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This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any

by ufmace 8y ago

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. Giant tech corps effectively taking over most means of communication and using their powers to openly censor things are part of the problem. IMO, a bigger part of the problem is the trend among activists that anyone with an improper opinion must be destroyed, along with anyone who allows them to express that opinion, and anyone marginally associated with anyone who allowed them to express their opinion, etc. It seems like a well-honed process now. Cherry-pick the worst things anyone has said or posted. If nothing sufficiently bad has been posted, then make some fake accounts and post something bad yourself. Write hit pieces on the owner or author and highlight those cherry-picked things. Spread those pieces far and wide, and keep writing new ones with the same theme. Direct them at anyone associated with the target. Repeat and keep spreading the net until somebody breaks. Is this what we created the internet to be?

labster 8y ago
It sounds like you wanted a revolutionary open discourse, and are surprised that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I really don't know how to fix the human empathy problem, though.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- seiferteric 8y ago
  My problem is all of the throwing stones in glass houses, hypocrisy an self righteousness I see out there. It's so easy to attack something a public figure might have once said but no one is looking through the "attackers" entire history to see what they might have once said. I don't believe any real person has never said something they later regretted (or should regret) and would be embarrassed by if it came out. As you said, empathy is the problem. People need to be more forgiving ans understanding. Only when someone has established a record of being wrong/bad should they be "attacked" for it, otherwise it should be sufficient to respectfully point out why you think they are wrong and move on with your life.
  - CM30 8y ago
    Well, I wouldn't exactly say no one is. Often, it ends up being revealed that the people attacking others for these culture war things are usually hiding some dark secrets of their own, or acting as hypocrites, and people have made quite a deal out of that. For example, the person whose video about questionable YouTube comments set off an advertiser backlash ended up getting involved in a bunch of stories themselves for making the exact same kind of content (as mentioned by Keemstar, Review Tech USA, etc). The GamerGate controversy had dozens of examples of people getting doxed or revealed as hypocrites, and certain entire forums exist pretty much to dig every bit of random people's personal backgrounds. You're right in that everyone has said something they regetted/should regret, and that people should be more forgiving and understanding, but it's not due to people not looking up the histories of the attackers. It's because everyone even remotely involved in a controversy will basically get doxed to hell and everything they've ever done or said used against them, accused and accuser alike.
    - yourbandsucks 8y ago
      The key thing about people going around attacking people on the internet is that they're really into attacking people. We could do with a lot more empathy from everyone. And I think it's fair in a certain way to get extra-annoyed at this type of behavior from those who preach inclusiveness. Like, at least the judgmental a-holes are consistent.
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        We could really use a lot more empathy and patience. Not just online. Everywhere in life.
- ufmace 8y ago
  I'd say that I'm not worried that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I'm more concerned that the extremist tactics and justifications that the worst of them have used in the real world have carried over to the internet, and we get into the same old arms race where everyone has to copy the tactics of the worst actor out there, or get swamped by them. To truly have empathy for all is indeed a hard problem though.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  >It sounds like you wanted a revolutionary open discourse, and are surprised that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. That sounds nicely quotable.
gipp 8y ago
What you've left out of that idyll of the early internet, though, is that its population was - smaller, by many orders of magnitude - from a highly homogeneous distribution of cultural backgrounds - mostly of comfortable material means These are, and have probably always been, prerequisites for the kind of civil discourse you're talking about. The "heavy-handedness" of tech companies is IMO less a cause than it is a reaction to the inevitable degeneration of discourse as the Internet grew up. The techno-libertarian-utopian ideals of the early internet were always a pipe dream because they failed to recognize the role of these factors in their culture, and attributed it all to the medium itself. Which is not to say that the Internet doesn't change our communication, just that it's not necessarily in the ways they wanted.
- ufmace 8y ago
  You may well be right about the civil nature of things in the early days being due to being composed of a small group of techies whose culture wasn't all that different from each other. Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. Maybe we're now seeing how wrong/naive we all were.
