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Making them smaller will make them more likely to resist government censorship how exactly?

username90 5y ago
Being large just makes you a large target, smaller things like HN wont get targeted since governments lack the capacity to handle that many things. And being large doesn't offer much protection to resist once targeted either, no matter how large they are they wont sacrifice significant revenue for moral reasons.
foolinaround 5y ago
twitter is attacked exactly because they are the only voice out there. As an example, There are several newspapers in India, which still continue to post opinions critical of the government. There is a system of courts still, sort of working, and would step in if things got too bad.
munk-a 5y ago
A single shut down of a platform can be written off as "for the children" or some other character assassination BS. When you start repeatedly attacking platforms that's when you get the moderates of your country to start taking umbridge. I think a good parallel might be TikTok in the US, Trump was exploring banning the platform toward the end of his term without a particularly large pushback from the general populace (though a whole bunch of pushback from tech literate folks). You can use excuses like that a time or two without raising too many eyebrows, but once it becomes a pattern people get angry. Having more smaller platforms makes it harder to effectively accomplish any censorship since your few shutdown freebies won't significantly impact the ability for political opponents to communicate with the public.
michaelmrose 5y ago
They don't want them smaller they want their autonomy not their sized reduced. Specifically they cling to the idea that social media ought to be a common carrier as obliged to carry their views as that of their detractors. If you look at the actual speech that is being disincentivized this looks objectively terrible in our present context.
- foolinaround 5y ago
  i dont know who you are speaking for, but agreed that the need for reduced autonomy for any agency of that size. In general, conservatives believe in markets, and if they happen to grow to a particular size with these constraints, so be it. -- > If you look at the actual speech that is being disincentivized this looks objectively terrible in our present context. I'll give one example to see what the reaction ought to be. A private citizen makes an otherwise legal speech at a political meeting - and youtube and all media wipe it out of the internet last week. Regardless of the private citizen being Trump and the party being Republicans, a liberal ( as the word used to mean before) should have been up against such censorship. 'Moderation' does not come into play in this example, but there is nothing specific to moderate really in what is essentially a semi-private meeting of free people.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    A semi private meeting would be held on hardware that you control which is entirely feasible.

Being large just makes you a large target, smaller things like HN wont get targeted since governments lack the capacity to handle that many things. And being large doesn't offer much protection to resist once targeted either, no matter how large they are they wont sacrifice significant revenue for moral reasons.

foolinaround 5y ago

twitter is attacked exactly because they are the only voice out there. As an example, There are several newspapers in India, which still continue to post opinions critical of the government. There is a system of courts still, sort of working, and would step in if things got too bad.

munk-a 5y ago

A single shut down of a platform can be written off as "for the children" or some other character assassination BS. When you start repeatedly attacking platforms that's when you get the moderates of your country to start taking umbridge. I think a good parallel might be TikTok in the US, Trump was exploring banning the platform toward the end of his term without a particularly large pushback from the general populace (though a whole bunch of pushback from tech literate folks). You can use excuses like that a time or two without raising too many eyebrows, but once it becomes a pattern people get angry. Having more smaller platforms makes it harder to effectively accomplish any censorship since your few shutdown freebies won't significantly impact the ability for political opponents to communicate with the public.

michaelmrose 5y ago

They don't want them smaller they want their autonomy not their sized reduced. Specifically they cling to the idea that social media ought to be a common carrier as obliged to carry their views as that of their detractors. If you look at the actual speech that is being disincentivized this looks objectively terrible in our present context.

foolinaround 5y ago
i dont know who you are speaking for, but agreed that the need for reduced autonomy for any agency of that size. In general, conservatives believe in markets, and if they happen to grow to a particular size with these constraints, so be it. -- > If you look at the actual speech that is being disincentivized this looks objectively terrible in our present context. I'll give one example to see what the reaction ought to be. A private citizen makes an otherwise legal speech at a political meeting - and youtube and all media wipe it out of the internet last week. Regardless of the private citizen being Trump and the party being Republicans, a liberal ( as the word used to mean before) should have been up against such censorship. 'Moderation' does not come into play in this example, but there is nothing specific to moderate really in what is essentially a semi-private meeting of free people.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  A semi private meeting would be held on hardware that you control which is entirely feasible.