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> These individuals are free to create their own businesses and websites which facilitate whatever kind of discourse they please, nobody can take that away from
by adventured 8y ago
> These individuals are free to create their own businesses and websites which facilitate whatever kind of discourse they please, nobody can take that away from them
That's very clearly not true at all. Just a dozen or so major companies or orgs can work together to shut you out of having nearly any reach at all. For practical purposes, you'll have zero reach. Any combined small group of them can easily be enough to make your life online dramatically more difficult.
They can get you at the domain registration (oligopoly + mixture of cartel behavior). Oh, well, you have no right to a domain registration.
They can get you at the ISP level (oligopoly). Oh, well, you have no right to Internet access.
They can get you at the discovery level. Oh, well, Google (monopoly), Facebook (monopoly), Twitter, Reddit, et al. don't owe you any discovery access.
They can get you at the hosting level. Oh, well, nobody owes you access to any sort of hosting, from Azure or AWS to Wordpress or Tumblr.
They can get you at the network transit level. If just a few ISPs or large backbone operators in the US blacklist your site from their customers, few will be able to see you. Again for practical purposes, you're dead in that market.
Google as one example has openly bragged about their potential to conspire with other malevolent entities to tightly control expression/speech. They know their position and exactly how they can abuse it to their political or ideological bias.
In the age of inherently subjective 'hate speech' as The Devil that must be stopped at any and all costs, none of this is far fetched in the least. It's going to get a lot worse yet; the topics covered by 'hate speech' blockades will get far more extensive in the coming years. The enemies of free speech have been wildly emboldened by their successes and the lack of push-back. The entire West is going to end up with the equivalent of a less restrictive Chinese firewall, and that's where liberal Democracy is guaranteed to die.
- reaperducer 8y agoJust a dozen or so major companies or orgs can work together to shut you out of having nearly any reach at all. Yep. And it's happened in the past. That's why so many tinfoil hat types ended up on shortwave radio, or sticking flyers to lampposts. Desperate people desperately trying to get a message out, with no means to do so.
- remarkEon 8y agoBut the line cannot become "tinfoil hat types" because that is a completely undefinable measure. People who correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis were considered "tinfoil hat types". Should they have been dropped off these platforms because they sounded crazy at the time?
- beat 8y agoSurely you see the difference between the "sounds crazy" of predicting a market collapse, and the "sounds crazy" of saying we should deport or execute all Muslims (as a for example).
- zepto 8y agoIf the difference is so obvious, why do we need to censor?
- wsy 8y agoThe difference between food and waste is also obvious, still we bring the waste to the garbage can. Also, nobody censors. A distributor decided not to distribute the stuff anymore.
- remarkEon 8y agoThis “well it’s not really censorship if it’s not the government” point is useless, shallow, and ultimately meaningless. Your garbage analogy (no pun intended) fails on its face because in that case the government is explicitly telling you what is trash and what is recycling; what is compost and what requires special disposal. This idea begets that we have agreed to outsource what is and isn’t “allowed” to be said in the public space (and these are public spaces) to private corporations that absolutely do have their own agenda and objectives. Are we as a society ready to do that? Who watches the Watchmen?
- 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]