  - shrimp_emoji 8y ago
    Naive is also calling this demographic diversity. (It's increased, yes, but lol.)
    - Farradfahren 8y ago
      You know, the rest of the planet is setting the standard. So diverse - compared with the rest of the planet- yes.
  - jasode 8y ago
    >Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. The naivete of everyone is somewhat understandable because each generation lets new technology (e.g. telegraph, airplanes, internet, etc) seduce them into thinking its capabilities will help humans understand each other. Some examples of previous naive forecasts: >"telegraph [...] would end international hostilities [...] the telegraph wire, the nerve of international life, transmitting knowledge of events, removing causes of misunderstanding, and promoting peace and harmony throughout the world."[1] >"With the perfect development of the airplane, wars will be only an incident of past ages."; "The Wright Brothers Invention Should Prevent Further Wars And Insure Peace"[2] >"the internet will help us connect with each other and let us discuss our differing viewpoints!"[3] And no doubt that if some future 22nd-century technology of brainwave-telepathic device is invented, those future people will think that magical thought-communicator will enable peace and harmony. Why would there be any wars if 10 billion of us could just magically send thoughts with universal language translation without even speaking or writing?!? (Don't worry, humanity will figure out a way to use the device for spreading hate.) [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=4y2UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=telegraph+%22removing+causes+of+misunderstanding%22&source=bl&ots=bIljc12MmG&sig=ACfU3U246wJWBB3RyWdMtmyCuEFCjzg7Vw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZitbxpNDgAhUNG6wKHa_nBvQQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=telegraph%20%22removing%20causes%20of%20misunderstanding%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=4y2UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=P... [2] https://wrightstories.com/wrights-perspective-on-the-role-of-airplanes-in-war/ https://wrightstories.com/wrights-perspective-on-the-role-of... [3] today's internet users
kadendogthing 8y ago
>It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days Good. >with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. No, we're just not allowing "information anarchy." Not all information is beneficial, useful, or constructive. Some of it has net negatives. Stop assuming there are enough rational/good actors to counter act the bad/ignorant actors who propagate bad information. We don't have the public education infrastructure in a good enough place to assume that. So stop assuming it, because the data is telling you you're wrong. We're seeing the opposite of what everyone claimed would happen if everyone had access to as much information from as many different sources as possible. And we've just tip toed into this era and we're already seeing bad effects. The internet of yesteryear (and I mean decades ago) was largely populated by well educated people. Most of them were educated in a fairly structured environment, and knew how to qualify credible sources and credible information against information that was most likely incorrect or uncredible. That's not indoctrination. That's not "oppressive." The exact opposite paradigm you want for the internet created a populace that allowed the internet to be a great place to have civil, intellectual, and life altering conversations. Someone saying something absurd/incorrect/dangerous never could go far. It was always beaten or it was ignored, left to die because there wasn't an audience for those ideas. Now you can present almost any idea, no matter how ridiculous, harmful, or "bad" it may be and there will most likely be audience. And that's a problem. The idea that again, we can just let ideas fly off the wall and it'll slowly get filtered out is not tenable and has every ounce of data loudly saying this perspective is not true. You might be well educated enough, or even just have the intelligence, to discuss certain topics in an intellectually curious manner from a distance. But others, a lot of others, are going to take them at face value and run with them. It's information anarchy. Anarchy always results in new power structures that are less suitable to civil existence.
- npsimons 8y ago
  > Now you can present almost any idea, no matter how ridiculous, harmful, or "bad" it may be and there will most likely be audience. Like anti-vax, or AGW denialism, or white supremacy, or flat-eartherism, or creationism, or trickle down economics . . . Need I go on?
  - 8y ago
komali2 8y ago
>hen make some fake accounts and post something bad yourself. Write hit pieces on the owner or author and highlight those cherry-picked things. Spread those pieces far and wide, and keep writing new ones with the same theme. I've never heard of this happening - was there specific instances of this you were thinking of? I'd like to read more, if possible.
- legitster 8y ago
  It is fairly acknowledged that for the new Ghostbusters movie, Sony Pictures deleted well-reasoned and articulated negative comments on the trailer's Youtube, but left up hateful and poorly worded ones so they could portray all negative criticism as bigoted.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    Is it?
    - Izkata 8y ago
      Yes: http://www.hedgology.com/how-the-ghostbusters-film-is-marketing-misogyny/ http://www.hedgology.com/how-the-ghostbusters-film-is-market...
