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Why is it hard to take it in good-faith? Regardless of one's political persuasion it should be chilling to anyone, especially the hacker types, to see how easil

Why is it hard to take it in good-faith? Regardless of one's political persuasion it should be chilling to anyone, especially the hacker types, to see how easily the tech companies can snuff voices out of existence. Who elected them? Whose interests do they serve? They should not have such power. We need real solutions to the speech problem and I fear that instead this knee jerk, performant stuff is going to backfire horribly.

intended 6y ago
Yeah but as hacker types people here should be looking at the fundamentals of the problem. I don't support free speech just for the sake of it. It serves a purpose to make society better off as a whole. The market place of ideas. We well now know, and you can see it play out since the internet showed up - that content The ideas that win out are the ones best designed to encroach on the hind brain and avoiding the parts that analyze using reason. Cat pics out perform everything. Images beat long form arguments. Machiavellian emotional constructs co-opt human brains, and a lawyer level eye for rhetoric, or blanket, unhelpful cynicism is needed to protect you. If you actually want that market place to work, now we know that we have to act on speech that destroys reason.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  The problem is who arbitrates which speech is good. If you look back at history there are many examples of speech that was suppressed because it was considered blasphemous or immoral only to later become orthodoxy. I think we are better off focusing our efforts on building back trust in journalism and teaching and empowering people to be skeptical and good critical thinkers. I do not think repression is going to work.
  - intended 6y ago
    I too thought the same, but because I like empirics, I went out and tested it. Repression works. You make a few assumptions here, which are important to examine. First, it was centralized power of the church, which was fighting facts that were not in congruences with their beliefs. However, today the positions are reversed, it is faith in unreal outcomes that is asking for credibility at the same level as facts. The people who stormed America's highest houses were there because they believed that an election wasn't fair. Nothing will convince them otherwise, no matter what the evidence. This is the essence of faith, and exactly why free speech exists. To allow human beings to be governed by reason over unreason or emotion. Secondly - we know for a fact, that emotion is the fastest way to co-opt logic. You can take a look at politics at home or around the world for evidence - wedge issues win, logic doesn't. If you aren't going to exert a force to counter emotional manipulation, then your people will be emotionally manipulated. They will be manipulated the hardest, by those who find that certain facts don't work for them. Finally - Journalism is failing because of other reasons than trust. It was an unviable market a while back. Their last source of income was the classifieds, and craigslist alone put an end to that. Journalism which is beholden to advertising will always have to compete with entertainment. Meaning that if its not more entertaining than a sports channel, advertising money will simply go elsewhere. I can only see independent, government or public founded journalism as the solution.
  - asdff 6y ago
    I don't think any future generations would look back at conspiring to hang lawmakers out in public as some orthodoxy that we were wrong to see as immoral.
xref 6y ago
> tech companies can snuff voices out of existence lol what? I can’t even name a single person who has no method of communicating due to “tech companies”. Even Stormfront is still online.
- leppr 6y ago
  If your voice is not fed to other people's ears through a recommendation algorithm, do you even have a voice at all?
throwaway9980 6y ago
Someone in another comment pointed out that Trump can release press releases or call a press conference if he chooses, or give a speech from the Oval Office. Let’s explore that. If he uses the old media tools and goes on national TV to start directing insurrectionists to the next target, what then? Do we agree that they have a responsibility to cut him off? The social networks and now Google and Apple are faced with an evolving volatile situation where the tools they supply are being used to foment an insurrection. They are taking steps to get ahead of what may happen in the event of Trump’s removal next week. Time is of the essence. There will be time for more nuanced discussion when emotions have cooled. Now is emphatically not the time to try to have those discussions. We need to get through the next several weeks first.

intended 6y ago

Yeah but as hacker types people here should be looking at the fundamentals of the problem. I don't support free speech just for the sake of it. It serves a purpose to make society better off as a whole. The market place of ideas. We well now know, and you can see it play out since the internet showed up - that content The ideas that win out are the ones best designed to encroach on the hind brain and avoiding the parts that analyze using reason. Cat pics out perform everything. Images beat long form arguments. Machiavellian emotional constructs co-opt human brains, and a lawyer level eye for rhetoric, or blanket, unhelpful cynicism is needed to protect you. If you actually want that market place to work, now we know that we have to act on speech that destroys reason.

zarkov99 6y ago
The problem is who arbitrates which speech is good. If you look back at history there are many examples of speech that was suppressed because it was considered blasphemous or immoral only to later become orthodoxy. I think we are better off focusing our efforts on building back trust in journalism and teaching and empowering people to be skeptical and good critical thinkers. I do not think repression is going to work.
- intended 6y ago
  I too thought the same, but because I like empirics, I went out and tested it. Repression works. You make a few assumptions here, which are important to examine. First, it was centralized power of the church, which was fighting facts that were not in congruences with their beliefs. However, today the positions are reversed, it is faith in unreal outcomes that is asking for credibility at the same level as facts. The people who stormed America's highest houses were there because they believed that an election wasn't fair. Nothing will convince them otherwise, no matter what the evidence. This is the essence of faith, and exactly why free speech exists. To allow human beings to be governed by reason over unreason or emotion. Secondly - we know for a fact, that emotion is the fastest way to co-opt logic. You can take a look at politics at home or around the world for evidence - wedge issues win, logic doesn't. If you aren't going to exert a force to counter emotional manipulation, then your people will be emotionally manipulated. They will be manipulated the hardest, by those who find that certain facts don't work for them. Finally - Journalism is failing because of other reasons than trust. It was an unviable market a while back. Their last source of income was the classifieds, and craigslist alone put an end to that. Journalism which is beholden to advertising will always have to compete with entertainment. Meaning that if its not more entertaining than a sports channel, advertising money will simply go elsewhere. I can only see independent, government or public founded journalism as the solution.
- asdff 6y ago
  I don't think any future generations would look back at conspiring to hang lawmakers out in public as some orthodoxy that we were wrong to see as immoral.

xref 6y ago

> tech companies can snuff voices out of existence lol what? I can’t even name a single person who has no method of communicating due to “tech companies”. Even Stormfront is still online.

leppr 6y ago
If your voice is not fed to other people's ears through a recommendation algorithm, do you even have a voice at all?

throwaway9980 6y ago

Someone in another comment pointed out that Trump can release press releases or call a press conference if he chooses, or give a speech from the Oval Office. Let’s explore that. If he uses the old media tools and goes on national TV to start directing insurrectionists to the next target, what then? Do we agree that they have a responsibility to cut him off? The social networks and now Google and Apple are faced with an evolving volatile situation where the tools they supply are being used to foment an insurrection. They are taking steps to get ahead of what may happen in the event of Trump’s removal next week. Time is of the essence. There will be time for more nuanced discussion when emotions have cooled. Now is emphatically not the time to try to have those discussions. We need to get through the next several weeks first.