Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 113 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#71

Post by 015a »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #63
tunesmith wrote: post #19

I'm having trouble even understanding the question, because I think your usage of "free speech" means something different than is normally intended. Free expression and free will always have an implied caveat, like "free will except where it impedes that of another". Free speech is always going to have a Venn diagram with "behavior", some of which is illegal. So if you're asking where you can go do illegal stuff, tha…

They also as much as said "There's places where you can do this but they're cesspools" which almost makes me feel like the real question is "Is there any way I can have the experience of moderated discussion without any risk of me being moderated?" to which the answer is 100% "Yes, your own forum, but don't be surprised if other people aren't sold on the value proposition."

I'd also argue there's a way to get a reasonable form of this in a more centralized world: You need functional KYC with a high degree of certainty that every participant in the discussion is human and culpable, and you need a system that allows users to block other users. That's really about it.

The problem with many of these social media platforms (X, Threads, Insta, etc) is that they are actively disincentivized to enforce the first requirement of those two. Strict KYC is (rightly) viewed by many as overtly invasive of privacy, it would hurt the volume of content on these platforms (because 90% of it is AI generated engagement bait), and it would hurt their user signup and retention metrics (being ignorant of how many bots and alts are on your platform is vastly better than knowing and doing something about it).

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#72

Post by diggan »

015a wrote: post #71
BobaFloutist wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also as much as said "There's places where you can do this but they're cesspools" which almost makes me feel like the real question is "Is there any way I can have the experience of moderated discussion without any risk of me being moderated?" to which the answer is 100% "Yes, your own forum, but don't be surprised if other people aren't sold on the value proposition."

I'd also argue there's a way to get a reasonable form of this in a more centralized world: You need functional KYC with a high degree of certainty that every participant in the discussion is human and culpable, and you need a system that allows users to block other users. That's really about it. The problem with many of these social media platforms (X, Threads, Insta, etc) is that they are actively disincentivized to…

> You need functional KYC with a high degree of certainty that every participant in the discussion is human and culpable

This would actively lower the freedom of expression. There are opinions people hold that they're only comfortable sharing when they know it won't come back to them in real life, as holding such opinions can be dangerous. These people should still be allowed to share their views and discuss with others that disagree with them/they disagree with. This could be one of the only ways for them to even challenge their own world view.

If you're optimizing freedom of expression, then anonymity is a requirement.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#73

Post by diggan »

incomingpain wrote: post #66

I remember when Digg crashed and burned because they got caught censoring speech. Everyone moved over to Reddit because it was all about free speech. I would laugh hard in someone's face if someone told me reddit didn't censor to a huge degree. Mind you, I doubt this will ever be the case as there's very few humans on reddit anymore. About 4 months ago I was testing to see how many humans were actually on the site. I…

> I remember when Digg crashed and burned because they got caught censoring speech. Everyone moved over to Reddit because it was all about free speech.

I think you misremember what happened. I was quite young (internet-time-spent wise) when it went down, but I seem to remember the mass-migration to reddit happened when digg re-designed their website (to version 4) and it ended up crashing a lot, tons of bugs and removed features people were actively using.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#74

Post by ta1243 »

petesergeant wrote: post #43
ta1243 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal in what jurisdiction? Free speech conversations tend to devolve very quickly into americentrism, which is fine until those with mass power try to impose their specific views on other countries.

> Free speech conversations tend to devolve very quickly into americentrism In fairness, the US has about the strongest free-speech protections, so that kind of makes sense?

America has the best version of the American view of free speech, that's true.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#75

Post by incomingpain »

diggan wrote: post #73
incomingpain wrote: post #66

I remember when Digg crashed and burned because they got caught censoring speech. Everyone moved over to Reddit because it was all about free speech. I would laugh hard in someone's face if someone told me reddit didn't censor to a huge degree. Mind you, I doubt this will ever be the case as there's very few humans on reddit anymore. About 4 months ago I was testing to see how many humans were actually on the site. I…

> I remember when Digg crashed and burned because they got caught censoring speech. Everyone moved over to Reddit because it was all about free speech. I think you misremember what happened. I was quite young (internet-time-spent wise) when it went down, but I seem to remember the mass-migration to reddit happened when digg re-designed their website (to version 4) and it ended up crashing a lot, tons of bugs and remo…

I legitimately still have my HD-DVD writers(HP dvd630) in my tower right now. It hasnt been plugged in for years.

