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> I believe free amplification is terrible It's exactly what they were saying at the invention of the printing press. Amplification becoming too cheap. Maybe b

> I believe free amplification is terrible It's exactly what they were saying at the invention of the printing press. Amplification becoming too cheap. Maybe being on the side of censorship is always being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"?

UncleMeat 6y ago
Is it the wrong side of history? Early printing is unambiguously connected with violence just as much as it is connected with intellectual freedom. Blood Libel and the associated murders of innocent jews could not have spread in the same manner without broadsheets. "It is really complicated" is the conclusion that early modern historians of information come to.
Voloskaya 6y ago
How exactly is press free amplification? How do I get my random opinion broadcasted to a newspaper audience? I would probably have to write an opinion column and send it to the journal, then they would read it, and decide whether or not they want to publish it. If it's the NYT for example, you can be sure that no matter how well written your piece is, they will never publish something that pushes the theory that COVID-19 is a plot by Bill Gates to put chips into everyone. But you can probably find a sketchy, low-audience journal that would. Well it's the same thing, a well known community was banned from Reddit to prevent them from using Reddit's amplification mechanism (/r/all etc), but they now have their own clone of it, with a smaller audience, that you are free to consult.
- jorblumesea 6y ago
  I don't agree with the comparison either, but, in the 16th century just about everyone could make a broad side and disseminate whatever they wanted. Literally, wars were started because of this. Similar to today's information age propaganda wars and disinformation, physical media was used in a similar way. There are some valid comparisons here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_wars
  - ativzzz 6y ago
    Huh that's a cool comparison. I guess society will have a rough patch when a new, more accessible medium of communication is mass released to the public.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    It's not an entirely inappropriate comparison. The similarities are obvious, and they are extremely relevant. However, relative to the days of broadsides, the barrier to entry for dissemination of ideas has decreased by orders of magnitude and the potential reach of such ideas has increased by orders of magnitude. It's like comparing slingshots and nuclear weapons. Yes, they're both things that let you hurt people from a distance.
- blix 6y ago
  "Free amplicfication" isn't about absolute lack of cost, it's about cost relative to older mechanisms. The printing press allowed information to spread much faster and more cheaply than having a monk write it by hand. It also allowed ideas that were not monk-approved to appear in print. When it first came out people were pretty upset about the incorrect ideas that propogated as a result. Eventually people with power figured out how to mostly control the printing press and so created the heavily gate-kept institutions you describe. The transitions our society is facing now echo these past struggles.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    There are similarities with those past struggles, but the differences are significant. We cannot simply hand-wave some of them away as "the struggles every new medium faces." Printed materials were still pretty gate-kept. Sure, anybody could spend a modest sum and get a bunch of roughly-printed pamphlets printed up. You could walk around London and hand them out. People did, and I suppose some of these ideas got traction. And some of those ideas were even good. That was still a lot of money and effort, and it was still a lot of work to establish some kind of credibility so that your ideas might actually gain acceptance. Otherwise you were just a crazy person handing out pamphlets along with all of the other crazy people. Today, you can post insane and dangerous COVID-19 falsehoods to half of the freaking world via YouTube or Facebook and your message is indistinguishable from ideas presented by people who actually know what they're talking about. The gatekeeping America used to have was... not great. Network television's self-censorship was often stodgy, at best. But you didn't have absolute fucking lunatics screaming about chemtrails and Bill Gate's 5G microchip mind-control scheme racking up literally millions of followers. That is a PROBLEM. If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now. We need long-term solutions (education) as well as short-term ones (so we don't have the loonies electing other loonies who actually get to steer the most powerful militaries on the planet)
