Tech and Liberty
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Tech and Liberty
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Re: Tech and Liberty
#2I'm confused by the initial comparison between Hamilton and XKCD
> Alexander Hamilton was against the Bill of Rights, particularly the First Amendment. This famous xkcd comic explains why:
They seems to be saying very different things: Hamilton (as I understand it) is saying the First Amendment is unnecessary (and even dangerous) because the constitution already provides no power by which to regulate speech. XKCD, however, is saying the non-government groups have the power to criticize speech and even ban it from their own platforms.
Re: Tech and Liberty
#3yay cancel culture
Re: Tech and Liberty
#4This is an interesting and important debate.
I'd love to see a round table with someone like this, and, say, the people behind Sleeping Giants, and maybe a few others.
Noteworthy: some guy filed paperwork to run for office in California in order to run false FB ads - and they won't let him.
Re: Tech and Liberty
#5The whole point lies on the definition of what is a social media. In what it is different to everything that happened before.
The more I think about it, the more I find addictiveness to be a key component. It is contrarian to the assumption of free-will. It was also a problem for TV.
Will the next media make people even more look like zombies that can’t resist to consume ? Which form will it take ? VR headsets worlds ?
Re: Tech and Liberty
#6And when cancel culture starts threatening to burn down a building that hosts a free speech conference? (One that includes a black speaker that has deraticalized dozens of racist extremists.) Where does that fall?
edit:
Also, where is the line between journalism, opinion and platform. Laws protecting platforms are not meant to shield editorial opinion. There is already a concept of private space in public service, why are social media sites not considered similar here?
I'm okay with people expressing their opinions.. I'm quite fine with it and happy to see more of it. But there's a difference between that, and masked thugs showing up armed.
Re: Tech and Liberty
#7A powerful and provocative article. I love the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."
I am a bit of a libertarian when it comes to civil liberties -- I flinch at any circumscription of speech, even when it is noxious. Still, for a very long time I was troubled by my readings of the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany. Weimar was a liberal democracy, albeit a very weak one, and efforts to repress the Nazis on the basis of their ideas were rejected as a infringement of their civil liberties. There is a part of me that is afraid of a patently false but persuasive idea gaining currency in a liberal democracy, when it ought to have been quelled in the cradle somehow. But maybe the lesson to be taken from the rise of Nazism is that it was not merely the ideas promulgated by the Nazis that propelled Hitler to power, but the cunning and brutal employment of paramilitary force -- that it was not just tracts, but truncheons that made Nazi Germany a real force.
Re: Tech and Liberty
#8And when cancel culture starts threatening to burn down a building that hosts a free speech conference? (One that includes a black speaker that has deraticalized dozens of racist extremists.) Where does that fall? edit: Also, where is the line between journalism, opinion and platform. Laws protecting platforms are not meant to shield editorial opinion. There is already a concept of private space in public service, wh…
the only thing that seems certain is that thugs will burn things down.
Re: Tech and Liberty
#9[deleted]
Re: Tech and Liberty
#10The fundamental problem is the near monopoly powers enjoyed by a select few social media and tech companies. If Facebook and Twitter's social networks were federated like email, it wouldn't matter whether they refuse to propagate one opinion or another. Unhappy users or anyone who feels silenced could simply switch to a different provider.
The problem isn't that Facebook or Twitter are allowing or not allowing free speech on their private networks. The problem is that their private networks have become so central to public discourse that they have undue authority over public speech. No private company should be in a position where they can silence speech to begin with.
I'm not arguing that these companies be broken up, either. What I am arguing is that they open up their networks to interact with other services using an open protocol such as Mastadon or Matrix. By the government if necessary.