Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#21

Post by godshatter » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #16

farias0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I don't fundamentally disagree with your point, I don't think you're framing the issue fairly. It's not a matter of most people being enemies of free speech, it's just that this is an inherently difficult problem. Everyone draws the line differently on what's acceptable and what isn't, and every platform is trying to foster a different kind of community.

I wonder if we would be better served with a NPR-like publicly funded platform for video hosting that puts a lot more resources into content moderation. The private platforms get away with the bare minimum by throwing black box AI at the problem which leads to problems like the anti-vax censorship chilling effects etc. There should be an easily reached human in the loop with transparent decisions, and levels of appea…

If the state's going to host it, then their bar should be whether it's legal or not. If they want to put scary warnings around certain content or lock some of it behind age restriction, sure, fine. But if they are going to use public funds to host a government run publicly available video sharing platform, they should be very cautious about removing any content that doesn't violate actual laws. Free speech and all that, if anyone still remembers the concept.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#22

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #17

wutbrodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. This is always how it's worked. The idea that protecting the rights of your enemies can be salutary relies on too many complex concepts for the majority of people to have any hope of grasping it: burning the commons, collective action, norm evolution, meta-level thinking[1], modeling counterfactual worlds (eg one a future wher…

I'm not sure people can't grasp it. But it certainly can't be taken for granted. Perhaps we need to continuously keep making versions of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4 ("Don't be a sucker" 1945)

Yea, I hear you, that's certainly possible. But I'm not reasoning top-down from liberalism's unpopularity, but rather bottom-up from the inability most people have to grasp the components I mentioned. Some of them are much simpler concepts than liberalism, and are applicable in many cases that people have more direct stakes in. And yet, in my experience, vanishingly few people are capable of grasping them to any reasonable degree.

> Perhaps we need to continuously keep making versions of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4 ("Don't be a sucker" 1945)

We're drowning in anti-racist and anti-fascist material. I don't think it's particularly relevant: clearly it's not difficult to nominally support these beliefs while still being extremely illiberal.

That's what's so insidious about illiberalism. It can (and does) poison any ideology, even "good ones", because once a sufficient number of people are bought into it, it hardens into dogma and leads easily to "why should we protect those that disagree with our holy belief system?".

To use an example that we have no trouble recognizing as illiberal, from our modern perspective: Christianity on paper is a very liberal tradition, full of exhortations to love thy enemy and spread peace and love. I don't doubt that this deeply resonated with many early converts. But after a thousand years of spreading to the masses and ossifying into institutions, the medieval Church resembled every other illiberal institution: here's the dogma, and if you don't like it, well then you'll love my torture dungeon.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#23

Post by londgine » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #15

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech? YouTube banning antivax content is speech . You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance on important issues of healthcare? Churches spend all day every day taking stances on abortion. You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?

I like the free market. If a store who also likes the free market decided to raise their price significantly because they claim to be better than everyone else then I will still think that is their right in the free market. However, since I value the free market so much I won't buy from them. Similarly, if YouTube wants to exercise their right of freedom of expression to censor content then I, as someone who values freedom of expression will use them less. Unfortunately, while in the first example many people would behave like me and cause the store to lower their price, not that many people value freedom of expression for YouTube to care about loosing those people.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#24

Post by Covzire » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #15

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech? YouTube banning antivax content is speech . You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance on important issues of healthcare? Churches spend all day every day taking stances on abortion. You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?

No church has a monopoly on the public square that is being exploited by one political party or corporate interest.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#25

Post by throwaway6734 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #21

foobarian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we would be better served with a NPR-like publicly funded platform for video hosting that puts a lot more resources into content moderation. The private platforms get away with the bare minimum by throwing black box AI at the problem which leads to problems like the anti-vax censorship chilling effects etc. There should be an easily reached human in the loop with transparent decisions, and levels of appea…

If the state's going to host it, then their bar should be whether it's legal or not. If they want to put scary warnings around certain content or lock some of it behind age restriction, sure, fine. But if they are going to use public funds to host a government run publicly available video sharing platform, they should be very cautious about removing any content that doesn't violate actual laws. Free speech and all th…

Doesn't the state already ban nudity/language on public broadcast, film, and radio?

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#26

Post by BitwiseFool » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #18

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

New Zealand has a Censorship Office and an official called the Chief Censor. The government has the power to declare that certain communications are illegal and prosecute people for making those communications. They recently, famously did this with footage from the Christchurch shootings as well as the shooter's manifesto. Yet New Zealand consistently tops Cato Institute's freedom index. Maybe, just maybe, an absolut…

>"Yet New Zealand consistently tops Cato Institute's freedom index."

