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

Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

rnz.co.nz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 337 posts

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#111

Post by stcredzero »

krapp wrote: post #96
BonesJustice wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bless your heart. It was actually a trick question: you cannot tell me what “violent extremism” means in this context, because you don’t know. You don’t know because you’re not the one who gets to decide. The only definition that matters is the one held by whoever will be deciding what gets censored and what doesn’t. How might your political adversaries choose to apply a filter on “violent extremism”? I could easily…

>It was actually a trick question: you cannot tell me what “violent extremism” means in this context, because you don’t know. You don’t know because you’re not the one who gets to decide. Oh, ok. The powers that be. The shadowy cabal. The unseen hand which controls all aspects of society with absolute and arbitrary power. I thought I was going to be able to have a rational, intellectually satisfying discussion but on…

The powers that be. The shadowy cabal. The unseen hand which controls all aspects of society with absolute and arbitrary power.

Actually, this does seem to be the case with a somewhat reduced context of just media/social-media/tech in 2019. Journalist collusion is well documented. Big company manipulation of local journalists is documented. We have seen indications of CEOs of different companies cooperating to suppress politics unacceptable to them, even to the point of implementing censorship and demonetization within their platforms, and outside their own companies and spanning multiple platforms.

no one is capable of defending free speech without resorting to slippery slopes and absolutism

That's begging the question. Free Speech is inherently an (almost) absolutist position. There are other rights which take precedence, but to be valid, no one can be the arbiter of the philosophical or political positions taken -- only of incitement to specific illegal actions. Otherwise the arbiters on speech exist, and there is no Free Speech.

In reality there is no need to defend Free Speech. Society isn't on the verge of collapse here. Maintaining Free Speech won't lead to an escalation of extremism. Only increased suppression will do that. What's really happening, is that big companies and governments are engaging in a power grab which weakens Free Speech.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#112

Post by stcredzero »

DuskStar wrote: post #84
chrisco255 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a slippery slope. For all intents and purposes we're accelerating down the slope. The Orwellian nightmare you talk about already exists in countries like China. The naive presumption that the West will always support free expression is baseless. It will not unless it's vigilantly defended by Westerners. And once given up, liberty is not easily regained (see Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, East Germany, etc). It's also w…

Exactly. If we start censoring now, where's the Schelling Fence [0] between this and censoring mainstream political opinions? What logic used to censor things here won't be used to censor more things later? 0: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...

Exactly. If we start censoring now, where's the Schelling Fence [0] between this and censoring mainstream political opinions?

I already see active attempts to re-define and re-label bog-standard Republican positions as "Far Right" and "Fascist." I've already encountered many people who want to throw the fact that such positions were mainstream, "down the memory hole."

What logic used to censor things here won't be used to censor more things later?

The effort to censor more things has already been ongoing.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#113

Post by atoav »

sixplusone wrote: post #80
ausbah wrote: post #21

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

So "we must do something, this is something, we must do it"? My lack of an alternative doesn't make your idea good.

If your bad idea is better than doing nothing and nobody can come up with something better, you could do it.

The problem is youtubes recommendation algorithm, which rides users ever deeper into weirder and more outrageous videos, if they are susceptible to it. It's a bit like balancing on a knifes edge, and that very system feeds directly into those generating revenue from it. It is a system that rewards cheap outrageous lies over intelligent and balanced truths.

In today's age where every truth will be declared to be just an opinion while every opinion will be presented as the truth, we don't need such a social experiment.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#114

Post by stcredzero »

bilbo0s wrote: post #66
commandlinefan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, by definition, censorship. It's not _government_ censorship, but it's still censorship.

Yeah, but so what? Companies need censorship to make money. They shouldn't have to lose money simply to satisfy your or my idea of not censoring. Now the government? Yeah. That's a whole other issue.

Yeah, but so what?

Companies need to trample on your human rights to make money.

Now the government? Yeah. That's a whole other issue.

