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Bringing people back to the open web

chrishardie.com

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Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#31

Post by prophesi »

untog wrote: post #28
prophesi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saddest part is how the younger generation turned college campuses, the place where radical & worldview-challenging ideas could thrive, into places wherein you're protected from any such challenging ideas.

That's a very common and entirely overblown hypothesis. Sure, there are student protests about a tiny number of speakers each year. But there have been student protests about anything ever since there have been students. > More importantly, though, we can see here why reaching broad conclusions from sets of anecdotes is inadvisable. There are around 2,600 four-year universities in the United States. Friedersdorf trie…

If you want a book that uses national polls conducted over the past 40+ years, plus a little bit of anecdotal evidence to make the data tangible, I recommend iGen by Jean M. Twenge[0].

There's a noticeable trend that the kids of this upcoming generation are ill-prepared for college and expect the authorities to protect them. In highschool, they're less likely to go out without their parents or work a part-time job (And on a positive note, less likely to drink or have premarital sex).

[0] https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy...

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#32

Post by TuringTest »

groby_b wrote: post #23
malvosenior wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensible adults have long been a proponent of free speech. It’s the call to censorship for comfort that is new and seemingly coming from younger generations who don’t have experience with why that may be a bad idea. The ACLU has long defended all speech: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/why-we-must-defend-fre...

Sensible adults have long been aware that censorship is something the government does, and that private individuals (and by extension, corporations) are perfectly fine restricting what speech they're willing to accept in their environment. The rule commonly known as "my house, my rules". The problem many people have with the open web is that many people don't step up and spell out house rules, which others interpret…

Uh, that's not quite exact. That may be something americans think, but at least here in Europe we have rules that control the speech that happens at private venues that enable public speech (like, newspapers).

For example if a newspaper publishes inaccurate information about a person, that person has the right to publish a correction[1] explaining their point of view on the subject; and the newspaper is forced by law to publish the correction in the same venue and same prominence. This is considered quite sensible to us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_reply

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#33

Post by crdoconnor »

groby_b wrote: post #27
crdoconnor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech. Besides, censoring Nazis and other undesirable types (e.g. ISIS propaganda) is ineffective at shutting them up and endears potential recruits to them. It would likely be more effec…

You got me. In my personal environment, my house? Speech that I don't accept doesn't happen. And it turns out that that's actually perfectly fine, because free speech should only not be restricted by the government .

>In my personal environment, my house?

Weren't we talking about freedom of speech on the open web though?

When you mentioned walled gardens I assumed you meant Twitter not your living room.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#34

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

malvosenior wrote: post #15
groby_b wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason we're in the mess that we are is the shit show the open web was. People were delighted to have a walled garden where they only communicated with friends, instead of random drive-by trolls in the open. And frankly, it's understandable. A place that justifies bullying and hate speech as a good thing, with mumblings of "b.. b.. but free speech", is not a place where anybody wants to spend their time. (Except…

Sensible adults have long been a proponent of free speech. It’s the call to censorship for comfort that is new and seemingly coming from younger generations who don’t have experience with why that may be a bad idea. The ACLU has long defended all speech: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/why-we-must-defend-fre...

It's a manifestation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs among a certain cohort that's allied with targets of discrimination and feeling politically cornered by the opposition's shift to the right. They see that the Overton window about certain types of discourse being mainstream has shifted because the opposition has moved further right -- both in terms of leadership and the views of the membership. They see radical positions working for their opponents, and escalate in turn.

There's a lack of nuance about whether they wish to push certain viewpoints underground and out of the mainstream, or if they wish to silence them altogether. Some probably don't care, which is troubling, but not altogether hard to understand. The effort is internally justified by invoking the 'paradox of tolerance', where they propose that the discourse of their opponents is fundamentally intolerant and presents a clear and present existential threat to society at large, and must be reactively suppressed for the health of diverse and open discourse to continue.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#35

Post by groby_b »

pmlnr wrote: post #29
groby_b wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd start by not calling your own friends "conformist" and "lazy". And instead, try to understand where they come from. We won't solve problems by shouting at each other.

I lost contact with many people because none of them respected me constantly asking to keep in touch outside of facebook - email, for example. I don't have lighter words, even if I consider them friends. Moving on from grammar and culture (in my read, I wasn't offensive, merely stated a fact), what actual solutions, proposals, ideas, can you contribute?

Culture is the issue. The long standing Internet tradition of "I didn't intend to be offensive, so it's fine that I was, and I should continue to be" is at the root of the entire problem.