Good for them, but that that index is meaningless to me. Truthfully, I have no respect for arguments that twist acts of suppressing freedom into acts seen as enhancing or preserving freedom.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#27

Post by foobarian » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #21

foobarian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we would be better served with a NPR-like publicly funded platform for video hosting that puts a lot more resources into content moderation. The private platforms get away with the bare minimum by throwing black box AI at the problem which leads to problems like the anti-vax censorship chilling effects etc. There should be an easily reached human in the loop with transparent decisions, and levels of appea…

If the state's going to host it, then their bar should be whether it's legal or not. If they want to put scary warnings around certain content or lock some of it behind age restriction, sure, fine. But if they are going to use public funds to host a government run publicly available video sharing platform, they should be very cautious about removing any content that doesn't violate actual laws. Free speech and all th…

Yes, exactly. And deciding legality should be done better than current automatic moderations that punish innocent content without a working appeals process.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#28

Post by y4mi » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #10

unethical_ban wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disinformation is doing more harm to society than encrypted terrorist emails ever could. The "Disinformation vs. free speech" will be a defining balance of the next decade, even more fraught than "privacy vs. security" in cyberspace. I'm not censoring someone because they want low taxes, high taxes, disbanding the department of education, or giving every poor person a new car. There is a line to be drawn, somewhere,…

> In the short term, I don't see how we force them to host actively harmful content without recategorizing their role in society. This recent flip from "Facebook et al aren't doing enough, put the screws on them" to "we can't force Facebook not to censor" is quite disingenuous. These companies and their founders are famously liberal, and were dragged kicking and screaming into ever more heavy-handed moderation, by bo…

They already were at that point, regardless of what people claim.

Facebook had the ability to paint whatever picture they wanted as truth by controlling what their users saw at what time. And they utilized it proudly long before COVID to increase engagement.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#29

Post by mLuby » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

api wrote: post #11

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

I have to be honest and say that my faith in the capacity of people to think in a free speech totally open environment was severely tested over the past 5-10 years. Things like Qanon, flat Earth, antivax hysteria, the meme-driven return of both "right" and "left" totalitarian ideologies from the early 20th century that should be completely discredited, and so on have made me wonder if most people simply can't handle…

> I've actually wondered if most people might not need to be protected from unregulated content in the same way that people need to be protected from exposure to lead, radon gas, etc.

Yes, but that means deciding which content is harmful, and that's where we are now. Figuratively, you end up with lead-lickers coming out of the woodwork saying that their way of life is being stifled by regulation/moderation.

Chasing user "engagement" has been pushing conversations from the mundane middle toward the fringes. Thus, people make understandable but hasty generalization[0] that what they're seeing is more common than average.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Inductiv...

In the past, I think this drift was counteracted by codes of morality (whether internalized, reinforced by people you know, or promulgated by regulatory bodies) as well as the limited means of disseminating information (few newspaper editors/radio announcers/news anchors to many readers/listeners/viewers). Though I'm sure there were plenty of wild pamphlets spreading chaos in the centuries between Gutenberg and Zuckerberg.

Even though most of those morality codes are downright oppressive by today's standards, and the many-to-many distribution enabled by the Internet has many benefits, we haven't found a substitute, so there's a gap in our armor.

Side note: Believing conspiracies and yearning totalitarian are two different failures in thinking. I say that because only the latter had strong support in the 20th century—even earlier if you count monarchies. Someone supporting Flat Earthers isn't harming me (except by undermining science in general); someone supporting Stalin 2.0 is an indirect direct threat to me.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#30

Post by BitwiseFool » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

londgine wrote: post #23

ggggtez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech? YouTube banning antivax content is speech . You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance on important issues of healthcare? Churches spend all day every day taking stances on abortion. You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?

I like the free market. If a store who also likes the free market decided to raise their price significantly because they claim to be better than everyone else then I will still think that is their right in the free market. However, since I value the free market so much I won't buy from them. Similarly, if YouTube wants to exercise their right of freedom of expression to censor content then I, as someone who values f…

I think discussions of the free market need to include scale. Scale absolutely matters when it comes to "voting with your wallet", or I suppose, in this case, your usage of a platform.

I think our notions on the merits of a free market, and indeed, the very understanding of a free market itself, come from a time before the network effect and the de-facto digital monopolies we see today.