Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech and Liberty

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 170 posts

Re: Tech and Liberty

#151

Post by SllX »

widowlark wrote: post #150
SllX wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we move on. Mastodon and the like seem to show promise. Reddit is around for something in between Mastodon and Facebook/Twitter, although it is ultimately susceptible to the same problems as the latter. Snapchat isn’t nothing, and while TikTok has problems stemming from its country of origin, it also isn’t nothing. I would say we have a lot of choices of platforms. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren’t the end of…

What we have right now is due to a largely unregulated free market.

A large number of choices in how we choose to socialize online? I can post this reply to you as easily as I can text my best friend or mother.

The problem I have with these discussions is that we aren’t talking about it in a more nuanced manner. The problem with Facebook and Twitter and their kind isn’t their size, magnitude or shape on the public discourse. If it weren’t them, it would be partisan newspapers and newsletters and cable networks pretending they have integrity and objectivity that they don’t. I’m sure they have some measure of integrity, I’m sure they strive to be objective, but I vastly prefer when people And networks fess up to where their biases lay.

Well Facebook and Twitter destroyed what was status quo, fine, I have no problem with that. Have they contributed to negative polarization? That’s much less clear, but I’m leaning towards no. Negative polarization is near as I can tell, an old English tradition and near as I can tell, runs through Catholics, Protestants, Barkers, Quakers, Whigs, Jacobites, Revolutionaries, Loyalists, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Federalists 1.5, Democratic-Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Republicans, Unionists, Confederates, Progressives, just to name a few off the top of my head.

If there is a problem Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. it’s that they collect enormous amounts of data, not just directly but they buy and sell with data brokers and use that to confirm or reconfirm identities. This by itself wouldn’t even be an issue except that they are bad stewards of our personal data. That’s a problem, and one worth focusing on, but let’s not pretend they are anymore powerful than they are, or that they are a cause of our society’s rifts.

The splits in our society are real, but they are older than Silicon Valley. Technology will not fix them. Social media will not fix them. The only thing that will do anything about them, and only then, very slowly, is actual factual dialog between people like you and I, and the fact that you and I are even having this discussion is because we have a choice in how, when, where and with whom we would like to talk. This isn’t Facebook, and this isn’t the Post Office or the Forum in Rome and somehow we’re able to talk anyway.

I’d say that’s at least one point in favor of the free market.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#152

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

seanhunter wrote: post #144
stickfigure wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every privacy advocate I've met seems to be most incensed at Facebook over Cambridge Analtyica. To recap: CA built a quiz app that recorded data that your friends shared with you; many users installed this quiz app and accepted the "share your friends' data" permission. Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. With a distributed social network, there's…

> Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. Facebook shared data that people had shared with their friends with Cambridge Analytica. That's not remotely in dispute - both Facebook and CA have admitted that. CA used Facebook's API and Facebook's servers gave CA the data. People's friends didn't share that data with CA.

It didn't like, round trip through them. But people's friends did authorize CA to read that data; otherwise CA wouldn't have been able to use the API to get it.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#153

Post by pchristensen »

For anyone interested in this, I recommend following the Center for Humane Technology. Their podcast (https://humanetech.com/podcast/) talks about many aspects of this in a very intelligent and technical manner.

I particularly recommend Episode 3 with Yael Eisenstat - https://your-undivided-attention.simplecast.com/episodes/wit... - w/transcript - http://humanetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CHT-Undivid...

Short version - the algorithmic feeds that drive engagement should not be protected by CDA230 - storing and retrieving user data should be protected, but platforms should be liable for the content that they amplify and promote.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#154

Post by filoleg »

sanderjd wrote: post #72
lliamander wrote: post #25

This describes precisely my own reaction to Munroe's comic. I mean, it's certainly true that discussion forums benefit from moderation to remove trolls. However, Munroe myopically assumes that the only people being de-platformed are trolls. Even if some of the people being de-platformed are provocateurs, the fact is that there's still a difference between excluding people from what is essentially a private club (as m…

What features make a private website a public square? I often wonder: Would people feel differently if platforms were honest and direct about being a private club of some specific kind? If Twitter came out and said they wanted to be a private club for people with progressive views to discuss politics and sundry, would that dampen the criticism of censorship?

I don't know about the rest of the people, but I definitely feel differently when it comes to being honest about being a private club.

Here is my analogy: I don't mind mods on r/thedonald kicking out anyone who isn't fully on board with the agenda, just like I agree with mods on r/latestagecapitalism or r/communism getting rid of those with dissenting opinions. But I do have issues with r/politics positioning themselves as a "neutral" sub to discuss politics, while essentially being an off-shoot of r/communism and r/DNC.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#155

Post by stickfigure »

seanhunter wrote: post #144
stickfigure wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every privacy advocate I've met seems to be most incensed at Facebook over Cambridge Analtyica. To recap: CA built a quiz app that recorded data that your friends shared with you; many users installed this quiz app and accepted the "share your friends' data" permission. Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. With a distributed social network, there's…

> Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. Facebook shared data that people had shared with their friends with Cambridge Analytica. That's not remotely in dispute - both Facebook and CA have admitted that. CA used Facebook's API and Facebook's servers gave CA the data. People's friends didn't share that data with CA.

A genie grants you one wish; Facebook has been replaced with a decentralized social network based on open protocols.

To your horror, your friends _still_ install insipid quiz apps and grant them permission to all of "your" data. And now there is nothing to stop it and no one to blame.

