Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship

by DiabloD3 • 5 years ago

659 532 5 years ago

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.

0des• 5 years ago

"Crises precipitate change" - Deltron 3030

leopaacc• 5 years ago

"never let a crisis go to waste" - someone

defterGoose• 5 years ago

"I wanna devise a virus; to bring dire straits to our environment"

Groans in 2021

bitwize3• 5 years ago

"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

UncensoredNews• 5 years ago

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)

croes• 5 years ago

I think that's why Cyberpunk as a fictional genre is dead, it's too real.

Ajay-p• 5 years ago

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.

daenz• 5 years ago

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.

betterunix26• 5 years ago

...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...

AlexTWithBeard8• 5 years ago

You certainly must love the way things are going in Belarus then.

eloff5• 5 years ago

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.

cortesoft• 5 years ago

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.

BurningFrog• 5 years ago

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.

stale200213• 5 years ago

The unfortunate truth is that terrorist organizations use mainstream social networking sites to recruit and radicalize

If an actual terrorist organization is doing this, as defined by the FBI, then our government should be in charge of handling that.

Terrorist is already illegal, and we already have government organizations, in charge of tracking that stuff down.

And those government organizations have checks and balances, and judges, and have to follow certain rules.

These checks and balances do not exist, with other forms of moderation.

radley2• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

pjc504• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

toomanyducks3• 5 years ago

First off: no, that is not the abolish the police argument. The argument for police abolition is as part of a massive restructuring of how we think about crime, not how we think about police. It's about taking our focus away from police themselves (the antithesis of 'imagine the police doing horrible things to you') and onto the factors that make people victims of the police: systemic racism, drug addictions, mental illnesses, and the exploitative nature of capitalism at its worse. When we redirect our attention to solving the root issues, focusing on policing is redundant and harmful.

Second off, you're totally right. Abolish the police.

swiley• 5 years ago

Yes, That's why most people are against the use of military equipment by police even if they're not against defunding them.

gedy• 5 years ago

Many of the people who say they want to "abolish the police" actually just want to be the police, but under a different name and under their rules.

anonytrary3• 5 years ago

No, since you are forgetting to take into account the probability of an outcome/risk analysis.

The probability of the local police being used against your city is so low, that the benefits are deemed to outweigh the risks. On the other hand, imagine software that lets you spy on all your employees' personal opinions, being sold as a way to "help strengthen culture-fit". That is something where the negatives may vastly outweigh the positives.

_ykl95• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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

SV_BubbleTime6• 5 years ago

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.

UncleMeat2• 5 years ago

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.

robertlagrant3• 5 years ago

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.

isaacremuant3• 5 years ago

I thought this would finally help many rabid anti Trump people realize giving so much power to the gov was a bad idea but since the major media outlets and tech companies seemed to be part of the "resistance" this association of "limiting power" for the WCS never actually transpired.

I don't expect people to be persuaded by your argument. They'll just demand and increase of power to further their idelogies that they deemed objective and righteouss truth.

anonytrary3• 5 years ago

This is very insightful. I've seen too many employees in big tech continue to shill their products and services because it helps their CEO or it helps their immediate team -- without thinking about who is being hurt (e.g. end users consuming snake oil) or how the product can be weaponized against the people it is supposed to be helping. This is as true for small startups as it is for companies with millions of end users.

echelon• 5 years ago

I support preventing Roko's Basilisk.

LatteLazy4• 5 years ago

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_five6• 5 years ago

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?

LatteLazy4• 5 years ago

* 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 :)

AlexTWithBeard8• 5 years ago

force fact checking

Just remember that less than a year ago it would have been your worst enemy appointing the fact checkers.

duemti• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

AlexTWithBeard8• 5 years ago

Such a vetting would be (1) extremely expensive and (2) in most cases the decision would "well... We don't know for sure"

wmf2• 5 years ago

https://oversightboard.com/ is trying to do this.

LatteLazy4• 5 years ago

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.

noxer4• 5 years ago

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.

rektide4• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

“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• 5 years ago

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.

rektide4• 5 years ago

yeah i actually like seeing my friends talking with each other & being able to join in the various conversations they're having.

if you're fine just leaving the online social circles your friends are in good for you. but i hope you can see how very very very very very short an answer & how rude is comes across to most people. and i'm sorry your friends are so boring.

ctoth2• 5 years ago

"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?

rektide4• 5 years ago

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?".

mindslight• 5 years ago

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".

drstewart• 5 years ago

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.

dragonwriter3• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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_• 5 years ago

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.

shrimpx4• 5 years ago

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.

jacob24842• 5 years ago

The people on the "right side of history" are usually fighting for freedom and liberty, not censorship and re-education camps

britch• 5 years ago

Winners usually frame their fights as ones for freedom and liberty, and emphasize their enemy's use of censorship and re-education camps.

jacob24842• 5 years ago

Something is either being censored or it's not. Regardless of the issue, I'll side with the side that is not censoring information.

tomjen3• 5 years ago

The people on the right side of history in WWII locked up their own citizens based on their ethnic heritage.

pjc504• 5 years ago

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.)

worker7674242• 5 years ago

FDR's track record on individual rights is rather poor. Seizure of gold, censorship, and internment come to mind.

ipaddr2• 5 years ago

People on the right side of history are the ones who won the war period.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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.

pankajdoharey• 5 years ago

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.

cratermoon6• 5 years ago

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...

throwawayboise7• 5 years ago

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.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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.

MildlySerious• 5 years ago

It is not unique to the online world, but the online world does change the dynamics around these things significantly, because the social immune system that we have in the real world completely fails on the internet.

In a small, real world friend group "that guy" who talks about ancient aliens, flat earth and Pleiadians or whatever gets shut down real quick and suffers consequences within his social circle.

In the online world, "those guys" can find each other and egg each other on into more bizarre world views. This isn't a theory, you can watch this happen in real time with the qanon "movement".

