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> Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian Would they be? Consider what just happened in the USA: All of the major socia

> Now of course most of the governments that would do this would be authoritarian Would they be? Consider what just happened in the USA: All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Now imagine if some similar subversion were attempted in another country, say Ecuador? Would these social media companies be as willing to silence a faction in another country? What if it were to happen in a more important country, say Australia? South Korea? Japan? Germany? At what point should these companies be interfering through censorship, and at what point are the issues too blurred or difficult to figure out who's right and who's wrong? Sir Richard Wharton in Yes, Minster once quipped: "Once you start interfering in the internal squabbles of other countries, you're on a very slippery slope." Naturally, these companies will resist the push towards becoming arbiters of Truth (until they actually BECOME such arbiters, then god help us all). So non-American governments will have no recourse but to plead with Youtube, and then block them when the answer is "no".

BoorishBears 6y ago
> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Where did this happen? Because I saw some specific tags blocked calling for a VP to be killed blocked (vs some generic "kill all humans" hyperbole)... and specific account blocked after its owner triggered an attack on the Capitol that resulted in 5 casualties (and breaking the rules of the platform for 4+ years) - Are you trying to say people who were pro-talking about killing Pence and storming the Capitol are a significant population? Because last time I checked there were still tens of millions of conservatives on Twitter who aren't banned
- kstenerud 6y ago
  What I'm talking about isn't so narrow as liberals or conservatives; it's about social cohesion and the censorship that's necessary in order to preserve it. We've been living charmed lives up until now because the ability to broadcast to large audiences has only been within the capabilities of a select few media outlets that were vetted and controlled to varying degrees by the government to make sure they didn't sow too much discord. And this is healthy, because a divided nation loses its international competitiveness and in the worst case risks collapse. We're now in the unprecedented situation where individual people can out-broadcast even nation states with the help of social media companies, most of which have their head offices in the USA, limiting their dependency upon and reachability from other governments of the world. It's a decent situation all around because having such companies headquartered in a repressive regime would have damaging effects worldwide. But we still run into some problems: 1. Their morals are local, but their reach is international. This has caused a lot of friction in the past, and that friction will only increase going forward. 2. They're being pressured to bow to local "truths" or risk being banned in a number of nations. These "truths" generally come to light from local issues, and while they can be easy to decypher in autocratic regimes, they absolutely will NOT be so easy to arbitrate in functioning democracies. We'll eventually reach the point where every social media company will need a team of sociologists and political strategists in order to figure out what's behind every government's complaints over what's being broadcast by their citizens, and how best to respond (making them higher arbiters of truth than even the government). The national self-determination issues alone are staggering. The endgame of this is increased government regulation and increased pressure for a single national "truth", which must be defended vigorously in order to keep the government functional. The increased conflict between these American companies and local governments will increase to the point where eventually the companies will win and essentially set the policy of truth worldwide, which leaves us in a very centralized and fragile state when it comes to corruption, especially since companies - unlike governments - have only profit as a motive, and do not answer to the people.
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point. You said this: > All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Where is this large population? Who is this large population? Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't identify the population you're using as a diving board to truly go into the deep end here.
    - kstenerud 6y ago
