21 ms·

We need more than deplatforming

109 points by TangerineDream 6y ago

ibejoeb 6y ago
> By all means the question of when to deplatform a head of state is a critical one Indeed. Maybe communications platforms, even private ones, should be carved out of the general ability to deny service. We have similar notions already, e.g., libel plaintiffs who are public figures must prove malice. Even if one disagrees with whatever that communication is, we should recognize that stifling it, even when done by a private entity and not the state, sows distrust.
paulddraper 6y ago
Wow that's a hot take from Mozilla.
rubyist5eva 6y ago
This is terrifying.
rowanG077 6y ago
I really don't recognize the society that we are moving towards. People are welcoming censorship with open arms. Twitter and other social media are the public spaces of the internet. Deplatforming someone there is essentially as if the governments bans the public speech of someone in the "real" world. It truly gives me shivers down my spine...
- jlokier 6y ago
  The Mozilla blog post you are replying about is suggesting increasing transparency, not suggesting more censorship.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Yes and that's good. But it's also very much pro censorship.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
    You're being quite glib if you're honestly pretending not to see the glaring subtext there. The intention is obviously to increase transparency in order to stamp out unwanted opinions before they even spread.
    - solipsism 6y ago
      Yes. Unwanted opinions like "we should overthrow the will of the people using force".
      - gotoeleven 6y ago
        Yes I agree unwanted opinions are the worst only wanted opinions should be allowed.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      If an opinion doesn't spread because people decide not to spread it after transparency reveals who is paying for advertisements and how platform algorithms are deciding which opinions to promote, isn't that just better democracy? The Mozilla blog entry, subtext and all, does not say that they should decide what opinions are unwanted.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    "Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation." Who gets to decide which is which? Why would I want to tell people they are wrong about how they experience the world when they disagree with the way I do?
    - solarmist 6y ago
      A fact is a thing that can be objectively verified. It is a fact regardless of a person’s experience. The word you’re thinking of is opinion. Which is how someone interprets a fact or a set of facts.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Facts are just opinions we share with enough other people. Consensus reality is the only reality imo
      - war1025 6y ago
        > A fact is a thing that can be objectively verified The past four years of "fact checking" have demonstrated those are not the sort of "facts" anyone is talking about.
      - jlokier 6y ago
        As you can see from replies, people do not agree on the meaning of "fact". To be fair this is because the word is used to mean different things, not just objective truths, even in formal contexts. Unfortunately because people don't hold the same idea about what the word "fact" means, and some don't believe in the concept of objective reality at all, one person can talk of "fact-checking website" and be thinking of only objective facts, while another person hears that as "prevailing-opinion-promoting website" to be used for non-objective facts. "Objective truth checking website" would be better. The intent is unambiguous at least. 1+1=2, pi is definitely irrational, and the Earth is not flat. Unfortunately when it comes to things like "evidence of widespread electoral fraud sufficient to overturn the result", that doesn't apply perfectly. That type of fact cannot be known absolutely; there's always that bit of wiggle room of possibility which feeds conspiracy theories, especially in a population distressed about many issues and distrustful of institutions and each other. Such things can however be known beyond reasonable doubt to the man on the Clapham omnibus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus).
  - bassman9000 6y ago
    These are the kind of misleading takes that are more dangerous IMHO, because they play into the good faith of most people, and their fears of being placed on "the wrong side". Classic postmodern word games. It's not censorship, that's bad: it's Transparent Deplatforming™
- sinity 6y ago
