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Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

nytimes.com

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Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#51

Post by JackMorgan »

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime.

If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice".

That said, I think it's going to take at least a few more decades before such a ruling is made. I suspect it will come along the lines that internet history is protected speech, and so it's a protected work category and is illegal to fire a person over. Once companies can just point to the law and shrug, then they can ignore the online mob.

Additionally, one would think cancelling should fall under libel and slander laws, and the accused would be able to go after the instigators.

It's uncomfortable when it's "your side" that finds it's goals at odds with human rights, but in the end we're all better off with defending basic human rights. Policing morality is infinitely more difficult and oppressive, no matter how much it really feels good at the moment.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#52

Post by blablabla123 »

JackMorgan wrote: post #51

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…

> In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal:

Which actions exactly should be illegal? I assume you don't want to make me force watching movies from certain producers that I don't like anymore. At the same time in some countries retail stores basically have to cater to everyone and already can be made liable if they don't sell something that they advertised for as long as customers stick to terms and conditions.

I rather think that excess cancelling and all that comes with it is a result of perceived injustices. Even if you come up with a very creative law unless these injustices are solved the symptoms will pop up elsewhere. That said, standards in society develop over time and probably the capacity for ambivalence is going to rise again. Also people tend to give more credit to things that have been worked for more than things that have been inherited.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#53

Post by AstralStorm »

blablabla123 wrote: post #52
JackMorgan wrote: post #51

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…

> In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: Which actions exactly should be illegal? I assume you don't want to make me force watching movies from certain producers that I don't like anymore. At the same time in some countries retail stores basically have to cater to everyone and already can be made liable if they don't sell something that they advertised for as long as customers stick to terms and conditio…

Political speech, in particular, is supposed to be protected from this kind of treatment.

Most importantly, accusations of bias are also not a valid reason to fire a journalist.

There's also an intermingling of private and public sphere, and firing someone for private legal behavior because some internet hive mind started a smear campaign also should not be lawful. Of course, America has the coercive institution of at-will employment, ruining any attempt at fixing it this way.

A good step would be filling class action defamation suit against a class running a smear campaign over barely public and irrelevant things. Consequences for setting up mobs. While platform is not liable, the users are. That could make some people think twice before doing it.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#54

Post by swiley »

freebuju wrote: post #42
captainmuon wrote: post #27

Instead of self censoring and deleting our past, we should solve the problem on the recipient's side, and harden ourselves against this kind of attack. When someone is booted out of office for the wrong reasons (even though it is "the right person", i.e. someone who's views I don't agree with) I speak out against it. If I was a politician, I would pledge before elections to never step down due to anything that happen…

The moment Twitter finally went mainstream, that was the death knell for "free" speech. Your employer, government agencies, religious & community leaders are all now on Twitter. Self censorship is not obligatory, it is a requirement to use the platform. Same thing to those family Whatsapp groups. I remember creating a Facebook account in my teenage years, most of my friends used nicknames on the account names. Why? B…

Free speech isn't dead, you just need to segregate your online identities.

This has always been true even before the internet.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#55

Post by ben_w »

JackMorgan wrote: post #51

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…

While I agree that the status quo isn’t stable and must change, I don’t think what you’re suggesting will be stable either.

The internet is one place where 99.9% compliance with a social norm or law isn’t good enough to prevent the remaining 0.1% from causing enough damage to be un-ignorable, even if you manage to get worldwide agreement on updating the law. (Consider that e.g. the UK does not have American freedom of speech, and if anything considers the American way of doing things to be strange and somewhat anarchic).

I sometimes wonder it would help if social media posts had to be deleted after a short period, perhaps a few months or a few years? (The pre-internet social media, being conversations and occasionally letters, was probably >99% forgotten in hours, and most of the rest was hearsay).

Or it would help, or make things worse, if it became easy for people to change identity?

