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> It's saying that deplatforming isn't the solution It's saying deplatforming is not going far enough to be the solution. And it advocates (among other things

by smsm42 6y ago

> It's saying that deplatforming isn't the solution It's saying deplatforming is not going far enough to be the solution. And it advocates (among other things) "amplifying factual voices", which for a browser platform can mean only one thing - abandoning neutrality and privileging certain type of content - one that the gatekeepers agree with and thus call "factual" - while excluding other types of content, that they disagree with and thus call "misleading". To remove all doubt, they bring Facebook - which exercises clear viewpoint-driven editorial control over the content, even if unconsistently, haphazardly and ineffectually - as an example of what they're looking for. For a browser platform, advocating such approach means they plan to install themselves as the gatekeepers of the Internet, choosing what information you are and aren't allowed to see. While once currently can route easily around Facebook censorship, once browsers join the game, it won't be so easy. And of course, for anybody who values unrestricted access to information as much as privacy, it is the reason to avoid using platforms that advocate such principles.

merlinscholz 6y ago
I could not have put it better myself. Once a browser gets political, you can bet for others to join them. And allowing a browser to control what articles/arguments you see is allowing the company behind the browser to control you politically. I think we can all agree this would not end well.
vesche 6y ago
First of all, I'll say that I _obviously_ don't want to live in some sort of Orwellian, Ministry of Truth, 1984-esque dystopia. However, I think there's an unnecessary amount of fearmongering going on currently about organizations pushing back against disinformation. There certainly is a disinformation problem and from a U.S. perspective it is quite obviously a foreign adversary and malicious actor problem. It seems that this Mozilla article is too vague, open-ended, and short to be processed correctly. I personally interpreted the article differently than you did, which doesn't mean either of us interpreted it incorrectly.
- smsm42 6y ago
  I'm sure you don't want to have minitrue. Just as I am sure most people who made Russian revolution didn't really intend to have Gulag, Joseph Stalin, Hungary of 1956 and Prague of 1968. These things however have certain logic of its own, and gatekeeping tends to unfold into the direction of minitrue. That's just the internal logic of the things - and we can see it unfolding right now. First it was promoting the rightthinkers, then demoting the wrongthinkers, then banning the wrongthinkers from a platform, then banning the wrongthinkers from all platforms, then banning all mentions of wrongthinkers, then banning services that allow wrongthinkers, then destroying all services that allow wrongthinkers... Pretty soon there's just no place where wrongthink can happen, and how it's different from minitrue? That it's a trillion-dollar corporation that is doing it, not the government? DO I really care? The result is the same.
lucideer 6y ago
> "amplifying factual voices", which for a browser platform can mean only one thing - abandoning neutrality and privileging certain type of content If you equate being factual with abandoning neutrality, you're not being political nor apolitical. That's just anti-intellectualism. > one that the gatekeepers agree with and thus call "factual" And the fact you're putting the word factual in scare-quotes only emphasises this further. Your comment then veers into some vague Facebook comparison which I frankly couldn't parse: I'm not sure if you're making out that Facebook is benign or not?
- smsm42 6y ago
  It's not "being factual". It's you forcing me to accept your definition of "factual". That's the crux of the question - it's no longer my choice, the gatekeeper chooses for me what is "fact" and what is not, and I have no option of applying my own intellect and make my own choice - the choice is made for me, the conclusions are prepared in advance for me and the information is pre-filtered and pre-arranged to push me into accepting whatever vision of the world the gatekeeper privileges. I don't have an option to even know there exists something outside of gatekeeper's filter, let alone build my own filter according to my own preferences. That's why the quotes are there - because it's literally what the quotes are for, to emphasize it's not my definition and not may decision - it's gatekeeper's, and I have no control and no input on it. If you think eating up pre-filtered and pre-digested information is "intellectualism", you definition of it is very different than mine. > you're making out that Facebook is benign or not? That's what using pre-digested information does for you - you become unable to parse things that aren't pre-digested. I will help you to make it clear - Facebook is evil, but the major point is not whether it's evil or not, but the role of information gatekeeper that it performs. Applied to a browser platform, this approach is dangerous and unacceptable to anybody who values their own intellect and is not scared of actually using it once in a while instead of outsourcing this function to a gatekeeper body.
  - lucideer 6y ago
    > It's you forcing me to accept your definition of "factual" Do you have a link to this definition that doesn't match your own? I'd be curious to see varying definitions of "factual"; it might make this issue easier to discuss. > it's no longer my choice, the gatekeeper chooses for me what is "fact" and what is not, and I have no option of applying my own intellect and make my own choice - the choice is made for me, the conclusions are prepared in advance for me and the information is pre-filtered and pre-arranged to push me into accepting whatever vision of the world the gatekeeper privileges You use two words here: "pre-filtered" and "pre-arranged" Pre-filtering is not what's been proposed in the article. We've already covered that above, so lets not reiterate... any implied pre-filtering here is imagined. Pre-arrangement is the world we live in and the very definition of the modern internet. What's been proposed is to introduce an improvement to how things are pre-arranged. I'd love to live in your utopia where we have the time to read everything in Google's index one-by-one and select which ones we value individually, but here in the real world, things are pre-arranged. This is about trying to find the best way to ensure that that pre-arrangement is not horribly skewed and corrupt.