People who (rightfully) feel estranged by mainstream media or left behind by politics pick up some weird idea, find communities who agree with them and end up holding on to those views longer than they would without the support. In some cases, this leads them to slowly becoming more estranged from real world contacts. Family and friends distance themselves because they don't want to hear any more about how Earth being a globe is somehow a big conspiracy and this little supportive online community eventually remains the only safe space to talk openly and they become more invested in it.

The problem is these communities harshly punish everyone who disagrees with the mob. Increasingly outlandish ideas are pushed into the conversation, and your only options are to agree or to be turned away, which becomes increasingly painful the more other contacts withdraw from you. It's a death spiral that is scary effective.

Eventually the only people that you can relate with is a group that also talks about how every bad thing that happens is orchestrated, democrats are all traitors that need to be put in front of a firing squad and baking soda treats cancer.

We need to come up with something to fight this deterioration of the social fabric, but I agree censorship is not sufficient or maybe even helpful.

spamizbad• 5 years ago

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.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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.

justbored123• 5 years ago

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.

galaxyLogic2• 5 years ago

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-...

worker7674242• 5 years ago

I actually think algorithms are more likely to promote things that either reinforce your existing beliefs or incite outrage.

tlholaday• 5 years ago

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?

trentnix• 5 years ago

The lab-leak hypothesis is provocative (and probably true), but got smothered anyway. It was just inconsistent with the narrative.

8note4• 5 years ago

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

Rd6n6• 5 years ago

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

AlexTWithBeard8• 5 years ago

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?

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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...

ideata20592510• 5 years ago

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.

TheFalun7• 5 years ago

“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.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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.

seizethegdgap• 5 years ago

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."

1vuio0pswjnm72• 5 years ago

"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• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

Those are all pre-internet. Not sure they are good examples of how the marketplace works in social media.

cdirkx• 5 years ago

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.

PicassoCTs2• 5 years ago

The internet has been a beautiful experiment to find out how what crank ideology aligns best to the human default instinctive nature.

wyager2• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

The fact that you equivocate NPR and Pravda means you’ve huffed plenty of those fumes yourself.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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.

amelius3• 5 years ago

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.

version_five6• 5 years ago

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.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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.

amelius3• 5 years ago

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?

tshaddox3• 5 years ago

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.

throwawaygh• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

suzzer992• 5 years ago

IMO your stance basically amounts to "propaganda doesn't work". History would suggest otherwise.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

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

This is the basic hierarchical nature of any complex society. In a well functioning society those people, called elites (today already considered a derogatory term), are being funneled to the top where they're put into positions of power.

I don't really know why that's in itself supposed to be abhorrent, because it's how any functional organisation is structured. The problems start when institutions break down and the quality of your elites is reduced, but the solution is not some sort of choose your own adventure story where you let the inmates run the asylum. There's no organisation on earth that survives like that.

The entire notion that the vast majority of adults 'make their own choices' is a complete fiction to begin with. Choices exist downstream from culture and culture itself is produced by elites and consumed by 'adults', and so the choice you have to ponder is which people you want to be in charge of producing your culture. Might be Harvard, Zuckerberg, Tucker, or the Pope, but the people have nothing to do with it.

quicklime• 5 years ago

It's not ironic, and not surprising. HN is very willing to "censor" (i.e. moderate, ban, etc) and on top of that, "politics" is considered off-topic altogether according to the guidelines.

In such an environment, the better ideas often do rise up to the top. Twitter and Facebook are not such environments.

"We" shield ourselves from bad ideas because this forum would be overrun if we didn't.

acituan3• 5 years ago

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.

This is a false dichotomy and a rather romantic notion. Independent adults rarely, if ever, make their minds from first principles. They do already cluster around people who think/convince others that they know better. So few of what we’re talking here is original thought, we are mostly riffing on what we’ve read elsewhere. And that’s OK. That how distributed cognition saves us a lot of time, when working correctly.

But distributed cognition of independent adults get to super irrational conclusions too, I don’t need to list past atrocities based on ridiculous ideas.

So while the failures and wins of distributed cognition is yet to be understood properly, it alone is not the culprit nor can be corrected via the virtues of atomized individualized cognition.

One thing is clear, ideas distributed over ad fueled companies’ screen estates conform to a particular topology and a particular objective function. The normativity of engagement is not that of reality. And the irrationality of those systems effect us even from afar, permeates into our culture and even into non-ad based forums like this.

trainsplanes• 5 years ago

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.

Gullible people exist. I mean, it's such a well-known phenomenon that the term "gullible" exists to describe people who fall for what should be obviously false information and lies. We all have our instances of gullibility, and we all have domains that we know nothing about, and there are countless people who prey on people with lack of knowledge in some area.

If people go around in real life deceiving people, someone might step in and tell them to watch out for the scam. There'll be signs in tourist areas where scammers frequent. Banks will send out notices on how to help their customers avoid financial traps. Schools teach kids to look out for bad information and misleading conclusions. Signs are posted in parks warning people not to venture out to certain areas because they're likely unprepared and could die (and people still die anyways).

This is all generally accepted as good.

But flag a post on some social networking site with a "This might be fake. Be careful", and people go wild saying the elite are trying to police us and they're destroying our freedoms.

refurb3• 5 years ago

The approach of “people are gullible and need someone smarter to show them the truth” of course requires some “smart enough” and no doubt many HNers consider themselves those people. Which is a hilarious take on HN if you ever read a discussion on health matters.

The amount of bad information, random conjuncture and conspiratorial thinking is pretty shocking.

mbesto• 5 years ago

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).

What you just described is called a representative democracy and was essentially created because a direct democracy didn't work, for exactly those reasons you mention (many people can't actually think for themselves - at the political level).

All this to say, we can be adults and let everyone get the same information and make their own choice

You're completely ignoring the crux here - it's about both access to information and algorithms that present signals vs noise. Pretending that my 95 year old grandma can reliably decide that a fox news segment isn't sensationalized drivel after being primed for 30+ years that its "news" and not entertainment, is just as silly as you thinking this whole suggestion is ridiculous.

oliv__2• 5 years ago

"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)."

