6 ms·

This is a really underrated point. This whole site is really "tech industry news" with some hacking sprinkled in, but its name at least is based on the idea of

This is a really underrated point. This whole site is really "tech industry news" with some hacking sprinkled in, but its name at least is based on the idea of the hacker ethos. That whole thing about decentralization, distrusting authority, information being free? A curiosity for how things work and logical investigation rather than letting someone else do your thinking for you? Disinformation is a huge problem and I understand the impulse to grab for the easiest available solution, but this is fool's gold and anathema to what hackers and Western democracies claim are the foundations of their belief system.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ceilingcorner 6y ago
I really can’t think of anything more alien to the hacker ethos than, “A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.” Disinformation is indeed a difficult problem, but there are enough smart people in the world to figure it out without resorting to authoritarianism. We can do better.
- twentydollars 6y ago
  > “A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.” Literally nobody is suggesting this. It's about freedom of Reach, not freedom of speech.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Right now, at this very moment, Facebook and Twitter prevent you from sending certain links via private message.
    - twentydollars 6y ago
      They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes which would be legally protected speech.
      - dorkwood 6y ago
        As someone not familiar with what those routes are -- what are they? Is email sent through Gmail protected, or is that also a private platform?
        Reelin 6y ago
        Don't worry, you're free to speak your mind so long as you don't actually try to communicate with anyone. Please take care not to express your opinions outside of the officially designated free speech zones!
        twentydollars 6y ago
        Don't be ridiculous. There are thousands of competing communications providers. If you want to share content that harms society or harms the platforms themselves then you might just have to do it outside of Facebook or Twitter.
      - Reelin 6y ago
        > They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes ... That is a complete non sequitur. You say it's not about freedom of speech. Someone responds that, in fact, blatant censorship is occurring. You don't even attempt to refute this point, instead falling back to pointing out that the censorship isn't illegal! Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected, and regardless of how wide spread the censorship might be.
        aeternum 6y ago
        Removing spam could be considered a form of censorship. It is removing the speech of others. Generally anti-spam measures facilitate rather than inhibit freedom of speech. A sufficiently popular internet forum without spam controls would quickly become mostly unusable. In this case, doesn't censorship enable freedom to speak?
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > It's about freedom of Reach, not freedom of speech. What a snappy cliche. If you prohibit certain people from using the printing press but allow others to do so, then in practice you are limiting their freedom to speak relative to other people. To imply otherwise is either disingenuous or profoundly misinformed.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dTal 6y ago
      Everyone has access to the modern equivalent of a printing press. Anyone can buy a domain name and a VPS and "print" as many leaflets as they want. Publishing on YouTube is more like, well, publishing. There's a middleman. They own their own press, they have a reputation and an audience, they bring the eyeballs, they make the money and they give you a cut. It has never been censorship for a publisher to decline to publish something. Youtube isn't infrastructure.
      - Reelin 6y ago
        YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc (and to a lesser extent search engines) are the modern equivalent of the printing press in terms of the effect they've had on how we communicate. A domain and VPS are simply not a viable substitute for access to mainstream social networks; to claim otherwise is disingenuous. They are not at all similar to publishing. There's no editor. There's no approval process for the typical use case, only a retroactive removal process. They don't have an audience in the traditional sense of people paying someone to curate information for them but rather depend on network effects to maintain a monopoly on their segment of the market. To that end, they have more in common with a dating app than they do with the New York Times. The presence of advertising revenue is the only legitimate similarity I see to a traditional publishing model. In spite of your claim that YouTube isn't infrastructure, it appears to me to have far more commonalities than differences with it. That it isn't (yet) regulated as such is merely a legal peculiarity from my perspective. (And the above doesn't even begin to consider the effects that dumping VC and megacorp funded free product has had on the market. Good luck starting a competing platform when there's no viable way to operate a subscription model and your direct competitor has a monopoly on the relevant advertising market.)
- kenjackson 6y ago
  The Hacker Ethos is to build your own media platform and stop whining about someone else’s (unless net neutrality is at play).
  - Reelin 6y ago
    It's generally a good attitude to have, but network effects are real. Disregarding them is a mistake.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    What happens next is your platform either gets zero traction, or it gets ridiculed as alt-right conspiracy theorist shithole, which is basically a self fulfilling prophecy.
    - smaryjerry 6y ago
      Don’t forget plants/trolls. People that don’t like a platform will go there act like the worst human alive just to get it banned or looked down upon. How many news stories now use proof of what you said by using “one user said..and another said..” therefore we have proof that this platform is or allows xyz. Its effective.
  - kill-procrustes 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure being critical of efforts to censor information is part of the hacker ethos ("information should be free"). I think this is actually why the Twitter approach ("some or all of this tweet is disputed") is a good way to go. You're providing more information—links to people who disagree—rather than hiding information.
    - kenjackson 6y ago
      Misinformation is more akin to me saying that I want gcc to ship my malware. No one is saying you can’t ship malware, but gcc doesn’t have to be your vehicle.
      - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ceilingcorner 6y ago

