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

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

#251

Post by freedomben »

3grdlurker wrote: post #224

Isn’t this just a consequence of American capitalism? Incentivise companies to optimize for profit, and they’ll do anything to rake in more ad money including violating people’s privacy and curating user-submitted content. We’ll have to fundamentally rethink entire economies before we could see large companies (if they would be, at all, allowed to exist) acting ethically.

I don't know why you're downvoted, because I think this theory on the cause is among the more interesting and nuanced comments. I think you've got an interesting observation there worth considering deeper. Perhaps they disagree with your Marxist conclusion?:

> We’ll have to fundamentally rethink entire economies before we could see large companies (if they would be, at all, allowed to exist) acting ethically.

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

#252

Post by freedomben »

varelse wrote: post #116
mancerayder wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Us guys? You're making a lot of assumptions. One of the saddest and most frustrating aspects of big tech's narrowing of permissible discourse is the association of defenders of discourse with red ties, right wing ideas and all of that. An Intro to Constitutional Law course or book would demonstrate how false that is, that up until only a decade or less ago, conservatives were the ones assaulting free speech. And Prog…

Cool, how about some specific references to settled cases that are relevant to the situation rather than vague references to law books? Back in the day, I remember how Tipper Gore was all about warning us of the dangers of explicit lyrics and videos and she wasn't a conservative or have I lost track of who's on which team? Disliking what became of one political party because of the embrace of a demagogue does not nec…

Hobby Lobby I know, but why not Carl's Jr?

Edit: Ah, I see the founder (who died in 2008) donated and supported anti-gay causes and anti-abortion

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

#253

Post by dragonwriter »

varelse wrote: post #116
mancerayder wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Us guys? You're making a lot of assumptions. One of the saddest and most frustrating aspects of big tech's narrowing of permissible discourse is the association of defenders of discourse with red ties, right wing ideas and all of that. An Intro to Constitutional Law course or book would demonstrate how false that is, that up until only a decade or less ago, conservatives were the ones assaulting free speech. And Prog…

Cool, how about some specific references to settled cases that are relevant to the situation rather than vague references to law books? Back in the day, I remember how Tipper Gore was all about warning us of the dangers of explicit lyrics and videos and she wasn't a conservative or have I lost track of who's on which team? Disliking what became of one political party because of the embrace of a demagogue does not nec…

> Back in the day, I remember how Tipper Gore was all about warning us of the dangers of explicit lyrics and videos and she wasn't a conservative

Al Gore was long known as a conservative Democrat, and his taking up his wife's singular political issue was in line with that; in fact the WSJ complained about his supposed reinvention as a liberal in 2000 during the campaign. (Weirdly, complaining that he had done so in aligning with Clinton, who also was, even as President, a conservative Democrat; this was a partisan campaign hitpiece more than anything, Gore’s actual reinvention as anything but a conservative Democrat didn't really happen until after he was out of electoral politics, when he became a single-issue campaigner on climate change.)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB966909158678552096

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

#254

Post by PhasmaFelis »

robertlagrant wrote: post #238
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…

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

He uses the words "slur", "bigotry and prejudice", "as inexcusable as racism", and "lacks self-awareness and empathy to the same degree as a racist".

Does that seem any more reasonable and rational than "as bad as racism"?

I could even get behind the basic idea that ad hominem attacks are always bad, except that he's already launched an ad hominem attack against what he assumes are "purple-haired Millennials with nose hoops and personal pronoun mood-rings" in the same article! I don't see how to read this as anything but "snarky insults are reprehensible when they happen to me and totally justified when I throw them at someone else."

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

#255

Post by smsm42 »

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…

The answer to this question is obvious - it's an exercise of pure power. Any time you hear anything about "misinformation" the real thing they are talking is power. Whoever has the power can censor those that do not have it and deny them chance to express their views. The guise under which it is done is immaterial - today it's health, tomorrow it's climate change, next day it's electoral politics or terrorism or vegetarianism or gender issues or bee colony collapse. Anything can be used as a basis for censorship, once you have the power and the will to censor. And the power to define what "misinformation" is and the power to censor is one and the same. It's not about seeking the truth, it's about seeking control and domination.

Once, in America, it was universally acceptable that censoring speech is not the power somebody should get. Neither the government, nor anybody else. Of course, as with every ideal, the reality sometimes came short of it - there are many infamous examples of censorship, both governmental and otherwise, that happened in America. But those ultimately were realized as conflicting with the ideal - and ultimately, the ideal won and they have lost.

Today, this ideal is increasingly being abandoned - for the large parts of the Left, have already completely been abandoned - for the ideas of "safety" and narrow partisan political considerations. The nation - and the whole culture we call "Western culture" - will suffer a lot and regret a lot if we don't find a way to stop it.

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

bena wrote: post #175
refenestrator wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So insurrections were only possible after the invention of firearms? That's weird. And I'm assuming you mean one gunshot "from the aggressors" as one of the Capitol Police officers did fire their weapon in defense of the Capitol. What would you call a group of armed people who forcibly enter a building in order to disrupt the work of a government and install an unelected leader to a position of power?

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by irrational »

refenestrator wrote: post #249
irrational wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a gunshot. A woman died! Why only a gun? What about the police officers that were beaten?

A gunshot by the alleged insurrection. Getting shot does not make one an organized rebellion attempt. In a nation with as many guns as America, especially in the right wing demographic, I'd expect some shooting and a lot more organization before I upgrade from 'riot'. Insurrection is just political spin. Look at that picture with the goofball holding the speaker's podium and tell me these people were serious.

That goofball who is currently in prison awaiting trial and will end up in federal prison for a long time to come? We must have different definitions of serious.

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

#258

Post by lostmsu »

An attack on the title: what the author does not realize, is that plumbing is not limited to the person who comes to their house to fix pipes. The majority of plumbing is from some water source to cleaning facility to your house and then back to treatment facility and finally back into nature. And that major part is actually mostly managed by "patricians".

Not that I support tech giants invasion in private lives. But when thought through the analogy works against the author's favor.

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

#259

Post by voidnullnil »

This title is a good way of phrasing a piece of common sense people have been trying to get rid of.

Also similar: "Mechanism not policy"

> It is almost impossible to envision all of the different ways in which a system might be used by different types of users over the life of the product. This means that any hard-coded policies are likely to be inadequate or inappropriate for some (or perhaps even most) potential users.

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

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

#260

Post by voidnullnil »

jeffbee wrote: post #10

These guys are parody-proof. "In my blog which is indexed by Google and Microsoft I reiterate the arguments from my book, available on Amazon, about how big tech is deplatforming me."

It's really cringe. I feel like we'd all be on something like Freenet right now not giving a shit about some company's web hosting server if Napster wasn't intervened.
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