I couldn't agree more. While no-one can deny that we are all born with different capacities (intellectual or otherwise), the argument that some people are essentially incapable of taking care of their own lives is a very slippery slope and a cynical one at that, viewing humans as incapable of learning or improving. I find it truly repulsive.

SyzygistSix4• 5 years ago

I did not interpret their comment that way. I see part of the problem being that the spaces we hang out in now are not conducive to productive conversation with a variety of people and instead nurture division due to perverse incentives and poor design.

pessimizer2• 5 years ago

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.

cyanydeez• 5 years ago

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

rayiner9• 5 years ago

It's not clear to me that censorship isn't making it worse. You have a mass populist/anti-elitist movement in the country. You're telling me that a solution to this is to have elites at multi-national mega-corporations deciding what information should reach the unwashed masses?

What exactly is the end-game here? You're not going to beat (or educate) the populism and conspiracy theories out of Americans. We're talking about a country where a prominent tech billionaire died because he disregarded "the medical elite" and went on an all-fruit diet to treat his pancreatic cancer.[1] That river is wide and deep, my friend. Telling people that the elites are controlling information sharing online for their own good is unlikely to have the desired result.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j...

Nursie16• 5 years ago

You're telling me that a solution to this is to have elites at multi-national mega-corporations deciding what information should reach the unwashed masses?

No, I’m specifically not telling you that! I’m not sure I have any good solutions but I specifically called out that censorship probably wasn’t the best plan!

I just wanted to say that the concept of a marketplace of ideas, as commonly envisaged in terms of ideas with merit rising to prominence, seems to be naive, and when we’re building systems to facilitate an uncensored or uncensorable marketplace of ideas, perhaps we should keep that in mind.

aabaker992• 5 years ago

"According to the American Cancer Society, for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined, the one-year relative survival rate is 20%, and the five-year rate is 9%." (https://pancreatic.org/pancreatic-cancer/about-the-pancreas/...)

I would hesitate to say your prominent tech billionaire died because of diet choices.

api• 5 years ago

I think you could make a basic content richness argument. There are interesting nuanced left, right, libertarian, socialist, etc. ideas but none of these are the ones discussed. The stuff that gets popular is meme level trash. Social media selects for punchy sound bites as much or more than the old media it is replacing.

robbrown451• 5 years ago

Glad to see your very good idea rise to the top.

And this is mostly because HN, partly though the excellent work of dang, does, well.... kinda the same thing. HN is censored. And I approve.... that's why I'm here rather than somewhere like 4chan.

Nursie16• 5 years ago

Ha, perhaps the success of the comment disproves its content!

CursedUrn• 5 years ago

How do you explain the massive list of advancements humanity made during the Enlightenment period with this attitude? Seems like you're advocating another dark age.

xyzzy21• 5 years ago

It's about the time constants of communication that cause this. Given time, the truth wins out. But when you accelerate communication beyond human capacitor to process it, you get what we have today.

User23• 5 years ago

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.

This has been well known for a couple thousand years at least. Aristotle comprehensively covered it in his Rhetoric[1]. There have always been people who can only be persuaded by rhetoric and not by dialectic. If anything, our contemporary educational system is designed to form persons to be incapable of dialectic and susceptible to rhetoric. And so the current state of affairs is unsurprising.

It's strange to think that rhetoric used to be a standard secondary level subject in the West. I wonder what it would be like to live in a society where virtually every moderately educated adult were well versed in persuasion tricks.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/

boring_twenties2• 5 years ago

Are we sure that most, or even many adults are well-versed in things they were taught in school? My experience suggests otherwise. I would honestly struggle with trigonometry or biology today, both subjects I excelled at in school. Funny enough, in my facebook feed today there are numerous people failing to answer "50+50-25*0+2+2" correctly.

guerrilla• 5 years ago

Better ideas, better models of truth and reality don't win out.

These are just subjective judgements. All you're saying is that people you don't share the same value judgements with won out.

jsnell3• 5 years ago

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?

Nursie16• 5 years ago

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?

PontifexMinimus11• 5 years ago

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.

catlifeonmars2• 5 years ago

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.

ashtonkem5• 5 years ago

Don’t we already have platform specific moderation? Isn’t that what people are complaining about?

MrStonedOne5• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

totony6• 5 years ago

You can't just ignore the fact that social networking has become the new town square because its inconvenient

That's not a good analogy. Facebook is most used as a semi-private space (akin to an open-house), or as just private (private party with friends). No one moderates that; you don't want to listen to it, you don't join the party (aka follow the person/page).

In a town square, if you scream profanities, harass people, etc, they have to listen because it's the only town square.

SyzygistSix4• 5 years ago

I would say that social media sites are more akin to a bar/coffee shop/pub/public house.

While free speech is not protected there by the first amendment (as far as I know), it is still important to value it broadly to create an open atmosphere. I think of the role they played in the run-up to the American Revolution and in organizing workers, and until the dawn of the internet and the plasticized commercialization of my town, the role it played in my social and artistic life.

But what you say is an excellent point about where we are now engaging in public discourse; it has changed drastically, very quickly, and there are significant concerns about free speech now that we all hang out on websites mostly owned by large corporations.

It feels gross to me. Like meeting up at the food court of Wal Mart because every other place in town has put out of business. And the town square is almost dead and gone, both online and in real life.

MrStonedOne5• 5 years ago

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?

throwawayboise7• 5 years ago

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?

jsnell3• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

clucas6• 5 years ago

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.

diffeomorphism• 5 years ago

Don't they? If someone sends me spam/malware I expect gmail to filter that, even if it is from a friend's (hijacked) account.

I think there definitely is a very blurry line between spam/fraud and spam/misinformation.

claytoneast• 5 years ago

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.

jsnell3• 5 years ago

Your solution doesn't address at the problem the article was describing. The stated problem is the "censorship" by tech companies. Allowing posting via API rather than just a user interface does nothing to solve that. If it doesn't solve the problem, why are we doing it again?

