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Corporate Unpersoning

unz.com

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Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#41

Post by macdust »

throwanem wrote: post #27
macdust wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Read UNZ.com to catch up on the latest thought in antisemitic, eugenicist, racist, and elitist circles. Otherwise, don't get upset when dehumanizers get unpersoned.

The thing I like about Unz.com is that it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other; marginalized voices of all stripes are welcome, would-be neo-Hitlers and would-be neo-Stalins alike. To be sure, I don't have a lot of use for opinions of either stripe, but I'm glad that there's a place left on the Internet where both are suffered to exist in public, for a little while longer at least. Sticking your…

>but I'm sure that is merely an unworthy cavil...

53 days ago I wrote a post but decided not to publish it. Thus am I compelled by you defend my right to publish here.

>it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other

The non-racist voices, like Michael Hudson, get plenty of exposure elsewhere. They are used at unz.com to lend a civilized context to the sophistic racist writers.

>both are suffered to exist in public

Sophisticated argumentation leading to racist conclusions offends but does not enlighten and so is best ignored. There aren't two civil sides here, pretenses notwithstanding.

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#42

Post by nerdponx »

humanrebar wrote: post #38
nerdponx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and if it turned out that hacker news was doing anything unscrupulous I would have no problem dropping it. I don't care what the rest of society does, start with you and yourself.

If you want to make a public statement or have an open discussion, you need to be where the public is.

How often do you actually need to do that?

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#43

Post by notl4wy3r »

humanrebar wrote: post #31
notl4wy3r wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of options in the modern era to promulgate your views without the support of any company. You can host them on ipfs, print them out and paste them as flyers, etc. Companies do not owe it to you to let you promote your views using their infrastructure. Maybe it is in their best interest, or the best interest of their users, or maybe not. But historically, we have valued companies' (and, transitively,…

> There are plenty of options in the modern era to promulgate your views without the support of any company. Who said anything about support? Do DNSs "support" every website they host? Why would forums be supporting all the speech they host then? > Companies do not owe it to you to let you promote your views using their infrastructure. I don't think of it in terms of obligations. I do think supporting free speech and…

> Do DNSs "support" every website they host?

Yes, in the sense we use in the tech industry where we say we "support" a particular use case -- i.e. enable it/allow it to happen.

> I do think supporting free speech and earnest dialogue is a social responsibility.

I don't. Or, rather, I think it exists in a constellation of other social responsibilities, and is subordinate to some others.

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#44

Post by kazinator »

jasode wrote: post #30
humanrebar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason free speech advocates don't like that option is that they don't get an audience I don't like it because "public areas" are owned and governed by private entities. It's nonsense to say you're in public if there's no public listening. That's not free speech, it's free speech zones . As in, "Say whatever you want, just say it to yourself in that shed over there." > Nazi-proponents would use it as a weapon t…

>If trolls show up on message boards, the solution is curation, moderation And those editorial mechanisms mean you no longer have "freedom of speech" -- which breaks the very law you're proposing. That's what I meant by "contradictions" in my previous message. A new law that extends "freedom of speech to private entities" is not possible for society to implement in a consistent manner. >Right now, people are worried…

Moderation where A dictates what B does/n't read is against freedom of speech. Self moderation whereby every B mods down unwanted material is compatible with freedom of speech, as is a mechanism whereby B indicates "I agree with C and want not to see what C doesn't want to see."

B and C are simply exercising their freedom from speech, which is as important as freedom of.

Of course, this has its own problems: like online fora devolving into cliques of people who think the same way.

People should be exposed to trolls and critically evaluate and re-evaluate their beliefs.

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#45

Post by explainplease »

macdust wrote: post #41
throwanem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I like about Unz.com is that it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other; marginalized voices of all stripes are welcome, would-be neo-Hitlers and would-be neo-Stalins alike. To be sure, I don't have a lot of use for opinions of either stripe, but I'm glad that there's a place left on the Internet where both are suffered to exist in public, for a little while longer at least. Sticking your…

>but I'm sure that is merely an unworthy cavil... 53 days ago I wrote a post but decided not to publish it. Thus am I compelled by you defend my right to publish here. >it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other The non-racist voices, like Michael Hudson, get plenty of exposure elsewhere. They are used at unz.com to lend a civilized context to the sophistic racist writers. >both are suffered to exi…

I don't agree with racism. But offense is irrelevant. What matters is ensuring that all people have equal access to all information so that truth may not be suppressed.

It is foolish, for anyone who cares about truth, to advocate suppression of information or opinions, by legal or other means. Because history demonstrates that, whenever such suppression is legitimized, it will be used by evil people to suppress truth.

Yesterday the cardinal sin was heresy against the church. Today the cardinal sin is racism. Tomorrow the cardinal sin will be something else. Someday the cardinal sin will be your own opinion. Only evil people and shortsighted fools advocate censorship of opposing views.

