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>For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to

by jasode 10y ago

>For example, one could imagine a world where the social norm was that services embodied some more generalized idea of free speech, and people are reluctant to use services that don't do this because one day it's likely to be used against them. Ok, I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote. I also looked at your link to see how it relates. Tell me if I interpreted your hypothetical scenario correctly: Suppose we have website called OrganicMothers.com that focuses on things like mothers breastfeeding their infants, growing veggies in the back yard and using a blender to pulverize it into homemade baby food. That website has heavy censoring against posts about artificial foods, or alternative viewpoints about synthetic breast milk, or messages with a disrespectful tone. Another website is AnythingGoesMothering.com allows any writings including chemical additives and all profanity and insults are uncensored. You're saying that a future societal norm could be where a mother who avoided AnythingGoesMothering.com because it had too many messages saying "any mother who doesn't feed her baby Monsanto's patented baby milk instead of breastmilk is a stupid c-nt!" ... will be denied a job and/or shunned from dinner parties? Remember that "free speech" includes everything from the cess pool. Basically all text is allowed short of doxxing people's social security numbers. I just don't see your hypothetical becoming the norm.

makomk 10y ago
Honestly, I was more thinking about the layer of abstraction above individual communities like OrganicMothers.com and AnythingGoesMothering.com - the one made up of shared services like Reddit and Facebook that are used to establish communities, since they're harder to avoid. But even at that level, speech-restrictive websites can certainly be worrying. For example, anti-vaccination ideas are likely to be popular with your hypothetical organic mothering community, and obviously they are also likely to attract a lot of anger. So the community would certainly be a lot friendlier if they banned criticism of mothers' choices not to vaccinate their kids. Can you perhaps see how this might not be socially desirable?
- jasode 10y ago
  >be a lot friendlier if they banned criticism of mothers' choices not to vaccinate their kids. Can you perhaps see how this might not be socially desirable? Yes I do, but only because you cherry-picked an example that seems to be an obvious benefit. I want to emphasize again that true free speech includes everything you don't like and all stupid opinions so you can't isolate good examples and ignore bad ones.
  - makomk 10y ago
    You cannot isolate good and bad examples of censorship that easily either, because it denies users information on what information they're being denied. This hypothetical site is hardly going to tell users that it's hiding the fact they're killing their babies from them; it's more likely to frame it as protecting them from industry propaganda, exactly as you argued they should be allowed to. It's only from the outside perspective that this is obviously terrible. (This is, in my experience, a general principle of site-based censorship. For example, if I had a dollar for every regular of every feminist community who was sure the site moderators were protecting them from the oppressor, when actually they were protecting the site owners from criticism and dissent by women more oppressed than them who they were rather spectacularly failing to represent...)
nommm-nommm 10y ago
>Suppose we have website called OrganicMothers.com that focuses on things like mothers breastfeeding their infants, growing veggies in the back yard and using a blender to pulverize it into homemade baby food. That website has heavy censoring against posts about artificial foods, or alternative viewpoints about synthetic breast milk, or messages with a disrespectful tone. Indeed these sort of communities actually require "heavy censorship" to remain functional and on topic otherwise it enviably would be overrun with trolls or people "looking to debate." It actually cannot be prevented without moderation. Without moderation the internet is not functional for the majority of users. Anyways, any form of moderation at all, even removing spam and off topic posts is "censorship." Commercial speech is also speech so removing spam is "restricting freedom of speech." (not that I think "freedom of speech" is applicable to private websites, because that's silly)

by jasode 10y ago

makomk 10y ago

Honestly, I was more thinking about the layer of abstraction above individual communities like OrganicMothers.com and AnythingGoesMothering.com - the one made up of shared services like Reddit and Facebook that are used to establish communities, since they're harder to avoid. But even at that level, speech-restrictive websites can certainly be worrying. For example, anti-vaccination ideas are likely to be popular with your hypothetical organic mothering community, and obviously they are also likely to attract a lot of anger. So the community would certainly be a lot friendlier if they banned criticism of mothers' choices not to vaccinate their kids. Can you perhaps see how this might not be socially desirable?

jasode 10y ago
>be a lot friendlier if they banned criticism of mothers' choices not to vaccinate their kids. Can you perhaps see how this might not be socially desirable? Yes I do, but only because you cherry-picked an example that seems to be an obvious benefit. I want to emphasize again that true free speech includes everything you don't like and all stupid opinions so you can't isolate good examples and ignore bad ones.
- makomk 10y ago
  You cannot isolate good and bad examples of censorship that easily either, because it denies users information on what information they're being denied. This hypothetical site is hardly going to tell users that it's hiding the fact they're killing their babies from them; it's more likely to frame it as protecting them from industry propaganda, exactly as you argued they should be allowed to. It's only from the outside perspective that this is obviously terrible. (This is, in my experience, a general principle of site-based censorship. For example, if I had a dollar for every regular of every feminist community who was sure the site moderators were protecting them from the oppressor, when actually they were protecting the site owners from criticism and dissent by women more oppressed than them who they were rather spectacularly failing to represent...)

nommm-nommm 10y ago

>Suppose we have website called OrganicMothers.com that focuses on things like mothers breastfeeding their infants, growing veggies in the back yard and using a blender to pulverize it into homemade baby food. That website has heavy censoring against posts about artificial foods, or alternative viewpoints about synthetic breast milk, or messages with a disrespectful tone. Indeed these sort of communities actually require "heavy censorship" to remain functional and on topic otherwise it enviably would be overrun with trolls or people "looking to debate." It actually cannot be prevented without moderation. Without moderation the internet is not functional for the majority of users. Anyways, any form of moderation at all, even removing spam and off topic posts is "censorship." Commercial speech is also speech so removing spam is "restricting freedom of speech." (not that I think "freedom of speech" is applicable to private websites, because that's silly)