Your solution creates the new problem that normal users don't understand what access they're granting to an API. Every API you expose is a tool for an unscrupulous app to exfiltrate data about you or your contacts. It's an avenue for sending spam. It's an avenue for monetizing your account's reputation by taking actions such as liking content, following/subscribing channels to boost their engagement numbers, scraping content that your contacts had not shared publicly.

It makes abuse-fighting much harder, since you can no longer trust the application to collect any kind of bot detection signals, and since huge tons of user interactions will be getting artifically concentrated at a few API gateways.

And finally, while nobody has a right to their business model, it's maybe useful to consider what the implications would be. It basically makes ad-supported services impossible, since somebody will inevitably implement an ad-free client for the service. (Or even worse, a client that just shows their own ads instead). Do you think we're really willing to go back to a world where the only free (as in money) services are ones that are being subsidized?

jensensbutton3• 5 years ago

What if the platform added 1 day of latency to every call?

belorn• 5 years ago

A good question, but much of it does get answered in the linked articles discussing the proposal.

Large social networks already have API's with partners, but who and how they are allowed to be used is defined through legal agreements and access controls. The access act is intended to regulate how those legal agreements over the API should be defined.

The EFF wants to allow third-party to ask consent of those users in order to use those API's for interoperability. In theory this would not put any additional requirement on the social network, and the consent request could occur out-of-band. The only change would be the legal ramification and access control.

In theory there could be a dominating social network without any API for third-parties, in which this proposal might be defeated. In practice that is very unlikely given the need of large companies. The proposal could also require if needed that internal API, if they exist (which all of them have as a matter of practicality), get opened up in the lack of any external API that can be used to enable interoperability. I would however guess that such a broad brush would be problematic, and a bit unnecessary since again every large social network already has third-party API's.

Do Discord have an API that a selected group of partners has access to? Do Instagram have it too? Given the correct permission, interactions between those two networks would be a matter of a third-party using those API's.

jensensbutton3• 5 years ago

In theory this would not put any additional requirement on the social network

This falls apart as soon as you examine it though. If the law only required a platform to give competitors access to whatever API they currently have without actually detailing what needs to be accessible then it would be trivially easy for platforms to change/restrict those APIs in ways that make them useless. And as soon as you try to address this you're back at the original problem of how you create a standard model that works for everyone.

busymom05• 5 years ago

Supreme Court of the United States Justice Clarence Thomas opined couple months ago discussing big tech censorship quite extensively. The case was regarding whether Trump was allowed to block people on Twitter and it being a 1st amendment violation. While the case was declared moot as Trump left office, Justice Clarence Thomas took the opportunity to discuss censorship. How politicians aren't allowed to block users on big tech but big tech is able to block and ban politicians and government employees and how this creates a weird power dynamic.

I would highly recommend reading his opinion:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-197_5ie6.pdf

Here's a few excerpts:

"But whatever may be said of other industries, there is clear historical precedent for regulating transportation and communications networks in a similar manner as traditional common carriers. Candeub 398–405. Telegraphs, for example, because they “resemble[d] railroad companies and other common carriers,” were “bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination." ... "Internet platforms of course have their own First Amendment interests, but regulations that might affect speech are valid if they would have been permissible at the time of the founding. See United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 468 (2010). The long history in this country and in England of restricting the exclusion right of common carriers and places of public accommodation may save similar regulations today from triggering heightened scrutiny—especially where a restriction would not prohibit the company from speaking or force the company to endorse the speech." ... "The similarities between some digital platforms and common carriers or places of public accommodation may give legislators strong arguments for similarly regulating digital platforms. [I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of ”digital platforms." ... "For example, although a “private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” Halleck, 587 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 6, 9), it is if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint. Ibid. Consider government threats. “People do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around.” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U. S. 58, 68 (1963). The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly. See ibid.; Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991, 1004–1005 (1982). Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital plat- form if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats. The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him. But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smothered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves."
"As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition, unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them." The last 2 points are important as Justice Thomas is basically saying "give us a case which brings up these two questions and then we will have a deep look."

One can even cite Amazon's recent censorship of SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas's own documentary as well as Eli Steele’s documentary as examples:

https://archive.is/aNv3B

renewiltord4• 5 years ago

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-4• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

knownjorbist3• 5 years ago

Did they?

renewiltord4• 5 years ago

Yes, that’s why I mentioned it. I am against that.

emerged• 5 years ago

That sounds dogmatic and short sighted to me.

PontifexMinimus11• 5 years ago

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.

ashtonkem5• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

meh … dropbox really?

PontifexMinimus11• 5 years ago

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.

pfraze• 5 years ago

I’ve been writing a bit about that idea https://paulfrazee.medium.com/productizing-p2p-bff5aed95f6a

okareaman• 5 years ago

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.

politician2• 5 years ago

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.

wmf2• 5 years ago

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.

pjc504• 5 years ago

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.

MrStonedOne5• 5 years ago

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.

politician2• 5 years ago

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”.

heavyset_go2• 5 years ago

removing liability for speech entirely off of the proprietors

This is already the case. Operators of interactive computer services are not liable for user-generated content.

devwastaken2• 5 years ago

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.

remarkEon6• 5 years ago

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".

Torwald2• 5 years ago

Far, far more deadly and dangerous "conspiracy theories" existed before the internet and caused actual deaths of sitting politicians.

Care to name an example?

devwastaken2• 5 years ago

We have not yet seen all to come from these conspiracy nuts. Jan 6th was a beginning, "militias" are itching to shoot anyone to "defend their freedom". The fbi did their job for a number of the attacks I listed, or else the governor of Michigan and Virginia would be dead, and a military response would have had to kill dozens of "militia" members when the state arrests them.

LimaBearz2• 5 years ago

It’s really interesting to see how quickly things have changed. The world watched in horror at Jan 6th, we decided we needed to be better than that and stopped a certain someone and friends who were spreading blatant lies that millions chose to accept as truth because it served an end goal, ignoring all evidence and facts disapproving..