  The shift started at least months, if not years ago. At least one could laugh at the internal contradictions of the people championing for this, since they're mostly also "pro privacy". At least they think so. People can really fluidly go between "yay E2E encryption" and "Facebook needs to make sure only 'truth' is allowed". Ban the lies! Funniest thing was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where Facebook was booed, nearly universally, because they had an fairly open API (which enabled people to consent to share their data with CA). Few tech-illiterate news articles later, and everyone is convinced that Trump won the elections because of Facebook evilness (and, of course, CA had 'magic algorithms' which could change peoples' minds en masse just by showing them few targeted ads; that's completely undeniable; "trusted journalist" said so). Eh.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  Let's not forget how this started: with people attacking free speech because they felt they had a right to be offended by things they didn't like. That's when censorship became mainstream again.
whb07 6y ago
Here I thought helping Mozilla by using their browsers was any good. So long! Glad to see your tiny market share approach 0 a bit quicker.
- throw111444 6y ago
  Well maybe they are forced to bark every time the ring bells or have Google money pulled from them.
iridium_core 6y ago
We need Russians - or people outside of the progressive bubble of Europe and North America - to create an alternate internet, please. Starting with browser, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook replacement. Then onto OS - mobile and desktop.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Yandex Browser, vk.com. There’s Yandex flavour of Android, Alt Linux for desktop. Russia got you covered, comrade, join, they love Trump and hate democrats.
meekmockmook 6y ago
Uhh, Mozilla should maybe not be posting if this if they want to be The Privacy Company(TM)? I'll be switching my VPN to straight Mullvad instead of to a group that sold it's soul to Google. Same tech, less baggage.
- manicdee 6y ago
  What is your beef with Mozilla’s statement?
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    We don’t need a company to decide what’s “harmful” to me. Especially not one out of the SV monoculture. I need them to be a browser that advocates for my privacy.
war1025 6y ago
Mozilla seems to go out of its way to make it harder for right-leaning people to back them with every move they make... I can't help but feel we're in for a bumpy 2021.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Purely anecdotal, but I know a bunch of "right leaning" people who are completely done with the bullshit and share Mozilla's sentiment. You may be speaking for fewer people than you realize.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > completely done with the bullshit I'm over and done with Trump, but it would have been a lot more effective for everyone if they had let him skulk meekly off into irrelevance.
    - drewbug01 6y ago
      Pretty sure that wasn’t his plan, given the months-long campaign to overturn the election: which culminated in him inciting a riot.
      - war1025 6y ago
        Trump definitely had a chance to remain relevant post-election. As someone that monitors "alt-right" type people, he did a very poor job capitalizing on any of that. The past couple months have basically been the losing team talking up a big game to make themselves feel better. The riots have been going all year. It was a different crowd this time, but riots are old news at this point. It wasn't a good look for the MAGA crowd and more than anything probably would have cowed them into submission. But then Big Tech had to turn around and give everyone a reason to be pissed off again.
        uoaei 6y ago
        At this point, it merely sounds like you've started with the conclusion that Big Tech is bad and then worked backwards to sound reasonable. In particular since the "riots have been going all year" is demonstrably false nonsense. Parades and rallies, maybe. Riots? What? And how are you even going to equivocate riots to an invasion of the physical center of the US government by whiny "patriots" who had no other plan except to waltz in and wait for the next cutscene to start?
undersuit 6y ago
This thread is a joke. Mozilla is putting forth some great ideas to fix the internet without overt censorship. A plan that can work in the long term to improve the internet.
- war1025 6y ago
  The article leads with a big "HEY LOOK, we can be trendy and dunk on the President too!" And then sort of whimpers its way into the ever popular "let's have 'independent' fact-checkers to tell you up is down and left is right." "All animals are equal, but left leaning animals are more equal"
