3 ms·

> The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with is unprecedented. The early internet had to deal with the same problems, yet it wa

> The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with is unprecedented. The early internet had to deal with the same problems, yet it was much more free than the internet of today. This isn't a false idealization of the past - I was around at the time. To me the only reason the internet matters is to let individual people speak and be heard - without being silenced by advertisers, the government, or the mob. If we let these entities institute censorship for the common good, we might as well have TV.

b1daly 8y ago
The rise of ubiquitous networked social platforms is very new. In the earlier days of the internet, it simply did not have the reach it does today. It is the mass effects that are causing problems, especially since you can now purchase direct access to millions for the purpose of spreading propaganda.
wpietri 8y ago
I was around at the time, too, and you're missing that the early Internet wasn't free at all: the great majority of the users were part of some postsecondary educational organization. Those places strongly select for very specific kinds of people (smart, collaborative, curious, reasonable, not murder-y), and imposed both formal and informal controls on what was said. Your notion is that 3 corporate-run, lowest-common-denominator TV channels controlling nationwide communication is exactly the same thing as a global network where everybody can participate and they can talk publicly about anything except, say, "Hey, we should kill all the Jews and brown people"? That seems woefully unsubtle to me. I see a useful middle ground. One where people are radically more free to communicate than they were at any point in human history. Not also that neither advertisers, the government, or "the mob" are silencing anything here. People are exercising their right to freedom of speech and freedom of association. This is the same thing that happened in the real world pre-Internet when people would throw Nazis out and refuse to support businesses who made Nazis welcome. Businesses are free to host Gab or not; everybody else is free to use those businesses or not based on their desire to support companies that support people getting minorities killed.
- cousin_it 8y ago
  Maybe we remember different things. The way I remember it, the early internet had plenty of horrible stuff and the sky didn't fall. I think silencing people (legally or otherwise) doesn't help reduce murder rate or anything. It just silences people.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    It depends on what you mean by early. Certainly up until The September That Never Ended, the great bulk of users were academics of one sort or another. That declined over time, but early adopters were still early adopters. There was some horrible stuff, sure, but it wasn't established. There weren't organizations actively recruiting. The truly horrible people of the time were still mailing newsletters and goose-stepping in person. You might think that silencing people doesn't reduce the murder rate, but you would be wrong. There are specific crimes of speech related to that, like incitement to riot, because that kind of speech historically leads to violence. You can also look at the history of people who end up killing people. Many of them have histories of radicalization, and that path starts with the mildest of entrypoints. See, e.g., Bellingcat's examination of the radicalization of internet fascists: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-infowars-75-fascist-activists-red-pilled/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-in... Or look at how Bowers and Sayoc got to the point of violence: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/31/magabomber-synagogue-shooter-likely-radicalized/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/31/magabomb... I agree that silencing people in general is bad. But it's very clear historically that some kinds of speech if tolerated lead to violence and death. If you think you can demonstrate otherwise, by all means take a swing at it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
tptacek 8y ago
Large portions of the Internet were cordoned off from commerce altogether. There was a weekend back in the 90s (probably more than one, but this is the one I remember) where there was an Internet-wide netsplit that cut commercial ISPs like Ripco off from the rest of the Internet. Most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet, and even in the alt. hierarchy, there were rules and politics behind what stuff got propagated.
- hollerith 8y ago
  I spent a decent amount of time on news.admin.net-abuse.email in 1993 and in the mid-1990s. (ISTR that is where spam on Usenet was mainly discussed.) I was very curious about Usenet, but recall no restrictions on any unmoderated newsgroup (and most newsgroups were unmoderated). I always believed that the reason it took years for Usenet to do something about spam is because (1) before spam got so bad they had to do something about it, there were no existing restrictions on the propagation of messages and (2) a widespread ethic among those running news servers that any restrictions on propagation, even restrictions on spam, were to be avoided. What sort of content, in your opinion, was denied propagation back when most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet? I got the impression that the ban on commerce over the US backbone was to prevent making any business big enough to be able to afford a PR person or a lobbyist in Washington afraid that the Internet was a threat to its revenue stream. Back when only a small fraction of the public knew anything about the Internet, the US Government was spending a relatively large amount of money keeping it running, and was consequently vulnerable to sniping from journalists and politicians to the effect that the US government is spending money to giving, e.g., people who are sexually attracted to people dressed up as animals, a forum to communicate with each other. You and I know that the marginal cost of adding an alt.sex.furries news group to the Internet was so low as to be not worth thinking about, but it would've been hard to get that point across to the voting public. People were worried for example about the National Science Foundation, one of the major funders of the Internet, getting one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award Or maybe the ban on commerce over the US backbone was a concession the US backbone's patrons in Washington needed to make to get Congress to continue to allocate funds for it. The ban was mostly successful only because very few people wanted to do commerce on the internet while the ban on commerce over the US backbone was in place. Possible exception: the last year or so of the ban when the internet was growing very quickly. Exception: people seeking W2 workers or W2 jobs rather than 1099 workers / jobs would've liked to be able to use ba.jobs to advertise, but IIRC it was a moderated newsgroup, and the moderator, like most people running internet infrastructure back then, grudgingly recognized the need for the ban (i.e., to protect the Internet's supporters in Washington from ridicule or from the animosity of powerful groups).

