18 ms·

Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse

• trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  There was another submission a few minutes ago in the same light. It linked to an article about how Big Tech companies are censoring doctors and decide what is accurate medical information. It was removed.
  • mberning 5y ago
    Maybe it was flagged to death. Maybe it will be back. All I know is when these type of stories come out two things are assured. 1) Shenanigans do take place. 2) The powers that be definitely don’t like it if you notice and talk about these shenanigans.
  • StuntPope 5y ago
    This one will be flagged any second.
  • aaronchall 5y ago
    And now so has this one.
  • dang 5y ago
    Just to be clear, when you see [flagged] on a submission it means that users flagged it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
    • aaronchall 5y ago
      I don't see [flagged] anywhere, though, dan?
      • gpm 5y ago
        Turn on showdead in your settings.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • smileypete 5y ago
    I emailed dang and he kindly unflagged it on request, but it got flagged again soon after. Maybe he can permanently unflag it? He also said: 'I've unkilled it so you can respond now. It's not really on topic for HN though. Too much of a provocative opinion piece and not enough significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). That guarantees a flamewar, which we're trying to avoid on HN.' I thought it was worth posting because it was written back in August 2020, so was quite prescient.
• rvz 5y ago
  Soon, your devices, smartphones, laptops and watches are going to have a political opinion. They are the little brothers reporting your 'thinking' to big brother to see if they will ban you or not.
  • slowmovintarget 5y ago
    Fountain pens and notebooks, fountain pens and notebooks.
• jasonjayr 5y ago
  This is rehashing the old "common carrier" debate again, isn't it? Which of these are the common carriers: Physical wire/connectivity provider? ISP? Tier1 ISPs? Social media sites connecting messages with other folks? Where is the line drawn, and what responsibility does each level have?
  • jeffbee 5y ago
    You can't use the common carrier argument to force someone to be a common carrier. If you pick and choose your clients based on policy you are by definition not a common carrier. Mailchimp is a private carrier. They choose what to carry.
    • jasonjayr 5y ago
      Agreed -- but a lot of social media sites say "we just connect people" and then turn around and are forced to play moderator so things don't burn out of control...
      • dane-pgp 5y ago
        I don't know why social media companies haven't tried letting users opt out of different categories of censorship. Presumably every user appreciates the anti-spam filtering these sites do, and anti-scam/phishing, but there should be a separate checkbox (ticked by default) for "Remove misinformation about covid/vaccines", and one for "Remove misinformation claiming the election was stolen", etc. Then the social media companies can say to governments "If you would like all users in your jurisdiction to be unable to opt out from these categories, please pass a law requiring us to hardcode these settings for them, and we'll update our UIs to tell users why they can't opt out." Better yet, the social media companies should say to governments "Please provide your own list of which posts are misinformation, and we'll make sure that users see a blank page saying 'Your government has deemed this post to be misinformation' instead of the content they want".
        • myrryr 5y ago
• echelon 5y ago
  It'd be nice if the plumbing worked together. I'd like to be able to export data easily, run my own programs easily, write software that doesn't get taxed or asked to be resubmitted (since when did Microsoft charge for Windows app development?) Every company purports to be for you, but it's a big toothy grinned lie. Some of them sell you, others sell you out. It also sucks that these companies surface the worst of humanity to drive engagement. Are people really this terrible? Tech started to sour in 2005.
  • kfprt 5y ago
    This is underrated. It should absolutely be a right to leave the walled garden and take your data with you.
• kfprt 5y ago
  Lately being on the internet is feeling more like Junta era Argentina with content disappearing left and right.
  • jareklupinski 5y ago
    youtube-dl is the only proof I have that some of my favorite content ever actually existed
    • kfprt 5y ago
      For me it's the realization that I don't even know what I lost. I just have lists of dead URL's.
      • jareklupinski 5y ago
        modern day Poe
  • rejectedandsad 5y ago
    I agree but it’s exceedingly rare that this is because of political reasons - usually, it’s because of music rights issues.
    • kfprt 5y ago
      I guess it depends on how you define 'political'. Almost all censorship is related to politics in one way or another. The cycle is X minority is mad and gets a news article written and then there's a new wave of disappearances. Really anything at all controversial. Often it's something not child friendly, which ignores the mass of the internet that is also not taken down for this. If you have kids do you really want their content moderation farmed out to some megacorp?
