5 ms·

EFF, Cory Doctorow warn about the dangers of de-platforming and censorship

87 points by MilnerRoute 6y ago

secfirstmd 6y ago
Maybe part of the issue is that now is the first time many people in the US actually notice this. When in reality Facebook and similar have been censoring voices for many years. For example Palestinian ones https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/fb-stop-censoring-palestine/ https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/fb-stop-censoring-palestine/
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Can also point out censoring Kurd's and Hezbollah. While at the same time allowing ISIS to use their platforms for recruitment.
cheese_van 6y ago
In the context of the various US objections to China, de-platforming narrows one distinction between the Chinese authoritarian treatment of speech and the US's. While all nation-states are hypocritical to a degree, it certainly allows the Chinese to underline this hypocrisy, while providing cover and justification for their own lack of internet speech freedoms. Not a happy trend for free speech absolutists anywhere.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I don't think there's anything that distinguishes the US more from China than a private platform being able to deplatform the president, rather than be bullied by him. There is no hypocrisy here. The only relevant rights in the US are the rights of twitter to not be compelled to publish someone's speech, and freedom of association. That unlike in China, Trump is subject to the TOS of Twitter is as American and as free-speech faithful as it gets. The only shameful thing was that Twitter carved out exceptions for him because they were afraid of political retaliation over the last four years. In fact having the government and the executive exercise influence over private business would make the US more like China, not less. When a politician is kicked off a platform for violating its terms it's not a violation of "free speech", it's the politician behaving like a five year old who says "mom, the other kids don't want me on the playground!" Free speech is not "in your face"-ism. It does not entitle anyone to scream on someone else's property.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    While he has the chair for a few more days, he is for most intents and purposes a disgraced former leader. China would certainly deplatform someone like that.
ilaksh 6y ago
I think the answer is decentralized protocols.
intended 6y ago
Right now everything seems to travel to the intersection of "Free Speech" and "Dangerous speech", creating a massive pile up of conversations going no where. Arguably this logjam resolves itself if you assume: 1) Everything is content, True/false, wrong/right being labels we use after consuming it. 2) All our social media, every new type of it, all UI/UX, payment models, subscriptions, memberships - simply Amplify or Suppress the propagation of content. This makes our tech discussions relatively value agnostic, and moves the question to whether i) the use of these tools was just ii) The extent of force used was just So yes, all our major firms have this power. ANY firm can have silencing or amplifying power. The question is how we define the norms, and the empirical evidence we generate that shows us what choices are better than others. A step below that is the empirics and informational tools we have to do the science. I used my masters dissertation as an excuse to explore whether a particular rule change on a forum worked. Honestly while it was fun to reach some conclusion, there are major gaps in our toolkits to explore these issues. Sentiment analysis corpuses for non-english corpuses are definitely one of the data sets we need more off, and we need ways to constantly update these dictionaries. Dealing with code mixed language is another problem. I'm sure someone has solved this, one of the issues is precisely that cross talk on experiments is low and every discipline is looking at this space. But that is something you can invest your time in if creating this evidence matters to you.
quantified 6y ago
Let’s note that while a bar has to allow the public entry, if your speech or actions inside the bar starts a fight, they can bounce you. No written terms of service needed. Just threatening the bartender might be enough. People might be deplatformed, but they can still write, publish anywhere that will accept their writing, call people on the phone... do anything they could do in the year 1999, 207 years after the Constitution was established. Shunning might be just fine in society, it always has been accepted. Look at the racial history of Chicago in 1919 and early 1950’s. Shunning after norms have been breached AGAINST STATED MORALS has been perfectly fine. We’re not talking races or creeds being deplatformed here. It took a lot of provocation. Maybe we’re being inconsistent and expedient. Soul-searching is called for. I support the ACLU and admire their consistency, they’ve supported the