roenxi 8y ago
I want to agree with the direction while disagreeing with how the details are framed. Particularly the taste of the idea that the internet is supposed to realise the ideals of technocrats leaves me with a bad taste on the tongue. Small numbers of highly motivated activists are part of the problem, but also part of how things are - pretty much by definition, change is led by activists who commit to an idea before it becomes mainstream. I find even for movements that I agree with the person pushing for change is often someone who I consider unhealthily dedicated to that particular topic. To say nothing of movements I disagree with. I'll pick on Stallman as a well known figurehead for this sort of thing. Activists attempting to shut people down when they can is (a) not going away and (b) going to be a tradition dating back to time immemorial. We should look to politics for examples of the forces at play and the organic solutions that are found. Political debate in a government setting swiftly degenerates into a shouting match if it is not absurdly ritualised. Technical discovery and discussions is done by small committees and with a few chosen representatives of the major ideologies to keep the signal-noise ratio acceptable. Executive power is embedded in an apparatus of precedent, ritual and respect that protects it from activism, even if it looks like the executive is misbehaving. I'd suggest the last sentence is key to the problems emerging on the internet - infrastructure controllers (Google, SSC, etc) aren't emerging from large agglomerations of people and don't have the unbreakable support network enjoyed by political leaders allowing them to fight back against unreasonable activists (eg, think Trump - the structures that protect him from activists must be world-class). I found this post enlightening to just how damaging the N-to-1 relationship between the weakest link in the system and activists can be, even when the weak link isn't a creator and is obviously committed to free speech and moderate ideals. The implications are profound.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > pretty much by definition, change is led by activists who commit to an idea before it becomes mainstream This isn't right. Compare the legalization of divorce. It's often given credit for America's current sky-high divorce rate. But it happened right in the middle of a long increasing trend in the divorce rate, without appearing to affect that trend in the slightest. Most change just happens, without being led by anyone at all.
opnitro 8y ago
Posting this essay because it's eternally relevant when it comes to discussions like these: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm It's an essay by a feminist writer on how movements organize themselves.
axaxs 8y ago
It's not just 'companies', it's people. Reddit has become beyond frustrating because of how siloed subreddits have become. I have to visit a mix of politics, news, and yes, the_donald, to even begin to get a breadth of happenings and news. This was never more apparent than this whole Smollet case. After it was found that it was a hoax, not only were all threads pointing out it was a hoax removed, but also all previous accusatory threads that had been allowed to stay prior. Conversely, you'll never see any negative news about the Trump administration on the_donald. I'm a person who likes to read, and rarely comment. This experience is completely broken for me, as there no longer seems to exist 'neutral' places for discussion. Is it that people value 'samethink' above all else? People getting more easily offended? I honestly have no idea, but it wasn't always this way...
- dmode 8y ago
  I had the opposite experience with the Smollet case. I actually never heard or cared about Smollet till it started popping up as the #1 and #2 stories in r/news. As someone who is on the left of political spectrum and politically fairly active, I don't of know anyone who really thought Smollet was some representation of the political left. The fact that he was actively "brigaded" and "upvoted" in r/news and r/conservative and r/t_d tells you a lot about political discourse and "comments" section. It has been taken over for trolls and professional trolls at that to score cheap online points, but also to game search engine rankings. There is no space for neutral conversation anymore.
  - makomk 8y ago
    A whole bunch of prominent Democrats - I think possibly even the entire slate of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, but certainly close to it - publicly and loudly stood behind Smollet's claim of being attacked. Most of the news covered it too. Even here in the UK, both his original claims and him calling accusations he faked the attack racist and homophobic made the front page of the BBC and probably a bunch of other sites. If you only saw it on r/news that probably says more about where you get your news from than anything.
    - 8y ago
rndmize 8y ago
