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> while I don't approve of censorship ... I always believed in absolute freedom of expression. I cheered Google when they prioritized values over revenues and

> while I don't approve of censorship ... I always believed in absolute freedom of expression. I cheered Google when they prioritized values over revenues and abandoned mainland China because of censorship requirements. But maybe I need to update my beliefs based on new evidence. When free expression enables disinformation campaigns, when false rumors get amplified into mob violence, when stochastic terror organizes online, maybe the side effects of unlimited free expression are too severe for a modern civilization. Is it completely unreasonable to think that there might be something to learn from China's policies of censorship and social control?

qball 8y ago
>When free expression enables disinformation campaigns, when false rumors get amplified into mob violence, when stochastic terror organizes online Society (and humanity) at large doesn't actually need the internet to do this. You already know about the LA riots in 1991 (and civil unrest before that); that wasn't organized over the Internet and yet was much more destructive than any riot in the US since then. Cults (Jonestown, scientology), domestic terrorism (the Oklahoma City bombing, among others), and anti-woman violence (Polytechnique) all predate the rise of the mass-market Internet. Meanwhile, as opposed to the crime waves of the 80s and 90s the planet is a significantly safer place than it was then. Contrast what China did 2 years earlier; they didn't need the Internet to murder hundreds of peaceful protestors in Tiananmen Square. Or the concentration camps jailing people simply for existing (and chopping them up for organs), or the Great Leap Forward that managed to kill more people through starvation than there were casualties in WW2 (and other disastrous and unprotestable policies). That's what policies of censorship and social control get you- people who can't speak up or forget how to cause catastrophe after catastrophe. People who actually have to think once in a while perform better, and people who are better at that tend to bring prosperity wherever they go, so they concentrate in countries where that ability is rewarded the most. Even though members of a more tolerant society mess up, they don't tend to turn into institutional mass murder (whereas that's exactly what happens in unfree societies like China's). >the side effects of unlimited free expression are too severe for a modern civilization. This has some truth to it; the 24-hour news cycle should be regulated because the direct result of its existence deludes members of society into thinking it's more dangerous than ever before when the exact opposite is true. But that's about all the truth it has.
repolfx 8y ago
There have always been disinformation campaigns. Ironically, you're probably the victim of one right now - the belief that there is some kind of vast "disinformation campaign" active in the west is a conspiracy theory that is routinely shot down by people who investigate the credibility of such claims in the media (e.g. Taibbi, Greenwald). Luckily, we can read the articles written by people who investigate claims of vast online disinformation campaigns, and discover they are false. That's because there's not much censorship in the west. We can learn that the mainstream, 'official' narrative is false. In China you'd never read about any claims that contradict the official narrative. You'd maybe suspect there was something wrong with it, but have no good way to prove it. BTW I don't know what "stochastic terror" is. But you sound pretty scared. Maybe you've fallen victim to it ;)
- gowld 8y ago
  Educate yourself. Stochastic phenomena are encountered in many forms in technology. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism Stochastic terror is the term for a situation where pro-violent rhetoric runs rampant in a community and occasionally one of its listeners "randomly" commits a violent physicial act.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    So it's just terrorism then. What kind of lone wolf terrorism isn't accompanied by at least one other person saying they agree with the terrorist's cause? Do we really need a term for this?
GuiA 8y ago
The Chinese Communist Party has been imprisoning, torturing, and murdering journalists, researchers, artists, authors. The Chinese Communist Party is running concentration camps. Yes, it is completely unreasonable to think that there might be something to learn from the Chinese Communist Party's policies of censorship and social control.
mattnewport 8y ago
Outrageous as the fake news Russian collusion conspiracy theory peddled by the likes of CNN and MSNBC for the last two years might seem, I think rushing to censor them would be the wrong conclusion to draw.
PlasticTank 8y ago
In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety. We've welcomed 1984 with open arms.
- panarky 8y ago
  > the desire to give up any and all freedoms That's not what I said. I said "there might be something to learn". Maybe my belief in unlimited free expression at any cost isn't the best way. Must we must allow terrorist recruiting and incitement to violence and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and targeted intimidation? It's a slippery slope fallacy to assume that any restriction inevitably leads to relinquishing "all freedoms".
  - int_19h 8y ago
    The problem is that slippery slope is not a hypothetical argument in this case. You can be jailed in France, today, for wearing a pro-BDS t-shirt, because it's "hate speech". At the same time, for all the political censorship that Europe has compared to US, it doesn't seem to be doing anything to stem the rising popularity of their extremist parties. (https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-la...) The problem, as usual, is that there's no "we" in "must we allow". You're not actually the person who's going to be doing the allowing - best case, if you live in a non-corrupt democracy, you'll be voluntarily giving that authority to somebody else; and not even to a specific person, but a role. If the bounds of that authority are too specific, it becomes useless in practice because it's easy to avoid its scope. If they are too vague, and the precise bounds are left to the discretion of the enforcers, it just gives them another channel to manifest their biases.

