12 ms·

He's an old-school internet freedom activist. Judging from what's happened with many similar activists, I'm guessing a hard-line anti-censorship mindset isn't

by J5892 5y ago

He's an old-school internet freedom activist. Judging from what's happened with many similar activists, I'm guessing a hard-line anti-censorship mindset isn't compatible with today's social/political landscape in which rampant misinformation on the internet has direct effects on meatspace. Of course, this is purely conjecture. It could be completely unrelated.

whimsicalism 5y ago
Information distribution has always had direct effects on meatspace. That's what makes an anti-censorship stand relevant and important. Nobody would censor if there were no physical impacts.
- a-dub 5y ago
  i used to be into hardline freedom of speech... now i acknowledge that real life nuances are a lot more complicated. censorship is messy and complicated and usually involves a dangerous concentration of power, sure... but truly free and anonymous speech that can originate from places that are immune to it's effects or can be falsely attributed for the purposes of subversion can also result in a dangerous concentration of power. what's the difference between a censored truth and a chorus of convincing lies originated anonymously that buries the truth?
  - akira2501 5y ago
    And this is something you believe is best solved through censorship of individuals by large tech companies?
    - J5892 5y ago
      I believe tech companies should have the freedom to decide who gets to post on their own platforms, regardless of the size/reach of the platform. To restrict that freedom would be a direct restriction of freedom of speech.
      - drdeca 5y ago
        Legally? Sure. Ethically? Not unless they make is very clear what they are doing. Well I mean, how clear it has to be I guess would vary with the level of restriction?
    - a-dub 5y ago
      i'm arguing that the situation is more complicated. we live in a world that is still somewhat e-communication naive, while the internet has completely rewritten the rules of the game bringing e-communication into focus. when the us constitution was written, it wasn't written with the idea in mind that anyone in the world could anonymously participate in the local political process. that would have been crazy talk! so i think maybe there may be some weirdness in terms of keeping the peace in the short term as more naive generations die off and more saavy generations come up. i also think that maybe some ideas we thought were principles were actually implementation strategies built for a very different world and that perhaps we'll need to look at what the underlying principles were and how they might be upheld in a world without information borders. perhaps freedom of speech, which was written with the idea of preventing government from getting too powerful and controlling people, would need to be reduced to the idea of any entity amassing undue power by consolidating information capabilities to control people. from that, maybe you build up a freedom of speech paired with a required assertion of identity... but honestly, i don't know. it sure does seem that the old principles were written for a different game though.
      - EvanAnderson 5y ago
        > when the us constitution was written, it wasn't written with the idea in mind that anyone in the world could anonymously participate in the local political process. that would have been crazy talk! I thought the Federalist Papers were published anonymously. I understand that you said "anyone in the world". I'm certainly not a scholar of American history, but surely there were European influences being exerted (and likely anonymously, too) on the Colonies around the time of the Federalist Papers. Far-reaching anonymous political speech isn't a new thing. The speed and ease of disseminating speech is new, for sure.
        a-dub 5y ago
        > Far-reaching anonymous political speech isn't a new thing. The speed and ease of disseminating speech is new, for sure. yeah i suppose you're right, foreign intelligence operations designed to influence local politics have existed long before the internet. i think maybe the difference is, it can now be done at scale on a grassroots level at substantially reduced cost. mix that with massive populations that are naive to common internet discussion traps and well, here we are.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    Just kinda spit balling here so forgive the lack of empathy, but it seems to me like the overall System is perfectly capable of correcting itself when people succumb to "misinformation" to the point it harms them. Yeah we don't want anyone to get harmed, sure sure, yeah, of course, that would be simply... awful. Yet... we learn best from failure, correct? In other words, at some point every concerned individual needs to let those insistent/destined to fail to do so, and let others learn from their mistakes. Everyone's gotta stop trying to save everyone else.
    - J5892 5y ago
      I don't disagree with this, but there's a threshold in which the misinformation becomes the prevailing "truth" for a portion of the population, and is no longer able to self-correct. If there is a force actively working towards this as a goal, do you not think that force should be actively opposed?
      - hhggffdd 5y ago
        The problem here is each political leaning will say the same of the other regarding misinformation - which is always subjective. The only difference is that one side has staked their existence on upholding free speech, to never silence the other, but not vice-versa. It’s not a fair fight. I always think: “how do you get to Hitler’s Germany”. And it doesn’t come from the group that upholds free speech. It comes from the group that says censorship has become an unfortunate necessity. We should respect those that hold true to principles that do a disservice to themselves.
      - porknubbins 5y ago
        I agree with the concerns you bring up but isn’t framing this as a free speech/censorship” problem too broad when the main concern is propaganda/misinformation being essentially broadcast (and amplified by engagement algorithms) over quasi monopolistic tech platforms?