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      > If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now. Even in the long term, how are you going to produce this more educated populace? Or rather, who are you going to entrust with the task? The same educational establishment that produced the current populace? But even if you can produce your more educated populace, you still have the problem that the Russian trolls aren't going to stand still. They're going to be better, too, by then.
- partiallypro 6y ago
  It's not a great comparison because both entities are regulated completely different based on what they allow on their platform/paper with exceptions to certain things. That's where people are getting confused. If you curate the news, you can be held liable for things published, if you don't you are allowed a pass (with some exceptions.) By stepping in actively censor a news story that has yet to be disputed, social media platforms have opened themselves up to being held liable for -all- posts.
  - markdown 6y ago
    > By stepping in actively censor a news story that has yet to be disputed That's not why Twitter "censored" the news story. They removed links to a story that violated their published policies.
    - 75dvtwin 6y ago
      > They removed links to a story that violated their published policies. I am not sure that it matters 'why they censored'. Put it another way, I do not think it matters if they applied their own ToS rules correctly, incorrectly, selectively or whatever. I am not sure that their terms of service, allow them to claim protection under 47.230 [1] I am sure that the position that the fed government investigators will take. If Twitter folks (or their crowd-sourced moderators, or committees) gray-out/remove/comment on/hide/edit content that Twitter claims 'is not theirs' -- then it is hard to imaging they are compliant with the 'non-publisher' protections of section 47.230. Imagine if one is a for-profit business, claiming tax code for a non-profit organization. Their Terms Of Service mentions: 'Making the world better and being charitable. We do not do business with bad clients'. Does that make that business less criminally liable for claiming taxes of a non-profit? To me it does not. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
- Orou 6y ago
  For clarity, the printing press was for books. Newspapers did not come along until much later. Interestingly, the Catholic church was very concerned about the ability to mass produce literature and wanted to have control over what could be published. They didn't want just anyone to be able to publish a book. Imagine giving people a platform to speak out against the Church!
  - treeman79 6y ago
    This is a major reason for Martin Luther and the Lutheran Church. There is an excellent hard core history podcast that somewhat relates to the topic.
    - krferriter 6y ago
      Yeah this one: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophets-of-doom/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophe... It's a good episode. History is pretty gruesome.
- beezle 6y ago
  The "press" has historically not been neutral; political sheets/tabloids heavily aligned with specific parties or individuals were very common in American history until the 20th century. There was little, if any, notion of "journalistic integrity" - they were simply a way to get out what specific persons wanted heard.
farias0 6y ago
I don't think it's comparable. If social network is the new newspaper, everyone is free to create your own newspaper. That's why I'll always defend net neutrality. But forcing a private institution to adopt a specific editorial stance, THAT'S anti-freedom. In general, we should work to promote alternative platforms, not to force the existing ones to promote what we believe is right.
- partiallypro 6y ago
  I agree, but I am also a fierce critic of what Facebook and Twitter are doing. By doing this they are actually driving many people to even -more- extreme platforms. I am generally not opposed to them banning antivaxxing, and things that are an active threat to safety...but banning the NY Post story was way too far, and Twitter has even doubled down on it by banning the follow up stories. The thing is that their business models rely on them not being held liable for what is posted, yet by curating things which aren't abhorrent or in the interest of public safety they have opened up a massive can of worms of potentially removing their limited liability from user generated content.
- username90 6y ago
  > If social network is the new newspaper, everyone is free to create your own newspaper. The main difference is that people buy a newspaper for the information it publishes while people join a social network because their friends are there. A social network starting to editorialize content is therefore a problem since there is really no alternative ways to keep in touch with friends as effectively, meaning these social networks gets to force their opinions on people.
