10 ms·

It's sad to see how servile about censorship so many hn readers are. Yes, we all know the baseline retorts about private companies, but there is a general clima

It's sad to see how servile about censorship so many hn readers are. Yes, we all know the baseline retorts about private companies, but there is a general climate that is extremely worrying for those of us who are paying attention.

ouid 6y ago
A monopoly corporation is just a branch of your government that you don't have representation in.
- jayrot 6y ago
  Not sure if you came up with this or heard it elsewhere, but that statement really resonates with me.
- driverdan 6y ago
  Mailchimp is not a monopoly.
- taxicab 6y ago
  I don't think mailchimp is a monopoly
  - ouid 6y ago
    Well I consider myself very fortunate then, to not have made that claim.
- swixi 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on how a "monopoly corporation" is like a branch of government? I don't understand your analogy, or what is special about a monopoly versus any other corporation with significant power, cultural or otherwise.
shortformblog 6y ago
Nothing is stopping you from creating your own libre alternative to these solutions, just as if you want to walk into a place without a shirt or shoes you can, as long as you own it.
- mainstreem 6y ago
  There's a little something called "network effects" you should read up on
  - shortformblog 6y ago
    If you get banned from a mall for making a disturbance, you lose access to the stores within that mall, despite the fact that those stores may be valuable to you. Just because there are network effects at play does not for a second mean that a private business loses the right to regulate who it has as a customer.
    - mainstreem 6y ago
      I was replying to someone saying gO MaKe yOuR oWn TwItTeR oR ReDdIt you absolute twit your analogy doesn't even begin to apply. I can go to another mall if I'm banned. there isn't another dominant social network. Getting banned from Facebook and Twitter is like having your phone line cut off by Ma Bell in 1950, not like getting kicked out of a mall you incredible dunce
      - shortformblog 6y ago
        That someone was me. You were literally responding to me. I was responding to you because you should create your own Twitter or Reddit if you don’t like how they’re operated. They have no right to offer you access if you don’t want to follow their rules.
- floren 6y ago
  As long as you can keep your DNS provider and hosting company from pulling the plug when pressured.
trhway 6y ago
>It's sad to see how servile about censorship so many hn readers are. most of us have corporate jobs that pay well compare to the majority of the people around. That isn't a recipe for fermenting rebeliosness , it is more of a way for complacency and being content, at least deep inside, with the things they are.
mmastrac 6y ago
If you don't weed your online garden it will fester and turn into a sh*thole that nobody else wants to be in. If you didn't have strong moderation here on HN, you probably wouldn't be posting here.
- EricE 6y ago
  I don't need companies to moderate for me. Give me tools to moderate my own content, thank you.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    Give me tools to moderate my own content, thank you. Yep. In the old days you had a killfile in your newsreader (NNTP client), problem solved.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    As I've said elsewhere: Personally, if [company] wants to filter or censor, go for it if and only if a) they disclose it and b) I can turn it off. We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search" When you filter without disclosing, you're stealing my agency and creating a situation for near-undetectable abuse.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      You're welcome to find a platform that does that. Perhaps unfortunately for you, I, like most users, prefer the platform to handle it for me, because I don't want to sift through garbage. > We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search" An interesting position, keep in mind that many people consider the act of ordering to be a form of censorship. That is, it is "censorship" if a site is pushed to the second page of the Google search results. You can't opt-out of that.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - 6y ago
disown 6y ago
Because leftists, just like rightists, are authoritarians. Neither side has principles or real values. Just agenda. One side will say a small bakery is a private business who can serve whomever they want. The other side will say it's a violation of people's rights for a small private bakery to deny service to [insert whatever minority group they are currently using to further their agenda]. You flip the situation and now it's the leftists defending private companies to deny service... The same people commenting here defending "private companies" were the same ones screaming bloody murder about a small private bakery. It's hypocrisy, it's a human trait. It's like how assange was a hero when he exposed bush, but now... The exact same ones who claim big tech is evil when they vociferously defend big tech's censorship here. It's almost like they have journalist's logic/agenda.
- mmastrac 6y ago
  Denying someone a cake based on their unchangeable sexuality is not the same as denying someone a place to email unproven allegations about the son of a politician with an eye to unduly influence an election. You can choose whether to be a QAnon'er. You can't choose to be straight.
  - anongraddebt 6y ago
    >unproven allegations This entire thread concerns Mailchimp specifically. Not sure there is a clearer definition of advertising than "unproven allegations".