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > (...) but it seems to me like the overall System is perfectly capable of correcting itself when people succumb to "misinformation" to the point it harms them. For this hypothesis to be valid, you'd require a population which: a) had decent critical thinking, b) consumed reliable information from reliable sources, c) wasn't targeted by bad actors who hijack information channels to saturate it with disinformation, d) wasn't radicalized to the point where even basic health and safety precautions are attacked as being partisan politics. What we have been seeing for the past year or so is that the system is unable to self-correct if attacked hard enough. Also, we also that the system indeed has some capacity to self-heal if the volume of disinformation is actively tuned down.
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    There is a parable something like this: The child looks at the forest and sees the forest. The adult looks at the forest and sees all the trees and plants and wildlife and features of the land. The old person looks at the forest and sees the forest. It's possible to lose sight of what really matters when overwhelmed with nuance.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    It's still an open question of whether we're actually seeing the result of too much free speech, or whether we're seeing the result of overly centralized powers popularizing extreme viewpoints to drive engagement. Faceboot et al have essentially installed themselves as middlemen into everyone's interpersonal relationships, and have thus hijacked our sense of social proof.
    - hhggffdd 5y ago
      It all boils down to ad revenue and clicks. It’s no coincidence that all this started happening the same time old media was threatened by the digital age.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Ditto. And then Paradox of Tolerance happened IRL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Banning speech and censorship are impractical. But something has to give. Now I'm pondering leveling up defamation tort. Like how Alex Jones just got pwned for endangering the lives of the Sandy Hook parents. Personal responsibility. Say whatever you want. But then you own it. Real life consequences. All the Freedom Speeches™ zealots, pretending that bots, sockpuppets, and corporations are people. Pretending that inciting a riot is okey dokey. Pretending that life is fair, with no power imbalances. So my blog with 100 yearly visitors is the same as the outrage machine. Parroting slippery slope tropes, eschewing balance and judgement, as though the train hasn't already jumped the track.
    - busterarm 5y ago
      You watch too much TV news. Any argument that appeals to fear and relies on boogeymen is trying to short-circuit the logical, rational parts of your brain. They're trying to make you part of the mob. You would do well to take such arguments and their prophets and burn them with hot coals. Literally tar and feather them and run them out of town.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - nec4b 5y ago
    Which censoring society is a role model for you?
tpmx 5y ago
Yeah, this is my interpretation as well. I mean, he formulated "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Funny enough, if I recall correctly, that quote was specifically in the context of USENET. And the story of USENET since then might be educational... USENET itself, and the infrastructure running under it, are hard to censor, but many of the individual service providers that ran USENET endpoints and provided them for their customers went "This is more trouble than it's worth" and stopped providing that service. It's harder to get on USENET now than it was in the days AOL offered it. The Net interprets censorship as damage, but a critical mass of service providers concluding something isn't worth the resources can have the same effect as censorship.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rasengan 5y ago
Freedom is serious business and worth dying for. If our freedoms online are taken, make no mistake, it will be war.
- blagie 5y ago
  I agree, but... Whose freedom? And what is freedom? Market dynamics support corporations which can generate the largest numbers of ad clicks. You can't run an organization which doesn't ultimately conform to market dynamics. That leads to polarization, hate, and misinformation. Do we want to go down that path? Are corporations people? Should corporations have freedom-of-speech? Should corporations be free to lie? Should government employees? Should corporations be free to engage in speech which is known to actively harm people? I really don't know. I do feel like some forms of intentional lying should be illegal. If a government employee says something, or an academic does, I should be able to trust they're not being intentionally untruthful. Where does that line lie? I don't know. I also feel like individuals should have real freedom of speech. Not just freedom from government prosecution after speech, but freedom from economic prosecution, and to some extent, social ostracization. I feel like we need a serious discussion here, though.
  - hhggffdd 5y ago
    I’m thinking Trump’s new social network will be a very interesting new development. For a long time those who have wanted not to be censored could always build a competing service. The new risk now is that people will become more cut off from one another. Having opposing views on the same forum was always a civilizing force. But now we will see an experiment begin on how segregated echo chambers will effect society. What happens when people become un-cancellable? It seems inevitable we will see right leaning equivalents of all the tech platforms. Funny though that everything hinges on the advertisers, whose risk-averseness appears to be the most effective moderating influence on society we have. Whether a free speech platform can find a sustainable business model is a big unknown.
- J5892 5y ago
  War with whom? The government? Tech companies? ISPs? All are in some ways restricting certain freedoms, while enabling others. And what freedoms are you afraid of being taken that have not already been taken in some form? I'm absolutely not disagreeing with you. I support full and absolute internet freedom. I have the ability to put absolutely anything I want on the internet with zero restrictions, but depending on what it is and how I put it there, there are many ways it may then cause me to lose freedom in some way. Which one should lead to war?
CRConrad 5y ago
> He's an old-school internet freedom activist. A commenter on The Reg speculated that it's because (according to this commenter) Gilmore has lately veered into arguing publicly for legalising marijuana, and the EFF doesn't want to be associated with that. If he has, that feels more plausible a cause than him being "an old-school internet freedom activist" per se.

