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An emergent ethical concern keeps bugging me in these situations. Of course, private companies reserve the right to refuse business and services to whomever the

An emergent ethical concern keeps bugging me in these situations. Of course, private companies reserve the right to refuse business and services to whomever they want. In a healthy society this is no problem. But if we slide towards a dystopian future where Big Tech is basically an oligarchy governing important chunks of society without due process and the democratic checks and balances we would expect from a governing body, things look pretty grim. I have no solution to offer, unfortunately. EDIT: Despite all the cynicism, I do think we are still on the healthy side of things :)

tyingq 7y ago
I'm not so worried about the free speech aspects of that...there's always somewhere to spew whatever opinion you have. I do agree, though, that Google and others wield a lot of power by being able to permaban a whole account/person for an alleged incident on just one of their platforms. Where "banned on YouTube" means, for example, that your Android phone no longer works.
- joeyrideout 7y ago
  Yes, but "there's always somewhere" may stop being true if we enter that dystopia. Competition for fringe discussion exists today so our society is healthy (thank goodness). If a true monopoly is allowed to form in these platforms, we will have a big problem. Thankfully we have anti-compete laws. Unfortunately it feels like we are flirting with monopolies when vertically integrated companies like Apple and Google have a very large market share (from Android to YouTube, as you mention). My favourite Sci Fi that deals with that dystopian future is a little-known show called Continuum. The oligarchy begins when governments go bankrupt and get bailed out by corporations in exchange for political power in the form of a "corporate congress". Fantastic show. Still sticks with me.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Yes, but "there's always somewhere" may stop being true if we enter that dystopia. That's true. That "somewhere" might become TOR because everything else is well regulated. In the end, you can technically also always meet like minded people in your basement to do whatever the government doesn't want you to do in public, so there's always "somewhere" ;)
  - rmtgk 7y ago
    >Yes, but "there's always somewhere" may stop being true if we enter that dystopia. We're already there and we didn't need to enter a dystopia. All big platforms (Google's YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, you name it) follow the same exact lines on politics and speech. (btw, funny that the English UK dictionary from Chrome doesn't include the word dystopia ;P)
- glenstein 7y ago
  >I'm not so worried about the free speech aspects of that...there's always somewhere to spew whatever opinion you have. You know, this is a really interesting observation. Oftentimes in these debates about moderation, people argue that you can't do it because these platforms are already de-facto public platforms. Meanwhile, in this thread's conversation, the main argument seems to be that pushing people off mainstream platforms won't work because they'll enjoy the exact same opportunities at another platform. That doesn't imply a contradiction from any particular person, as long as they only embrace one argument or the other. But both have been used in defense of Not Moderating Trolls, and both can't be right.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    My reasoning is that it's not really different from the past. Heavy corporate control of communications media isn't new, it predates the internet. Yet people still find ways to get their rants seen and heard, then..and now. I concede that companies can make it harder. Hard to really stamp it out though.
    - glenstein 7y ago
      And that's fine. I think I lean toward your reasoning, more or less. Though what I WANT to do is take concerns about consolidated media seriously while also undercutting the free-speech argument that seems backward-engineered specifically just to defend trolling. If we can all agree (not that we should, but if we DID agree) that there are platforms that are de-facto public spaces, and we want to take away their ability to moderate the way they currently do, then let's work to make them actual public utilties/spaces/whatevers, so that the standards they are subjected to are formalized and not pushed and pulled by weird momentary energies of this or that internet controversy. Or work to decentralize them, again, so that the issue of how moderation happens isn't just attached to this weirdly specific cultural moment where it's hard to figure out the sincerity of the motivations. Or just reject the whole argument outright.
wpietri 7y ago
It's still the Internet. Anybody can run and host software. Anybody can post a link to that. I agree tech's concentration of power in a few large companies is a big problem. I just don't think it's a significant concern for freedom of speech. Hopefully we'll return to enforcing pro-competition laws vigorously.
- freehunter 7y ago
  This is always my response when people say "the Internet is dying, woe to us, big tech is destroying the Internet". It doesn't matter if 90% of Internet users exclusively use Facebook, Facebook does not and can not stop you from creating your own website and distributing links the old fashioned way. There is absolutely nothing "dead" about the Internet of the 90s. It still exists and it's still possible to be a part of. The fact that Facebook and Google and etc built on top of that does not matter one bit. If you create your own website are you going to get Facebook-level traffic? No, of course not. But you wouldn't in 1998 either because there just weren't that many people interested in visiting your website. Facebook didn't make them less interested, because they never had that interest to begin with. If I run a health food store, I don't cry because an ice cream shop opened up across the street. I don't cry when I see how many people walk right past my door to get to the unhealthy treats. I know I'm in a niche market, and I know that ice cream will always be more popular than kale and wheatgrass. The people who go for ice cream aren't going to go for kale and wheatgrass anyway, so I'm not losing customers to the ice cream shop. The ice cream customers are not my customers. What the ice cream shop did was put more people on the sidewalk. They didn't steal my customers, but if I have a really good value proposition I may be able to steal some of theirs. That unhealthy ice cream shop is a good thing for my business, even if it's a bad thing for overall community health.
CM30 7y ago
I'd agree with this. As large companies get more powerful and their property becomes the equivalent of the public square, we seem to be ending up in a situation where rights de facto don't exist and everything's left at the whim of the public/stakeholders/owners. Then again, I also worry that no one seems to want to make a neutral platform or service/piece of infrastructure any more, and everything seems to be designed as a pseudo platform/publisher instead. Would we even create the telephone/email/postatal service infrastructure we use today if it didn't already exist? I suspect the answer is no. I suspect we'd end up with something like Slack or Discord or Facebook Messenger where the corporation can step in and ban people for wrongthink. No one wants to sell a dumb pipe or what not any more.
anbop 7y ago
You see this right now, where Trump’s support in the ballot box is stronger than his support in polling which is stronger than his support in the media, because when a point of view becomes socially unacceptable, people only express it in private.
patrickg_zill 7y ago
There is however some government action in terms of government ad spending on these platforms, and the many, many billions of dollars in tax incentives/abatements that have been handed over to Google etc. That may not reach the level of government involvement needed to claim that universal access must be provided; however it should be noted that the government has helped to pick winners and losers in the internet economy.
lopmotr 7y ago
> Of course, private companies reserve the right to refuse business and services to whomever they want. In a healthy society this is no problem. Did you notice that you just said that civil rights laws prohibiting racial and sexual discrimination are wrong and that the US is an unhealthy society because of them? Perhaps you do believe that, which is fine, but if you don't, then be careful making bold statements with a scope wider than what you're really thinking of. It sounds grand and important to make a general declaration of what's right and wrong, but the reason it sounds grand and important is because it carries so much meaning. If you don't really mean all of it, then it's more honest to stick to the specific concept you do want to say.

