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

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341–350 of 600 posts

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

#341

Enragement equals engagement. If that's the world you want, good news, that's the world we have now. And the magic of AI and recommender systems has disrupted that old and stupid model of if "it bleeds it leads" to get you outraged faster and with far less effort than it used to take in the old and stupid days. But that's not the world I want to live in personally and if it takes some imperfect even sometimes ham-fis…

Perhaps our generation must suffer during an evolutionarily difficult time so that we do not end up in 1984?

Perhaps our generation must rely less on ridiculous hyperbole whose only benefit is to drive engagement and instead consider more compromise solutions to situations like this?

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you want our future determined by a few well-informed, rational people? Or do you want it determined by an ignorant, short-sighted mass? "I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."

Instead of making a snarky smear upon the faculty of what is probably the most coveted university in the world, why don't you just come out and make an informed argument on what you find so wrong with them? “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the…

As an immigrant to America, I have thought hard about the differences between it and the developing country I came from. We don’t have any shortage of intellectuals, and those Harvard professors export their ideas for the whole world. Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. I’m convinced that what we’re missing is ordinary Americans.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because uh, right now, we have Nazis. We do not, in fact, have Nazis. Allow me to re-phrase: Yes, censorship is bad, but which is worse: admitting a little bit of censorship, or Islamic Terrorists? Because uh, right now, we have Islamic Terrorists. At least one was real in the last couple decades.

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

[deleted]

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

#344

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…

> removing liability for speech entirely off of the proprietors

This is already the case. Operators of interactive computer services are not liable for user-generated content.

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

#345
post #188

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.

I don't think there is a marketplace of ideas that can be separated from the algorithms used to promote them. Every ordering of content is going to favour something, even chronological. Somebody will find a way to abuse any sorting mechanism you use

Give the user the driving wheel of the recommendation or open up the algorithms. It's not that complicated.

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because uh, right now, we have Nazis. We do not, in fact, have Nazis. Allow me to re-phrase: Yes, censorship is bad, but which is worse: admitting a little bit of censorship, or Islamic Terrorists? Because uh, right now, we have Islamic Terrorists. At least one was real in the last couple decades.

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

[deleted]

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because uh, right now, we have Nazis. We do not, in fact, have Nazis. Allow me to re-phrase: Yes, censorship is bad, but which is worse: admitting a little bit of censorship, or Islamic Terrorists? Because uh, right now, we have Islamic Terrorists. At least one was real in the last couple decades.

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

[deleted]

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because uh, right now, we have Nazis. We do not, in fact, have Nazis. Allow me to re-phrase: Yes, censorship is bad, but which is worse: admitting a little bit of censorship, or Islamic Terrorists? Because uh, right now, we have Islamic Terrorists. At least one was real in the last couple decades.

It is an ironclad fact that more Americans have been killed by right-wing domestic terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since 9/11.

[deleted]

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

#349
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"According to the American Cancer Society, for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined, the one-year relative survival rate is 20%, and the five-year rate is 9%." ( https://pancreatic.org/pancreatic-cancer/about-the-pancreas/... ) I would hesitate to say your prominent tech billionaire died because of diet choices.

He had a highly curable type of pancreatic cancer.

Fair enough. A (probably weighted average) prior on his pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor puts the 5 year survival rate at 54% instead of 9%. [1] It appears there are more pancreatic NET cases in the least favorable, "distant" SEER classification.

Nevertheless, there can be more factors at play than distrust of the medical community. Some people may want to live out the rest of their lives free from the harsh side effects of chemotherapy, for example. I wouldn't use his cancer treatment decisions to argue that tech elites make bad choices in the face of information, to bring us back to the broader discussion.

[1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/pancreatic-neuroendocrine-tumo...

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

#350
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how one could look at the current state of affairs regarding rampant misinformation online and say "yeah this is the best we can do without compromising our ideals". Its not good enough.

I think that's the real issue in all of this discussion: there is simply no will. It's too hard, it's too impossible, we've decided big tech has already won, we've ceded decades of open progress in tech to moguls who don't give the fuck about us, or we're so ideological that any step to the "left" or "right" is perceived as abdicating principles of freedom. My gp was a former-Jew (thanks anti-semites) that flew over…

Who is being murdered on a daily basis because of holocaust deniers?
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