      In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever they believe to be the bad actors (yeah, good luck!). Although social media companies have allowed more of us to broadcast to an unprecedentedly large audience, we're not actually ready for the Pandora's box this opens in terms of free speech, corporate rights and obligations, and national sovereignty. The near-term solution will be selective censorship by companies and blocking by governments unhappy with the censorship choices (for both good and bad reasons). But as the decade drags on, we'll be forced to recognize our lack of psychological adaptability to this kind of influential power that can destabilize societies to such a degree (by individual, group, AND state actors), and try to come up with a least-worst solution that we're probably not going to like. It's not like this is completely new; larger countries with information dissemination advantages have used that power to destabilize smaller countries for centuries, most recently in South America and the Middle East. But it's quite another thing to be on the receiving end, by anyone able to harness a sufficient audience (i.e. not just state actors), and find yourself unable to effectively defend against it.
      - BoorishBears 6y ago
        Nope. Definitely not buying that was the original population mentioned: it doesn't follow your original claim and it doesn't follow your reply. > All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Parler users are not a significant portion of the population. They were not blocked by "all social media companies", their app was removed from an app store. If you're trying to implicate the people who were using Parler... again small population and the over lap between banned from social media and using Parler is far away from a "significant portion of the population". And many are of a certain political leaning, they are not representative of that population. This while comment chain was built on an event "banning a significant portion of the population population" that doesn't exist. End of story. I'm not interested in discussing doomsaying based on made up events. Nothing said in this thread is a novel thing, it's the same tired what-ifs that ignore the "what-happened". When your argument doesn't even stand without leaning on made up events and slipper slopes, it's not worth much.
diminish 6y ago
Calls for violence and election-critics were encouraged by current social media in some countries. It looks like many social media platforms have bias based on the political affinities of their owners. I see no reason for any government or any party to trust the social media, mobile OS platforms and messaging anymore. A new set of tools is about to loom hopefully.
- lxmorj 6y ago
  Is this really different than old media? Seems like all networks are biased - these are just more powerful, centralized networks.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > Is this really different than old media Yes. People never handled daily small talk with their friends and family via the Letters page of e.g. The Times, so it was never antisocial to change newspaper, to boycott a newspaper entirely, or to go without any daily paper at all.
    - simonh 6y ago
      There are plenty of direct messaging apps and services people can use to continue to do so such as iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, email and many more. The issue is publishing services with discoverability where anyone can see or subscribe to your feed, those are more like a letters page and service providers have a clear interest in what they are publishing for you.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
It's an interesting point I had not yet considered that most private internet censorship seems to relate to some political issue or moral value that primarily plays in the U.S.A.. That, and of course financially complying with pressure from the Chinese government to be tough on whatever independence movement it struggle with now — Catalonia was of course free to chant it's independence.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  It's American Privilege, pure and simple. Anything tech is pretty much American and so the rest of the world gets dragged into their bullshit.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    I find that there is quite a bit of technology that isn't, but that also seems to be less interested in moral police. GNOME is of the U.S.A. and well known for its livid codes of conduct; KDE is of German origins, and seems to be more lax in this. Even with Linux, Linus, a Finn living in the U.S.A., has long resisted it and even referenced this difference between Finnish and U.S.A. culture, but eventually relented.
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      I got the impression the Linus wasn't given much choice. Is there an open-source project, US or not, that the Code of Conduct saga hasn't touched?
  - fapjacks 6y ago
    And here we have arrived at the crux of the problem. Should we just throw up our hands and say "Then just don't use American tech"? I think this move by Uganda (and your comment) illustrate the same frustration that we in America feel at the power these monopolies are exerting over public discourse (for some various definitions of "public discourse").
    - 6y ago
_jgdh 6y ago
Case in point, the fascists in India became very concerned about Trump being deplatformed. They decried it as a lack of tolerance, because they knew there’s no difference between what Trump does and what they do.
- fellellor 6y ago
  Yes. Fascists like Angela Merkel and AMLO must be stopped in their tracks.

