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Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
71–80 of 366 posts
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, I'm not sure I really understand this angle. Usually not wanting to be associated with specific content, and not funding that content wouldn't be censorship. I would expect it exists in the same way in non digital mediums, advertisers can choose how they spend their money.
Its not just funding - content is often removed because its perceived as unpalatable to advertisers and payment processors. This is the way the modern web which we all made, works.
It's also removed because the content is abhorrible, or beginning to push the boundires to make the previous abhorrible content seem palatable.
The assumption that users cannot see or understand the slide towards abhorrent content is incorrect.
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#73I think this article misses one big point which is how we - the people on this website - have actively constructed a world where advertisers can shift spend really quickly. Brand safety is a big reason for censorship - the idea of keeping ads for a company away from content that people might not like. YouTube demonetizes loads and loads of controversial topics across the political spectrum - and that's a Feature for…
I agree with you, but I think an important point to add is, that this is why it is dangerous to have the most import forums be advertising driven. Stephen Douglas spoke from a literal podium (when he wasn't prevented from doing so by an angry mob). There were multiple newspapers in most cities, and each part of the political spectrum had one (prominent abolitionists were often editors).
By crafting a society wherein Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. are the primary forums for public discourse, given that they are all primarily ad-driven, it makes for a public discourse which is averse to anything that upsets people. This isn't an inevitable consequence of technology, but it may be an inevitable consequence of ad-driven public discourse where it is difficult to get a new one off the ground due to the network effect.
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, I see: that affects whether it's allowed to be taught in an elective class or not. Yes, to fully oppose censorship, we should allow critical race theory to be taught in optional elective social studies classes. But then we should also allow optional elective science classes to teach that evolution is wrong, because to do otherwise would be censoring the young-Earth creationists.
If you can find a way to teach that without violating the Establishment Clause, sure. The only way forward I can see here would look like a comparative history of religions course, which would teach various creation stories from a neutral viewpoint. And that doesn't seem to be what those campaigning for anti-evolution education have been looking for. Curious if you've got any fresh ideas, though.
Maybe that was a bad example. What if instead of something religious, there was a class teaching some kooky conspiracy theory as fact, like a physics elective saying that perpetual motion is possible, but that the patents to make it work well enough to overcome friction have all been bought up by Big Oil and suppressed?
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#75I believe in freedom of speech. What I do not believe in is freedom of mass speech. Your responsibility to the truth should increase in line with your reach. Have 1000 followers in twitter and want to talk about starting the next holocaust? Great, say whatever. A million followers? Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.
Well in the example given, Stephen Douglass was free to speak to a small group, but not to a (for the times) large one. Your criterion is exactly the one that would legitimize censoring Stephen Douglass.
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#76"Cultural Health" is a meaningless term. Replace it with "what I think is good" and you have the author's true meaning.
This isn't a "think piece" - it's a paid political opinion piece complaining that current events will not produce the outcome the author desires.
Why is this on HN at all?
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#77"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…
I don't think this is a conservative opinion piece -- or at least, it's not well aligned to the Republican tribe. While it does mention some examples of cancellation on the left, it also devotes significant focus to legislation by Republicans attacking the freedom of speech in academia. But, sadly, it appears that most of the commenters here are responding to what they expect from the title.
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Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#78"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…
I don't think this is a conservative opinion piece -- or at least, it's not well aligned to the Republican tribe. While it does mention some examples of cancellation on the left, it also devotes significant focus to legislation by Republicans attacking the freedom of speech in academia. But, sadly, it appears that most of the commenters here are responding to what they expect from the title.
It is very obviously conservative in language and origin; you only have to read French's bio or about where The Dispatch's come sfrom. Their tag line is, "Fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture -- informed by conservative principles".
5 years ago this would have no question passed for a conservative piece. What has shifted here is the rapid Republican/Trumpist slide toward authoritarianism. So I read this as a conservative who is shocked by the monster he helped unleash.
I also don't think it's particularly well thought through, in that it tries to both-sides the problem with a false equivalency between "cancel culture" (that is, people using their free speech and free association) and right-wing attempts to use the power of the state to win a culture war (which clearly violates free speech). And the fundamental premise in the title is nonsensical. It's like saying, "Having bouncers can't make a bar popular." Yes, duh, and nobody thinks otherwise.
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#79The article never once tries to define what it thinks would be good "cultural health". You can kinda infer that the current level of vitriol and animosity is bad, but what kind of society would that look like and how would we get there?
I can see three versions. First is a homogenous culture where there is nothing to fight culture wars over. I don't think such a thing is possible, nor desirable, since the author's free speech argument rests on a diversity of thought angle.
Another is a culture where people are free to disagree but do so respectfully and are willing to compromise on the larger issues. This sounds good on paper but the truth is a disturbing minority of this country believes Trump won the 2020 election, that COVID is at once a harmless prop for a government powergrab, and also a Chinese bioweapon, that climate change is a lie, that gun ownership is sacred, that abortion is murder, etc. Ignoring your personal stance on these issues, how would one compromise on any of them? I believe climate change is an existential threat, we're already careening past the point of no return, the time for debate ended some time around 2007, and you still want to talk about it on Twitter?
Lastly is a culture where you're simply not allowed to disagree, and perhaps this is where the path of least resistance has led us. We use AI to separate like-minded folks into clusters so they can avoid arguing with each other, and as a bonus we can sell a few trillion dollars worth of ads to them. Citizens can head to some culturally-appropriate venues for disagreement (i.e, the Youtube comment section) when we feel like tilting at some windmills.
Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
#80I think censorship actually could help us in a huge way back to cultural health; start censoring big data, rage cycle algorithms, sexploitation, advertising. Then on top of that giving people independent, client-based, advanced AI powered tools en masse, and making sure they know how to use them and why, for accurate elected censorship on their own devices of things they personally find detrimental to their mental he…
It might easily happen via antitrust intervention. The big internet companies might be forced to adopt federated standards and "open up" their big walled-garden platforms to enable free interaction among users across different "social" service providers. Then the service providers would start to compete and differentiate by adopting things like user-facing AI scores for content.
The feasibility of this varies by platform; it seems especially hard for some platforms like YouTube or TikTok, which are doing the "core" work of hosting video content and providing recommendations. Others though might be easier.