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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

#581

Post by catlifeonmars »

ashtonkem wrote: post #52
catlifeonmars wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not platform-specific moderation? All social media content is available for consumption by a set of platforms the user authorizes. Those platforms are free to filter or moderate the content as they see fit. While not explicitly spelled out in TFA, this seems like the trivially obvious implementation.

Don’t we already have platform specific moderation? Isn’t that what people are complaining about?

We have platform specific moderation, in conjunction with high switching costs. If the content and connections themselves are owned by the platform then you have high switching costs. If the content and connections are instead owned by the user and all platforms share a compatible protocol for exchanging content/connections data, then the switching cost vanishes because there is no switching.

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

#582

Post by jhanschoo »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #477
jhanschoo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take a moderate example to support the idea that we cannot nevertheless have a threshold where we can be sure that something is false. But while we cannot clearly say where the land ends and the ocean begins, there are large swaths of places that we can positively identify as ocean. The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship i…

> The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship is easy. Disagree. This is what OP said, among other things: "We absolutely can, as a society, say that (for example) misinformation about vaccines, where we are dealing with matters of fact, is not on a level with actual vaccine science. This is not really up for honest debate."

You are confusing the identification of certain statements as false (which is easy for some things), with the enforcement of censorship (which OP does not claim to have).

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

#583

Post by jhanschoo »

exporectomy wrote: post #444
jhanschoo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take a moderate example to support the idea that we cannot nevertheless have a threshold where we can be sure that something is false. But while we cannot clearly say where the land ends and the ocean begins, there are large swaths of places that we can positively identify as ocean. The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship i…

Here's a claim that's definitely in the ocean - Mohammed is the messenger of God. Do you want that claim banned from the internet because it's clearly false (God doesn't even exist)? Do you want to exterminate Islamic faith? Just because it's wrong, doesn't mean nobody should believe it or be exposed to it.

That particular statement is in fact neither known to be true nor false for some definitions of the Muslim God, since there is no secular evidence for the existence nor non-existence of God for those definitions of the Muslim God.

But I agree with the point you are trying to make, that many people have false beliefs crucial to a societal institutions that cannot realistically be suppressed by heavy-handed censorship without also destroying meaning and satisfaction for many people, and also the society itself. And of course, holy texts often contradict themselves, yet some consider all of it true.

However, you are arguing against a strawman, since OP never claimed to have a solution, nor even that censorship was the appropriate response, not do I claim that either.

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

#584

Post by the_gipsy »

tekknik wrote: post #571
the_gipsy wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically. I'm not American, hell I can't even remember which of democrats/republicans are more or less conservative - or which animal logo is which. What I'm saying is, that using the narrative makes you sound like a conspiracy nutjob that insinuates that there is some conspiracy…

> Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically. How come dems always revert to whataboutism? We’re not talking about biased news. We’re talking about concerted efforts by multiple groups of people to create a single unified voice for their party. Also do you get that you can not be a dem and also not be a republican…

This is clearly not whataboutism. I’m not gonna debate why, I leave that as either an exercise for you, or tale it as a trolling attempt.

> you can not be a dem and also not be a republican

False dilemma.

> Oh it’s no conspiracy, it’s a unified party fighting what they view as an enemy. The nutjob thing is just stupid already. In fact you’re starting to sound like one for having such and issue with it.

Sure sure

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

#585

Post by baobabKoodaa »

jhanschoo wrote: post #582
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship is easy. Disagree. This is what OP said, among other things: "We absolutely can, as a society, say that (for example) misinformation about vaccines, where we are dealing with matters of fact, is not on a level with actual vaccine science. This is not really up for honest debate."

You are confusing the identification of certain statements as false (which is easy for some things), with the enforcement of censorship (which OP does not claim to have).

Ok. Allow me to rephrase: can you point to a single example where an entity was given power to decide which statements are false (for censorship-related purposes) and subsequently did a good job? To be specific, I mean doing a good job of identifying which statements are false and which statements are true.

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

#586

Post by noxer »

mistermann wrote: post #522
noxer wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bigg…

>...a goal of reaching something like "X is True"?

Not really, It would serve no purpose, only the people who agree with it will agree with the system that outputs "their truth".

I dont think the goal should be such a system because I think is will be flawed no matter what and also because I think people should be triggered to think and not feed with simplified "facts".

People would also do better if they stop caring about a lot of "garbage" facts they get feed every day if they would actually need to think and build an opinion on something.

Instead they get a opinion presented and either take it or reject it based on bias mostly. This is not useful. It would be better if a person who's not sufficiently interested in the topic simply does not have an opinion on it. At lest if at a later point he gets interested he would then not be preoccupied by past "copied/rejected opinions". Many people today have very strong opinion on very irrelevant topics and can hardly reason their stance because it dint "grew" in them it was mostly planted/absorbed from media.

