2 ms·

I think shifting the emphasis and amount of representation of different kinds of speech and different prevailing opinions, without actually blocking speech, is

I think shifting the emphasis and amount of representation of different kinds of speech and different prevailing opinions, without actually blocking speech, is not censorship as it is classically meant. Otherwise you might as well say that every form of debate, persuasion and promotion are censorship, because they have that effect. Calling that censorship is to miss the point of the more serious thing that is widely disliked, which is the bright-line distinction between opinions that are merely rendered unpopular, compared with opinions which are actively blocked from being expressed or heard at all. However, the point isn't to quibble over the meaning of the word. The point is, would it be harmful to functioning democracy and people's freedom of thought to "promote factual voices". By all means argue against doing so, and be concerned that it would result in long-term censorship effects but: I've tried to make the argument that the absence of "promote factual voices" also results in long-term censorship (the way you are meaning it), because we get a de facto biased spread of opinions anyway as a result of social media dynamics and all the dodgy actors in them. There's newsfeed algorithms, advertising, optimising for hits and clicks and engagement, nefarious actors, paid shills, all sorts of things. And though I'm loathe to say it, a lot of low-quality trolling and thoughtless opinions which get amplified easily. But even without all those, social media has system dynamics which must inevitably result in something that governs the consensus towards an allowed range of ideas versus ideas which are discouraged. I think we have no choice on that. The only choice is which kind of systemic bias shall we opt for. I favour whatever structures lead to certain types of thinking (not the same as particular opinions): higher quality debate, eduction, knowledge and wisdom in society (which sounds like healthier democracy to me), as represented by a broad spectrum of people, open to all, and designed to protect diversity of thought while promoting quality of thought. I'm avoiding saying what leads to that, because I honestly don't know the answer, only that "don't promote anything" is not necessarily the answer or unbiased, especially when there's plenty of other dodgy promotion going on behind the scenes already.

Lammy 6y ago
Eumemics
- jlokier 6y ago
  Nice. Upvoted by me, because that's an interesting word I haven't seen before, it's interesting to see people argue for and against it, and I think your point of view is a reasonable thing to argue for even though I think it's weakly argued because it doesn't appear to weigh up consequences of alternatives. Put in eumemics terms, the argument I've presented in this subthread is that you can't avoid it, you can only pretend to avoid it and/or decide not to be deliberate about it, thereby having the effect of eumemics anyway but with different parameters. That might be the better decision, to commit to not being one of the actors significantly influencing global dialogue, but there's no point pretending it isn't a decision or that it doesn't have consequences, or that the outcome is neutral, or that the outcome is what most people actually want. (Or that it isn't a paradox.) One way or another there are powerful actors in the system, and if there weren't it would create them. I suppose if you commit to the underlying principle of respect for people in a democratic manner, you might want to be neutral about which consequences "the people" can pursue, for example if they want war than war it is, if they want peace then peace it is. However by and large what most people say they want at large, and what they actually get as a result of their actions, are quite disconnected due to very complex chains of consequences. This is well known and people complain about it all the time. As a result, even if trying to be neutral and respectful towards all people with regard to what the people want, it is not clear (to me anyway) that neutral communications platforms lead to what people actually want (collectively, democratically) any better than non-neutral platforms. Perheps we should build things that are designed to find out what people actually want, in a robust and evolvable manner (collectively, democratically) and choose the biases that then provide it. A well known example is moderation: Unmoderated platforms end up causing many people to leave them or to avoid speaking up, with the result that any unmoderated platform is dominated by highly unrepresentative viewpoints of the collective of people. Moderated platforms are accused of censorship, "view-promoting" platforms are accused of censorship in your meaning of it (as long term bias), yet unmoderated and un-promoting platforms are also censorship by that meaning because they also quiet so many voices in a systematically biased fashion. There is simply no escape from this dilemma and no honesty in pretending it doesn't exist.

Lammy 6y ago

Eumemics

jlokier 6y ago
Nice. Upvoted by me, because that's an interesting word I haven't seen before, it's interesting to see people argue for and against it, and I think your point of view is a reasonable thing to argue for even though I think it's weakly argued because it doesn't appear to weigh up consequences of alternatives. Put in eumemics terms, the argument I've presented in this subthread is that you can't avoid it, you can only pretend to avoid it and/or decide not to be deliberate about it, thereby having the effect of eumemics anyway but with different parameters. That might be the better decision, to commit to not being one of the actors significantly influencing global dialogue, but there's no point pretending it isn't a decision or that it doesn't have consequences, or that the outcome is neutral, or that the outcome is what most people actually want. (Or that it isn't a paradox.) One way or another there are powerful actors in the system, and if there weren't it would create them. I suppose if you commit to the underlying principle of respect for people in a democratic manner, you might want to be neutral about which consequences "the people" can pursue, for example if they want war than war it is, if they want peace then peace it is. However by and large what most people say they want at large, and what they actually get as a result of their actions, are quite disconnected due to very complex chains of consequences. This is well known and people complain about it all the time. As a result, even if trying to be neutral and respectful towards all people with regard to what the people want, it is not clear (to me anyway) that neutral communications platforms lead to what people actually want (collectively, democratically) any better than non-neutral platforms. Perheps we should build things that are designed to find out what people actually want, in a robust and evolvable manner (collectively, democratically) and choose the biases that then provide it. A well known example is moderation: Unmoderated platforms end up causing many people to leave them or to avoid speaking up, with the result that any unmoderated platform is dominated by highly unrepresentative viewpoints of the collective of people. Moderated platforms are accused of censorship, "view-promoting" platforms are accused of censorship in your meaning of it (as long term bias), yet unmoderated and un-promoting platforms are also censorship by that meaning because they also quiet so many voices in a systematically biased fashion. There is simply no escape from this dilemma and no honesty in pretending it doesn't exist.