121–130 of 145 posts
Honestly, I don't get all the complaining from harassment. We live in a digital age where we can control a large amount of our information stream. If we don't like something, we just turn off the stream. It's like left-wing advocates and Fox. They don't like it, so they don't watch it. If you don't like what people are posting on some service, remove the service, inform people you know that you don't care about what'…
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I'm not sure this is entirely fair. YikYak's undoing was doing away with the features that brought people to it; it was a very popular application, and continued to be right up until the de-anonymizing aspects were brought into play. It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed and in most cases, seemingly a success for interaction. It wasn't really good for anything else besides shitposting, but it…
>It's function a digital bathroom wall was pretty well executed But is that an idea worth executing? $73 million dollars down the tubes on a "digital bathroom wall." I would say I'm amazed that anyone thought this was an idea worth investing in, but sadly, I'm really not amazed at all.
Anonymity, and being able to express yourself and talk about your secrets/difficult life issues without worrying about social consequencesz is absolutely something that is valuable to the world.
There are lots of people in the world who feel completely unable to talk to anyone about their personal issues.
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>Please don’t @ me about free speech or censorship; not only is it irrelevant to startups because they are businesses & not the government, but moderation & boundaries are what make communities endure. "don't @ me" about completely relevant challenges to your opinion that are based on axiomatic political principles is cowardly and foolish. free speech and avoiding censorship are not just legal rights, they are princi…
> free speech and avoiding censorship are not just legal rights, they are principles that ought to be defended. those who would argue for a world where the de facto standard is censorship because they are capable of a narrow legalistic interpretation of freedoms are hideously short-sighted. if you endorse the erosion of these principles in the venues where you are strong, your enemies will use your exact arguments to…
The only purpose of freedom of speech and thought is to protect unpopular, evil, and straight up false speech.
That's fine if you use your platform to exclude those that you don't like.
But we aren't talking about that. We are talking about platforms that explicitly ALLOW this shitposting, and yet other people who don't own the platform are trying to stop it.
Sure, fine, businesses can do whatever they want with their own platform. So how about we allow that? Those that want to censor can censor, and those that don't can not do so.
And it turns out that there seems to be a huge demand for a platform that doesn't censor and allows people to post anonymously. (yik yak only died because it went away from what made it good).
So how about those procensorship people just leave it be and let those of us who disagree with them go to our own platform?
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> free speech and avoiding censorship are not just legal rights, they are principles that ought to be defended. those who would argue for a world where the de facto standard is censorship because they are capable of a narrow legalistic interpretation of freedoms are hideously short-sighted. if you endorse the erosion of these principles in the venues where you are strong, your enemies will use your exact arguments to…
Popular speech doesn't need to be protected. It is never in any danger of being censored, almost by definition. The only purpose of freedom of speech and thought is to protect unpopular, evil, and straight up false speech. That's fine if you use your platform to exclude those that you don't like. But we aren't talking about that. We are talking about platforms that explicitly ALLOW this shitposting, and yet other peo…
hypothetical: I've just told all your neighbors that you've got a criminal conviction for raping 8 year old children. It's just words, what's the harm?
>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment... I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into…
When you want the best possible outcome in a lawsuit, you go after the parties with deeper pockets, and the greater incentive to settle.
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Why shouldn't the university offer some form of protection? Even if it's the form of blocking the app? The police clearly don't give a shit. Someone has to do something. What are universities doing with all that money they get from tuition?
Blocking the app is a really extreme move that harms the vast majority of users who are using it in a harmless way. Imagine if people started putting up fliers that said mean, harassing things on lamposts and building walls around campus. Would tearing down the buildings and lampposts be a good response? If the campus were just a big open field with no buildings or anywhere where someone could put up a mean, harassin…
When people say this, it comes with an implied "except for some people". Lots of people deny it, but it's true. I like adding this implicit addendum to posts on Facebook explicitly, because every time, the person says something like, "Oh, no, I mean that for everyone." And then I say "You mean everyone including, for example, Richard Spencer?" Now, I don't care about that guy, but I was fairly astonished at how many people were normalizing political violence that time when somebody punched him. That's when I first understood viscerally that every one of those statements about inclusion and tolerance comes with an implied "except for some people."
This article seems to miss the point of why Yik Yak really failed. It didn't fail because of bullying, or bad publicity - That doesn't discourage users from using the app unless they're the ones targeted. The app failed because of the ham fisted attempts to control the userbase and remove a problem that did not affect the vast, vast majority of the userbase by introducing the "Handles" feature, and then later making…
I agree. Their app became popular as a place for uncensored, anonymous speech. When they started censoring and requiring usernames their customers spitefully deleted the app. There are so few places left in the US where someone can engage in free speech. Free speech is nearly nonexistent on college campuses. Yik Yak was offering a product users couldn't find anywhere else. But they threw it all away.
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Popular speech doesn't need to be protected. It is never in any danger of being censored, almost by definition. The only purpose of freedom of speech and thought is to protect unpopular, evil, and straight up false speech. That's fine if you use your platform to exclude those that you don't like. But we aren't talking about that. We are talking about platforms that explicitly ALLOW this shitposting, and yet other peo…
> So how about those procensorship people just leave it be and let those of us who disagree with them go to our own platform? hypothetical: I've just told all your neighbors that you've got a criminal conviction for raping 8 year old children. It's just words, what's the harm?
If we live in a culture where people understand the concept of "people on the internet could be lying", especially with regards to specific, highly serious, allegations against specific people, then someone posting something like that about me wouldn't be a big deal, because nobody would believe them.
There certainly could be "harm", but I'd argue that on average, the harm would have a very low chance of mattering, and I'd rather live in an open society.
The more people are able to talk, the more they are able to get to the actual truth of the matter.
I live in the city where YikYak was used to harass an activist at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She was later savagely murdered.