- intended 6y ago
  How would alternate platforms work when platforms result in winner take all dynamics?
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  > But forcing a private institution to adopt a specific editorial stance, THAT'S anti-freedom Who is forcing a private organization to adopt any stance? "Leaving alone" is not the same as "actively promoting." Twitter leaving alone a story does not mean Twitter is promoting that story, that is exactly what section 230 is about. > not to force the existing ones to promote what we believe is right. I guess they don't need to pay taxes either, or take a stand against violence, or racism, or....? They still exist within the society in which they function and that means both social and legal rules bind them, same as you or me. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, their status as a corporation doesn't somehow entitle them to a more special or louder voice than any one else's.
crazygringo 6y ago
> Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"? Absolutely, of course. Hate speech and Holocaust denial are censored in Europe generally, and a majority of people in those countries today do say support these bans (i.e. they say "thank god"). Because they saw the kind of hateful thinking that led to WWII, and how shockingly easy it is for people to be convinced of revisionist history, and don't want that to be repeated. Similarly, libel laws function effectively as censorship, but are widely supported. I think most of us are happy that newspapers can't maliciously print lies about common citizens. (Edit: love that I'm being downvoted for this -- apparently people don't like these objective facts?)
- leptons 6y ago
  I upvoted you because you're absolutely right.
antonfire 6y ago
> Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"? Well, the honest answer to the "can you remember" question is going to be misleading. By the nature of the thing we're talking about, the historical things like that are things that people aren't going to remember. If you believe in "to the victor go the spoils" on the information front, then successful censorship (and more generally propaganda) is always on the right side of history.
- legolas2412 6y ago
  If the censorship is always on the right side of history, then we would definitely know instances of "thanks a lot for the censorship".
geofft 6y ago
I think a better argument is that being on the side of forcing people to do things is being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. People should be free to decide, of their own volition, that they want to choose to not amplify something. That's different from being compelled to not amplify it, which is generally bad. But I can think of a number of examples of censorship that history has not judged poorly: - Libel and slander. If I say "I used to work with 'hartator and they brought in KKK flags every morning and broke the build every evening, you don't want to hire them," it's generally considered reasonable for you to get the government to force me to stop and also force other people not to repeat what I said. - Planning crimes. If I say "Hey, let's get together tomorrow evening and murder some strangers for fun," and we start talking about how to do it, it's generally considered reasonable for the government to consider that a crime. - Trademark infringement and other fair competition laws. If I say "These headphones are recommended by Apple" and they're not, or I say "These apples are organic" and they're not, or I say "This is an all-beef sausage" and it contains pork, it's generally considered reasonable for the government to say that I can't keep saying that if I want to keep selling the things I'm saying them about. - Employment agreements. If I say "Hey, new employer, here's a list of my old employer's customers and here's some of their source code," it's generally considered reasonable for the old employer to object. (There are a number of cases of compelled action that are currently not considered unreasonable - prison labor, military drafts, etc. - but I think those stand a much higher chance of being on the wrong side of history, in the long term, than any of the above.)
claudeganon 6y ago
The printing press was also used to fuel deranged, antisemetic hysteria in the form of Martin Luther’s widely-disseminated book, On the Jews and their Lies. So, I guess some things really never do change: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemiti...
leptons 6y ago
>Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"? Nazism in Germany, post-WW2. And I'm okay with that.
- username90 6y ago
  If only USA would do the same thing in the middle east today... Right wing extremism is a huge problem there.