> We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. Maybe I had a late start, but as far as I remember the internet has never been like that. So much of the forums and comment sections I used to read were mountains of junk, starting with the way people would write "First!" as a comment on nearly anything. The best didn't rise to the top - things that generated the most interest did, and the two were often completely divergent. > It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. Giant tech corps effectively taking over most means of communication and using their powers to openly censor things are part of the problem. Feels like the reverse to me. Giant tech corps are failing to take measures against actively harmful memetic material - antivax, MLM, conspiracy theories, racism/white supremacy, extremism, etc. because these things drive their primary metric: engagement. Generally, it feels to me like large tech companies only take action on these issues after significant public outcry or advertiser action. The problem of censorship has little to do with them and everything to do with opposing groups that harass or threaten individuals (Scott's post being a prime example).
dnautics 8y ago
A similar argument was made about television, and the printing press too. Quality of life over the arc of history - and the discourse - has gotten much better. Why do you suspect the internet will be any different? It's still the early days. Remember yellow journalism? Or Jefferson calling Adams a hermaphroditical character?
- yesenadam 8y ago
  I recently read about some of the things that were printed about Lincoln in the newspapers of his day! Unbelievable. (Sorry, don't have a link)
  - tsimionescu 8y ago
    10 things Jefferson would have thought about Lincoln! You won't BELIEVE number 7!
rayiner 8y ago
> We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. Who is “we?” Who envisioned that? And who gave those people the right to speak for the rest of us? Free speech exists within the framework of social norms. You can think and say what you want, but that doesn’t mean that you get to think and say what you want in your places of work, community, etc., without social consequences from other people. That’s a central part of the freedom of association—nobody has to let you say what you want in their spaces. Ostracizarion, shaming, and exclusion over speech, actions, and beliefs is a central and important part of constructing and maintaining the social fabric. All that happened to the Internet is that it became civilized. And like every other area of civilized society, people imposed their social norms on it. Free speech still exists. Nothing is stopping you from setting up a web server and posting whatever (legal) thing you want. But nobody has to accommodate you and your thoughts in their spaces. And they are free to ostracize you for the things you believe or say.
- closeparen 8y ago
  The social norm under discussion here is exactly when and to what degree those ostracism campaigns ought to be waged. If the answer is “never” we are going to see a lot of pedophilia, Nazism, and spam. If the answer is “whenever people disagree” then we are going to be a world of mutually unintelligible and isolated factions. The correct setpoint is an interesting and non-obvious question, and the limited scope of the First Amendment doesn’t answer it.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Yes, but that question has nothing to do with the Internet. The correct set point of that social norm is whatever it is in the rest of society, because the Internet (at least in the US) now includes almost everyone. My point is that the folks that founded the Internet, even if they believed in techno libertarian ideas like that mentioned by OP (which I’m not sure is true—the Internet was built by a bunch of defense contractors at a very mainstream company), have no say in what the Internet should be like. It belongs to my mom and my six year old as much as anyone.
jancsika 8y ago
> We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. I'd like to know more about the vision: * what was the idea for combating Sybil if hundreds of thousands, millions, or billions of people arrived? * what was the idea for combating disinformation campaigns? * if you thought it best to maximize for globally readable and reachable ideas, what was the idea for dealing with garden variety abuse and viral content of a defamatory nature?
intended 8y ago
IF we say that its troubling in these days, then we are missing the many other signs that people have been yelling about for years now. We were mistaken about humanity and the internet. The process you describe is not necessarily how it happens either, simple error can recreate this scenario. It is clear that the only tool moderators have at hand are variants of censorship - and thats because not all ideas are equal, and some ideas are better evolved to travel through the currents and dark gyres of the sea of human thoughts.
davidgay 8y ago
> and the best rising to the top. Did you ever actually read newsgroups like soc.culture.yugoslavia in the early 90s? I just went to take a quick peek to refresh my memory, and yes, it was quite awful - https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!searchin/soc.culture.yugoslavia/before$3A1994$2F01$2F01 https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!searchin/soc.culture.yug...
arkh 8y ago
Bruce Schneier had a really good essay on what happenned: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/power_and_the_i.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/power_and_the... > What we forgot is that technology magnifies power in both directions. When the powerless found the Internet, suddenly they had power. But while the unorganized and nimble were the first to make use of the new technologies, eventually the powerful behemoths woke up to the potential -- and they have more power to magnify. And not only does the Internet change power balances, but the powerful can also change the Internet. Internet is just a force multiplier.
wetpaws 8y ago
The problem is not with tech companies, the problem is with sjw's