• varelse 5y ago
  I remain confused as to why anyone thinks they have unlimited first amendment rights on social media. It sounds a lot like thinking one has first amendment rights at a private employer. Let's clear this up right now. TLDR: you don't unless you explicitly do. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/setting-the-record-straight-on-free-4092972/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/setting-the-record-straigh... Edit: keep bringing those freethinker(tm) downvotes. It won't change the law one bit, but I guess it gives good feels. I mean you could also try starting your own social media network that absolutely guarantees first amendment rights, but so far only hilarity has ensued from that premise along the lines of tragedy plus time equals comedy. You could be the first one to prove them all wrong. What's stopping you? Or if that's too hard, why don't you all apply to work at Facebook and Twitter? Then you can work your way up the ladder until you can depose Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. And on the first day of your reign of your new empire you can proclaim to all shareholders and employees that your social media site is entirely unregulated. Otherwise WTH should these companies care about you? You won't build anything and you won't do the work to change the path of something already built.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • Turing_Machine 5y ago
    > Edit: keep bringing those freethinker(tm) downvotes Sauce. Goose. Edit: Maybe you should start your own tech news site. Or if that's too hard, why don't you apply to work at YC and work your way up to a position where you control the moderation for this site? Once again: Sauce. Goose.
    • varelse 5y ago
      You're assuming I'm not okay with the content moderation of Hacker News. You should never assume. If anything you should jump with joy at the rights of people who disagree with this article to flag it and at your right to register discontent without any substantive argument as to why you are registering your discontent with but a simple down vote. That's freedom of speech in action! And while my tone here is sarcastic, I believe sincerely that this moderation system is currently superior to any of the ham fisted bad AI deployed on either of the two leading social media sites.
• jeffbee 5y ago
  These guys are parody-proof. "In my blog which is indexed by Google and Microsoft I reiterate the arguments from my book, available on Amazon, about how big tech is deplatforming me."
  • CarelessExpert 5y ago
    It's honestly deeply comical. It's a classic example of wanting to have both free speech and freedom from consequences. It seems to me the religion of capitalism has a solve, here, and it's called competition. If they really believe in freedom, they should support the freedom of Twitter to kick them off the platform, and these folks have the freedom to find another platform elsewhere. But, of course, freedom isn't what these people are after. They just want to manufacture a different kind of consent.
  • voidnullnil 5y ago
    It's really cringe. I feel like we'd all be on something like Freenet right now not giving a shit about some company's web hosting server if Napster wasn't intervened.
• g42gregory 5y ago
  I think this article spot-on. In my opinion, there is very little (but not zero) actual misinformation on the Internet. Most of what we call “misinformation” is an influence campaign by one side, which is thoroughly disliked by the opposing side. When Big Tech labels something “misinformation” they are essentially taking one side or the other on the issue at hand.
  • ordinaryradical 5y ago
    > there is very little (but not zero) actual misinformation on the Internet. It’s not the amount to take issue with but the spread of its influence. Anti-vaccine ideology was given a platform by big tech and now we have an endemic disease because folks believe that nonsense and let it hold sway over their medical decisions. Edit: for folks voting this down I’d be interested in a rebuttal or at least an explanation of how this doesn’t add to the conversation. I try to be a good citizen here and thought I was engaging in good faith.
    • Turing_Machine 5y ago
      You don't get to argue that it should be permissible to shut down people's opinions and then complain when your own opinions get shut down.
      • guscost 5y ago
        Especially when in the latter case, it happened organically.
    • mancerayder 5y ago
      > Edit: for folks voting this down I’d be interested in a rebuttal or at least an explanation of how this doesn’t add to the conversation. I try to be a good citizen here and thought I was engaging in good faith "Misinformation", someone might say, and we wouldn't have to give you any justification. No freedom from consequences, they say.
    • __blockcipher__ 5y ago
• zozbot234 5y ago
  Mailchimp is "big tech" now? Can't these folks just throw a RSS feed together (hosted on the cheapest static webhost around) and tell people to subscribe to it? This is a big fat nothingburger if I ever saw one.
  • Turing_Machine 5y ago
    Because to a first approximation everyone understands, and can get, email, while maybe 5% of the population, if that, understand RSS feeds. My 80 year old aunt can read email. While I'm sure I could teach her to use RSS feeds, it would not be a task I would look foward to. And she has me. Most people don't have me, or anyone like me (or, likely, you, or the majority of other users of this site). What you're saying is roughly equivalent to "So what if they can't use the telephone or television? Can't these folks just use Morse code?"
    • zozbot234 5y ago
      > Because to a first approximation everyone understands, and can get, email, while maybe 5% of the population, if that, understand RSS feeds. At some point in history, 5% or less of the population understood email. RSS feeds are not inherently more complex than email, in fact they're quite a bit simpler. (And even if you don't grok RSS feeds, you'll probably grok a weblog; RSS is only relevant here because it gives the exact same affordances as something like a Mailchimp newsletter, even though it works differently under the hood.)