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#56

Post by texaswhizzle »

Stop posting your life and thoughts on the internet! Privacy advocates have been screaming about this for years but no one seems to care until they have a gun in their face.

The really sad thing is the children. Parents uploading their kids entire lives and the kids have absolutely no way to opt out. Permanently giving your kid an online identity before they can even talk. Horrible thing to do to your child.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#57

Post by freebuju »

pjc50 wrote: post #47
freebuju wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment Twitter finally went mainstream, that was the death knell for "free" speech. Your employer, government agencies, religious & community leaders are all now on Twitter. Self censorship is not obligatory, it is a requirement to use the platform. Same thing to those family Whatsapp groups. I remember creating a Facebook account in my teenage years, most of my friends used nicknames on the account names. Why? B…

Interesting argument because it implies that launching more "free speech" platforms (e.g. Parler) is actually worse for free speech. Note that twitter still allows pseudonymity that you're talking about.

You may have misunderstood my argument. My contention is that a mainstream platform and free speech cannot co-exist. You can only choose one of the two options.

About Twitter allowing pseudonyms, it is out of the scope in this context as you cannot cancel a faceless person.

Am pro-free speech as I truly believe this was the original intention of the www and the communities that formed it. If the answer to this return in ideology is in more "free speech" platforms, then am personally more-than-ready to embrace the idea. No one should be policed in or victimized for sharing their opinions on the internet. I find it is so backward and cringy.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#58

Post by [deleted] »

makomk wrote: post #40
kragen wrote: post #9

Ironic that this is being posted by the NYT (though not as an editorial, I guess), who fired Quinn Norton within 24 hours because she'd embedded herself in Anonymous and consequently used the word "fag", years earlier. The mob framed her as anti-gay despite her having had an outspokenly bisexual life partner around that time.

It's pretty obvious that the reason the NYT is doing this is that someone was fired who they saw as being on the same side as them, for online speech they were extremely sympathetic towards, due to stuff dug up by Republican supporters. This particular issue is heavily tied to the US political divide: supporting Palestine is seen as a left-wing thing, and labelling those people as anti-Semites a right-wing tactic. Wh…

[deleted]

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#59

Post by JackMorgan »

tobesure wrote: post #44
0xy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to point out that Vox only labeled the edits and tweeted about it after they were caught red handed stealth editing their deception. The other "usual suspects" were all attacking lab leak theory in 2020, including CNN, Washington Post and the NYT. Washington Post's chief fact checker called it "debunked". These people are quite literally controlling the flow of information, given their secret contracts with Fa…

I think the situation is far more dire. The same types of political ideologues are taking over FAANG and other tech spaces, and other information outlets, like Wikipedia, where only "approved" or "authoritative" sources are typically accepted. Corporate and social culture have been hijacked by a sort of soft, insidious, growing authoritarianism and the consequences for the future of the west are severe, especially be…

Considering the Overton window, the argument could be made that today's "right of center" would have been considered dangerously extremist by the right a few decades ago, and that growing extremism is causing previously right leaning groups to apear to "change sides" and "ganging up" when they're not actually changing their stances at all, they're reacting to what they perceive as growing extremism. When a minority group gets more extreme, it appears to people in that group that everyone else is moving away, when in reality, it's them that are actually shifting beliefs.

Re: Our digital pasts weren’t supposed to be weaponized like this

#60

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

JackMorgan wrote: post #51

In the future I suspect cancelling will be illegal: the same way vigilante justice is illegal now. Causing a person to be fired/doxxed by a mob for an action that isn't even illegal (free speach) is no more morally noble then going and beating them up over a suspected crime. If a person commits a crime, then let courts decide, otherwise it's just mob rule and vigilante "justice". That said, I think it's going to take…

i have a question. What about "right to be forgotten" ? if doxing would be illegal in future, would that mean the crony capitalists like google and facebook would decide declaring your old photos and "stupid" past as "too important" and just like your AFK history is written and unchangeable.
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