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Sure you can block specific users, but if I don't want to see (for example) anti-semitism how can I block that topic completely? It's not as if users tag their

Sure you can block specific users, but if I don't want to see (for example) anti-semitism how can I block that topic completely? It's not as if users tag their posts with each brand of hate speech.

Keverw 7y ago
I'm not sure if you block someone if it also hides their topics created by them but I would assume so. I know they have a way to block words too. I guess they call it mute users and words instead of block. I know some people were calling this the alt tech space. I haven't really been following it other than I remember the developer was interviewed talking about it. Another idea instead of verification badge being reserved for large celebrities, supposed to be more to show it's truly them. I do think we're going down a slippery slope with all this censorship though and a few large players in Silicon valley controlling everything. I know there was a lot of accusations going on, that some search engines and sites were rigged to rank Hillary higher than Trump... Even the people in the media were saying Trump had no chance and Hillary was going to win. It's like they tried to rig the whole thing. But even then the mainstream media is all controlled by a few hands anyways too. Then there are only really two main operating systems... On Mobile iOS and Android. Desktop Mac and Windows... So seems like more choices and freedom is a great thing, so power is spread out more instead of a few having large amounts of influence. However I also feel like people will pick things based on ease of use and features over being open. I like the ideas of Linux but I find myself using MacOs when it comes to desktop operating systems. I know people are building alternatives to Facebook and YouTube on the blockchain (such as Steemit). Then there are even projects aiming to build alternatives to Wikipedia as some people don't even trust them either, forget what it's called though off the top of my head though. I know some of these companies have a lot of control and power, and can't even provide decent technical support. I know Elizabeth Warren recent thing is talking about breaking up big tech, Google and Facebook... I like a lot of what Google does though, as a geek they are doing awesome things technically. I'm not sure if breaking them up is a good idea or not, but I think more competition and choices would be great as lack of tech support is a concern(and many recent HN posts on that topic already) and ideally I wish they'd be neutral in ranking things but I know people debate about that anyway as a whole other topic.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  > some search engines and sites were rigged to rank Hillary higher than Trump... Even the people in the media were saying Trump had no chance and Hillary was going to win. It's like they tried to rig the whole thing. But even then the mainstream media is all controlled by a few hands anyways too. You don't know this, though. There's no possible way you can. And from someone inside the media— it's more disparate than you seem to want to believe.
neetdeth 7y ago
Personally I think Curt Yarvin had a decent idea about how to handle this type of thing with Urbit. Of course Urbit itself is terminally esoteric and nigh unusable, but here are the principles: “Urbit will do everything possible to help you block content you don't want to see. It does nothing to help you block content you don't want others to see. ... If you post content on Urbit which may offend or disturb any significant group of users, it is your responsibility to mark it properly for automatic blocking.” https://urbit.org/posts/beliefs-and-principles/ https://urbit.org/posts/beliefs-and-principles/ There was a wordier post related to this but I think some stuff might have been purged with his separation from Tlon. Anyway, the point is, if I’m writing from an alt-right perspective it’s my responsibility to tag it as such. Properly tagged, anti-semitism (for example) would not be an abuse of the platform. I don’t see how this is any less enforceable than the outright banning that e.g. Twitter practices now, and in fact it may be quite a bit easier, as you’ll get fewer “outlaws” who have to cycle through alts every week or two to get their message out to their followers. One problem of course is establishing a small and universally recognized set of tags that work well enough for most people. Instead of very specific “content warning” types of things, it’s probably good enough to indicate broad political allegiance - black flag, red flag, brown flag etc. It’s rare that just a single word in isolation sets people off - offense taken seems to have more to do with the worldview motivating a given statement. Then there’s the question of asymmetry. Say, for example, that As are mortally offended by B content but Bs don’t seem to care much about A content. In effect, you’d be creating an unfair burden on Bs simply because they’re more tolerant than As. NLP algorithms can obviously help here, as well as crowdsourced tagging. So a single A user might have to be exposed to a B-type post to apply the tag, but we might consider that an acceptable loss over a large enough base. This of course all assumes good faith. I suspect that As will simply be furious that Bs are able to talk to other Bs and neutral Cs, even if they never see those posts.

