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

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

#241

Post by coldtea »

krapp wrote: post #239
coldtea wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not a statement many people who have been angry recently would agree with. Well, what "angry people would agree with" is a pretty strange basis for an argument, anyway... > 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. And that would be neither here nor there, cause your forums are not so massive as to shape publ…

>And that would be neither here nor there, cause your forums are not so massive as to shape public opinion and influence elections and news. Maybe assholes shouldn't be able to use these platforms to shape public opinion and influence elections and news. Maybe having a Twitter account is a privilege, and not a right, and that privilege is correctly granted on the precondition that one will not use the platform to act…

>Maybe assholes shouldn't be able to use these platforms to shape public opinion and influence elections and news

And who judges who is the asshole objectively?

For example, in my book a president who actively bombed 7 countries, continued wars he was elected to stop, under whose terms ICE deported more people at the border than Trump (wall or no wall), gave Wall Street a "too big to fail" bailout, enlarged surveillance and hunted several whistleblowers and threatened journalists, is more of an asshole (and a danger) than another who is just a crass business/tv personality that wrote mean tweets and that rednecks liked. That's whether the former has had more political experience or is a smoother talker, and polite company.

But that's just me, and neither is even my President, so...

>Maybe having a Twitter account is a privilege, and not a right, and that privilege is correctly granted on the precondition that one will not act like an asshole.

No, I'd say that having an account to social platforms above some population reach level shouldn't be a "privilege" but a right (that is, subject to due process/law, not up to the whims of the company).

Else, those who control said platforms (where the majority of the public frequents and where most of public discourse happens), also control the public dialogue.

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

#242

Post by smoe »

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…

For me the issue is more that communities as they grow seem to be bound to become either burning dumpster fires or turn just uninteresting and boring as they converge on the lowest common denominator of interests/opinions.

I have self hosted IRC, forums and git servers in the past, but honestly what the point if free speech is not really an issue where I live and it’s just maintenance cost for me? So far I found mob mentality and self censorship within communities much more worrysome than anything imposed by government and big tech.

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

#243

Post by Sophistifunk »

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…

Exactly this. I can't run protocols. And I can't afford to open anything I run to the general internet, because I'm not a sysadmin, I don't know how to be a good sysadmin, and I don't want to be a sysadmin. It's a respectable job I just don't want to do, and attempting it as a dabbler will mean I get pwn3d basically immediately.

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

#244

Post by krapp »

coldtea wrote: post #241
krapp wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And that would be neither here nor there, cause your forums are not so massive as to shape public opinion and influence elections and news. Maybe assholes shouldn't be able to use these platforms to shape public opinion and influence elections and news. Maybe having a Twitter account is a privilege, and not a right, and that privilege is correctly granted on the precondition that one will not use the platform to act…

> Maybe assholes shouldn't be able to use these platforms to shape public opinion and influence elections and news And who judges who is the asshole objectively? For example, in my book a president who actively bombed 7 countries, continued wars he was elected to stop, under whose terms ICE deported more people at the border than Trump (wall or no wall), gave Wall Street a "too big to fail" bailout, enlarged surveill…

>And who judges who is the asshole objectively?

If Obama, or any other President, had acted the way Trump did on Twitter, I'd have no issue with them being banned, either.

>No, I'd say that having an account to social platforms above some population reach level shouldn't be a "privilege" but a right

And who judges what is a "social platform" objectively? Because you've just granted the government the right to use its monopoly on force to remove fundamental rights like freedom of speech and association from the people running any website which meets some arbitrary "population reach" threshold.

To me, that's a lot scarier than platforms fact-checking statements or banning racists and people calling for violence or spreading misinformation.

>(that is, subject to due process/law, not up to the whims of the company).

Companies aren't anarchist collectives, they are subject to due process and the law. You just disagree with companies having the right to choose with whom they do business, and with Twitter and other big social media platforms being able to moderate content and ban people. But they're still doing so within the framework of a state and its laws.

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

#245

Post by bccdee »

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…

Few people if any ever seriously alleged that Russian hackers intervened in the administration of the 2016 US federal election. Rather, the assertion was that Russian agents spread disinformation on media platforms, and that was found to be largely true.

Dishonest claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 US federal election are a lot more dangerous, as is obvious from the Jan. 6th terrorist attack on the US Capitol.

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

#246

Post by intended »

einpoklum wrote: post #227
atoav wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it is precisely the "unfree" parts of HN that make it attractive ... stuff like a culture of down-voting destructive, inflammatory or snarky comments ... a strong focus on certain topics etc. Cultures of upvoting/downvoting are completely orthogonal to whether protocols or applications are free software or proprietary. Neither does the subject matter focus on a news aggregation site. > What if the free platform you…

Let me rephrase your argument, so its tractable.

