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I think a lot of the dweb people first got interested in this area because they were on BBSes and so on sharing stuff like the anarchist's cookbook at risk of g

by gfodor 6y ago

I think a lot of the dweb people first got interested in this area because they were on BBSes and so on sharing stuff like the anarchist's cookbook at risk of getting a visit by the FBI and used to think information wanted to be free. Now they're adults, and have kept their interest in dweb technologies, but have come to see "dangerous speech" as a huge problem, and are waking up to the realization that their technical interests and goals would enable these kinds of things. And they're not happy about it, or at the very least are experiencing cognitive dissonance. But that was always the case, and for many, they were the unsavory people in their youth that the older folks were saying were participating in dangerous rhetoric and ought to be silenced or investigated, just like they are saying now about people who are saying things adjacent to things which are illegal. At the very least we should seek consistency. If you support decentralized technology for speech, you should be happy with the net benefits and net harms. The alternative is the status quo. Arguably the spirit of the internet was not to have what we have now.

konjin 6y ago
You will find that the people who were on the unsavoury bbs are the people who are against censorship today. Out of the half dozen people I know from that period in my life (2000-2006) not one has had a kind thing to say about facebook, google or twitter since 2010. Those firms are the lame dinosaur stuck in a tar pit that we made fun of Microsoft for being in the 00s. It's the people who called us nerds and made high school hell for us that somehow ended up in hr at tech co and are now setting policy there.
- gfodor 6y ago
  That may be a more valid perspective, but I don't think these are homogeneous groups. I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to see people who have been railing against tech company centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not directed in a direction they like.
  - konjin 6y ago
    > I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to see people who have been railing against tech company centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not directed in a direction they like. What else can you do? Saying that tech co is wrong today is as much career suicide as saying that the US deserved 9/11 was in 2002. I even had one guy tell me he is going full accelerationist on his main twitter because the http based internet is a dead end and the more unusable it becomes the sooner we will get something better.
electriclove 6y ago
I agree with your first paragraph but not the rest. We still feel information should be free and decentralized technology is the future.
- gfodor 6y ago
  I'm not saying all dweb people feel this way, I'm in the other camp myself. I'm saying part of the dynamic going on includes a subset of people who forgot that these aren't some global good, they will create both good and harm, like anything else.
newacct583 6y ago
You're making a false equivalence.[1] The "dweb" people were indeed merely anarchic and irresponsible. The deeper, conspiracy-minded parts of the MAGA community are verifiably dangerous. They said for weeks that a storm is coming, that they were going to take washington, that congress had to be stopped, that the vice president should be executed, etc... And then on Wednesday they made the attempt. Comments like yours are predicated on this idea that speech itself can only ever be merely "irresponsible". But... the world isn't like that. If you spend years making "jokes" about insurrection, you eventually find someone attacking congress. [1] Edit to answer the question below: you are falsely equating harmless anarchic geeks of the 80's and 90's with violent terrorists. It's not appropriate to manage these communities using the same tools.
- IanDrake 6y ago
  I think this is overplayed at this point. You must concede one of only two possibilities. 1) The capitol building has all along been an easy soft target that could have been infiltrated by a small contingent of terrorist. 2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried. Neither option is a good look for our country. Now compound that with using this event as a popular excuse to restrict free speech, when the correct reaction should be to improve security at the capitol for any enemy. If you think this goes away becuse big tech takes even moderate voices down, you don't understand what's going on.
  - eyeball 6y ago
    "2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried." seems likely that the trumpers gave that order so their mob could get in
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > big tech takes even moderate voices down Can you cite some "moderate voices" that have been taken down by big tech? They're all still up as far as I can see. Trump incited an attack on congress. He got banned. Parler deliberately cultivated an extreme community of violent rhetoric (they really did, have you looked at that site?). They got banned. Who else? Seems like only people reasonably identifiable as extremists are affected. I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability to rationalize violence. The President directed an attack on Congress last Wednesday to prevent his opponent's certification. And... what people really want to talk about is Parler losing their hosting? (Edit to note that you refused to answer the question and jumped off on a WHATABOUTBLM?! tangent instead. In fact, contra your hyperbole, no moderate right wing voices have been censored or silenced.)
cameldrv 6y ago
I agree that the BBS tradition of G-files plays into this, but those were very different times. The people downloading this sort of stuff were almost exclusively kids who got a thrill out of possessing forbidden knowledge, but aside from setting off a smoke bomb at an abandoned quarry or something, nothing ever came of it. The near mainstream culture of prepping and guns and conspiracy is far different than it was back then. I still think that there is a positive place for DWeb technologies, but that place is specifically to enable more truly free speech. A lot of what got us into this mess is that speech on social media is not truly free. The only speech that is allowed/promoted on those platforms is that which appeals to base instincts, because it is that speech that drives revenue for the platforms. What we're allowed to say, and have heard, should not depend on what is most profitable for a few companies.
- gfodor 6y ago
  The problem with your first point is that however true it may be, it doesn’t provide a good mental framework for creating values that are universally applicable. The lessons of fearing an FBI visit for just sharing text files was correct: being free to speak and not fear oppression due to not what you say but what it implies is what freedom of speech is. It’s quite uncontroversial to say that people who explicitly advocate specific violence are breaking the just laws around that and should be suppressed. The controversy is around what speech adjacent to that is not just permissible, but if it’s just to jump to conclusions about a person’s motives or intentions and act on them in the absence of illegal speech.