truly reprehensible. Not sure if they’ve ever been called on to defend the deepest taboos, but they’ve gone deep enough. Yet it would be interesting to work through them defending the speech that, for example, exhorted people to kill ACLU attorneys. I imagine there are limits somewhere. Trumbo breached someone’s norms and was deplatformed. He forced the world to allow his redemption. Let’s see the deplatformed show themselves worthy of redemption. And there need to be some well-thought-out movements to address aome of the causes that get folks to go so over the edge. There are many causes, economic, educational, societal. Flat-out bigoted neighborhoods are more likely to crank out flat-out bigoted generations, that’ll be a hard one for a long time. But less “us” v “them” could be accomplished.
- anothernewdude 6y ago
  Bars do not have to allow the public entry, indeed that's half the work of bouncers.
  - quantified 6y ago
    You’re right, I was thinking of even neighborhood bars. Along those lines, is it not the case that Twitter, FB and all other social-media sites could institute user vetting and behave more like a club? Some services are invite-only already. Obviously changes the business model, just pointing out the perfect legality.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
typenil 6y ago
"Go make your own Facebook" Then AWS takes down Parlor. And so many on Hacker News rejoice. "Go make your own AWS" Where does that end? Go make your own domain registrar? Go make your own ICANN? Go make your own ISP? Go make your own internet? Go make your own microchips? If some virtue signaling Silicon Valley execs want to impress their friends, you're done. Oligarchy. Has nothing to do with capitalism or democracy. It has to do with internet points and social standing for elite tech executives. Looks far more like McCarthyism or totalitarianism than anything resembling a free democracy.
- permille42 6y ago
  You don't need Facebook to communicate your ideas to others. You don't need AWS either. AWS is actually a backwards development of technology in my opinion because it is anti-open source. It is quite straightforward to lease your own server and/or build your own and colo. You can even easily setup containers on such, or a cluster of them if you desire. You also don't need a domain name to host a site. Plain IP addresses work fine in many situations. There are plenty of "shady" countries who will let you register DNS and do whatever you want with it. Just look at the underground pirate community. None of this weak censorship by silencing Facebook posts is stopping them. Piracy will continue to the end of time, because if you have a bit of tech skill there is very little that can silence a person on the modern internet. And yes, p2p ( without internet ) file sharing is alive and well. Those in draconian environments engage in it. Swapping 12tb drives is quite effective in sharing data. Own microchips? Yeah we are heading that way. Hence the popularity of Risc-V and various "open hardware". Typically it is sufficient to use your own software stack on existing hardware though. SV execs can't do shit about public opinion or the underground community. The free exchange of information is alive and well. It just doesn't live on Facebook or Parler or any of that crap.
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    >You don't need Facebook to communicate your ideas to others. Interesting, that is the same point conservative judge Robert Bork used to make, and while not the only reason why he was rejected for the Supreme Court, it was certainly a factor. Weird how someone like Bork, who used to be considered on the far fringe of conservativism, is now part of mainstream liberal orthodoxy.
8bitsrule 6y ago
Is "censorship" what newspaper editors have done with letters to the op-ed pages for over a century? (Some made it, how many didn't? Most) How many TV News stations air viewer responses? Is that censorship? Those businesses were mostly one-way from choice. In the same 'over a century' lots of people reacted by starting their own newspapers. Those papers too were 'echo chambers'. How are 'social media' more public? Is 'we guarantee to air everything' part of their TOS? Else, nothing new here.
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
Curious how Doctorow justifies the practice of disemvoweling, a passive aggressive form of censorship that boing boing used to silence people they didn't agree with but who weren't violating the terms of service of the site. Also wonder how all of this fits in the depersoning of Violet Blue from boing boing.
- emptysongglass 6y ago
  This actually happened to me way back in the day when I called out Doctorow on Boing Boing for his relentless use of the platform as a soapbox for self-promotion.
  - xhkkffbf 6y ago
    He can be very weaselly on these things. It's nice that he hasn't lost his general support for free speech -- as some people have done all too willingly. But the disemvoweling is definitely born of fascist impulses.

