Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019) • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by fareesh » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #115

fareesh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 standar…

Well there was the attempt at violent overthrow of a government... That's one difference.

Seemed like one of the poorest attempts I have ever seen, is it really being treated as a serious one?

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

#142

Post by pfraze » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #107

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 standar…

This is a pretty biased take on what's been happening.

The 2020 election's fraud claims were thrown out by courts. They were entirely evidence-free. Even Lindsey Graham gave a concise speech on the night of 1/6 explaining precisely how false those fraud claims were.

The 2016 election involved Russia hacking the DNC and leaking their emails, which became a centerpiece of the election debate ("Hillary's emails!"). It also involved Trump publicly asking for Russia to leak the emails, and then (once elected) firing the head of the FBI and saying in an interview with Lester Holt it was because Comey was investigating any possible ties with Russia.

The response to 2016 was the Mueller investigation. The response to 2020 was an attempted insurrection. One of these is not like the other, and you're attempting to paint a false political logic behind how the two have been treated.

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

#143

Post by fareesh » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #119

fareesh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 standar…

At what point did those who made the "vague accusation of hacking" storm the United States Capitol in a coup attempt?

Do people really believe that it was a coup attempt though? I see people framing it that way but always assumed it was political exaggeration

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

#144

Post by ridaj » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #133

jasode wrote: post #3

>a workable plan that enables more free speech, [...] That approach: build protocols, not platforms. To be clear, this is an approach that would bring us back to the way the internet used to be. The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface. As I've commented before[1][2], discussing protocols and advocating for them is a pop…

Well said. Free and lazy over freedom and work.

Economies of scale and specialization. Same reason not everyone is fabbing their own chips, running their own power plant, digging for their own oil and growing their own fruit. Aside from people living in complete isolation from the rest of the world, we all put a price on freedom at some point.

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

#145

Post by philipkglass » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #129

fareesh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 standar…

While I agree, one predictable counter-argument is that Twitter et al are private organizations with a legal prerogative to ban whomever they like (freedom of association). This is true, but we should think about how this was intended to work and the property that this was designed to protect: the original idea was that you had a decentralized network of communities that could individually excommunicate whomever they…

Twitter has a monopoly on things that work exactly like Twitter. That's all. I'm a lot more sympathetic to arguments about how Google and Facebook have a worrying degree of control online, because services owned by them are used by an absolute majority of English speaking people.

Twitter is only used by 22% of Americans as of 2019 [1]. If Twitter banned me I wouldn't even know about it for several months because that's about how frequently I log in. It's important to a certain kind of "very online" person but from my POV it's as inessential as Pinterest or Twitch.

I think that Twitter's perceived importance has been exaggerated beyond its actual user numbers because the previous US President used it so heavily. It was also an easy, cheap, reliable way for other publishers to churn out content. "Trump Tweets Something -- We React" was a daily staple for TV and written publications for 4 years. But 78% of Americans get along just fine without using Twitter itself.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...

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

#146

Post by ameister14 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

froh wrote: post #126

fareesh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 standar…

Maybe it also stems from the global diversity of the employees in said companies. To the European eye the idea of allowing any and all public utterance feels like a free ticket to disaster. Deliberate and carefully crafted representation of "reality", and indirect communication via various "trusted channels" is part of winning elections anywhere. The carefully and orchestrated use of mass media in the 1920s and 1930s…

>So to protect the electorate (!) from being grossly misled, many European countries in the aftermath of the 1940s decided to counterbalance the freedom of speech with rules what is not freedom of speech.

That's a very generous way of looking at it. In the West, I would say that it would be more accurate to look at it through the lens of the cold war, though. Communism and radicalism were to be prevented and so freedom of speech was necessarily curtailed. In the East, it was likewise curtailed, ostensibly to 'protect the youth' and 'prevent disinformation' but with more potential for immediate consequences.

>Is that ever in the public debate in the USA? Reasonable limits to free speech?

Sure. It's been debated a lot, actually. Laws have changed significantly over the last hundred years, almost entirely to the expansion of free speech side.

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

#147

Post by WClayFerguson » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #106

WClayFerguson wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me "The Left" means the set of beliefs more than it means the set of believers, but you can't have a belief without a believer.

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

#148

Post by riffic » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:05 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #3

>a workable plan that enables more free speech, [...] That approach: build protocols, not platforms. To be clear, this is an approach that would bring us back to the way the internet used to be. The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface. As I've commented before[1][2], discussing protocols and advocating for them is a pop…

> it does not make progress

FUD. Making statements like this totally discounts the healthy and vibrant communities that exist today making use of open protocols. Either your head is in the sand or you have an interest in stalling those systems from taking root.

I got news for you though. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting it back inside.

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

#149

Post by atoav » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #3

>a workable plan that enables more free speech, [...] That approach: build protocols, not platforms. To be clear, this is an approach that would bring us back to the way the internet used to be. The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface. As I've commented before[1][2], discussing protocols and advocating for them is a pop…

I think what many don't realise is that it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive. And by that I don't mean centralized technical or organizational structure, but rather stuff like a culture of downvoting destructive, inflamatory or snarky comments, a good and mostly invisible moderation, a strong focus on certain topics etc.

To have a good discourse it totally helps if that one guy over there isn't screaming at everybody that has a slightly different opinion while he is shitting onto the table in front of the rest of us. It helps if everybody agrees what goes to far.

Federated, decentralized and free plattforms need to deal with this their own way. What if the free plattform you are hosting is used by a ring of child molestors and pedophiles? Do you accept that freedom for all also means freedom for them? Or do you enforce your own law on your own turf? While this is an extrem example, anybody who tried to run such a thing in a meaningful way had to ask themselves the same question. I am btw. aware that child molesters are a common scenario used by politicians to justify yet another crack down on encryption.

The question here is, what kind of plattform would you want to run? One where the discussions enrich the lives of a thousand people, show some of them perspectives they never had? Or rather the lawless zone where everything goes and the stronger person with the louder capslock and the meaner insults wins? Or something conspiratorial?

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

#150

Post by majormajor » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

zrm wrote: post #4

jasode wrote: post #3

>a workable plan that enables more free speech, [...] That approach: build protocols, not platforms. To be clear, this is an approach that would bring us back to the way the internet used to be. The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface. As I've commented before[1][2], discussing protocols and advocating for them is a pop…

> If HN is overrepresented by vanguards of decentralization and free speech, why are a lot of us here on HN instead of running USENET nodes and posting to a newsgroup such as "comp.programming.hackernews" to avoid being moderated by dang? Because the point isn't to have no moderation, it's for the power of "moderation" not to be vested in a small number of oligarchs pressured by angry mobs spurred on by media compani…

> Because the point isn't to have no moderation, it's for the power of "moderation" not to be vested in a small number of oligarchs pressured by angry mobs spurred on by media companies with bad incentives to want to damage their political opponents and market competitors.

This is not a statement many people who have been angry recently would agree with.

Trump would've gotten himself banned from any of the forums I hung out in from 2000 to now. Not for being conservative, for being an asshole.

The "only remove illegal content" crowd has a problem with that. I don't.