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

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

#271

Post by cudgy »

shrimpx wrote: post #264
cudgy wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“You can make the same argument in the opposite direction: for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?“ This is truly ironic given that exact abuse has been perpetrated by these tech companies in order to build their empires in the form of adve…

This is a tough issue, and I don't see how it would be more humanist to support something like "all speech, in any situation, must be allowed and protected". Clearly some of that speech will be destructive, and harm people. I don't think you want to advocate that those people who are being harmed should be unable to protect themselves from speech they see as harmful and destructive. Neither side of this coin is a str…

No. It’s quite clear. People should have the right to pursue dangerous, stupid, crazy, ugly, offensive, illogical activities as well as safe, brilliant, sane, beautiful, flattering, and logical activities.

Your approach results in a star chamber of elites that make value judgments on what people can SAY, which directly impacts what they can DO. Society is limited to their judgment and belief system.

There are countries that exist today with this model, and it is not a pleasant existence to be a regular citizen in those countries especially for creative “weird” people who represent most of the major innovations in the world. Read history and see for yourself how this approach leads to poor outcomes for the majority. In fact, it is at the core of the founding of the United States itself.

One approach leads to a narrow, controlled, and directed society that is controlled by the elite; the other brings breadth and freedom to pursue crazy thoughts that can lead to major innovations.

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

#272

Post by Khaine »

shrimpx wrote: post #255
julianmarq wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence? You mean a society where the most charismatic/popular members get the attention of the masses, mostly by telling them what they want to hear? Yes, I think I'm prepared to live in such a society. I t…

We should clarify that "free speech" is unrelated to what Twitter and Facebook are doing. Free speech is a constitutional concept, protecting people from draconian government laws that suppress their speech, or discriminate them based on their speech. What Facebook and Twitter are doing is providing a product that amplifies and places speech in front of particular eyeballs and ears. There are many, many issues with w…

Free speech is not a "constitutional concept" whatever you mean by that. Free speech is a philosophical concept that has been embedded in the US Constitution as the 1st Amendment.

The US Founders thought that people must have the ability to speak their mind, to discuss and challenge each others ideas. They thought this ability was so important they enshrined it in law.

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

#273

Post by jusssi »

cbozeman wrote: post #59
megous wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world/new-zealand-mosque-s... Maybe they don't want livestreams like this?

Well too goddamn bad. That's part of life in a post-Enlightenment world. You don't get to have the all the great shit without all the worst shit along with it. The very nature of freedom means at some point, someone is going to do something you don't like. And I don't mean the mosque shooting. That was illegal. I mean part of having a free society means you have put up with people saying crazy nonsensical bullshit th…

Put a hundred people in a row. Punch them all in the face.

Most of them will be fine, at least eventually. A couple might develop permanent cognitive issues, or even die. But most of them will be fine. Yet it is not a reason for us to give people the permission (let's face it, you can't take away the freedom, they'll do it if they want to) to punch others in the face.

Maybe some day people will acknowledge that publishing things has consequences. Just like punching people in the face has consequences.

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

#274

Post by Khaine »

vmception wrote: post #196
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.

The US has strong speech protections, somehow when people are wrong in their beliefs about what that means they move the goal post to this mythical “ethical” free speech maxim. I dont believe in what those people imagine free speech means. I believe in the “first amendment” which includes freedom of association including for the non-government people that create venues and platforms. “We have the right to refuse serv…

Except you don't have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. It is against the law to refuse service on the basis of protected classes (i.e. race, sex, sexual orientation). These classes are thought to be immutable.

More and more evidence shows that political beliefs are inheritable[1]. Should that be protected? What about height? We know that shorter men earn less than taller men. Should short people be protected from short jokes? Should the government ensure short and tall people have the same salary? What about attractiveness? Again uglier people are less successful and have less sex. Should they be protected? Should the government put their finger on the scale to ensure ugly people have the same amount of sex?

Either, I should be able to discriminate on any basis, or I can't. The problem at the moment is we have it both ways, in ways that asymmetrically attack one particular group of people.

Nobody really things through any of these inconsistencies though because it doesn't impact most people. As the values in Silicon Valley have significantly diverged from large parts of the US, more and more people are being impacted by these policies.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/09/study-on-tw...

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

#275

Post by ojnabieoot »

technick wrote: post #73

I'm starting to look forward to the downfall of any of the FAANGs that become censorship happy. This shit has to stop and I know the 1st wasn't mean for private business, but now that private business has such a reach, it needs to be forced on them.