87 points by MilnerRoute 6y ago

Maybe part of the issue is that now is the first time many people in the US actually notice this. When in reality Facebook and similar have been censoring voices for many years. For example Palestinian ones https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/fb-stop-censoring-palestine/ https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/fb-stop-censoring-palestine/

Gibbon1 6y ago
Can also point out censoring Kurd's and Hezbollah. While at the same time allowing ISIS to use their platforms for recruitment.

cheese_van 6y ago

In the context of the various US objections to China, de-platforming narrows one distinction between the Chinese authoritarian treatment of speech and the US's. While all nation-states are hypocritical to a degree, it certainly allows the Chinese to underline this hypocrisy, while providing cover and justification for their own lack of internet speech freedoms. Not a happy trend for free speech absolutists anywhere.

Barrin92 6y ago
I don't think there's anything that distinguishes the US more from China than a private platform being able to deplatform the president, rather than be bullied by him. There is no hypocrisy here. The only relevant rights in the US are the rights of twitter to not be compelled to publish someone's speech, and freedom of association. That unlike in China, Trump is subject to the TOS of Twitter is as American and as free-speech faithful as it gets. The only shameful thing was that Twitter carved out exceptions for him because they were afraid of political retaliation over the last four years. In fact having the government and the executive exercise influence over private business would make the US more like China, not less. When a politician is kicked off a platform for violating its terms it's not a violation of "free speech", it's the politician behaving like a five year old who says "mom, the other kids don't want me on the playground!" Free speech is not "in your face"-ism. It does not entitle anyone to scream on someone else's property.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  While he has the chair for a few more days, he is for most intents and purposes a disgraced former leader. China would certainly deplatform someone like that.

ilaksh 6y ago

I think the answer is decentralized protocols.

intended 6y ago

Right now everything seems to travel to the intersection of "Free Speech" and "Dangerous speech", creating a massive pile up of conversations going no where. Arguably this logjam resolves itself if you assume: 1) Everything is content, True/false, wrong/right being labels we use after consuming it. 2) All our social media, every new type of it, all UI/UX, payment models, subscriptions, memberships - simply Amplify or Suppress the propagation of content. This makes our tech discussions relatively value agnostic, and moves the question to whether i) the use of these tools was just ii) The extent of force used was just So yes, all our major firms have this power. ANY firm can have silencing or amplifying power. The question is how we define the norms, and the empirical evidence we generate that shows us what choices are better than others. A step below that is the empirics and informational tools we have to do the science. I used my masters dissertation as an excuse to explore whether a particular rule change on a forum worked. Honestly while it was fun to reach some conclusion, there are major gaps in our toolkits to explore these issues. Sentiment analysis corpuses for non-english corpuses are definitely one of the data sets we need more off, and we need ways to constantly update these dictionaries. Dealing with code mixed language is another problem. I'm sure someone has solved this, one of the issues is precisely that cross talk on experiments is low and every discipline is looking at this space. But that is something you can invest your time in if creating this evidence matters to you.

quantified 6y ago

Let’s note that while a bar has to allow the public entry, if your speech or actions inside the bar starts a fight, they can bounce you. No written terms of service needed. Just threatening the bartender might be enough. People might be deplatformed, but they can still write, publish anywhere that will accept their writing, call people on the phone... do anything they could do in the year 1999, 207 years after the Constitution was established. Shunning might be just fine in society, it always has been accepted. Look at the racial history of Chicago in 1919 and early 1950’s. Shunning after norms have been breached AGAINST STATED MORALS has been perfectly fine. We’re not talking races or creeds being deplatformed here. It took a lot of provocation. Maybe we’re being inconsistent and expedient. Soul-searching is called for. I support the ACLU and admire their consistency, they’ve supported the truly reprehensible. Not sure if they’ve ever been called on to defend the deepest taboos, but they’ve gone deep enough. Yet it would be interesting to work through them defending the speech that, for example, exhorted people to kill ACLU attorneys. I imagine there are limits somewhere. Trumbo breached someone’s norms and was deplatformed. He forced the world to allow his redemption. Let’s see the deplatformed show themselves worthy of redemption. And there need to be some well-thought-out movements to address aome of the causes that get folks to go so over the edge. There are many causes, economic, educational, societal. Flat-out bigoted neighborhoods are more likely to crank out flat-out bigoted generations, that’ll be a hard one for a long time. But less “us” v “them” could be accomplished.

