Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse • Hacker News Board

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#131

Post by iqanq » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:24 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #122

throwawaygh wrote: post #110

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. Our problem isn't censorship. Our problem is that our political/economic/relig…

> speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. No such platform has ever existed. How would you propose building one?

The American government should provide citizens with a basic public web hosting service where constitutional freedoms are respected.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#132

Post by ksdale » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #110

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. Our problem isn't censorship. Our problem is that our political/economic/relig…

My question is how does your platform differ from what Substack is already trying to do?

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#133

Post by throwawaygh » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #130

throwawaygh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, no! I mean, yes, but also, stop getting sucked into this stupid debate. It's a red herring.

And I guess to expand on my position, I don't think this debate is stupid. The way through, in my mind, as naive as it may seem, is to be basically like substack, and acknowledge that providing a platform is a big responsibility, one they don't take lightly, that the goal is increased trust overall, and that that goal is primarily served by being as content agnostic as possible. Acting in good faith with no expectati…

> by being as content agnostic as possible.

This is not congruent with profit motive, so they will fail. Either as a company or as at this goal. Almost certainly the latter.

Google set out to not be evil and Zuckerberg set out to connect the world. Both, I'm sure, sincere.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#134

Post by throwawaygh » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #132

throwawaygh wrote: post #110

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. Our problem isn't censorship. Our problem is that our political/economic/relig…

My question is how does your platform differ from what Substack is already trying to do?

Substack is trying to generate returns for venture capitalists.

That they agree with one piece of your politics at this particular moment in their company's growth and at this particular point in the evolution of your political beliefs is a massive red herring.

Let me repeat. Substack is trying to generate returns for venture capitalists.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#135

Post by canadaduane » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:29 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #64

ziroshima wrote: post #4

No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. I just don't understand the shortsightedness, the naivete, or the willingness to discard the principle of free speech.

The status quo is a messy conflagration where initial beliefs were the brush, a combination of mental health issues and social frustration were the trees, and the perverse incentives of engagement metrics provided the high winds. So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy…

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this.

One thought experiment that has helped me get my mind around the problem is "why is it necessary that parents shield children from some information?"

I think free speech might have a context that is invisible to us. Something like a prior, or trained neural net, in which free speech and no censorship is absolutely the right thing. And then there might be other contexts where it is wrong, and harmful.

In other words, "dangerous ideas" may be the wrong way of thinking about free speech--it might be "dangerous contexts" of our minds--such as childhood. If so, what then?

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#136

Post by harry8 » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:30 PM UTC

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #12

We don’t have a trust problem. We have a lack of trustworthy people in positions of power problem. I see how one can be easily confused. But we (the People) don’t trust politicians or business leaders because they have show repeatedly they’re not worthy of trust.

We never trusted politicians. We never trusted corporate executives. We never trusted lawyers.

We used to trust that the large news organisations were somewhat self-correcting and accountable. The New York Times, Washington post, Wall st Journal, CNN, NBC, CBS, NPR, etc.

After the total lack of accountability for Iraq and WMD, for 2 decades of Afghanistan, The Russiagate debacle and you can add a hundred things you've seen clearly yourself to this list. Trusting these news organisations is pathologically insane. They're clearly very happy to fabricate, to repeat and amplify pure propaganda with no evidence as fact and pretend it never happened or we were all in it together as though readers/watchers being duped are the real problem.

This is the trust that changed. Lies "for the greater good" have a huge interest rate when the bill comes due.

Nobody was ever inclined to really trust Trump, or Clinton or Bush or Obama or Biden any more than Nixon. Why would you? They're politicians. We trusted the limits on their power and the idea that there was corrective feedback on the system somewhere.

We used to think we wouldn't be subject to pravda levels of lies from our "diverse" media sources. Maybe we were terribly naive when we thought that. Now we know there are true stories, well reported in the Times and the Journal for example but you can't assume that about any given story, especially if it affects military funding either directly or indirectly.