UncleMeat 6y ago

Is it the wrong side of history? Early printing is unambiguously connected with violence just as much as it is connected with intellectual freedom. Blood Libel and the associated murders of innocent jews could not have spread in the same manner without broadsheets. "It is really complicated" is the conclusion that early modern historians of information come to.

Voloskaya 6y ago

How exactly is press free amplification? How do I get my random opinion broadcasted to a newspaper audience? I would probably have to write an opinion column and send it to the journal, then they would read it, and decide whether or not they want to publish it. If it's the NYT for example, you can be sure that no matter how well written your piece is, they will never publish something that pushes the theory that COVID-19 is a plot by Bill Gates to put chips into everyone. But you can probably find a sketchy, low-audience journal that would. Well it's the same thing, a well known community was banned from Reddit to prevent them from using Reddit's amplification mechanism (/r/all etc), but they now have their own clone of it, with a smaller audience, that you are free to consult.

jorblumesea 6y ago
I don't agree with the comparison either, but, in the 16th century just about everyone could make a broad side and disseminate whatever they wanted. Literally, wars were started because of this. Similar to today's information age propaganda wars and disinformation, physical media was used in a similar way. There are some valid comparisons here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_wars
- ativzzz 6y ago
  Huh that's a cool comparison. I guess society will have a rough patch when a new, more accessible medium of communication is mass released to the public.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  It's not an entirely inappropriate comparison. The similarities are obvious, and they are extremely relevant. However, relative to the days of broadsides, the barrier to entry for dissemination of ideas has decreased by orders of magnitude and the potential reach of such ideas has increased by orders of magnitude. It's like comparing slingshots and nuclear weapons. Yes, they're both things that let you hurt people from a distance.
blix 6y ago
"Free amplicfication" isn't about absolute lack of cost, it's about cost relative to older mechanisms. The printing press allowed information to spread much faster and more cheaply than having a monk write it by hand. It also allowed ideas that were not monk-approved to appear in print. When it first came out people were pretty upset about the incorrect ideas that propogated as a result. Eventually people with power figured out how to mostly control the printing press and so created the heavily gate-kept institutions you describe. The transitions our society is facing now echo these past struggles.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  There are similarities with those past struggles, but the differences are significant. We cannot simply hand-wave some of them away as "the struggles every new medium faces." Printed materials were still pretty gate-kept. Sure, anybody could spend a modest sum and get a bunch of roughly-printed pamphlets printed up. You could walk around London and hand them out. People did, and I suppose some of these ideas got traction. And some of those ideas were even good. That was still a lot of money and effort, and it was still a lot of work to establish some kind of credibility so that your ideas might actually gain acceptance. Otherwise you were just a crazy person handing out pamphlets along with all of the other crazy people. Today, you can post insane and dangerous COVID-19 falsehoods to half of the freaking world via YouTube or Facebook and your message is indistinguishable from ideas presented by people who actually know what they're talking about. The gatekeeping America used to have was... not great. Network television's self-censorship was often stodgy, at best. But you didn't have absolute fucking lunatics screaming about chemtrails and Bill Gate's 5G microchip mind-control scheme racking up literally millions of followers. That is a PROBLEM. If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now. We need long-term solutions (education) as well as short-term ones (so we don't have the loonies electing other loonies who actually get to steer the most powerful militaries on the planet)
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > If you say to me that the ideal solution is to simply have a more educated populace, I wouldn't disagree. However, that doesn't solve things now. Even in the long term, how are you going to produce this more educated populace? Or rather, who are you going to entrust with the task? The same educational establishment that produced the current populace? But even if you can produce your more educated populace, you still have the problem that the Russian trolls aren't going to stand still. They're going to be better, too, by then.
partiallypro 6y ago
It's not a great comparison because both entities are regulated completely different based on what they allow on their platform/paper with exceptions to certain things. That's where people are getting confused. If you curate the news, you can be held liable for things published, if you don't you are allowed a pass (with some exceptions.) By stepping in actively censor a news story that has yet to be disputed, social media platforms have opened themselves up to being held liable for -all- posts.
- markdown 6y ago
  > By stepping in actively censor a news story that has yet to be disputed That's not why Twitter "censored" the news story. They removed links to a story that violated their published policies.
  - 75dvtwin 6y ago
    > They removed links to a story that violated their published policies. I am not sure that it matters 'why they censored'. Put it another way, I do not think it matters if they applied their own ToS rules correctly, incorrectly, selectively or whatever. I am not sure that their terms of service, allow them to claim protection under 47.230 [1] I am sure that the position that the fed government investigators will take. If Twitter folks (or their crowd-sourced moderators, or committees) gray-out/remove/comment on/hide/edit content that Twitter claims 'is not theirs' -- then it is hard to imaging they are compliant with the 'non-publisher' protections of section 47.230. Imagine if one is a for-profit business, claiming tax code for a non-profit organization. Their Terms Of Service mentions: 'Making the world better and being charitable. We do not do business with bad clients'. Does that make that business less criminally liable for claiming taxes of a non-profit? To me it does not. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
Orou 6y ago
For clarity, the printing press was for books. Newspapers did not come along until much later. Interestingly, the Catholic church was very concerned about the ability to mass produce literature and wanted to have control over what could be published. They didn't want just anyone to be able to publish a book. Imagine giving people a platform to speak out against the Church!
- treeman79 6y ago
  This is a major reason for Martin Luther and the Lutheran Church. There is an excellent hard core history podcast that somewhat relates to the topic.
  - krferriter 6y ago
    Yeah this one: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophets-of-doom/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophe... It's a good episode. History is pretty gruesome.
beezle 6y ago
The "press" has historically not been neutral; political sheets/tabloids heavily aligned with specific parties or individuals were very common in American history until the 20th century. There was little, if any, notion of "journalistic integrity" - they were simply a way to get out what specific persons wanted heard.

farias0 6y ago

I don't think it's comparable. If social network is the new newspaper, everyone is free to create your own newspaper. That's why I'll always defend net neutrality. But forcing a private institution to adopt a specific editorial stance, THAT'S anti-freedom. In general, we should work to promote alternative platforms, not to force the existing ones to promote what we believe is right.

