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Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

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Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#131

Post by ForHackernews »

tomnipotent wrote: post #102
ForHackernews wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually true? Don't those companies (maybe not Apple) maintain "shadow profiles" to track non-users? https://reclaimthenet.org/google-is-building-shadow-profiles... https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-shadow-profiles/

A tracking pixel on a website doesn't make me that pixels customer, anymore than being photographed by a photographer on the street makes me their customer.

By that standard, most Google and Facebook users aren't customers anyway. Nobody pays to use Google Search or Facebook.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#132

Post by lostmsu »

krapp wrote: post #115
lostmsu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are quite naive or selectively blind. Someone just posted this in another comment thread: https://twitter.com/GaiaRiot10/status/1468787960216797190

And yet oddly, the entire Twitter thread that agrees with Gaea Opines, and presumably their politics, hasn't been banned. Gaea Opines, themselves, hasn't been banned. Other Instagram posts and comments more extreme than that one haven't been banned. Other Twitter comments more extreme than that one haven't been banned. One removed comment does not an all-encompassing, democracy threatening conspiracy against a specif…

Then you theory is exceptionally hard to disprove, as someone would have to come up with a huge number of individual examples to have "statistical significance".

There are also a few websites, whose entire domain is banned in Facebook Messenger. It was discussed here previously. thedonald.win is a political example of such censorship. I think The Pirate Bay links are banned in Facebook itself.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#133

Post by Kinrany »

gentleman11 wrote: post #119
karl11 wrote: post #3

Just to make sure I understand this — the argument is that in order to combat authoritarianism, Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?

If, hypothetically, there were 1/3 people who are legitimately easy to manipulate online, then in that hypothetical scenario, what would be a good response that didn’t involve censorship? What comes to my mind is that it’s largely the algorithms fault. They hyper optimize for strong emotional reactions and not at all for truth or value. It’s the social media companies that are forcing this insane content down peoples…

> what would be a good response that didn’t involve censorship?

Educate people. Replace advertisement with search tools and opt-in configurable recommendations.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#134

Post by christophilus »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #52
smt88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those governments (and the ones in the US) are at least beholden to voters. Large companies have no accountability, and if they disrupt the democratic process, they have no consequences either. Mark Zuckerberg is the authoritarian ruler of an extremely powerful entity that, in some countries, is more powerful than any local government.

They're "beholden to the voters" only in an aggregated sense. Most democracies are representative, so if there's an elite consensus around an issue, it's easy to end up in a situation where a few unpopular policies get enacted or a few popular policies don't. This is ultimately too niche of a topic for many people to be single-issue voters about.

This, and at least in the US, your choice is really between two candidates who are— in practice— virtually identical on most issues. Want to vote for a pro-privacy, anti-war, anti-monopoly, fiscally responsible, forward-thinking candidate? Great. Your candidate will get 0.0001% of the votes. The Republican and Democrat machines don’t give anyone else a chance.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#135

Post by perl4ever »

pessimizer wrote: post #122
cletus wrote: post #28

> How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity of facts? This one is easy. There is no integrity of facts. No matter what standard you use you will have cases where reasonable people disagree. Historians argue about interpretation of facts all the time. There is no universal objective truth. You can argue that you don't need absolute integrity and just clamp down on the fringe stuff but that just s…

> I don't care if someone was a felon or you think they're not informed enough (who decided that?). I don't even care if somebody is currently in prison; I think every prison needs a polling place and facilities for on-site journalists/reporters who are covering what is going on inside. If your elections could be significantly moved by the votes of prisoners, you live in a failed state.

I have seen it claimed that in the US, elections are significantly moved by the votes of prisoners, in the sense that, while prisoners may not vote, they are counted as inhabitants of the county they are imprisoned in, so they increase representation of those who can vote nearby.

Locations of prisons tend to be rural and have very different demographics from the places where prisoners would otherwise be living.

Deciding to let prisoners vote needs to be followed up by a decision on whether to let them vote as if they returned to their former home, or in the location of the prison.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#136

Post by 8note »

jakear wrote: post #40
smt88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those governments (and the ones in the US) are at least beholden to voters. Large companies have no accountability, and if they disrupt the democratic process, they have no consequences either. Mark Zuckerberg is the authoritarian ruler of an extremely powerful entity that, in some countries, is more powerful than any local government.

> more powerful than any local government I’ll believe that when I see FB agents smashing down doors to imprison (/kill) activists.

Why do that when they can push the activist down a depressive spiral into suicide?

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#137

Post by markvdb »

seany wrote: post #120
markvdb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friendlier reading. Social media algorithms amplify whatever is most profitable to amplify. Unfortunately, amplifying sh t flinging turns out to be the most profitable. Social media companies have encoded this preference into their algorithms from the very beginning and optimised - a/b tested- for profitability along the way. Social media are deliberately hiding gems under piles of - pardon my french- sh t.…

You can say shit on the internet...

Shit, I didn't know that!

Serious face back on.

Have you ever seen a concise word for algorithmicly-drowning-people-in-shit-on-social-media-because-profit?

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#138

Post by aunty_helen »

F6F6FA wrote: post #77
1cvmask wrote: post #5

If they were going to give their award to a truly deserving recipient it would have been the tortured and imprisoned journalist Julian Assange who is an advocate of free speech and an independent media and voices. Instead they gave the awards deliberately to censorship advocates. It's the journalistic equivalent of giving war criminals and killers of children Nobel Peace Prizes like Kissinger and Obama. https://www.h…

How can you have integrity of the justice system if you don't have integrity of facts? What you call torture, is the isolation and lack-of-stimulus we put all prisoners through. This treatment is not specific to harass Assange, but Assange and his team wants special treatment specific to Assange. Assange is different in many ways. A journalist normally does not convince a suicidal army recruit in Iraq to search the l…

Dumbest comment of the internet today. You think the guys that published the watergate stories just said "hey give us what you got and we'll see what we can do with it?"

At best you're blatantly astroturfing. At least have the balls to stick your opinion to your account.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#139

Post by chiefalchemist »

Has Nobel bar been lowered? I can't tell if this is a misunderstanding of the current state of the world, hypocrisy, or a combination of both.

The State (as well as traditional Media), regardless of country, is losing its power and influence. Big Tech knows more and thus is able to influence more. The USA and other "democracies" are not immune to this shift. If nothing else, Covid has swung the pendulum back a bit, or has at least delayed Big Tech's complete undermining of the long standing status quo. That status quo isn't going to surrender. So do not expect 21st Century totalitarianism to look like the 20th Century variety. No one saw it coming then, just as too few see it coming now.

I mention this book often on HN, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" spells out the history and The Truth in a very 21st Century way.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw

Calling out Russia isn't bold or new. In fact, it's a dangerous distraction.

Re: Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

#140

Post by nextaccountic »

dionidium wrote: post #129
malermeister wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is known as the paradox of tolerance and was figured out right after WW2 by Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher who witnessed the rise of the Nazis. Authoritarians use the framework of a free society to rise to power until they are strong enough to topple it. A free society must be able to defend itself against that approach, even if it might seem contrary to its own values. Here's the way he formulated it: > U…

You say this was “figured out” like you think it’s some kind of natural law that was discovered by scientists. It’s not. It’s a value judgement. It’s not at all clear the trade-off is worth it and the very quote you supplied argues for “intolerance of intolerance” as a kind of a last resort, once things turn violent. Second, as a practical matter, it’s not at all clear what constitutes intolerance. If you think the s…

> If you think the state has standing to adjudicate intolerance

It has standing to judge everything else, but not intolerance?

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