5 ms·

Web needs rethink to stop “nasty” ideas spreading, says Tim Berners-Lee

16 points by eplanit 10y ago

k0nsl 10y ago
I only read the title and it immediately reminded me of what Rabbi Cooper said: https://k0nsl.org/blog/detox/intolerant-rabbi-wants-to-censor-the-www/ https://k0nsl.org/blog/detox/intolerant-rabbi-wants-to-censo...
sametmax 10y ago
So after drm, what, censorship ?
damiencarol 10y ago
Yeah! We need something to stop all those 'crimethinking' things...
- kesselvon 10y ago
  Paradoxically, if you want to defend freedom of speech, you can't allow ideologies that are anti-free speech to spread "e.g. the new resurgence in authoritarianism and fascism"
  - mythrwy 10y ago
    Sure you can. In fact, you must. As long (and this is very important) as it remains speech.
    - sametmax 10y ago
      Exactly. People confuse allowing people to express anything and passivity. But first: - you can react to hate speech by positive actions to counteract it; - you can forbid hate that goes beyond speech.
    - vkou 10y ago
      At what point did fascism in Italy and Germany turn from speech to action? At what point would you have been OK with suppressing fascist speech? (A lot of people answer "September 1st, 1939" to that question.) At what point was it too late to stop? ("September 1st, 1939" was years too late.) What makes you sure that it doesn't cross that point, before you have the moral consensus to suppress it? We've been down this road once before. The last time around, it killed fifty million people. In politics, the line between speech and action is far murkier then these absolutes.
      - BuuQu9hu 10y ago
        The line between speech (ideas) and action is perfectly clear. Don't pretend it isn't.
        dTal 10y ago
        No it isn't. Speech is action. It has consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance
        vkou 10y ago
        So, I ask you - at what point fascism in Europe could have been stopped? At what point did fascist speech, rallies, and demonstrations turn into action? Was it after they seized power? They were so appreciative of free speech, that they immediately repressed it.
        mythrwy 10y ago
        Fascism in Europe could have been stopped in the 16-1800's when Britain and France gobbled up the world as colonies. They could have left a piece for Germany and Italy to occupy as these societies unified some years later. Or they could have not colonized at all. Alternatively maybe it could have been stopped by preventing the industrial revolution. Or by preventing Germany and Italy from uniting as countries at the end of the 1800's/early 1900's. Or by preventing banking interests from lending to industrialists. Or by preventing the Viking invasions. Or preventing the collapse of international papal authority. Or by preventing the rise of papal authority in the first place. Or giving the Chinese first dibs on East Asia. Or giving native Africans gunpowder. Or by any number of other means. Point being, you seem to think 1)Fascism in Europe during the second world war is the worst event to happen to mankind ever and attempting to prevent it re-occurring justifies any means, even those with potentially worse outcomes. And 2)Fascism arose strictly because some guys popped in out of nowhere and started talking. What about Pol Pot? What about Stalin? What about the church during the Middle Ages? What about the conquests of Islam? What about the massacres in Medieval China? Events very simply don't happen in a vacuum, (in spite of the popular culture/ public school view of history). The dangers of those who want to prevent free speech because it offends someone far outweigh the dangers of letting the marketplace of ideas decide which ideas are worth considering. I don't find the rise of the alt-right (which I don't support btw) nearly as alarming as I find the number of young people who think offensive speech should be legislated against or banned. Which is truly an authoritarian and disturbing trend.
joshumax 10y ago
So, the web was created to freely distribute unhindered by geographic position or social class... But apparently people are using it to do bad stuff Better censor it, that can't go wrong /s
tutufan 10y ago
Also, the phone system!
mythrwy 10y ago
Websites don't spread nasty ideas. People spread nasty ideas. When nasty websites are outlawed only outlaws will have nasty websites. And you can take my HTTP server when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
csense 10y ago
Censorship isn't something I'm in favor of, but I think the idea Berners-Lee has is something different. Any given content has "viral coefficients" that determine how fast it replicates and how likely it is to die out before penetrating. His idea's to make a social network where toxic content's has lower viral coefficients. Censorship is certainly one path to this goal -- simply kill any objectionable content before it has a chance to spread. How else could you make a piece of content less likely to spread? Display it less prominently. Warn people that it spreads negativity and they shouldn't propagate it. Automatically identify filter bubbles and occasionally include content with an opposing viewpoint. The real problem is some/all of these measures may cost you users. How do you lower the viral coefficient of toxic information in your social network without lowering the viral coefficient of your social network itself?
- garysieling 10y ago
  I've been building a search engine for lectures (https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com), so I've spent some time comparing search results vs. youtube. They seem to weight popularity heavily, which makes sense if you're trying to sell ads, but it means a lot of toxic content rises to the top (e.g. conspiracy theories, or tons of short videos denouncing the video of a well known figure, which becomes un-findable). I'm banking on being able to improve this for my niche use case with more quality measures, although time will tell if this pans out. E.g. if a speaker has spoken at prestigious conferences, written a book, what Wikipedia says about that, or that they've invested in better production quality, including closed captions, better audio/video. For the filter bubble problem, I think that being able to see lists of talks without the machine learning what you "want" is potentially a superior experience. I suspect that if you start by filtering to just the higher quality material, you can potentially get a good cross-section of different viewpoints, just by using text text analysis.
- dahdum 10y ago
  Who gets to define what thought is "toxic" and what is not? I don't see how you can define it algorithmically.
  - 10y ago

