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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)

#71
post #26

"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…

Technology shapes conversations and changes in the way technology works has changed the way the conversations have happened. > 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". Look at how the conversations happened. They were in places like forums and forums were often around topics. I belonged to many forums on topics and the…

I think the problem is that most people use mobile phones, rather then computer workstations. In the 90's everyone had a proper PC workstation. But now people have touch screens instead. You wont type long blog posts or participate in lengthy forum discussions using a touch screen. If you would put a graph with PC sales vs pads and phones showing the last 30 years you would see where it shifted from creating/consuming to passive/consuming. There are still normal PC users, it's just that the number have now grown much, while the number of touch screen users has grown exponentially.

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

#72

You can tell this article is well over a year old, because it doesn't mention the words Fediverse, ActivityPub, Mastodon (or Quanta.wiki!) It was summer of 2019 when the vast majority of those who are most 'plugged in' realized we're going to need a new censorship-resistant web, after the Vox Adpocolypse and other totalitarian and dictatorial over-reach by BigTech, which has been escalating steadily since then, culmi…

> Point of Fact: 68% of voters had never heard of the Hunter Laptop on election day. Point of fact: that’s bullshit. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... ---[begin quote]--- At the final presidential debate Donald Trump tried to land a blow on Democratic rival Joe Biden by suggesting that purported evidence from a laptop computer links him to alleged corrupt business dealings by his son, Hu…

The Hunter scandal was just one random example of countless examples of censorship by BigTech and M5M. I could care less about the laptop story.

I care about the censorship story. One corrupt family can't destroy a democracy, but a loss of free speech rights is guaranteed to.

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

#73
How about, god forbid, constrain ourselves and only use these platforms to keep in touch and share pleasant pet images?

Why in fuck's name does everybody and their cat fight holy wars with each other? I feel that is the real issue, the platforms are just symptoms of it.

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

#74
post #26

"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…

Technology shapes conversations and changes in the way technology works has changed the way the conversations have happened. > 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". Look at how the conversations happened. They were in places like forums and forums were often around topics. I belonged to many forums on topics and the…

Going unremarked in this nostalgia is that those old forums were still moderated, sometimes heavily, and the #1 tool was the ban hammer. It was not a free speech love-in. Hell, Something Awful would automatically replace your post with "yams" if you merely hit a trigger word, if you weren't ejected outright.

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

#75

This take is inaccurate and a myopic understanding of free speech. Moderating social media, and the internet is in fact, doable, and absolutely necessary. This has nothing to do with "censorship". The debate is actually easily settled if you understand what is happening with free speech online. What typically happens in conspiracy-circles, is that people are radicalized because the disinformation is simply not challe…

That your (thoughtful, IMO) response is being downvoted into oblivion by the same people who purport to want "free speech" is sort of perfect.

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The entire summer long while buildings burned, and entire cities looted by violent murdering thugs it was called "peaceful protests". Then when some actual peaceful protesters go to a legitimate politically organized rally in clown outfits in Washington brandishing American flags and are literally ushered into the buildings by security it's portrayed by the lying media as serious military coup attempt. To quote Biden…

It took me a while to place the cognitive dissonance, but I found it eventually: you've made stuff up. Buildings weren't burning all summer, “violent murdering thugs” weren't called peaceful, “politically organized rally” doesn't mean anything…

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The entire summer long while buildings burned, and entire cities looted by violent murdering thugs it was called "peaceful protests". Then when some actual peaceful protesters go to a legitimate politically organized rally in clown outfits in Washington brandishing American flags and are literally ushered into the buildings by security it's portrayed by the lying media as serious military coup attempt. To quote Biden…

Do you have a source to the "ushered into the buildings" thing? Like, are you saying they didn't intend into storming the Capitol but were guided/leaded there by the security staff?

Also I think you're being unfair by ignoring the causes of both of the protests, as (IMO, feel free to disagree) one of them was directly supporting democratic and liberal interests and the other was directly against them. I don't think you can discuss the protests without taking into account what they were protesting.

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

#78
I talk about this more in my blog post [0], but I think that the only viable way out of this mess if anti-trust laws ensure that social network companies who have more than X users need to use open and decentralized protocols. This would be much easier to achieve than trying to break up companies (not saying we shouldn't break them up).

0: https://canolcer.com/post/social-media-decentralized-by-law/

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

#79
Social media, as search engines and maybe other handful of things, became basic social infrastructure such as roads, goverments will have to pay for the servers where these "open protcols" run and they should be moderated from The Constitution itself.

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

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The entire summer long while buildings burned, and entire cities looted by violent murdering thugs it was called "peaceful protests". Then when some actual peaceful protesters go to a legitimate politically organized rally in clown outfits in Washington brandishing American flags and are literally ushered into the buildings by security it's portrayed by the lying media as serious military coup attempt. To quote Biden…

> literally ushered into the buildings by security

Are you serious?

The fact that some cops eventually decided that 20 cops could not stand against 1000 violent protestors smashing through windows and doors, after at least one cop had been dragged out of his position and beaten senseless by the mob, and another cop killed, and so decided that the safest thing to do was open the doors, doesn't mean that all of a sudden they were peaceful protestors. Give me a fucking break.

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