  - disown 6y ago
    > Denying someone a cake based on their unchangeable sexuality What happened to fluidity and spectrum. Aren't you actually spouting hate speech right now? You were so quick to virtue signal that you resorted "hate speech". > is not the same as denying someone a place to email unproven allegations about the son of a politician with an eye to unduly influence an election. You are right. Cake is superficial nonsense. Free speech is actually important. Imagine if the story about being denied the cake was censored. Imagine if the cake story was censored for being disinformation - which it turned out it was. I'd rather be denied a cake than to be denied the ability to speak about being denied the cake. I'm sure you'd agree if you weren't clouded by orthodoxy and agenda.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
scarby2 6y ago
Sadly it's because a lot of us have lost faith in people in general over the past 5/6 years. Initially when the internet came along we though "great, now we can share ideas and knowledge with total freedom and not worry about governments or the media". Without realizing what that freedom allowed for abject the checks and balances that were traditionally applied (editorial/peer review etc) and the sheer amount of exposure this gave to bad actors. The past 5 years have shown us that as a society we have lost our common basis in fact (alternative facts, fake news etc.) and the whole thing worries me. It worries me even more that i can't see a way out of it other than censorship. Short of a massive change in education to focus on critical thinking and evaluating received information, but that takes years and the problems we have now are destroying western democracy.
- justinzollars 6y ago
  The assumption here is, the censors have the ability to "critically think" and others do not. I'm not sure that is very honest.
  - drenvuk 6y ago
    You're making the mistaken assumption that the people who need to think critically have all of the information or even the right information to do so. Most people are making judgements and coming to conclusions based on less than whole data. They don't have time to exhaustively investigate everything about every topic and make sure that all of their sources are flawless. You're asking for perfection. It's impossible. This is not reasoning for censorship by the way, its reasoning for systemizing trustable sources of information. Someone will care enough to get it right and fair so we should promote them and ignore the others.
    - justinzollars 6y ago
      Are you able name name one "trustable source of information"? I can't.
      - 6y ago
wait_a_minute 6y ago
The retort about "private companies" is usually a dishonest one, because whenever I drill into the views of the people making that retort I find that they are leftists (even far leftists) who only pretend to care about private companies when it's convenient to do so. The aim is clearly censorship at all levels of information distribution. We must end the trend now before it is too late. If their views were the ones these companies were shutting down, they'd be up at arms about it. The evidence is in the response to Coinbase recently instituting a No Politics policy. Plenty on the left construed that as being censorship, ironically enough.
- lemonberry 6y ago
  This isn't a phenomenon specific to the left. The number of people on the right that refuse to wear masks in private establishments that request is revealing. To the right liberal judges are "activist judges". To the left conservative judges are "activist judges". As a "liberal" (I'm not sure what that even means anymore) in his mid 40s I've been appalled at the portion of the left turning their back on the idea of free speech. The hypocrisy, lack of critical thinking and myopia runs in both directions. And, unfortunately, it runs deep.
  - wait_a_minute 6y ago
    It does run in both directions, but notice which side has the predominant position and representation at the top tech companies that are doing the information policing. It's certainly happening in conservative communities, but the established information channels are almost all controlled or dominated by the left. And they never call out their own. When was the last time you saw reddit for example shut down propaganda, say, on r/sino? Or prevent it from affecting other subreddits? It's blatantly obvious that pro far left astroturfing and gaslighting are the norm on most of the popular social media.
    - lemonberry 6y ago
      I don't disagree with your assessment, but I don't know enough about it to take a strong position on it. That said, I'm concerned about the idea of policing information. On the other hand the amount of manipulation I see via media, on both the right and the left, has me concerned too.
MarkLowenstein 6y ago
Shortly after the 2016 election the WaPo added a black banner proclaiming "Democracy dies in darkness." I have always thought that that was more of a rallying cry for them - hoisting their pirate flag as they took on Trump - rather than something they feared. HN readers, you are witnessing the dark curtain of totalitarianism falling on us. I hope you will not be acquiescent. I won't be.
humaniania 6y ago
Blocking malicious psychological manipulation seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not all speech is protected free speech.
- throwaway84600 6y ago
  "Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like." -Larry Flint
mc32 6y ago
I could at least hope this means they will also censor dishonest marketing and advertising. I'll believe it when I see it and in the meantime this is just political posturing.