Today you and others who point out what brought us here are downvoted, others like myself flagged.. as if the circumstances that brought us to this junction means nothing.

You’re right though, CP is illegal, revenge porn we decided as a society is unacceptable, we have slander and liable laws, etc… we’ve drawn some lines in “free speech”, and we discovered another one on the 6th

I get that some folks who bought the lie are upset now but this is society marching forward, and it’s interesting reading this post, watching it being overrun by extremism

vsareto• 5 years ago

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.

mousepilot2• 5 years ago

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_Skies2• 5 years ago

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?

FranchuFranchu• 5 years ago

"Whoa, it's the guy in that one xkcd comic!"

MrStonedOne5• 5 years ago

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.

AlexTWithBeard8• 5 years ago

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...

cratermoon6• 5 years ago

Probably a good place for reposting this: https://publicseminar.org/essays/why-we-should-outlaw-oppres...

cornel_io• 5 years ago

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.

cratermoon6• 5 years ago

Did you know that in the Aeropagetica, John Milton's 1644 pamphlet that is a landmark in the history of free speech, Milton literally said it was OK to censor Catholicism and superstition? [1]

Freedom of speech has always been subject to limitations, exceptions, and special pleadings. There is no absolute liberty, there is only freedom to the extent that society is indifferent to, or can at least tolerate.

"even opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act" [2]

[1] "Yet if all cannot be of one mind—as who looks they should be?—this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate" https://www.gutenberg.org/files/608/608-h/608-h.htm

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-bas...

Mountain_Skies2• 5 years ago

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.

Torwald2• 5 years ago

Can you share links to works from people that you deem memory holed by EFF, please?

notatelloshill• 5 years ago

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.

LoveLeadAcid• 5 years ago

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.

smoldesu• 5 years ago

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• 5 years ago

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.

shrimpx4• 5 years ago

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.

blfr• 5 years ago

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.

umvi• 5 years ago

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.

Well, people connected with each other before 2007, so presumably you could be exposed to different, interesting ideas by joining local clubs, churches, or other community gatherings where you have interactions with non "computer janitors"

shrimpx4• 5 years ago

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?

bitwize3• 5 years ago

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.

remarkEon6• 5 years ago

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.

bitwize3• 5 years ago

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

DreamScatter2• 5 years ago

By the way, the nazis were successful because they used censorship. If you want to support censorship, beware that this is what enabled the nazis.

candiddevmike• 5 years ago

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.

Pxtl• 5 years ago

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.

AnimalMuppet2• 5 years ago

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.

remarkEon6• 5 years ago

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?

thirdreich• 5 years ago

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

chiefalchemist• 5 years ago

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...

varelse3• 5 years ago

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.

verdverm3• 5 years ago

Perhaps our generation must suffer during an evolutionarily difficult time so that we do not end up in 1984?

varelse3• 5 years ago

Perhaps our generation must rely less on ridiculous hyperbole whose only benefit is to drive engagement and instead consider more compromise solutions to situations like this?

toomanyducks3• 5 years ago

"The free marketplace of ideas" (and also classical liberalism) is hugely reliant on the idea of humans as rational agents (both the people selling and the people consuming). But when we're not, everything opens up to tons of propaganda (especially that from fascists who are more than willing to engage where leftists will reject premises).

You can't have "enragement equals engagement" AND the "free" marketplace of ideas is good. The first is the natural consequence of the existence of the latter. If you take issue with the first, you should not accept the second either.

As for what should replace that 'free' market, I honestly don't know. But deplatforming (not censoring, deplatforming) hate speech is a good place to start.

varelse3• 5 years ago

Humans in my opinion and perhaps my opinion alone are ultimately rational agents prone to do the right thing but only after they've done all the wrong things. I don't have time for that here so I support experimenting with freedom of speech here and regulating obvious abuses of it like Facebook monetizing hatred and superstition. I don't know if I'm right or if I'm wrong here but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Isamu• 5 years ago

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?

SV_BubbleTime6• 5 years ago

Do you remember when you were incensed by the inaction of media companies

Not even a little bit. Some of us have been ideologically consistent that censorship is not helpful.

jmull• 5 years ago

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.)

bshanks• 5 years ago

The proposed ACCESS Act discussed in the post appears to be at: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3849...

Jerry2• 5 years ago

ACLU is still silent about the latest attack on free speech. They still haven't opposed the White House's plan to enforce speech. I've cancelled my monthly donations to them because of it. Please do the same if you give them money.

busymom05• 5 years ago

ACLU has been down the tubes for a while now, especially when it comes to political cases.

ACLU Lawyer Cheers Suppression of a New Book

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-s...

ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From an Online Censorship Controversy

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/aclu-again-cowardly-abstain...

pradn• 5 years ago

I have never been comfortable with supporting the ACLU because of their "money is speech" stance. The political system of the US has become increasingly plutocratic, making it hard for popular policies to be enacted and make progress toward important issues like fighting poverty and climate change.

SMAAART• 5 years ago

Censorship is like Zeno's dichotomy paradox; today the people promoting Censorship as a solution are happy; give it a long enough timeline and the very same people promoting Censorship will be the ones being censored.

jensensbutton3• 5 years ago

Article and linked proposal really just don't even attempt to tackle the privacy implications of all this. People don't like that WhatsApp knows your _metadata_, but we're supposed to be good with anyone being able to bring all the metadata of their entire social network to any random provider? How do you make such an argument in 2021, the year "privacy" went mainstream?

busymom05• 5 years ago

The censorship debate always reminds me of the 2000s after 9/11 where anyone who opposed going to war in multiple foreign countries which had nothing to do with 9/11 were labelled "terrorist sympathizers". Taking advantage of this, they also passed a mass spying bill - the Patriot Act. Stating "man cannot be a woman" or "men shouldn't compete in women's sports" is considered transphobic in current climate. Regardless of which side of the Palestine-Israel conflict you fall one, either or both sides can be censored by labelling it as "anti-semitic" or "islamaphobic". Speaking out against the Patriot Act and forever wars would be (and was) labelled "unpatriotic" and "terrorist sympathizer" and censored. Speaking out against healthy living would be labelled "fat phobic". Or the opposite could also happen. All the groups which speak out against fat shaming could also get censored because it's dangerous to public health. The government and big tech would start censoring you for advertising soft drinks/chips and other junk food. Since all religions oppose gay marriage, when super religious are in power, they would censor LGBT content. Pro-choice would get censored for religious reasons and Pro-life would be censored for racism/dangerous or other reasons.

