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I agree with the title - we do need an alternative web, but not the kind the author wants. We need an alternative web that has less censorship and regulation. T

• iliketosleep 8y ago
  The author refers to a decentralized web, which cannot be controlled by any individual, state, or corporation. I think this implies less censorship and regulation.
  • asutekku 8y ago
    I’d love to be as idealistic, but when “free and uncensored” service has ever been ended up being something else than a cesspool for alt-right?
    • leereeves 8y ago
      Any free and uncensored service is bound to contain opinions you don't agree with. That's kinda the point.
      • andy_ppp 8y ago
        How about free decentralised and self-policing - opinions are fine but creating a place where illegal activity can’t be stopped will lead to any platform (even with good intentions) being marginalised.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
        • leereeves 8y ago
          People commit far more serious crimes in public parks than could ever be committed on a website. Is that a reason to close or marginalize public parks? Why not enforce the law on websites in a similar way: by arresting those responsible for illegal activity instead of attacking the venue?
          • andy_ppp 8y ago
            Well if you squint and look closely I don’t think I said anything other than it’s better to make these platforms self policing as a way to stop illegal content from appearing. Personally, the only thing I would ban is child pornography, and probably insightment to terrorism from right wing and islamists as well.
            • naasking 8y ago
              I don't even know why you would qualify "incitement to terrorism" with right wing. Have you never heard of left wing terrorists? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism
              • ModernMech 8y ago
                From your link: "Incidents of left-wing terrorism dropped off at the end of the Cold War (circa 1989), partly due to the loss of support for communism.[14]" Conversely, there was an incident of right wing terrorism just last week. This follows a trend of increasing right-wing terrorist activity: https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_IdeologicalMotivationsOfTerrorismInUS_Nov2017.pdf https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_IdeologicalMotivationsO... Yes, left wing terrorism exists, but today people are increasingly associating terrorism with right-wing ideologies because it's in our face and happening with increasing frequency. It's the same reason one might associate terrorism with Islam in 2001.
                • naasking 8y ago
                  I fail to see what any of this has to do with the other post. Should incitement to left wing terrorism somehow be ok on this new platform just because it may not currently be common? Furthermore, from your own link, the 2000s saw a flood of left wing terror attacks. That was not that long ago.
                  • ModernMech 8y ago
    • Yetanfou 8y ago
      Before the term 'alt-right' was even coined there were AFA/Antifa plus a myriad of other leftist 'revolutionary' groups calling for the destruction of whatever happened to be in their way, islamists of every plumage vying for the position of the most vile representative of their ideology, a multitude of incarnations of Nazi-fetishism, etcetera. In other words, no need to point at a specific ideology to personify the tragedy of the commons. When there is no censorship there will be places where things are said you'd rather not hear. The best advice I can give is to avoid those places, that way you won't hear what they're saying. Even without censorship there are laws which limit what can be said so a censorship-free 'net does not necessarily equate a cesspool.
    • mschuster91 8y ago
      Not just Nazi scum, but also piracy, child porn and gore/terror videos... turns out whenever you have a service that these four groups can use to spread their content they will flood it. I personally have no big problem with piracy as these days most of it is self-defense against "copy protections" that actually hinder legitimate buyers, but I'd be happy if the other three groups would disappear from the planet rather sooner than later.
    • throwmeback 8y ago
      ...or alt-left...
      • stronglikedan 8y ago
        Very valid point, but you're not supposed to point it out here.
    • iliketosleep 8y ago
      A decade or two ago it was the left which was vying for free and uncensored. Political fortunes have changed and now it's the right. Censorship is not free of political bias, and those on the wrong side of the current trend will flood platforms where the censorship does not exist. Those who are in favour of censorship must consider that political trends change over time, and one day they might be the ones being censored.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • smadge 8y ago
      The only example I can think of is Gab, which became a “cesspool for the alt-right” because it specifically marketed itself to that demographic. There have also been internet communities for the far left where members could post opinions that didn’t have purchase in mainstream outlets since the beginning of the web.
      • asutekku 8y ago
        8chan, jodel (local anonymous based message board popular in some parts of europe, similar to yikyak) to say few. I’m not trying to claim the others don’t exist.