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#46

Post by macdust »

explainplease wrote: post #45
macdust wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I'm sure that is merely an unworthy cavil... 53 days ago I wrote a post but decided not to publish it. Thus am I compelled by you defend my right to publish here. >it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other The non-racist voices, like Michael Hudson, get plenty of exposure elsewhere. They are used at unz.com to lend a civilized context to the sophistic racist writers. >both are suffered to exi…

I don't agree with racism. But offense is irrelevant. What matters is ensuring that all people have equal access to all information so that truth may not be suppressed. It is foolish, for anyone who cares about truth, to advocate suppression of information or opinions, by legal or other means. Because history demonstrates that, whenever such suppression is legitimized, it will be used by evil people to suppress truth…

Not about suppression. unz.com is still operating. It just isn't a contributor to Google's news aggregator.

Anyway unz.com itself is an aggregator and doesn't publish everyone either.

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#47

Post by humanrebar »

ci5er wrote: post #40
humanrebar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few places where this doesn't analogize that way. Significantly and uniquely, Facebook, Google, etc. are selling forums and mediums for expression. They are common carriers of speech; they are not partnering in creating speech.

Do you believe then, that Facebook (founded 2004) and Google(founded 1998) have an obligation to carrier any and all speech? Why? Because they were successful? If I were Facebook (I am not) ... wouldn't I - shouldn't I - be able to say: "Get off my lawn"?

> ...an obligation to carrier any and all speech?

"Any" and "all" are absolute words like "always" and "never", so no.

I think there's room to create something like network neutrality but for speech. It doesn't need to apply to every single site on the internet, just like network neutrality doesn't apply to every single server connected to the internet.

But there is an analogy between the companies that provide the backbone of the internet and the companies that provide the backbone of public discourse.

> "If I were Facebook..."

Morally and ethically, facebook should not be able to influence public discussion to fit their worldview, including banning thoughts it finds too abhorrent. The (recent, to the internet) push to do so is just a new wave of the things described in the Scarlet Letter, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984. It's getting pushed too far and things will happen people will regret.

Should there be legal protections? At the moment, I think the discussion is worth having. If you asked me ten years ago, I would have said no, but it's apparent to me that something is different this time. I don't know if it's network effects or what, but it seems like a few companies are carriers for the public speech of average Americans and if they all decided that the thoughts of, say, libertarians were dangerous, we could end up with another round of the Hollywood blacklists, but that affect everyone and in much less tangible ways (algorithms that change and cannot testify, lack of objective data to prove suppression happens, etc.).

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#48

Post by humanrebar »

nerdponx wrote: post #42
humanrebar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to make a public statement or have an open discussion, you need to be where the public is.

How often do you actually need to do that?

Ask the BLM movement. Why did they feel the need to block traffic? Couldn't they have just posted on facebook?

Besides, frequency of something isn't a good measure of its importance. "How often do you feel the need to vote?" is also the wrong question to ask.

Re: Corporate Unpersoning

#49

Post by throwanem »

macdust wrote: post #41
throwanem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I like about Unz.com is that it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other; marginalized voices of all stripes are welcome, would-be neo-Hitlers and would-be neo-Stalins alike. To be sure, I don't have a lot of use for opinions of either stripe, but I'm glad that there's a place left on the Internet where both are suffered to exist in public, for a little while longer at least. Sticking your…

>but I'm sure that is merely an unworthy cavil... 53 days ago I wrote a post but decided not to publish it. Thus am I compelled by you defend my right to publish here. >it doesn't seem particularly to favor one side over the other The non-racist voices, like Michael Hudson, get plenty of exposure elsewhere. They are used at unz.com to lend a civilized context to the sophistic racist writers. >both are suffered to exi…

I understand that it's not pleasant to be accused of attempting to manipulate opinion. If you've spent little time here, and especially if you don't have showdead enabled in your account options, you may well be unaware of the large increase in such activity which took place here before and during the election season. The account you are using shows every sign of having been created for such purpose; I enumerated most of those signs in my prior comment. One I overlooked there is that, when frequent participants here create "throwaway" accounts for the purpose of speaking without attribution, they generally acknowledge those accounts as such. You have not done that, either.

And so far you have used this account, with all those stigmata, to contribute nothing of value; of the adjectives in your comment to which I originally responded, all save one ("latest") could be replaced with 'sinful' and the comment remain precisely as meaningful as it started out. You do nothing to support your claims of moral or intellectual failure; you merely insist upon them, and when those claims are challenged, insist on them still harder.

I grant this is a useful style of discourse among those who agree with you, or who are susceptible to believing that something is so awful that even to examine it for themselves and try to draw their own conclusions on its merit risks contaminating them with some sort of social or intellectual pestilence. You will find very few of the latter sort here, and even those of the former tend in my experience to prefer engaging on a higher level than mere accusations of heresy.

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