agiroth

The site says you're using Algorand. When everyone is using Ethereum, why go against the grain?

You want to take that away from me while pretending to do it for the greater good, when in reality it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.

Let's call a spade, a spade. Your position appears to be "I don't want to choose, and I don't want anyone else to be able to choose either".

That is certainly not the paragon of virtue. Letting people choose -- which doesn't affect you at all - is.

I do not want sideloading, I do not want alternative stores, I do not want the so-called “healthy competition”.

Good. Don't use them. Do you use every single feature of your phone? Of course not. There are probably features you don't even know about.

So don't use them. The mere presence of the feature doesn't obligate you to use it.

And what do you do when your webhost becomes your moderator and deplatforms your site, on the exact same day?

We can take this all the way to fabricating wires to build computers to make our own servers; at some point we have to discuss the actual issue: where to private and public rights intersect and what is the role of government in resolving the conflict.

For someone whose username is 'quotemstr' (quote master), that post is a great, short explanation of that idea and very.. quotable.

But the thought of a government body deciding when a company may and may not enforce its rules is chilling.

In general I agree with you; I only consider this kind of thinking valid at Twitter/FB/Google/AWS scale - where one decision affects populations the size of entire nations (or larger). It's a problem less than a dozen companies would ever face and any reasonable law would need to make that abundantly clear. I wouldn't favor opening that door for smaller companies.

In the short term, sure it would. If you tear up one field in the middle of planting and plant another, it'll hurt short term; 10 years later it'll be a funny story.

Markets love a vacuum and it would be an opportunity for local players to dive in.

The slippery slope argument is generally regarded as a logical fallacy because the argument can be applied to anything.

Can you expand on this? I've seen the claim several times, but given the fact that (in general, not referring to covid) it is possible to point to historical examples of how things progress from A->B->C, and then you can identify a sequence of A->B currently, it becomes almost silly not to conclude the goal is C. So why is demonstrating history repeating itself a fallacy?

Granted I've placed a number of conditions there. Maybe that's what you mean. I'm just curious what the general argument is.

What interest would the U.S. have in requiring Flu or HIV tests for travel?

Humans unfortunately have a bias for "doing something" rather than nothing, even if the two actions are equivalent in consequence (which favors doing nothing - less energy).

Scream loud enough and we'll create problems where there weren't any. I mean that's basically what network news does all day every day. Then we'll respond to those problems, and create more problems. Etc. "It worked for covid, why aren't we doing it for the flu?" Even if the argument isn't valid, it sounds good, and politicians like things that sound good even if they don't do anything, creating problems and great expense for people for little to no actual gain.

Not impossible at all, just an incredibly... very.. bad... scary.. idea.

I literally started asking around on the web for exactly this today.

Seriously taking a look, this looks promising. We built an app on AppSync and Cognito and I want to get off AWS so I'm looking for alternatives, and this... fits the bill.

Incognito won't help unfortunately. I've tried this on a few occasions and it still pollutes my suggestions. I've noticed that using Brave seems to blunt it -- I have to watch alot more to notice the pollution.

Can't say more than that, I stopped experimenting and basically stopped using Youtube except for the same music I listen to over and over now. Nothing new.

Free speech is not a right granted by the government, it is a principle and a natural right. We all have it.

The government has nothing to do with it.

Even if we all lived in anarchy, free speech would still be a thing.

I found their response underwhelming as well.

I am tentatively willing to accept that these are simply applications of free speech and section 230, provided that the EFF prompt governments to write legal frameworks for what these platforms can and cannot do.

It is not acceptable to have companies this large, and this influential, 100% unaccountable to democracy.

Would you like AWS to moderate every line you write on HN?

Or how about this.

Would you like the CEO of Parler to be telling you what you are allowed to write?

That is the consequence of what you are saying.

Parler moderating Parler; Twitter moderating Twitter; are very different from AWS moderating Parler or Twitter.

This is an excellent point. I've been thinking about how to make it succinctly, I think this is as good a way as any.

Disclaimer: I have never used Parler.

But I firmly believe in the principle of free speech and not stifling discourse.

And no, not just over Parler. But maybe over Twitter bannings. And Facebook bannings. And Parler. And deplatforming. Eventually people will build their own internet you can't control, and continue to talk. How will you feel about that? Let's say for sake of argument that that occurs, that a whole segment of society builds their own hardware infrastructure that the tech giants do not control and cannot shut down. What would you want to happen?

You kicking someone out of your house doesn't change the fundamental balance of society.

AWS, Apple and Google deciding on behalf of 3 billion people what they're allowed to read, most certainly does.

No it absolutely does not.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/501/

The more people are involved, the more interest the state has in private property.

This is why for example we have employment and health laws.

Exactly, so Parler gets to decide how Parler is moderated.

AWS gets to decide if Parler is violating the law, and remove it for that reason.

If you want to introduce other reasons... well, I'd wager you haven't thought through the consequences of that.

I haven't used Parler but I'd wager the vast majority of its content isn't. If you want to pick out content, I guarantee I can match post for post with something identical on Twitter.

So why isn't Twitter being targeted?

If the organizing purpose of Parler was incitement and insurrection, sure. But it isn't. And that means they still get 230 protections whether you like it or not.

You missed the point. Scale is what matters, not privacy.

The Supreme Court has ruled that free speech on private property is still protected when questions of scale are introduced. There are circumscriptions on that, but it is still protected.

No, everybody is. In a democratic society, it is the responsibility of every citizen and corporation to act in accordance with democratic values.

Exactly, everybody is. In a democratic society, everybody decides together what the rules for things like this are, not 2-3 tech CEOs.

I say, draft laws around this and let the people vote on them. Then at least we'd have some basis for doing things like this.

Exactly because right now, between Apple, Google and AWS, several billion people have had a decision made for them.

That looks like government behavior to me.

You make some good points. I want to reply to a couple of them.

I like the idea of a decentralized platform, but I agree that the solution has to be a legislative one. What's being lost is the "national conversation" on the subject and now private companies are deciding for everyone. Billions of people are now being told they don't get to decide how they interact with society; instead, literally a few people are deciding on behalf of billions. There is very little way to spin that as a positive result. This is what democracy is literally for - "we all decide together what we want the rules to be". I'm... honestly so saddened to see that people can't see that.

If "the people" decide, and what's happening now is what everyone votes for? Great! I may not like it but at least we know that we used good means since the means determine the ends. Right now, the means we are using is literally corporations acting as governments - making decisions for billions.

Re: idea has to pass the child porn test: agree. There's a few others too like illegal incitement etc. A platform needs a meaningful way to detect and remove this (not only because the law requires it, but this is a protective measure to ensure everyone gets to interact on that platform instead of it just disappearing).

This comment does not deserve to be downvoted. A decentralized platform ensuring people can communicate with who they want is a net positive for society.

If this is something you're interested in, I am as well.

Amazon made the decision to change that calculation and in this case, whataboutism is perfectly valid.

Your house is not the same thing as Twitter or Parler or Amazon or Apple.

This is what the companies do who want to take down copyrighted content, and what governments do when they want to take down illegal content. Why should any other standard apply?

Typically in such cases posts are placed in limbo - still present but usually inaccessible while legal questions are answered.

Courts should be making these decisions, not companies interfering in other companies.

Why?

Because at the end of the day these are questions "the people" need to answer, not unelected managers at tech companies.

A few people do not have the right to silence the voice of millions. That's what's happening, fundamentally, and it is being cheered, and you all somehow think this is going to end well.

It's not their platform, they don't get to see how it is moderated.

We do, the people. You know those things we pass called laws? Yeah that determines how moderation needs to happen. Not other companies.