Just a few days ago there were 2 posts on HN:

Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598383

The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645282

In the first case, my women friends are too afraid to speak up because they are afraid of being labelled a transphobic. 3 of my female friends have lost sports scholarships to biological men.

In the second case, the reasoning provided is "Criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitism. Really.":

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/criticism-of-israel-is-anti-...

Here is a partial historical list of scientific consensus "deniers" proven right which this sort of censorship will either silence by big tech or due to self-censorship:

1. Ignaz Semmelweis, who suggested that doctors should wash their hands, and who eliminated puerpal fever as a result, was fired, harassed, forced to move, had his career destroyed, and died in a mental institution at age 47. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with...

2. Alfred Wegener, the geophysicist who first proposed continental drift, the basis of plate tectonics, was berated for over 40 years by mainstream geologists who organized to oppose him in favour of a trans-oceanic land bridge. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener#Reaction

3. Aristarchus of Samos, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, brilliant minds and leaders in their field all supported the heliocentric model. They were at some point either ignored, derided, vilified, or jailed for their beliefs. All this because they went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Controversy_ov...

4. J Harlen Bretz, the geologist who documented the catastrophic Missoula floods, was ridiculed and humiliated by uniformitarian "elders" for 30 years before his ideas were accepted. He first proposed that a giant flood raked Eastern Washington in prehistoric times, and who suffered ridicule and skepticism until decades of further research proved his thesis. All this because he went against consensus science. He was eventually awarded the Penrose Medal.

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/bretzs-floo...

5. Carl F. Gauss, discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry, self-censored his own work for 30 years for fear of ridicule, reprisal, and relegation. It did not become known until after his death. Similar published work was ridiculed. His personal diaries indicate that he had made several important mathematical discoveries years or decades before his contemporaries published them. Scottish-American mathematician and writer Eric Temple Bell said that if Gauss had published all of his discoveries in a timely manner, he would have advanced mathematics by fifty years All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#Personali...

6. Hans Alfven, a Nobel plasma physicist, showed that electric currents operate at large scales in the cosmos. His work was considered unorthodox and is still rejected despite providing answers to many of cosmology's problems. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfvén

7. Georg Cantor, creator of set theory in mathematics, was so fiercely attacked that he suffered long bouts of depression. He was called a charlatan and a corrupter of youth and his work was referred to as utter nonsense. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor

8. Kristian Birkeland, the man who explained the polar aurorae, had his views disputed and ridiculed as a fringe theory by mainstream scientists until fifty years after his death. He is thought by some to have committed suicide. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Birkeland#Legacy

9. Gregor Mendel, founder of genetics, whose seminal paper was criticized by the scientific community, was ignored for over 35 years. Most of the leading scientists simply failed to understand his obscure and innovative work. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel#Initial_receptio...

10. Michael Servetus discovered pulmonary circulation. As his work was deemed to be heretical, the inquisitors confiscated his property, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and burned him at the stake atop a pyre of his own books. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus#Imprisonment_...

11. Amedeo Avogadro's atomic-molecular theory was ignored by the scientific community, as was future similar work. It was confirmed four years after his death, yet it took fully one hundred years for his theory to be accepted. All this because he went against consensus science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Avogadro#Response_to_th...

foxhop• 5 years ago

I posted my public stance on this topic here: https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can....

busymom05• 5 years ago

A lot of the discussion around censorship devolves to "it's a private company, they can do whatever". While this has already been proven to be a false idea based on the comments from the White House actively telling private companies which posts/users to take down, I would also like to share how things happen in China:

"People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies.

Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.”

The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship."

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea

dragonwriter3• 5 years ago

While this has already been proven to be a false idea based on the comments from the White House actively telling private companies which posts/users to take down

No, it hasn't. A government office telling private actors what it cobsiders to be misinformation and would like not relayed is not state censorship as long as there is no compulsory process. A private party can certainly use “I trust the government, and they say X is wrong” as an input to their consideration of how to exercise their free speech without it being anything other than free speech.

What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies.

China has and uses compulsory process to ensure compliance with its desired censorship, though.

busymom05• 5 years ago

White House's exact words were "we're flagging problematic posts FOR Facebook that spread disinformation". "FOR" is an important word.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-administration...

On top of this, they have already threatened the companies during the hearings that if they don't take it down, then they will get actioned. Plus Biden even called social media companies murderers.

"Congressional Democrats have repeatedly made explicit threats to social-media giants if they failed to censor speech those lawmakers disfavored. In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they had “better” restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: “We’re going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very accountable.” New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: “Let’s see what happens by just pressuring them.”"

This is literally what makes them state actors. I don't know what more they need to do for you to prove they are state actors. There's also precedent from Supreme Court.

"For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action. In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), the Supreme Court found a First Amendment violation when a private bookseller stopped selling works state officials deemed “objectionable” after they sent him a veiled threat of prosecution. In Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987), the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found state action when an official induced a telephone company to stop carrying offensive content, again by threat of prosecution."

"As the Second Circuit held in Hammerhead Enterprises v. Brezenoff (1983), the test is whether “comments of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request.” Mr. Richmond’s comments, along with many others, easily meet that test. Notably, the Ninth Circuit held it didn’t matter whether the threats were the “real motivating force” behind the private party’s conduct; state action exists even if he “would have acted as he did independently.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-...

Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963):

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/378/bantam-book...

Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987):

https://openjurist.org/827/f2d/1291/carlin-communications-in...

