Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#151

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 11:55 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #93

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part where he says that being snarky to vaccine deniers is literally just as bad as racism. > “Covidiots”, “Deniers” these are not rational counter-arguments, they’re slurs. Anybody employing them is not engaging in discourse but rather bigotry and prejudice. This is as inexcusable as racism. Over the past few years many have been challenged to examine their own biases and privilege, in certain contexts for perfe…

If the guy you responded to is not the author of that piece, he's connected to the site in some way. I do not believe his question is in good faith, but is an attempt to deflect any criticism by instead forcing his critic to defend and explain in detail any such criticism before he even attempts to defend his half-baked ideas.

Yeah, there's definitely someone mass-downvoting anyone who criticizes the piece in any way. Dunno if it's that guy or not. But it doesn't hurt to have clear, concise answers to deflecting questions in the comments for skim-readers to see.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#152

Post by CarelessExpert » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #145

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #75

I'm not going to comment on the author's credibility or overall quality of his arguments. However, I think he brings up a very important point: who gets to decide what's misinformation? * Private organizations are run by fallible humans, chasing money and reduced liability * Governments lie. If you don't believe me, read any history book * Scientists are not a spherical mass floating in a vacuum with a unified opinio…

"Misinformation" is one of the most brilliant propaganda coups of my life time. It does not exist. There is no such thing as "misinformation". There is only misinformation according to some party . "Google is going to remove misinformation from YouTube." sounds incredible laudable to the modern ear. "Google is going to remove things that are misinformation according to Google corporate policy." is much less compellin…

> It does not exist. There is no such thing as "misinformation".

Talk about highschool level sophistry. "Nah bro, there are no facts, everything is meaningless, the truth is a lie and all lies are true, man!"

Please.

> I do believe in objective truth.

Oh good, I'm glad you took the time to contradict yourself.

> However, if we had a mechanism for objectively determining it in a way we all agreed upon

So misinformation exists but we'll never be able to identify it?

I repeat: please.

The world is not flat. The anunaki don't exist. COVID vaccines don't contain microchips.

This isn't even a little bit hard.

Does it get hard in the muddy middle? Sure. But your claim that 'There is no such thing as "misinformation"' is pure bunk.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#153

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #108

asymptosis wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only engineers believe most of the important issues in the world actually have an objective answer to them. Was this really necessary? How many engineers do you know, and how many of them actually ascribe to this belief?

It's a playful jab at a category of people I am part of too, although I do not share that belief. The statement I made is wrong on purpose regardless (for light comedic effect): not only engineers hold that belief, nor are they the only ones who do. There is a significant overlap (higher than a random person's picked from the population) between engineers and what I would call "fundamentalist rationalists". That is,…

I'd honestly consider your take as lacking nuance. Or lacking a dimension.

Accepting uncertainty doesn't mean abandoning objectivity. On the contrary - difficulties in objectively measuring things or falsifying hypotheses are best handled with mathematical tools, which absolutely can work with uncertain quantities (that's what probability theory is for). Throwing hands in the air and saying "it's too difficult therefore there's no objectivity", or "it can go whichever way, so it may as well go the way I like", is not the solution.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#154

Post by fighterpilot » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

varelse wrote: post #141

fighterpilot wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's definitely not okay for a government to threaten a private company (through which most public discourse flows) into censoring its political opponents. It is no different in practice to a 1A violation. The extent to which this happens at all can be debated. But the principle of the matter should be clear, if it is shown to be happening, it is certainly morally wrong, it's anti-democracy and (although it's dif…

That's funny, I didn't hear any of this righteous self indignation during the last administration over its bogus antitrust threats. Were those okay with you or did it take you this long to work up a really good lather? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/05/trump-looking-into-antitrust...

This is presumptive whataboutism with fairly incendiary language. You don't know my views on this question and have lumped me in with am amorphous blob you've labelled "conservative". You might be surprised to learn that I am not against social media censoring hate speech, for example.

For the record, what Trump was doing was clearly authoritarian and had the intention of controlling moderation decisions on these platforms. It was anti-democratic and awful due to its underlying intentions. Ron DeSantis is trying a similar thing to Ben and Jerry's now.

However, I was and remain less concerned by this than I am with the influence of the Democratic Party on tech firms, mainly because the Republicans have so little influence despite the threats. You can see the power asymmetry (and revolving door) on display through a single example, the censorship of the Hunter Biden story on the eve of the election.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#155

Post by shkkmo » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #145

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #75

I'm not going to comment on the author's credibility or overall quality of his arguments. However, I think he brings up a very important point: who gets to decide what's misinformation? * Private organizations are run by fallible humans, chasing money and reduced liability * Governments lie. If you don't believe me, read any history book * Scientists are not a spherical mass floating in a vacuum with a unified opinio…

"Misinformation" is one of the most brilliant propaganda coups of my life time. It does not exist. There is no such thing as "misinformation". There is only misinformation according to some party . "Google is going to remove misinformation from YouTube." sounds incredible laudable to the modern ear. "Google is going to remove things that are misinformation according to Google corporate policy." is much less compellin…

> It does not exist. There is no such thing as "misinformation".

