Did the early internet activists blow it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#51

Post by Mirioron » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #44

heartbeats wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they already are. The crazy screamer on the street corner causes an actual harm to you. To avoid 8chan is trivial; just don't go there. That people get radicalized going there seems like a poor argument. If I understand you correctly, the principle is the following: 1. Someone holds acceptable views. 2. They visit 8chan. 3. They now hold abhorrent views. Why should 8chan be blamed for this, or rather, what did th…

Radicalization is not about opinions , it is about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose . You get, yeah, that these are also places where these little shitheads gather and decide who to brigade (the aforementioned "oh, hmm, that lady has opinions about video games, let's try real hard to destroy her life" dreck that the various chans indulge in when they…

>the aforementioned "oh, hmm, that lady has opinions about video games, let's try real hard to destroy her life" dreck that the various chans indulge in when they're bored

What are you referring to when you say this? Because if you're referring to Gamergate then that's quite a mischaracterization. I'm not saying that bad things weren't done during it, but it wasn't about hating on women in video games.

And aren't most swatting incidents unrelated to chans? Mostly it seems to have been about people getting angry at one another playing video games or related to streamers of video games. Does that make Twitch complicit?

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#52

Post by CoolGuySteve » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #45

mjcohen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would your reaction if information about you or your loved ones was posted and people were encouraged to do nasty things to you or them?

Expressing opinions vs making specific threats is a very clear thick line for me, and yet somehow whenever I read about takedowns and such it seems many people have trouble making the distinction. “I hate x and wish they had never been born” Is not “I am coming to your house tomorrow with a weapon” Yet people treat them similarly. From there it just becomes “anything that scares me is a threat.” Then, it becomes obvi…

In some psychology class long ago, I learned that one of the most self destructive things someone can do is perceive emotions as information. As in "That made me mad so what they did was clearly wrong". A lot of therapy is geared to shifting people away from that cognitive error.

But that concept is thrown out the window when it comes to Twitter/Facebook/etc.

I can't count how many times I've read "I'm literally shaking now" used as an indictment against someone else's perceived transgression. I think out of all the twitter cliches, that one makes me roll my eyes the most.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#53

Post by koyote » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

worble wrote: post #33

v7x wrote: post #10

I agree with most of the article, but the author faltered in the area I predicted he would before I began to read. He expresses fear that without some restraint that sites might become "like 8chan". To which I have to ask, why is that a problem? Because its a hotbed for hate speech? What is hate speech? I'm sure I dont need to elaborate further on what I see wrong with that. What people seem to forget/ignore is that…

Having been on the internet since a young age, I've always found it strange the internet is, well, so "srs business" these days. The internet has never, and as you say, will never be a harmonious place where everyone will be nice to each other. We can't even achieve this in physical spaces which can actually enforce these kinds of rules! Maybe I'm lucky, but I find it really easy to just disasociate with online comme…

I completely agree and am glad I am not the only one who feels like that.

I believe a lot of the internet of that era changed with Facebook: it was the first prominent social media that encouraged (mandated even) you to use your real name and information and a lot of people went with it. Myspace, MSN or similar before that were all aliases even if you knew the people in real life. This removed a level of privacy and made attacks more personal.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#54

Post by Barrin92 » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:34 AM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #48

Barrin92 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. If I am free as long as I only do it "The Right Way", I'm not free This is a shallow definition of freedom, the sort of idea of freedom that children instinctively have when they're told to go to bed and start throwing a tantrum and it is largely what the internet was built on, maybe not accidentally by people who in many ways were juvenile adults. There's a deeper version of freedom, a more adult one, that recogn…

> Likewise an internet without hierarchies, without controls and without enforcement of social taboos, be that by law, by gatekeepers or through exclusion incentivizes the very worst actors to run amok. Social approval should be incorporated into law, (either literal or culturally) because places that don't do it become uninhabitable. (as the current public internet increasingly is). "Uninhabitable?" To me it seems l…

>especially in the gated communities of the social networks. Small community forums are still running as they always have

exactly my point, focus on "gated" and "small". What do you think is it that distinguishes gated communities from the generic facebook newsfeed? The right to censor, judge who gets in or not, be able to exclude bad actors, and to have stake and identity when commenting, and to set common rules for conduct. the internet is transforming from a public space to an internet of private gated communities.

In this the internet perfectly mirrors declining cities that do not maintain their commons. A lot of fractured, tribal communities emerge who are not in contact with each other, the marketplaces and houses degrade, and a huge amount of resources is spent on simply insulating oneself from everyone else. It is not a pretty picture.

On who gets to decide what taboos exist? There is no need for a moral arbiter. In communities that function well taboos and rules reflect the consensus of its constituent members. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg gets to make institutional decisions for 2 billion people is another sign of dysfunction.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#55

Post by dependenttypes » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #11

The internet does need regulation; what I'd like to see (but don't expect to) is a regime where platforms have to be transparent about their moderating systems. I have no objection to Facebook, Twitter, Google/Youtube, Hacker News or WeChat aggressively moderating their platform, or even running social engineering programs. Their platform, their problem, humans have lived with that sort of thing for centuries. My iss…

> there isn't a tool (that I know of) saying "Zerohedge has been removed from Google's index"

Google uses the lumen database for DMCAs, which account for most of its removals, I am not aware for something similar for non-dmca removals however.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#56

Post by dependenttypes » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

One thing that I find amusing is that the same people worried about the government becoming too authoritarian, want to give the government the power to stifle “hate” speech, which can easily be defined to mean what the government wants it to mean.

