161–170 of 243 posts
Decentralize everything is a concept that should be taught as a fundamental life lesson to school children everywhere.
We should also teach them not to fall for conspiracy theories, and how to read articles carefully.
If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms in the name of free speech or independent thought instead into achieving a more just, anti-racist society we'd all be so much better off.
This is as ridiculous as people who say "Why don't we all just get along?" Some are skeptical of megacorporations controlling the economics of information, the potential wrongs of moral control, without necessarily defending detestable people, in the same way those who defend freedom of speech aren't defending Mein Kampf.
I really wish more people could wrap their heads around this idea, because it's so important.
There is no a priori way to suppress "bad" speech and also
* not suppress ideas that are good but unpopular
* not suppress speech that is valid criticism that annoys the powerful
* not suppress speech that is valid criticism that annoys the majority
* not suppress speech that is true but makes most people uncomfortable
* not suppress speech that is true but also most people don't believe
But! With strong free speech protections, no one can suppress ideas that are good but unpopular; nor ideas that are valid criticism, even those that annoy the powerful and the majority; etc.
Here are examples of hate speech laws being used in unexpected, and unexpectedly awful, ways. And, these uses are inevitable and unsurprising to those of us who have a deeper philosophical understanding of how free speech works:
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/201...
* https://www.salon.com/2016/11/07/french-hate-crime-ruling-se...
* https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-france-sarkozy-idUSBRE...
* https://web.archive.org/web/20191115120742/https://southeast...
They chose to not participate with PayPal, and invent their own currency, and in exchange, PayPal stopped dealing with them. Their questions were fairly basic KYC form-letter questions anyone selling a financial service should be able to answer - if they couldn't, they might be in trouble with the SEC, not just PayPal.
And yet this entire thing is going to turn into an ugly left vs. right culture war, even though this is probably more about KYC regulations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If some of y'all put the time you spent into defending white supremacists and hate platforms And how do you define this? Have you ever once considered you could be wrong and they could be right? The freedom of speech is the freedom to disagree. It's the freedom to talk about things we know are unorthodox and offensive, and not fear prosecution from our government (In the context of US/constitution speech). At one t…
I understand the point you are making and think that normally there is merit to it. However, I think it's important to point out there is a difference between saying "homosexuals and black people should have equal legal and societal rights" versus whatever language these people use to justify their beliefs in white supremacy. >Have you ever once considered you could be wrong and they could be right? No, I've never on…
The problem is that the accusation isn't necessarily true and there needs to be room to argue about that. Otherwise the accusation is a weapon that can be used without justification and without recourse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self-hosted servers are already against Comcast TOS, they tolerate them for casual use but any significant traffic is going to result in a service interruption.
How does one self host their own online speech then? Whatever your answer is, that thing should not be controlled by a private company.
Pay for hosting.
> that thing should not be controlled by a private company
How would this be possible in a capitalist country?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money is speech, so says the supreme court (Citizens United). Impeding the transfer of fiat (infra which should be a utility) is a violation of constitutional rights (arguably) if you're not breaking the law. Even if I disagree with the speech (I do! Vehemently!), rights must be inalienable. Maybe this should be patched in Section 230 legislation versus 18 USC § 1960, would have to read more statute to provide a prop…
There is so much shortsightedness with the modern pro-censorship crowd. Do they assume censorship will never be applied to their side because they aren't the "evil" ones?
Before the narrative drumbeat of snowflake libs and cancel culture started, conservatives were stereotypically pearl-clutching and easily offended.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Proud Boys are not white supremacists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys
The leader isn't even white, nor are most of their members. He was on a youtube podcast recently, with Tim Pool I think, something definitely doesn't make sense between what the media is constantly parroting about them and what they actually are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Will they be significant economies though? Gab and Epik are mostly about culture wars and conspiracy theories. How many people are actively involved in those?
The history of explosive growth in tech platforms should make us very cautious about assuming small economies will stay small. It's been barely a decade since Facebook and Twitter were small platforms that didn't matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a clear slippery slope fallacy. You can clearly define and enshrine intolerance based on immutable physical characteristics into speech laws, as many countries have done (Canada, Germany, etc).
Sorry, this is not a "clear slippery slope fallacy". A slippery slope fallacy is a claim about a series of events, with each even being more unlikely than the one before it. GP makes no claim of a series of events at all. GP is merely pointing out that often, societal norms have been immoral, despite the "wisdom of the time" saying that challenging the norm is immoral. And society doesn't realize they were wrong unti…
> You bring up Canada and Germany, even though we have no idea how good or bad of an impact those laws will have
This makes no sense. We literally do know how good or bad of an impact these laws will have _because there are literally examples of countries with those laws_.
They chose to not participate with PayPal, and invent their own currency, and in exchange, PayPal stopped dealing with them. Their questions were fairly basic KYC form-letter questions anyone selling a financial service should be able to answer - if they couldn't, they might be in trouble with the SEC, not just PayPal.
Genuine question here - what's the difference between them selling this 'currency' and buying in game currency on a video game? Or would those kind of things also have to comply with these kind of regulations?
If you allow transfers between users and cashing out to real money (as Epik's "Masterbucks"), then you'd have to comply with these kinds of regulations, so video games try and take steps to ensure that their currencies aren't treated like that, or at least if this does happen, they can't be seen as facilitating it. Epik's marketing material explicitly mentions both "fully transferrable" and "convertible to dollars" - this combination means that you're intentionally running a service that can be used for money transfers, and thus you need to ensure KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti money-laundering) compliance or shut down that service.