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This strikes me as a timely and important sentiment. When we demand that Twitter ban anti-semitic tweets, or that Cloudflare block white supremacist websites,

by mundo 8y ago

This strikes me as a timely and important sentiment. When we demand that Twitter ban anti-semitic tweets, or that Cloudflare block white supremacist websites, or that Youtube deplatform Alex Jones, we are taking the power to limit speech (which the founders felt was too important to be wielded by the government) and handing it to middle managers at software companies. The de jure rule is "Freedom of Speech shall not be infringed" but the de facto rule is "Don't say anything that would upset the advertisers." This seems like a Bad Idea (tm) but until/unless a decentralized Mastodon/Scuttlebutt style platform gets traction, I don't know what the solution is. It's a natural result of relying on private apps as a primary method of communication.

dwighttk 8y ago
Even Mastodon instances can get in on the banning.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Yep. In the end, even most of these hypothetical distributed social network instances would have the de facto rule: >Don't say anything that would upset the advertisers...
  - 51lver 8y ago
    What advertisers? I haven't seen any on mastodon. In fact, I think the network would be actively hostile to their presence.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      We're talking about a world where the distributed social network instances replaces the facebooks and twitters of the world. And be assured, in such a world, the advertisers would move to the distributed social network instances.
      - mundo 8y ago
        All I really want from a social network is to be able to share small files with my friends and see small files that my friends have shared with me. It's convenient to have a for-profit handle all the hard parts (checking whether people are who say they are, storing the stuff when one of us is offline, etc) but it's not an actual requirement. Especially if some portion of the members of the network have a $5 VPS, which is certain to be true. (As an aside, it mystifies me that some VPS provider hasn't already built this. A FOSS decentralized social network that requires a small dedicated server would be like a whalefall for that industry. If I were a PM at Amazon, I would have a team contributing 'store my files on AWS instead of my phone' to Scuttlebutt right now, and ditto for every other promising-looking decentralized social app.)
- mundo 8y ago
  I'm a lot more sanguine about communities muting someone because they don't like that person than about companies muting someone because it's profitable to do so. You can hypothesize a future in which Mastodon gets very popular, and in which a single for-profit node or a coordinated group of such nodes monopolize it and end up wielding censorship power similar to traditional centralized social media sites, but that's not what it's designed to do and there's no reason to assume it's a fait accompli.
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    It's already happened https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251 https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251
charlesism 8y ago
> we are taking the power to limit speech (which the > founders felt was too important to be wielded by the > government) Someone spray-paints a swastika on your car. Do you think the founders would mind if you painted it over?
- manfredo 8y ago
  It'd more like Ford trying to ban people from putting Hilary or Trump bumper stickers on their cars. In your scenario, an individual had their property vandalized. That is not comparable to platforms censoring certain views.
  - charlesism 8y ago
    > That is not comparable to platforms > censoring certain views. Historically, it has been. If someone had sent a letter to The Pennsylvania Chronicle, containing a recipe for baking a turd pie, I don't think Ben Franklin would have felt the need to print it. Facebook, Twitter, Google... they're the ones footing the bill to host their users' content.
    - manfredo 8y ago
      The Pennsylvania Chronicle isn't a platform. It's a publisher. Readers' letters getting published is the exception, not the norm. The ideas discussed here would be more like a telecoms provider specifically refusing to do business with someone because they disagree with their politics.
      - mundo 8y ago
        What's the difference? AFAICT the idea that when a website gets big enough it becomes de facto infrastructure and gets governed by different rules is pure imagination.
        basch 8y ago
        There are rules that treat telecoms differently precisely because there is opportunity for market failure. The argument is, that some software companies have crossed into becoming a telecom like entity. A market failure exists, where consumers may need protecting. Obviously, current laws dont treat facebook, google, or microsoft that way. Do we feel the same way about gmail/outlook starting to censor emails that google/microsoft dont approve of?

by mundo 8y ago

dwighttk 8y ago

Even Mastodon instances can get in on the banning.

bilbo0s 8y ago
Yep. In the end, even most of these hypothetical distributed social network instances would have the de facto rule: >Don't say anything that would upset the advertisers...
- 51lver 8y ago
  What advertisers? I haven't seen any on mastodon. In fact, I think the network would be actively hostile to their presence.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    We're talking about a world where the distributed social network instances replaces the facebooks and twitters of the world. And be assured, in such a world, the advertisers would move to the distributed social network instances.
    - mundo 8y ago
      All I really want from a social network is to be able to share small files with my friends and see small files that my friends have shared with me. It's convenient to have a for-profit handle all the hard parts (checking whether people are who say they are, storing the stuff when one of us is offline, etc) but it's not an actual requirement. Especially if some portion of the members of the network have a $5 VPS, which is certain to be true. (As an aside, it mystifies me that some VPS provider hasn't already built this. A FOSS decentralized social network that requires a small dedicated server would be like a whalefall for that industry. If I were a PM at Amazon, I would have a team contributing 'store my files on AWS instead of my phone' to Scuttlebutt right now, and ditto for every other promising-looking decentralized social app.)
mundo 8y ago
I'm a lot more sanguine about communities muting someone because they don't like that person than about companies muting someone because it's profitable to do so. You can hypothesize a future in which Mastodon gets very popular, and in which a single for-profit node or a coordinated group of such nodes monopolize it and end up wielding censorship power similar to traditional centralized social media sites, but that's not what it's designed to do and there's no reason to assume it's a fait accompli.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  It's already happened https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251 https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251

charlesism 8y ago

> we are taking the power to limit speech (which the > founders felt was too important to be wielded by the > government) Someone spray-paints a swastika on your car. Do you think the founders would mind if you painted it over?

manfredo 8y ago
It'd more like Ford trying to ban people from putting Hilary or Trump bumper stickers on their cars. In your scenario, an individual had their property vandalized. That is not comparable to platforms censoring certain views.
- charlesism 8y ago
  > That is not comparable to platforms > censoring certain views. Historically, it has been. If someone had sent a letter to The Pennsylvania Chronicle, containing a recipe for baking a turd pie, I don't think Ben Franklin would have felt the need to print it. Facebook, Twitter, Google... they're the ones footing the bill to host their users' content.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    The Pennsylvania Chronicle isn't a platform. It's a publisher. Readers' letters getting published is the exception, not the norm. The ideas discussed here would be more like a telecoms provider specifically refusing to do business with someone because they disagree with their politics.
    - mundo 8y ago
      What's the difference? AFAICT the idea that when a website gets big enough it becomes de facto infrastructure and gets governed by different rules is pure imagination.
      - basch 8y ago
        There are rules that treat telecoms differently precisely because there is opportunity for market failure. The argument is, that some software companies have crossed into becoming a telecom like entity. A market failure exists, where consumers may need protecting. Obviously, current laws dont treat facebook, google, or microsoft that way. Do we feel the same way about gmail/outlook starting to censor emails that google/microsoft dont approve of?