Bringing people back to the open web • Hacker News Board

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#81

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #55

s73v3r_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't. The sad part is people apparently believing that minorities being subjected to a bunch of hate speech directed toward them are "challenging ideas."

I think it's funny you were immediately downvoted for this. It betrays this crowd as a population that largely hasn't experienced the kind of the politely-expressed but openly hateful things that are passed off as challenging. Or how quickly people berate groups as delicate because they meet for the purposes of not feeling like shit for a few hours.

I don't find it funny. I find it rather sad, but unfortunately rather predictable for this crowd.

Fortunately, at this point, the comment has been upvoted into the positive.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#82

Post by goatlover » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

ebiester wrote: post #62

goatlover wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody should have to deal with violence or threats of violence. But that's way different than trying to shut down a speaker who holds political views different from the students or professors doing the protesting. College should physically be a safe place as much as possible, but intellectually, it's fair to ask students (and professors) to be challenged by a variety of views.

That's a separate argument, however. We can disambiguate the "Safe places are necessary for non-privileged groups to have an area where they are predominant members and the space is catered to them rather than the predominant culture" - examples would include a place like a gay bar or youth group, or a club that is only of one ethnicity - and "we should expect a college to be a safe space." A college that is governed…

> A college that is governed by the predominant culture cannot be a "safe space."

I disagree with this line of thinking. College shouldn't culturally be a "safe place". It should be physically safe, but culturally? You should be challenged when you go to college.

This "safe place" idea could apply to anyone. Should the highly religious, sheltered home schooler feel culturally safe at college from the predominate culture that went to schools with other kids and were exposed to different views?

Of course not.

> If we want to argue that a college space isn't a place where people are by default treated with respect

Treating people with respect is different from exposing them to ideas that might challenge their beliefs, or might be culturally different.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#83

Post by Rylinks » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #74

Rylinks wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong, even in the United States. There are rare circumstances where a company's property is open to the public to such an extent that they become subject to first amendment restrictions (e.g. Marsh v. Alabama). Some states, such as California, have even greater restrictions on private parties in their state constitution. CA's constitutional speech protections prevent shopping malls from expelling petitioners…

I stand corrected. And am happy to learn about Marsh v. Alabama, thank you! The larger point I was trying to make still stands. I think. Specifically, that speech in a private context is not subject to the same amount of regulations as speech in a public context (with the incorrect interference that only the govt can restrict speech in a public context). Marsh v. Alabama specifically argues that the sidewalk in a com…

I agree, and if I were forced to answer I would say that even the CA constitution probably doesn't apply to Facebook et. al.

I think the point I have in mind is that there are less restrictions on speech as the venue becomes more private, and this is for good reasons, large websites as a platform for mass conversation are relatively new, and come with their own benefits and drawbacks when they choose to restrict speech. And because these trade-offs are new, the debate should be about these pros and cons, rather than flat statements that censorship is bad, or that private companies can do whatever they want, no matter how severe.

It should be a policy debate. The CA constitution probably doesn't apply, but the legislature can intervene anyway, and I don't think an argument that says "these platforms are important enough to modern-day communication that they should do so in some manner" is completely insane.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#84

Post by Retra » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

peoplewindow wrote: post #76

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute free speech is not a sustainable position, because it conflicts with other basic rights, freedoms and laws. Would you not accept that directly inciting violence against specific groups or individuals must be banned?

It's better to ban nothing when it comes to speech. Any restrictions at all rapidly escalate into enormous restrictions, hypocrisy and logical contradictions. Actually by now, I automatically assume anyone who uses the phrase "hate speech" doesn't actually care about violent speech at all, just shutting down people they don't agree with. Consider that students in America keep arguing that any opinion they don't like…

>Any restrictions at all rapidly escalate into enormous restrictions [...]

This is a slippery slope argument and it is as weak as any.

Hate speech is that speech which has historically been used to 'justify' vast amounts of violence against mostly innocent people. More accurately, it is speech that is used to promote emotions which cause people to conveniently accept justifications of violence that overlook the individuality of a person. The speech that does this is designed to do it. And the consequences of engaging in such thinking can be almost arbitrarily bad.

The first amendment was written before WW2. It was written before Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, radio, television, internet, and modern journalism. It was also written by people with a questionable understanding of modern liberalism and to appease people with a far worse understanding of liberalism.

The first amendment is not sacred. Even if you can find fault in every alternative, this does nothing to absolve the faults already within it.

> the moment you say that sort of preaching isn't allowed anymore you run into the question of people's right to practice religion

Clearly christianity is outlawed in the US because stoning people (and by extension, homosexuals) is illegal. All that's happened here is that you're not allowed to grant yourself arbitrary rights by claiming they are 'religious.' All societies restrict the authority of religion. Either through secular principles such as this, or through religious persecution committed by another religion.

>I am struggling to think of cases where someone stood up and announced "kill those people" and it actually happened

This is laughable. Your ignorance isn't a argument. "I can't find any examples of something I didn't bother to look for examples of."

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#85

Post by fauigerzigerk » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

peoplewindow wrote: post #76

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute free speech is not a sustainable position, because it conflicts with other basic rights, freedoms and laws. Would you not accept that directly inciting violence against specific groups or individuals must be banned?

It's better to ban nothing when it comes to speech. Any restrictions at all rapidly escalate into enormous restrictions, hypocrisy and logical contradictions. Actually by now, I automatically assume anyone who uses the phrase "hate speech" doesn't actually care about violent speech at all, just shutting down people they don't agree with. Consider that students in America keep arguing that any opinion they don't like…

I agree that there is a danger of overreach and political instrumentalisation and that we are seeing it in full force in many public debates right now.

