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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

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, that the sentiment of "limits speech that promotes resurgence of X" is the same that dictatorships like Argentina used against the "subversives" that would promote and bring about communism. When you allow the powerful to define "dangerous speech". Criticism of the government very quickly becomes dangerous when it's successful. We've seen it with everything related to covid where in some countries peo…

That is an absolutist argument. Sure, some countries have used censorship in abusive ways, but I very specifically mentioned Germany. It was widely recognized after World War II that a resurgence of nazism would have been disastrous for Germany, and censorship was imposed to prevent the hundreds of thousands of committed nazi party members from trying to reestablish nazism. Censorship was absolutely necessary because…

If my argument is absolutist then your argument is authoritarian.

Mine is a safer proposition for the oppressed, for the minorities, for those not algined with the politics of the elites.

The whole argument about Nazi resurgence really falls flat when you realize that people get called Nazis for spousing wrongthink politics.

Your whole proposition is "the dangers of Nazism are too great". That's the same tactic I mentioned of "the dangers of communism" are too great.

If you want, ignore dictatorships. The slippery slope in non dictatorships is extremely damaging.

You're not gonna limit your censorship either, as you suggest in your last line. You're going to use it against your political foes to continue in or seize power.

Your motte and bailey tactics to get people to accept "some censorship for their own good" and then censor their speech that goes against your politics by calling it "Nazism" is a way bigger threat than the actual chance of "Nazi ideology". There was a time the ACLU safeguarded the right to say the most abhorrent of views the same you make sure due process is served even with the alleged most abhorrent criminals.

It benefits everyone.

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

#522
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather than a fact checker maybe an algorithm could find opposing content and present this. That would force the user to make some "fact"-checks aka to think. needed to say that such an algorithms could/would be biased as well. What do you think of a small social network composed of vetted (and always subject to review) reasonably trustworthy and fairly unbiased but definitely open minded users who decompose, fact…

Almost everything will be "not really known for sure". So the next step to make it useful would be somehow count/vote and get "an X is more likely true than Y". Maybe even add % and now you essentially have "mob-fact-checking". Needles to say that the majority isn't a source of truth, especially not if you have a broad range of topics and a broad range of people so that for any given topic only a fraction of the peop…

If I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like you're kind of setting a goal of reaching something like "X is True"? My thinking is, very often (usually?) the best that can be done is to decompose X down to as fine grained sub-components as possible, and then tentatively flag things with True/False/Unknown...or maybe even something more fine-grained than that ("Seems True", "Seems False").

From my perspective, the biggest issues are that we refer to issues with extremely ambiguous names/perspectives, and we assert true/false where it is absolutely not finalized. I believe that if there was a system run by a transparent, independent organization that took the definitions and the epistemic status of these issues very, very seriously, some people would start to have some trust in them, especially if they developed a track record over time.

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

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the system actually worked tobacco would actually be banned and not almost. Despite being only able to smoke outdoors I still see many young people in Spain taking up the habit.

Why should tobacco be banned? That's just another war on drugs that didn't work for alcohol or pot, and isn't working for the current illicit drugs. People should be allowed to smoke what they want, as long as it isn't a health issue for others. If young people in Spain want to smoke outside or in their homes, so what?

Nobody starts smoking because they like it. They get roped into it by others.

Pretty much everyone I know regrets they ever started. That's the difference. Many other drugs are actually nice to use.

I don't want to ban it for those old people that have smoked all their lives. But that young people still take it up is worrying.

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

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are >90% very left leaning, which is common in elite academic institutes, but such groups are typically contemptuous of average Americans and their religious views. This would set up a likely conflict, such as what we got a hint of when the masses elected Trump as a big middle finger.

Why is it that the politics of academics is found to be so distasteful, when we accept the politics of businessmen such as Peter Thiel and Rupert Murdoch as a matter of course? In a country that had always worshiped technological innovation, why are academics who provide the very seeds of this innovation, disrespected so easily? Look where your governance-by-middle-finger got us. It got us an egomaniacal dotard, drun…

“ Look where your governance-by-middle-finger got us. “

Your??

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

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One academic's theories led to some failed governments, therefore academics are bad at country-building? No, that’s just the most egregious example. Circling back to my original point: I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes countries rich and how do you turn poor countries into rich ones. Academicians spend tons of time studying psychology, culture, politics can etc. But I can’t think of any of those theor…

> When Lee Kuan Yew, who made Singapore rich in a generation, talks about development, he doesn’t talk about academic theories. He focuses on the culture of the ordinary people. He (and most national leaders, elected or otherwise) works at too high a level to talk about academic theories in general conversation. You don't think he and the people working in his government studied economics, history, and politics? They…

> He (and most national leaders, elected or otherwise) works at too high a level to talk about academic theories in general conversation. You don't think he and the people working in his government studied economics, history, and politics? They just made Singapore prosperous by getting everyone to work harder and study more?

There is a difference between people with judgment governing with the advice of academics, and putting academic theories directly into action. A good example during pandemic were governors who listened to doctors but applied their own judgment after listening to other stakeholders, and those who outsourced decision making to credentialed experts.

