7 ms·

Online Speech Is Now an Existential Question for Tech

31 points by prostoalex 6y ago

tlholaday 6y ago
chris poole offered a strategic answer to this question in 2010: https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo... terse: anonymity + ephemerality.
- gipp 6y ago
  And what a shining beacon for online communication the chans have been.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    I beleive you're saying this sarcastically, but I personally think this is quite true. Most modern memes grew in the morass that are the 'chans, as have a lot of beneficial movements. Now, with the good has come the questionable and outright bad. Q-anon being only the latest example. The chans are the modern equivalent of city parks with their soapboxes. There is both good and bad, because speech on the 'chans is almost completely free. And, IMO, that's a good thing. I firmly believe that civilization in general would benefit from more truly free spaces online. Free and anonymous speech is one of the cornerstones that the US was founded upon, after all.
    - tlholaday 6y ago
      Free, anonymous, and ephemeral.
    - tomatotomato37 6y ago
      The surviving 'chans aren't really that free speech though, they just happen to take a laissez-faire stance on slurs; if you go post spam, illegal media, or plans to commit a public atrocity you're still going to get banned without a second thought. Hell, even stupid shit like using certain meme words or posting cartoon horses will still get you kicked out of a lot of the boards. Not to say any of that's a bad thing; in fact I'll say it's why the site is more of a culture factory than both the mainstreams Twitter/Reddit types and the alternatve Gab/Parler/whatevers
  - chmod775 6y ago
    I'll take them over echo-chambers where extremist left/right stupidity can fester unchecked any day.
  - pochamago 6y ago
    It's really wonderful not having any anxiety about what you're posting being tied to some kind of identity you have to maintain
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Ironically “the Chan’s” had a better pulse of America than the NYTs.
barbacoa 6y ago
" Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control. " This is a passage from the Unabomber's manifesto he wrote back in the 1990s. Turned out to be disturbingly prophetic.
- rapnie 6y ago
  Might as well replace with "extremists on the fringe" and "extremists in control" be they on the left or right side of the divide.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Right, there's nothing prophetic about this. Extremists on both the right and the left take extreme positions and are prepared to take extreme measures. It goes with the territory. I also don't think the right and left axis is misleading. It's up to the majority on right and left to realise they generally have more in common with the majority on the 'other' side than they have with the extremists on 'their' side.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  Since this article doesn’t seem to be a WSJ Op Ed, it may actually turn out to be more balanced than the terrorist’s ramblings. Perhaps someone who pays for the WSJ can weigh in.
jancsika 6y ago
I'm curious about any reading material that illuminates the relationship between these two things: 1. healthy amount of diversity and competition among a large number of publishers 2. robustness of free speech protections My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections. But it's just speculation so I'd like some background reading on the topic.
- Animats 6y ago
  My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections. It's certainly worse if a small number of providers have a monopoly. The European Union uses, as a rule of thumb, that there have to be four independent alternatives in a market for price competition to work. That may also be a useful guide for free expression. Book publishers now have a choke point - Amazon. That's a monopsony problem, where there's one dominant buyer. When there were many publishers and many bookstores, there was no central choke point. That's over.
wwww4all 6y ago
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Big Establishment, Big Government, Big Business, Big Media, Big Tech. Big Fascists. It doesn’t matter if it’s left wing or right wing. Both are now controlled by Big establishment elites and oligarchs.
systemvoltage 6y ago
One of the most chilling effects of Tech x Group Thinking is mob justice and unguarded, unchecked, supression and oppression of those who present contrary views. Twitter is a cesspool of this since it provides a warm incubation chamber with ability to block those who challenge. It resonates uncontrollably as the ripples spread within hours. Not enough time for the press or institutional assessment. Take an example of Timrit Gibru[1]. Whether you agree or not, she seems to be completely and utterly glued to Twitter. She posts so frequent, at the time of writing this post, her last tweet was 5 minutes old. She tweets every few minutes in her waking hours. Vile, contemptful tweets of her agenda and rallying up support for her unchallenged arguments. Over 100k followers. These people are out there to aggressively spread their influence bypassing press, bypassing their counter parts and ramming through without challenge. I am afraid, this is going to get worse unless we institutionalize professional journalism again, with deep analysis of the issues and present both sides of the view, and allow public comments. The society is like putty, it can be shaped and formed by those in power, we've just provided them with a massive Tech steamroller that flattens any bumps. I understand Parler and other fringe social media platforms and how they can be damaging to the society. I am equally concerned of this slow motion political-correctness-mob-justice culture that will be impossible to evade. I want to go back to old days to be honest. Handing over press amplification to individuals is a shit idea. I want proper institutions and journals to present content in long form with citations of their sources. Imagine if we get rid of Science journals and just let researchers tweet their experimental results. No one challenging their claims, no peer review, nothing. That's what press has become now-a-days. [1] https://twitter.com/timnitgebru https://twitter.com/timnitgebru
Animats 6y ago
We should use the term "censorship", not "moderation", where one party prevents another from saying something. Calling it "moderation" is an attempt to sugar-coat censorship. Arguably, if a private company is pressured to censor by a government, their censorship actions becomes state action. First Amendment protections may apply in the US. This is an unresolved area in US law. It's come up where cities have outsourced management of some public spaces such as parks and plazas, and the outsourcing company prohibited protests.[1] Worth seeing: "Censored", an official U.S. Government training cartoon from WWII. Written by "Dr. Seuss", by the way.[2] In that era, censorship was made very explicit. Letters didn't just disappear. They had sections cut out and were stamped "Opened by Censor". Maybe if you put your name on it, you should be able to say it without prior restraint. Most of the serious problems come from anonymous speech. [1] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-detroit-agree-interim-rules-protect-free-speech-public-parks https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-detroit-agree-inter... [2] https://catalog.archives.gov/id/35864 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/35864
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  Question for you: do you have an example of something that most people on this message board might class as moderation, but which you wouldn’t call censorship?
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  I guess I’m just ok with censorship in a lot of situations. Perhaps if online discussion and therefore (by your standard) censorship were more decentralised then it would be more fair but it seems people don’t want something decentralised.

