Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#221

Post by refurb » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #211

refurb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guess you haven’t read it? Because your summary is not accurate.

That summary is a direct copy and paste from the Wikipedia link I posted and references in that quote. And yeah, I have read Popper as well as Wikipedia. Saying "it's not accurate" isn't accurate.

Ok, but you selectively quoted a part that makes it sound like Popper is fine not tolerating any intolerance. He wasn’t. He basically said you tolerate intolerance as much as you can without risking the collapse of social order.

Big difference.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#222

Post by ogre_codes » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

emptyparadise wrote: post #214

ogre_codes wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your television and radio broadcasts have been "censored" and curated since the dawn of time. Newspapers have curated their content and various newspapers are known for having left or right bias. This isn't just the stations own content. If you paid to put content on television, radio, or in the paper, the publisher has always had the right to publish or not publish content (with some limits, but nothing this article…

I think social media is not directly comparable to television and radio broadcasts. The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be. Let me use your analogy, though. Let's say there are many newspapers in town. Is it fair for me to refuse to publish certain things? Sure. What if I own the only newspa…

> The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be.

The "Public Square" assumes the space is owned by... well the public. Either the town or city. That's not the case here. Even if it were, the reach of a person in the public square is tiny... a few hundred people if they are absolutely lucky.

Besides... your rights in actual public squares haven't changed a bit. Save the fact that COVID has shut down many public spaces.

> But then what if I start buying out every printing press in town?

You mean the way Clear Channel has actually bought up a huge percentage of radio stations?

The way big right wing corporations have bought up the majority of local television stations in the country?

Is it "fair" that the majority of television broadcast stations are owned by a few right-wing media companies?

For what it's worth, all three "competing" local broadcast television stations are owned by the same company now.

I'd love to know why people think it's super important that Facebook and Twitter cease their supposedly "biased" curating while so many broadcast companies which reach 10s of millions of homes get a free pass.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#223

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #165

bawolff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tools are these actually - the delete button? When it comes down to it - i like moderated spaces on the internet. I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content. I don't like seeing shock images. So yes, i support having moderation. The question to me is not: yes/no moderation, its where you draw the line; what are your policies and how are they enforced. Fundamentally i think the s…

> I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content. I mean, ok? Can't you simply not watch that content? What if there were a warning on the content, so that you could choose to not watch it? Or maybe you could specify on your account, that you don't want to see that content, so it never shows up for you. Problem solved, and everyone wins.

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#224

Post by diggernet » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #168

nl wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't we have a culture of tolerance? The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. [1] If you haven't read Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies"…

Have you read Popper? Here's a relevant quote from him about tolerance: > If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ;…

> ... answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

The real paradox of the paradox of tolerance is how many people use Popper quotes to rationalize their own intolerance for people with differing ideas, without any awareness that Popper was speaking only of intolerance for people who resort to violence.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#225

Post by xyzzyz » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:08 AM UTC

diggernet wrote: post #224

xyzzyz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read Popper? Here's a relevant quote from him about tolerance: > If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ;…

> ... answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. The real paradox of the paradox of tolerance is how many people use Popper quotes to rationalize their own intolerance for people with differing ideas , without any awareness that Popper was speaking only of intolerance for people who resort to violence .

Yes. It's as if people want to just use name of famous philosopher to justify their urge to censor people and ideas they don't like.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#226

Post by mrtksn » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #147

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property. Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media. Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We…

> HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say

Exactly. I think it works because it makes discussion possible even for the most extreme ideas by reducing the emotional response.

People don’t become racists/terrorists/etc simply because someone told them so. Content removal of speech supporting these ideas doesn’t do any good.

However removing things that break the discussion works. Spamming, flooding, being very rude or provocative, all make the discussion impossible.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#227

Post by proverbialbunny » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #147

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property. Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media. Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We…

>HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say.

This is how the news used to be regulated in the US. Before the Fairness Doctrine news was all over the place, during it was sane and rational, after .. well we're all living it.

When it comes to checks and balances, the news can be under regulated which allows for lies and corruption like we're seeing right now, it can be regulated in an unfair or bias way, or it can be regulated in a balanced way that doesn't restrict speech, it enhances it.

The US has already solved this problem for previous platforms. It needs to go back and put checks and balances back in, instead of letting corruption remove those checks and balances and keep it removed.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#228

Post by emptyparadise » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #157

emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

>supporting restrictions on speech and privacy violations That's a confusing phrase. It took me a while to realize you meant "supporting privacy violations" rather than "supporting restrictions on privacy violations". You seem to be lumping speech restrictions and privacy violations into the same bucket, but I see them as very different, often even opposed to each other. The US elevates free speech higher than privac…

Fixed the wording to make it a bit more clear, thanks. Connecting doxing as a privacy violation to free speech is a very interesting point that I didn't think about - I was thinking about data collection and tracking when talking about privacy violations.

For what you bring up with doxing, I don't think I have a very satisfying answer. I definitely won't advocate for keeping it on social media websites. But I can't advocate for all-powerful tools that would allow even for actually dangerous content like that to be tracked down and removed from everywhere, because there is no way to ensure that tools like that will not be abused.

Remove it from Twitter, block it on your own federation nodes, try to bring the perpetrators to justice, but, as painful as it is, you shouldn't have a magic button that would be able to completely eradicate that from the internet.

It would also be good to reduce data collection and to teach people to be more conscious of what they share to prevent private information from leaking to begin with.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#229

Post by Const-me » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #192

Const-me wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paragraph b3 says this: “It is the policy of the United States to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet” I think the technologies where a centralized commercial company controls which information is received by users violates at least the spirit of that law.

Centralized spam filters are an interesting test case. We generally agree they are good, and necessary. How are they different than algorithmic ordering that we agree to in the TOS?

> How are they different than algorithmic ordering that we agree to in the TOS?

People [would be] consuming the spam content being filtered agree with the filtering and are generally happy with it.

Failing that, when people are unhappy with their spam filter they can adjust or disable it.

As a last resort, they can migrate to another e-mail provider, there's no monopoly on e-mail. Moreover, e-mail is delivered almost equally between different providers.

Many people watching youtube or reading facebook are unhappy with their content policies. There's no way to control their filters or opt out of them. There's de-facto monopoly on these markets: the network effect is too strong, and antimonopoly laws don't seem to apply to their acquisitions of competitors.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#230

Post by emptyparadise » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 6:22 AM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #222

emptyparadise wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think social media is not directly comparable to television and radio broadcasts. The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be. Let me use your analogy, though. Let's say there are many newspapers in town. Is it fair for me to refuse to publish certain things? Sure. What if I own the only newspa…

> The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be. The "Public Square" assumes the space is owned by... well the public. Either the town or city. That's not the case here. Even if it were, the reach of a person in the public square is tiny... a few hundred people if they are absolutely lucky. Besides…

So let's go after TV and radio stations too, then? I'm not opposed to that.

By the way, I don't think forcing broadcasters or social media to not police their content is the way to go - I'd much rather make sure they don't become monopolistic. The situation you describe with TV must not happen with social media too.