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

on.substack.com

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

#161

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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 internet? Anybody can dangle their own leaf on this inconceivably large tree.

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

#163

Post by throwawaygh »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #152
throwawaygh wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't have to be one thing. You can let there be a market of platforms. Just no profiteering, either directly or indirectly. Easier said than done, of course. Also, shouldn't be .gov. Public benefit but not government-owned.

Sounds like the Fediverse.

The crux is disallowing or otherwise destroying the profit motive for platform creation, as much as or more than creating a functional alternative.

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

#165

Post by throwawaygh »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #161
pdonis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 internet? Anybody can dangle their own leaf on this inconceivably large tree.

This is 100% what I used to think re: the censorship debate, so hear me out.

The problem isn't censorship or dangerous speech.

The problem is NOT censorship! Literally everyone can throw apache on an old laptop and then punch a hole in port 80 on their home router. Some issues with that setup, sure, but we had billionaire POTUS crying censorship. Fucker could buy a bunch of data centers with a week's income or whatever, so clearly has the ability to speak, but also isn't wrong that his speech on twitter/fb is being curtailed.

The problem is not dangerous speech either, though. Something happened over the last 10 years that I'm absolutely certain would not have happened if we were still hosting everything on geocities or BBSes.

The problem is platforms and profit motive.

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

#166

Post by indymike »

president wrote: post #149
indymike wrote: post #22

Freedom of press and freedom of speech exist exactly because government could not be trusted, and eventually, lies have to be covered by making it illegal to expose those lies. Censorship seems like a good idea until you realize the end game looks a lot like "Best Korea".

This was obvious in the time when people that had the most rationale argument typically made decisions on how things should be. Now we live in a time where people who make the most money make the decisions on how things should be.

> This was obvious in the time when people that had the most rationale argument typically made decisions on how things should be.

Outside of a few brief moments in history where sanity broke out, this is usually not the case.

> Now we live in a time where people who make the most money make the decisions on how things should be.

This is the default. Substitute "have the most wealth" for "make the most money" and it's about perfect.

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

#167

Post by daveevad »

throwawaygh wrote: post #146
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). So…

Doesn't have to be one thing. You can let there be a market of platforms. Just no profiteering, either directly or indirectly. Easier said than done, of course. Also, shouldn't be .gov. Public benefit but not government-owned.

> government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth

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

#168

Post by wizzwizz4 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #163
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the Fediverse.

The crux is disallowing or otherwise destroying the profit motive for platform creation, as much as or more than creating a functional alternative.

Pretty much none of the Fediverse is for-profit. People have tried, before. Nobody uses the for-profit Fedi services, because they're just bad. (There are for-profit hosting providers like Masto.host, but I don't think they count.)

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

#169

Post by ksdale »

throwawaygh wrote: post #134
ksdale wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because their interests are opposed to mine doesn't mean I can't trust them. Teacher's unions can use their poor performance as a justification for increasing their own pay which comes straight out of my pocket and yet I'm able to trust them. I'm evaluating their deeds, not their motivations. Calling something a non-profit doesn't magically make it pure. The Red Cross and Goodwill have plenty of problems, as do governments around the world.

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

#170

Post by philipkglass »

adolph wrote: post #148
iqanq wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why limit it to citizens?

Consider speech that is legal but likely to offend most Americans. For example, a picture gallery of American soldiers killed in Iraq, where each picture is captioned "Death to Crusaders, death to America!"

If the 1a.gov platform is limited to citizens, it limits the number of accounts that can use that platform for agitating against Americans. If the platform is open to anyone in the world, it's going to end up as the #1 host of terrorist-sympathetic media in the world. Most of the pro-ISIS videos that the big platforms scrubbed back in 2015 or thereabouts were not illegal under the "imminent lawless action" test [1]; platforms mostly cleaned up under color of Terms of Service, not color of law. It would be hard enough to adamantly protect the First Amendment while removing actually-illegal material [2] if limited to Americans. Opening it to the whole world would make the moderation problem truly Sisyphean.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

[2] It would publicly host worst content, for longer, because (I presume) it couldn't just use automated classifiers and outsourced workers to determine when a published item or a whole account crosses the line to illegality. If it did use these tools, it would end up recreating the "banned without clearly stated reasons or possibility of appeal" problem that makes people unhappy with the platforms that already exist.

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