      • Turing_Machine 5y ago
        Other than not coming preinstalled on every operating system and having reply capability, you mean?
    • tzs 5y ago
      Or they could use email but via someone other than Mailchimp, such as ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Sendinblue, GetResponse, Moosend, EngageBay, Omnisend, Zoho, Mailjet, ConvertKit, Benchmark, AWeber, HubSpot, Constant Contact, DotDigital, Campaign Monitor, Sender, SendPulse, Klaviyo, Jilt, Autopilot, Drip, Keap, and probably many others. Email is not like, say, Facebook where to reach someone on Facebook you need to send via Facebook. How you send email is largely irrelevant as long as you pick a provider that doesn't send so much spam that their outgoing mail gets blocked.
• yssrnjm 5y ago
  I have been told to disagree with this post. Therefore I disagree with this post.
• jsnell 5y ago
  There's some chutzpah in an anti-vaxxer pushing fraudulent Covid miracle cures and invoking Semmelweis in the very same post.
  • StuntPope 5y ago
    Where is the anti-vax material in that post?
    • PhasmaFelis 5y ago
      The part where he says that being snarky to vaccine deniers is literally just as bad as racism. > “Covidiots”, “Deniers” these are not rational counter-arguments, they’re slurs. Anybody employing them is not engaging in discourse but rather bigotry and prejudice. This is as inexcusable as racism. Over the past few years many have been challenged to examine their own biases and privilege, in certain contexts for perfectly valid reasons. Anybody engaging in this type of othering toward skeptics and contrarians lacks self-awareness and empathy to the same degree as a racist.
      • robertlagrant 5y ago
        He didn't say they're as bad as racism. Inexcusable is not a synonym for bad.
        • PhasmaFelis 5y ago
          He uses the words "slur", "bigotry and prejudice", "as inexcusable as racism", and "lacks self-awareness and empathy to the same degree as a racist". Does that seem any more reasonable and rational than "as bad as racism"? I could even get behind the basic idea that ad hominem attacks are always bad, except that he's already launched an ad hominem attack against what he assumes are "purple-haired Millennials with nose hoops and personal pronoun mood-rings" in the same article! I don't see how to read this as anything but "snarky insults are reprehensible when they happen to me and totally justified when I throw them at someone else."
• grzm 5y ago
  The title's been editorialized: Actual title is "When dissent is misinformation, fallacies become facts"
  • epoxyhockey 5y ago
    I think the title is distasteful, but the title tag of the article matches the hn title and is also the first title displayed above the fold (on a mobile browser, at least).
    • grzm 5y ago
      Good catch.
• CarelessExpert 5y ago
  > These companies think they’re the patricians of internet discourse. The reality is they’re the plumbing. That was true until they started promoting and demoting content in order to drive engagement and juice their ad revenues. Big tech is not plumbing. The minute Facebook invented the news feed they became editors and content promoters. If they really want to just be plumbing, they can shut down their algorithms any time. As an aside, I picked on that part of the post because the rest of it quickly pivots away from tech and reads as a self-promoting, semi-unhinged rant about covid that reads like the drunken ramblings of Q adjacent anarcho-libertarian, complete with the big hits: references to the "Davos elite", hydrochloroquine, ivermectin, Evil Dr. Fauci, etc, etc. Which reminds me, I should probably flag this post given it's relevance to HN is glancing at best...
  • stale2002 5y ago
    > The minute Facebook invented the news feed they became editors and content promoters. Ok. If they are editors and publishers then perhaps the law should change so that should be treated like other content editors that exist already. We could do this by treating them legally equal to things like the New York Times, with all the legal responsibilities, freedoms, and liabilities that such a thing entails. And these companies that don't want to be treated like editors, then we could create new provisions in the law, that give them protections if they act like how the phone company acts.
• StuntPope 5y ago
  lol. Flagged.
• la6471 5y ago
  That started when politicians shifted their responsibilities of governance and policy making to private entities to cover for their inefficiencies and their vote bank politics.
  • ergocoder 5y ago
    Not only politicians. A lot of people support this. Regarding trump being banned: "Twitter can ban whomever they want". We are now in a screaming match. Who can scream at the twitter exec louder win.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  But power expands until it fills the possibility space
• zug_zug 5y ago
  I'm also gonna flag this, after careful deliberation. I'm gonna leave a comment, because I'm not the shadow powers that be, I'm just a dude who thinks this is an incohesive rambling that's a waste of everybody's time and, despite the promising title, ultimately rehashed flame-baity non-tech non-news.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • evrydayhustling 5y ago
    Yep, another day, another random dude who considers himself an expert on what freedom is, what tech platforms are, and the dangers of private businesses refusing to amplify his friends. Even a plumber will refuse to route your sewage back to the public water main...