by ufmace 8y ago

labster 8y ago

It sounds like you wanted a revolutionary open discourse, and are surprised that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I really don't know how to fix the human empathy problem, though.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
seiferteric 8y ago
My problem is all of the throwing stones in glass houses, hypocrisy an self righteousness I see out there. It's so easy to attack something a public figure might have once said but no one is looking through the "attackers" entire history to see what they might have once said. I don't believe any real person has never said something they later regretted (or should regret) and would be embarrassed by if it came out. As you said, empathy is the problem. People need to be more forgiving ans understanding. Only when someone has established a record of being wrong/bad should they be "attacked" for it, otherwise it should be sufficient to respectfully point out why you think they are wrong and move on with your life.
- CM30 8y ago
  Well, I wouldn't exactly say no one is. Often, it ends up being revealed that the people attacking others for these culture war things are usually hiding some dark secrets of their own, or acting as hypocrites, and people have made quite a deal out of that. For example, the person whose video about questionable YouTube comments set off an advertiser backlash ended up getting involved in a bunch of stories themselves for making the exact same kind of content (as mentioned by Keemstar, Review Tech USA, etc). The GamerGate controversy had dozens of examples of people getting doxed or revealed as hypocrites, and certain entire forums exist pretty much to dig every bit of random people's personal backgrounds. You're right in that everyone has said something they regetted/should regret, and that people should be more forgiving and understanding, but it's not due to people not looking up the histories of the attackers. It's because everyone even remotely involved in a controversy will basically get doxed to hell and everything they've ever done or said used against them, accused and accuser alike.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    The key thing about people going around attacking people on the internet is that they're really into attacking people. We could do with a lot more empathy from everyone. And I think it's fair in a certain way to get extra-annoyed at this type of behavior from those who preach inclusiveness. Like, at least the judgmental a-holes are consistent.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      We could really use a lot more empathy and patience. Not just online. Everywhere in life.
ufmace 8y ago
I'd say that I'm not worried that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I'm more concerned that the extremist tactics and justifications that the worst of them have used in the real world have carried over to the internet, and we get into the same old arms race where everyone has to copy the tactics of the worst actor out there, or get swamped by them. To truly have empathy for all is indeed a hard problem though.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
>It sounds like you wanted a revolutionary open discourse, and are surprised that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. That sounds nicely quotable.

gipp 8y ago

What you've left out of that idyll of the early internet, though, is that its population was - smaller, by many orders of magnitude - from a highly homogeneous distribution of cultural backgrounds - mostly of comfortable material means These are, and have probably always been, prerequisites for the kind of civil discourse you're talking about. The "heavy-handedness" of tech companies is IMO less a cause than it is a reaction to the inevitable degeneration of discourse as the Internet grew up. The techno-libertarian-utopian ideals of the early internet were always a pipe dream because they failed to recognize the role of these factors in their culture, and attributed it all to the medium itself. Which is not to say that the Internet doesn't change our communication, just that it's not necessarily in the ways they wanted.

