4 ms·

Most books are not "The Little Red Book", yet "The Little Red Book" managed to help cause a lot of harm. It's not just the fraction of "bad" content in your s

Most books are not "The Little Red Book", yet "The Little Red Book" managed to help cause a lot of harm. It's not just the fraction of "bad" content in your system, it's also the level of propagation. Most of the "99.9% benign" content will not draw a lot of eyes per piece of content, while I'd guess "bad" content will draw a lot more eyes, and ergo have a bigger impact.

z2 8y ago
I totally agree with what you are saying, but to nitpick/go on a tangent, the direction of information flow may matter too. From what I understand, the Little Red Book was more of a symbol or product of the cult of personality and hysteria, rather than the _cause_ of subsequent hysteria after its publishing. In other words, there was plenty of dogma to go around that it may not have created more chaos, and had it not existed, some other symbol may have taken its place. It would be interesting to see how much content on Facebook, despite high propagation, is mostly destined for echo chambers, or actually spurring new action and converting others.
ummonk 8y ago
Let's start banning books with bad content I guess?
- rndgermandude 8y ago
  I did not make this argument. I made the opposite argument in the past, actually. I am a proponent of reclassifying facebook etc as common carriers/utilities and forcing them not to censor any content unless it's actually illegal content. Tho, that does not and can not mean they have an obligation to promote such content e.g. through search results. However, words do have impact, and may be used as a weapon to incite the readers to certain actions. This can be actions I like, or actions that I find abhorrent. Then again, the danger that censorship poses to a free society, and the danger of unfettered censorship by private parties controlling major chunks of the "public marketplace of ideas" in particular, outweighs the dangers of bad people publishing legal but reprehensible speech, by a lot. The censorship we allow has to be minimal, and driven by societal consensus or compromise, and right now the state, with a separation of power and checks and balances, while not perfect, is still the far better alternative than letting a Zuckerberg or a Brin or a Dorsey or a Huffman unilaterally decide what's OK and what gets banned.

z2 8y ago

I totally agree with what you are saying, but to nitpick/go on a tangent, the direction of information flow may matter too. From what I understand, the Little Red Book was more of a symbol or product of the cult of personality and hysteria, rather than the _cause_ of subsequent hysteria after its publishing. In other words, there was plenty of dogma to go around that it may not have created more chaos, and had it not existed, some other symbol may have taken its place. It would be interesting to see how much content on Facebook, despite high propagation, is mostly destined for echo chambers, or actually spurring new action and converting others.

ummonk 8y ago

Let's start banning books with bad content I guess?

rndgermandude 8y ago
I did not make this argument. I made the opposite argument in the past, actually. I am a proponent of reclassifying facebook etc as common carriers/utilities and forcing them not to censor any content unless it's actually illegal content. Tho, that does not and can not mean they have an obligation to promote such content e.g. through search results. However, words do have impact, and may be used as a weapon to incite the readers to certain actions. This can be actions I like, or actions that I find abhorrent. Then again, the danger that censorship poses to a free society, and the danger of unfettered censorship by private parties controlling major chunks of the "public marketplace of ideas" in particular, outweighs the dangers of bad people publishing legal but reprehensible speech, by a lot. The censorship we allow has to be minimal, and driven by societal consensus or compromise, and right now the state, with a separation of power and checks and balances, while not perfect, is still the far better alternative than letting a Zuckerberg or a Brin or a Dorsey or a Huffman unilaterally decide what's OK and what gets banned.