  • tzs 5y ago
    It was kind of amusing that in his section giving examples of what he said were various logical fallacies in the "vast majority of all media narrative around COVID-19" he committed several of those same fallacies, plus a few more.
    • bena 5y ago
      It would be funnier if it weren't so common. Everything is a cudgel to people like him. Fallacies exist, not to introspect on one's own arguments, but to assail arguments you disagree with. Data exists only so long as it supports your conclusion and any data to the contrary or supports other conclusions is wrong. Never defend, always attack.
• mcint 5y ago
  Odd critique coming from the head of a DNS company, that could easily offer a competitive service with MailChimp. The obsession with class (in the title, and content) and misunderstood genius reads more like within-class squabble than an argument for a different order. I did some freelance work helping someone worried about Google censorship move their services to more independent alternatives, including EasyDNS. This post makes a lot more sense to me as signaling, in that respect.
  • freedomben 5y ago
    > Odd critique coming from the head of a DNS company, that could easily offer a competitive service with MailChimp. I think you missed the author's point. His point is not that someone needs to start a competing service. his point is that the feel that tech companies are patricians rather than plumbers is widespread and common place.
• achenatx 5y ago
  Since the beginning of forums there have been trolls and misinformation. There has always been the option to ignore, either by not replying or by blocking an offender from their view. However my experience has been that 1) people are almost universally incapable of ignoring trolls. 2) it is somehow almost impossible for people to stomach banning a troll knowing the troll is still posting. The closest system that seems to work is for people to downvote whatever it is they dont like and for that to cause posts to have lower priority.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• polskibus 5y ago
  Exactly, tech giants are now a natural monopoly, which means we should force them to provide more utility than they want to give in exchange for tolerating their privilege. Either that or break them up.
  • robertlagrant 5y ago
    MailChimp is not a tech titan.
• gpsx 5y ago
  Should big internet companies by plumbing and not exert control over content on their system? As much as it annoys me some of the things Google, for example, does exercising the power they have, it does have the right to control what is on there, to some extent. As I interpret it, I think the OP is saying it is not right to censure, but I am not sure how this applies to a private company and content on their own system. I agree a big company shouldn't have _complete_ power to control content on their site for reasons the OP says because at some point this becomes a danger to society. At the same time it is a danger to society to freely let users promote whatever content they want, for the same reasons. For all the examples or people who have been persecuted (or whatever word would fit better) for saying the "truth", like scientist who said the earth was not at the center of the universe, there are countless others who, for the better, were quieted from issueing harmful information. The OP says people should be taught a lesson in critical thinking, but I don't think this is a problem. I think most people are pretty logical, they are just dealing with misinformation, no matter what "side" they are on. So this is a real problem. It is good the OP raises these questions, but I don't think it has the solution.
• toiletaccount 5y ago
  sometimes I wonder how people and politicians would react to a user-friendly decentralized and distributed social network with strong crypto in the right places and no hierarchy. if such a thing were ever made, it would be very difficult to monitor or moderate.
  • creato 5y ago
    It also sounds difficult to curate (just another kind of moderation), and much of the success of the current social media heavyweights is due to their curation.
    • grishka 5y ago
      It's a fallacy. Good social media platform doesn't need curation. It doesn't need any recommendation system whatsoever. Every single thing you see in your feed is the result of your conscious decision to follow someone. It's just you and your friends. And exactly zero content from people you don't know. Current social media doesn't respect you because being respectful doesn't drive metrics.
  • psyc 5y ago
    This is one of my favorite thought experiments, except in my version it is guaranteed that nobody can moderate anything, ever. My best guess is: There is a threshold for how much of a problem something can become before congress makes a law prohibiting "access" to this network or running the client, or any analogue thereof. Then there's another threshold at which the government ratchets up resources for real enforcement. In short, the conclusion I always come to is that no matter what the math and the game theory say, if the legislative, executive, and judicial all agree that it's a big enough problem, it's dead. There's nothing technologists can do about this. At least, this is the conclusion I always run into whenever I've tried to brainstorm technical solutions over the years.
  • vkou 5y ago
    It'll immediately fill up with pirated content, porn, porn of dubious legality, spam, and harassment, ensuring that all the normies would stay on Facebook. It'll be a social network for people who were banned from all the other social networks, which is not a great town to live in.