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

But this censorship simply provoked people to analyze the censorship and it was way beyond. They were censoring all kinds of things silently. Shadow banning wasnt quite understood yet.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#76

Post by diggan »

incomingpain wrote: post #75
diggan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember when Digg crashed and burned because they got caught censoring speech. Everyone moved over to Reddit because it was all about free speech. I think you misremember what happened. I was quite young (internet-time-spent wise) when it went down, but I seem to remember the mass-migration to reddit happened when digg re-designed their website (to version 4) and it ended up crashing a lot, tons of bugs and remo…

I legitimately still have my HD-DVD writers(HP dvd630) in my tower right now. It hasnt been plugged in for years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers... But this censorship simply provoked people to analyze the censorship and it was way beyond. They were censoring all kinds of things silently. Shadow banning wasnt quite understood yet.

Went to Wikipedia to confirm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_revolt#Digg :

> In 2007 in the AACS encryption key controversy

> When Digg redesigned their website in 2010 the community revolted and used the platform to advertise a user migration to competitor Reddit

So while both seems to be classified as "user revolt", the redesign seems to be acknowledged as causing the migration to reddit. Of course, not 100% sure how accurate that is, but seems to match my own memory at least.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#77

Post by kkfx »

Usenet still exists, anyone can run a server and hosts public groups, emails even if with some giants hurting the freedom are still universally common. The main issue is how many know them and decide to came back to them.

Oh, we also still have RSS on many sites, not that much, not with complete articles, but enough to being able to follow news from various sources without third party scoring/recommendation systems filters.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#78

Post by 015a »

diggan wrote: post #72
015a wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also argue there's a way to get a reasonable form of this in a more centralized world: You need functional KYC with a high degree of certainty that every participant in the discussion is human and culpable, and you need a system that allows users to block other users. That's really about it. The problem with many of these social media platforms (X, Threads, Insta, etc) is that they are actively disincentivized to…

> You need functional KYC with a high degree of certainty that every participant in the discussion is human and culpable This would actively lower the freedom of expression. There are opinions people hold that they're only comfortable sharing when they know it won't come back to them in real life, as holding such opinions can be dangerous. These people should still be allowed to share their views and discuss with oth…

I very clearly did not assert that your identity had to be shared publicly or shared with the people you are interacting with. I only said that the entity operating the centralized social network had to have a strong and confident sense of each users' identity. The purpose of this is to ensure that everyone interacting within the walled garden is human, and to ensure that blocked people cannot just go create an alt account to get around being blocked. Whether it is "@JimJohnson" or "@ButtDestroyer420" you're interacting with isn't relevant.

I understand the anonymity argument, even from the perspective that sometimes you don't want even the service operator to know who you are. I'll be blunt on my take on this: I think this is millenial/genx idealism, tossing coins into a wishing well for an internet that does not exist anymore and will never again. Generative AI is out of the bag, and social network service providers can either grow up and recognize that their Paramount Number 1 service they can offer is some reasonable guarantee of protection against generative AI, or they can stay addicted to their juiced engagement numbers and play dumb when it comes out that 99% of tweets are from bots trying to build rapport, sell products, and influence elections (bye bye advertisers!). Its their call. Twitter is making the wrong one. Meta is up next. Traditionally they've all done bot detection; this doesn't work. Bots are indistinguishable from humans now. You need human-detection; KYC, meat-space verification. If you don't like the anti-privacy angle, then don't participate; no one is forcing you, and you're welcome to start your own mastodon server out in the generative AI wildlands (and, by the way, you should always have that right; i'm not prescribing how the world should be ran, just how e.g. Threads should be).

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#79

Post by big-green-man »

> The places that aren't moderated are filled with political crap such as to tarnish their credibility, so that the people will stay away by their own will.

People say stupid shit. When you have a place where anyone can publish anything, you wind up with a lot of people publishing a lot of stuff you don't like.

You don't get to decide what sort of discourse or ideas are getting published. Nobody does. That's just part and parcel. You can block people, ignore people, but networks have their character.

The best network IMO for free speech is nostr. There are no controlled or verified identities, censorship is almost impossible. But it has it's character. The content there is the content there. It's mostly bitcoiners. Go use it stand talk about other things if you don't like that aspect.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any place on the internet capable of freedom of speech?

#80

Post by tmaly »

davidham wrote: post #67
BobaFloutist wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also as much as said "There's places where you can do this but they're cesspools" which almost makes me feel like the real question is "Is there any way I can have the experience of moderated discussion without any risk of me being moderated?" to which the answer is 100% "Yes, your own forum, but don't be surprised if other people aren't sold on the value proposition."

This is the X model. Nobody moderates Musk!

I have friends that till get censored on X, it is free speech for some but not for others.
Post reply on HN