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Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

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Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#311

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

Moderation has already been occuring for a while now

This includes moderation of left wing users and things that probably should not be banned(especially minority voices). It's just the the current crop of far right and conspiracy folks complain a lot more/louder.

That said I do worry that it will be an extra excuse for authoritarian countries but it probably won't change their behavior

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#312
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tools are these actually - the delete button? When it comes down to it - i like moderated spaces on the internet. I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content. I don't like seeing shock images. So yes, i support having moderation. The question to me is not: yes/no moderation, its where you draw the line; what are your policies and how are they enforced. Fundamentally i think the s…

>if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website. You are clearly ignorant of the kinds of shit actual YouTube alternatives have to deal with. Their websites and videos get de-ranked or de-listed from search (Rumble [1]), their apps get removed from app store (LBRY [2]), their infrastructure gets constant attacks (BitChute [3]). Meanwhile, the mainstream media smears them at every opportunity. This is nothing lik…

And by smear do you mean accurately describing far right conspiracy junk or something else?

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#313
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it best for a society to evolve by suppressing diversity? In this situation, I'm talking about diversity of ideas relating to politics. Have you ever considered why Silicon Valley exists in America? It's because as America grew, it welcomed in people from all over the world with extremely different backgrounds with extremely different ideas about how to do things. Over time, that situation resulted in extreme…

>How is it best for a society to evolve by suppressing diversity? Because radical change generally leads to very bad things so you want a slow evolution which means you suppress ideas so they spread more slowly and thus society has more time to process them properly. >Over time, that situation resulted in extreme innovation where the best ideas prevailed. And the existence of giant corporate beasts, massive wealth co…

> you want a slow evolution which means you suppress ideas so they spread more slowly

So is this your viewpoint on all forms of diversity, such as racial and socioeconomic inclusion? Or are you selectively changing your definition as you go?

> And the existence of giant corporate beasts, massive wealth concentration...

This has nothing to do with what we're discussing here.

> foreign influence over elections

So you recognize foreign influence over elections, but think it's ok to silence people whose underlying animosity is rooted around accusations of foreign influence in the most recent election?

> and hide externalities

Interesting choice of words considering you're in support of literally hiding externalities of the situation as a whole

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centralized spam filters are an interesting test case. We generally agree they are good, and necessary. How are they different than algorithmic ordering that we agree to in the TOS?

> How are they different than algorithmic ordering that we agree to in the TOS? People [would be] consuming the spam content being filtered agree with the filtering and are generally happy with it. Failing that, when people are unhappy with their spam filter they can adjust or disable it. As a last resort, they can migrate to another e-mail provider, there's no monopoly on e-mail. Moreover, e-mail is delivered almost…

Interesting points. I don’t think I’m fully sold on it - something like Tinder would seem to be an interesting thought experiment, where people are unable to move due to network effects.

I definitely appreciate you taking the rime to respond. I’m just not sure that I agree that a network effect is monopolistic. It feels more akin to losing a feature by switching off gmail.

Definitely valid points about turning off the filter, although on gmail, I believe that is only for your personal filters. Google still filters huge amounts of malicious stuff before it gets to the spam folder, by silently dropping it.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#315
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is being hunted, that's pretty hyperbolic. If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world and I would encourage anyone concerned about YouTube's content policy to consider visiting other websites on the internet in addition to YouTube.

> If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world A lot of people do. You can't really find out what's going on in the world from the mainstream media in any real resolution or detail, and "other websites on the internet" don't generally have thousands and thousands of people livestreaming actual live video of what's happening . Perhaps t…

You can because the mainstream western media despite it's faults tends to be pretty good

Meanwhile there are tons of crazy extremists streaming. A lot of it doesnt provide an accurate view and might only be useful as a potentially biased first hand account to digged through by journalists and historians after the fact

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about people being offended. I'm talking about people being murdered for publicity, as a propaganda effort, and YouTube having to deal with the fallout.

Right, and I get that. My point is, "Why is that YouTube's problem?" What does it say about our society, where people will commit murder for publicity, thus totally and utterly destroying their lives, almost certainly for life, just for some validation of their existence? I just cannot get shake the feeling its our culture that has a serious problem, not our tech platforms.

Because YouTube shows video to billions of users and it has a responsibility to avoid spreading Hateful propoganda

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#317
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with OP, opinions shouldn’t be censored, no matter how much we disagree with them. Anything that’s not harassment, a direct threat or direct call to violence should be allowed. To your example, if someone attacks you personally then that would count as harassment and be moderated out.

>opinions shouldn’t be censored Let's say I have a platform that let's people comment, so outside of direct harassment I shouldn't be allowed to delete things?

Well it's not really a question of what you should do, it was more a comment on what the ideal solution would be.

Is your platform as large as Twitter, is it one of the main communication platforms in society, does it allow users to wield social and political influence? Is it a proverbial public square?

If so, then in my view a wise and emotionally mature person would elect not to censor opinions, realizing that there are more important things at stake than hurt feelings.

Of course I might be wrong when claiming that censoring opinions and mandating a specific morality will lead to more conflict (see another comment I made in this thread for more on that). Maybe it won't. I guess we'll find out in the next decade or so.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#318

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

Don't conflate omission with prohibition.

Twitter can omit realDonaldTrump, no concerns whatsoever.

But any one prohibiting realDonaldTrump from trolling, by whatever medium, would be alarming.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#319
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How is it best for a society to evolve by suppressing diversity? Because radical change generally leads to very bad things so you want a slow evolution which means you suppress ideas so they spread more slowly and thus society has more time to process them properly. >Over time, that situation resulted in extreme innovation where the best ideas prevailed. And the existence of giant corporate beasts, massive wealth co…

> you want a slow evolution which means you suppress ideas so they spread more slowly So is this your viewpoint on all forms of diversity, such as racial and socioeconomic inclusion? Or are you selectively changing your definition as you go? > And the existence of giant corporate beasts, massive wealth concentration... This has nothing to do with what we're discussing here. > foreign influence over elections So you r…

>So is this your viewpoint on all forms of diversity, such as racial and socioeconomic inclusion?

Yes. Although in the US we've been working on socioeconomic and racial inclusion for the last few centuries so I feel that's moving slowly enough for society to adjust. Communism shows what happens when you move on the socioeconomic side too quickly and it's not pretty.

I do find it funny how some people think racial and socioeconomic inclusion is a new thing that is just now happening. Do you people never pay attention to history, ever?

>This has nothing to do with what we're discussing here.

You talked about the glory of change in terms of SV. I mentioned the dark flip side of change in terms of SV. You can try to cherry pick parts of the story but I'll keep pointing out that you're doing so.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#320

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

What's your opinion of Project Censored?

https://www.projectcensored.org/top-25-censored-stories-of-a...

Just to pick any example:

What's the culture war label for the fate of journalist Abby Martin?

https://www.projectcensored.org/24-silenced-in-savannah-jour...

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