6 ms·

I used to believe that with all my heart until I started reading 4chan, now between that, deepfakes, and the imminent arrival of GPT-2 bots, I’m really fearful

I used to believe that with all my heart until I started reading 4chan, now between that, deepfakes, and the imminent arrival of GPT-2 bots, I’m really fearful of the future of online publishing. We’re going to end up with defacto censorship because most if not all platforms will be threatened into it. Fundamentally it seems online discussion for human beings has serious bugs. Self policing used to work in the early internet but it seems the volume has overwhelmed most self policing systems.

syshum 8y ago
I believe we are seeing the end of Free Speech as well That however does not change my statement, If we regulate away Anonymous speech we regulate away Free Speech There is no getting around that fact, so we are going to destroy free speech while claiming we are "protecting it"
- cromwellian 8y ago
  Well, that’s if you consider free speech to be hate speech. The kind of behavior I’m talking about is people posting explicitly racist memes or incitement to violence. Even today, a flood of racist caricatures of Andrew Yang are Flooding from 4chan onto YouTube, instagram, and twitter from maga trolls. The reason why censorship is coming is because the trolls have ruined a good thing. We can tolerate nazi marches and extremists as long as it is off in a small discredited corner. But when the fascists start running bots and troll armies flooding forums, making it hard to trust anything, speech has already been censored by sheer lowering of signal to noise. If I can drown you out with online armies, I don’t need the platforms to censor you, I just need to overwhelm you and make people feel reading the comments is useless and I will have achieved my mission. The left might be destroying speech in academia, but on the open internet it is decidedly the alt-right and radicals that are endangering free speech.
  - rudedogg 8y ago
    I think these issues are fundamental problems with communication. Sure some have been automated - but communicating is simply easier than it ever has been. The problems will be worked on, and like democracy we'll swing back and forth trying to find the right solution and balance, but the situation will hopefully keep improving.
  - syshum 8y ago
    >>Well, that’s if you consider free speech to be hate speech. I (like the US Supreme Court) consider all speech that 1. is not a directly call to immediate violence to a specific date, time, place, and individual(s) 2. Is not defamation To be Free Speech, this may include things you consider to be "Hate Speech" and/or offensive which is a subjective definition that is for ever changing, and changes based on the politics of an individual "Racist Memes" is free speech and should be protected "incitement to violence" would have to include a True Threat, which is a specific legal standard >>Even today, a flood of racist caricatures of Andrew Yang are Flooding from 4chan onto YouTube, instagram, and twitter from maga trolls. Of the 3 platforms you list, I only use YouTube, and I rarely look at the comments there. I do not believe the solution to your perceived problems with memes on these platforms is for mass censorship. The platforms should provide tools for people to block, hide and ignore content they do not personally want to see but not resort to wide scale censorship. Even if successful in this censorship what do you believe the victory will be? Will have eliminated any racist from the world, will have changed their minds, will have ended extremist? Do you think people that resort to violence are curbed because you can longer see their posts on twitter? We know this is not the case, infact it often makes the extremism worse when it pushed underground. >>on the open internet it is decidedly the alt-right and radicals that are endangering free speech. That depends on your definition of alt-right, which is heavily over used and at this point has no meaning. When Left Libertarians like myself are being labeled "alt-right" because we support free speech (real free speech) the term has lost all meaning. Authoritarian lefts believe that anyone that do not believe lock step in with their Authoritarian and Identitarian policies are some combination of racist, troll, alt-right or nazi. It is lazy and intellectually dishonest
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      Maybe I'm not communicating clearly, but the point I'm making is, speech censorship is coming, and it is not coming from the government, it's going to be decentralized speech censorship, and the reason why it's coming is because trolls are going to ruin all of our communications channels. The cost of speech and publishing has gone to zero in many ways, and with automation, trolls are going to conduct one big denial of service attack. When the founding fathers envisioned freedom of speech and press, they envisioned individuals with soap boxes speaking to crowds, they envisioned some people printing newspapers or pamphlets, they didn't imagine every single person with a megaphone able to blare at a loud volume, and even clone themselves via automation to go blast their megaphone in every hall and park. When there are no costs, bad actors can spam. The end result in email was the institution of very aggressive spam filters, which made it partially useful again. Public online discourse is becoming so toxic and troll ridden, that either commenting is going to be disabled, or it's going to be aggressive filtered and curated (i.e. censored) As soon as that happens, the right wing is going to claim their viewpoints are being censored by left wing tech companies. The left wing is going to claim their viewpoints are being censored by an oligarchy in bed with the US empire, and everyone's going to whine about their particular video or missive being taken down by algorithms, because quite simpler, there's no perfect algorithm for this, and the problem is beyond human curation -- even assuming humans themselves could be unbiased curators. So increased censorship seems inevitable, no one is going to be happy, and mostly because social manners that used to keep people in check in the physical world, have essentially amplified the ability of people to wreak havok and bear no responsibility. Free speech was never freedom from responsibility. Someone deciding not to work with you of your public statements or behaviors or criticize you was always the check and balance. The thing with authoritarian leftists on campus, and the alt-right, is that the people getting hyperbolic over pronouns are a minority and not an actual threat. They're also pretty public about it, and don't need to hide who they are. They're not shooting up mosques or synagogues or churches or blowing up Oklahoma federal buildings. In the 70s, the left wing actually would commit terrorism, trying to sabotage property and the establishment, but that has mostly abated. What we're seeing over the last few years, is a rise in nationalism and ethocentrism, a 'great unraveling',and I worry about that a lot more than I worry about someone on campus demanding their trigger warning safe space. We have nationalists now at the levers of power, one in fact, the most powerful man in the world. When we have a President who is going to punish people for using the wrong pronoun, I'll start worrying about that.

