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No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are

No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. I just don't understand the shortsightedness, the naivete, or the willingness to discard the principle of free speech.

mike_hock 5y ago
> No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. [citation needed]
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Even if you don't understand their motivations, nearly everyone believes that they're doing the right thing. As I've internalized that, it becomes a lot easier to empathize with people who have different viewpoints: instead of being a bunch of cackling fascists, maybe they are just well-intentioned people with different values than I hold (or perhaps even the same values, just weighted differently)
SQueeeeeL 5y ago
>that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. Once the idea of dangerous speech becomes aknowledged, censorship just becomes a game of degrees.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  This isn't at all true. Many free speech absolutists will happily concede the existence of dangerous speech and dangerous ideas.
  - double_nan 5y ago
    But should these ideas be censored though?
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      Red herring.
      - double_nan 5y ago
        I got your point, but what is the hill we should die on? I'd say censorship is the one.
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        > what is the hill we should die on? Substack's incentives are even worse than YouTube or Facebook. If you think YT and FB were good for western democracy, then I guess you can die on that hill. Otherwise, die on the hill of "fuck those profiteers and the very specific capitalists very much among us right now in this exact setting that enable them, who should probably know better by now"
        double_nan 5y ago
        There is a difference between fighting censorship and supporting a platform of the day. So fight censorship, don't support substack, YT, FB or anything else. On the side note: having many competing platforms help to fight censorship. So if you are serious about that I don't see how you can't support and promote diversity. Any road will start with the first steps anyway and having 5,10,50 platforms is better than having 3 platforms and seems like a good first step.
numtel 5y ago
> No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets. Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries. A few years ago, Zuckerberg said that all problems would be solved if everybody told the truth all the time. It's not that simple though. There's a Greg Egan story about a couple that undergoes a procedure to experience all the thoughts and feelings of each other for a period of time, which ultimately results in their breakup.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  I think this is absolutely right, and wish that discussions on this topic would focus more on the externalities of profit-seeking platforms than free speech principles. Free speech absolutists tend to jump to the defense of free speech and in the process ignore a real problem. Pro-censorship/content moderation folks tend to jump to the defense of censorship/moderation. In the process, the debate gets framed around "speech vs. censorship" instead of the serious issues with our political commons being dominated by sophisticated profit-seeking entities.
- autokad 5y ago
  > Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries if you want to talk about power and information asymmetries, I suggest you look at Communist regimes.
- nickff 5y ago
  >"I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets." Profit is definitely one motivation for censorship, but there has been plenty of censorship in non-profit-centric situations. Communist countries and other government actors have been leaders in censorship, with no obvious profit motive.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    OP is clearly referring to censorship in the "admin bans you from their website if you say things they don't like" sense, not the "government throws you in jail if you say wrong thing" sense. These conversations tend to become unproductive and devolve when folks conflate these two senses of the word censorship. IMO, we should use "content moderation" for the former and "censorship" for the latter, congruent with historical usage. But people who are against content moderation will claim I'm being biased, even though I view the whole debate as a bit of red herring that distracts from the real issues. So I'd settle for "private-sector censorship" and "government censorship". But in any case it's almost always counter-productive to conflate the two, to the point that it's a logical fallacy which should be named.
ameminator 5y ago
I doubt that, in a decent number of cases, these censors have the best of intentions.
paulpauper 5y ago
The argument I sometimes see is that censorship is justified to prevent indirect harm of misinformation. If you want to be unvaccinated, that is your choice, but posting anti-vax content may have externalities , such as convincing other ppl to not be vaxed.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  > posting anti-vax content may have externalities , such as convincing other ppl to not be vaxed. Oh erudite student of history, what then will stop the toxic vaccines and unethical medical studies from being halted then? Such as: The Cutter Incident [1] , The SV40 Contamination [2] , The Swine Flu Vaccine Debacle [3], The Vaccine Contamination disaster [4] , The Tuskegee Syphilis Study [5] , just to name a few. We should be skeptical about the pros and cons of medical interventions, and also, non-interventions too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC452549/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC452549/ [3] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-the-fiasco-of-the-us-swine-flu-affair-of-1976 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-the-fiasco-of-th... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/politics/johnson-covid-vaccine-emergent.html?referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/politics/johnson-covid... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
- water8 5y ago
  Well there’s been an astronomical number of breakthrough cases on the vaccine so maybe the problem is people like you talking in such a definitive terms over something that is clearly not 100% effective
  - Nursie 5y ago
