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Free speech is a noble ideal, but it seems like the current implementation of the Internet has turned that ideal on its head. Yes, everyone should be able to s

Free speech is a noble ideal, but it seems like the current implementation of the Internet has turned that ideal on its head. Yes, everyone should be able to say whatever they want to say, but no one should be forced to hear it. The way we implement discussion forums, chats, issue trackers, wikis, etc. is perhaps giving too many privileges to the mob. I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they can see or hear. Letting the mob in, and then muting or banning after the fact can be exploited too easily.

AgentME 6y ago
>Letting the mob in, and then muting or banning after the fact can be exploited too easily. This seems like the popular wisdom online, but is it really something that's abused so much (at all, or relative to the problem it exists to solve)? I've seen many more places with people terrified of the concept of moderators abusing their powers and places that refused to ban outright harassment and bigotry because the moderators were too worried about being seen as power hungry than I've actually seen power abusing moderators issue too many bans. (If you count "refusing to kick out harassers" as a kind of power abuse through inaction though, then I've seen a lot of that. Maybe this reframing would be helpful in general online.) I believe you can already block people on GitHub and it stops them from interacting with any of your repos, and that doesn't seem too exploitable or broken in my opinion. If anything, they need more features along these lines and what you mentioned.
smcphile 6y ago
> I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they can see or hear. Letting the mob in, and then muting or banning after the fact can be exploited too easily. I see that that could be done in a private group setting where everyone knows each other. In a forum for the general public though I have difficulty seeing how that could be done. Do you have any implementation details in mind?
- squibbles 6y ago
  I don't know of an easy or economical way to prevent or discourage abuse of communications. For social communications, the main problem is: How do I find people I like or trust? That is a tough problem given constraints. For network communications (IP), practically any two machines can communicate with each other, which opens up a number of serious security risks.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > For network communications (IP), practically any two machines can communicate with each other, which opens up a number of serious security risks. This isn't quite a correct characterization of the problem. The problem - rather in the style of your previous post - is that a given machine will listen to communications from any other machine, and often react to them. My usual go-to example is that most web browsers will happily execute completely arbitrary code from any random website they happen to stumble across. There are practical reasons (eg opprotunistic scans for exploitable vulnerabilities) to keep machines isolated, but the root problem is not that your machines can send and recieve communications with arbitrary others, but that they choose to. > How do I find people I like or trust? I don't have a general solution to this one even in principle, but I've found it helps if you don't need to trust them. Proper anonymity or pseudonymity means I can have a perfectly comfortable conversation even in the depths of 4chan, and laugh in the faces of anyone who tries to threaten me.
mproud 6y ago
When free speech turns into free hate, that’s when it’s unacceptable.
- serf 6y ago
  > When free speech turns into free hate, that’s when it’s unacceptable. the reason that both yourself and the parent of your comment seem to fail to realize is that the reason free speech must be protected unilaterally is that we will eventually have a bad actor in the seat of the person who decides what is or isn't hate speech. 'Hate speech' is too ambiguous, to a fault. 'Free speech' is too ambiguous to its' merit. When Political-BadActor-#23 gets into the role of deciding what is or isn't hate speech, it will probably become very difficult to criticize or police the position of Political-BadActor-#23. That's why it remains an imperfect system -- once overt censorship is introduced it's up to the censors to remain responsible, a feat never once demonstrated historically.
serf 6y ago
>I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they can see or hear. Who decides? Why were they chosen? How were they vetted? Is the vetting process continuous throughout their stay? In other words: What checks and balances are in place to make sure they don't abuse the position for the advantage or disadvantage of a group due to personal motivation? The idea of a constant lifetime blacklist/whitelist makes me envision a world filled with small echo-chambers, all supportive of their own ideas, and filled with ire towards anything they view as opposition.
- gnat 6y ago
  I believe you misunderstand the post you replied to. I understand it to mean "I want control over what I see" (i.e, the author is the "someone" who should decide what they see). We had whitelists and blacklists back in Usenet days, and they let you plonk bozos just fine.
aaron695 6y ago
Twitter for instance should be set to private by the user. It's unacceptable to set it as public. If you post in public you are the same as a newspaper. You need to take all that on-board. From mental health of employees to security to legal. Newspapers don't just write stuff and shove it out there.
fellellor 6y ago
All that is fine, but in this context you’re talking about placing gates over open source software. I hope the solution to this problem is much more well thought out that a simple comparison of free speech and hate speech.