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    If there's one person you don't have to be pursuing trendiness to criticize, it's Trump.
    - war1025 6y ago
      And if there's one group you don't have to feel bad spitting on, it's Jews. This is not a good road to go down. We've seen where it leads.
- stale2002 6y ago
  The blog post also explicitly advocates in favor of deplatforming. It doesn't just get to walk away from that, even if it has additional recommendations.
  - undersuit 6y ago
    I support deplatforming. Private companies and such. Twitter should never be a public forum unless the US government feels they need the existing user ecosystem when they turn it into a utility.
    - stale2002 6y ago
O_H_E 6y ago
> Additional precise and specific actions must also be taken: > Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted. > Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact. > Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual* voices over disinformation. > Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things. *go to the article for the link Short, clear, and forward-moving (I think).
- meekrohprocess 6y ago
  Transparency in how ads are targeted would go a long way. Personally, I would appreciate a legal mandate that every targeted advertisement must include a link explaining which demographics or criteria are being used to target the ad. Ideally the ad would also need to identify which criteria were applicable to the individual who was shown the ad, and where that information came from. That requirement might be onerous to implement, but maybe it could kick in at a certain revenue threshold for the ad network. Imagine if people had to be told that they kept seeing embarrassing ads because their bank sold their interest in [product category] to a marketing agency. Or if you could inform your aging relatives that they shouldn't trust ads which target them based on their past multilevel marketing purchases. I can dream...
- Noos 6y ago
  The link worries me the most. I mean, apparently the solution is social networks running a private list of "authoritative" news sources and making sure the feed is weighted towards them. The three listed have a clear left-wing bias. The alternative was Breitbart, and some other network I haven't heard of, but was probably included to try and balance it out. So it's really not "transparency" since there's no objective news ecosystem quotient out there to be audited, its just the reverse of what was used to promote fake news, now its just promoting what they think real news it.
  - manicdee 6y ago
    I would prefer left-wing biased factual reporting over right-wing biased lies. The equation is pretty simple from my perspective. Most of my Facebook time is pointing out to family members that the “news” they are sharing is lies and misinformation, such as “cosplay guy at the Capitol invasion was Antifa” — the evidence was pictures of certain individuals being on an Antifa web site, despite the pictures clearly being part of an article identifying the fascists. Then there are the articles trying to twist “tracking vaccine recipients” into “surveillance vaccine recipients” and other such nonsense.
anonytrary 6y ago
Yes, social media is responsible for radicalizing a small group of alt-right folks, but I don't think de-platforming Trump really fixes the problem, and it acts a local minimum that detracts from solving the actual problem. De-platforming the alleged figurehead is just going to make the problem worse. Big tech is playing a really risky game, and I'm not alone in that opinion. It is a popular opinion that Trump "incited" the siege, but I must respectfully disagree. Most people realize there is a deeper cause, and humbly believe that using Trump as a scapegoat is a short-term bandaid and will only allow the wound to continue to fester. I hate to say it, but I think that big tech feels responsible for radicalizing folks, and Trump is the perfect scapegoat. Is it really crazy to believe that tech wants to continue using their algorithms (known to cause radicalization) and are using Trump as a scapegoat?
- posix_me_less 6y ago
  You are most probably right, there are some naive believers here and there in those companies, but for the most part C suite cares about being aligned with the establishment to keep their revenue streams and their control intact. Trump is just a useful tool for them at this point - "see we are your ally/servant, we fight the Trump movement".