    Can you site claims of 100% effectiveness? Did they come from medical authorities? As far as I'm aware, even early on in the cycle, realistic claims of effectiveness were being made, with some quibbling over data transparency that were resolved. As we now have variants to contend with, that effectiveness in preventing infection has dropped precipitously. However the effectiveness at preventing hospitalisation and death is still pretty high. If it was sold to you as 100% effective you were lied to. But if you were told that there were claims of 100% effectiveness which were clearly a lie, by someone trying to put you off vaccination, then you've been given false information there too.
usernomdeguerre 5y ago
Except that it works. In fact it works for a population of 5 times our size (China). So it seems to me that the only people who have their heads up their asses are us, who seem to think that censorship is a childs model for maintaining power and influence. In our technological society censorship can work better than ever before. Frankly, imo, in the absence of effective accountability for ones' words or deeds, censorship becomes one of the only few remaining tools for stability.
- ksdale 5y ago
  I think it's far too early to pass judgment on whether it works in China. Lots of very oppressive states have lasted for decades, apparently successfully, until they implode spectacularly. Less than a century ago, many in the West sang the praises of communism as (unkown to them) a million people died in the Gulag. Things aren't always as they appear.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Preference falsification is the act of communicating a preference that differs from one's true preference. The public frequently conveys, especially to researchers or pollsters, preferences that differ from what they truly want, often because they believe the conveyed preference is more acceptable socially. The idea of preference falsification was put forth by the social scientist Timur Kuran in his 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies as part of his theory of how people's stated preferences are responsive to social influences. It laid the foundation for his theory of why unanticipated revolutions can occur. The concept is related to ideas of social proof as well as choice blindness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification More about Kuran: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/11/why-timur-kuran-is-one-of-our-most-important-thinkers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/11/wh... Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4-timur-kuran-economics-revolution-mass-deception/id1469999563?i=1000447329487 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4-timur-kuran-economic...
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  It is a child's model. Look at how it is used by the ruling party. As a child with their toys. Look at the childish displays of outrage when we tell them you can't sexually abuse (and then disappear) your tennis players without consequences. Who even does that? "Oh, that toy said something mean to me so I threw it away." Adults don't do that, children do. When we condemn slave labor it's more childish tantrums. That's what wolf warrior diplomacy is really. It's a state of more than a billion under its care yet on the political stage it's a huge Akira-sized baby with a big toy baton smash-smash-smashing any who dare discipline it.
throwawaygh 5y ago
The status quo is a messy conflagration where initial beliefs were the brush, a combination of mental health issues and social frustration were the trees, and the perverse incentives of engagement metrics provided the high winds. So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely by accident. (I'm not arguing against the argument against censorship... it's just that I think the censorship issue is mostly a massive red herring when it comes to the issues that are discussed in the article.)
- kolanos 5y ago
  > So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely by accident. Don't think it is an accident. The ruling class has set this stage by design. There is little to no critical thinking being taught in K-12. Create a malleable population, then push censorship to protect them from themselves.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Newsflash, there is little of anything being taught in K12. Public schooling is a sad joke in the US.
    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      It’s why I was so unconcerned with the school shutdowns early in the pandemic. Even an entire semester lost wouldn’t noticeably impede the nonexistent learning of US students. However, now that’s it’s been two years of on and off online school, that’s well past the point when detrimental effects would show, even in the US education system.
  - lliamander 5y ago
    You can't teach critical thinking. There are techniques you can learn, but critical thinking is fundamentally an attitude. It's the attitude of never taking anything you read or hear at face value. And while it can be quite important, it's also super exhausting. I think people's tolerance for that kind of work exists along a spectrum (probably with at least some biological component) but that no one can really do it all the time.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
But if we let people decide for themselves, they might decide wrong! And our position is clearly and obviously right! But people are stupid and will listen to lies, so we have to remove the possibility of them being exposed to those lies! /s, in case it wasn't obvious... People are more certain of their own position than is warranted. This is true in politics (as C. S. Lewis said, in practice no policy can be more than probably correct). It was true with Covid ("trust the science" when not enough science had been done yet; people talked as if the correct course was obvious and certain, and they were often wrong in hindsight). And it will be true again, and again, and again. And from that false certainty, people regard contrary opinions/interpretations of the data as not just false, but morally wrong. And then they regard people believing the "obviously wrong" position as a sign that people are stupid and not to be trusted with the facts. (Unlike themselves, of course, who clearly can be trusted with the facts, because they reached the right answers!) And people don't see the dichotomy between "people are stupid and evil, and can't be trusted with the truth" and "we (who are also people!) can decide what is true, and can be trusted to only tell them the truth". When you point a finger at someone, four finger point back at you...
- Nursie 5y ago
