13 ms·

Mozilla seems to be moving in the other direction now. "We need more than deplatforming" https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatform

Mozilla seems to be moving in the other direction now. "We need more than deplatforming" https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d...

aarpmcgee 6y ago
My sense is that this blog post is objectionable to you but I can't quite figure out why.
- jjordan 6y ago
  It's a statement in support of suppressing speech, and it's needlessly political. Mozilla leadership has mostly rested on their laurels (read: Google money) while Firefox consistently slid in market share. I've been a loyal FF user for 17 years, and this was the final straw. In the process of switching to Brave.
  - aarpmcgee 6y ago
    I don't see anything in that post about suppressing speech—can you help me see it? The main bullet points in the article don't seem to have anything to do with suppressing speech (unless that is how you are framing the bullet point which reads: "Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation."
    - al_chemist 6y ago
      It starts with title "We need more than deplatforming" which means "deplatforming is good, but it's not enough". noun: deplatforming; noun: de-platforming the action or practice of preventing someone holding views regarded as unacceptable or offensive from contributing to a forum or debate, especially by blocking them on a particular website. It continues with "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms." Blocking, silencing and removal does suppress speech.
      - aarpmcgee 6y ago
        I appreciate your followup here! Thanks.
      - stkdump 6y ago
        Freedom of speech should not guarantee 'right to global reach'. People should be allowed to say what they think to an amount of people who they can have personal relationships with, their neighbors, relatively close colleagues and similar. Deplatforming should not take this away, it should just take the biggest megaphone away mankind invented to date.
        kortilla 6y ago
        It’s still speech suppression and support of it, even if you think it’s justified.
        stkdump 6y ago
        Sure, in the same vein as building a dam is water suppression. It doesn't take away any right, it's about the limits of a right. You also suppress freedom of speech indirectly when you put someone in prison, so any crime punished by imprisonment seems to be considered reason enough to justify that as well. Saying that freedom of speech can't ever be limited is a very ideological point of view, so far away from reality that I wouldn't consider it worth debating at all. Now there is a valid argument to be made, how decisions to deplatform a person should be made and/or how such decisions can be appealed.
        kortilla 6y ago
        > You also suppress freedom of speech indirectly when you put someone in prison You’re confusing suppressing an individual’s ability to speak with the general notion of the free exchange of ideas. Arrest one person and free speech activists aren’t concerned, arrest everyone that says something, now they are concerned. The notion of trying to suppress topics is the problem, not the limitation of a particular individual. > Saying that freedom of speech can't ever be limited is a very ideological point of view, so far away from reality that I wouldn't consider it worth debating at all. You built a shitty strawman and then attacked it. Bravo. If you actually want to debate people who advocate free speech, the concern is when speech is suppressed because of the contents of the speech. Not because the person is dead, in prison, in a coma, or some other contrived crap.
  - antihero 6y ago
    Deplatforming isn't suppression it's realising that you entities do not have to be neutral in their support and broadcast of various things. It's the question of a radical over a liberal mindset.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  The Mozilla of 2004 is not the Mozilla of today. With unnecessary proselytizing/virtual signalling, implementing features antithetical to their values (Pocket integration, switching to WebExtensions), pursuing wasteful and fruitless endeavors (FirefoxOS), the company has completely strayed from its main focus: building a solid, open, and free browser. I'm still with them, but I'd be lying if I don't strongly consider moving to Brave every time they come out with actual innovative and exciting features like this.
nvr219 6y ago
What's that supposed to mean or have to do with this topic at all
- dx87 6y ago
  It means that Brave is implementing protocols that help circumvent censorship, while the CEO of Mozilla is saying that current censorship doesn't go far enough.
autocorr 6y ago
Taken out of context that quote would imply "we need even more serious censorship", but admits that deplatforming a certain world leader is a not a real solution and that these actions that should be taken: > Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted. > Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact. > Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation. [link to post on changing Facebook's timeline algorithm] > Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things. The first two are no-brainers. The third is alright, but I doubt re-weighting Facebook's timeline algorithm is going to put the genie back in the bottle. The fourth is useful but pretty generic at "do research on things".
- undefined1 6y ago
  "We need more than deplatforming" is the literal headline, and they support it in the post: "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms. Additional precise and specific actions must also be taken" Note: More than. Additional. Also.
  - autocorr 6y ago
    I interpret the post as saying "banning people on Twitter won't solve our problem, transparency in advertising and social media algorithms will" because before your quote Mitchell (CEO of Mozilla) in the post says: > But as reprehensible as the actions of Donald Trump are, the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality. Donald Trump is certainly not the first politician to exploit the architecture of the internet in this way, and he won’t be the last. We need solutions that don’t start after untold damage has been done. And then lists several possible solutions that seem quite reasonable, and we should for sure push for the first two. PS to anyone reading this exchange, at this point our comments are longer than the original blog post, you might as well just read the original instead of our out-of-order commentary. :)
Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 6y ago
Wonderful, as if I need my browser to censor more stuff.
- jraph 6y ago
  Good, it won't.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
The funny part is that this is the bio in Mozilla’s twitter: “We work to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to all.” I guess by “all” they mean only people with political opinions they support.
- jhardy54 6y ago
  In case you're unfamiliar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Unfortunately part of making things "open and accessible to all" means revoking access to people who would weaponize the internet to contradict those goals. A tolerant society means no tolerance for terrorists.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    If you can effectively cast your political opponents as “terrorists” you can rationalize denying them all sorts of rights and still get to call yourself a supporter of human rights. They did a similar thing during the Iraq war.
    - hkt 6y ago
      Iraq seems a little different to an armed invasion of.. the capitol building. No?
      - xvector 6y ago
        One day, people may actually need to invade the Capitol building, but it will never happen because of your eagerness to create an authoritarian state that shuts down all controversial discourse. If we deplatformed every “violent thug” that did something people didn’t like, you would have a fraction of the rights you have today.
        Draken93 6y ago
        I believe that we passed a controversial discourse, when a certain group of people decided to ignore all reasonable arguments, to ignore sience. This is not about shutting down all controversial discourse. It is about "defend[ing] a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant". Surpression shall only happen if there is no other way to defend a tolerant society cause the intolerant are working with (massiv, wide spread) violence. I don't know who is in the position to decide when that point has come. But one could argue that people invading the capitol is that point.(I don't think so) What I am really worried about, is that it seems like tech companies will have to make those decisions. In the end there will be individual persons, who make that decisons and that is very dangerous.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
I wonder why Mozilla even bothers with these kinds of posts. I doubt a single person in the world cares about getting political opinions from their web browser so these kinds of posts just dirty their image.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Sponsor's opinion is what actually matters.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  It's even worse than that - it makes me less able to trust Mozilla because Mozilla wants to make sure they can help me decide what is true or not. That is definitely not Mozilla's job nor do they have that ability. It just tells me they're looking to help control the internet for corporations.
dartharva 6y ago
Well, Brave leadership isn't that subtle either. Here's Brendan getting salty over Gab's attempted fork of Brave: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118705815127347200 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118705815127347200. I guess we should simply ignore these political endorsements and only take the functional utility into account when choosing browsers.
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  Gab has not updated Dissenter in 10 months (Windows and Linux) or more than 13 months (macOS). Without backporting or merging up to current Brave, this leaves its users horribly vulnerable to unpatched but disclosed Chromium security bugs, including full remote code execution vulns. Don't use Dissenter. My "salty" tweet was prophetic.
eclat 6y ago
Wow. Did not expect that from Mozilla of all places. Really disappointed as I've been a die hard Firefox user for as long as I can remember in large part because of the commitment to a free, open internet and fundamental Liberal values like free speech.

