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>wonder if America needs to add basic but explicit free speech protections [...] run by a private entity (twitter, facebook, HN, This really isn't possible to

by jasode 9y ago

>wonder if America needs to add basic but explicit free speech protections [...] run by a private entity (twitter, facebook, HN, This really isn't possible to implement in any practical or consistent way without contradictions in usability. If you made such a law, trolls such as Nazi-proponents would use it as a weapon to infect sites such as HackerNews with their walls of hate speech. Moderators couldn't flag nor delete the hate speech as "off topic" because the Nazi group would complain of "censorship". Imagine that scenario: it would be against the law to delete hate speech here even though most us on HN would rather talk about programming languages or tech startups. The way marginal groups have free speech now is at the level of DNS servers by buying a domain name. Instead of trying to get Facebook and HackerNews to host your hate speech by expanding "free speech to private entities", you create a Nazi domain (e.g NaziPartyUSA.com) and put your hate speech at that URL. Same for any ISIS group that wants to infect commercial websites like Facebook/HN with recruitment propoganda to attract followers who are willing to behead infidels. The reason free speech advocates don't like that option is that they don't get an audience -- such as the millions of eyeballs at Facebook. Well, free speech doesn't guarantee an audience. The quantity of the audience is orthogonal to the free speech and the corporate censorship.

smackay 9y ago
I agree and as far as I can squint there is no real solution to this. Commercial platforms put their commercial needs ahead of anything and everything else. For that to work effectively they need mainstream content that the majority will be interested in and, if possible, applying guidance to make sure the value from all that mainstream content and mainstream eyeballs is maximised. Interesting and contrarian viewpoints, which might broaden people's opinions, simply need not apply or if they then they will be accorded the marginal position they deserve. This is a pity. This piece was entertaining and informative as it points to the subtlety of these effects. Nobody necessarily needs to do anything - any algorithm or process that can optimise for any metric and produce this result - humans need not be involved in any way. This problem can only get worse as more automation, i.e. machine learning is applied and where the humans involved in the day to day running of the systems do not have the faintest clue how it works.
krakensden 9y ago
Is it really true that there is no censorship at the dns level? The creeps at the daily stormer seem to have been run off the internet, it seems sort of like the reason dns has been 'safe' in the past is that people didn't lobby the dns providers.
- jasode 9y ago
  >no censorship at the dns level? I'm not claiming there is zero censorship at the DNS level. I'm saying a marginal group (whether ISIS or Piratebay or Wikileaks) needs to find a TLD (top level domain) willing to hold them. (That's what The Daily Stormer did -- they tried Albania tld ".al", then Russia ".ru", and now it looks like they're at tld ".ws" (Samoa)) Creating a new domain at a tld is much more realistic to implement than passing a new law requiring Facebook/HN to pay for and host your objectionable content. For marginal groups, that DNS-level option to spread your ideas exists today without any new laws.
humanrebar 9y ago
> The reason free speech advocates don't like that option is that they don't get an audience I don't like it because "public areas" are owned and governed by private entities. It's nonsense to say you're in public if there's no public listening. That's not free speech, it's free speech zones. As in, "Say whatever you want, just say it to yourself in that shed over there." > Nazi-proponents would use it as a weapon to infect... I think Nazis are dispicable but quantitatively not a big enough problem to be worth the cost of genuine public discussion and debate. A group idiots the size of Raton, New Mexico running around in tiki torches in Charlottesville is sensational, but not really our biggest issue, even if we limit the discussion to racism and hatred. If trolls show up on message boards, the solution is curation, moderation, law enforcement (digital assault should be enforced more), and good counterarguments. Right now, people are worried about totalitarian government and corporate police punishing them for thought crime. If you asked me a decade ago, I would have called that paranoid, but these days the supporting examples and surveys seem to be piling up.
- jasode 9y ago
  >If trolls show up on message boards, the solution is curation, moderation And those editorial mechanisms mean you no longer have "freedom of speech" -- which breaks the very law you're proposing. That's what I meant by "contradictions" in my previous message. A new law that extends "freedom of speech to private entities" is not possible for society to implement in a consistent manner. >Right now, people are worried about totalitarian government and corporate police punishing them for thought crime. Well, maybe we're having 2 different conversations. I'm not talking about situations like China and their Great Firewall suppressing Tiananmen Square, Taiwan independence, and other topics of dissent. That's the _government_ doing the censorship and not _private_ website like HN censoring by deleting posts. That's a different topic from "extending freedom of speech to private entities" that you were talking about. Instead, I'm talking about websites with unpopular topics like Unz.com which spawned this thread and neo-Nazi website like Dailystormer.ws. If DailyStormer can reject articles about "programming in Lisp", HackerNews should likewise be able to reject posts about "eliminating the Jewish population". Trying to craft the wording on a new law such that both sides like HN and DailyStormer can post off-topic content on each others' website without censorship is a futile goal for lawmakers. Right now, in the USA, American citizens can go point their browser url to Dailystormer.ws and read all the articles. There is no Great American Firewall nor ISP blocking access.

