4 ms·

They’re not outnumbered though. They’re backed up by sock puppet accounts, nation state funded propaganda / troll organisations out to cause trouble and well fu

by mnd999 6y ago

They’re not outnumbered though. They’re backed up by sock puppet accounts, nation state funded propaganda / troll organisations out to cause trouble and well funded PR companies pushing populist agendas. It’s not a question of free speech vs censorship, it’s which type censorship do you prefer? The corporate kind or the shitposting bullying trolling kind?

eptcyka 6y ago
What makes you think that it's just the baddies that employ troll farms?
- mnd999 6y ago
  IMHO trolling is bad by definition. But it doesn’t really matter whether you consider it the goodies or baddies, it’s still a form of shutting down speech.
  - eptcyka 6y ago
    Are you implying that the deplorable people on twitter are not outnumbered by the non-deplorable people because of bot farms?
    - MagnumOpus 6y ago
      There needs to be nuance around "outnumbered". The deplorables are made more visible and made to appear more popular by bot-assisted upvoting/retweeting/sharing efforts. Non-deplorables are silenced or made to self-censor by mass-downvotes/death threats in DMs/doxxing. And even the ones who just view and don't write get disheartened and leave if their curated frontpage is a cesspool of falsehoods and outrage bait. So yes, bot farms and their manual brethren (wumao dang, IRA, alt-right discords) over time help to purge dissenting voices.
- sdoering 6y ago
  Because if you employ bot farms and troll hordes, you crossed the line. You left free speech (your voice should not be censored and you should be able to say your mind) in favor of amplification and agenda pushing. At least in my personal view. Take this forum here for example: There is a community driven mechanism that enforces some rules. Your comment can end up dead. One can decide to view dead comments, but given enough negative feedback you can be silenced here. The community enforces values. These might change over time, but they are there, because the community does value collective freedom (freedom from trolls and such things) in a form that allows individual freedom of speech to be restricted. On a deeper level: There are always different forms of freedom at play and valuing one above the other restricts the other necessarily. Freedom of speech without restriction enables said actors and bot farms together with content personalisation to hinder the freedom of individuals. Because they aren't allowed to see content that amplified voices drown out or that is being hidden from their view by the algorithms. So actually Google, Facebook and the likes are already restricting the freedom of people. And doing so under the thin guise of "fighting for freedom of speech".
deleted 6y ago
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by mnd999 6y ago

eptcyka 6y ago

What makes you think that it's just the baddies that employ troll farms?

mnd999 6y ago
IMHO trolling is bad by definition. But it doesn’t really matter whether you consider it the goodies or baddies, it’s still a form of shutting down speech.
- eptcyka 6y ago
  Are you implying that the deplorable people on twitter are not outnumbered by the non-deplorable people because of bot farms?
  - MagnumOpus 6y ago
    There needs to be nuance around "outnumbered". The deplorables are made more visible and made to appear more popular by bot-assisted upvoting/retweeting/sharing efforts. Non-deplorables are silenced or made to self-censor by mass-downvotes/death threats in DMs/doxxing. And even the ones who just view and don't write get disheartened and leave if their curated frontpage is a cesspool of falsehoods and outrage bait. So yes, bot farms and their manual brethren (wumao dang, IRA, alt-right discords) over time help to purge dissenting voices.
sdoering 6y ago
Because if you employ bot farms and troll hordes, you crossed the line. You left free speech (your voice should not be censored and you should be able to say your mind) in favor of amplification and agenda pushing. At least in my personal view. Take this forum here for example: There is a community driven mechanism that enforces some rules. Your comment can end up dead. One can decide to view dead comments, but given enough negative feedback you can be silenced here. The community enforces values. These might change over time, but they are there, because the community does value collective freedom (freedom from trolls and such things) in a form that allows individual freedom of speech to be restricted. On a deeper level: There are always different forms of freedom at play and valuing one above the other restricts the other necessarily. Freedom of speech without restriction enables said actors and bot farms together with content personalisation to hinder the freedom of individuals. Because they aren't allowed to see content that amplified voices drown out or that is being hidden from their view by the algorithms. So actually Google, Facebook and the likes are already restricting the freedom of people. And doing so under the thin guise of "fighting for freedom of speech".

deleted 6y ago

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