31 points by prostoalex 6y ago

chris poole offered a strategic answer to this question in 2010: https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo... terse: anonymity + ephemerality.

gipp 6y ago
And what a shining beacon for online communication the chans have been.
- falcolas 6y ago
  I beleive you're saying this sarcastically, but I personally think this is quite true. Most modern memes grew in the morass that are the 'chans, as have a lot of beneficial movements. Now, with the good has come the questionable and outright bad. Q-anon being only the latest example. The chans are the modern equivalent of city parks with their soapboxes. There is both good and bad, because speech on the 'chans is almost completely free. And, IMO, that's a good thing. I firmly believe that civilization in general would benefit from more truly free spaces online. Free and anonymous speech is one of the cornerstones that the US was founded upon, after all.
  - tlholaday 6y ago
    Free, anonymous, and ephemeral.
  - tomatotomato37 6y ago
    The surviving 'chans aren't really that free speech though, they just happen to take a laissez-faire stance on slurs; if you go post spam, illegal media, or plans to commit a public atrocity you're still going to get banned without a second thought. Hell, even stupid shit like using certain meme words or posting cartoon horses will still get you kicked out of a lot of the boards. Not to say any of that's a bad thing; in fact I'll say it's why the site is more of a culture factory than both the mainstreams Twitter/Reddit types and the alternatve Gab/Parler/whatevers
- chmod775 6y ago
  I'll take them over echo-chambers where extremist left/right stupidity can fester unchecked any day.
- pochamago 6y ago
  It's really wonderful not having any anxiety about what you're posting being tied to some kind of identity you have to maintain
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Ironically “the Chan’s” had a better pulse of America than the NYTs.

barbacoa 6y ago

" Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control. " This is a passage from the Unabomber's manifesto he wrote back in the 1990s. Turned out to be disturbingly prophetic.

rapnie 6y ago
Might as well replace with "extremists on the fringe" and "extremists in control" be they on the left or right side of the divide.
- simonh 6y ago
  Right, there's nothing prophetic about this. Extremists on both the right and the left take extreme positions and are prepared to take extreme measures. It goes with the territory. I also don't think the right and left axis is misleading. It's up to the majority on right and left to realise they generally have more in common with the majority on the 'other' side than they have with the extremists on 'their' side.
WalterGR 6y ago
Since this article doesn’t seem to be a WSJ Op Ed, it may actually turn out to be more balanced than the terrorist’s ramblings. Perhaps someone who pays for the WSJ can weigh in.

jancsika 6y ago

I'm curious about any reading material that illuminates the relationship between these two things: 1. healthy amount of diversity and competition among a large number of publishers 2. robustness of free speech protections My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections. But it's just speculation so I'd like some background reading on the topic.