by jasode 9y ago

smackay 9y ago

I agree and as far as I can squint there is no real solution to this. Commercial platforms put their commercial needs ahead of anything and everything else. For that to work effectively they need mainstream content that the majority will be interested in and, if possible, applying guidance to make sure the value from all that mainstream content and mainstream eyeballs is maximised. Interesting and contrarian viewpoints, which might broaden people's opinions, simply need not apply or if they then they will be accorded the marginal position they deserve. This is a pity. This piece was entertaining and informative as it points to the subtlety of these effects. Nobody necessarily needs to do anything - any algorithm or process that can optimise for any metric and produce this result - humans need not be involved in any way. This problem can only get worse as more automation, i.e. machine learning is applied and where the humans involved in the day to day running of the systems do not have the faintest clue how it works.

krakensden 9y ago

Is it really true that there is no censorship at the dns level? The creeps at the daily stormer seem to have been run off the internet, it seems sort of like the reason dns has been 'safe' in the past is that people didn't lobby the dns providers.

jasode 9y ago
>no censorship at the dns level? I'm not claiming there is zero censorship at the DNS level. I'm saying a marginal group (whether ISIS or Piratebay or Wikileaks) needs to find a TLD (top level domain) willing to hold them. (That's what The Daily Stormer did -- they tried Albania tld ".al", then Russia ".ru", and now it looks like they're at tld ".ws" (Samoa)) Creating a new domain at a tld is much more realistic to implement than passing a new law requiring Facebook/HN to pay for and host your objectionable content. For marginal groups, that DNS-level option to spread your ideas exists today without any new laws.

humanrebar 9y ago

> The reason free speech advocates don't like that option is that they don't get an audience I don't like it because "public areas" are owned and governed by private entities. It's nonsense to say you're in public if there's no public listening. That's not free speech, it's free speech zones. As in, "Say whatever you want, just say it to yourself in that shed over there." > Nazi-proponents would use it as a weapon to infect... I think Nazis are dispicable but quantitatively not a big enough problem to be worth the cost of genuine public discussion and debate. A group idiots the size of Raton, New Mexico running around in tiki torches in Charlottesville is sensational, but not really our biggest issue, even if we limit the discussion to racism and hatred. If trolls show up on message boards, the solution is curation, moderation, law enforcement (digital assault should be enforced more), and good counterarguments. Right now, people are worried about totalitarian government and corporate police punishing them for thought crime. If you asked me a decade ago, I would have called that paranoid, but these days the supporting examples and surveys seem to be piling up.

jasode 9y ago
>If trolls show up on message boards, the solution is curation, moderation And those editorial mechanisms mean you no longer have "freedom of speech" -- which breaks the very law you're proposing. That's what I meant by "contradictions" in my previous message. A new law that extends "freedom of speech to private entities" is not possible for society to implement in a consistent manner. >Right now, people are worried about totalitarian government and corporate police punishing them for thought crime. Well, maybe we're having 2 different conversations. I'm not talking about situations like China and their Great Firewall suppressing Tiananmen Square, Taiwan independence, and other topics of dissent. That's the _government_ doing the censorship and not _private_ website like HN censoring by deleting posts. That's a different topic from "extending freedom of speech to private entities" that you were talking about. Instead, I'm talking about websites with unpopular topics like Unz.com which spawned this thread and neo-Nazi website like Dailystormer.ws. If DailyStormer can reject articles about "programming in Lisp", HackerNews should likewise be able to reject posts about "eliminating the Jewish population". Trying to craft the wording on a new law such that both sides like HN and DailyStormer can post off-topic content on each others' website without censorship is a futile goal for lawmakers. Right now, in the USA, American citizens can go point their browser url to Dailystormer.ws and read all the articles. There is no Great American Firewall nor ISP blocking access.