BoorishBears 6y ago

> All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Where did this happen? Because I saw some specific tags blocked calling for a VP to be killed blocked (vs some generic "kill all humans" hyperbole)... and specific account blocked after its owner triggered an attack on the Capitol that resulted in 5 casualties (and breaking the rules of the platform for 4+ years) - Are you trying to say people who were pro-talking about killing Pence and storming the Capitol are a significant population? Because last time I checked there were still tens of millions of conservatives on Twitter who aren't banned

kstenerud 6y ago
What I'm talking about isn't so narrow as liberals or conservatives; it's about social cohesion and the censorship that's necessary in order to preserve it. We've been living charmed lives up until now because the ability to broadcast to large audiences has only been within the capabilities of a select few media outlets that were vetted and controlled to varying degrees by the government to make sure they didn't sow too much discord. And this is healthy, because a divided nation loses its international competitiveness and in the worst case risks collapse. We're now in the unprecedented situation where individual people can out-broadcast even nation states with the help of social media companies, most of which have their head offices in the USA, limiting their dependency upon and reachability from other governments of the world. It's a decent situation all around because having such companies headquartered in a repressive regime would have damaging effects worldwide. But we still run into some problems: 1. Their morals are local, but their reach is international. This has caused a lot of friction in the past, and that friction will only increase going forward. 2. They're being pressured to bow to local "truths" or risk being banned in a number of nations. These "truths" generally come to light from local issues, and while they can be easy to decypher in autocratic regimes, they absolutely will NOT be so easy to arbitrate in functioning democracies. We'll eventually reach the point where every social media company will need a team of sociologists and political strategists in order to figure out what's behind every government's complaints over what's being broadcast by their citizens, and how best to respond (making them higher arbiters of truth than even the government). The national self-determination issues alone are staggering. The endgame of this is increased government regulation and increased pressure for a single national "truth", which must be defended vigorously in order to keep the government functional. The increased conflict between these American companies and local governments will increase to the point where eventually the companies will win and essentially set the policy of truth worldwide, which leaves us in a very centralized and fragile state when it comes to corruption, especially since companies - unlike governments - have only profit as a motive, and do not answer to the people.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  This is so so many words about a overly discussed slippery slope, that do not address a very simple point. You said this: > All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Where is this large population? Who is this large population? Thus entire comment you typed is an distressingly large stretch if you can't identify the population you're using as a diving board to truly go into the deep end here.
  - kstenerud 6y ago
    In this case, the population is Parler members. But the instance and people involved are largely irrelevant; it's merely the illustration of a point that will become more and more pronounced as more people realize this power. And it'll be confounded by the fact that no company can be fully up to date with the local foibles of country X and their issues that the company must now decide the truth of and censor whomever they believe to be the bad actors (yeah, good luck!). Although social media companies have allowed more of us to broadcast to an unprecedentedly large audience, we're not actually ready for the Pandora's box this opens in terms of free speech, corporate rights and obligations, and national sovereignty. The near-term solution will be selective censorship by companies and blocking by governments unhappy with the censorship choices (for both good and bad reasons). But as the decade drags on, we'll be forced to recognize our lack of psychological adaptability to this kind of influential power that can destabilize societies to such a degree (by individual, group, AND state actors), and try to come up with a least-worst solution that we're probably not going to like. It's not like this is completely new; larger countries with information dissemination advantages have used that power to destabilize smaller countries for centuries, most recently in South America and the Middle East. But it's quite another thing to be on the receiving end, by anyone able to harness a sufficient audience (i.e. not just state actors), and find yourself unable to effectively defend against it.
    - BoorishBears 6y ago
      Nope. Definitely not buying that was the original population mentioned: it doesn't follow your original claim and it doesn't follow your reply. > All of the major social media companies blocked a significant portion of the population because of the attempted subversion of democracy in the country. Parler users are not a significant portion of the population. They were not blocked by "all social media companies", their app was removed from an app store. If you're trying to implicate the people who were using Parler... again small population and the over lap between banned from social media and using Parler is far away from a "significant portion of the population". And many are of a certain political leaning, they are not representative of that population. This while comment chain was built on an event "banning a significant portion of the population population" that doesn't exist. End of story. I'm not interested in discussing doomsaying based on made up events. Nothing said in this thread is a novel thing, it's the same tired what-ifs that ignore the "what-happened". When your argument doesn't even stand without leaning on made up events and slipper slopes, it's not worth much.

diminish 6y ago

Calls for violence and election-critics were encouraged by current social media in some countries. It looks like many social media platforms have bias based on the political affinities of their owners. I see no reason for any government or any party to trust the social media, mobile OS platforms and messaging anymore. A new set of tools is about to loom hopefully.

lxmorj 6y ago
Is this really different than old media? Seems like all networks are biased - these are just more powerful, centralized networks.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > Is this really different than old media Yes. People never handled daily small talk with their friends and family via the Letters page of e.g. The Times, so it was never antisocial to change newspaper, to boycott a newspaper entirely, or to go without any daily paper at all.
  - simonh 6y ago
    There are plenty of direct messaging apps and services people can use to continue to do so such as iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, email and many more. The issue is publishing services with discoverability where anyone can see or subscribe to your feed, those are more like a letters page and service providers have a clear interest in what they are publishing for you.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

It's an interesting point I had not yet considered that most private internet censorship seems to relate to some political issue or moral value that primarily plays in the U.S.A.. That, and of course financially complying with pressure from the Chinese government to be tough on whatever independence movement it struggle with now — Catalonia was of course free to chant it's independence.

secondcoming 6y ago
It's American Privilege, pure and simple. Anything tech is pretty much American and so the rest of the world gets dragged into their bullshit.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  I find that there is quite a bit of technology that isn't, but that also seems to be less interested in moral police. GNOME is of the U.S.A. and well known for its livid codes of conduct; KDE is of German origins, and seems to be more lax in this. Even with Linux, Linus, a Finn living in the U.S.A., has long resisted it and even referenced this difference between Finnish and U.S.A. culture, but eventually relented.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    I got the impression the Linus wasn't given much choice. Is there an open-source project, US or not, that the Code of Conduct saga hasn't touched?
- fapjacks 6y ago
  And here we have arrived at the crux of the problem. Should we just throw up our hands and say "Then just don't use American tech"? I think this move by Uganda (and your comment) illustrate the same frustration that we in America feel at the power these monopolies are exerting over public discourse (for some various definitions of "public discourse").
  - 6y ago

_jgdh 6y ago

Case in point, the fascists in India became very concerned about Trump being deplatformed. They decried it as a lack of tolerance, because they knew there’s no difference between what Trump does and what they do.

fellellor 6y ago
Yes. Fascists like Angela Merkel and AMLO must be stopped in their tracks.