by smsm42 6y ago

merlinscholz 6y ago

I could not have put it better myself. Once a browser gets political, you can bet for others to join them. And allowing a browser to control what articles/arguments you see is allowing the company behind the browser to control you politically. I think we can all agree this would not end well.

vesche 6y ago

First of all, I'll say that I _obviously_ don't want to live in some sort of Orwellian, Ministry of Truth, 1984-esque dystopia. However, I think there's an unnecessary amount of fearmongering going on currently about organizations pushing back against disinformation. There certainly is a disinformation problem and from a U.S. perspective it is quite obviously a foreign adversary and malicious actor problem. It seems that this Mozilla article is too vague, open-ended, and short to be processed correctly. I personally interpreted the article differently than you did, which doesn't mean either of us interpreted it incorrectly.

smsm42 6y ago
I'm sure you don't want to have minitrue. Just as I am sure most people who made Russian revolution didn't really intend to have Gulag, Joseph Stalin, Hungary of 1956 and Prague of 1968. These things however have certain logic of its own, and gatekeeping tends to unfold into the direction of minitrue. That's just the internal logic of the things - and we can see it unfolding right now. First it was promoting the rightthinkers, then demoting the wrongthinkers, then banning the wrongthinkers from a platform, then banning the wrongthinkers from all platforms, then banning all mentions of wrongthinkers, then banning services that allow wrongthinkers, then destroying all services that allow wrongthinkers... Pretty soon there's just no place where wrongthink can happen, and how it's different from minitrue? That it's a trillion-dollar corporation that is doing it, not the government? DO I really care? The result is the same.

lucideer 6y ago

> "amplifying factual voices", which for a browser platform can mean only one thing - abandoning neutrality and privileging certain type of content If you equate being factual with abandoning neutrality, you're not being political nor apolitical. That's just anti-intellectualism. > one that the gatekeepers agree with and thus call "factual" And the fact you're putting the word factual in scare-quotes only emphasises this further. Your comment then veers into some vague Facebook comparison which I frankly couldn't parse: I'm not sure if you're making out that Facebook is benign or not?

smsm42 6y ago
It's not "being factual". It's you forcing me to accept your definition of "factual". That's the crux of the question - it's no longer my choice, the gatekeeper chooses for me what is "fact" and what is not, and I have no option of applying my own intellect and make my own choice - the choice is made for me, the conclusions are prepared in advance for me and the information is pre-filtered and pre-arranged to push me into accepting whatever vision of the world the gatekeeper privileges. I don't have an option to even know there exists something outside of gatekeeper's filter, let alone build my own filter according to my own preferences. That's why the quotes are there - because it's literally what the quotes are for, to emphasize it's not my definition and not may decision - it's gatekeeper's, and I have no control and no input on it. If you think eating up pre-filtered and pre-digested information is "intellectualism", you definition of it is very different than mine. > you're making out that Facebook is benign or not? That's what using pre-digested information does for you - you become unable to parse things that aren't pre-digested. I will help you to make it clear - Facebook is evil, but the major point is not whether it's evil or not, but the role of information gatekeeper that it performs. Applied to a browser platform, this approach is dangerous and unacceptable to anybody who values their own intellect and is not scared of actually using it once in a while instead of outsourcing this function to a gatekeeper body.
- lucideer 6y ago
  > It's you forcing me to accept your definition of "factual" Do you have a link to this definition that doesn't match your own? I'd be curious to see varying definitions of "factual"; it might make this issue easier to discuss. > it's no longer my choice, the gatekeeper chooses for me what is "fact" and what is not, and I have no option of applying my own intellect and make my own choice - the choice is made for me, the conclusions are prepared in advance for me and the information is pre-filtered and pre-arranged to push me into accepting whatever vision of the world the gatekeeper privileges You use two words here: "pre-filtered" and "pre-arranged" Pre-filtering is not what's been proposed in the article. We've already covered that above, so lets not reiterate... any implied pre-filtering here is imagined. Pre-arrangement is the world we live in and the very definition of the modern internet. What's been proposed is to introduce an improvement to how things are pre-arranged. I'd love to live in your utopia where we have the time to read everything in Google's index one-by-one and select which ones we value individually, but here in the real world, things are pre-arranged. This is about trying to find the best way to ensure that that pre-arrangement is not horribly skewed and corrupt.