False. Freedom of speech outweighs property rights and the right of corporations' "Freedom of association."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#115

Post by qball »

odiroot wrote: post #52
ausbah wrote: post #21

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

The bigger problem is how selective is stopping the extremism in many venues. This is really worrying. Here in Germany it's very popular to talk about, chastise and silence "Nazis" (be it real or assumed), which sort of makes sense knowing Germany's history. From my perspective -- of a Slav whose people were exterminated en masse by real Nazis. At the same time various, frequently militant, extremists (e.g. anarchist…

>Here in Germany it's very popular to talk about, chastise and silence "Nazis" (be it real or assumed), which sort of makes sense knowing Germany's history.

And yet it doesn't even prevent the core of the problem, which is that the supreme law of the land is easily abusable as a weapon once the Nazis get in power (and if the German economy tanks to the point where people can no longer buy bread for a day's work, which was true in the Weimar Republic, they will).

Anti-speech laws have never been about stopping Nazis. It's all about the feeling that they stop Nazis, which (especially in majoritarian-biased politics) is all that really matters.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#116

Post by stcredzero »

standardUser wrote: post #59
mooseburger wrote: post #44

Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate. This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre…

You don't accept that the internet has enabled people with obscure and extreme views to better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?

better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?

It's allowed everyone to do that. That's why we have more acrimony today. Allow a level playing field, and the violent stupid losers will lose. Start taking away people's rights, and you've only given those toxic people a pretext. (Which is exactly what the Christchurch shooter was trying to do.)

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#117

Post by atoav »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #90
krapp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Western countries have governments and are states based on the rule of law, and all place some limits on speech and expression. Even the US doesn't allow certain forms of expression, such as libel, slander, falsehoods, terroristic threats, etc. The West has therefore never supported free expression, just as it has never supported free markets. We are already on, and have always been on, that slope. Yet not all We…

The US allows just about all expressions without prior restraint. Even shouting fire in a theater is allowed speech until a court says otherwise -- after the fact and with due process. In contrast, censorship is a kind of prior restraint that restricts speech in the absence of judicial review or due process contrary to the rule of law.

Yeah but it restricts speek on a media plattform. Believe it or not, in the past 100 years it was pretty much the norm, that certain contents would not be published e.g. in books or newspapers.

A lot of the stuff right wing extremists say on youtube today would have been censored on television in the past (depending on the country of course).

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#118

Post by pathseeker »

atoav wrote: post #113
sixplusone wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So "we must do something, this is something, we must do it"? My lack of an alternative doesn't make your idea good.

If your bad idea is better than doing nothing and nobody can come up with something better, you could do it. The problem is youtubes recommendation algorithm, which rides users ever deeper into weirder and more outrageous videos, if they are susceptible to it. It's a bit like balancing on a knifes edge, and that very system feeds directly into those generating revenue from it. It is a system that rewards cheap outrag…

> If your bad idea is better than doing nothing and nobody can come up with something better, you could do it.

Where is the evidence that this is better than the status quo?

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#119

Post by pathseeker »

krapp wrote: post #57
BonesJustice wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.

> What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works…

Extremist is not well-defined, despite how much you want it to be. People who thought women had the right to vote a hundred years ago were extremist.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#120

Post by jakeogh »

krapp wrote: post #94
jakeogh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent didn't imply it was. Freedom is often lost incrementally. Framing that basic fact of history as a logically fallacy is unwise.

>Parent didn't imply it was. Yes, they did. The purpose of suggesting that "extremism" as a term is "so vague as to be meaningless" is to imply precisely that. It's a common enough rhetorical tactic that it can be taken for granted in any thread where speech or censorship (particularly of what is considered right or far-right politics) is the subject. Extremism in context has a commonly understood definition, and cla…

No, parent pointed out what I repeated, that history shows that freedoms are lost incrementally. You are the only one talking about inevitability.... which is par considering you also think it's totally obvious what some word that by it's very nature is inherently undefined, means.
Post reply on HN