From a systems perspective, the fact that the medium is currently named Facebook is irrelevant. The primary actors in the Cambridge Analytica Scandal are your friends. You can remove Facebook and the same narrative remains - you shared data with your friends, and they shared it with someone you don't like.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#156

Post by jay_kyburz »

mr__y wrote: post #143
jay_kyburz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself pretty progressive, but I find the idea of forcing companies to "open up their networks" distasteful and problematic. I just doesn't seem piratical. I've said it a few times before, I don't think the problem is the carriers, its that there are no penalties for telling a lie on the internet. This is where we should start to fix this problem.

I see at least a few problems with penalizing lies: 1. Who is going to determine whether a given statement is a lie or not? 2. What about sarcasm and works of fiction? (And who (and how) determines whether a given post was intended to be sarcastic or not?) 3. What about a context? For instance, exactly the same wording of a message might carry a different meaning depending on the content of other posts in a thread. W…

For 1 2 and 3 we rely on the courts. It's already their job to decide when somebody has broken the law or not. The courts need to decide if a reasonable person could tell if some writing is sarcasm or fiction, and if it was written to intentional mislead, then its a crime. 4 is just a hard problem we need to work through.

5. The problem that needs fixing is that people don't trust anything they read any more. Nobody knows what to believe and can't make a good judgement call about what is a trustworthy news source. This results in a polarised, ignorant society.

If you post online that Trump likes your mums cooking, nobody is going to take you to court because the damages done is almost nothing. If you post online that Trump wants to evict all Chinese nationals from the country, well that's a lie that could cause some real strife, and I would be happy if that was just not written on the internet.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#157

Post by mr__y »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #156
mr__y wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see at least a few problems with penalizing lies: 1. Who is going to determine whether a given statement is a lie or not? 2. What about sarcasm and works of fiction? (And who (and how) determines whether a given post was intended to be sarcastic or not?) 3. What about a context? For instance, exactly the same wording of a message might carry a different meaning depending on the content of other posts in a thread. W…

For 1 2 and 3 we rely on the courts. It's already their job to decide when somebody has broken the law or not. The courts need to decide if a reasonable person could tell if some writing is sarcasm or fiction, and if it was written to intentional mislead, then its a crime. 4 is just a hard problem we need to work through. 5. The problem that needs fixing is that people don't trust anything they read any more. Nobody…

Relying on courts seems to suffer one problem: given the scale and amount of posts I doubt that any judical system is capable to process that amount of cases.

Secondly, as it was already pointed in this thread, there are other ways to manipulate - for example by omitting some facts or simply rephrasing them.

To give you an extreme but real life example, recently in Poland there was news about Robert Biedron, left wing politician who rescued a two year old boy and his father from a burning car, then according to other media he just allowed them to wait in his car before police arrived (and I can't honestly tell which version is true - this kind of supports your point), but there was also a headline that translates to "Car crashed and burning with a 2 year old child on board. Robert Biedron involved". While this obviously gives a completely inverse impression on the viewer, technically this is not a lie - all the information in that headline is true and 100% correct. Penalizing lying on the internet will not stop manipulation. Maybe just make it a little bit harder forcing the manipulator to be a bit more creative

Re: Tech and Liberty

#158

Post by jeegsy »

stickfigure wrote: post #155
seanhunter wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. Facebook shared data that people had shared with their friends with Cambridge Analytica. That's not remotely in dispute - both Facebook and CA have admitted that. CA used Facebook's API and Facebook's servers gave CA the data. People's friends didn't share that data with CA.

A genie grants you one wish; Facebook has been replaced with a decentralized social network based on open protocols. To your horror, your friends _still_ install insipid quiz apps and grant them permission to all of "your" data. And now there is nothing to stop it and no one to blame. From a systems perspective, the fact that the medium is currently named Facebook is irrelevant. The primary actors in the Cambridge An…

I had not looked at it this way before..It is possible to be prudent with your data but once you share with other who are maybe not so prodent, who knows?

Re: Tech and Liberty

#159

Post by lliamander »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #132
dave_b wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By “public space,” I meant the predominant avenues for public discourse (maybe not the best choice of words). Mainstream media, tech platforms, and universities are the specific things I had in mind.

The mainstream media is overwhelmingly owned by the rich elite, with deep connections to conservative politics. The idea that the mainstream media is somehow overwhelmingly progressive is something conservatives like to parrot, but I've never found it to have any basis in truth. The "leftist" big media outlets are really centrist, at best.

> The mainstream media is overwhelmingly owned by the rich elite, with deep connections to conservative politics.

I'm going to have to ask for a citation for that. Unless you are suggesting that supporting the interests of the rich elite is an essentially conservative position (a claim which both the rich elite and conservatives would deny).

If you look at the politics of all the people (executives and rank-and-file) working in the institutions of media, entertainment, and academia, you'll find that a significant majority are left of center given the generally accepted notions of left and right as they are used in contemporary American politics.

Re: Tech and Liberty

#160

Post by jeegsy »

SllX wrote: post #125
widowlark wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cant have it both ways. On the one hand, Twitter, Facebook, et al. are "basically" town/public squares - they are also private companies. So we either regulate and minimize private companies ability to silence speech as they see fit, which is their right - or we allow them to exercise their own rights, thus bending to the masses and appealing to the lowest common denominator through censorship.

Or we move on. Mastodon and the like seem to show promise. Reddit is around for something in between Mastodon and Facebook/Twitter, although it is ultimately susceptible to the same problems as the latter. Snapchat isn’t nothing, and while TikTok has problems stemming from its country of origin, it also isn’t nothing. I would say we have a lot of choices of platforms. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren’t the end of…

What happens when there is collusion to exclude between all these supposedly separate platforms? I seem to recall a certain Jones guy who was deplatformed by nearly all the major social networks in a single day. Any holdouts (twitter) were thereafter hounded into submission by the media. The market aint working like it should I think.
Post reply on HN