Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#131

Post by summerdown2 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #122

yummyfajitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad sta…

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2…

> 1) Private entities must pay for speech they disagree with on their private platforms and in their private conferences even if that opposing speech causes them to lose the funding that allows for them to pay for it in the first place.

Just thinking about your point (1), I'm not sure it is impossible, depending on the industry. Isn't it just the straightforward position for most companies that are considered common carriers - they can't discriminate?

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#132

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

tedks wrote: post #130

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people raise issues of free speech is that Reddit-style sites act more like a public utility and less like a single community. Reddit is a community of communities. The argument is that Reddit itself shouldn't limit speech, but that the individual communities within it can decide for themselves how to regulate discussion.

This is the same tired justification of injustice that "states rights" advocates trot out.

I don't think that really compares.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#133

Post by jasode » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

summerdown2 wrote: post #131

jasode wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2…

> 1) Private entities must pay for speech they disagree with on their private platforms and in their private conferences even if that opposing speech causes them to lose the funding that allows for them to pay for it in the first place. Just thinking about your point (1), I'm not sure it is impossible, depending on the industry. Isn't it just the straightforward position for most companies that are considered common…

>Isn't it just the straightforward position for most companies that are considered common carriers - they can't discriminate?

(For more about that won't work, see my previous comment I linked in the footnote.)

It wouldn't make any sense for the government to forcefully reclassify a company like Facebook as a "common carrier"[1] like a telecommunications provider because FB is sponsored by advertisers. The ISPs (with subscribers) can be common carriers but not websites (with ad sponsors).

A "common carrier" designation from the government doesn't come with a $20 billion payment to Facebook from the government (taxpayers) to make up for loss of advertisers pulling their ad dollars on platform that allows speech they don't like.

Likewise, since "common carrier" doesn't mean users are forced keep their Facebook accounts and forced to read newsfeeds of opinions they disagree with, it doesn't solve the problem.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#134

Post by Noos » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:10 PM UTC

Places like this tend to show the hypocrisy of the average leftist when it comes to free speech, though. When free speech benefits them by weakening social norms (especially religious ones), they champion it, but the moment free speech starts to subvert the new liberal norms they put in to replace it, suddenly we get arguments about how free speech is a limited concept and pleas to rediscover civility and tolerance.

So much of discourse honestly is bullshit, and no, this place isn't immune either. Replace "free speech" with "disruption" to get this place's hypocrisy too. Oh, let's trumpet the sharing economy, whose purpose is to disrupt and ignore law in order to give urban programmers benefit, but when some employer decides to disrupt employment law by discriminating against older techies or native born ones, and the same thing happens.

It's all about self-interest in the end. I'd rather a reddit style community that tolerates all self-interest than one that claims to be encouraging civility when it's really something else.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#135

Post by matt4077 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

carnivalclown wrote: post #111

BEEdwards wrote: post #29

Lot's "but this isn't free speech" in here, but that's exactly the point, free speech has been tried and it leads to shit holes like reddit and voat. Places you might visit, but wouldn't recommend or even admit to using in a mixed group. People talk about free speech like it's some goal, but in reality all people seem to do with it is make fun of fat people and post stolen naked pictures of celebrities. When confront…

> When confronted with the fact that this isn't acceptable behavior Who defines what "acceptable" behavior is though? If so many people "wouldn't recommend or even admit using in a mixed group", then why is Reddit the 8th highest traffic website in the US?

It's become the seedy underbelly of the net. If Freud were still en vogue, they could rename it redd-id.com

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#136

Post by Retra » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:17 PM UTC

veddox wrote: post #74

I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a rather flawed argumentation: a) The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdict…

>On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online [...]

That's because the behavior you are seeing online is actually not at all like the behaviors "in real life" that you are comparing them to. In person, you get a lot more information and in a vastly more narrow context, and it's much easier to interpret people under those conditions.

For one thing, if you show strong opinions online, people tend to think you're a pig-headed fool, but if you do it in person, they're more liable to think you're just blowing off steam or impassioned. Which is to say, we also tolerate things in person that we do not tolerate online very well.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#137

Post by Retra » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:20 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #118

rmc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. It's especially curious, because HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach. If limiting speech is good for HN, why isn't it good for Imzy? It's also important to remember that reddit is very pro-free speech, but bans some protected speech, namely, doxxing. Redditors started to dox p…

No right is limitless. I don't know about other countries but in elementary school where I am we're taught a person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others , and freedom of speech is certainly limited by other people's human rights, including the right to human dignity. AFAIK the declaration of human rights include that right. There is no freedom without responsibility, and that's why people who aren't or can'…

Elementary school is not the place to learn about the subtleties of human cultural conflict.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#138

Post by makomk » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #122

yummyfajitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to the idea of free speech than simply the first amendment. This essay explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/29/the-spirit-of-the-first... The general gist is: imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are ostracized from society, rejected from conferences and fired from their jobs. Those of us who favor a broader concept of free speech feel this is a bad sta…

>imagine a world where women who advocate for suffrage and women's rights are [...], rejected from conferences Your expanded idea of free speech is noble but it's not possible for society to provide. Free speech allowed by the government is possible. Free speech hosted and paid for by private commercial entities is impossible -- in any long-term sustaining way. The "free speech on commercial entities" would require 2…

Not everything has to be a law. For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to use services that don't do this because one day it's likely to be used against them. Instead, the press are pushing the opposite social norm, that sites are somehow morally obligated to restrict speech: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/social-media-companies-are-...

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#139

Post by reitanqild » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #118

rmc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. It's especially curious, because HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach. If limiting speech is good for HN, why isn't it good for Imzy? It's also important to remember that reddit is very pro-free speech, but bans some protected speech, namely, doxxing. Redditors started to dox p…

No right is limitless. I don't know about other countries but in elementary school where I am we're taught a person's freedom is limited by the freedoms of others , and freedom of speech is certainly limited by other people's human rights, including the right to human dignity. AFAIK the declaration of human rights include that right. There is no freedom without responsibility, and that's why people who aren't or can'…

This was downvoted for some reason I couldn't see so I upvoted it.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#140

Post by overgard » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

veddox wrote: post #74

I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a rather flawed argumentation: a) The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdict…

Well, lets say you know someone who is a legit flat earther. You're not going to change their mind, because such a belief is unreasonable, but if you attempt to reason with them you elevate their social status and accidentally lend credence to them. This is the Fox News "fair and balanced" model -- if you give equal time to both viewpoints, even if one viewpoint is nuts, people will assume that there's a rational debate being had.

HN, for all its good parts, tends to be humorless. I would argue that humor can work as an immune system to bad ideas. When someone says something really stupid, often the best response really is mockery. You wont convince the person you're making fun of, but it can settle a debate pretty fast. Humor doesn't have to be mean to be funny, but sometimes it is. "Be Nice" policies tends to lead to communities that lack this useful sociological immune system, and it can drive out the smart people, to the point where you have a lot of "nice" people arguing some very dumb points.