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Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

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Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#61

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bitwize wrote: post #18
BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

New Zealand has a Censorship Office and an official called the Chief Censor. The government has the power to declare that certain communications are illegal and prosecute people for making those communications. They recently, famously did this with footage from the Christchurch shootings as well as the shooter's manifesto. Yet New Zealand consistently tops Cato Institute's freedom index. Maybe, just maybe, an absolut…

From a personal perspective, I don't want to have to wade through everyone else's "free expression", for the same reason that I don't want to have to wade through every company's advertisements. Experientially, I am less free when everyone can interrupt my brain space with what they want to shove at me. I want limited amounts of high-quality, interesting communication, not the noise of everybody's everything. (Think in terms of Shannon information theory.)

So I kind of see your point. Filtering out the garbage is no loss to me. It make me freer rather than less free. And yet...

The failure mode of the New Zealand approach is to have someone who is partisan hold the office of Chief Censor. Worse, someone who is a dedicate partisan might see the value of holding that position, and might deliberately, systematically seek it, hiding their partisan-ness until they obtained it. Sooner or later, someone's going to at least try.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#62

Post by quantumBerry »

faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

If all "legitimate" platforms ban hate speech, then users wanting to engage in hate speech will all go to some platform that radically allows all speech with disproportionately this undesirable speech. They will intermingle disproportionately with those spreading sexual abuse images, drugs, insurgent propaganda and instructional material, and other undesirable material. Facebook likely makes the problem worse by forcing these "hate speech" and "disinformation users" to be completely surrounded by people with repulsive content, instead of having their repulsive content critiqued and shamed by other users.

Having people with bad, hateful ideas out in the open I would argue is preferable to concentrating all these bad thoughts together with people that will reinforce that it is normal.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#63

Post by PerkinWarwick »

nescioquid wrote: post #48
api wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest and say that my faith in the capacity of people to think in a free speech totally open environment was severely tested over the past 5-10 years. Things like Qanon, flat Earth, antivax hysteria, the meme-driven return of both "right" and "left" totalitarian ideologies from the early 20th century that should be completely discredited, and so on have made me wonder if most people simply can't handle…

Chris Hedges sometimes remarks that he finds people turn towards superstitious, religious, or conspiratorial world views when they find they have no control over their lives. I suspect that if the US somehow changed so that economic security were increased for most people, there would be much less unreason and general discourse wouldn't be so mean.

That's an interesting theory, although I doubt that 19th century US farmers, among the most self-sufficient people in history, were lacking in religion, superstition, or conspiracies.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#64

Post by simonh »

naasking wrote: post #54
faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

Sure it worked at reducing hate speech on reddit , but is that the right objective? It's not implausible to think that the resentment from such local measures could cause hate to increase in a more global sense. Kind of like entropy in thermodynamics: local work can reduce local entropy, but at the expense of causing a global increase in entropy. If the real objective should be a global decrease in hate, then maybe l…

I suppose to the extent these channels of communication recruit and radicalise, if they are shut down they will not be able to recruit and radicalise. The act of shutting them down might infuriate regular users of these channels, but they’re already radicalised anyway.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#65

Post by duxup »

I am wary of the situation developing.

But I'm also wary of this idea that "well you just give the people tools to sort it out".

Mostly because:

1. It seems unrealistic as expecting people to peruse their own source code... That's a huge pain in the ass for most folks and they're just as likely to pick a bad filter or service to do that for them anyway.

2. Did that change anything about how a situation where GoDaddy and Google refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer?

I don't think it did....

Aren't we back at the start with these suggestions?

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#66

Post by beardyw »

> Anonymity and pseudonymity have played important roles throughout history, from secret ballots in ancient Greece to 18th century English literature and early American satire.

Sorry, I think anonymity is valuable in the world we find ourselves, but to suggest it was prevalent more than a few decades ago is really stretching things. Yes there are examples, but ordinary people just wouldn't do it. Now, to have say an email which is your actual name is a rarity even if you wanted it.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#68

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ggggtez wrote: post #15
BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech? YouTube banning antivax content is speech . You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance on important issues of healthcare? Churches spend all day every day taking stances on abortion. You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?

The problem is that Youtube is big enough, and carries enough of the global conversation, that we think it should be a common carrier. (Think of the phone company back in the day. They didn't care if you were literally the Nazi Party of America, they carried your phone calls just like everybody else's.) People kind of think of Youtube that way, even though, legally, Youtube isn't playing by those rules.

But there's also this two-faced evaluation of Youtube. When Youtube blocks the other side, people say "private company, First Amendment, they can carry what they want". But when Youtube blocks their side, people at least feel the violation of the "common carrier" expectation, and get upset.

So maybe it's time for us as a society to decide: Has Youtube (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google) gotten big enough and important enough that they should be regulated into some kind of "common carrier" status? Or do we want them to continue as they are?

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#69

Post by fighterpilot »

PerkinWarwick wrote: post #60
faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

>"Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. Which is fine I think, but why have Reddit or FB do the censoring (aside from things that are outright illegal). I don't much care if a bunch of Nazis or tankies are busy planning world domination on Reddit while sharing recipes. Why do you care?

> Why do you care?

Because zero moderation beyond criminal content is 8chan, which arguably inspired mass shootings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/04/three-m...

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#70

Post by naasking »

simonh wrote: post #64
naasking wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it worked at reducing hate speech on reddit , but is that the right objective? It's not implausible to think that the resentment from such local measures could cause hate to increase in a more global sense. Kind of like entropy in thermodynamics: local work can reduce local entropy, but at the expense of causing a global increase in entropy. If the real objective should be a global decrease in hate, then maybe l…

I suppose to the extent these channels of communication recruit and radicalise, if they are shut down they will not be able to recruit and radicalise. The act of shutting them down might infuriate regular users of these channels, but they’re already radicalised anyway.

There is little evidence that radicalization happens online [1]. It seems to require in-person contact to really take root.

[1] https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/internet-a...

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