined using what we covered above:
|
| 1. Notice that decentralization is important to you.
|
| 2. Notice that it is outright against the desires of others.
|
| 3. Notice that social applications get more powerful as the
| number of participants increase.
|
| Now lets generalize the above and make it more clear why those
| things matter:
|
| 1. Some people love X where X is something. 2. Some people hate
| X where X is something. 3. These people are incentivized to use
| the same application due to the utility of social tools growing
| with number of participants.
|
| This problem is absolutely nutty in its complexity. It's also
| the actual reality of social applications. Almost all the
| issues with social applications boil down to the problem that
| people have different desires and those desires aren't in
| alignment with each other.
|
| The technical aspects of the problem don't even matter. The
| problem isn't simple.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The solution is simple. Exchange the client/server model for a
| peer-to-peer model. By peer-to-peer and I mean literally IP to
| IP and not something like instant messenger that bounces
| messages through a central server. Only then can you assure a
| fix to interference.
|
| This is my go to response as to "what to do about social
| media."
|
| And I opine|rant|blather on about it whenever I see folks
| complaining about or claiming that some rules|regulation|policy
| will "fix" social media.
|
| And such tracts are becoming more and more common (cf. this
| article[0][1], entitled _OK, but What Should We Actually Do
| About Facebook? I Asked the Experts._ from today). But, as in
| the article linked, no one _ever_ suggests decentralized
| communications.
|
| I'm not sure _why_ , but there certainly are barriers to making
| decentralized "social media" work. Those same barriers are what
| make centralization of much of our digital universe necessary
| and hugely profitable.
|
| Those barriers are _primarily_ (there are other issues, but are
| mostly part of the result rather than the cause) related to the
| ways in which end-users are provided access to the Internet.
|
| I'm specifically referring to asymmetric internet links. _Most_
| internet links are $X Mb /sec download and ($X / 25 or so)
| Mb/sec upload.
|
| What's more, there are often policy restrictions on "consumer"
| internet links that block them from "running servers," whether
| that be port blocking or throttling.
|
| This keeps decentralized communication from being viable. Other
| than these artificial barriers, there's nothing stopping folks
| from hosting their own cat/family/meme photos/videos and/or
| other content.
|
| There are plenty of decentralized platforms that can do so with
| minimal set up and configuration.
|
| However, if you can't serve more than a couple of concurrent
| connections at a reasonable speed, that breaks the whole
| decentralized/P2P paradigm. Because _my_ upload bandwidth is
| the limiting factor in being able to host content.
|
| If, on the other hand, you have a link with _symmetric_
| bandwidth without policy restrictions, serving your own content
| is a no-brainer.
|
| As such, my "solution" for addressing the "censorship" of the
| centralized "social media" platforms is to make them irrelevant
| by eliminating the entire reason for their existence --
| asymmetric bandwidth favoring download vs. upload on internet
| links.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/opinion/facebook-
| experts....
|
| [1] (same as [0], just from archive.md):
| https://archive.md/qpNtV
|
| Edit: Added title of linked article in the comment.
| austincheney wrote:
| YouTube was founded when most people had slow internet and
| they seemed to have done ok. I have fiber at my house and do
| about 920mb/s both up and down. It's only a matter of time
| before that becomes almost universally common enough to rule
| out bandwidth from any consideration.
|
| As a result I am writing a peer-to-peer application assuming
| universal fiber, 4K displays, and IPv6 are already common.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I have fiber at my house and do about 920mb/s both up and
| down. It's only a matter of time before that becomes almost
| universally common enough to rule out bandwidth from any
| consideration.
|
| I hope you're right. Where I live (the US), most ISPs have
| cable TV systems, interests in streaming platforms, or
| both.
|
| That provides incentives to maintain the status quo WRT
| asymmetric links and centralization.
|
| ISPs like Verizon, which had previously pushed hard on
| fiber deployment, are refocusing on wireless, as that's a
| much bigger profit center for them.
|
| I hope you're right about the inevitability of
| (multi-)GB/sec symmetric connections, but the current
| incentive structure argues against it, at least in the US.
|
| Which is why I believe that last-mile FTTP[0] should
| largely be local, public/quasi-public[1] utilities that
| support themselves by selling interconnects to multiple
| ISPs.
|
| Those ISPs can then compete on speed, price, services, etc.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_x#FTTP
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quasi_public_corpo
| ratio...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Stop trying to fix or demolish it already. You don't own it and
| have no right to control everybody else. Think for a minute about
| how every proposal and precedent could be used against you. The
| pattern of "Lets do away with due process because I am angry! Wah
| my lack of due process!" has been repeated too damn many times.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| My 2 cents on how to fix social media, maybe it is stupid but to
| ban any political discussion. People LOVE talking about politics
| especially in their personal community (echo chamber). I swear
| this is the most fun political people have had on the internet in
| 20 years. It's too bad it just becomes an echo chamber. We had a
| community group for our town on Facebook, all it was was fake
| accounts and people talking shit about Democrats and the
| occasional left wing person talking shit back. Recently they
| banned political discussion and anything not directly related to
| our town. Thank the fucking lord. People will still slip in some
| political bullshit but it's miles better.