I'm sorry, but this is complete BS. If someone makes statements that they know are false, then they are a liar and are spreading misinformation. If someone makes statements for which they have incontrovertible proof, this is absolutely not misinformation.

Just because the gradients between those two are complex, doesn't mean that misinformation doesn't exist, just that the definition of "misinformation" is fuzzy (like so many other words.)

(I don't believe in objective truth or meaning. I do believe that communication is impossible without mutually shared subjective truths and meanings.)

Edit: The reality is that there is a significant amount of misinformation put out by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. Some of it (e.g. some press releases) is widely recognized but also generally tolerated. Some of it is partisan. Some of it is widely accepted as truth by almost everyone.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#156

Post by irrational » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #75

I'm not going to comment on the author's credibility or overall quality of his arguments. However, I think he brings up a very important point: who gets to decide what's misinformation? * Private organizations are run by fallible humans, chasing money and reduced liability * Governments lie. If you don't believe me, read any history book * Scientists are not a spherical mass floating in a vacuum with a unified opinio…

There is objective truth. Trump did not win the last election if you look at it in the right light. The absolute truth is, he lost. That isn’t misinformation. That can be applied to a myriad of other things. The earth is not flat. The vaccine does not contain microchips. Masks do prevent the spread of airborne disease. Jan 6th was an insurrection by the Republicans and not a tourist trip.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#157

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #65

Not sure if there's a more eloquent name for these kinds of "throw enough shit and hope some of it sticks" arguments but the article is very confused, from claiming ad hominem attacks are as bad as racism, to ranting about millenials and throwing in WMD's in Iraq for good measure. The actual key issue is somewhere in the middle of that article: > "When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate what is or is…

> Tech companies are large yes, but competitors are, as Google actually correctly put it at one point, one click away.

Except they're wrong. There's no meaningful competitors to choose from. The big tech platforms - and arguably most SaaS software - are not commoditized. There's no competitor you can just switch to. This is mostly achieved through purposeful incompatibility, and all kinds of network effects.

> Size is not an indicator of market power, inability to chose alternatives is.

Exactly. But in winner-take-all markets, the two strongly correlate.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#158

Post by refenestrator » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #156

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #75

I'm not going to comment on the author's credibility or overall quality of his arguments. However, I think he brings up a very important point: who gets to decide what's misinformation? * Private organizations are run by fallible humans, chasing money and reduced liability * Governments lie. If you don't believe me, read any history book * Scientists are not a spherical mass floating in a vacuum with a unified opinio…

There is objective truth. Trump did not win the last election if you look at it in the right light. The absolute truth is, he lost. That isn’t misinformation. That can be applied to a myriad of other things. The earth is not flat. The vaccine does not contain microchips. Masks do prevent the spread of airborne disease. Jan 6th was an insurrection by the Republicans and not a tourist trip.

That last one is a choice of descriptive words, not an objective truth.

Personally, my bar for 'insurrection' involves at least one gunshot. You can differ! But it's not objective.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#159

Post by vannevar » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

"Supposed to be" according to whom? It's fine that the author wants to run a social media company like an email service, and of course he's free to do that. But none of the major social media sites share that business model. Their revenue is based on engagement, and that model is deeply and inextricably entangled with their content and how it is pushed out to users. Are social media sites qualified to be arbiters of truth? Of course not, that's not their business model. But they're well within their rights to decide what content gets exposed to who on their service, and they've done that from the very beginning. People who are upset at being "deplatformed" are in the exact same position as SEO optimizers whose business gets gouged when Google changes their search algorithm.

If you want to make Facebook some kind of common carrier, you're going to have to outlaw all of its engagement-optimizing AI and targeted marketing, the very core of its business model. When you get on a platform to take advantage of exactly those tools, you can't complain when they change the rules on you---you knew the score when you signed up, you can save the crocodile tears.

Re: Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

#160

Post by proactivesvcs » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 12:12 AM UTC

If an organisation provides a service transparently, such as Akamai, Level3, DNS root servers etc. then they're plumbing and they should shift packets unless you or your systems are trying to break their plumbing.

If they run a service that you patronise as an end user then they can do what they want because if you don't like their terms of service you can go elsewhere.

Don't like f*c*book's terms or behaviour? Leave. YouTube keeps mistreating you? Leave. AWS repeatedly asks you to stop your users breaking the terms you agreed to? Leave.

I don't care if you can't get the clout or customers you want on Vimeo or Mastodon. I don't care if you don't think there is no viable alternative. You obey the contract you agreed to or you get kicked off. Organisations are not obliged to agree with you or serve you.

Lumping Internet-based organisations into "Big Tech" is a misnomer and I find it is frequently a sign that someone's about to go on a rant about something they either don't understand or are purposefully being obstinate about.