• spikels 5y ago
  Hey Big Tech! * No Liability For User Content * Arbitrary Control Over User Content Pick one!
• PhasmaFelis 5y ago
  I read the headline and was nodding along. Then I got to the part where he suddenly rants that content moderators are "probably...teams of purple-haired Millennials with nose hoops and personal pronoun mood-rings." And calls out the AP for marking a medical claim "false" just because no one has been able to produce any evidence for it. And says that calling anti-vaxxers nasty names is literally just as bad as racism. I'm looking at the comment I just typed and it sounds like I'm exaggerating to make him look bad. But I'm not. That's what he's actually claiming.
• Barrin92 5y ago
  Not sure if there's a more eloquent name for these kinds of "throw enough shit and hope some of it sticks" arguments but the article is very confused, from claiming ad hominem attacks are as bad as racism, to ranting about millenials and throwing in WMD's in Iraq for good measure. The actual key issue is somewhere in the middle of that article: >"When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate what is or isn’t misinformation, or taking action based on events that occur outside of their own platforms what they are doing, at its core, is adjudicating international law" No, it isn't. It's a private company determining how and who it conducts business with. Being a 'patrician' of your own property is completely fine and in fact a basic right, and if you don't like Mailchimp's content policies, go to a competitor. Unless someone explains to me, in plain English, why we ought to abolish the very important freedom of deciding for themselves who and how private entities do business with, I don't want to read any essay length pieces any more about the Gulag archipelago, Orwell or how his friend being cancelled by Mailchimp is like being stuck in Soviet Russia. And to preempt the inevitable "but they're so large!". This is not an indicator of anything. Tech companies are large yes, but competitors are, as Google actually correctly put it at one point, one click away. Size is not an indicator of market power, inability to chose alternatives is.
  • tangjurine 5y ago
    > [explain] to me, in plain English, why we ought to abolish the very important freedom of deciding for themselves who and how private entities do business with The explanation for this is the same explanation for why eminent domain exists. If you own a piece of land that will be in the middle of a busy road, in the US you likely can't construct that part of the road yourself and charge people or arbitrarily restrict people from using it - you likely will have to sell it to the US government. I'm not trying to argue about if this is the ideal way to do things, but the more society views tech companies owning platforms like landowners owning parts of roads, the more government control.
    • Barrin92 5y ago
      Eminent domain exists because land use is exclusionary. Land owners have the ability to hamper development by exercising coercive power. If AT&T or your phone provider start to cancel you, you have a pretty good analogy. Services and products on the internet however are not landowners. The reason eminent domain exists is because land is not fungible. Mailchimp however does not sit on mail-land. There is nothing that prevents dozens of mailchimp competitors to exist, offering whatever content policies people prefer. Google does not sit on search-land and somehow excludes anyone from building a search engine. Tech companies, in almost all cases, derive their value from the intellectual property that they built, not some sort of analog to land they stumbled upon. If that was the case we would be on MySpace.
• dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
  I'm not going to comment on the author's credibility or overall quality of his arguments. However, I think he brings up a very important point: who gets to decide what's misinformation? * Private organizations are run by fallible humans, chasing money and reduced liability * Governments lie. If you don't believe me, read any history book * Scientists are not a spherical mass floating in a vacuum with a unified opinion, nor are they correct by default Furthermore, only engineers believe most of the important issues in the world actually have an objective answer to them. So, who gets to decide? Who gets the power of saying what thoughts are bad and what thoughts are good? Is it someone you agree with? What if it changes to someone you don't?
  • whatshisface 5y ago
    Who gets to decide who goes to jail? All of the same fallibility arguments apply.
    • dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
      Yes, I agree. My arguments extend to the law too. Previously, you could've gone to jail for being black or having a beer. Women got to vote in 1920. I personally follow the law so I don't go to jail, since historically it has been made by idiots.
      • bumby 5y ago
        I think the better answer is not “whom” but “what process”. People will always be fallible. Processes, however, can layer checks and balances in a way that people often can’t. Processes are also easier to change than people in my experience. Processes certainly aren’t perfect but considering your examples are past tense, they can tend to arc towards “more perfect.”
        • dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
          I like this idea. Perhaps I'm committing the same fallacy that the Romans did around the fall of the Republic. The prevailing idea was that their problems were caused by a "failure of Roman morals", rather than by a failure of their system, even as they realized the inevitability of their situation and tried to enact changes. > Processes certainly aren’t perfect but considering your examples are past tense, they can tend to arc towards “more perfect.” Agreed. My use of the past was to illustrate a basic truth: given the big (colossal) failures of the past, is it more likely we have largely found the truth, or that we are still very far away from it? It's impossible to know of course. That said, the amount of people who will claim their truth is ultimate and all of who do not see it their way must be idiots is staggering. It's human nature though, I literally did that one comment above.