aarpmcgee 6y ago

My sense is that this blog post is objectionable to you but I can't quite figure out why.

jjordan 6y ago
It's a statement in support of suppressing speech, and it's needlessly political. Mozilla leadership has mostly rested on their laurels (read: Google money) while Firefox consistently slid in market share. I've been a loyal FF user for 17 years, and this was the final straw. In the process of switching to Brave.
- aarpmcgee 6y ago
  I don't see anything in that post about suppressing speech—can you help me see it? The main bullet points in the article don't seem to have anything to do with suppressing speech (unless that is how you are framing the bullet point which reads: "Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation."
  - al_chemist 6y ago
    It starts with title "We need more than deplatforming" which means "deplatforming is good, but it's not enough". noun: deplatforming; noun: de-platforming the action or practice of preventing someone holding views regarded as unacceptable or offensive from contributing to a forum or debate, especially by blocking them on a particular website. It continues with "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms." Blocking, silencing and removal does suppress speech.
    - aarpmcgee 6y ago
      I appreciate your followup here! Thanks.
    - stkdump 6y ago
      Freedom of speech should not guarantee 'right to global reach'. People should be allowed to say what they think to an amount of people who they can have personal relationships with, their neighbors, relatively close colleagues and similar. Deplatforming should not take this away, it should just take the biggest megaphone away mankind invented to date.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        It’s still speech suppression and support of it, even if you think it’s justified.
        stkdump 6y ago
        Sure, in the same vein as building a dam is water suppression. It doesn't take away any right, it's about the limits of a right. You also suppress freedom of speech indirectly when you put someone in prison, so any crime punished by imprisonment seems to be considered reason enough to justify that as well. Saying that freedom of speech can't ever be limited is a very ideological point of view, so far away from reality that I wouldn't consider it worth debating at all. Now there is a valid argument to be made, how decisions to deplatform a person should be made and/or how such decisions can be appealed.
        kortilla 6y ago
        > You also suppress freedom of speech indirectly when you put someone in prison You’re confusing suppressing an individual’s ability to speak with the general notion of the free exchange of ideas. Arrest one person and free speech activists aren’t concerned, arrest everyone that says something, now they are concerned. The notion of trying to suppress topics is the problem, not the limitation of a particular individual. > Saying that freedom of speech can't ever be limited is a very ideological point of view, so far away from reality that I wouldn't consider it worth debating at all. You built a shitty strawman and then attacked it. Bravo. If you actually want to debate people who advocate free speech, the concern is when speech is suppressed because of the contents of the speech. Not because the person is dead, in prison, in a coma, or some other contrived crap.
- antihero 6y ago
  Deplatforming isn't suppression it's realising that you entities do not have to be neutral in their support and broadcast of various things. It's the question of a radical over a liberal mindset.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
The Mozilla of 2004 is not the Mozilla of today. With unnecessary proselytizing/virtual signalling, implementing features antithetical to their values (Pocket integration, switching to WebExtensions), pursuing wasteful and fruitless endeavors (FirefoxOS), the company has completely strayed from its main focus: building a solid, open, and free browser. I'm still with them, but I'd be lying if I don't strongly consider moving to Brave every time they come out with actual innovative and exciting features like this.