But I think that the sort of wording that nokcha posted in the sibling comment does a pretty good job at putting the breaks on any tendencies to extend the meaning of inciting violence endlessly.

I think the real problem of overreach arises because governments are trying to outsource censorship to huge corporations that are running our centralised internet.

These corporations are not going to be as wise as the judge ruling on Brandenburg v. Ohio. They are going err on the side of caution and ban everything remotely suspicious to avoid controversy. And then everyone will say it's not censorship because it's not the government doing it.

You are right that bans on speech are only very rarely needed. But that's how it should be. It should be a tool of last resort just like the use of lethal force by police should be a very rare exception. But I think we do need tools of last resort.

I want this particular tool of last resort in the hands of the courts though, and not applied automatically on a massive scale by corporations trying to stay in the good graces of governments.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#86

Post by superkuh » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #16

superkuh wrote: post #3

>If the closed web is a place where hate speech, harassment and bullying thrives, the open web can be, needs to be an experience where it does not. I am strongly against this appeal to censorship. Luckily in the real open web, where you host your own content the incentives and mechanisms for censorship are few and difficult to achieve. No, my dream of the open web is diverse. Full of things people hate and full of th…

> I am strongly against this appeal to censorship. Why do you interpret "experiencing a web without harassment and bullying" as implying "censoring speech"? People may publish all the hatred and bullshit they want on the open web, but I don't need to be forced to watch it. Both things are not exclusive. IM applications with limited groups (Telegram, Whatsapp) show us a way this can be done. If these tools were open,…

Because what a small, loud minority of people call "bullying" simply isn't. Because sometimes mocking ideas is the right thing to do. The idea that "bullying" or "harassment" should be eliminated comes from a place where people believe they can define an absolute right or wrong. And even more unbelievable, they think that there is a person (or worse, a group of people) that know these absolutes.

If they want to block that communications on their forum it's fine. But I'll post to my personal, self-hosted website whatever opinions I want.

The way to cut the gordian knot of what to allow is simple: everyone should self host, federate, and set up web rings. Everyone should be a full participant on the 'net instead of going through centralized proxies that create perverse commercial incentives for censorship.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#87

Post by peoplewindow » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #44

barkingtoad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same argument has been made countless times. "Linux has no chance in the corporate world. HP has thousands of paid devs working on HP-UX." It turned out there were a greater number of devs NOT at HP... and today, there are more devs NOT at Facebook.

But Linux only worked because there's many companies contributing to it. So which company would have the resources and reasons for contributing to an entirely open social network, with no way to monetize it?

Linux became popular because it was free as in beer, because it was essentially a clone of pre-existing systems that lots of programmers happened to like (the commercial UNIXes) and because those competing systems were fairly stagnant.

So far open source communities haven't really tried to clone Facebook to the level of detail required to make people feel at home, and you're already competing against 'free'. So that avenue isn't available either.

I suspect it isn't possible to compete with Facebook because for most people it isn't broken.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#88

Post by mosdave » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #12

pmlnr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devs are not the problem, especially not the amount of them. Google has so many devs, sure, maybe that's why we now have 7 messaging app from them... The tools for the open web are present, just check https//indieweb.org Comformist, lazy people, our own friends, are the problem. I'd love to see how to make them care.

I'd start by not calling your own friends "conformist" and "lazy". And instead, try to understand where they come from. We won't solve problems by shouting at each other.

I don't think he was shouting.

What words do you use to categorize/describe your lazy conformist friends?

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#89

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #82

ebiester wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a separate argument, however. We can disambiguate the "Safe places are necessary for non-privileged groups to have an area where they are predominant members and the space is catered to them rather than the predominant culture" - examples would include a place like a gay bar or youth group, or a club that is only of one ethnicity - and "we should expect a college to be a safe space." A college that is governed…

> A college that is governed by the predominant culture cannot be a "safe space." I disagree with this line of thinking. College shouldn't culturally be a "safe place". It should be physically safe, but culturally? You should be challenged when you go to college. This "safe place" idea could apply to anyone. Should the highly religious, sheltered home schooler feel culturally safe at college from the predominate cult…

"You should be challenged when you go to college."

Challenged is an entirely different beast than being told that you don't deserve to be there, that you don't deserve the same basic human rights of others, or being told that you shouldn't exist. THOSE are the things that "safe spaces" are meant to provide respite from.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#90

Post by Spivak » Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 8:38 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #86

TuringTest wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am strongly against this appeal to censorship. Why do you interpret "experiencing a web without harassment and bullying" as implying "censoring speech"? People may publish all the hatred and bullshit they want on the open web, but I don't need to be forced to watch it. Both things are not exclusive. IM applications with limited groups (Telegram, Whatsapp) show us a way this can be done. If these tools were open,…

Because what a small, loud minority of people call "bullying" simply isn't. Because sometimes mocking ideas is the right thing to do. The idea that "bullying" or "harassment" should be eliminated comes from a place where people believe they can define an absolute right or wrong. And even more unbelievable, they think that there is a person (or worse, a group of people) that know these absolutes. If they want to block…

I don't think your proposed solution will really change anything and would probably backfire if it became reality. Congrats, you now have a public website espousing opinions that would have gotten you banned from the former central platforms. But it doesn't really matter since the practical reach of your message is basically nonexistant. You're blacklisted from all the popular webrings who are empowered to moderate even stronger since they're not platforms for general speech anymore and their users love it because it's not fun to be bullied and harassed.

Everyone gets what they want I guess?