ufmace 8y ago
You may well be right about the civil nature of things in the early days being due to being composed of a small group of techies whose culture wasn't all that different from each other. Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. Maybe we're now seeing how wrong/naive we all were.
- shrimp_emoji 8y ago
  Naive is also calling this demographic diversity. (It's increased, yes, but lol.)
  - Farradfahren 8y ago
    You know, the rest of the planet is setting the standard. So diverse - compared with the rest of the planet- yes.
- jasode 8y ago
  >Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. The naivete of everyone is somewhat understandable because each generation lets new technology (e.g. telegraph, airplanes, internet, etc) seduce them into thinking its capabilities will help humans understand each other. Some examples of previous naive forecasts: >"telegraph [...] would end international hostilities [...] the telegraph wire, the nerve of international life, transmitting knowledge of events, removing causes of misunderstanding, and promoting peace and harmony throughout the world."[1] >"With the perfect development of the airplane, wars will be only an incident of past ages."; "The Wright Brothers Invention Should Prevent Further Wars And Insure Peace"[2] >"the internet will help us connect with each other and let us discuss our differing viewpoints!"[3] And no doubt that if some future 22nd-century technology of brainwave-telepathic device is invented, those future people will think that magical thought-communicator will enable peace and harmony. Why would there be any wars if 10 billion of us could just magically send thoughts with universal language translation without even speaking or writing?!? (Don't worry, humanity will figure out a way to use the device for spreading hate.) [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=4y2UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=telegraph+%22removing+causes+of+misunderstanding%22&source=bl&ots=bIljc12MmG&sig=ACfU3U246wJWBB3RyWdMtmyCuEFCjzg7Vw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZitbxpNDgAhUNG6wKHa_nBvQQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=telegraph%20%22removing%20causes%20of%20misunderstanding%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=4y2UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=P... [2] https://wrightstories.com/wrights-perspective-on-the-role-of-airplanes-in-war/ https://wrightstories.com/wrights-perspective-on-the-role-of... [3] today's internet users

kadendogthing 8y ago

>It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days Good. >with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. No, we're just not allowing "information anarchy." Not all information is beneficial, useful, or constructive. Some of it has net negatives. Stop assuming there are enough rational/good actors to counter act the bad/ignorant actors who propagate bad information. We don't have the public education infrastructure in a good enough place to assume that. So stop assuming it, because the data is telling you you're wrong. We're seeing the opposite of what everyone claimed would happen if everyone had access to as much information from as many different sources as possible. And we've just tip toed into this era and we're already seeing bad effects. The internet of yesteryear (and I mean decades ago) was largely populated by well educated people. Most of them were educated in a fairly structured environment, and knew how to qualify credible sources and credible information against information that was most likely incorrect or uncredible. That's not indoctrination. That's not "oppressive." The exact opposite paradigm you want for the internet created a populace that allowed the internet to be a great place to have civil, intellectual, and life altering conversations. Someone saying something absurd/incorrect/dangerous never could go far. It was always beaten or it was ignored, left to die because there wasn't an audience for those ideas. Now you can present almost any idea, no matter how ridiculous, harmful, or "bad" it may be and there will most likely be audience. And that's a problem. The idea that again, we can just let ideas fly off the wall and it'll slowly get filtered out is not tenable and has every ounce of data loudly saying this perspective is not true. You might be well educated enough, or even just have the intelligence, to discuss certain topics in an intellectually curious manner from a distance. But others, a lot of others, are going to take them at face value and run with them. It's information anarchy. Anarchy always results in new power structures that are less suitable to civil existence.

npsimons 8y ago
> Now you can present almost any idea, no matter how ridiculous, harmful, or "bad" it may be and there will most likely be audience. Like anti-vax, or AGW denialism, or white supremacy, or flat-eartherism, or creationism, or trickle down economics . . . Need I go on?
- 8y ago

komali2 8y ago

>hen make some fake accounts and post something bad yourself. Write hit pieces on the owner or author and highlight those cherry-picked things. Spread those pieces far and wide, and keep writing new ones with the same theme. I've never heard of this happening - was there specific instances of this you were thinking of? I'd like to read more, if possible.

legitster 8y ago
It is fairly acknowledged that for the new Ghostbusters movie, Sony Pictures deleted well-reasoned and articulated negative comments on the trailer's Youtube, but left up hateful and poorly worded ones so they could portray all negative criticism as bigoted.
- cm2012 8y ago
  Is it?
  - Izkata 8y ago
    Yes: http://www.hedgology.com/how-the-ghostbusters-film-is-marketing-misogyny/ http://www.hedgology.com/how-the-ghostbusters-film-is-market...