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

#587

Post by baobabKoodaa »

jhanschoo wrote: post #583
exporectomy wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a claim that's definitely in the ocean - Mohammed is the messenger of God. Do you want that claim banned from the internet because it's clearly false (God doesn't even exist)? Do you want to exterminate Islamic faith? Just because it's wrong, doesn't mean nobody should believe it or be exposed to it.

That particular statement is in fact neither known to be true nor false for some definitions of the Muslim God, since there is no secular evidence for the existence nor non-existence of God for those definitions of the Muslim God. But I agree with the point you are trying to make, that many people have false beliefs crucial to a societal institutions that cannot realistically be suppressed by heavy-handed censorship…

> However, you are arguing against a strawman, since OP never claimed to have a solution, nor even that censorship was the appropriate response, not do I claim that either.

OP strongly implied that it's easy to distinguish which claims should be censored and which claims should not be censored. This is complete fantasy.

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

#588

Post by robertlagrant »

UncleMeat wrote: post #222
robertlagrant wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can only happen if you gave government the ability to throw you in prison for that, and then somehow a tiny minority got into government and abused the power you gave them.

> That can only happen if you gave government the ability to throw you in prison for that Why? The universe won't stop anybody from doing that just because laws exist. Authoritarians will not be halted by existing laws or norms. That's what I'm worried about. And that's why things like preventing fascists from organizing in public has merit.

> Authoritarians will not be halted by existing laws or norms

I think this is exactly what they will be halted by. 1930s Germany was full of propaganda against Jewish people and other countries. Why bother doing that if authoritarians can just snap their fingers and force people to do things?

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

#589

Post by tekknik »

the_gipsy wrote: post #584
tekknik wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically. How come dems always revert to whataboutism? We’re not talking about biased news. We’re talking about concerted efforts by multiple groups of people to create a single unified voice for their party. Also do you get that you can not be a dem and also not be a republican…

This is clearly not whataboutism. I’m not gonna debate why, I leave that as either an exercise for you, or tale it as a trolling attempt. > you can not be a dem and also not be a republican False dilemma. > Oh it’s no conspiracy, it’s a unified party fighting what they view as an enemy. The nutjob thing is just stupid already. In fact you’re starting to sound like one for having such and issue with it. Sure sure

> This is clearly not whataboutism. I’m not gonna debate why, I leave that as either an exercise for you, or tale it as a trolling attempt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I leave that as an exercise to you. This quite literally fits the definition.

Agree with the rest or not, lets see what happens in 2022! Dems keep digging a hole for themselves acting this way.

Also, speaking of trolling, remember you took issue with emphasis and still haven't disproven that the narrative doesn't exist. So this entire post chain is a troll attempt by yourself.

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

#590

Post by mistermann »

noxer wrote: post #586
mistermann wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bigg…

>...a goal of reaching something like "X is True"? Not really, It would serve no purpose, only the people who agree with it will agree with the system that outputs "their truth". I dont think the goal should be such a system because I think is will be flawed no matter what and also because I think people should be triggered to think and not feed with simplified "facts". People would also do better if they stop caring…

> Not really, It would serve no purpose, only the people who agree with it will agree with the system that outputs "their truth".

Does this not assume that people's minds cannot be changed? I understand the generalization you're making and very much agree with it, but I suspect we differ greatly on the underlying causality.

> I dont think the goal should be such a system because I think is will be flawed no matter what...

Is "perfect is the enemy of good" relevant here, and perhaps also "perception is reality", and some others?

> and also because I think people should be triggered to think and not feed with simplified "facts".

100% agree. A proper system would have numerous goals and features, I imagine you can think of many that I overlook (despite how much more time I've spent thinking about this problem).

> People would also do better if they stop caring about a lot of "garbage" facts they get feed every day if they would actually need to think and build an opinion on something.

This is a fine idea - how might one cause (force) such ideas to manifest in physical reality?

> Instead they get a opinion presented and either take it or reject it based on bias mostly.

Under the current system, agreed.

> This is not useful.

That depends on one's perspective, goals, etc - it is immensely useful to some people.

> It would be better if a person who's not sufficiently interested in the topic simply does not have an opinion on it. At least if at a later point he gets interested he would then not be preoccupied by past "copied/rejected opinions". Many people today have very strong opinion on very irrelevant topics and can hardly reason their stance because it dint "grew" in them it was mostly planted/absorbed from media.

Agree again - so, what can be done to alter this state of affairs? What is the most efficient approach that can be devised and implemented (and, how might one go about that)?

The lack of systems & logical thinking on HN when it comes to certain topics is an extremely interesting phenomenon to me, what do you think?

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