nvr219 6y ago

What's that supposed to mean or have to do with this topic at all

dx87 6y ago
It means that Brave is implementing protocols that help circumvent censorship, while the CEO of Mozilla is saying that current censorship doesn't go far enough.

autocorr 6y ago

Taken out of context that quote would imply "we need even more serious censorship", but admits that deplatforming a certain world leader is a not a real solution and that these actions that should be taken: > Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted. > Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact. > Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation. [link to post on changing Facebook's timeline algorithm] > Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things. The first two are no-brainers. The third is alright, but I doubt re-weighting Facebook's timeline algorithm is going to put the genie back in the bottle. The fourth is useful but pretty generic at "do research on things".

undefined1 6y ago
"We need more than deplatforming" is the literal headline, and they support it in the post: "Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms. Additional precise and specific actions must also be taken" Note: More than. Additional. Also.
- autocorr 6y ago
  I interpret the post as saying "banning people on Twitter won't solve our problem, transparency in advertising and social media algorithms will" because before your quote Mitchell (CEO of Mozilla) in the post says: > But as reprehensible as the actions of Donald Trump are, the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality. Donald Trump is certainly not the first politician to exploit the architecture of the internet in this way, and he won’t be the last. We need solutions that don’t start after untold damage has been done. And then lists several possible solutions that seem quite reasonable, and we should for sure push for the first two. PS to anyone reading this exchange, at this point our comments are longer than the original blog post, you might as well just read the original instead of our out-of-order commentary. :)

Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 6y ago

Wonderful, as if I need my browser to censor more stuff.

jraph 6y ago
Good, it won't.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

The funny part is that this is the bio in Mozilla’s twitter: “We work to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to all.” I guess by “all” they mean only people with political opinions they support.

jhardy54 6y ago
In case you're unfamiliar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Unfortunately part of making things "open and accessible to all" means revoking access to people who would weaponize the internet to contradict those goals. A tolerant society means no tolerance for terrorists.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  If you can effectively cast your political opponents as “terrorists” you can rationalize denying them all sorts of rights and still get to call yourself a supporter of human rights. They did a similar thing during the Iraq war.
  - hkt 6y ago
    Iraq seems a little different to an armed invasion of.. the capitol building. No?
    - xvector 6y ago
      One day, people may actually need to invade the Capitol building, but it will never happen because of your eagerness to create an authoritarian state that shuts down all controversial discourse. If we deplatformed every “violent thug” that did something people didn’t like, you would have a fraction of the rights you have today.
      - Draken93 6y ago
        I believe that we passed a controversial discourse, when a certain group of people decided to ignore all reasonable arguments, to ignore sience. This is not about shutting down all controversial discourse. It is about "defend[ing] a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant". Surpression shall only happen if there is no other way to defend a tolerant society cause the intolerant are working with (massiv, wide spread) violence. I don't know who is in the position to decide when that point has come. But one could argue that people invading the capitol is that point.(I don't think so) What I am really worried about, is that it seems like tech companies will have to make those decisions. In the end there will be individual persons, who make that decisons and that is very dangerous.

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago

I wonder why Mozilla even bothers with these kinds of posts. I doubt a single person in the world cares about getting political opinions from their web browser so these kinds of posts just dirty their image.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
Sponsor's opinion is what actually matters.
LegitShady 6y ago
It's even worse than that - it makes me less able to trust Mozilla because Mozilla wants to make sure they can help me decide what is true or not. That is definitely not Mozilla's job nor do they have that ability. It just tells me they're looking to help control the internet for corporations.

dartharva 6y ago

Well, Brave leadership isn't that subtle either. Here's Brendan getting salty over Gab's attempted fork of Brave: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118705815127347200 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118705815127347200. I guess we should simply ignore these political endorsements and only take the functional utility into account when choosing browsers.

BrendanEich 6y ago
Gab has not updated Dissenter in 10 months (Windows and Linux) or more than 13 months (macOS). Without backporting or merging up to current Brave, this leaves its users horribly vulnerable to unpatched but disclosed Chromium security bugs, including full remote code execution vulns. Don't use Dissenter. My "salty" tweet was prophetic.

eclat 6y ago

Wow. Did not expect that from Mozilla of all places. Really disappointed as I've been a die hard Firefox user for as long as I can remember in large part because of the commitment to a free, open internet and fundamental Liberal values like free speech.