roenxi 8y ago

I want to agree with the direction while disagreeing with how the details are framed. Particularly the taste of the idea that the internet is supposed to realise the ideals of technocrats leaves me with a bad taste on the tongue. Small numbers of highly motivated activists are part of the problem, but also part of how things are - pretty much by definition, change is led by activists who commit to an idea before it becomes mainstream. I find even for movements that I agree with the person pushing for change is often someone who I consider unhealthily dedicated to that particular topic. To say nothing of movements I disagree with. I'll pick on Stallman as a well known figurehead for this sort of thing. Activists attempting to shut people down when they can is (a) not going away and (b) going to be a tradition dating back to time immemorial. We should look to politics for examples of the forces at play and the organic solutions that are found. Political debate in a government setting swiftly degenerates into a shouting match if it is not absurdly ritualised. Technical discovery and discussions is done by small committees and with a few chosen representatives of the major ideologies to keep the signal-noise ratio acceptable. Executive power is embedded in an apparatus of precedent, ritual and respect that protects it from activism, even if it looks like the executive is misbehaving. I'd suggest the last sentence is key to the problems emerging on the internet - infrastructure controllers (Google, SSC, etc) aren't emerging from large agglomerations of people and don't have the unbreakable support network enjoyed by political leaders allowing them to fight back against unreasonable activists (eg, think Trump - the structures that protect him from activists must be world-class). I found this post enlightening to just how damaging the N-to-1 relationship between the weakest link in the system and activists can be, even when the weak link isn't a creator and is obviously committed to free speech and moderate ideals. The implications are profound.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> pretty much by definition, change is led by activists who commit to an idea before it becomes mainstream This isn't right. Compare the legalization of divorce. It's often given credit for America's current sky-high divorce rate. But it happened right in the middle of a long increasing trend in the divorce rate, without appearing to affect that trend in the slightest. Most change just happens, without being led by anyone at all.

opnitro 8y ago

Posting this essay because it's eternally relevant when it comes to discussions like these: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm It's an essay by a feminist writer on how movements organize themselves.

axaxs 8y ago

It's not just 'companies', it's people. Reddit has become beyond frustrating because of how siloed subreddits have become. I have to visit a mix of politics, news, and yes, the_donald, to even begin to get a breadth of happenings and news. This was never more apparent than this whole Smollet case. After it was found that it was a hoax, not only were all threads pointing out it was a hoax removed, but also all previous accusatory threads that had been allowed to stay prior. Conversely, you'll never see any negative news about the Trump administration on the_donald. I'm a person who likes to read, and rarely comment. This experience is completely broken for me, as there no longer seems to exist 'neutral' places for discussion. Is it that people value 'samethink' above all else? People getting more easily offended? I honestly have no idea, but it wasn't always this way...

dmode 8y ago
I had the opposite experience with the Smollet case. I actually never heard or cared about Smollet till it started popping up as the #1 and #2 stories in r/news. As someone who is on the left of political spectrum and politically fairly active, I don't of know anyone who really thought Smollet was some representation of the political left. The fact that he was actively "brigaded" and "upvoted" in r/news and r/conservative and r/t_d tells you a lot about political discourse and "comments" section. It has been taken over for trolls and professional trolls at that to score cheap online points, but also to game search engine rankings. There is no space for neutral conversation anymore.
- makomk 8y ago
  A whole bunch of prominent Democrats - I think possibly even the entire slate of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, but certainly close to it - publicly and loudly stood behind Smollet's claim of being attacked. Most of the news covered it too. Even here in the UK, both his original claims and him calling accusations he faked the attack racist and homophobic made the front page of the BBC and probably a bunch of other sites. If you only saw it on r/news that probably says more about where you get your news from than anything.
  - 8y ago

rndmize 8y ago

> We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. Maybe I had a late start, but as far as I remember the internet has never been like that. So much of the forums and comment sections I used to read were mountains of junk, starting with the way people would write "First!" as a comment on nearly anything. The best didn't rise to the top - things that generated the most interest did, and the two were often completely divergent. > It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. Giant tech corps effectively taking over most means of communication and using their powers to openly censor things are part of the problem. Feels like the reverse to me. Giant tech corps are failing to take measures against actively harmful memetic material - antivax, MLM, conspiracy theories, racism/white supremacy, extremism, etc. because these things drive their primary metric: engagement. Generally, it feels to me like large tech companies only take action on these issues after significant public outcry or advertiser action. The problem of censorship has little to do with them and everything to do with opposing groups that harass or threaten individuals (Scott's post being a prime example).