Most people don't care for that kind of environment. And so we splinter, and wall off. We're using technological restrictions as a substitute for cultural norms. And so, my original statement still stands - if you want to change the situations, change what your norms are, and influence global norms that way.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#36

Post by s73v3r_ »

prophesi wrote: post #21
malvosenior wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensible adults have long been a proponent of free speech. It’s the call to censorship for comfort that is new and seemingly coming from younger generations who don’t have experience with why that may be a bad idea. The ACLU has long defended all speech: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/why-we-must-defend-fre...

The saddest part is how the younger generation turned college campuses, the place where radical & worldview-challenging ideas could thrive, into places wherein you're protected from any such challenging ideas.

No, they didn't. The sad part is people apparently believing that minorities being subjected to a bunch of hate speech directed toward them are "challenging ideas."

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#37

Post by untog »

prophesi wrote: post #31
untog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very common and entirely overblown hypothesis. Sure, there are student protests about a tiny number of speakers each year. But there have been student protests about anything ever since there have been students. > More importantly, though, we can see here why reaching broad conclusions from sets of anecdotes is inadvisable. There are around 2,600 four-year universities in the United States. Friedersdorf trie…

If you want a book that uses national polls conducted over the past 40+ years, plus a little bit of anecdotal evidence to make the data tangible, I recommend iGen by Jean M. Twenge[0]. There's a noticeable trend that the kids of this upcoming generation are ill-prepared for college and expect the authorities to protect them. In highschool, they're less likely to go out without their parents or work a part-time job (A…

Yeah, about that:

> For instance, Twenge argues that young people have become increasingly self-absorbed since the advent of the Internet. One piece of evidence she uses is a search she ran through Google's Ngram (which searches through printed books) for the phrase "I love me." She found a sharp spike in the phrase in the last few decades. But "I love me" sounds slightly off — surely most people say "I love myself." And lo, if you search "I love myself" (as I would guess Twenge did first), you find that the phrase fluctuated with much less satisfying results, and in fact occurred at a higher frequency in, for instance, the 1770s, than in the early 2000s. So, Twenge discovered a grammatical shift and disguised it as a cultural one.

> It's a small example, but the book is dizzying with this brand of deceptive spin.

https://www.npr.org/2017/09/17/548664627/move-over-millennia...

I'm not arguing that the book is without merit, but I really don't think it comprehensively and inarguably states that the "younger generation" are as damaged as the "older generation" might suspect (and "the coming generation are wrong about all the things!" is a trope as old as time)

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#38

Post by lwhsiao »

butterfi wrote: post #22
bitwize wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A free OS for PCs is a good idea -- but impossible. Microsoft and Apple have tenthousands of developers. And not just any devs, some of the best in the industry. Microsoft and Apple have research labs where they can subject their OS to hundreds of thousands of user-hours of testing for usability, scalability, and robustness. How do you compete with that?

Linux?

I believe the parent was intentionally mirroring the grandparent comment to make the argument that Linux is a good counterexample.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#39

Post by s73v3r_ »

kuschku wrote: post #2

This is a good idea – but impossible. Google and Facebook have tenthousands of developers. And not just any devs, some of the best in the industry. Google and Facebook have tons of userdata for training ML models. How do you compete with that? The only way your projects would ever be able to outcompete Google and Facebook on technology is if you’d somehow get a ton of engineers willing to work for a good cause. But t…

Most people don't worry about ML models or anything like that. They just want something that works, and works well. And, at least in the case of FB, something that their friends/relatives are also available on. You don't need open source devs working on the technical side; you need open source work done on the interface side. You need things that non-technically inclined people can pick up and use.

Re: Bringing people back to the open web

#40

Post by fauigerzigerk »

crdoconnor wrote: post #19
groby_b wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason we're in the mess that we are is the shit show the open web was. People were delighted to have a walled garden where they only communicated with friends, instead of random drive-by trolls in the open. And frankly, it's understandable. A place that justifies bullying and hate speech as a good thing, with mumblings of "b.. b.. but free speech", is not a place where anybody wants to spend their time. (Except…

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech. Besides, censoring Nazis and other undesirable types (e.g. ISIS propaganda) is ineffective at shutting them up and endears potential recruits to them. It would likely be more effec…

Absolute free speech is not a sustainable position, because it conflicts with other basic rights, freedoms and laws.

Would you not accept that directly inciting violence against specific groups or individuals must be banned?

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