Both the left and right (and centrist!) authoritarians are only annoyed when things that they agree with get censored. This is the whole point of authoritarianism after all, that you do not tolerate other's opinions.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#57

Post by dependenttypes » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

passwordreset wrote: post #28

carapace wrote: post #6

> But the reality is that no matter how much money and manpower (plus less-than-perfect “artificial intelligence”) Facebook throws at curating hateful or illegal content on its services, and no matter how well-meaning Facebook’s intentions are, a user base edging toward 3 billion people is always going to generate hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives every year. In re: FB, there was an FB e…

TLDR: $6.25M is all it would cost to implement Orwellian censorship across Facebook. TFA says there are "hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives every year." Let us assume there are a million false positives that require human intervention every year. There are 50 work weeks in the year, so to resolve 1,000,000 false positives over 50 weeks requires humans to resolve an average of 20000 per we…

It will not be only the ones whose post was removed as a false positive asking for a manual review.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#58

Post by jariel » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

v7x wrote: post #10

I agree with most of the article, but the author faltered in the area I predicted he would before I began to read. He expresses fear that without some restraint that sites might become "like 8chan". To which I have to ask, why is that a problem? Because its a hotbed for hate speech? What is hate speech? I'm sure I dont need to elaborate further on what I see wrong with that. What people seem to forget/ignore is that…

"What is hate speech? I'm sure I don't need to elaborate further on what I see wrong with that."

Absolutely you need to elaborate.

I think your comment implies a misunderstanding of populism and the kinds of things that go on in this world. By that I mean, because we actually do live in a world with a lot of rules, I suggest most people don't realize just how bad it can get.

"Anything goes" means ISIS showing beheadings of civilians in order to recruit more young men to the cause which works very well as a recruiting tool.

I'd encourage you to look into the Rwandan genocide - it was done through media. Radio broadcasters on either side were lamenting the others as 'cockroaches' 'vile creatures' who needed to be 'exterminated' passing lies and false information and then, at one point, calling for outright murder. The 'war' was not between armies, it was a lot of regular people, taking to the streets, massacring each other with machetes en masse. Like a 'zombie' film come to life.

And of course, the idiot teaching people to make sarin gas in their basement for fun, or to make sure that those 'cockroaches in group XYZ' can be slaughtered'.

This is what 'anything goes' means.

The moniker 'hate speech' can surely be over-applied, for example, in Quebec a comedian was fined $30K for making a joke about a person in a wheelchair. Sometimes uncomfortable arguments are labeled 'hate'. This is ridiculous obviously.

But - there's absolutely no doubt that 'hate speech' exists and can foment particularly young minds into some really devious world views.

Particularly in the context of 'fake information' the Holocaust, for example, could be 'erased' as a legit element of history.

Some of the stuff that is 'normalized' among some kids is pretty shocking, even just some casual use of language.

The 'internet' is now the commons, like any other commons, and though we need to err very much in the side of freedom of expression there - will be limited.

I see at least two thresholds, 1) the civil commons, like most areas where you can't go around screaming about this or that, like a private office or even a public square where you can't harass people. And 2) more private spaces, people should be able to almost anything they want (i.e. 'almost anything goes) and the threshold should be really high, but true 'hate speech calling for violence' for example should be a problem. ISIS beheading videos should be taken down. People calling for the mass murder of 'some group' can be taken down. If you're trying to teach people to make sarin gas in their basements, this can be taken down. Etc..

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#59

Post by naniwaduni » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #48

Barrin92 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. If I am free as long as I only do it "The Right Way", I'm not free This is a shallow definition of freedom, the sort of idea of freedom that children instinctively have when they're told to go to bed and start throwing a tantrum and it is largely what the internet was built on, maybe not accidentally by people who in many ways were juvenile adults. There's a deeper version of freedom, a more adult one, that recogn…

> Likewise an internet without hierarchies, without controls and without enforcement of social taboos, be that by law, by gatekeepers or through exclusion incentivizes the very worst actors to run amok. Social approval should be incorporated into law, (either literal or culturally) because places that don't do it become uninhabitable. (as the current public internet increasingly is). "Uninhabitable?" To me it seems l…

Nobody goes online anymore, it's too crowded.

Re: Did the early internet activists blow it?

#60

Post by jonas21 » Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

passwordreset wrote: post #28

carapace wrote: post #6

> But the reality is that no matter how much money and manpower (plus less-than-perfect “artificial intelligence”) Facebook throws at curating hateful or illegal content on its services, and no matter how well-meaning Facebook’s intentions are, a user base edging toward 3 billion people is always going to generate hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives every year. In re: FB, there was an FB e…

TLDR: $6.25M is all it would cost to implement Orwellian censorship across Facebook. TFA says there are "hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives every year." Let us assume there are a million false positives that require human intervention every year. There are 50 work weeks in the year, so to resolve 1,000,000 false positives over 50 weeks requires humans to resolve an average of 20000 per we…

Facebook already employs 15,000 content moderators, both directly and via contractors. By many accounts, they're overworked and don't get enough time to deal emotionally with what they have to see [1] -- and they only review a fraction of the content on Facebook. 125 people would clearly be many orders of magnitude too small to review everything.

The "hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives" quote is referring to the rate after human moderation (and is also just speculation by the author).

I think people tend to underestimate the scale that would be required to solve this problem because they tend to underestimate just how terrible people are.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderat...