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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

#111

Post by LatteLazy »

colordrops wrote: post #23
LatteLazy wrote: post #6

There are really 2 options here: 1. Live with the first amendment at section 230 as. That means things stay mostly the same. Big tech will continue to censor too many of the things I like and too few of the things I don't like. And we wait for the pre-internet generation to die off and be replaced so society can progress. 2. Restrict the 1st and force fact checking, fairness, neutrality, etc. This would get us back t…

Option 2 implies that there is some truly unbiased entity without conflict of interest that could both be able to handle speech vetting and also be allowed to do it. This is extreme fantasy.

I won't pretend I know what it would look like or how it should work. That said, it's not impossible to at least improve the current situation: removing at least some demonstrably false statements would be a start. Requiring "right to reply" and equal air time to different parties would be too.

Again, I don't really support this approach, I'm just pointing out it is what people presumably want since Option 1 is out of favour and that only really leaves option 2.

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

#112

Post by TheFalun »

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.

Or just have public audits of police forces and provide accountability and transparency into cases as necessary.

In addition good policing should be rewarded with significant bonuses.

Incentivizing good behavior will always Trump criticizing "bad" (often never defined) behavior.

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

#113

Post by khawkins »

ashtonkem wrote: post #64
jacob2484 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is either being censored or it's not. Regardless of the issue, I'll side with the side that is not censoring information.

A quick perusal through history will show that conflicts where one side is censorious and the other is not has basically never happened. Usually the winning side sweeps their misdeeds under the rug afterwards. See: US behavior towards communists and left wing groups during the Cold War, or censorship during WW1 and WW2. The whole "fire in a crowded theater" trope comes from the unanimous Supreme Court decision uphold…

Most people are openly taught about the misdeeds of the McCarthy era in schools and in public discussions. This wasn't swept under the rug, most people agree that it happened and wasn't a good thing.

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

#114

Post by pfraze »

PontifexMinimus wrote: post #45

Mandating interoperability, with ActivityPub and similar protocols, would help. In the long term I'd like to see a future where it's a normal thing for people to roll their own social media platforms, by putting a Raspberry Pi on their local network, downloading and configuring some open-source software, and the local nodes all talk to each other and doing so gives someone the same level of functionality that they to…

I’ve been writing a bit about that idea https://paulfrazee.medium.com/productizing-p2p-bff5aed95f6a

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

#115

Post by TheFalun »

betterunix2 wrote: post #108
eloff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." I will not sacrifice free speech for added protection from terrorists.

Free speech absolutism has not worked very well. Usenet was overrun by neonazis and all the interested discussions moved to moderated newsgroups/mailing lists/forums. A genocidal terrorist organization made effective us of various social media platforms to recruit large numbers of people to their cause and the world is a better place now that they have been banned. Right now we are missing one of our best chances to…

And how many people did those neonazis actually effect? How many more people saw that and immediately criticized the neonazis who wouldn't have seen them before?

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

#116

Post by notahacker »

readflaggedcomm wrote: post #109
justbored123 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tells you that "marketplace of ideas" is a dumb idea, because we already have proved a million times that people are not the rational creatures that we were sold we were for a long time. We are smart apes, but apes none the least: emotionally driven by our limbic system, very tribal and status seeking. Prone to rationalize all these basic impulses in a million different ways creating the illusion of rational ind…

If the algorithm distorts conversation, then how can you be sure it more accurately reflects human nature? How does something that isn't a marketplace of ideas prove it's dumb? Or should this question be punished by your algorithm?

The main agenda the algorithm has is selecting stuff human nature has a high propensity to click on...

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

notahacker wrote: post #116
readflaggedcomm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the algorithm distorts conversation, then how can you be sure it more accurately reflects human nature? How does something that isn't a marketplace of ideas prove it's dumb? Or should this question be punished by your algorithm?

The main agenda the algorithm has is selecting stuff human nature has a high propensity to click on...

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by throwawaysea »

justbored123 wrote: post #84
spamizbad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tells you that "marketplace of ideas" is a dumb idea, because we already have proved a million times that people are not the rational creatures that we were sold we were for a long time. We are smart apes, but apes none the least: emotionally driven by our limbic system, very tribal and status seeking. Prone to rationalize all these basic impulses in a million different ways creating the illusion of rational ind…

The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the timescale you want or with the tradeoffs you want while the truth settles out, but I think these claims that it doesn’t work are hasty.

Furthermore there isn’t a better alternative. Right now censorship from platform owners is abusively used to skew political discussions, using the pretense of factuality. I regularly see fact checkers make mistakes or make misleading claims or they inconsistent apply scrutiny. I see trusted organizations like old newspapers and health organizations (like the WHO) regularly make mistakes or sell their own speculation as incontrovertible truth. Trust cannot be given to a few lone entities. The marketplace of ideas doesn’t have this problem since it is decentralized.

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

#119

Post by betterunix2 »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #14
betterunix2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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…

You certainly must love the way things are going in Belarus then.

I prefer the way things are run in countries like France and Germany, where people understand the value of free speech in debating politics and spreading new ideas while also recognizing that some limits are necessary (e.g. limits on speech that promotes a resurgence of nazism).

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

#120

Post by Applejinx »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #90
spamizbad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is no doubt true (about how the algorithms work). At the same time what we see is that there is a market, demand, for misinformation. And some people are making money from that. Why is there so much misinformation about Covid vaccines and vaccines in general? Because people want to believe in such misinformation and because that allows websites to make money from their readership. Therefore the peddling of misin…

Because there are sociopolitical actors who can extract direct benefit from OTHER people believing misinformation to their detriment. You are omitting this motivation, and it's a significant factor, worth spending money and energy on if your motivation is to harm a population that you see as your enemy.

This assumes a global marketplace of information propagation. That's the new factor here: the actual motivation isn't all that new.

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