Animats 6y ago
My speculation is that the more competition there is among a large number of publishers, and the more diverse their reasons are for publishing, the harder it becomes for attackers to chip away at free speech protections. It's certainly worse if a small number of providers have a monopoly. The European Union uses, as a rule of thumb, that there have to be four independent alternatives in a market for price competition to work. That may also be a useful guide for free expression. Book publishers now have a choke point - Amazon. That's a monopsony problem, where there's one dominant buyer. When there were many publishers and many bookstores, there was no central choke point. That's over.

wwww4all 6y ago

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Big Establishment, Big Government, Big Business, Big Media, Big Tech. Big Fascists. It doesn’t matter if it’s left wing or right wing. Both are now controlled by Big establishment elites and oligarchs.

systemvoltage 6y ago

One of the most chilling effects of Tech x Group Thinking is mob justice and unguarded, unchecked, supression and oppression of those who present contrary views. Twitter is a cesspool of this since it provides a warm incubation chamber with ability to block those who challenge. It resonates uncontrollably as the ripples spread within hours. Not enough time for the press or institutional assessment. Take an example of Timrit Gibru[1]. Whether you agree or not, she seems to be completely and utterly glued to Twitter. She posts so frequent, at the time of writing this post, her last tweet was 5 minutes old. She tweets every few minutes in her waking hours. Vile, contemptful tweets of her agenda and rallying up support for her unchallenged arguments. Over 100k followers. These people are out there to aggressively spread their influence bypassing press, bypassing their counter parts and ramming through without challenge. I am afraid, this is going to get worse unless we institutionalize professional journalism again, with deep analysis of the issues and present both sides of the view, and allow public comments. The society is like putty, it can be shaped and formed by those in power, we've just provided them with a massive Tech steamroller that flattens any bumps. I understand Parler and other fringe social media platforms and how they can be damaging to the society. I am equally concerned of this slow motion political-correctness-mob-justice culture that will be impossible to evade. I want to go back to old days to be honest. Handing over press amplification to individuals is a shit idea. I want proper institutions and journals to present content in long form with citations of their sources. Imagine if we get rid of Science journals and just let researchers tweet their experimental results. No one challenging their claims, no peer review, nothing. That's what press has become now-a-days. [1] https://twitter.com/timnitgebru https://twitter.com/timnitgebru

Animats 6y ago

We should use the term "censorship", not "moderation", where one party prevents another from saying something. Calling it "moderation" is an attempt to sugar-coat censorship. Arguably, if a private company is pressured to censor by a government, their censorship actions becomes state action. First Amendment protections may apply in the US. This is an unresolved area in US law. It's come up where cities have outsourced management of some public spaces such as parks and plazas, and the outsourcing company prohibited protests.[1] Worth seeing: "Censored", an official U.S. Government training cartoon from WWII. Written by "Dr. Seuss", by the way.[2] In that era, censorship was made very explicit. Letters didn't just disappear. They had sections cut out and were stamped "Opened by Censor". Maybe if you put your name on it, you should be able to say it without prior restraint. Most of the serious problems come from anonymous speech. [1] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-detroit-agree-interim-rules-protect-free-speech-public-parks https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-detroit-agree-inter... [2] https://catalog.archives.gov/id/35864 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/35864

dan-robertson 6y ago
Question for you: do you have an example of something that most people on this message board might class as moderation, but which you wouldn’t call censorship?
dan-robertson 6y ago
I guess I’m just ok with censorship in a lot of situations. Perhaps if online discussion and therefore (by your standard) censorship were more decentralised then it would be more fair but it seems people don’t want something decentralised.