by gfodor 6y ago

konjin 6y ago

You will find that the people who were on the unsavoury bbs are the people who are against censorship today. Out of the half dozen people I know from that period in my life (2000-2006) not one has had a kind thing to say about facebook, google or twitter since 2010. Those firms are the lame dinosaur stuck in a tar pit that we made fun of Microsoft for being in the 00s. It's the people who called us nerds and made high school hell for us that somehow ended up in hr at tech co and are now setting policy there.

gfodor 6y ago
That may be a more valid perspective, but I don't think these are homogeneous groups. I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to see people who have been railing against tech company centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not directed in a direction they like.
- konjin 6y ago
  > I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to see people who have been railing against tech company centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not directed in a direction they like. What else can you do? Saying that tech co is wrong today is as much career suicide as saying that the US deserved 9/11 was in 2002. I even had one guy tell me he is going full accelerationist on his main twitter because the http based internet is a dead end and the more unusable it becomes the sooner we will get something better.

electriclove 6y ago

I agree with your first paragraph but not the rest. We still feel information should be free and decentralized technology is the future.

gfodor 6y ago
I'm not saying all dweb people feel this way, I'm in the other camp myself. I'm saying part of the dynamic going on includes a subset of people who forgot that these aren't some global good, they will create both good and harm, like anything else.

newacct583 6y ago

You're making a false equivalence.[1] The "dweb" people were indeed merely anarchic and irresponsible. The deeper, conspiracy-minded parts of the MAGA community are verifiably dangerous. They said for weeks that a storm is coming, that they were going to take washington, that congress had to be stopped, that the vice president should be executed, etc... And then on Wednesday they made the attempt. Comments like yours are predicated on this idea that speech itself can only ever be merely "irresponsible". But... the world isn't like that. If you spend years making "jokes" about insurrection, you eventually find someone attacking congress. [1] Edit to answer the question below: you are falsely equating harmless anarchic geeks of the 80's and 90's with violent terrorists. It's not appropriate to manage these communities using the same tools.

IanDrake 6y ago
I think this is overplayed at this point. You must concede one of only two possibilities. 1) The capitol building has all along been an easy soft target that could have been infiltrated by a small contingent of terrorist. 2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried. Neither option is a good look for our country. Now compound that with using this event as a popular excuse to restrict free speech, when the correct reaction should be to improve security at the capitol for any enemy. If you think this goes away becuse big tech takes even moderate voices down, you don't understand what's going on.
- eyeball 6y ago
  "2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried." seems likely that the trumpers gave that order so their mob could get in
- newacct583 6y ago
  > big tech takes even moderate voices down Can you cite some "moderate voices" that have been taken down by big tech? They're all still up as far as I can see. Trump incited an attack on congress. He got banned. Parler deliberately cultivated an extreme community of violent rhetoric (they really did, have you looked at that site?). They got banned. Who else? Seems like only people reasonably identifiable as extremists are affected. I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability to rationalize violence. The President directed an attack on Congress last Wednesday to prevent his opponent's certification. And... what people really want to talk about is Parler losing their hosting? (Edit to note that you refused to answer the question and jumped off on a WHATABOUTBLM?! tangent instead. In fact, contra your hyperbole, no moderate right wing voices have been censored or silenced.)

cameldrv 6y ago

I agree that the BBS tradition of G-files plays into this, but those were very different times. The people downloading this sort of stuff were almost exclusively kids who got a thrill out of possessing forbidden knowledge, but aside from setting off a smoke bomb at an abandoned quarry or something, nothing ever came of it. The near mainstream culture of prepping and guns and conspiracy is far different than it was back then. I still think that there is a positive place for DWeb technologies, but that place is specifically to enable more truly free speech. A lot of what got us into this mess is that speech on social media is not truly free. The only speech that is allowed/promoted on those platforms is that which appeals to base instincts, because it is that speech that drives revenue for the platforms. What we're allowed to say, and have heard, should not depend on what is most profitable for a few companies.

gfodor 6y ago
The problem with your first point is that however true it may be, it doesn’t provide a good mental framework for creating values that are universally applicable. The lessons of fearing an FBI visit for just sharing text files was correct: being free to speak and not fear oppression due to not what you say but what it implies is what freedom of speech is. It’s quite uncontroversial to say that people who explicitly advocate specific violence are breaking the just laws around that and should be suppressed. The controversy is around what speech adjacent to that is not just permissible, but if it’s just to jump to conclusions about a person’s motives or intentions and act on them in the absence of illegal speech.