Kanye West is buying Parler • Hacker News Board

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#371

Post by thedougd » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #238

jleyank wrote: post #95

Can't make private individuals or companies host your speech. Can't make people listen to your speech. There's no protection against civil (ie, non governmental) action against your speech. You want freedom, host it your self and be prepared to accept the consequences and gains. Go to Speakers Corner and have a go. Put up a website. Buy a TV/Radio station, or Internet provider.

>Can't make private individuals or companies host your speech. There is no fundamental reason this is an unchangeable true. A lot of the noise around Section 230 repeal and other laws being passed in places like Texas are designed to alter exactly this norm. Personally I am not sure if I would change it or not, I am just pointing out that it is far from written in stone...

They can try to disincentivize private censorship, but unlikely to stop it. I believe the primary argument is forcing these companies to publish speech is a violation of their own free speech.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#372

Post by mariusor » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #327

mariusor wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a platform where people expect the ugly ideas to be debated (in good faith) will have the users that are willing to do that[1]. Not every platform needs to have _all_ the users. I know that it's a bit of an anathema on a discussion board built by venture capitalists to say that the goal of a social platform should not be to maximize the amount of users and engagement, but here we are. I think optimizing…

> I think that a platform where people expect the ugly ideas to be debated (in good faith) will have the users that are willing to do that[1]. This does not actually...happen. At least not over the medium and long term. What actually happens, and you can see this in practice, is that decent people are not particularly interested, over long periods of time, in arguing that no, there is no globalist (read: Jewish) cons…

I disagree with you. I think that the phenomenon that you described (which exists on most social platforms that are advertising themselves as "free speech") is not present everywhere and my impression is that the problem is exactly with the "chase all the users" mentality.

One example that I can think of the top of my head is Scott Alexander's blog, where I saw opinions put forward (most of the times in a respectful manner) that ranged from extremely egalitarian to extremely libertarian. I am entirely sure that some of the people posting there have views that veer into "one flavour of bigot" or another, but because the community as a whole would rise against the most objectionable types of ideas that one could put forward, they never do it. To me that is a healthy community and I hope it can be achieved in other places without needing an "alpha-personality" at the center for people to gather around.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#373

Post by elil17 » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #339

elil17 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Capitalism is the problem" is a statement so broad an non-specific that it can not be a lie. Certainly any economic system has problems. Saying that a specific race is inherently evil is a specific factual claim (one that few people actually make).

> Certainly any economic system has problems Sure, but there's a huge gap between "X has problems" and "X is _the_ problem", i.e. if only we removed X, everything would be fine. It's absurd.

I do not assume that people mean "if we only removed capitalism, everything would be fine" when they say "capitalism is the problem." I assume they mean something more like "replacing capitalism with [y] would make things much better than marginal changes to capitalism" where [y] is probably democratic socialism, or that they mean something like "most problems can be traced back to capitalism and to fix these problems we need to fix capitalism" where "fixing capitalism" means enacting whatever policies the speaker happens to advocate for.

Someone saying "it would be better if the US adopted a government closer to the USSR's" is a pretty out there statement and I'm not going to assume that someone means that unless they're pretty clear about it.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#374

Post by MockObject » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #256

mrtksn wrote: post #11

Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. I have been following self proclaimed free speech absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your ri…

I used to be free speech absolutist, but I am not any longer, especially when it comes to social media. The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was basically “let everyone hear everything and make up their own mind”. This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented in psychologic…

I wonder if anyone believes their own views are too dangerous for broad distribution, and should be limited to protect demoocracy.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#375

Post by monknomo » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #228

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and public breakdown. Devil's advocate: there's no way this isn't the case for Kanye, right? Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life? Why was he able to achieve everything he's achieved 1996 -> 2012 (Roc-A-Fella -> The College Dropout -> My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era) without these "mental illness" bouts?

https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/kanye-west-bipolar-disorder.h... : "He has famously referred to bipolar disorder as his “superpower,”" This is key to understanding bipolar: it has an "upswing" phase in which someone has more energy and less inhibition. Increased self-belief as well. It can, if you're lucky, be just the right thing to catapult someone into incredible creative works. The risk is that risk-taking may not…

Both phases come with a lack of self-awareness and sometimes anosognosia as symptoms

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#376

Post by sneaky_verily » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

xd1936 wrote: post #182

paulpauper wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying he's sick or he is wrong, yet his popularity keeps growing. Same for net worth. His tweets are getting 3-5x the engagement compared to a year ago. Maybe it's all part of the act.