• bena 5y ago
  By like the second sentence I was able to deduce pretty much most of what this guy was going to complain about and what side he was on every issue. I do miss the days before "big tech" and social media when every asshole with half an opinion wasn't given a bullhorn to shout it from the rooftops as if they had something worthwhile to say. When you are complaining about the Associated Press, maybe take a step back and consider whether or not you're just wrong. Because the Associated Press is one of the most milquetoast, boring, middle-of-the-road, non-opinion-giving, dry ass, plain organizations out there. They really don't give a shit. They report on things so other newspapers can run the story. And it seems like all he wants to do is commit the fallacy fallacy. He thinks by saying something is a fallacy, that makes them wrong. It doesn't. Not to mention, the authorities people are "appealing" to are experts in this field. Not to mention, we can turn that "appeal to authority" around on Ivermectin as well. He's just pimping it because "a doctor said so". And when you point that out, they'll point out why we should blah blah blah. But that's the rub. It's something they want you to do for them, but won't do for you. No one is listening to these people simply because they're in charge, but because they're proven experts in their field. And so on, with the rest. When he's not just completely misrepresenting a situation to claim something is fallacious when it's not.
• distantsounds 5y ago
  > We see Fauci removing his mask the moment the cameras stop rolling. We see AOC sitting amongst a fairly close knit crowd put one on for the express purpose of a photo op and then take it off again. But if you send an email to your own subscribers via Mailchimp wondering out loud if masks are nothing more than performative theatre, you’ll get shut down. no, when you nitpick an _extremely complicated scientific matter_ to where you are actively going against CDC guidelines for the sake of pushing your own argument, you get shut down. imagine that. it's almost as if Mailchimp would rather you believe scientists than some tech bro with a podcast.
• devwastaken 5y ago
  James Charles, a very popular individual on Twitter, has been cancelled about 5 times. Guess what? They're still there. That's because "Cancel Culture" is largely made up by talking heads. Very few people actually get "cancelled", and when they do, it's not because of posts on Twitter by themselves. Youtube houses plenty of conspirators, right wing news, gun channels, and they're monetized. Not only that, but youtube comment sections are notorious for being inline with "conservative" views. Some gun channels have been demonitized. Not because Youtube doesn't want the money, but because Google doesn't control what advertisers do. In one of the demonitization dramas it was revelead that Youtube as a company would stop generating revenue if a big advertiser like Pepsi or Disney stopped doing business with Youtube. If you want to see "cancelling" how about the crowds of hate that target minority groups with significant harassment? Why is online canceling from Twitter talked about, but not actual real life militia groups and violent groups that gather to kill transgender individuals? One of those actually harms people. Do you see these "cancellers" showing up to city council meetings, forming actual physical protests? Nope. Everyone is actually quite free to ignore it. The only time things change is when those in positions of power decide to change it. They make those changes not on the outrage on Twitter, but on their own personal beliefs on whom they want to do business with. Ontop of this, "cancel culture" can be translated to "protest culture". Somehow critisizing and stopping business with people is "cancelling", and not "protest" now? >No tech company should be enforcing their Terms of Service based on what they think their users have done or might do off of their own platforms. Yet Twitter, Facebook, Patreon and who knows who else do that. Reworded: No individual should be enforcing their morals based on what they think someone has done or might do when not next to them. These "I should be able to say anything I want on someone elses platform" is uniquely american privledge talking. If Youtube, or Twitter, or Facebook allowed whatever people want, guess what? They'd be regulated tomorrow to not allow it. Words actually do have harm, and words do not inherently have 1st ammendment protections. There are already plenty of misinformed people whom want a "repeal of 230". These companies have both a moral and financial responsibility to enforce their terms of service. >A mailer company like Mailchimp has no business even parsing the content of their paying clients, let alone summarily judging whether it is misinformation or not. Mail providers should care about two things and two things only: Yes, they do. They have to parse them for illegal content, and then they have to parse for content that might have their services used in ways that harm others. Disinformation can easily be harmful, and a company like Mailchimp does not want to be implicated in it regardless of 230 protections or not.