b1daly 8y ago

The rise of ubiquitous networked social platforms is very new. In the earlier days of the internet, it simply did not have the reach it does today. It is the mass effects that are causing problems, especially since you can now purchase direct access to millions for the purpose of spreading propaganda.

wpietri 8y ago

I was around at the time, too, and you're missing that the early Internet wasn't free at all: the great majority of the users were part of some postsecondary educational organization. Those places strongly select for very specific kinds of people (smart, collaborative, curious, reasonable, not murder-y), and imposed both formal and informal controls on what was said. Your notion is that 3 corporate-run, lowest-common-denominator TV channels controlling nationwide communication is exactly the same thing as a global network where everybody can participate and they can talk publicly about anything except, say, "Hey, we should kill all the Jews and brown people"? That seems woefully unsubtle to me. I see a useful middle ground. One where people are radically more free to communicate than they were at any point in human history. Not also that neither advertisers, the government, or "the mob" are silencing anything here. People are exercising their right to freedom of speech and freedom of association. This is the same thing that happened in the real world pre-Internet when people would throw Nazis out and refuse to support businesses who made Nazis welcome. Businesses are free to host Gab or not; everybody else is free to use those businesses or not based on their desire to support companies that support people getting minorities killed.

cousin_it 8y ago
Maybe we remember different things. The way I remember it, the early internet had plenty of horrible stuff and the sky didn't fall. I think silencing people (legally or otherwise) doesn't help reduce murder rate or anything. It just silences people.
- wpietri 8y ago
  It depends on what you mean by early. Certainly up until The September That Never Ended, the great bulk of users were academics of one sort or another. That declined over time, but early adopters were still early adopters. There was some horrible stuff, sure, but it wasn't established. There weren't organizations actively recruiting. The truly horrible people of the time were still mailing newsletters and goose-stepping in person. You might think that silencing people doesn't reduce the murder rate, but you would be wrong. There are specific crimes of speech related to that, like incitement to riot, because that kind of speech historically leads to violence. You can also look at the history of people who end up killing people. Many of them have histories of radicalization, and that path starts with the mildest of entrypoints. See, e.g., Bellingcat's examination of the radicalization of internet fascists: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-infowars-75-fascist-activists-red-pilled/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-in... Or look at how Bowers and Sayoc got to the point of violence: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/31/magabomber-synagogue-shooter-likely-radicalized/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/31/magabomb... I agree that silencing people in general is bad. But it's very clear historically that some kinds of speech if tolerated lead to violence and death. If you think you can demonstrate otherwise, by all means take a swing at it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

tptacek 8y ago

Large portions of the Internet were cordoned off from commerce altogether. There was a weekend back in the 90s (probably more than one, but this is the one I remember) where there was an Internet-wide netsplit that cut commercial ISPs like Ripco off from the rest of the Internet. Most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet, and even in the alt. hierarchy, there were rules and politics behind what stuff got propagated.

hollerith 8y ago
I spent a decent amount of time on news.admin.net-abuse.email in 1993 and in the mid-1990s. (ISTR that is where spam on Usenet was mainly discussed.) I was very curious about Usenet, but recall no restrictions on any unmoderated newsgroup (and most newsgroups were unmoderated). I always believed that the reason it took years for Usenet to do something about spam is because (1) before spam got so bad they had to do something about it, there were no existing restrictions on the propagation of messages and (2) a widespread ethic among those running news servers that any restrictions on propagation, even restrictions on spam, were to be avoided. What sort of content, in your opinion, was denied propagation back when most conversations on the Internet took place on Usenet? I got the impression that the ban on commerce over the US backbone was to prevent making any business big enough to be able to afford a PR person or a lobbyist in Washington afraid that the Internet was a threat to its revenue stream. Back when only a small fraction of the public knew anything about the Internet, the US Government was spending a relatively large amount of money keeping it running, and was consequently vulnerable to sniping from journalists and politicians to the effect that the US government is spending money to giving, e.g., people who are sexually attracted to people dressed up as animals, a forum to communicate with each other. You and I know that the marginal cost of adding an alt.sex.furries news group to the Internet was so low as to be not worth thinking about, but it would've been hard to get that point across to the voting public. People were worried for example about the National Science Foundation, one of the major funders of the Internet, getting one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award Or maybe the ban on commerce over the US backbone was a concession the US backbone's patrons in Washington needed to make to get Congress to continue to allocate funds for it. The ban was mostly successful only because very few people wanted to do commerce on the internet while the ban on commerce over the US backbone was in place. Possible exception: the last year or so of the ban when the internet was growing very quickly. Exception: people seeking W2 workers or W2 jobs rather than 1099 workers / jobs would've liked to be able to use ba.jobs to advertise, but IIRC it was a moderated newsgroup, and the moderator, like most people running internet infrastructure back then, grudgingly recognized the need for the ban (i.e., to protect the Internet's supporters in Washington from ridicule or from the animosity of powerful groups).