by J5892 5y ago

whimsicalism 5y ago

Information distribution has always had direct effects on meatspace. That's what makes an anti-censorship stand relevant and important. Nobody would censor if there were no physical impacts.

a-dub 5y ago
i used to be into hardline freedom of speech... now i acknowledge that real life nuances are a lot more complicated. censorship is messy and complicated and usually involves a dangerous concentration of power, sure... but truly free and anonymous speech that can originate from places that are immune to it's effects or can be falsely attributed for the purposes of subversion can also result in a dangerous concentration of power. what's the difference between a censored truth and a chorus of convincing lies originated anonymously that buries the truth?
- akira2501 5y ago
  And this is something you believe is best solved through censorship of individuals by large tech companies?
  - J5892 5y ago
    I believe tech companies should have the freedom to decide who gets to post on their own platforms, regardless of the size/reach of the platform. To restrict that freedom would be a direct restriction of freedom of speech.
    - drdeca 5y ago
      Legally? Sure. Ethically? Not unless they make is very clear what they are doing. Well I mean, how clear it has to be I guess would vary with the level of restriction?
  - a-dub 5y ago
    i'm arguing that the situation is more complicated. we live in a world that is still somewhat e-communication naive, while the internet has completely rewritten the rules of the game bringing e-communication into focus. when the us constitution was written, it wasn't written with the idea in mind that anyone in the world could anonymously participate in the local political process. that would have been crazy talk! so i think maybe there may be some weirdness in terms of keeping the peace in the short term as more naive generations die off and more saavy generations come up. i also think that maybe some ideas we thought were principles were actually implementation strategies built for a very different world and that perhaps we'll need to look at what the underlying principles were and how they might be upheld in a world without information borders. perhaps freedom of speech, which was written with the idea of preventing government from getting too powerful and controlling people, would need to be reduced to the idea of any entity amassing undue power by consolidating information capabilities to control people. from that, maybe you build up a freedom of speech paired with a required assertion of identity... but honestly, i don't know. it sure does seem that the old principles were written for a different game though.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      > when the us constitution was written, it wasn't written with the idea in mind that anyone in the world could anonymously participate in the local political process. that would have been crazy talk! I thought the Federalist Papers were published anonymously. I understand that you said "anyone in the world". I'm certainly not a scholar of American history, but surely there were European influences being exerted (and likely anonymously, too) on the Colonies around the time of the Federalist Papers. Far-reaching anonymous political speech isn't a new thing. The speed and ease of disseminating speech is new, for sure.
      - a-dub 5y ago
        > Far-reaching anonymous political speech isn't a new thing. The speed and ease of disseminating speech is new, for sure. yeah i suppose you're right, foreign intelligence operations designed to influence local politics have existed long before the internet. i think maybe the difference is, it can now be done at scale on a grassroots level at substantially reduced cost. mix that with massive populations that are naive to common internet discussion traps and well, here we are.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Just kinda spit balling here so forgive the lack of empathy, but it seems to me like the overall System is perfectly capable of correcting itself when people succumb to "misinformation" to the point it harms them. Yeah we don't want anyone to get harmed, sure sure, yeah, of course, that would be simply... awful. Yet... we learn best from failure, correct? In other words, at some point every concerned individual needs to let those insistent/destined to fail to do so, and let others learn from their mistakes. Everyone's gotta stop trying to save everyone else.
