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Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

uk.reuters.com

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Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#171

Post by Barrin92 »

ferzul wrote: post #123
salmonfamine wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're encountering a fundamental conflict between an unregulated free market and a digital economy that doesn't have any notion of scarcity or cost. The old paradigm just doesn't fit. And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. The fa…

so how does that work? i cannot think of a workable solution short of an end to the world wide web, and the beginning of a system of national internets and data ports (as in, places you send your data to to export them from one country and import them to another). otherwise, the democratic oversight will just be whatever the u.s can manage. the internet is already falling apart; i notice many u.s media sites are inac…

>it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it.

I think it's right. Countries have sovereignty over their physical territory and they ought to have sovereignty over their digital territory, that's the basis of any democracy and self-determination.

Of course it produces awful results in Turkey because Erdogan is an autocrat, and autocrats use power to enact dumb policies, in this case censoring something because his family was insulted.

However in democracies it is necessary to not be defenseless and to maintain values. Here in Europe I've always felt that we're pretty much exposed in the digital sphere to either American norms due to sheer size, and nowadays more and more to negative campaigns by countries like Russia and China as they've learned to weaponize cyberspace.

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#172

Post by oarabbus_ »

briefcomment wrote: post #24

In a dictatorship, cracking down on social media is a no brainer. But I think social media undermines democracies as well. Social media vastly amplifies loud minorities. Democracy assumes that the majority of people are reasonable, so majority rule will also be reasonable. Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring wh…

>Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring what the majority of the country actually wants. This is why we can have an election outcome that no one in the media predicted.

Dewey Defeats Truman.

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#173

Post by Florin_Andrei »

briefcomment wrote: post #24

In a dictatorship, cracking down on social media is a no brainer. But I think social media undermines democracies as well. Social media vastly amplifies loud minorities. Democracy assumes that the majority of people are reasonable, so majority rule will also be reasonable. Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring wh…

> Add to that the fact that social media is highly game-able and scalable, and you have small groups of people working against the majority of the country.

I started in this industry in the '90s, I like to think of my cohort as the generation who "built the Internet" (or the commercial version of it).

We've created a monster. Or at least the means to unleash it.

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#176

Post by analyte123 »

adrr wrote: post #155
analyte123 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legacy media amplifies a loud minority too: owners, managers, and employees of media corporations. Most of the "controversy" around social media, stoked by legacy media, comes down to the old loud minority not liking that a different loud minority might get a say.

Do you think extreme fringe beliefs like QAnon would gain traction without social media? Legacy media boundaries are dictated by advertisers.

Scientology is considered a fringe belief group by many and managed to get hundreds of thousands of adherents long before social media. Just as an example that everyone always brings up, advertisers didn't stop the New York Times and many other allegedly credible sources from falsely claiming Iraq had WMDs, the result of which has killed approximately infinity times the number of people that QAnon has. Just like social media users, legacy media outlets distort the truth and stir up rancor in the populace ("hands up, don't shoot", president is a secret Russian agent, Obamacare is a government death panel, climate change isn't real: pick your poison).

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#177

Post by magicsmoke »

linuxftw wrote: post #33

It's so weird that people here usually want to regulate social media, but when some other government that doesn't share your worldview does it, it's all of a sudden oppressive. You say the wrong thing online in the UK or Germany, the police come knocking. Everyone always thinks their reason for censorship is exceptional because their beliefs are the one-true virtuous beliefs in the universe.

It's because openness is a luxury and status symbol. Ohh look how open and so much better I am, and how I'm composed and stoic enough to tolerate all this dissent. But when you take away wealth and security then luxury and status are the first things to go.

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#178

Post by closeparen »

salmonfamine wrote: post #100
briefcomment wrote: post #24

In a dictatorship, cracking down on social media is a no brainer. But I think social media undermines democracies as well. Social media vastly amplifies loud minorities. Democracy assumes that the majority of people are reasonable, so majority rule will also be reasonable. Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring wh…

I think we're encountering a fundamental conflict between an unregulated free market and a digital economy that doesn't have any notion of scarcity or cost. The old paradigm just doesn't fit. And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. The fa…

Democratic input and regulatory oversight over discourse is in the same category as total surveillance: a perfectly benevolent operator would certainly be able to produce a better world with it, but we cannot trust anyone with that kind of power.

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#179

Post by vharuck »

nickik wrote: post #139
salmonfamine wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, good questions. I'm not advocating an end to global platforms. And I don't think the democratic oversight should come from the US government. The end goal should be a website like Wikipedia -- non-profit, maintained and perhaps even funded by users. In fact, I think a lot of the fragmentation of the internet you see abroad is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable…

> is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable power of these corporations Its about governments powerlessness to control the message from foreign cooperations likely influenced by foreign governments. Maybe 0.000001% of it is 'protecting users'. > essentially, the ability to control their feeds Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option. > m…

>Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.

It depends on the implementation. A good example for user control is Pandora. Not hard at all to control what music I'll hear.

Re: Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says

#180

Post by pasabagi »

Barrin92 wrote: post #171
ferzul wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so how does that work? i cannot think of a workable solution short of an end to the world wide web, and the beginning of a system of national internets and data ports (as in, places you send your data to to export them from one country and import them to another). otherwise, the democratic oversight will just be whatever the u.s can manage. the internet is already falling apart; i notice many u.s media sites are inac…

>it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it. I think it's right. Countries have sovereignty over their physical territory and they ought to have sovereignty over their digital territory, that's the basis of any democracy and self-determination. Of course it produces awful results in Turkey because Erdogan is an autocrat, and autocrats use power to enact dumb po…

I think cultural defensiveness is a strange phenomenon. The musical tradition that grew into jazz survived centuries of the most brutal slavery, but now it's the basis of most of what we hear in our day-to-day. Ultimately, cultural values that work will win out, and art that is beautiful will shine through. No amount of political pressure, violence, boundaries and borders can change that. You can't mandate that people should buy bratwurst, or read Horace, or go to church - but equally, if your values are good values, they can only be suppressed for some time, before they spring up in new forms and new places.

In China, they are conducting a great experiment in suppressing and controlling culture. Perhaps it will work - perhaps not, but I think you could only really achieve such a goal with such means, and moreover, I think such means are far more insidious and corrupting than any kind of foreign influence. Sheltered culture becomes irrelevant, then idiotic, then it becomes something only idiots and fossils can believe in.

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