AgentME 6y ago

>Letting the mob in, and then muting or banning after the fact can be exploited too easily. This seems like the popular wisdom online, but is it really something that's abused so much (at all, or relative to the problem it exists to solve)? I've seen many more places with people terrified of the concept of moderators abusing their powers and places that refused to ban outright harassment and bigotry because the moderators were too worried about being seen as power hungry than I've actually seen power abusing moderators issue too many bans. (If you count "refusing to kick out harassers" as a kind of power abuse through inaction though, then I've seen a lot of that. Maybe this reframing would be helpful in general online.) I believe you can already block people on GitHub and it stops them from interacting with any of your repos, and that doesn't seem too exploitable or broken in my opinion. If anything, they need more features along these lines and what you mentioned.

smcphile 6y ago

> I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they can see or hear. Letting the mob in, and then muting or banning after the fact can be exploited too easily. I see that that could be done in a private group setting where everyone knows each other. In a forum for the general public though I have difficulty seeing how that could be done. Do you have any implementation details in mind?

squibbles 6y ago
I don't know of an easy or economical way to prevent or discourage abuse of communications. For social communications, the main problem is: How do I find people I like or trust? That is a tough problem given constraints. For network communications (IP), practically any two machines can communicate with each other, which opens up a number of serious security risks.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > For network communications (IP), practically any two machines can communicate with each other, which opens up a number of serious security risks. This isn't quite a correct characterization of the problem. The problem - rather in the style of your previous post - is that a given machine will listen to communications from any other machine, and often react to them. My usual go-to example is that most web browsers will happily execute completely arbitrary code from any random website they happen to stumble across. There are practical reasons (eg opprotunistic scans for exploitable vulnerabilities) to keep machines isolated, but the root problem is not that your machines can send and recieve communications with arbitrary others, but that they choose to. > How do I find people I like or trust? I don't have a general solution to this one even in principle, but I've found it helps if you don't need to trust them. Proper anonymity or pseudonymity means I can have a perfectly comfortable conversation even in the depths of 4chan, and laugh in the faces of anyone who tries to threaten me.

mproud 6y ago

When free speech turns into free hate, that’s when it’s unacceptable.

serf 6y ago
> When free speech turns into free hate, that’s when it’s unacceptable. the reason that both yourself and the parent of your comment seem to fail to realize is that the reason free speech must be protected unilaterally is that we will eventually have a bad actor in the seat of the person who decides what is or isn't hate speech. 'Hate speech' is too ambiguous, to a fault. 'Free speech' is too ambiguous to its' merit. When Political-BadActor-#23 gets into the role of deciding what is or isn't hate speech, it will probably become very difficult to criticize or police the position of Political-BadActor-#23. That's why it remains an imperfect system -- once overt censorship is introduced it's up to the censors to remain responsible, a feat never once demonstrated historically.

serf 6y ago

>I am partial to the idea of someone getting to decide, in advance, who they can see or hear. Who decides? Why were they chosen? How were they vetted? Is the vetting process continuous throughout their stay? In other words: What checks and balances are in place to make sure they don't abuse the position for the advantage or disadvantage of a group due to personal motivation? The idea of a constant lifetime blacklist/whitelist makes me envision a world filled with small echo-chambers, all supportive of their own ideas, and filled with ire towards anything they view as opposition.

gnat 6y ago
I believe you misunderstand the post you replied to. I understand it to mean "I want control over what I see" (i.e, the author is the "someone" who should decide what they see). We had whitelists and blacklists back in Usenet days, and they let you plonk bozos just fine.

aaron695 6y ago

Twitter for instance should be set to private by the user. It's unacceptable to set it as public. If you post in public you are the same as a newspaper. You need to take all that on-board. From mental health of employees to security to legal. Newspapers don't just write stuff and shove it out there.

fellellor 6y ago

All that is fine, but in this context you’re talking about placing gates over open source software. I hope the solution to this problem is much more well thought out that a simple comparison of free speech and hate speech.