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

bombthrower.com

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

#231

Post by irrational »

refenestrator wrote: post #158
irrational wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was a gunshot. A woman died!

Why only a gun? What about the police officers that were beaten?

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #127
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…

> Unless someone explains to me, in plain English, why we ought to abolish the very important freedom of deciding for themselves who and how private entities do business with Just to set some parameters here, you would be fine with, say, a landlord refusing to rent an apartment to a black person?

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

achenatx wrote: post #97

Since the beginning of forums there have been trolls and misinformation. There has always been the option to ignore, either by not replying or by blocking an offender from their view. However my experience has been that 1) people are almost universally incapable of ignoring trolls. 2) it is somehow almost impossible for people to stomach banning a troll knowing the troll is still posting. The closest system that seem…

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by PhasmaFelis »

bena wrote: post #190
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh. Maybe not. As of late, in the past year or so, I forget the actual timeline, I've noticed a certain direction the overall tone of the comments and voting have taken. It's been a little frustrating (I guess that's the word closest to what I'm feeling) as I've typically viewed HN as a place that went more for technology and science rather than... other things.

> As of late, in the past year or so, I forget the actual timeline, I've noticed a certain direction the overall tone of the comments and voting have taken.

I've noticed the same thing. It's unsettling.

I haven't always agreed with the HN consensus on things, but until quite recently that consensus seemed to be honest and well-intentioned.

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

#236

Post by dane-pgp »

myrryr wrote: post #174
dane-pgp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why social media companies haven't tried letting users opt out of different categories of censorship. Presumably every user appreciates the anti-spam filtering these sites do, and anti-scam/phishing, but there should be a separate checkbox (ticked by default) for "Remove misinformation about covid/vaccines", and one for "Remove misinformation claiming the election was stolen", etc. Then the social media…

You could do that, but the end results will be the same as the social media sites which don't do moderation. They turn to shit, extremely fast. It isn't there wasn't a lack of social platforms which didn't try to remove moderation "because of free speech" but they don't last long before they collapse under their own crazyness, and the crazyness of their users.

I don't think such a site would collapse. Instead, it would fragment into different bubbles, some of which would be toxic to mainstream users, but users wouldn't see any of that toxicity without specifically opting in to it.

I imagine such a platform would turn out like Reddit, only better, since people who opt out of the consensus reality would probably have their messages only visible to like-minded users, unlike on Reddit where each user is trusted by default in each subreddit.

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

#237

Post by robertlagrant »

polskibus wrote: post #41

Exactly, tech giants are now a natural monopoly, which means we should force them to provide more utility than they want to give in exchange for tolerating their privilege. Either that or break them up.

MailChimp is not a tech titan.

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

#238

Post by robertlagrant »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #52
StuntPope wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the anti-vax material in that post?

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…

He didn't say they're as bad as racism. Inexcusable is not a synonym for bad.

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

#239

Post by robertlagrant »

justbored123 wrote: post #223

Why? The media companies have always done so. The press is and always was "patricians" of printing press discourse. You can't say whatever you like on a news paper. The TV companies and Cable companies are and always were "patricians" of tv programming. You can't say whatever you like on a tv program. The publishing companies are and always were "patricians" of the books. You can't say whatever you like on a book and…

There's no double standard. The post wouldn't decide whether to deliver a newspaper based on its contents.

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

#240

Post by joelbondurant »

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…

Blasphemy to the new official religion of the USA, The Science. There is one true Science, in Fauci's name we pray.
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