Nevermark6• 5 years ago

Big tech censorship will not solved without addressing the other half of a problem with two sides.

Without systems that promote quality, non-ideological, nuanced, original, tolerant dialogue we will keep running into the false dilemma of unmoderated cess pools or heavy handed moderation.

If we are to avoid this dilemma we need systems that organically promote constructive, tolerant and inclusive communication, and original, nuanced, intelligent, non-ideological ideas, instead of the opposite.

This cannot be done by organizations whose profit incentive is aligned with user attention instead of user satisfaction.

Those organizations benefit from degraded communication until strong moderation is both continually demanded and decried.

---

On a side note, I am so disappointed in the constant framing of ideas as right or left. It dumbs society down incredibly to view so much through the filter of two (often arbitrarily correlated, historically shifting) clusters of supposedly disjoint options.

In the real world, communes work well sometimes, markets often work better at scale but not for everything, markets require "social solutions" like non-commercial criminal and civil justice systems, education and health could be explicitly tested and then managed as investments with a pay off of lower taxes (including for the rich) instead of as charities forced on the rich, etc.

The Right/Left and associated ideologies are all self-defeating when believed in isolation and the nuances of their ragged edges, their limitations, and constructive combinations ignored.

prawn• 5 years ago

I like your comment and think it could potentially approach the broader problem in a roundabout way, but it does feel like a separate thing. But ignoring that, I run a forum and so think a lot about ways of encouraging decent conversation. I think Reddit mostly does pretty well in that (in my experience) the junk is hidden and requires effort to read. Hacker News pushes it down the page, but it's trivial to scroll down and see who's in the naughty corner out of curiosity.

I mostly read r/NBA and find the quality very decent. I'm sure there are trolls and racist rants and so on, but unless I expand comment branches, I don't see any of them. I find that the branches being pruned/hidden helps manage how much time I spend on a discussion too. On HN, I often feel like I want to read or skim every comment in a discussion which is rarely a great use of time.

semitones• 5 years ago

"Without systems that promote quality, non-ideological, nuanced, original, tolerant dialogue we will keep running into the false dilemma of unmoderated cess pools or heavy handed moderation." - it is impossible to measure the qualifiers "quality", "nuanced", "tolerant", "original", "non-ideological" while still being objective. Thus, whatever implementation for enforcing these qualifiers you choose, it will inevitably lean towards some ideology. Hence, contradiction.

cutemonster• 5 years ago

What you wrote sounds to me a bit like claiming that it's impossible to qualify paintings as beautiful or not, so therefore there cannot be any art museums

Nevermark6• 5 years ago

I disagree.

It is not impossible to measure quality, once you accept that quality has many definitions and therefore requires many contexts incentivizing different versions of it for different purposes and audiances.

And that diversity would be a very good thing.

dcow• 5 years ago

It’s not about the content it’s about the incentives and reward structures we put in place to govern our society. E.g. we want(ed) a strong economy of businesses in the US so we subsidize(d) their operation. We know very well now that social media platforms (sometimes even deliberately) promote content that irks people because they get rewarded by our ad industry for eyeball time. What better way to consume and waste human capital than to present a bunch of people with outrageous bullshit? There must be a structure or limit we can impose on the attention industry that would deter what we have come to consider abusive treatment of humans. A really dumb but raw implementation would be a use tax where social media companies are literally taxed for engagement beyond some threshold. Point is it’s not a contradiction to demand and invent better systems in the face of poor outcomes. What you can’t do, and what is the contradiction you’re referring to, is to force the desired outcomes without addressing the underlying incentives because then you are oppressing people or companies exhibiting valid behavior within the existing system.

_ykl95• 5 years ago

Agreed. I think it's a major issue in political discourse when people begin to identify with labels and slogans, and treat them as prescriptive (ideals to be adhered to) rather than descriptive (approximate reflections of one's current general beliefs).

Surveys consistently show that most of us agree on far more than we disagree when questions are phrased in politically neutral terms. People quickly realize when they actually talk to other people that most are fairly reasonable and relatable, even if they have good faith disagreements on particular points, but social media being optimized for maximum engagement with shallow/short-form discussion just results in seeing the most extreme elements of society talk over each other and largely fail to come to a common understanding.

ddingus5• 5 years ago

I put this to a test over a couple years of business travel.

While bringing up a field service group, I had a period of high travel taking me all over the US. I enjoy politics, culture and people and am frequently frustrated with the left - right, very tribal political discourse myself.

So, what I did was find coffee shops and any other events where people might gather and enjoy conversation and had a bunch of chats avoiding labels while also conveying a strong, no judgement, just interested in perspective from different parts of the nation...

Those looked kind of like a two way interview.

Many of those ended up being long, gratifying conversations too.

Based on these, I would submit the following:

People fear judgement.

People fear "that other tribe"

An awful lot of discourse is fear, blame and shame.

eg: teaching "those other people" a lesson

How could anyone tolerate "that other tribe"

You get the idea.

Outside of those conversations, which all told me the US has poor class awareness and with that, equally poor ability to see others as just peers, instead it is all colored in various ways that amplify differences despite the reality being we are all people who run the same basic way, have the same basic needs, struggles.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 5 years ago

Ha, I was going to add basically the same sidenote, even calling it a sidenote and using the word framing. All I was going to state was that the title could have been "right, left or center" but instead he chose "left or right". WTF.

We could almost imagine the author himself is vying for attention by pushing the hot buttons known to work. Either that or he is incapable of recognising his own foibles.

PicassoCTs2• 5 years ago

Right and Left are basically ideologies carrying to the different ideas of society depending upon gender. On average for females a more redistributing, moderating society is more attractive. For men a society that allows them to display "provider" status seems more attractive. To frame the whole thing as a ideological debate, in a society with massive change of roles and influence is intellectual dishonest.

Some transcend these "stereotypes" and are for a more redistribution society based upon the insight that these transformations require a reform of policy. They are sadly in the minority - in both ideologies.

xerox13ster• 5 years ago

Bro what the hell are you on about? Have you read anything on Left v Right wing ideologies? What?