All the WMD pushing assholes appear to be back pushing the next war and again if you think that going to war is not such a great idea given the last few unmitigated disasters you clearly are carrying water for Bin Laden, I mean Saddam, I mean the Taliban, I mean Assad, I mean PUTIN!

Trump (damn him) wanted out of Afghanistan like the majority of Americans. Suddenly there's a totally false story, usually fabricated that he's ignoring PUTIN's bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan to swing public opinion against the steps to get out.

Biden (let's go) agrees 100% with Trump and American voters that 20 years and 3 trillion is enough and continues Trump's work and gets out. The tone of reporting changes immediately and his popularity plummets.

Nobody "trusted" Biden.

Nobody "trusted" Trump.

Now many, many more of us from all political persuasions are very suspicious of the negative feedback mechanism to keep them in check because it has been abused so very, very badly.

Nothing like providing the raw footage and source documents to de-spin. Anyone doing that is the real focus of censorship.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#137

Post by throwawaygh » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:30 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #128

throwawaygh wrote: post #110

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. Our problem isn't censorship. Our problem is that our political/economic/relig…

> prohibited from profit-seeking A more pragmatic goal might be that they are not ad or attention driven. It's the fight for attention (specifically "content" as a ruse to get you to see adds) that has led directly to the current censorship problems, as well as many other issues, in part because its created these big platforms that try to make everyone watch ads that are lightning rods for interests that want to cont…

If anything, the substack incentives are even worse. At least radicalizing was a second-order effect of Google/FB incentives. It's damn close to the first-order optimization objective for a company that depends on getting people so worked up that they'll pay to join a mailing list. (Who pays to join a mailing list?! never in my life....) Answer: the Most True Believers.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#138

Post by zimpenfish » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:31 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #106

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may have some details wrong, but do you think their overall impression of the event is wildly inaccurate? There was significant violence perpetrated during that event, even if it didn't result in death. Police officers were beaten. When these mistaken people are corrected and told no one died at the hands of rioters, but 150 police officers sustained injuries some so bad they were still out of work six months la…

>They may have some details wrong, but do you think their overall impression of the event is wildly inaccurate? The prosecutors do. None are being charged with insurrection nor terrorism, just trespassing and disorderly conduct.

> None are being charged with insurrection nor terrorism

Haven't 11 Oath Keepers been charged with "seditious conspiracy"[1]? Does that not come under the definition of "insurrection" - "a violent uprising against an authority or government"?

[1] "[If] two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States" via https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/par...

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#139

Post by wizzwizz4 » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:32 PM UTC

daveevad wrote: post #127

throwawaygh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation The platforms where we talk online should be most analogous, legally, to a library or city hall.

I've wondered in the past if something like 1st.gov shouldn't exist, basically a Twitter clone protected by the 1st Amendment payed for by the citizens of the United States.

That would be horrible. Web hosting, sure. A Twitter clone, with (next to) no moderation‽ It'd better have better self-moderation tools than I've seen on any Twitter clone ever. A Twitter clone is a good environment for metric maximisation: what makes you click “share” thrives, being reworded and altered occasionally, in a manner analogous to evolution (but with a more deliberate mutation process than randomness). Something has to fight that process if you want the site to have value to anyone but sociologists.

Re: Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse

#140

Post by flyingcircus3 » Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 11:33 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #105

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditional media I see this distinction made all of the time when this topic comes up. The mainstream media is untrustworthy. Corporate media has an agenda. Legacy media is corrupt. These qualifiers all imply that there is some non-traditional, non-corporate, non-legacy media that does not have these problems. Yet whenever the people making these distinctions are asked who/what these superior alternatives are, the…

Legacy/traditional/corporate/entrenched media has an outsized impact. There doesnt need to be some pure alternative in order to recognize that.

If there is no pure alternative, then these problems are not unique to legacy/traditional/corporate/entrenched media, and therefore have nothing to do with them being in the mainstream.