Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
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Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#2This is a ridiculous take. You will get censored no matter how much you try to “talk” about it. You’re dealing with people who will nod, say uh huh, and carry on doing what they were doing regardless of what’s written.
Nothing has really been accomplished in the last decade. It’s a one way ticket to surveillance and censorship.
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#3This is a ridiculous take. You will get censored no matter how much you try to “talk” about it. You’re dealing with people who will nod, say uh huh, and carry on doing what they were doing regardless of what’s written. Nothing has really been accomplished in the last decade. It’s a one way ticket to surveillance and censorship.
"Crises precipitate change" - Deltron 3030
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#4I think that's why Cyberpunk as a fictional genre is dead, it's too real.
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#5Take what you support and imagine it used against you in the worst possible ways. Do you still support it? If yes, then it is worth supporting. If it's not, then maybe you're only supporting it because of who it currently helps or harms. This exercise also works with things that you don't support.
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#6There are really 2 options here:
1. Live with the first amendment at section 230 as. That means things stay mostly the same. Big tech will continue to censor too many of the things I like and too few of the things I don't like. And we wait for the pre-internet generation to die off and be replaced so society can progress.
2. Restrict the 1st and force fact checking, fairness, neutrality, etc. This would get us back to a functional media/societal/democratic state a lot faster. But it would require pretty radical change. Also, the biggest losers wouldn't be big tech. They would be Fox news and similar orgs.
I don't see any other option here. I don't see that "regulating" (wtf that means, different things to different people for sure) Facebook but not Fox is productive or fair or possible even really.
Personally, I don't trust the current system to do anything other than beat tech companies with a stick for no reason but that they exist and don't pay enough in "lobbying". I don't see Fox or similar, much bigger propaganda/censorship orgs being touched. Certainly not on a bipartisan basis (and that's what's needed to do more than sneeze in Washington).
So here we are, and I am glad the right and left and (stupidly) fighting each other...
Thanks for reading, you may now downvote these inconvenient truths...
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#7I tend to agree with this article: we all should be worried about being dependent on having only a few core systems where speech happens, especially when network effect & switching costs are very very high.
I believe platforms have the right to moderate themselves as they see fit. They get that freedom, and we're better for letting private systems regulate themselves. Or, (as mentioned) as Twitter is floating, creating an “app store for moderation”, making moderation an interoperable layer rather than integrated.
And I agree with where Cory eventually brings the discussion to: what makes everything all feel so impossible is that switching costs are astronomical. If we leave the one network our friend is on we lose all digital connection with that friend, lose the view we'd get of them interacting with others. Competitive Compatibility is needed, to let us allow private companies to create their own rules, but to not keep each of us restrained & restricted within a handful of supersized networks.
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#8This is a ridiculous take. You will get censored no matter how much you try to “talk” about it. You’re dealing with people who will nod, say uh huh, and carry on doing what they were doing regardless of what’s written. Nothing has really been accomplished in the last decade. It’s a one way ticket to surveillance and censorship.
"Crises precipitate change" - Deltron 3030
"never let a crisis go to waste" - someone
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#9I think that's why Cyberpunk as a fictional genre is dead, it's too real.
I've been waiting for @cstross to finish the Halting State series but at last update, he appeared to opine that fiction was getting too close to reality. Thus he has declined to finish the series.
I felt this was a bit of a cop out at the time. The Halting State series had us thinking about these issues, which I think is better than not thinking, writing, and debating them. If reality is catching up to fiction, then write about reality, don't be afraid of it.
Re: Right or left, you should be worried about big tech censorship
#10The long term threat of big tech censorship is that it is priming governments with an expectation that all online communication can (and therefore should) be policed - the exact opposite of the decentralized permissionless Internet dream. The longer they maintain bearable levels of censorship, the longer governments have to cozy up to the idea and expect to apply it to communications technology that lacks the centralization vulnerability. So ultimately, the faster Big Tech implodes and goes the way of Digg, the better. We should cheer when they stay well ahead of what governments want to censor - it makes it clear they are more like TV channels than letting them claim to be manifestations of "the Internet".