tyingq 7y ago

I'm not so worried about the free speech aspects of that...there's always somewhere to spew whatever opinion you have. I do agree, though, that Google and others wield a lot of power by being able to permaban a whole account/person for an alleged incident on just one of their platforms. Where "banned on YouTube" means, for example, that your Android phone no longer works.

joeyrideout 7y ago
Yes, but "there's always somewhere" may stop being true if we enter that dystopia. Competition for fringe discussion exists today so our society is healthy (thank goodness). If a true monopoly is allowed to form in these platforms, we will have a big problem. Thankfully we have anti-compete laws. Unfortunately it feels like we are flirting with monopolies when vertically integrated companies like Apple and Google have a very large market share (from Android to YouTube, as you mention). My favourite Sci Fi that deals with that dystopian future is a little-known show called Continuum. The oligarchy begins when governments go bankrupt and get bailed out by corporations in exchange for political power in the form of a "corporate congress". Fantastic show. Still sticks with me.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Yes, but "there's always somewhere" may stop being true if we enter that dystopia. That's true. That "somewhere" might become TOR because everything else is well regulated. In the end, you can technically also always meet like minded people in your basement to do whatever the government doesn't want you to do in public, so there's always "somewhere" ;)
- rmtgk 7y ago
  >Yes, but "there's always somewhere" may stop being true if we enter that dystopia. We're already there and we didn't need to enter a dystopia. All big platforms (Google's YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, you name it) follow the same exact lines on politics and speech. (btw, funny that the English UK dictionary from Chrome doesn't include the word dystopia ;P)
glenstein 7y ago
>I'm not so worried about the free speech aspects of that...there's always somewhere to spew whatever opinion you have. You know, this is a really interesting observation. Oftentimes in these debates about moderation, people argue that you can't do it because these platforms are already de-facto public platforms. Meanwhile, in this thread's conversation, the main argument seems to be that pushing people off mainstream platforms won't work because they'll enjoy the exact same opportunities at another platform. That doesn't imply a contradiction from any particular person, as long as they only embrace one argument or the other. But both have been used in defense of Not Moderating Trolls, and both can't be right.
- tyingq 7y ago
  My reasoning is that it's not really different from the past. Heavy corporate control of communications media isn't new, it predates the internet. Yet people still find ways to get their rants seen and heard, then..and now. I concede that companies can make it harder. Hard to really stamp it out though.
  - glenstein 7y ago
    And that's fine. I think I lean toward your reasoning, more or less. Though what I WANT to do is take concerns about consolidated media seriously while also undercutting the free-speech argument that seems backward-engineered specifically just to defend trolling. If we can all agree (not that we should, but if we DID agree) that there are platforms that are de-facto public spaces, and we want to take away their ability to moderate the way they currently do, then let's work to make them actual public utilties/spaces/whatevers, so that the standards they are subjected to are formalized and not pushed and pulled by weird momentary energies of this or that internet controversy. Or work to decentralize them, again, so that the issue of how moderation happens isn't just attached to this weirdly specific cultural moment where it's hard to figure out the sincerity of the motivations. Or just reject the whole argument outright.

