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Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

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Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#71

Post by BurningFrog »

betterunix2 wrote: post #13
daenz wrote: post #5

Take what you support and imagine it used against you in the worst possible ways. Do you still support it? If yes, then it is worth supporting. If it's not, then maybe you're only supporting it because of who it currently helps or harms. This exercise also works with things that you don't support.

...which is exactly how I concluded that the censorship we see online is basically necessary. The worst possible ways that online speech can be used against me include being murdered by a lone-wolf terrorist who received instruction online. The worst that can happen to me from censorship being imposed is that I will not be allowed to say certain things online or challenge those in power, or possibly that I will be ex…

> The worst that can happen to me from censorship being imposed is that I will not be allowed to say certain things online or challenge those in power, or possibly that I will be excluded from these social networks entirely because the people in power do not like what I said -- which is certainly bad, but not quite as bad as being dead.

In the censored system, people in power can kill you, censor any talk about it, and no one will ever know.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#72

Post by Nursie »

spamizbad wrote: post #59
Nursie wrote: post #26

>First of all, the internet’s “marketplace of ideas” is severely lopsided at the platform level The marketplace of ideas itself has been show to be a bust in recent years, IMHO. Better ideas, better models of truth and reality don't win out. People have not shown themselves interested in intellectual debate or argument. We do not see the 'best' ideas rise to the top. And before anyone asks who I am to judge the best…

That's because the "marketplace of ideas" is being distorted by algorithms that are going to favor "provocative" ideas that drive clicks. Exciting lies defeat boring truths.

That may well be a big factor, and that's something that needs to be looked at more closely. Lots of people describe being drawn down the rabbithole by algorithmically driven suggestions which nudge them ever more extreme.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#73

Post by chroem- »

knownjorbist wrote: post #66
chroem- wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so long as the government doesn’t act as an authority to fuse censorship across all platforms They literally discussed how they're doing this last week during a white house press conference.

Did they?

Yes.

> We are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff

> https://www.newsweek.com/biden-administrations-admission-the...

Psaki also discussed how they're building blacklists of people so that if you get banned on one platform, you also get banned on all of the other platforms.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#74

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

Nursie wrote: post #26

>First of all, the internet’s “marketplace of ideas” is severely lopsided at the platform level The marketplace of ideas itself has been show to be a bust in recent years, IMHO. Better ideas, better models of truth and reality don't win out. People have not shown themselves interested in intellectual debate or argument. We do not see the 'best' ideas rise to the top. And before anyone asks who I am to judge the best…

> factually incorrect, scientifically illiterate, conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas

There are indeed some factual mistakes floating around, mostly around covid-is-just-a-flu and the-earth-is-flat discussions.

But usually shit hits the fan in social issues of poverty, homelessness, abortion rights and such.

Alas, there's no hard science in most of these issues. There is a bunch of plausible-looking speculations, philosophical theses and general thoughts. Pretty much like 17-th century physics, in 18-th century biology or 19-th century medicine were.

As for the ideas being harmful... What do we do with potentially harmful, yet factually correct statements, and does the same logic apply to beneficial, but factually wrong ones?

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#75

Post by UncensoredNews »

SpywareThrow wrote: post #2

This is a ridiculous take. You will get censored no matter how much you try to “talk” about it. You’re dealing with people who will nod, say uh huh, and carry on doing what they were doing regardless of what’s written. Nothing has really been accomplished in the last decade. It’s a one way ticket to surveillance and censorship.

There is a way to circumvent censorship. Read your news using RSS feeds.

Shameless Plug: I do that and [recommend the best articles](https://UnCensoredNews.us)

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#76

Post by [deleted] »

pueblito wrote: post #46
pjc50 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to policing in general of all kinds? Isn't this literally an "abolish the police" argument? After all, imagine the police used against you in the worst possible way ..

Surely one can conceive of effective ways to limit to damage the police can do to people short of abolishing the police. For example, disarm the police and they can’t shoot you.

[deleted]

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#77

Post by tomjen3 »

jacob2484 wrote: post #24

The people on the "right side of history" are usually fighting for freedom and liberty, not censorship and re-education camps

The people on the right side of history in WWII locked up their own citizens based on their ethnic heritage.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#78

Post by devwastaken »

I'm not concerned. If I ran a platform serving out qanon BS I'd ban and log their details. Terrorists don't get protections from a private company, nor should they. People don't understand just how insane these groups of people have become. Without FBI interference these terrorist groups would have murdered multiple state governors and carried out plenty of bombings. I'm not going to "be neutral" to such people.

1. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl..., "The Wolverine Watchmen group had been recruiting members on Facebook from November 2019 until June 2020, when Facebook began purging all boogaloo-related material."

2. AWS datacenter attack, https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/amazon/aws-data-center-s..., "Management has warned Amazon data center staff to be on the lookout for any suspicious activity following a comment on Parler that suggested “someone with explosives training” could “pay a visit to some AWS data centers,""

3. Sovreign citizen movement + violent plots, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...

4. Jan 6th : Pauline Bauer - https://youtu.be/rvgwR4kfQVs, Participated in the insurrection because "Democrats are behind pedo rings" - this is fabricated propaganda perpetuated on the net that we can how see has actual, real world harm.

5. 8Chan, https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/, hosted many form of illigal, harmful and predatory content, namely directions/links to CP, animal abuse, Revenge porn, coordinated harassment of groups and people for the purposes of suiciding other people. This is still there on their new site, but it is now a heavy hotbed of conspiracy nuts that believe they're the victims.

Plenty more that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#79

Post by wmf »

politician wrote: post #68

It would be workable to designate these social platforms as public spaces, removing liability for speech entirely off of the proprietors and onto the courts if we also implemented mandatory licensing for use of these networks. You can’t drive without a license and identification. It’s not dystopian to suggest that, as a society, we’re at a point where we need to insist on public places on the Internet and personal ac…

More "real names" policies won't do anything about misinformation. People are already mostly accountable for their speech, but since misinformation is legal that accountability doesn't do anything.

Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship

#80

Post by Nursie »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #74
Nursie wrote: post #26

>First of all, the internet’s “marketplace of ideas” is severely lopsided at the platform level The marketplace of ideas itself has been show to be a bust in recent years, IMHO. Better ideas, better models of truth and reality don't win out. People have not shown themselves interested in intellectual debate or argument. We do not see the 'best' ideas rise to the top. And before anyone asks who I am to judge the best…

> factually incorrect, scientifically illiterate, conspiratorial, harmful crank ideas There are indeed some factual mistakes floating around, mostly around covid-is-just-a-flu and the-earth-is-flat discussions. But usually shit hits the fan in social issues of poverty, homelessness, abortion rights and such. Alas, there's no hard science in most of these issues. There is a bunch of plausible-looking speculations, phi…

I don't know, I genuinely don't have a good solution - I'm pretty sure "ban it" is not one.

But I think we need to recognise, when we try to address this stuff, that our current picture of speech online is suffering not just from deplatforming, but also domination of some narratives by high volumes of motivated bullshit.

> usually shit hits the fan in social issues of poverty, homelessness, abortion rights and such.

flat earth is .... well I wouldn't put it with the most harmful ideas. It's clearly very silly, and not a great thing to propagate, but so far flat earthers haven't taken their beliefs out on the road, so to speak. Antivax, now that's harmful. There are certainly all sorts of grey areas and I wouldn't want to suppress discussion of safety, of risks from emergency approval or whatever, but when you get to "The vaccine makes you infertile" and "The vaccine will kill everyone that gets it" and "The vaccine contains 5G chips that they are going to use to track you", and such views actually start to impact the uptake...

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