anothernewdude 6y ago
Bars do not have to allow the public entry, indeed that's half the work of bouncers.
- quantified 6y ago
  You’re right, I was thinking of even neighborhood bars. Along those lines, is it not the case that Twitter, FB and all other social-media sites could institute user vetting and behave more like a club? Some services are invite-only already. Obviously changes the business model, just pointing out the perfect legality.
redis_mlc 6y ago

typenil 6y ago

"Go make your own Facebook" Then AWS takes down Parlor. And so many on Hacker News rejoice. "Go make your own AWS" Where does that end? Go make your own domain registrar? Go make your own ICANN? Go make your own ISP? Go make your own internet? Go make your own microchips? If some virtue signaling Silicon Valley execs want to impress their friends, you're done. Oligarchy. Has nothing to do with capitalism or democracy. It has to do with internet points and social standing for elite tech executives. Looks far more like McCarthyism or totalitarianism than anything resembling a free democracy.

permille42 6y ago
You don't need Facebook to communicate your ideas to others. You don't need AWS either. AWS is actually a backwards development of technology in my opinion because it is anti-open source. It is quite straightforward to lease your own server and/or build your own and colo. You can even easily setup containers on such, or a cluster of them if you desire. You also don't need a domain name to host a site. Plain IP addresses work fine in many situations. There are plenty of "shady" countries who will let you register DNS and do whatever you want with it. Just look at the underground pirate community. None of this weak censorship by silencing Facebook posts is stopping them. Piracy will continue to the end of time, because if you have a bit of tech skill there is very little that can silence a person on the modern internet. And yes, p2p ( without internet ) file sharing is alive and well. Those in draconian environments engage in it. Swapping 12tb drives is quite effective in sharing data. Own microchips? Yeah we are heading that way. Hence the popularity of Risc-V and various "open hardware". Typically it is sufficient to use your own software stack on existing hardware though. SV execs can't do shit about public opinion or the underground community. The free exchange of information is alive and well. It just doesn't live on Facebook or Parler or any of that crap.
- Mountain_Skies 6y ago
  >You don't need Facebook to communicate your ideas to others. Interesting, that is the same point conservative judge Robert Bork used to make, and while not the only reason why he was rejected for the Supreme Court, it was certainly a factor. Weird how someone like Bork, who used to be considered on the far fringe of conservativism, is now part of mainstream liberal orthodoxy.

8bitsrule 6y ago

Is "censorship" what newspaper editors have done with letters to the op-ed pages for over a century? (Some made it, how many didn't? Most) How many TV News stations air viewer responses? Is that censorship? Those businesses were mostly one-way from choice. In the same 'over a century' lots of people reacted by starting their own newspapers. Those papers too were 'echo chambers'. How are 'social media' more public? Is 'we guarantee to air everything' part of their TOS? Else, nothing new here.

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

Curious how Doctorow justifies the practice of disemvoweling, a passive aggressive form of censorship that boing boing used to silence people they didn't agree with but who weren't violating the terms of service of the site. Also wonder how all of this fits in the depersoning of Violet Blue from boing boing.

emptysongglass 6y ago
This actually happened to me way back in the day when I called out Doctorow on Boing Boing for his relentless use of the platform as a soapbox for self-promotion.
- xhkkffbf 6y ago
  He can be very weaselly on these things. It's nice that he hasn't lost his general support for free speech -- as some people have done all too willingly. But the disemvoweling is definitely born of fascist impulses.