dnautics 8y ago

A similar argument was made about television, and the printing press too. Quality of life over the arc of history - and the discourse - has gotten much better. Why do you suspect the internet will be any different? It's still the early days. Remember yellow journalism? Or Jefferson calling Adams a hermaphroditical character?

yesenadam 8y ago
I recently read about some of the things that were printed about Lincoln in the newspapers of his day! Unbelievable. (Sorry, don't have a link)
- tsimionescu 8y ago
  10 things Jefferson would have thought about Lincoln! You won't BELIEVE number 7!

rayiner 8y ago

> We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. Who is “we?” Who envisioned that? And who gave those people the right to speak for the rest of us? Free speech exists within the framework of social norms. You can think and say what you want, but that doesn’t mean that you get to think and say what you want in your places of work, community, etc., without social consequences from other people. That’s a central part of the freedom of association—nobody has to let you say what you want in their spaces. Ostracizarion, shaming, and exclusion over speech, actions, and beliefs is a central and important part of constructing and maintaining the social fabric. All that happened to the Internet is that it became civilized. And like every other area of civilized society, people imposed their social norms on it. Free speech still exists. Nothing is stopping you from setting up a web server and posting whatever (legal) thing you want. But nobody has to accommodate you and your thoughts in their spaces. And they are free to ostracize you for the things you believe or say.

closeparen 8y ago
The social norm under discussion here is exactly when and to what degree those ostracism campaigns ought to be waged. If the answer is “never” we are going to see a lot of pedophilia, Nazism, and spam. If the answer is “whenever people disagree” then we are going to be a world of mutually unintelligible and isolated factions. The correct setpoint is an interesting and non-obvious question, and the limited scope of the First Amendment doesn’t answer it.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Yes, but that question has nothing to do with the Internet. The correct set point of that social norm is whatever it is in the rest of society, because the Internet (at least in the US) now includes almost everyone. My point is that the folks that founded the Internet, even if they believed in techno libertarian ideas like that mentioned by OP (which I’m not sure is true—the Internet was built by a bunch of defense contractors at a very mainstream company), have no say in what the Internet should be like. It belongs to my mom and my six year old as much as anyone.

jancsika 8y ago

intended 8y ago

IF we say that its troubling in these days, then we are missing the many other signs that people have been yelling about for years now. We were mistaken about humanity and the internet. The process you describe is not necessarily how it happens either, simple error can recreate this scenario. It is clear that the only tool moderators have at hand are variants of censorship - and thats because not all ideas are equal, and some ideas are better evolved to travel through the currents and dark gyres of the sea of human thoughts.

davidgay 8y ago

> and the best rising to the top. Did you ever actually read newsgroups like soc.culture.yugoslavia in the early 90s? I just went to take a quick peek to refresh my memory, and yes, it was quite awful - https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!searchin/soc.culture.yugoslavia/before$3A1994$2F01$2F01 https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!searchin/soc.culture.yug...

arkh 8y ago

Bruce Schneier had a really good essay on what happenned: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/power_and_the_i.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/power_and_the... > What we forgot is that technology magnifies power in both directions. When the powerless found the Internet, suddenly they had power. But while the unorganized and nimble were the first to make use of the new technologies, eventually the powerful behemoths woke up to the potential -- and they have more power to magnify. And not only does the Internet change power balances, but the powerful can also change the Internet. Internet is just a force multiplier.

wetpaws 8y ago

The problem is not with tech companies, the problem is with sjw's