• stereoradonc 5y ago
  When companies market themselves as the "medium for public discourse", it is easy to cross lines between staying "neutral" or influence it the way they see fit. "Social Media" has served no useful purpose beyond generating these kind of moralistic arguments. We are better off without them.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  I'd take it a step futher and borrow an adage to say platforms and media mainly say they are fighting misinformation to convince you that the rest of their content is meaningful. Base reality is, they all make money on selling your attention to advertisers, and they need for you to believe that your encounters with them are "real," serendipitous, and that you aren't just being managed like an animal in an existential zoo. Sure, there are true believers who think abusing trust and technical power to shape narratives is honest and necessary work, and via Twain, there is no argument that will change their mind so long as they are being paid to believe in it. These would not be the first managers to mistake their own credulity for skill. I'd reject that any of the platforms are seriously combating misinformation, and state it is just another trope in support of the same end, which is the global brandsafing of all public discourse on behalf of their main essential coalition members - the worst, wideley acknowledged, most objectively evil and mendacious organizations in the history of world. If you don't like how a platform puts you on a target list and actively wipes out your social capital and isolates you from your relationships and ability to make a living, people are perfectly free to just go and start up their own purges...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • kook_throwaway 5y ago
    Thank you, this is one of the best posts I've read on here. >on behalf of their main essential coalition members - the worst, wideley acknowledged, most objectively evil and mendacious organizations in the history of world. Very few people seem willing say this out loud. These groups are not your friends, and are often the biggest offenders of many of the things they claim they are trying to prevent. 'the coalition' is social engineering on an industrial scale and it's disgusting regardless of the stated or unstated intentions.
  • acituan 5y ago
    I agree with your thesis in general with several nitpicks; > Sure, there are true believers who think abusing trust and technical power to shape narratives is honest and necessary work Narrative warfare exists and is not a single agent game. I am not saying this makes narrative shaping defendable, but in the absence of some meaning-making work opportunist opponents will happily fill in the vacuum. This is the slippery slope that escalates to being a true believer of power (ab)use. In the past, opponent processes of meaning-making was between differing, well-paced journalistic outlets somewhat within consilience distance. Today a) the inter-narrative drift is impossibly larger and b) heavily clustered around partisan dimensions which are themselves pushed away and c) comes out of a 24hr infotainment firehose because finances favor that. We're denial-of-service'd out of thinking for ourselves and the narratives we're given are hopelessly irreconcilable. > most objectively evil and mendacious organizations in the history of world There is no such cabal of coordinated evil. In fact, this gnostic belief is part of the narrative that creates ressentiment and nihilism. Emergent foolishness can just be as evil. And it can be countered with emergent, distributed wisdom, not necessarily another billions of dollars worth of a "good" platform. > Base reality is, they all make money on selling your attention to advertisers, Selling your attention to advertisers is a relatively minor harm. We are actually pretty good at suppressing noise and get to the signal we want. But the shaping of your attention and emotions that maximize time on site is harmful in a much more durable way. Not only it directly attacks your noise-suppression and relevance-detection heuristics, the more you stay on site the more you're actively trained to be more foolish, reactive and receptive. This bleeds to the rest of your life. It is like an anti-mindfulness training that stupefies you. The solution is bound to be in the form of a suite of counter-trainings that gives back each individual their agency to realize this is not good for us.
• vannevar 5y ago
  "Supposed to be" according to whom? It's fine that the author wants to run a social media company like an email service, and of course he's free to do that. But none of the major social media sites share that business model. Their revenue is based on engagement, and that model is deeply and inextricably entangled with their content and how it is pushed out to users. Are social media sites qualified to be arbiters of truth? Of course not, that's not their business model. But they're well within their rights to decide what content gets exposed to who on their service, and they've done that from the very beginning. People who are upset at being "deplatformed" are in the exact same position as SEO optimizers whose business gets gouged when Google changes their search algorithm. If you want to make Facebook some kind of common carrier, you're going to have to outlaw all of its engagement-optimizing AI and targeted marketing, the very core of its business model. When you get on a platform to take advantage of exactly those tools, you can't complain when they change the rules on you---you knew the score when you signed up, you can save the crocodile tears.
• proactivesvcs 5y ago
  If an organisation provides a service transparently, such as Akamai, Level3, DNS root servers etc. then they're plumbing and they should shift packets unless you or your systems are trying to break their plumbing. If they run a service that you patronise as an end user then they can do what they want because if you don't like their terms of service you can go elsewhere. Don't like f*c*book's terms or behaviour? Leave. YouTube keeps mistreating you? Leave. AWS repeatedly asks you to stop your users breaking the terms you agreed to? Leave. I don't care if you can't get the clout or customers you want on Vimeo or Mastodon. I don't care if you don't think there is no viable alternative. You obey the contract you agreed to or you get kicked off. Organisations are not obliged to agree with you or serve you. Lumping Internet-based organisations into "Big Tech" is a misnomer and I find it is frequently a sign that someone's about to go on a rant about something they either don't understand or are purposefully being obstinate about.