  - J5892 5y ago
    I don't disagree with this, but there's a threshold in which the misinformation becomes the prevailing "truth" for a portion of the population, and is no longer able to self-correct. If there is a force actively working towards this as a goal, do you not think that force should be actively opposed?
    - hhggffdd 5y ago
      The problem here is each political leaning will say the same of the other regarding misinformation - which is always subjective. The only difference is that one side has staked their existence on upholding free speech, to never silence the other, but not vice-versa. It’s not a fair fight. I always think: “how do you get to Hitler’s Germany”. And it doesn’t come from the group that upholds free speech. It comes from the group that says censorship has become an unfortunate necessity. We should respect those that hold true to principles that do a disservice to themselves.
    - porknubbins 5y ago
      I agree with the concerns you bring up but isn’t framing this as a free speech/censorship” problem too broad when the main concern is propaganda/misinformation being essentially broadcast (and amplified by engagement algorithms) over quasi monopolistic tech platforms?
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > (...) but it seems to me like the overall System is perfectly capable of correcting itself when people succumb to "misinformation" to the point it harms them. For this hypothesis to be valid, you'd require a population which: a) had decent critical thinking, b) consumed reliable information from reliable sources, c) wasn't targeted by bad actors who hijack information channels to saturate it with disinformation, d) wasn't radicalized to the point where even basic health and safety precautions are attacked as being partisan politics. What we have been seeing for the past year or so is that the system is unable to self-correct if attacked hard enough. Also, we also that the system indeed has some capacity to self-heal if the volume of disinformation is actively tuned down.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  There is a parable something like this: The child looks at the forest and sees the forest. The adult looks at the forest and sees all the trees and plants and wildlife and features of the land. The old person looks at the forest and sees the forest. It's possible to lose sight of what really matters when overwhelmed with nuance.
- mindslight 5y ago
  It's still an open question of whether we're actually seeing the result of too much free speech, or whether we're seeing the result of overly centralized powers popularizing extreme viewpoints to drive engagement. Faceboot et al have essentially installed themselves as middlemen into everyone's interpersonal relationships, and have thus hijacked our sense of social proof.
  - hhggffdd 5y ago
    It all boils down to ad revenue and clicks. It’s no coincidence that all this started happening the same time old media was threatened by the digital age.
- specialist 5y ago
  Ditto. And then Paradox of Tolerance happened IRL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Banning speech and censorship are impractical. But something has to give. Now I'm pondering leveling up defamation tort. Like how Alex Jones just got pwned for endangering the lives of the Sandy Hook parents. Personal responsibility. Say whatever you want. But then you own it. Real life consequences. All the Freedom Speeches™ zealots, pretending that bots, sockpuppets, and corporations are people. Pretending that inciting a riot is okey dokey. Pretending that life is fair, with no power imbalances. So my blog with 100 yearly visitors is the same as the outrage machine. Parroting slippery slope tropes, eschewing balance and judgement, as though the train hasn't already jumped the track.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    You watch too much TV news. Any argument that appeals to fear and relies on boogeymen is trying to short-circuit the logical, rational parts of your brain. They're trying to make you part of the mob. You would do well to take such arguments and their prophets and burn them with hot coals. Literally tar and feather them and run them out of town.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- nec4b 5y ago
  Which censoring society is a role model for you?