ouid 6y ago

A monopoly corporation is just a branch of your government that you don't have representation in.

jayrot 6y ago
Not sure if you came up with this or heard it elsewhere, but that statement really resonates with me.
driverdan 6y ago
Mailchimp is not a monopoly.
taxicab 6y ago
I don't think mailchimp is a monopoly
- ouid 6y ago
  Well I consider myself very fortunate then, to not have made that claim.
swixi 6y ago
Can you elaborate on how a "monopoly corporation" is like a branch of government? I don't understand your analogy, or what is special about a monopoly versus any other corporation with significant power, cultural or otherwise.

shortformblog 6y ago

Nothing is stopping you from creating your own libre alternative to these solutions, just as if you want to walk into a place without a shirt or shoes you can, as long as you own it.

mainstreem 6y ago
There's a little something called "network effects" you should read up on
- shortformblog 6y ago
  If you get banned from a mall for making a disturbance, you lose access to the stores within that mall, despite the fact that those stores may be valuable to you. Just because there are network effects at play does not for a second mean that a private business loses the right to regulate who it has as a customer.
  - mainstreem 6y ago
    I was replying to someone saying gO MaKe yOuR oWn TwItTeR oR ReDdIt you absolute twit your analogy doesn't even begin to apply. I can go to another mall if I'm banned. there isn't another dominant social network. Getting banned from Facebook and Twitter is like having your phone line cut off by Ma Bell in 1950, not like getting kicked out of a mall you incredible dunce
    - shortformblog 6y ago
      That someone was me. You were literally responding to me. I was responding to you because you should create your own Twitter or Reddit if you don’t like how they’re operated. They have no right to offer you access if you don’t want to follow their rules.
floren 6y ago
As long as you can keep your DNS provider and hosting company from pulling the plug when pressured.

trhway 6y ago

>It's sad to see how servile about censorship so many hn readers are. most of us have corporate jobs that pay well compare to the majority of the people around. That isn't a recipe for fermenting rebeliosness , it is more of a way for complacency and being content, at least deep inside, with the things they are.

mmastrac 6y ago

If you don't weed your online garden it will fester and turn into a sh*thole that nobody else wants to be in. If you didn't have strong moderation here on HN, you probably wouldn't be posting here.

EricE 6y ago
I don't need companies to moderate for me. Give me tools to moderate my own content, thank you.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Give me tools to moderate my own content, thank you. Yep. In the old days you had a killfile in your newsreader (NNTP client), problem solved.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  As I've said elsewhere: Personally, if [company] wants to filter or censor, go for it if and only if a) they disclose it and b) I can turn it off. We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search" When you filter without disclosing, you're stealing my agency and creating a situation for near-undetectable abuse.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    You're welcome to find a platform that does that. Perhaps unfortunately for you, I, like most users, prefer the platform to handle it for me, because I don't want to sift through garbage. > We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search" An interesting position, keep in mind that many people consider the act of ordering to be a form of censorship. That is, it is "censorship" if a site is pushed to the second page of the Google search results. You can't opt-out of that.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - 6y ago

disown 6y ago

Because leftists, just like rightists, are authoritarians. Neither side has principles or real values. Just agenda. One side will say a small bakery is a private business who can serve whomever they want. The other side will say it's a violation of people's rights for a small private bakery to deny service to [insert whatever minority group they are currently using to further their agenda]. You flip the situation and now it's the leftists defending private companies to deny service... The same people commenting here defending "private companies" were the same ones screaming bloody murder about a small private bakery. It's hypocrisy, it's a human trait. It's like how assange was a hero when he exposed bush, but now... The exact same ones who claim big tech is evil when they vociferously defend big tech's censorship here. It's almost like they have journalist's logic/agenda.