  The issue with that approach to me is you end up saying every piece of information is as valid as any other. We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others. So what do you do? I'm not advocating censorship as a solution, but simply throwing up your hands and saying "who are you to judge?" isn't really working either.
  - rdtsc 5y ago
    > We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others. It depends on the specific issue. But since we agreed we didn’t want censorship, we err on the side of caution present our evidence with hopefully better and more thorough research supporting it.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
Without any curation, everyone would have to wade through tons of spam.
- epgui 5y ago
  Exactly this. When it comes to your health, you are what you eat. Why do people think their brains are completely unaffected by their training set? You think what you read/hear. We're just meat computers, and information hygiene (or the lack thereof) actually matters and has a big impact.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    Lovely, and who gets to determine which information is "hygienic"? I don't think it's a coincidence that people who support censorship think of humans as "meat computers". I suggest that if someone says "we are meat computers," we start treating them like one, i.e. ignoring them.
    - epgui 5y ago
      I’m not saying this is easy.
yabbutz88 5y ago
steelstraw 5y ago
There is something miserable in the figure who enjoyed in their youth the freedom of speech, but from the comfort of age seeks to deny it to others; some deformity of the soul. -Edward Snowden
- Fricken 5y ago
  In my youth there was no internet and no one was complaining that they couldn't use it. Now propaganda and conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. There's no need to censor anything because few can tell fact from fiction anyhow.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
EarlKing 5y ago
> best of intentions .......what does Marcellus Wallace look like?
- yaboy 5y ago
  a bitch?
- prehistoricdog 5y ago
  wh-what?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
epgui 5y ago
Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again? Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual. Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals. The point of equilibrium is fuzzy and ill-defined, but it's characterized by an increase in stability. The point is that free speech is not a sacred irreducible holy thing. It's an important thing that serves a purpose. It's not absolute. It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals. The government is "individuals"! Every bit of power you take from the individuals in society, you give to the individuals in government. And historically the vast majority of these people have been corrupt and self-serving, because such kinds of people are attracted to positions of power, and most voters can't tell the difference between a good person and a skilled liar. Government attracts narcissists, as it requires a certain kind of narcisissm to go about telling people that they should live their lives how you want, not how they want.
  - epgui 5y ago
    In the context of my post, the meaning of "government" is basically Hobbes' Leviathan, or a more modern version of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)#Part_II:_Of_Commonwealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)#Part_I...
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I really appreciated reading your post. So much of what I read online and then come to even believe myself pushes me towards one extreme or the other. I almost argue I need to do A or B. Again and again, something nudges me back to realizing it's a balance, an oscillation between the two sides, never fully settled, always with a little bounce and overshooting. Reading your post helped me feel calm and at ease, nudging me back towards this realization. So thank you.
BeefWellington 5y ago
Here's what I don't understand about this argument: Why do slander and libel laws exist? There's already limitations on free speech in place. The article's broader point is that trust is low in a lot of institutions (for good reasons and bad) and thus the focus shouldn't be on censorship but on improving that trust. I agree with this approach. However I think it is also important to recognize that propaganda has only become a more effective tool with the advent of social media. I don't think outright censorship is the correct path but I also don't believe slapping a "misleading" or similar tag on things actually qualifies as censorship.
- piaste 5y ago
  > Here's what I don't understand about this argument: Why do slander and libel laws exist? I would be interested in abolishing both, in fact. I suspect society might adapt well. Currently, when someone makes an unsubstantiated statement towards someone, it still carries _some_ weight precisely because the audience thinks that the slanderer wouldn't risk punishment for no reason. Especially if the slander is written and signed. (And we've carried over this mentality even in the age of the Internet where anonymous slander is largely risk-free. For some reason, when @Goku69420 tweets 'Everybody knows that Joe Blow is a goat-botherer!', our brains treats it more like a fellow citizen writing a letter to the editor, rather than as the digital version of toilet-wall graffiti.) Imagine if we let a generation or two of legalized slander and libel pass. I suspect we might become used to the idea that even the nicest people will occasionally have random strangers claiming awful things about them, and slander not backed up by evidence or at least substantial credibility will become a non-issue. Then again, I might be too optimistic. In the heyday of the 'yellow press', did most ordinary people treat their bylines with skepticism and amusement, like most people do nowadays with e.g. the Weekly World News? Or did they have a large audience of long-term believers, like even the most partisan talk shows do nowadays?
- nradov 5y ago
  There are no US federal criminal laws against slander and libel. Those are civil issues and don't represent a limit on free speech.
Vinnl 5y ago
> But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. The main point, from my POV, is that it's already being decided which information is appropriate for people to be exposed to, by "the algorithm" guessing which posts are most likely to get people to engage, and exposes them to those. I don't particularly think censorship is the option. Unfortunately, the European Parliament just rejected a proposal to ban personalised algorithms in general, but I wouldn't be surprised if we'd need something like that to deal with this.

