I’d like to address this, since it’s a common retort meant to shutdown discussion on censorship. It’s disingenuous , because “First amendment” is so essential to American culture, that it means both the literal First Amendment to the constitution AND more importantly, the American principle of free expression. Ether you are aware that people are appealing to free expression as a principle, or you are unaware that fre…
This. The companies are behaving in an un-American manner. What they are doing is deeply selfish and cynical. They should be criticized for their behavior and shamed for it. We should not excommunicate members of our society even if the things they say are reprehensible. And yes, the companies have a right to do it, but there are plenty of things you can do, but should nevertheless be shamed for doing.
> We should not excommunicate members of our society even if the things they say are reprehensible.
We do all the time. That's how cultural norms are enforced.
> Those are transnational private companies. If you're going to sell your services and goods here, you need to comport to the cultural norms HERE. > What is stopping others from claiming they have been behaving in an un-Chinese manner or an un-European manner or an un-Russian manner so far? Nothing. > How is a naive notion of nationalism of capital an argument of how such entities should behave when they operate in m…
> If you're going to sell your services and goods here, you need to comport to the cultural norms HERE. They are also selling their services and goods there so: > They can and do change business practices to fit the region. They have and do change their practices to fit the global region they operate in so the "un-american" critique would be moot.
> They have and do change their practices to fit the global region they operate in so the "un-american" critique would be moot.
I'm not sure what this means. They are behaving poorly HERE. I am not criticizing them for the crazy stuff they do elsewhere. That's an entirely different conversation.
It’s incredibly disheartening to see how quickly people are warming to the practice of coordinated top-down gagging of certain individuals and groups. You won’t be so happy to cheer on such behavior and policies when in the future the one silenced turns out to be you. The power to censor should be given solely to the individual to curate their own information diet; it should never belong to the medium itself (whether…
I used to think that way until I learned about the illusory truth effect, which basically states that being exposed to information multiple times makes you more likely to believe it to be true. The consequence of this is that attempting to curate information might "infect" you with ideas that you never wanted in your brain in the first place.
If you started in the wrong way," I said in answer to the investigator's questions, "everything that happened
would be a proof of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self−validating. You couldn't draw a breath
without knowing it was part of the plot."
"So you think you know where madness lies?"
My answer was a convinced and heartfelt, "Yes."
"And you couldn't control it?"
"No I couldn't control it. If one began with fear and hate as the major premise, one would have to go on the
conclusion."
"Would you be able," my wife asked, " to fix your attention on what The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the
Clear Light?"
I was doubtful.
"Would it keep the evil away, if you could hold it? Or would you not be able to hold it?"
I considered the question for some time. "Perhaps," I answered at last, "perhaps I could − but only if there were
somebody there to tell me about the Clear Light. One couldn't do it by oneself. That's the point, I suppose, of the Tibetan ritual − somebody sitting there all the time and telling you what's what."
[Doors of Perception, 57−58]
Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/…
This is exactly how bitmessage worked. The problem was that spammers would be able to flood the network with crap so to counter that it was added that proof of work must be completed to have your message forwarded on. The problem with this is it means you could not send a message from a mobile device because the PoW required was too high. Also a method to reduce the amount of traffic required was called streams. Inst…
> spammers would be able to flood the network with crap
Would there be a legit motivation to do that? I get that it's a threat, but would it be possible to gain anything from DDOSing that network?
Seems like either a) you come up with a system for banning spam IPs, or b) the spammers improve the anonymity of the rest of the network by creating more noise for the messages to hide in.
> If you're going to sell your services and goods here, you need to comport to the cultural norms HERE. They are also selling their services and goods there so: > They can and do change business practices to fit the region. They have and do change their practices to fit the global region they operate in so the "un-american" critique would be moot.
> They have and do change their practices to fit the global region they operate in so the "un-american" critique would be moot. I'm not sure what this means. They are behaving poorly HERE. I am not criticizing them for the crazy stuff they do elsewhere. That's an entirely different conversation.
> They are behaving poorly HERE
That a critique of their behavior should not depend on the locality (an ideological statement) much less a locality that represents about 1.9% of the world area and 4.2% of the population.
I wish they excluded extremes on both sides of the spectrum. Otherwise, it makes Cabal seem like a Parler for the extreme left. (Maybe it is not; I know nothing about people behind Cabal.)
Obvious conclusion since everything that isn't far-right is far-left. /s
Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/…
Thought experiment: There are 7e9 people on earth. Say they send 10, 100 byte messages per day, but that compresses 10x (modern text compression using big neural networks is amazing ). That works out to 7e11 bytes per day, or 8 Megabytes per second. That is nearly feasible today...
However, that's also 21 Terabytes per month. It'll be a while before that's feasible. Hopefully the population doesn't grow with our bandwidth capabilities.
I wish they excluded extremes on both sides of the spectrum. Otherwise, it makes Cabal seem like a Parler for the extreme left. (Maybe it is not; I know nothing about people behind Cabal.)
Obvious conclusion since everything that isn't far-right is far-left. /s
More like anyone who's willing to condemn one extreme but not the other is almost certainly supporting the latter.
Checked the FAQ. Downside: It doesn't support Tor and they don't seem to have any plan for that. So it's trusted-friends-only, IPs are always visible. Which is pointless for me, as a person trying to build healthy online friendships from behind Tor. Upside: I was afraid it's a reaction to Parler being deplatformed. And then I thought maybe it was a side-project of Urbit. But looking at the Values page: "No nazis, no…
> or anyone friendly with them
This is disgusting - it implies that you should pick and choose your friends based on political affiliation, which not only is extremely (and intentionally) divisive, but also provides no room for guiding these individuals back to a more moderate political stance.
Without being friends (or at least interacting with) with those who have been ostracized by society, how, exactly, do you propose to try to get them to change their minds?
I'm also curious as to how they plan to enforce this constraint - Cabal appears to be completely decentralized, correct?