    • gmueckl 8y ago
      That happens because these placed only attract extremes and let them stay among themselves. The key to a platform that does not become a cesspool is to disallow isolation and bubble building for extreme oppinions. Yet, this bubble building is what people desire and the only way to create a successful social online service is to cater to that group building. Real life rarely provides similar comforting bubbles of likeminded and reaffirming people. You still need to interact with other people even if you disagree with their views. In front of your computer screen, the right forum for sharing your views is just a few button pressed away. It is too easy to avoid the rest. To play devil's advocate and take an extreme position for the sake of discussion: we don't more free speech. Instead, we need a to introduce a duty to listen that goes both ways: if you want to express your opinions, you must also listen to what others have to say and especially, how others respond to what you say. And you do not get to pick and choose who you listen to. In essence, nobody must ever have full and exclusive control over the shape of the community they are part of.
    • EamonnMR 8y ago
      All of them before, what, 2014? That seemed to be the turning point.
    • ataturk 8y ago
      That's just ridiculous. The Web was supposed to be a marketplace of ideas. If you don't like the ideas, you're free to come up with your own. Censorship is not the answer. And alt-right is a reaction to the total beat down that less extreme reform movements such as the TEA Party and to a lesser extent, libertarians, tried to offer. The IRS was used to kill the TEA Party and now we find out John McCain was a major factor in why those targeted audits took place. Republicans just wanted their party back from the RINO assholes. I watched what happened with my own eyes--the RINO/GOPe played very dirty pool because they love big government, Big Brother, huge "defense" spending waste, pollution, misery, and total domination. In short, they're assholes and they doubled down when challenged. So now you get "alt-right" and you're fucking complaining about it!
    • dredmorbius 8y ago
      Systems which establish reputation, but don't ground it in strong and strictly unitary identity.
    • nabnob 8y ago
      Why should a billion dollar corporation get to decide which opinions are acceptable and which views don't get a platform? I'm as far to the left as you can get. I used to support stricter moderation on social media platforms, but I'm putting my foot in my mouth now. In practice, these corporations are just as likely to censor leftist views as they are to censor right-wing views. Even people who study history and politics don't agree on definitions of racism, sexism, etc. There's a lot of nuance that a $10/hr contractor who sat through a one-day training on offensive content at Facebook won't understand. This type of censorship doesn't help progressives, it just lets corporations determine the window of acceptable discourse.
  • Proven 8y ago
    Why not get rid of state (or at least as many laws as possible) rather than create a new “Dark” Internet on which most users would technically be criminals as all the ludicrous laws and regulations equally apply to Dark Internet
• aiyodev 8y ago
  You’re absolutely right. This is where someone usually says we need a decentralized web. But I wonder if we’re wasting time waiting for some new technology to save us. I’ve been waiting at least a decade and have seen project after project fail. Maybe instead we should focus on building a network of alternative, pro-liberty sites and apps using existing technology.
  • apatters 8y ago
    It's really just another manifestation of the tendency techies have to get overexcited about novel tech. Which is hardly the worst vice in the world, but when you want to build something that will reliably make an impact at scale, you don't really want to use novel tech outside of very rare cases. You want to use stuff that is dependable and gets the job done. I'm still a little skeptical of claims that existing web tech isn't decentralized enough. You can still start a website anywhere on the planet in 5 minutes. The big distribution/promotion channels were always centralized long since before the web existed. A lot of these arguments seem to really boil down to "if the government passes a law I don't like, I can't evade it." Governments have been passing some bad laws lately, but they've done that for basically all of human history... I'm not at all against technology which resists bad or unjust laws, but we are never going to get to tech that is 100% effective at evading the law and probably shouldn't since the outcome would be anarchy. My money is on the web becoming choked with monopoly-entrenching, innovation-crushing regulations, and then people flocking to something surprisingly mundane, imperfect, and not heavily based on novel technology -- simply because that thing is less regulated.