tpmx 5y ago

Yeah, this is my interpretation as well. I mean, he formulated "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".

shadowgovt 5y ago
Funny enough, if I recall correctly, that quote was specifically in the context of USENET. And the story of USENET since then might be educational... USENET itself, and the infrastructure running under it, are hard to censor, but many of the individual service providers that ran USENET endpoints and provided them for their customers went "This is more trouble than it's worth" and stopped providing that service. It's harder to get on USENET now than it was in the days AOL offered it. The Net interprets censorship as damage, but a critical mass of service providers concluding something isn't worth the resources can have the same effect as censorship.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rasengan 5y ago

Freedom is serious business and worth dying for. If our freedoms online are taken, make no mistake, it will be war.

blagie 5y ago
I agree, but... Whose freedom? And what is freedom? Market dynamics support corporations which can generate the largest numbers of ad clicks. You can't run an organization which doesn't ultimately conform to market dynamics. That leads to polarization, hate, and misinformation. Do we want to go down that path? Are corporations people? Should corporations have freedom-of-speech? Should corporations be free to lie? Should government employees? Should corporations be free to engage in speech which is known to actively harm people? I really don't know. I do feel like some forms of intentional lying should be illegal. If a government employee says something, or an academic does, I should be able to trust they're not being intentionally untruthful. Where does that line lie? I don't know. I also feel like individuals should have real freedom of speech. Not just freedom from government prosecution after speech, but freedom from economic prosecution, and to some extent, social ostracization. I feel like we need a serious discussion here, though.
- hhggffdd 5y ago
  I’m thinking Trump’s new social network will be a very interesting new development. For a long time those who have wanted not to be censored could always build a competing service. The new risk now is that people will become more cut off from one another. Having opposing views on the same forum was always a civilizing force. But now we will see an experiment begin on how segregated echo chambers will effect society. What happens when people become un-cancellable? It seems inevitable we will see right leaning equivalents of all the tech platforms. Funny though that everything hinges on the advertisers, whose risk-averseness appears to be the most effective moderating influence on society we have. Whether a free speech platform can find a sustainable business model is a big unknown.
J5892 5y ago
War with whom? The government? Tech companies? ISPs? All are in some ways restricting certain freedoms, while enabling others. And what freedoms are you afraid of being taken that have not already been taken in some form? I'm absolutely not disagreeing with you. I support full and absolute internet freedom. I have the ability to put absolutely anything I want on the internet with zero restrictions, but depending on what it is and how I put it there, there are many ways it may then cause me to lose freedom in some way. Which one should lead to war?

CRConrad 5y ago

> He's an old-school internet freedom activist. A commenter on The Reg speculated that it's because (according to this commenter) Gilmore has lately veered into arguing publicly for legalising marijuana, and the EFF doesn't want to be associated with that. If he has, that feels more plausible a cause than him being "an old-school internet freedom activist" per se.