wpietri 7y ago

It's still the Internet. Anybody can run and host software. Anybody can post a link to that. I agree tech's concentration of power in a few large companies is a big problem. I just don't think it's a significant concern for freedom of speech. Hopefully we'll return to enforcing pro-competition laws vigorously.

freehunter 7y ago
This is always my response when people say "the Internet is dying, woe to us, big tech is destroying the Internet". It doesn't matter if 90% of Internet users exclusively use Facebook, Facebook does not and can not stop you from creating your own website and distributing links the old fashioned way. There is absolutely nothing "dead" about the Internet of the 90s. It still exists and it's still possible to be a part of. The fact that Facebook and Google and etc built on top of that does not matter one bit. If you create your own website are you going to get Facebook-level traffic? No, of course not. But you wouldn't in 1998 either because there just weren't that many people interested in visiting your website. Facebook didn't make them less interested, because they never had that interest to begin with. If I run a health food store, I don't cry because an ice cream shop opened up across the street. I don't cry when I see how many people walk right past my door to get to the unhealthy treats. I know I'm in a niche market, and I know that ice cream will always be more popular than kale and wheatgrass. The people who go for ice cream aren't going to go for kale and wheatgrass anyway, so I'm not losing customers to the ice cream shop. The ice cream customers are not my customers. What the ice cream shop did was put more people on the sidewalk. They didn't steal my customers, but if I have a really good value proposition I may be able to steal some of theirs. That unhealthy ice cream shop is a good thing for my business, even if it's a bad thing for overall community health.

CM30 7y ago

I'd agree with this. As large companies get more powerful and their property becomes the equivalent of the public square, we seem to be ending up in a situation where rights de facto don't exist and everything's left at the whim of the public/stakeholders/owners. Then again, I also worry that no one seems to want to make a neutral platform or service/piece of infrastructure any more, and everything seems to be designed as a pseudo platform/publisher instead. Would we even create the telephone/email/postatal service infrastructure we use today if it didn't already exist? I suspect the answer is no. I suspect we'd end up with something like Slack or Discord or Facebook Messenger where the corporation can step in and ban people for wrongthink. No one wants to sell a dumb pipe or what not any more.

anbop 7y ago

You see this right now, where Trump’s support in the ballot box is stronger than his support in polling which is stronger than his support in the media, because when a point of view becomes socially unacceptable, people only express it in private.

patrickg_zill 7y ago

There is however some government action in terms of government ad spending on these platforms, and the many, many billions of dollars in tax incentives/abatements that have been handed over to Google etc. That may not reach the level of government involvement needed to claim that universal access must be provided; however it should be noted that the government has helped to pick winners and losers in the internet economy.

lopmotr 7y ago

> Of course, private companies reserve the right to refuse business and services to whomever they want. In a healthy society this is no problem. Did you notice that you just said that civil rights laws prohibiting racial and sexual discrimination are wrong and that the US is an unhealthy society because of them? Perhaps you do believe that, which is fine, but if you don't, then be careful making bold statements with a scope wider than what you're really thinking of. It sounds grand and important to make a general declaration of what's right and wrong, but the reason it sounds grand and important is because it carries so much meaning. If you don't really mean all of it, then it's more honest to stick to the specific concept you do want to say.