    • ldubost 8y ago
      > I'm still a little skeptical of claims that existing web tech isn't decentralized enough. This is because it's not a technological problem. The path to an actual decentralized web is clean technologically. We just need to take what already exists which is currently massively used in a centralized way, and build the services UI on top of it. Of course there are still crypto to add and so on, but if the investment where going that way it would come fast. The real problem is a business problem. Decentralized services don't pay unless there is something centralized. We cannot expect that (big) private companies will pay for something that's not in their interest. I've been running an open source company for 15 years. I've see so many times in the voice or in the eyes of entrepreneurs that they saw us as philanthropists. If we want de centralization, competition and control of our data and software we either or a combination of: - need individuals or comapnies to pay for it (pay your software provider + hosted fairly) - public funding - laws restriction the oligopoly approach - gdpr++++ - forcing standard based for big companies - forbidding centralization - forcing open-source Some are voluntary extreme and have little chance to ever happen.
• femiagbabiaka 8y ago
  there are pockets of humanity still, you just have to look a little harder
• bsder 8y ago
  > We need an alternative web that has less censorship and regulation. This is absolutely not an obviously true statement, and we have, in fact, quite a bit of situations to the contrary. For example, if someone is following my persona online and harassing me, I very much want to be able to enforce an "internet restraining order". That almost certainly cannot be done without some level of regulation.
  • icebraining 8y ago
    Offline restraining orders can't really be enforced either. In fact, according to a public health study, all the value came from asking for the order (basically scaring the perpetrator) - actually being granted one was not found to provide additional benefits.
    • bsder 8y ago
      > In fact, according to a public health study, all the value came from asking for the order (basically scaring the perpetrator) - actually being granted one was not found to provide additional benefits. That is a completely different statement from "can't really be enforced". The fact that something "self-enforces" because it might turn into a "legal enforces" is possibly the most effective enforcement.
  • Phenix88be 8y ago
    Your online persona can just block anyone who harassing him. In real life, you can't "block" people...That why I don't get how harassment on internet can be a thing. Just block them !
    • ModernMech 8y ago
      Block them how? If you block someone they can just create a new persona to harass you with. Edit: For everyone downvoting, can you please express how you think clicking a block button stops harassment? Have you actually ever been the victim of online harassment? Did simply clicking a button solve your problem?
• krapp 8y ago
  >The current internet is turning more and more into TV. That's what most people want - a curated and moderated (censored) platform from which they can passively consume content. Any future web is going to have to account for that or else not be useful to most of society.
• rchaud 8y ago
  > The current internet is turning more and more into TV. You can build a working webserver using a $50 Raspberry Pi kit, to host whatever you want as long as it complies with the law. I would think that the "free speech" people would put their money where their mouth is and learn how to do some of this stuff instead of making Youtube videos about how they're being held back by political correctness.
  • chmln 8y ago
    Yeah, it's not like you can lose your domains, get kicked off of the vast majority of web hosts and demoted in google search just for having the wrong opinions
    • rchaud 8y ago
      This sort of victim mentality isn't helpful for you or your "cause". The only people it helps are the shysters who'll tell you these problems are created by the cultural marxist global elite or whatever, while shaking their e-tip jar. Isn't it usually the "free speech" crew telling others that they don't know what 'real oppression' is? Try running a website in China critical of government policy and see where that gets you. The world wasn't created to serve you personally. If you have visions of running the next Stormfront, don't act shocked if Cloudflare and your web host stop playing ball sometime down the line. Neither of those are necessary to run a functioning website. As a recent meme put it, 'learn to code'.
      • chmln 8y ago
        I don't have a "cause". Are you trying to argue that Twitter, Facebook, and Google are apolitical? > Try running a website in China critical of government policy and see where that gets you Someone has it worse, so we shouldn't try to be better? ISIS throws gay people off of rooftops. Does that make jailing them in the US okay, because it's not as bad? > The world wasn't created to serve you personally. If you have visions of running the next Stormfront, don't act shocked if Cloudflare and your web host stop playing ball sometime down the line. Allowing domain registrars and hosting providers to arbitrarily take down websites based on political viewpoints is a horrific overreach. Don't act shocked when tomorrow it will be your opinion that's deemed "incorrect" and you're booted off the web for your perfectly legal libertarian blog