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Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

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Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#101

Post by ardy42 »

metalliqaz wrote: post #19
colllectorof wrote: post #8

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy." 10 or 15 years ago people looked at web 1.0, saw many good communities and valuable conversations and said "we need to protect free speech". Today people loo…

I'm shocked (/s) that Silicon Valley's brand of libertarianism led to five companies dominating everything and then pulling up the ladder behind them by abandoning open standards in favor or proprietary silos.

[flagged]

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#102

Post by hirundo »

zer0gravity wrote: post #84

What I think we need is Interoperability, not just protocols. What I understand by interoperability is what a mature (spoken) language provides. Although its body of words remains pretty much fixed, it offers a wide range of expression. I think that what we need is a language of the internet to achieve this type of interoperability. So, in a way, a language can be seen as a communication protocol and, with such a lan…

Discoverability is a fundamental part of protocol design. Here's a list of service discovery protocols:

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

We could use a C-3PO (protocol droid, fluent in over six million forms of communication) for interop.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#103

Post by joshuamorton »

mbostleman wrote: post #66
betterunix2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>>lately it seems that "the right" remains undecided about whether or not it is acceptable to threaten the lives of politicians who refused to overturn the results of an election>> This isn't even remotely a representative sentiment of the 70+ million people that are not on the "left". >>"The left" is for democracy>> Again, I don't think we would find this accurate if data were collected. Both sides are "for democrac…

From this description, I can't tell which side you're characterizing as which. That would generally imply it's more of a platitude than a real realization.

Also while that may be true of individuals (I don't think it is), it clearly isn't true of party leadership.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#104

Post by johbjo »

kevincox wrote: post #96
johbjo wrote: post #91

The reason Reddit is a better user experience than usenet is 1) voting on posts and karma, and 2) continually polished user interface. Design a decentralized protocol that can handle voting/karma, while also incentivising developers of clients. The problem is that this is not easy.

> voting on posts and karma I agree that this is Reddit's main feature. However it isn't necessarily good. It is basically an amplification of "interest" whether that is good or bad. Assuming that votes represent general quality is a dangerous mistake. > continually polished user interface Ok, this must be a joke. > Design a decentralized protocol that can handle voting/karma, while also incentivizing developers of c…

> Assuming that votes represent general quality

Maybe but if we let voting/karma/moderation be "perspectives" of the content rather than lossy filters, then it won't matter much.

> you need to choose who's votes you trust.

If users can freely choose their "root" in a trust tree, then it might be interesting. Each upvote confers trust and "karma".

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#105

Post by majormajor »

WClayFerguson wrote: post #27
colllectorof wrote: post #8

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy." 10 or 15 years ago people looked at web 1.0, saw many good communities and valuable conversations and said "we need to protect free speech". Today people loo…

The left wing is still not wanting to rise up against censorship because they believe it's still benefiting them, since BigTech (+M5M) is their leftist ally...for now. What they need to realize is that once you give Tyrannical Control over to your leaders (governments, or BigTech censors), because you consider them benevolent today, it's foolish because they won't be benevolent forever. Our founding fathers knew powe…

> Our founding fathers knew power corrupts, but today's 20-somethings seem quite unaware.

The government has to be able to actively respond to the problems of the moment, and those problems will constantly change. A handcuffed government only benefits the already-powerful.

The dirty secrets of the "but the founding fathers!" argument are that (a) they knew they weren't creating a perfect set of rules in the Constitution, and planned for us to be modifying it as we learned new things and the world changes, and (b) it's failed anyway. Abstract principles listed on a page don't "protect freedom," bad actors can find ways to sneak things through (sometimes in plain sight, like that whole slavery thing that took a century to get figured out, or the followup forms of discrimination that are still with us).

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#106

Post by wizzwizz4 »

WClayFerguson wrote: post #90
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is not divided into two camps, not should it be. Some people are neither with nor against you; they've got their own things going on.

Labels can be divisive and tribal when used against individuals, to smear them by saying they're guilty of the bad actions of a few in a group. However language itself is built on "labels", so they're required. It's impossible to criticize bad ideas without some shorthand label for those kinds of thinking and ideologies. The fact that whole entire groups hold those same ideas necessarily is a critique of the entire g…

You implied that “the right” means everyone not on “the left” – but I thought “the right” and “the left” were labels for political ideologies.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#107

Post by fareesh »

colllectorof wrote: post #8

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy." 10 or 15 years ago people looked at web 1.0, saw many good communities and valuable conversations and said "we need to protect free speech". Today people loo…

I remember watching a very strange segment on American news about a man who owns a mattress and pillow company who was banned from Twitter because he continuously expressed his disbelief in the legitimacy of the election result of 2020, and was organizing various events along this theme.

From what I recall the 2016 election was frequently attributed to some vague accusation of hacking from Russia but the same standard was not applied at the time, nor is it applied today. The people espousing this view were eventually proven inconclusive in all the different inquiries into the matter, and they were far more influential than a man who sells pillows.

There seems to be a very disproportionate level of enforcement towards offenders on the social media platforms, and this seems to stem from the personal politics of the people working there.

If the employees at these companies had the opposite politics, I am quite sure the rhetoric around this issue would be framed in terms of authoritarianism. Are you not allowed to criticize your government anymore in the USA? I find that to be quite incredible.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#108

Post by shafyy »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #88
shafyy wrote: post #78

I talk about this more in my blog post [0], but I think that the only viable way out of this mess if anti-trust laws ensure that social network companies who have more than X users need to use open and decentralized protocols. This would be much easier to achieve than trying to break up companies (not saying we shouldn't break them up). 0: https://canolcer.com/post/social-media-decentralized-by-law/

> social network companies who have more than X users need to use open and decentralized protocols The problem with this is that a corporation can claim that its protocol is open and decentralized, while in practice making it hard for others to implement. Remember how Microsoft managed to make .docx an ISO standard, even though Microsoft Word was the only application that would be able to read and write it 100%? Also…

Yes, good points. I understand that it's not that simple in practice. But at least such laws would lay a foundation and then the details can be discussed better. Anti-trust laws are never black and white, but I would argue that we are better off for them.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#109

Post by cgrealy »

mbostleman wrote: post #66
betterunix2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>>lately it seems that "the right" remains undecided about whether or not it is acceptable to threaten the lives of politicians who refused to overturn the results of an election>> This isn't even remotely a representative sentiment of the 70+ million people that are not on the "left". >>"The left" is for democracy>> Again, I don't think we would find this accurate if data were collected. Both sides are "for democrac…

> This isn't even remotely a representative sentiment of the 70+ million people that are not on the "left".

Probably not, but it’s a pretty accurate summary of their leadership.

The facts are the 45 and the Republicans attempted to throw out the results of an election.

You can argue that most people on the right do not agree with this, but they should really stop voting for these people then.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)

#110

Post by zer0gravity »

hirundo wrote: post #102
zer0gravity wrote: post #84

What I think we need is Interoperability, not just protocols. What I understand by interoperability is what a mature (spoken) language provides. Although its body of words remains pretty much fixed, it offers a wide range of expression. I think that what we need is a language of the internet to achieve this type of interoperability. So, in a way, a language can be seen as a communication protocol and, with such a lan…

Discoverability is a fundamental part of protocol design. Here's a list of service discovery protocols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_discovery We could use a C-3PO (protocol droid, fluent in over six million forms of communication) for interop.

I'm not talking about a zillion protocols with discoverable services, but of a single language of the internet that allows service discoverability and concept sharing dynamically between peers.
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