The risks are overblown, and so its ok to create places with decentralized freer speech.

Firstly- I removed the parts where you stated that this is like the phone network.

Phone calls are temporally limited, once you are done with a call its over. You can't hear that voice again, or relive that conversation, except through memory.

Text on a forum combines the worst of phone calls and books.

Not only is it easy to create and respond in real time (Like a phone, and unlike books or letters), but it is also persistent so people can read and participate in that moment of emotion repeatedly (like a phone call).

These are great and greatly bad depending on how they are used, but they are dramatically different from the way a phone call impacts human beings.

Which brings us to the second point - it isn't only the information, it is the emotion, or in combination the "content" of speech on forums/social media that matters.

Having actively tried to push for free speech and then managed speech, I can guarantee that without moderation, forums/social spaces collapse. They fall victim to our neurology, and the scale of people on it.

So you can't avoid the use of force here, the question is the amount of force being used, and whether it is commensurate to the specific event it is being used to mitigate.

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

#247

Post by kimmeld »

bccdee wrote: post #231
allarm wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will never be easy. People should understand that and take the hard part as a fun part or as a price to pay for their digital independence.

That's not true. There's no reason why hosting a server should be hard. This is a UX issue, and an eminently solvable one at that. Imagine a self-hosted, easy-to-install Heroku-style server platform with a public repository for application images. It's not hard because it needs to be hard; it's hard because no one has invested the time and money to make it easy.

It’s hard the same reason I can’t put a ton of solar panels on my roof and pump large amounts of electricity into the grid. The upstream infrastructure is not sized appropriately. It’s not that running a server is hard but that most internet infrastructure is designed to consume and not produce.

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

#248

Post by henry_bone »

striking wrote: post #240
henry_bone wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I comment on moderation since this thread is about censorship and free speech? I guess we'll find out. Seems I've lost a point. Someone took exception to what I said above. Not sure how I went wrong, but if enough people feel similarly, then my post will fade away. It will be censored. Make of that what you will. UPDATE: I've got a point back since I wrote this comment. I won't keep editing this comment each time…

Although it does seem a little meta, I'd like to do you the favor of telling you why I downvote every time I see someone complain about their downvotes or their post being grayed out. It's boring. It doesn't make for good conversation. It's not falsifiable and there's nothing to be said about it. You're just unhappy about it, and it just bores me. Maybe you feel like you're being censored, but really there can only b…

It's not my comments I'm arguing for.

I don't think I'm that hard-done-by. I'm referring to gray comments that don't seem to be particularly hostile, but are just, say, conservative (for example) in nature.

Perhaps I've forgotten, but I don't think I've complained about being downvoted. Today doesn't count. It's not a complaint, just an observation in a thread about free speech and censorship.

Thanks for the feedback.

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

#249

Post by Seirdy »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #57

I read, and re-read the article and I am yet to understand how a protocol will help what the author describes in the first few paragraphs. (BTW very nicely walked around that hot bowl of mess!) First, Usenet was just as much of a dumpster fire as Reddit et al. in some branches ( alt. I am looking at you). The rest (comp. soc. sci. etc) were heavily self moderated. Second, I am not sure the author is clear on what is…

The whole idea of protocols instead of platforms is that there's no central owner to turn evil or foot the bill (having to make money to scale up to user growth can create a conflict of interest). Users aren't as locked-in as they would be on a closed platform.

I wrote about this in detail last night: https://seirdy.one/2021/01/27/whatsapp-and-the-domestication...

Users aren't necessarily the product in social media; this is only true of mainstream centralized networks.

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

#250

Post by striking »

henry_bone wrote: post #248
striking wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it does seem a little meta, I'd like to do you the favor of telling you why I downvote every time I see someone complain about their downvotes or their post being grayed out. It's boring. It doesn't make for good conversation. It's not falsifiable and there's nothing to be said about it. You're just unhappy about it, and it just bores me. Maybe you feel like you're being censored, but really there can only b…

It's not my comments I'm arguing for. I don't think I'm that hard-done-by. I'm referring to gray comments that don't seem to be particularly hostile, but are just, say, conservative (for example) in nature. Perhaps I've forgotten, but I don't think I've complained about being downvoted. Today doesn't count. It's not a complaint, just an observation in a thread about free speech and censorship. Thanks for the feedback…

I've heard people 'just ask questions' or 'make observations' or similar a million times before, and you most certainly have comments that fit the profile of what you've been arguing in favor of. It reads like a deflection, as a result.

Moreover, this is kind of what I mean by comments that aren't falsifiable, that don't really add anything. You're not giving me anything to work with when you gesture vaguely to theoretical comments rather than specific examples. All I have to go on are yours. And yours make for very good counterexamples.

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