mmastrac 6y ago
Denying someone a cake based on their unchangeable sexuality is not the same as denying someone a place to email unproven allegations about the son of a politician with an eye to unduly influence an election. You can choose whether to be a QAnon'er. You can't choose to be straight.
- anongraddebt 6y ago
  >unproven allegations This entire thread concerns Mailchimp specifically. Not sure there is a clearer definition of advertising than "unproven allegations".
- disown 6y ago
  > Denying someone a cake based on their unchangeable sexuality What happened to fluidity and spectrum. Aren't you actually spouting hate speech right now? You were so quick to virtue signal that you resorted "hate speech". > is not the same as denying someone a place to email unproven allegations about the son of a politician with an eye to unduly influence an election. You are right. Cake is superficial nonsense. Free speech is actually important. Imagine if the story about being denied the cake was censored. Imagine if the cake story was censored for being disinformation - which it turned out it was. I'd rather be denied a cake than to be denied the ability to speak about being denied the cake. I'm sure you'd agree if you weren't clouded by orthodoxy and agenda.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

scarby2 6y ago

Sadly it's because a lot of us have lost faith in people in general over the past 5/6 years. Initially when the internet came along we though "great, now we can share ideas and knowledge with total freedom and not worry about governments or the media". Without realizing what that freedom allowed for abject the checks and balances that were traditionally applied (editorial/peer review etc) and the sheer amount of exposure this gave to bad actors. The past 5 years have shown us that as a society we have lost our common basis in fact (alternative facts, fake news etc.) and the whole thing worries me. It worries me even more that i can't see a way out of it other than censorship. Short of a massive change in education to focus on critical thinking and evaluating received information, but that takes years and the problems we have now are destroying western democracy.

justinzollars 6y ago
The assumption here is, the censors have the ability to "critically think" and others do not. I'm not sure that is very honest.
- drenvuk 6y ago
  You're making the mistaken assumption that the people who need to think critically have all of the information or even the right information to do so. Most people are making judgements and coming to conclusions based on less than whole data. They don't have time to exhaustively investigate everything about every topic and make sure that all of their sources are flawless. You're asking for perfection. It's impossible. This is not reasoning for censorship by the way, its reasoning for systemizing trustable sources of information. Someone will care enough to get it right and fair so we should promote them and ignore the others.
  - justinzollars 6y ago
    Are you able name name one "trustable source of information"? I can't.
    - 6y ago

wait_a_minute 6y ago

The retort about "private companies" is usually a dishonest one, because whenever I drill into the views of the people making that retort I find that they are leftists (even far leftists) who only pretend to care about private companies when it's convenient to do so. The aim is clearly censorship at all levels of information distribution. We must end the trend now before it is too late. If their views were the ones these companies were shutting down, they'd be up at arms about it. The evidence is in the response to Coinbase recently instituting a No Politics policy. Plenty on the left construed that as being censorship, ironically enough.

lemonberry 6y ago
This isn't a phenomenon specific to the left. The number of people on the right that refuse to wear masks in private establishments that request is revealing. To the right liberal judges are "activist judges". To the left conservative judges are "activist judges". As a "liberal" (I'm not sure what that even means anymore) in his mid 40s I've been appalled at the portion of the left turning their back on the idea of free speech. The hypocrisy, lack of critical thinking and myopia runs in both directions. And, unfortunately, it runs deep.
- wait_a_minute 6y ago
  It does run in both directions, but notice which side has the predominant position and representation at the top tech companies that are doing the information policing. It's certainly happening in conservative communities, but the established information channels are almost all controlled or dominated by the left. And they never call out their own. When was the last time you saw reddit for example shut down propaganda, say, on r/sino? Or prevent it from affecting other subreddits? It's blatantly obvious that pro far left astroturfing and gaslighting are the norm on most of the popular social media.
  - lemonberry 6y ago
    I don't disagree with your assessment, but I don't know enough about it to take a strong position on it. That said, I'm concerned about the idea of policing information. On the other hand the amount of manipulation I see via media, on both the right and the left, has me concerned too.

MarkLowenstein 6y ago

Shortly after the 2016 election the WaPo added a black banner proclaiming "Democracy dies in darkness." I have always thought that that was more of a rallying cry for them - hoisting their pirate flag as they took on Trump - rather than something they feared. HN readers, you are witnessing the dark curtain of totalitarianism falling on us. I hope you will not be acquiescent. I won't be.

humaniania 6y ago

Blocking malicious psychological manipulation seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not all speech is protected free speech.

throwaway84600 6y ago
"Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like." -Larry Flint

mc32 6y ago

I could at least hope this means they will also censor dishonest marketing and advertising. I'll believe it when I see it and in the meantime this is just political posturing.