I really can’t think of anything more alien to the hacker ethos than, “A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.” Disinformation is indeed a difficult problem, but there are enough smart people in the world to figure it out without resorting to authoritarianism. We can do better.

twentydollars 6y ago
> “A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.” Literally nobody is suggesting this. It's about freedom of Reach, not freedom of speech.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Right now, at this very moment, Facebook and Twitter prevent you from sending certain links via private message.
  - twentydollars 6y ago
    They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes which would be legally protected speech.
    - dorkwood 6y ago
      As someone not familiar with what those routes are -- what are they? Is email sent through Gmail protected, or is that also a private platform?
      - Reelin 6y ago
        Don't worry, you're free to speak your mind so long as you don't actually try to communicate with anyone. Please take care not to express your opinions outside of the officially designated free speech zones!
        twentydollars 6y ago
        Don't be ridiculous. There are thousands of competing communications providers. If you want to share content that harms society or harms the platforms themselves then you might just have to do it outside of Facebook or Twitter.
    - Reelin 6y ago
      > They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes ... That is a complete non sequitur. You say it's not about freedom of speech. Someone responds that, in fact, blatant censorship is occurring. You don't even attempt to refute this point, instead falling back to pointing out that the censorship isn't illegal! Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected, and regardless of how wide spread the censorship might be.
      - aeternum 6y ago
        Removing spam could be considered a form of censorship. It is removing the speech of others. Generally anti-spam measures facilitate rather than inhibit freedom of speech. A sufficiently popular internet forum without spam controls would quickly become mostly unusable. In this case, doesn't censorship enable freedom to speak?
- Reelin 6y ago
  > It's about freedom of Reach, not freedom of speech. What a snappy cliche. If you prohibit certain people from using the printing press but allow others to do so, then in practice you are limiting their freedom to speak relative to other people. To imply otherwise is either disingenuous or profoundly misinformed.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dTal 6y ago
    Everyone has access to the modern equivalent of a printing press. Anyone can buy a domain name and a VPS and "print" as many leaflets as they want. Publishing on YouTube is more like, well, publishing. There's a middleman. They own their own press, they have a reputation and an audience, they bring the eyeballs, they make the money and they give you a cut. It has never been censorship for a publisher to decline to publish something. Youtube isn't infrastructure.
    - Reelin 6y ago
      YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc (and to a lesser extent search engines) are the modern equivalent of the printing press in terms of the effect they've had on how we communicate. A domain and VPS are simply not a viable substitute for access to mainstream social networks; to claim otherwise is disingenuous. They are not at all similar to publishing. There's no editor. There's no approval process for the typical use case, only a retroactive removal process. They don't have an audience in the traditional sense of people paying someone to curate information for them but rather depend on network effects to maintain a monopoly on their segment of the market. To that end, they have more in common with a dating app than they do with the New York Times. The presence of advertising revenue is the only legitimate similarity I see to a traditional publishing model. In spite of your claim that YouTube isn't infrastructure, it appears to me to have far more commonalities than differences with it. That it isn't (yet) regulated as such is merely a legal peculiarity from my perspective. (And the above doesn't even begin to consider the effects that dumping VC and megacorp funded free product has had on the market. Good luck starting a competing platform when there's no viable way to operate a subscription model and your direct competitor has a monopoly on the relevant advertising market.)
kenjackson 6y ago
The Hacker Ethos is to build your own media platform and stop whining about someone else’s (unless net neutrality is at play).
- Reelin 6y ago
  It's generally a good attitude to have, but network effects are real. Disregarding them is a mistake.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  What happens next is your platform either gets zero traction, or it gets ridiculed as alt-right conspiracy theorist shithole, which is basically a self fulfilling prophecy.
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    Don’t forget plants/trolls. People that don’t like a platform will go there act like the worst human alive just to get it banned or looked down upon. How many news stories now use proof of what you said by using “one user said..and another said..” therefore we have proof that this platform is or allows xyz. Its effective.
- kill-procrustes 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure being critical of efforts to censor information is part of the hacker ethos ("information should be free"). I think this is actually why the Twitter approach ("some or all of this tweet is disputed") is a good way to go. You're providing more information—links to people who disagree—rather than hiding information.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    Misinformation is more akin to me saying that I want gcc to ship my malware. No one is saying you can’t ship malware, but gcc doesn’t have to be your vehicle.
    - 6y ago