Sure you can block specific users, but if I don't want to see (for example) anti-semitism how can I block that topic completely? It's not as if users tag their posts with each brand of hate speech.

Keverw 7y ago

I'm not sure if you block someone if it also hides their topics created by them but I would assume so. I know they have a way to block words too. I guess they call it mute users and words instead of block. I know some people were calling this the alt tech space. I haven't really been following it other than I remember the developer was interviewed talking about it. Another idea instead of verification badge being reserved for large celebrities, supposed to be more to show it's truly them. I do think we're going down a slippery slope with all this censorship though and a few large players in Silicon valley controlling everything. I know there was a lot of accusations going on, that some search engines and sites were rigged to rank Hillary higher than Trump... Even the people in the media were saying Trump had no chance and Hillary was going to win. It's like they tried to rig the whole thing. But even then the mainstream media is all controlled by a few hands anyways too. Then there are only really two main operating systems... On Mobile iOS and Android. Desktop Mac and Windows... So seems like more choices and freedom is a great thing, so power is spread out more instead of a few having large amounts of influence. However I also feel like people will pick things based on ease of use and features over being open. I like the ideas of Linux but I find myself using MacOs when it comes to desktop operating systems. I know people are building alternatives to Facebook and YouTube on the blockchain (such as Steemit). Then there are even projects aiming to build alternatives to Wikipedia as some people don't even trust them either, forget what it's called though off the top of my head though. I know some of these companies have a lot of control and power, and can't even provide decent technical support. I know Elizabeth Warren recent thing is talking about breaking up big tech, Google and Facebook... I like a lot of what Google does though, as a geek they are doing awesome things technically. I'm not sure if breaking them up is a good idea or not, but I think more competition and choices would be great as lack of tech support is a concern(and many recent HN posts on that topic already) and ideally I wish they'd be neutral in ranking things but I know people debate about that anyway as a whole other topic.

52-6F-62 7y ago
> some search engines and sites were rigged to rank Hillary higher than Trump... Even the people in the media were saying Trump had no chance and Hillary was going to win. It's like they tried to rig the whole thing. But even then the mainstream media is all controlled by a few hands anyways too. You don't know this, though. There's no possible way you can. And from someone inside the media— it's more disparate than you seem to want to believe.

neetdeth 7y ago

Personally I think Curt Yarvin had a decent idea about how to handle this type of thing with Urbit. Of course Urbit itself is terminally esoteric and nigh unusable, but here are the principles: “Urbit will do everything possible to help you block content you don't want to see. It does nothing to help you block content you don't want others to see. ... If you post content on Urbit which may offend or disturb any significant group of users, it is your responsibility to mark it properly for automatic blocking.” https://urbit.org/posts/beliefs-and-principles/ https://urbit.org/posts/beliefs-and-principles/ There was a wordier post related to this but I think some stuff might have been purged with his separation from Tlon. Anyway, the point is, if I’m writing from an alt-right perspective it’s my responsibility to tag it as such. Properly tagged, anti-semitism (for example) would not be an abuse of the platform. I don’t see how this is any less enforceable than the outright banning that e.g. Twitter practices now, and in fact it may be quite a bit easier, as you’ll get fewer “outlaws” who have to cycle through alts every week or two to get their message out to their followers. One problem of course is establishing a small and universally recognized set of tags that work well enough for most people. Instead of very specific “content warning” types of things, it’s probably good enough to indicate broad political allegiance - black flag, red flag, brown flag etc. It’s rare that just a single word in isolation sets people off - offense taken seems to have more to do with the worldview motivating a given statement. Then there’s the question of asymmetry. Say, for example, that As are mortally offended by B content but Bs don’t seem to care much about A content. In effect, you’d be creating an unfair burden on Bs simply because they’re more tolerant than As. NLP algorithms can obviously help here, as well as crowdsourced tagging. So a single A user might have to be exposed to a B-type post to apply the tag, but we might consider that an acceptable loss over a large enough base. This of course all assumes good faith. I suspect that As will simply be furious that Bs are able to talk to other Bs and neutral Cs, even if they never see those posts.