syshum 8y ago

I believe we are seeing the end of Free Speech as well That however does not change my statement, If we regulate away Anonymous speech we regulate away Free Speech There is no getting around that fact, so we are going to destroy free speech while claiming we are "protecting it"

cromwellian 8y ago
Well, that’s if you consider free speech to be hate speech. The kind of behavior I’m talking about is people posting explicitly racist memes or incitement to violence. Even today, a flood of racist caricatures of Andrew Yang are Flooding from 4chan onto YouTube, instagram, and twitter from maga trolls. The reason why censorship is coming is because the trolls have ruined a good thing. We can tolerate nazi marches and extremists as long as it is off in a small discredited corner. But when the fascists start running bots and troll armies flooding forums, making it hard to trust anything, speech has already been censored by sheer lowering of signal to noise. If I can drown you out with online armies, I don’t need the platforms to censor you, I just need to overwhelm you and make people feel reading the comments is useless and I will have achieved my mission. The left might be destroying speech in academia, but on the open internet it is decidedly the alt-right and radicals that are endangering free speech.
- rudedogg 8y ago
  I think these issues are fundamental problems with communication. Sure some have been automated - but communicating is simply easier than it ever has been. The problems will be worked on, and like democracy we'll swing back and forth trying to find the right solution and balance, but the situation will hopefully keep improving.
- syshum 8y ago
  >>Well, that’s if you consider free speech to be hate speech. I (like the US Supreme Court) consider all speech that 1. is not a directly call to immediate violence to a specific date, time, place, and individual(s) 2. Is not defamation To be Free Speech, this may include things you consider to be "Hate Speech" and/or offensive which is a subjective definition that is for ever changing, and changes based on the politics of an individual "Racist Memes" is free speech and should be protected "incitement to violence" would have to include a True Threat, which is a specific legal standard >>Even today, a flood of racist caricatures of Andrew Yang are Flooding from 4chan onto YouTube, instagram, and twitter from maga trolls. Of the 3 platforms you list, I only use YouTube, and I rarely look at the comments there. I do not believe the solution to your perceived problems with memes on these platforms is for mass censorship. The platforms should provide tools for people to block, hide and ignore content they do not personally want to see but not resort to wide scale censorship. Even if successful in this censorship what do you believe the victory will be? Will have eliminated any racist from the world, will have changed their minds, will have ended extremist? Do you think people that resort to violence are curbed because you can longer see their posts on twitter? We know this is not the case, infact it often makes the extremism worse when it pushed underground. >>on the open internet it is decidedly the alt-right and radicals that are endangering free speech. That depends on your definition of alt-right, which is heavily over used and at this point has no meaning. When Left Libertarians like myself are being labeled "alt-right" because we support free speech (real free speech) the term has lost all meaning. Authoritarian lefts believe that anyone that do not believe lock step in with their Authoritarian and Identitarian policies are some combination of racist, troll, alt-right or nazi. It is lazy and intellectually dishonest
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    Maybe I'm not communicating clearly, but the point I'm making is, speech censorship is coming, and it is not coming from the government, it's going to be decentralized speech censorship, and the reason why it's coming is because trolls are going to ruin all of our communications channels. The cost of speech and publishing has gone to zero in many ways, and with automation, trolls are going to conduct one big denial of service attack. When the founding fathers envisioned freedom of speech and press, they envisioned individuals with soap boxes speaking to crowds, they envisioned some people printing newspapers or pamphlets, they didn't imagine every single person with a megaphone able to blare at a loud volume, and even clone themselves via automation to go blast their megaphone in every hall and park. When there are no costs, bad actors can spam. The end result in email was the institution of very aggressive spam filters, which made it partially useful again. Public online discourse is becoming so toxic and troll ridden, that either commenting is going to be disabled, or it's going to be aggressive filtered and curated (i.e. censored) As soon as that happens, the right wing is going to claim their viewpoints are being censored by left wing tech companies. The left wing is going to claim their viewpoints are being censored by an oligarchy in bed with the US empire, and everyone's going to whine about their particular video or missive being taken down by algorithms, because quite simpler, there's no perfect algorithm for this, and the problem is beyond human curation -- even assuming humans themselves could be unbiased curators. So increased censorship seems inevitable, no one is going to be happy, and mostly because social manners that used to keep people in check in the physical world, have essentially amplified the ability of people to wreak havok and bear no responsibility. Free speech was never freedom from responsibility. Someone deciding not to work with you of your public statements or behaviors or criticize you was always the check and balance. The thing with authoritarian leftists on campus, and the alt-right, is that the people getting hyperbolic over pronouns are a minority and not an actual threat. They're also pretty public about it, and don't need to hide who they are. They're not shooting up mosques or synagogues or churches or blowing up Oklahoma federal buildings. In the 70s, the left wing actually would commit terrorism, trying to sabotage property and the establishment, but that has mostly abated. What we're seeing over the last few years, is a rise in nationalism and ethocentrism, a 'great unraveling',and I worry about that a lot more than I worry about someone on campus demanding their trigger warning safe space. We have nationalists now at the levers of power, one in fact, the most powerful man in the world. When we have a President who is going to punish people for using the wrong pronoun, I'll start worrying about that.