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I got hit by the comment rate limiter earlier. I agree that downvoting someone on HN is not censorship. What I meant is the biases of the people writing and t

I got hit by the comment rate limiter earlier. I agree that downvoting someone on HN is not censorship. What I meant is the biases of the people writing and training the ranking / flagging algorithms bleeds through into the implementation. Similar to how there have been stories that facial recognition tools only recognize white people. I don't know that it's a great argument or analogy. I mainly was trying to point out that when you escalate from individuals downranking items to individuals writing algorithms that have similar built in biases, then you end up with something very near censorship, even if it isn't intentional. I believe that's really the whole argument behind "system discrimination", maybe individuals aren't overtly discrimination, but the system is built up in such a way that the result is discrimination. You can agree or not, but it's worth considering, and I'd guess most people could be convinced of it in one context or another.

danShumway 5y ago
Oh definitely, systemic bias in general is a thing, and I think that as certain industries get more insular there are more opportunities for that to happen, whether it's intentional or not. Tech is not immune to that, socially or politically. But the idea of "communities shouldn't moderate themselves", or what the GOP is proposing, which is that the government should decide how communities are allowed to moderate themselves -- that is in my opinion is just really contrary to the ideal of free speech. I think that there's a risk of confusing the dangers of disproportionate and centralized power (which is a real problem) with the idea of moderation or criticism or freedom of association in general, which are themselves fundamental parts of free speech. So I just think that we need to be very careful and precise about exactly what is meant by a claim that companies like Facebook or Visa are threats to free speech. I do encourage people and communities to try and examine their unconscious bias and how that affects the systems that they build, I think that's important for everyone to do. But the proposals that are coming out of the GOP are doing a lot more than that, there's a difference between examining bias and direct intervention into how platforms are allowed to moderate.

danShumway 5y ago

Oh definitely, systemic bias in general is a thing, and I think that as certain industries get more insular there are more opportunities for that to happen, whether it's intentional or not. Tech is not immune to that, socially or politically. But the idea of "communities shouldn't moderate themselves", or what the GOP is proposing, which is that the government should decide how communities are allowed to moderate themselves -- that is in my opinion is just really contrary to the ideal of free speech. I think that there's a risk of confusing the dangers of disproportionate and centralized power (which is a real problem) with the idea of moderation or criticism or freedom of association in general, which are themselves fundamental parts of free speech. So I just think that we need to be very careful and precise about exactly what is meant by a claim that companies like Facebook or Visa are threats to free speech. I do encourage people and communities to try and examine their unconscious bias and how that affects the systems that they build, I think that's important for everyone to do. But the proposals that are coming out of the GOP are doing a lot more than that, there's a difference between examining bias and direct intervention into how platforms are allowed to moderate.