Left v Right is about proletariat vs bourgeoise and it originates from French politic during the revolution where the left side of the assembly favored moving power towards the people and the right were Monarchists that wanted King Louis' continued reign.

To equate this to gender is unbelievably ignorant bordering on intellectual dishonesty.

shoemakersteve2• 5 years ago

This has to be one of the strangest takes I've come across...

ngc248• 5 years ago

Exactly ... We need to be "liberal" in some things and "conservative" for others.

Nevermark6• 5 years ago

And dispose of those terms completely, except for exceptionally rarified discussions where attention is paid to very clear definitions of which versions of "liberal" and "conservative" are even being discussed.

Effective policy isn't found using that false Rorschach compass.

utbabya• 5 years ago

Without systems that promote quality, non-ideological, nuanced, original, tolerant dialogue we will keep running into the false dilemma of unmoderated cess pools or heavy handed moderation.

I disagree tying big tech censorship to this.

Yes what you describe is nice and what the audience here (including me) prefer, that's why we're here. Such places with such rules are paradises.

However, I for one accept the risk of freedom over "safety". I acknowledge we humans are "good" and "evil" at the same time, maybe we'll "actualize" at some point in the future as a whole (I doubt it) but we're not there yet. Even if that's a goal, I strongly believe allowing cancel-candidate speech is vital to the progress. Producing questionable speech has its cost already, I actually think the cost is too high already given the mob nature of social media.

Yeah there are "misinformed" people, but isn't that the value of democracy? We disagree but we compromise.

Even for the anti-vaxx case, when the ones who refuse to vaccinate can screw up the whole population, I still don't think you should ban the speech, the law or executive order should be based on action instead.

Even for the GAB case, I don't think the platform should be banned, nor private conversation being snooped on. So how do we protect ourselves against such attacks? I'd say these are just extra protections that I don't want given the tradeoff, the law is there to punish the actions. I'll take that safety risk that's been there since before tech is a thing any day.

Guess the nuance here is the right to speech versus the right to publish given the nature of social media moving the forth pillar of democracy to the public. My take is that the same applies even for publishing. If nonsense sounds more attractive than scientific facts, maybe we educated people should work on our PR skills, or fix the root of the problem, education. Now that's progress.

Nevermark6• 5 years ago

There is more to the problem than a tradeoff between freedom and safety.

The problem isn't created simply by allowing people the freedom to express themselves. It's created by highly manipulative middlemen choosing what to promote and what to suppress (in a relative not absolute sense) via algorithms designed to maximize attention to ads.

That is nothing like a simple free speech situation.

I have no problem with free speech, and free speech forums, even if they do sometimes become cess pools.

I have a real problem with the most widely used glorified scrapbook sharing software (Facebook), biasing all our feeds toward content that is likely to pull us into comment flame wars or using provoked anger and tribal identity reinforcement as a user addiction strategies.

Note that Facebook didn't start behaving this way until after the network effect of their social graph had created tremendous lock-in/switching-costs for their users.

threesmegiste• 5 years ago

When the trump accounts were shut down, the political stance and attitude silenced the criticism. it's too late now. The social media accounts of the president of the usa have been closed. The account of a man who received half the votes from the USA has been closed. then the majority could not say it was wrong. now it's too late to talk and complain

anonytrary3• 5 years ago

I wish this attitude was more prevalent. The most dangerous thing we can do is turn a non-partisan issue into a partisan one. As soon as it becomes about right vs. left, you have an army of people on Twitter, etc. who are ready to mindlessly shill a viewpoint, not because they know anything about it, but because it aligns with their political identity.

cable2600• 5 years ago

Actually the people getting banned and censored did Gab and a few others that were cut off from Paypal, Visa, Patreon and others. They have to go somewhere, and are not wanted on Big Tech social networks. They have been radicalized as a result. Believing conspiracy theories and alt-right groups.

originalvichy• 5 years ago

My experience with peeking into Gab was being greeted by a suprisingly large amount of neo-nazi posts dominating the site.

From my experience you don’t really need to push neo-nazis into conspiracy theories – their ideology is already a one big conspiracy theory.

morpheos137• 5 years ago

I am starting to think tech is bad period. If we could have avoide the industrial revolution it would have been mych better for humanity and for the planet.

re-al• 5 years ago

No one has 'the truth', it's just not that sort of thing. Everyone has opinions. Some opinions are lies. Transparency is the way to deal with the lies.

But if you're the one lying and have your hands on the levers of power, censorship is a great tool.

timwaagh• 5 years ago

Honestly aren't there bigger problems in this world? These days it's all privacy and tech. What about governments going out of their way to deny people a roof over one's head?

Now I know that isn't necessarily eff's problem but it's a bigger problem than Facebook censoring stuff that doesn't align with their idea of political correctness. Don't get me wrong I didn't like it when FB censored one of my countries greatest traditions, but it's just one of those annoyances that you just need to accept.

Cyberthal• 5 years ago

Imagine if Mao and Sun Yat Sen were duking it out, and nerds blamed Facebook for the resulting social polarization.

Yeah man, and the printing press too. Those Protestant Reformation wars were no joke!

taylodl• 5 years ago

What you should be worried about is people claiming to have the right to use your private property and when violating your terms of service complain about "censorship." It's no different than inviting someone to your home for dinner whereupon they go on a racist/political rant to the point where you ask them to leave, and then they complain loudly about censorship.

It's not censorship.

LBarret• 5 years ago

Also what about laws and governments ? This is a very american perspective IMHO to miss this part of the picture.

Some stuff should be regulated. Especially post of FB/Twitter/ect that are actually provably false and whose diffusion are nothing but a carefully crafted op from a foreign country.

you could be concerned about over-regulation, but currently we are at the opposite side of the spectrum.

Asking FB/Twitter - or any company - to do the right thing and go against its own interest is simply naive.

Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

Related Stories