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| Besides what others have brought up, I'll bring up the fact
| that what constitutes "politics" is almost a political question
| in and of itself.
|
| And I live in an area affected by Hurricane Ida. I've started
| following my local government on social media because it is one
| of the best places to keep up to date on what's going on
| concerning cleanup and what not. And I would say a government
| run page concerning that government is about as political as
| you can get.
|
| As is your community page. A lot of things related to your town
| is political. I mean, politics is the word we use to define how
| groups make decisions. So any time you're talking about making
| decisions in a group, you're talking politics.
|
| But of course, that's not what you mean when you say
| "politics". It's not what anyone who complains about politics
| mean when they say politics. They either mean "things I don't
| agree with", "things I find uncomfortable to think about", or
| "evangelizing a viewpoint".
|
| For instance, someone complained about Squid Game being "too
| political" because it had an underlying message of "rich people
| fuck with poor people for sport". But it isn't a political
| statement at all, it's a sociological one. But thinking about
| how a less exaggerated version of that is basically our day to
| day makes that guy uncomfortable. He wanted to tune in and drop
| out. But "this makes me uncomfortable" is a him problem. He's
| trying to make it an everyone problem.
| ksec wrote:
| I think every social media will grow until it reaches politics,
| stock / investment or pornography. And you would think having a
| special channel for those would fix it, but no, it always
| creeps back in. It is sort of strange to continue see the same
| pattern over and over again.
|
| Personally I think we have a human nature problem, and not a
| technology problem looking for market fit.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| In my social group, I ask that politics be contained to a
| specific channel.
|
| Anyone is free to join the channel, no limitations or
| anything, just an opt-in. Rule is posted obviously and we
| remind people frequently.
|
| I've lost 4 people because they were upset that this rule is
| enforced against everyone, out of a group of maybe 20. They
| wanted their politics to be everywhere and not constrained to
| one channel.
|
| I never thought this tiny little policy was going to cause
| such a mess. It has dramatically improved the rest of
| discussions - you can actually just talk about stuff without
| people jumping in with their political takes - but it's been
| an upsetting policy in ways I did not anticipate.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| You realize that under your proposal, your own proposal would
| be banned right? You are advocating policy. That's politics.
| cousin_it wrote:
| I think that kind of gotcha response is usually wrong. Yes,
| people need to be protected from politics, and that
| protection requires a certain nonzero minimum amount of
| politics. The same is true for guns, smallpox, etc.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| lol! nice catch ...that definitely got me thinking
| mdp2021 wrote:
| What about instead to "counter immaturity in discussion", like
| we are trying to do here?
| zaphar wrote:
| Achieving any kind of success at that is very much an outlier
| and can't possibly scale to all the forums currently on the
| internet at the moment. You may get a handful of places that
| reach the level that HN currently maintains but the overall
| effect will be the same as now.
| kodah wrote:
| > While the government can't police private conversations, it can
| regulate the content of broadcasts to protect the public
| interest.
|
| I've never agreed with this idea and I don't think I'm alone in
| that. Possibly "public interest" is the wrong word.
|
| > It's worth remembering that Congress's decision to license
| radio operators after the Titanic disaster was about more than
| just allocating scarce spectrum. It was about bringing those who
| speak to the masses out of the shadows and into the daylight of
| the public square. It was about making broadcasters, whether
| individuals, businesses, or other organizations, visible and
| accountable. We may not need to establish a formal licensing
| program for social media, but we do need to bring the spirit of
| the common good back to broadcasting.
|
| Except operating in the clear is a well-known danger as well.
| People using the words "accountability" and "consequences" almost
| never want to discuss the upper and lower limits of such ideas.
| If the concept of "punching up" is any indicator, it's at least
| partially a dog whistle for who it's okay to abuse these days.
|
| Such a system would need to be private as well, instead of
| operating in full transparency to prohibit the litany of
| performative exercises people will undergo these days to make
| their point. The author seems to try to assuage that only
| "powerful private interests" would take issue with the proposed
| system.
|
| > An ambitious Digital Communications Act along the lines
| sketched out here would be complicated and controversial. It
| would be resisted by many powerful private interests. It would
| not be a panacea. But we can no longer pretend that social media
| will fix itself.