16 points by eplanit 10y ago

k0nsl 10y ago

I only read the title and it immediately reminded me of what Rabbi Cooper said: https://k0nsl.org/blog/detox/intolerant-rabbi-wants-to-censor-the-www/ https://k0nsl.org/blog/detox/intolerant-rabbi-wants-to-censo...

sametmax 10y ago

So after drm, what, censorship ?

damiencarol 10y ago

Yeah! We need something to stop all those 'crimethinking' things...

kesselvon 10y ago
Paradoxically, if you want to defend freedom of speech, you can't allow ideologies that are anti-free speech to spread "e.g. the new resurgence in authoritarianism and fascism"
- mythrwy 10y ago
  Sure you can. In fact, you must. As long (and this is very important) as it remains speech.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Exactly. People confuse allowing people to express anything and passivity. But first: - you can react to hate speech by positive actions to counteract it; - you can forbid hate that goes beyond speech.
  - vkou 10y ago
    At what point did fascism in Italy and Germany turn from speech to action? At what point would you have been OK with suppressing fascist speech? (A lot of people answer "September 1st, 1939" to that question.) At what point was it too late to stop? ("September 1st, 1939" was years too late.) What makes you sure that it doesn't cross that point, before you have the moral consensus to suppress it? We've been down this road once before. The last time around, it killed fifty million people. In politics, the line between speech and action is far murkier then these absolutes.
    - BuuQu9hu 10y ago
      The line between speech (ideas) and action is perfectly clear. Don't pretend it isn't.
      - dTal 10y ago
        No it isn't. Speech is action. It has consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance
      - vkou 10y ago
        So, I ask you - at what point fascism in Europe could have been stopped? At what point did fascist speech, rallies, and demonstrations turn into action? Was it after they seized power? They were so appreciative of free speech, that they immediately repressed it.
        mythrwy 10y ago
        Fascism in Europe could have been stopped in the 16-1800's when Britain and France gobbled up the world as colonies. They could have left a piece for Germany and Italy to occupy as these societies unified some years later. Or they could have not colonized at all. Alternatively maybe it could have been stopped by preventing the industrial revolution. Or by preventing Germany and Italy from uniting as countries at the end of the 1800's/early 1900's. Or by preventing banking interests from lending to industrialists. Or by preventing the Viking invasions. Or preventing the collapse of international papal authority. Or by preventing the rise of papal authority in the first place. Or giving the Chinese first dibs on East Asia. Or giving native Africans gunpowder. Or by any number of other means. Point being, you seem to think 1)Fascism in Europe during the second world war is the worst event to happen to mankind ever and attempting to prevent it re-occurring justifies any means, even those with potentially worse outcomes. And 2)Fascism arose strictly because some guys popped in out of nowhere and started talking. What about Pol Pot? What about Stalin? What about the church during the Middle Ages? What about the conquests of Islam? What about the massacres in Medieval China? Events very simply don't happen in a vacuum, (in spite of the popular culture/ public school view of history). The dangers of those who want to prevent free speech because it offends someone far outweigh the dangers of letting the marketplace of ideas decide which ideas are worth considering. I don't find the rise of the alt-right (which I don't support btw) nearly as alarming as I find the number of young people who think offensive speech should be legislated against or banned. Which is truly an authoritarian and disturbing trend.

joshumax 10y ago

So, the web was created to freely distribute unhindered by geographic position or social class... But apparently people are using it to do bad stuff Better censor it, that can't go wrong /s

tutufan 10y ago

Also, the phone system!

mythrwy 10y ago

Websites don't spread nasty ideas. People spread nasty ideas. When nasty websites are outlawed only outlaws will have nasty websites. And you can take my HTTP server when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

csense 10y ago

Censorship isn't something I'm in favor of, but I think the idea Berners-Lee has is something different. Any given content has "viral coefficients" that determine how fast it replicates and how likely it is to die out before penetrating. His idea's to make a social network where toxic content's has lower viral coefficients. Censorship is certainly one path to this goal -- simply kill any objectionable content before it has a chance to spread. How else could you make a piece of content less likely to spread? Display it less prominently. Warn people that it spreads negativity and they shouldn't propagate it. Automatically identify filter bubbles and occasionally include content with an opposing viewpoint. The real problem is some/all of these measures may cost you users. How do you lower the viral coefficient of toxic information in your social network without lowering the viral coefficient of your social network itself?

garysieling 10y ago
I've been building a search engine for lectures (https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com), so I've spent some time comparing search results vs. youtube. They seem to weight popularity heavily, which makes sense if you're trying to sell ads, but it means a lot of toxic content rises to the top (e.g. conspiracy theories, or tons of short videos denouncing the video of a well known figure, which becomes un-findable). I'm banking on being able to improve this for my niche use case with more quality measures, although time will tell if this pans out. E.g. if a speaker has spoken at prestigious conferences, written a book, what Wikipedia says about that, or that they've invested in better production quality, including closed captions, better audio/video. For the filter bubble problem, I think that being able to see lists of talks without the machine learning what you "want" is potentially a superior experience. I suspect that if you start by filtering to just the higher quality material, you can potentially get a good cross-section of different viewpoints, just by using text text analysis.
dahdum 10y ago
Who gets to define what thought is "toxic" and what is not? I don't see how you can define it algorithmically.
- 10y ago