• borland 5y ago
  A horrible person got deplatformed and they're all angry with the world. Companies get to decide how to run their platforms; if you don't like it, send your money to other horrible companies, or try and convince lawmakers that your horrible case should be protected. Ultimately though, stopping being horrible is probably the easiest option but these people never seem to want to take it? HN doesn't allow downvotes so I upvoted literally everything else on the front page to compensate. Thx
• emodendroket 5y ago
  Says who? We're seeing some negative side effects to certain kinds of content flowing through social networks, and perhaps more importantly, from the tech company's perspective, politicians do not actually want them to sit back and not touch this content. If they did that, they'd likely end up getting regulated. Also, a truly unmoderated social network would quickly become a clearing house for garbage content nobody wants to look at.
  • whatever1999 5y ago
    The power of blocking content should give to state government, because they are supervised by the people. Big tech are not, and they probably use this power as a bargaining chip deal with politicians under table.
  • kktkti9 5y ago
    Maybe that says a lot about the real value of digital social networks as we know them now. Perhaps we should just have dumb pipes, and let people network over them without a MITM running psychology and behavioral economics experiments on people who merely want to connect with friends and family
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ogaitnas 5y ago
  Tech bro complaining his other tech bro friend isn't able to peddle anti-vax misinformation on private "big tech" platform Mailchimp. boohoo. Has anyone taken a look at his friend's twitter feed?
• shadowgovt 5y ago
  > You’re using their mailservers, and in their mind that’s what gives them the right and the moral authority to monitor the content of your communications to your own audience. Yes, how strange that somebody would believe they should have a say in how you use their services.
• justbored123 5y ago
  Why? The media companies have always done so. The press is and always was "patricians" of printing press discourse. You can't say whatever you like on a news paper. The TV companies and Cable companies are and always were "patricians" of tv programming. You can't say whatever you like on a tv program. The publishing companies are and always were "patricians" of the books. You can't say whatever you like on a book and get them to print it, promote it and distribute if they disagree. Radio companies are and always were "patricians" of the radio waves, you need a license to operate a radio and they decide what gets on air. Why the double standard? Now, you can say whatever you like on the internet, you just are not entitle to force other people and companies to give you a platform to do so. Facebook, Youtube, this site, etc., doesn't owe you sh#t. If you want to publish something that they don't like, host it and promote it yourself, just as if you want to put something in the news that they don't like, or on TV or on the radio or on a book. The insane and childish authoritarianism of the author of this article that believes that "Mail Chimp" doesn't tell him what to do with their service but instead he is the one that tells them how to run their private for profit company is both comical and sad. If you don't like the terms of service, stop using their service. That's how that works. If you think that they are infringing on your rights, them take them to court, don't click bait about it.
  • robertlagrant 5y ago
    There's no double standard. The post wouldn't decide whether to deliver a newspaper based on its contents.
• 3grdlurker 5y ago
  Isn’t this just a consequence of American capitalism? Incentivise companies to optimize for profit, and they’ll do anything to rake in more ad money including violating people’s privacy and curating user-submitted content. We’ll have to fundamentally rethink entire economies before we could see large companies (if they would be, at all, allowed to exist) acting ethically.
  • freedomben 5y ago
    I don't know why you're downvoted, because I think this theory on the cause is among the more interesting and nuanced comments. I think you've got an interesting observation there worth considering deeper. Perhaps they disagree with your Marxist conclusion?: > We’ll have to fundamentally rethink entire economies before we could see large companies (if they would be, at all, allowed to exist) acting ethically.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• iammisc 5y ago
  I just closed all my social media accounts. Let them plumb cake.
• lsiebert 5y ago
  This links to Doug McKenty's twitter, where he is retweeting people saying that Covid-19 is a hoax. Make of that what you will.
• lostmsu 5y ago
  An attack on the title: what the author does not realize, is that plumbing is not limited to the person who comes to their house to fix pipes. The majority of plumbing is from some water source to cleaning facility to your house and then back to treatment facility and finally back into nature. And that major part is actually mostly managed by "patricians". Not that I support tech giants invasion in private lives. But when thought through the analogy works against the author's favor.
• voidnullnil 5y ago
  This title is a good way of phrasing a piece of common sense people have been trying to get rid of. Also similar: "Mechanism not policy" > It is almost impossible to envision all of the different ways in which a system might be used by different types of users over the life of the product. This means that any hard-coded policies are likely to be inadequate or inappropriate for some (or perhaps even most) potential users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_mechanism_and_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_mechanism_and_po...