gotoeleven 6y ago
Yes I sure hope a lot of new legislation comes out of this moment of rage. Rage-based legislation usually ends up being very wise.
qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
Pushing people off Twitter is liable to just send them to the fever swamps of voat, parler, gab, 8chan, etc.
- etrautmann 6y ago
  This has been litigated many times. That’s still better than polluting the agora, as Reddit found when banning r/fatpeoplehate and others.
  - qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
    It doesn't take a very large number of exiles from the agora to cause a large amount of damage if they are determined terrorists.
aidenn0 6y ago
This is probably an unpopular opinion on this forum, but it seems like repealing section 230 would accomplish this just fine. Then large platforms would either have to: 1. Completely relinquish any editorial controls (which means advertising money goes bye-bye). 2. Completely sanitize things. Smaller platforms are at lower scale and can manually moderate (as they often do currently thanks to trolling and spam) Sounds like a win-win to me!
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Now you know exactly why they were willing to do anything to keep rule 230, including overriding a Trump veto.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    I think Trump's obsession with 230 was clearly retributive. In top of that he spent very little effort trying to gather consensus. I'd like to see it debated on its own merits, but that seems unlikely in the current climate
rubycon22 6y ago
This will definitely get more people to use firefox RIP Firefox It was good knowing you. Look at what they did to my boy...
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
If there’s anything that would ensure I never use Firefox.
copperwater69 6y ago
Man posts like this (and their updates which always remove features I use) are why I switched to Brave. Mozilla has been circling the drain for a while now, kept alive only by googles grace. Despicable call to arms from a zombie company coasting off its earlier innovation.
- ecmascript 6y ago
  Same, I got very tired of Mozillas woke bs so I stopped my financial support and switched to Brave. Basically no one uses Firefox anymore anyway, so this just cements it. At work we don't even care to support firefox since no one uses it lol. Sad af, but true.
deleted 6y ago
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sun-dragonfly 6y ago
Does this means they are going to add ads censorship plugin in the browser by default?
disposekinetics 6y ago
In a perfect world no platform would be able to collect enough information about any given conversation to either be liable for it or fact check it.
tanseydavid 6y ago
From the article: 'But as reprehensible as the actions of Donald Trump are, the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality.' I am no fan of Donald Trump but this scares me to death. I mean that in the most literal sense.
lazyjones 6y ago
This just shows how terribly wrong it was to let a very small number of browser developers steadily increase the complexity of browser standards and lock out all independent competition. It's more urgent now than ever before to throw away all this baggage and start a WWW2 without these politicized entities and with lean clients maintainable by small groups of people. If you disagree, please consider being in the same situation with the political inclinations reversed, or just in another country where you disagree with the government but Mozilla doesn't.
- posix_me_less 6y ago
  Yes. But there was so much money to be made and so much control of society to be gained, it was hard to prevent this. > It's more urgent now than ever before to throw away all this baggage and start a WWW2 without these politicized entities and with lean clients maintainable by small groups of people. Yes that would be great. But if we want libertarian world-wide network with services and rules that cannot be attacked by the establishment, it has to be either small and uninteresting to them, or it has to completely infeasible for them to attack it. Some new ideas are needed, because free software and open standards are apparently not enough to keep liberty alive on the internet.
deleted 6y ago
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ctdonath 6y ago
History shows clearly that such mass demonization of normal citizens ends very badly, with millions killed for no good reason. The rhetoric used portrays an evil which speakers want to exist so they can oppose it, with no room for clarification by those targeted. Please stop.