|
| At the core of social media problems is bad human behavior of all
| persuasions. Some people just manage to learn or detach
| themselves.
|
| Personally, I partially blame public API concepts for most of
| this mess. Whether you're talking about limitless graphs for
| sharing "information" (in its most general definition) or API's
| which can be enumerated. Their legitimate use is finite and at
| worst it's entirely extractive. Better regulation, to me, would
| be the government regulating what sort of information you allow
| to be open and possibly the use/limits of virality.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I've never agreed with this idea and I don't think I'm alone
| in that. Possibly "public interest" is the wrong word.
|
| Do you agree or disagree with the notion that since the
| electromagnetic spectrum is a limited resource, actual
| broadcast (using the spectrum) needs to be regulated?
| 14 wrote:
| My dad always talked about George Carlin the guy is a legend. My
| dad always told me a story about when Carlin was "not" allowed to
| say certain things on the air and made comment to that fact. I am
| now betting it was because of this case. Supposedly Carlin turned
| to the camera and said something along the lines of "f&@k all you
| stupid lip readers out there" except he only lipped it never
| actually said it. I'm not sure if it was live or they producers
| just didn't understand what he did but they aired the show. It
| made a lot of deaf people mad apparently. I have not been able to
| find the clip or any reference to it but believe my dad's
| account.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I like Carlin too. Here's my choice quote "Think of how stupid
| the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider
| than that."
|
| I don't trust people to make good decisions. Admittedly
| incredibly paternalistic, but I've met a lot of people, and
| most of them are just making one bad decision after another.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| I don't think free speech was meant to only defend "private
| communication". What a weird article.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > As the dominant informational networks of the twenty-first
| century, they need to be accountable for the content they
| broadcast, whatever its source.
|
| The article seems to be arguing that social media companies need
| to be judge, jury and censor over every message that is
| "broadcast", i.e. sent to more than a few close friends.
|
| It admits that defining a "public interest" standard is basically
| impossible, but assumes that this ambiguity won't be exploited by
| whichever side is in control of whichever body gets to punish the
| social media companies for under- or over-censoring.
|
| If someone tweets "Click here to read my 400 page manifesto about
| what is wrong with America", would Twitter need to assign lawyers
| the task of scouring that document for "problematic" passages
| like "defund the police" or "give more power to ICE"?
|
| Perhaps if there were a workable system in place for silencing
| extreme and misinformed voices on the TV and radio, we could try
| applying it at scale to the internet too, but right now that's
| like trying to run before you can crawl.
| sharpener wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but... a public interest clause might not be
| the right tool, since public interest can be interpreted as
| restricted to information that would affect a person's voting
| preferences and nothing broader.
|
| In the UK TV broadcasters get their licences and general
| charter terms from the government, based on standards
| previously contested in law and, I believe, broadly enshrined
| in statute and/or regulations. One of those terms is a crucial
| clause to the effect that broadcasters are not allowed to
| broadcast anything that would make ordinary people throw up
| over their TV dinner or grannies die of apoplexy, etc.
|
| Various entities, people or single issue political parties for
| instance, have attempted to get broadcasters to show films
| containing grisly stuff, and when they meet refusal have
| attempted to sue broadcasters on free speech grounds. However,
| the right to free speech does not allow a legal entity or
| person to compel some other party to shout out noxious views on
| their behalf. So broadcasters in the UK can exercise their
| rights against such compulsion and filter out extremal horrors
| if they wish. The tests they use are designed to maintain the
| same two or three standard deviations of a normal distribution
| curve that maximises their customer base and matches the same
| standards civil law requires to maintain order on the civil
| scale anyway.
|
| In that context, what are social media companies if they are
| not media intermediaries between legal entities? Thus they can
| not be compelled to relay anyone's content to anywhere else if
| they don't want to. Their T&Cs typically say so anyway.
|
| Folks worried about censorship of their partisan or minority
| views on such platforms don't seem to get what rights those
| intermediary companies have. They play nice relaying messages
| because they like mass market incomes.
|
| So really the issue might be purely about how many messages
| could MetaFB/Twitter afford to kill off and still be popular
| enough to survive?
| PrinceRichard wrote:
| New laws mean forcing others to conform to our expectations of
| their behavior. This is only acceptable when there is a broad
| social consensus about the necessity of the law. There is no such
| consensus regarding how social media should operate.
| mistermann wrote:
| As far as I know, there _hasn 't even been an attempt_ at
| having a serious, ~fact based discussion on the matter that
| involves the public. Where/how would such a discussion even
| take place?
|
| The way the world operates in 2021 is a mess, unfortunately
| this is _normal_ so few people seem to notice.
| GodKronos wrote:
| Delete it?
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(page generated 2021-11-04 23:01 UTC)