51–60 of 83 posts
Despicable call to arms from a zombie company coasting off its earlier innovation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "amplify factual voices over disinformation." First, to be clear, that's not censorship, and it is entirely compatible with freedom of speech because it is not proposing to prevent speech, only to direct emphasis. Freedom of speech means you are free to speak and people who choose to listen are free to listen, not that you get equal airtime. Second, we already have amplification taking place of non-factual voices.…
> First, to be clear, that's not censorship It's long-term censorship because if you can control speech for long enough you can control the range of ideas people have the possibility to be exposed to, the overall opinion consensus changes over time toward just the allowed range of ideas, and after enough time this changes the facts in consensus reality.
Otherwise you might as well say that every form of debate, persuasion and promotion are censorship, because they have that effect.
Calling that censorship is to miss the point of the more serious thing that is widely disliked, which is the bright-line distinction between opinions that are merely rendered unpopular, compared with opinions which are actively blocked from being expressed or heard at all.
However, the point isn't to quibble over the meaning of the word. The point is, would it be harmful to functioning democracy and people's freedom of thought to "promote factual voices".
By all means argue against doing so, and be concerned that it would result in long-term censorship effects but:
I've tried to make the argument that the absence of "promote factual voices" also results in long-term censorship (the way you are meaning it), because we get a de facto biased spread of opinions anyway as a result of social media dynamics and all the dodgy actors in them.
There's newsfeed algorithms, advertising, optimising for hits and clicks and engagement, nefarious actors, paid shills, all sorts of things. And though I'm loathe to say it, a lot of low-quality trolling and thoughtless opinions which get amplified easily. But even without all those, social media has system dynamics which must inevitably result in something that governs the consensus towards an allowed range of ideas versus ideas which are discouraged.
I think we have no choice on that. The only choice is which kind of systemic bias shall we opt for.
I favour whatever structures lead to certain types of thinking (not the same as particular opinions): higher quality debate, eduction, knowledge and wisdom in society (which sounds like healthier democracy to me), as represented by a broad spectrum of people, open to all, and designed to protect diversity of thought while promoting quality of thought. I'm avoiding saying what leads to that, because I honestly don't know the answer, only that "don't promote anything" is not necessarily the answer or unbiased, especially when there's plenty of other dodgy promotion going on behind the scenes already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> First, to be clear, that's not censorship It's long-term censorship because if you can control speech for long enough you can control the range of ideas people have the possibility to be exposed to, the overall opinion consensus changes over time toward just the allowed range of ideas, and after enough time this changes the facts in consensus reality.
I think shifting the emphasis and amount of representation of different kinds of speech and different prevailing opinions, without actually blocking speech, is not censorship as it is classically meant. Otherwise you might as well say that every form of debate, persuasion and promotion are censorship, because they have that effect. Calling that censorship is to miss the point of the more serious thing that is widely…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I support deplatforming. Private companies and such. Twitter should never be a public forum unless the US government feels they need the existing user ecosystem when they turn it into a utility.
You originally said this "some great ideas to fix the internet without overt censorship". This statement is false. That was my point. Mozilla explicitily was supporting censorship. So, therefore it is not "without censorship". It seems like you are walking your original statement back though, and instead simply saying that you personally support censorship. So great. Glad that you agree that your original statement w…
I am no fan of Donald Trump but this scares me to death. I mean that in the most literal sense.
If you disagree, please consider being in the same situation with the political inclinations reversed, or just in another country where you disagree with the government but Mozilla doesn't.