> By all means the question of when to deplatform a head of state is a critical one Indeed. Maybe communications platforms, even private ones, should be carved out of the general ability to deny service. We have similar notions already, e.g., libel plaintiffs who are public figures must prove malice. Even if one disagrees with whatever that communication is, we should recognize that stifling it, even when done by a private entity and not the state, sows distrust.

paulddraper 6y ago

Wow that's a hot take from Mozilla.

rubyist5eva 6y ago

This is terrifying.

rowanG077 6y ago

I really don't recognize the society that we are moving towards. People are welcoming censorship with open arms. Twitter and other social media are the public spaces of the internet. Deplatforming someone there is essentially as if the governments bans the public speech of someone in the "real" world. It truly gives me shivers down my spine...

jlokier 6y ago
The Mozilla blog post you are replying about is suggesting increasing transparency, not suggesting more censorship.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Yes and that's good. But it's also very much pro censorship.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
  You're being quite glib if you're honestly pretending not to see the glaring subtext there. The intention is obviously to increase transparency in order to stamp out unwanted opinions before they even spread.
  - solipsism 6y ago
    Yes. Unwanted opinions like "we should overthrow the will of the people using force".
    - gotoeleven 6y ago
      Yes I agree unwanted opinions are the worst only wanted opinions should be allowed.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    If an opinion doesn't spread because people decide not to spread it after transparency reveals who is paying for advertisements and how platform algorithms are deciding which opinions to promote, isn't that just better democracy? The Mozilla blog entry, subtext and all, does not say that they should decide what opinions are unwanted.
- Lammy 6y ago
  "Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation." Who gets to decide which is which? Why would I want to tell people they are wrong about how they experience the world when they disagree with the way I do?
  - solarmist 6y ago
    A fact is a thing that can be objectively verified. It is a fact regardless of a person’s experience. The word you’re thinking of is opinion. Which is how someone interprets a fact or a set of facts.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Facts are just opinions we share with enough other people. Consensus reality is the only reality imo
    - war1025 6y ago
      > A fact is a thing that can be objectively verified The past four years of "fact checking" have demonstrated those are not the sort of "facts" anyone is talking about.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      As you can see from replies, people do not agree on the meaning of "fact". To be fair this is because the word is used to mean different things, not just objective truths, even in formal contexts. Unfortunately because people don't hold the same idea about what the word "fact" means, and some don't believe in the concept of objective reality at all, one person can talk of "fact-checking website" and be thinking of only objective facts, while another person hears that as "prevailing-opinion-promoting website" to be used for non-objective facts. "Objective truth checking website" would be better. The intent is unambiguous at least. 1+1=2, pi is definitely irrational, and the Earth is not flat. Unfortunately when it comes to things like "evidence of widespread electoral fraud sufficient to overturn the result", that doesn't apply perfectly. That type of fact cannot be known absolutely; there's always that bit of wiggle room of possibility which feeds conspiracy theories, especially in a population distressed about many issues and distrustful of institutions and each other. Such things can however be known beyond reasonable doubt to the man on the Clapham omnibus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus).
- bassman9000 6y ago
  These are the kind of misleading takes that are more dangerous IMHO, because they play into the good faith of most people, and their fears of being placed on "the wrong side". Classic postmodern word games. It's not censorship, that's bad: it's Transparent Deplatforming™
sinity 6y ago
The shift started at least months, if not years ago. At least one could laugh at the internal contradictions of the people championing for this, since they're mostly also "pro privacy". At least they think so. People can really fluidly go between "yay E2E encryption" and "Facebook needs to make sure only 'truth' is allowed". Ban the lies! Funniest thing was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where Facebook was booed, nearly universally, because they had an fairly open API (which enabled people to consent to share their data with CA). Few tech-illiterate news articles later, and everyone is convinced that Trump won the elections because of Facebook evilness (and, of course, CA had 'magic algorithms' which could change peoples' minds en masse just by showing them few targeted ads; that's completely undeniable; "trusted journalist" said so). Eh.
lazyjones 6y ago
Let's not forget how this started: with people attacking free speech because they felt they had a right to be offended by things they didn't like. That's when censorship became mainstream again.

whb07 6y ago

Here I thought helping Mozilla by using their browsers was any good. So long! Glad to see your tiny market share approach 0 a bit quicker.

throw111444 6y ago
Well maybe they are forced to bark every time the ring bells or have Google money pulled from them.

iridium_core 6y ago

We need Russians - or people outside of the progressive bubble of Europe and North America - to create an alternate internet, please. Starting with browser, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook replacement. Then onto OS - mobile and desktop.

vbezhenar 6y ago
Yandex Browser, vk.com. There’s Yandex flavour of Android, Alt Linux for desktop. Russia got you covered, comrade, join, they love Trump and hate democrats.

meekmockmook 6y ago

Uhh, Mozilla should maybe not be posting if this if they want to be The Privacy Company(TM)? I'll be switching my VPN to straight Mullvad instead of to a group that sold it's soul to Google. Same tech, less baggage.

manicdee 6y ago
What is your beef with Mozilla’s statement?
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  We don’t need a company to decide what’s “harmful” to me. Especially not one out of the SV monoculture. I need them to be a browser that advocates for my privacy.

war1025 6y ago

Mozilla seems to go out of its way to make it harder for right-leaning people to back them with every move they make... I can't help but feel we're in for a bumpy 2021.