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

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that the politics of academics is found to be so distasteful, when we accept the politics of businessmen such as Peter Thiel and Rupert Murdoch as a matter of course? In a country that had always worshiped technological innovation, why are academics who provide the very seeds of this innovation, disrespected so easily? Look where your governance-by-middle-finger got us. It got us an egomaniacal dotard, drun…

First, lumping engineers in with the bulk of academia is disingenuous to say the least. Second, what does it say about the desirability of what’s being sold by the technocratic elite that half the country voted for a second term for the egomaniacal dotard (for he surely was that), and most of the other half of the country got behind Joe Biden, a man from a working class background, a graduate of a second tier univers…

The “politics of academics is distasteful” because they too often lack any basis in the lived experience of real people.

You point to Trump, but I’d note that not even Democrats like the academic social engineers. On Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren (a Harvard professor) had an embarrassing performance. Even in NYC, home of the country’s technocratic elite, voters passed over the technocrat in favor of someone who promised to carry a gun to church as mayor.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having the government writing censorship rules sounds absolutely dystopian to me. No, because our court system could prevent any censorship that infringed on our rights. It is better to have our court system stop people from censoring too much, than it is for there to be zero rules at all, as to what could or could not be censored.

> No, because our court system could prevent any censorship that infringed on our rights No they can't. The legislature would. Do you trust Nancy pelosi and Ted Cruz to write censorship rules you agree with?

> No they can't. The legislature would

Yes the courts would. Lol. Any laws that infringe on our rights, can be struct down by the court system.

Thats literally the point of the court system. To strike down laws that infringe on our rights.

> Do you trust Nancy pelosi and Ted Cruz to write censorship rules you agree with?

Hey, at least if they write them, the courts can strike them down, if they infringe on our rights.

At least there is some check and balance there, where our court system, will strike down laws that infringe on our rights.

I'd rather have that then no court system being able to strike any of it down.

If you want to suggest that the court system should be able to strike down FB censorship rules, that would work as well though!

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

#528
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, that has the public square embodied in a few big systems. If it were me, I would have those regulated to be like utilities. Pre internet, business was done via phone. Deplatforming = not allowed to have a phone, and that basically did not happen.

Deplatforming doesn't apply to phones because phone communication is fundamentally different from social media. And prior to the internet, deplatforming still existed: when would you ever hear anyone make neo-nazi arguments on any of the broadcast tv networks?

Well, broadcast has been gatekeeping on a LOT of fronts for a very long time, nothing new there.

When do we see economic reporting from the labor point of view, for example? We don't on broadcast anymore. And after massive media consolidation, that reporting only happens via indie media, and it's largely via the Internet, discoverable through social media.

The answer to broadcast issues was public access broadcasting, and the likes of PBS. That sort of worked, except for underfunding and the need for big business to underwrite most of the programming.

In terms of social media, what is needed is process. Trying to do business today without it is similar to not having a phone. However, let's set that aside and just look at conflict of interest and speech issues.

The major players are the public square today. Whether that was intended isn't the point. That they are, is.

Back when Alex Jones was deplatformed, a lot of us, myself included, said we were headed down this increasingly difficult road today, and here we are. We were also frequently judged as being some supporter for Jones. (I am not, but see his case as being high value for this discussion)

Process needs to be there to manage expectations, provide opportunity for improvement, provide consistency and all the basics needed. In other words, some growing up needs to happen. Costs are higher, risks are higher, and the money is more than good enough.

Without it, what we've got is a very highly arbitrary, quite easily abused system that far too many people depend on for important discussions. Look at the folks advocating for direct democracy. They assume all this is here, working properly, and working for us, not against us.

The neo-nazis were on public access BTW. I seen 'em, along with quite a few others on the mandated access channels.

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

#529
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Not anyone has the power they do

The point is that if they're simply responding to consumer demand, then it's collectively us who are the censors.

If we were the censor, we would have the government do it (which represents us). Facebook's opinion of what they perceive to be morally dubious does not represent anyone but facebook themselves.

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

#530
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think it's a major issue in political discourse when people begin to identify with labels and slogans, and treat them as prescriptive (ideals to be adhered to) rather than descriptive (approximate reflections of one's current general beliefs). Surveys consistently show that most of us agree on far more than we disagree when questions are phrased in politically neutral terms. People quickly realize when they…

I put this to a test over a couple years of business travel. While bringing up a field service group, I had a period of high travel taking me all over the US. I enjoy politics, culture and people and am frequently frustrated with the left - right, very tribal political discourse myself. So, what I did was find coffee shops and any other events where people might gather and enjoy conversation and had a bunch of chats…

I associate coffee shops with certain kinds of people. Not universally, of course, but enough to wonder if you were seeing a restricted set of people with whom you were better able to hold those conversations.

You mention other events, so perhaps I'm totally wrong here. But I'm curious about the ways that the events you picked may have shaped the conclusions that you drew.

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