qball 8y ago

>When free expression enables disinformation campaigns, when false rumors get amplified into mob violence, when stochastic terror organizes online Society (and humanity) at large doesn't actually need the internet to do this. You already know about the LA riots in 1991 (and civil unrest before that); that wasn't organized over the Internet and yet was much more destructive than any riot in the US since then. Cults (Jonestown, scientology), domestic terrorism (the Oklahoma City bombing, among others), and anti-woman violence (Polytechnique) all predate the rise of the mass-market Internet. Meanwhile, as opposed to the crime waves of the 80s and 90s the planet is a significantly safer place than it was then. Contrast what China did 2 years earlier; they didn't need the Internet to murder hundreds of peaceful protestors in Tiananmen Square. Or the concentration camps jailing people simply for existing (and chopping them up for organs), or the Great Leap Forward that managed to kill more people through starvation than there were casualties in WW2 (and other disastrous and unprotestable policies). That's what policies of censorship and social control get you- people who can't speak up or forget how to cause catastrophe after catastrophe. People who actually have to think once in a while perform better, and people who are better at that tend to bring prosperity wherever they go, so they concentrate in countries where that ability is rewarded the most. Even though members of a more tolerant society mess up, they don't tend to turn into institutional mass murder (whereas that's exactly what happens in unfree societies like China's). >the side effects of unlimited free expression are too severe for a modern civilization. This has some truth to it; the 24-hour news cycle should be regulated because the direct result of its existence deludes members of society into thinking it's more dangerous than ever before when the exact opposite is true. But that's about all the truth it has.

repolfx 8y ago

There have always been disinformation campaigns. Ironically, you're probably the victim of one right now - the belief that there is some kind of vast "disinformation campaign" active in the west is a conspiracy theory that is routinely shot down by people who investigate the credibility of such claims in the media (e.g. Taibbi, Greenwald). Luckily, we can read the articles written by people who investigate claims of vast online disinformation campaigns, and discover they are false. That's because there's not much censorship in the west. We can learn that the mainstream, 'official' narrative is false. In China you'd never read about any claims that contradict the official narrative. You'd maybe suspect there was something wrong with it, but have no good way to prove it. BTW I don't know what "stochastic terror" is. But you sound pretty scared. Maybe you've fallen victim to it ;)

gowld 8y ago
Educate yourself. Stochastic phenomena are encountered in many forms in technology. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochastic_terrorism Stochastic terror is the term for a situation where pro-violent rhetoric runs rampant in a community and occasionally one of its listeners "randomly" commits a violent physicial act.
- repolfx 8y ago
  So it's just terrorism then. What kind of lone wolf terrorism isn't accompanied by at least one other person saying they agree with the terrorist's cause? Do we really need a term for this?

GuiA 8y ago

The Chinese Communist Party has been imprisoning, torturing, and murdering journalists, researchers, artists, authors. The Chinese Communist Party is running concentration camps. Yes, it is completely unreasonable to think that there might be something to learn from the Chinese Communist Party's policies of censorship and social control.

mattnewport 8y ago

Outrageous as the fake news Russian collusion conspiracy theory peddled by the likes of CNN and MSNBC for the last two years might seem, I think rushing to censor them would be the wrong conclusion to draw.

PlasticTank 8y ago

In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety. We've welcomed 1984 with open arms.

panarky 8y ago
> the desire to give up any and all freedoms That's not what I said. I said "there might be something to learn". Maybe my belief in unlimited free expression at any cost isn't the best way. Must we must allow terrorist recruiting and incitement to violence and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and targeted intimidation? It's a slippery slope fallacy to assume that any restriction inevitably leads to relinquishing "all freedoms".
- int_19h 8y ago
  The problem is that slippery slope is not a hypothetical argument in this case. You can be jailed in France, today, for wearing a pro-BDS t-shirt, because it's "hate speech". At the same time, for all the political censorship that Europe has compared to US, it doesn't seem to be doing anything to stem the rising popularity of their extremist parties. (https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/ https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-la...) The problem, as usual, is that there's no "we" in "must we allow". You're not actually the person who's going to be doing the allowing - best case, if you live in a non-corrupt democracy, you'll be voluntarily giving that authority to somebody else; and not even to a specific person, but a role. If the bounds of that authority are too specific, it becomes useless in practice because it's easy to avoid its scope. If they are too vague, and the precise bounds are left to the discretion of the enforcers, it just gives them another channel to manifest their biases.