happytoexplain 6y ago
Purely anecdotal, but I know a bunch of "right leaning" people who are completely done with the bullshit and share Mozilla's sentiment. You may be speaking for fewer people than you realize.
- war1025 6y ago
  > completely done with the bullshit I'm over and done with Trump, but it would have been a lot more effective for everyone if they had let him skulk meekly off into irrelevance.
  - drewbug01 6y ago
    Pretty sure that wasn’t his plan, given the months-long campaign to overturn the election: which culminated in him inciting a riot.
    - war1025 6y ago
      Trump definitely had a chance to remain relevant post-election. As someone that monitors "alt-right" type people, he did a very poor job capitalizing on any of that. The past couple months have basically been the losing team talking up a big game to make themselves feel better. The riots have been going all year. It was a different crowd this time, but riots are old news at this point. It wasn't a good look for the MAGA crowd and more than anything probably would have cowed them into submission. But then Big Tech had to turn around and give everyone a reason to be pissed off again.
      - uoaei 6y ago
        At this point, it merely sounds like you've started with the conclusion that Big Tech is bad and then worked backwards to sound reasonable. In particular since the "riots have been going all year" is demonstrably false nonsense. Parades and rallies, maybe. Riots? What? And how are you even going to equivocate riots to an invasion of the physical center of the US government by whiny "patriots" who had no other plan except to waltz in and wait for the next cutscene to start?

undersuit 6y ago

This thread is a joke. Mozilla is putting forth some great ideas to fix the internet without overt censorship. A plan that can work in the long term to improve the internet.

war1025 6y ago
The article leads with a big "HEY LOOK, we can be trendy and dunk on the President too!" And then sort of whimpers its way into the ever popular "let's have 'independent' fact-checkers to tell you up is down and left is right." "All animals are equal, but left leaning animals are more equal"
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  If there's one person you don't have to be pursuing trendiness to criticize, it's Trump.
  - war1025 6y ago
    And if there's one group you don't have to feel bad spitting on, it's Jews. This is not a good road to go down. We've seen where it leads.
stale2002 6y ago
The blog post also explicitly advocates in favor of deplatforming. It doesn't just get to walk away from that, even if it has additional recommendations.
- undersuit 6y ago
  I support deplatforming. Private companies and such. Twitter should never be a public forum unless the US government feels they need the existing user ecosystem when they turn it into a utility.
  - stale2002 6y ago

O_H_E 6y ago

> Additional precise and specific actions must also be taken: > Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted. > Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact. > Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual* voices over disinformation. > Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things. *go to the article for the link Short, clear, and forward-moving (I think).

meekrohprocess 6y ago
Transparency in how ads are targeted would go a long way. Personally, I would appreciate a legal mandate that every targeted advertisement must include a link explaining which demographics or criteria are being used to target the ad. Ideally the ad would also need to identify which criteria were applicable to the individual who was shown the ad, and where that information came from. That requirement might be onerous to implement, but maybe it could kick in at a certain revenue threshold for the ad network. Imagine if people had to be told that they kept seeing embarrassing ads because their bank sold their interest in [product category] to a marketing agency. Or if you could inform your aging relatives that they shouldn't trust ads which target them based on their past multilevel marketing purchases. I can dream...
Noos 6y ago
The link worries me the most. I mean, apparently the solution is social networks running a private list of "authoritative" news sources and making sure the feed is weighted towards them. The three listed have a clear left-wing bias. The alternative was Breitbart, and some other network I haven't heard of, but was probably included to try and balance it out. So it's really not "transparency" since there's no objective news ecosystem quotient out there to be audited, its just the reverse of what was used to promote fake news, now its just promoting what they think real news it.
- manicdee 6y ago
  I would prefer left-wing biased factual reporting over right-wing biased lies. The equation is pretty simple from my perspective. Most of my Facebook time is pointing out to family members that the “news” they are sharing is lies and misinformation, such as “cosplay guy at the Capitol invasion was Antifa” — the evidence was pictures of certain individuals being on an Antifa web site, despite the pictures clearly being part of an article identifying the fascists. Then there are the articles trying to twist “tracking vaccine recipients” into “surveillance vaccine recipients” and other such nonsense.

anonytrary 6y ago

Yes, social media is responsible for radicalizing a small group of alt-right folks, but I don't think de-platforming Trump really fixes the problem, and it acts a local minimum that detracts from solving the actual problem. De-platforming the alleged figurehead is just going to make the problem worse. Big tech is playing a really risky game, and I'm not alone in that opinion. It is a popular opinion that Trump "incited" the siege, but I must respectfully disagree. Most people realize there is a deeper cause, and humbly believe that using Trump as a scapegoat is a short-term bandaid and will only allow the wound to continue to fester. I hate to say it, but I think that big tech feels responsible for radicalizing folks, and Trump is the perfect scapegoat. Is it really crazy to believe that tech wants to continue using their algorithms (known to cause radicalization) and are using Trump as a scapegoat?