partiallypro 6y ago
I agree, but I am also a fierce critic of what Facebook and Twitter are doing. By doing this they are actually driving many people to even -more- extreme platforms. I am generally not opposed to them banning antivaxxing, and things that are an active threat to safety...but banning the NY Post story was way too far, and Twitter has even doubled down on it by banning the follow up stories. The thing is that their business models rely on them not being held liable for what is posted, yet by curating things which aren't abhorrent or in the interest of public safety they have opened up a massive can of worms of potentially removing their limited liability from user generated content.
username90 6y ago
> If social network is the new newspaper, everyone is free to create your own newspaper. The main difference is that people buy a newspaper for the information it publishes while people join a social network because their friends are there. A social network starting to editorialize content is therefore a problem since there is really no alternative ways to keep in touch with friends as effectively, meaning these social networks gets to force their opinions on people.
intended 6y ago
How would alternate platforms work when platforms result in winner take all dynamics?
RonanTheGrey 6y ago
> But forcing a private institution to adopt a specific editorial stance, THAT'S anti-freedom Who is forcing a private organization to adopt any stance? "Leaving alone" is not the same as "actively promoting." Twitter leaving alone a story does not mean Twitter is promoting that story, that is exactly what section 230 is about. > not to force the existing ones to promote what we believe is right. I guess they don't need to pay taxes either, or take a stand against violence, or racism, or....? They still exist within the society in which they function and that means both social and legal rules bind them, same as you or me. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, their status as a corporation doesn't somehow entitle them to a more special or louder voice than any one else's.

crazygringo 6y ago

> Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"? Absolutely, of course. Hate speech and Holocaust denial are censored in Europe generally, and a majority of people in those countries today do say support these bans (i.e. they say "thank god"). Because they saw the kind of hateful thinking that led to WWII, and how shockingly easy it is for people to be convinced of revisionist history, and don't want that to be repeated. Similarly, libel laws function effectively as censorship, but are widely supported. I think most of us are happy that newspapers can't maliciously print lies about common citizens. (Edit: love that I'm being downvoted for this -- apparently people don't like these objective facts?)

leptons 6y ago
I upvoted you because you're absolutely right.

antonfire 6y ago

> Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"? Well, the honest answer to the "can you remember" question is going to be misleading. By the nature of the thing we're talking about, the historical things like that are things that people aren't going to remember. If you believe in "to the victor go the spoils" on the information front, then successful censorship (and more generally propaganda) is always on the right side of history.

legolas2412 6y ago
If the censorship is always on the right side of history, then we would definitely know instances of "thanks a lot for the censorship".

geofft 6y ago

I think a better argument is that being on the side of forcing people to do things is being on the wrong side of history no matter the issue. People should be free to decide, of their own volition, that they want to choose to not amplify something. That's different from being compelled to not amplify it, which is generally bad. But I can think of a number of examples of censorship that history has not judged poorly: - Libel and slander. If I say "I used to work with 'hartator and they brought in KKK flags every morning and broke the build every evening, you don't want to hire them," it's generally considered reasonable for you to get the government to force me to stop and also force other people not to repeat what I said. - Planning crimes. If I say "Hey, let's get together tomorrow evening and murder some strangers for fun," and we start talking about how to do it, it's generally considered reasonable for the government to consider that a crime. - Trademark infringement and other fair competition laws. If I say "These headphones are recommended by Apple" and they're not, or I say "These apples are organic" and they're not, or I say "This is an all-beef sausage" and it contains pork, it's generally considered reasonable for the government to say that I can't keep saying that if I want to keep selling the things I'm saying them about. - Employment agreements. If I say "Hey, new employer, here's a list of my old employer's customers and here's some of their source code," it's generally considered reasonable for the old employer to object. (There are a number of cases of compelled action that are currently not considered unreasonable - prison labor, military drafts, etc. - but I think those stand a much higher chance of being on the wrong side of history, in the long term, than any of the above.)

claudeganon 6y ago

The printing press was also used to fuel deranged, antisemetic hysteria in the form of Martin Luther’s widely-disseminated book, On the Jews and their Lies. So, I guess some things really never do change: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemiti...

leptons 6y ago

>Can you remember one time in history where we now like "thanks god they censor these thoughts!"? Nazism in Germany, post-WW2. And I'm okay with that.

username90 6y ago
If only USA would do the same thing in the middle east today... Right wing extremism is a huge problem there.