His tweets _were_ getting engagement. They locked his account[1]. 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/09/tw...

And now he is going to own a social media site so his account can't be locked.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#377

Post by seanw444 » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

Hey guys, I have an idea: why don't we try building free-speech protocols rather than free-speech platforms?

Humans are fallible. We like to think we could build something where people can talk freely, but if the ability to censor something we don't like is presented, at some point nearly everybody will take that action because they personally deem it necessary for some greater good.

Ultimately, protocols that cannot be altered or censored (at least without significant and difficult amounts of effort) are what are necessary to obtain true free speech.

There are some groups that are understanding this, and working accordingly. LBRY for example, says exactly this in their "what is LBRY" article:

> Building protocols, not platforms, is the best way to secure a free, open internet.

As long as people use centralized services that are susceptible to fallible human intervention, that fallibility will be acted upon.

Centralization was adequate back when the internet was first brewing. Many people had common interests, people were respectful of others' data often enough that encrypted network protocols weren't deemed necessary. Now, encryption is almost required because so many people have bad intentions. The internet has grown, and so have the amount of conflicting demographics using it.

Just as we had to adopt encryption on a wide scale to keep the internet usable, adopting decentralization at a wide scale will be too. And that includes making it easy enough for normies to access that they think nothing else of it, much like how they don't care what encryption is, as long as there's a lock icon in their search bar.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#378

Post by spywaregorilla » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

davewritescode wrote: post #338

spywaregorilla wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't listen to much rap / hip hop, and can only name his cover (adaptation?) of Stronger, I do know who Kanye is. I don't know anything about his music. Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so mu…

Early Kanye West brought a lot of attention to social issues through his music and was one of the first hip-hop artists to publicly advocate for acceptance of gay folks in hip-hop culture at a time when gay slurs were very common. His first album was downright wholesome as far as hip-hop and there's a reason he was so beloved. He's been on a long, slow, downward trajectory with his mental health since the death of hi…

I don't feel that's particularly incompatible with anything I said.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#379

Post by awb » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #11

Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. I have been following self proclaimed free speech absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your ri…

> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it.

Really? They've never defined free speech, so how can we hold them accountable?

The idea of a "free speech absolutist" is a complete joke destined for legal consequences. For example, I don't think they mean free speech is the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions on free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Plus, there are all kinds of free speech reductions they could make, like only allowing palatable content onto top trending recommendations. So, you're not banning free speech, but you're actively restricting it based on what's attractive to advertisers or even the general public.

If they said "all legally permitted speech on our platform will be given the same protection and visibility based on metrics that do no include the meaning of the speech", then that would be something concrete that we could hold them accountable to.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#380

Post by LatteLazy » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

thedougd wrote: post #371

LatteLazy wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can't make private individuals or companies host your speech. There is no fundamental reason this is an unchangeable true. A lot of the noise around Section 230 repeal and other laws being passed in places like Texas are designed to alter exactly this norm. Personally I am not sure if I would change it or not, I am just pointing out that it is far from written in stone...

They can try to disincentivize private censorship, but unlikely to stop it. I believe the primary argument is forcing these companies to publish speech is a violation of their own free speech.

Right now section 230 means you can censor without censoring perfectly and not get sued. Repealing it means Facebook are liable for anything posted there IF the censor at all. So Facebook either gives up all censorship (free speech!), or gives up all user driven content (unlikely).

That's just civil law, the constitutional right to free speech doesn't cover getting sued for it. Even if it does apply to corporations right to censor...