posix_me_less 6y ago
You are most probably right, there are some naive believers here and there in those companies, but for the most part C suite cares about being aligned with the establishment to keep their revenue streams and their control intact. Trump is just a useful tool for them at this point - "see we are your ally/servant, we fight the Trump movement".

gotoeleven 6y ago

Yes I sure hope a lot of new legislation comes out of this moment of rage. Rage-based legislation usually ends up being very wise.

qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago

Pushing people off Twitter is liable to just send them to the fever swamps of voat, parler, gab, 8chan, etc.

etrautmann 6y ago
This has been litigated many times. That’s still better than polluting the agora, as Reddit found when banning r/fatpeoplehate and others.
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
  It doesn't take a very large number of exiles from the agora to cause a large amount of damage if they are determined terrorists.

aidenn0 6y ago

This is probably an unpopular opinion on this forum, but it seems like repealing section 230 would accomplish this just fine. Then large platforms would either have to: 1. Completely relinquish any editorial controls (which means advertising money goes bye-bye). 2. Completely sanitize things. Smaller platforms are at lower scale and can manually moderate (as they often do currently thanks to trolling and spam) Sounds like a win-win to me!

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Now you know exactly why they were willing to do anything to keep rule 230, including overriding a Trump veto.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  I think Trump's obsession with 230 was clearly retributive. In top of that he spent very little effort trying to gather consensus. I'd like to see it debated on its own merits, but that seems unlikely in the current climate

rubycon22 6y ago

This will definitely get more people to use firefox RIP Firefox It was good knowing you. Look at what they did to my boy...

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago

If there’s anything that would ensure I never use Firefox.

copperwater69 6y ago

Man posts like this (and their updates which always remove features I use) are why I switched to Brave. Mozilla has been circling the drain for a while now, kept alive only by googles grace. Despicable call to arms from a zombie company coasting off its earlier innovation.

ecmascript 6y ago
Same, I got very tired of Mozillas woke bs so I stopped my financial support and switched to Brave. Basically no one uses Firefox anymore anyway, so this just cements it. At work we don't even care to support firefox since no one uses it lol. Sad af, but true.

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sun-dragonfly 6y ago

Does this means they are going to add ads censorship plugin in the browser by default?

disposekinetics 6y ago

In a perfect world no platform would be able to collect enough information about any given conversation to either be liable for it or fact check it.

tanseydavid 6y ago

From the article: 'But as reprehensible as the actions of Donald Trump are, the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality.' I am no fan of Donald Trump but this scares me to death. I mean that in the most literal sense.

lazyjones 6y ago

This just shows how terribly wrong it was to let a very small number of browser developers steadily increase the complexity of browser standards and lock out all independent competition. It's more urgent now than ever before to throw away all this baggage and start a WWW2 without these politicized entities and with lean clients maintainable by small groups of people. If you disagree, please consider being in the same situation with the political inclinations reversed, or just in another country where you disagree with the government but Mozilla doesn't.

posix_me_less 6y ago
Yes. But there was so much money to be made and so much control of society to be gained, it was hard to prevent this. > It's more urgent now than ever before to throw away all this baggage and start a WWW2 without these politicized entities and with lean clients maintainable by small groups of people. Yes that would be great. But if we want libertarian world-wide network with services and rules that cannot be attacked by the establishment, it has to be either small and uninteresting to them, or it has to completely infeasible for them to attack it. Some new ideas are needed, because free software and open standards are apparently not enough to keep liberty alive on the internet.

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ctdonath 6y ago

History shows clearly that such mass demonization of normal citizens ends very badly, with millions killed for no good reason. The rhetoric used portrays an evil which speakers want to exist so they can oppose it, with no room for clarification by those targeted. Please stop.