The thing is that private companies also have 1st amendment rights, and ideas like “we need to force FAANGs to do business with horrible racists like the people who run Parler” is much more of a threat to free speech than “Parler can’t buy a fleet of r4xlarge EC2 instances to broadcast their racist propaganda.”

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

#276

Post by treeman79 »

Have watched ad tech exes go out of there way to cut off any form of revenue to any center or right leaning site.

Was shocked out how routine it was for them.

To them shutting down alt view points was just fighting the good fight. Zero effort to comprehend the other side.

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

#277

Post by fakedang »

osobo wrote: post #239
colllectorof wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website. You are clearly ignorant of the kinds of shit actual YouTube alternatives have to deal with. Their websites and videos get de-ranked or de-listed from search (Rumble [1]), their apps get removed from app store (LBRY [2]), their infrastructure gets constant attacks (BitChute [3]). Meanwhile, the mainstream media smears them at every opportunity. This is nothing lik…

I never heard of these before. I wish there was a plugin that'd signal me if I visited a Google-owned platform and provided me with alternatives.

Good luck hosting such an extension on Chrome.

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

#278

Post by marcinzm »

jb775 wrote: post #199
marcinzm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is a perfect system, I support the one I feel has the best chance of ensuring a stable but evolving society. Not restricting things has resulted in the governing body of the US getting attacked by an angry armed mob inside a federal government building. So that's not a viable option for a stable society. The government is both subject to changing political whims and has a history of overusing it's control in…

How is it best for a society to evolve by suppressing diversity? In this situation, I'm talking about diversity of ideas relating to politics. Have you ever considered why Silicon Valley exists in America? It's because as America grew, it welcomed in people from all over the world with extremely different backgrounds with extremely different ideas about how to do things. Over time, that situation resulted in extreme…

>How is it best for a society to evolve by suppressing diversity?

Because radical change generally leads to very bad things so you want a slow evolution which means you suppress ideas so they spread more slowly and thus society has more time to process them properly.

>Over time, that situation resulted in extreme innovation where the best ideas prevailed.

And the existence of giant corporate beasts, massive wealth concentration, massive income inequality in the bay area, spread of socially destabilizing ideas, foreign influence over elections, privacy failures, etc., etc. And many would argue many of the ideas, especially recently, aren't revolutionary but rather simply better ways to cheaply exploit people and hide externalities (that society but not the company pays for).

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

#279

Post by ogre_codes »

bostik wrote: post #238
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…

Funny thing is, there might be a way out if we changed the incentives. Because let's be clear: FB, Twitter, YouTube, ... (and to a slightly lesser degree, Google) - they are all media distributors and opinion amplifiers. Much like traditional publishers. Only instead of creating or sourcing their own content, they syndicate. We also have to acknowledge that content moderation at scale is impossible.[ß] The lines are…

How would this even work with something like twitter?

Lets say Biden Tweets a big fat lie to his millions of followers. That lie in turn gets retweeted by millions of people. Next, Biden posts a retraction. Do all of his followers also have to post a retraction? Does Twitter have to implement some kind of retweet retraction mechanic?

What if the original user is obscure and someone famous quote tweets a big fat lie instead of inventing their own big-fat lie? Does it make a difference if the quoter was agreeing with the original?

How do you deal with users who refuse to post a retraction or even leave twitter entirely? Is there an auto-retraction? Who decides if and when something is retracted?

> The requirement to surface corrections as widely as the original item

Imagine for a moment you are running an obscure little website, "The 2nd amendment times", and you post a little story on your blog about how Obama is getting appointed to replace Biden in 2024 and he's coming to take everyone's guns. All 17 of your readers read your story and laugh it off except one passes it on to Rush Limbaugh who Tweets it.

Now 17 million people blow up your blog. You are featured on Fox News and dozens of top right-wing pundits repost your site.

Who is "accountable" here? How would this get retracted? If you post a new article on the front page of your blog saying you dreamt the whole thing after smoking too much weed, does that make it all good even though only your original 17 readers are likely to see this correction?

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

#280

Post by cudgy »

I understand perhaps sole enterprise or small partnership having the right to control who they serve. However, if it is a public corporation, it is no longer an individual entity, a citizen entitled to control over whom you serve.

Once your company is public and traded on markets within the United States, it is now available to any individual to become a partial owner. To claim that you represent an individual opinion about whom you want to serve is only figurative. These companies are owned by thousands maybe even millions of people with all types of beliefs.

What I am seeing right now with big tech are the voices of a dominant billionaire leader and noisy, radical employees steering decisions about who should be served by the company. This minority of people in a public corporation should not have this kind of power. Their decisions should be driven entirely by the legal system and what is legally allowed and who can be legally served.

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