mike_hock 5y ago

> No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. [citation needed]

Rebelgecko 5y ago
Even if you don't understand their motivations, nearly everyone believes that they're doing the right thing. As I've internalized that, it becomes a lot easier to empathize with people who have different viewpoints: instead of being a bunch of cackling fascists, maybe they are just well-intentioned people with different values than I hold (or perhaps even the same values, just weighted differently)

SQueeeeeL 5y ago

>that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. Once the idea of dangerous speech becomes aknowledged, censorship just becomes a game of degrees.

throwawaygh 5y ago
This isn't at all true. Many free speech absolutists will happily concede the existence of dangerous speech and dangerous ideas.
- double_nan 5y ago
  But should these ideas be censored though?
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    Red herring.
    - double_nan 5y ago
      I got your point, but what is the hill we should die on? I'd say censorship is the one.
      - throwawaygh 5y ago
        > what is the hill we should die on? Substack's incentives are even worse than YouTube or Facebook. If you think YT and FB were good for western democracy, then I guess you can die on that hill. Otherwise, die on the hill of "fuck those profiteers and the very specific capitalists very much among us right now in this exact setting that enable them, who should probably know better by now"
        double_nan 5y ago
        There is a difference between fighting censorship and supporting a platform of the day. So fight censorship, don't support substack, YT, FB or anything else. On the side note: having many competing platforms help to fight censorship. So if you are serious about that I don't see how you can't support and promote diversity. Any road will start with the first steps anyway and having 5,10,50 platforms is better than having 3 platforms and seems like a good first step.

numtel 5y ago

> No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets. Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries. A few years ago, Zuckerberg said that all problems would be solved if everybody told the truth all the time. It's not that simple though. There's a Greg Egan story about a couple that undergoes a procedure to experience all the thoughts and feelings of each other for a period of time, which ultimately results in their breakup.

throwawaygh 5y ago
I think this is absolutely right, and wish that discussions on this topic would focus more on the externalities of profit-seeking platforms than free speech principles. Free speech absolutists tend to jump to the defense of free speech and in the process ignore a real problem. Pro-censorship/content moderation folks tend to jump to the defense of censorship/moderation. In the process, the debate gets framed around "speech vs. censorship" instead of the serious issues with our political commons being dominated by sophisticated profit-seeking entities.
autokad 5y ago
> Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries if you want to talk about power and information asymmetries, I suggest you look at Communist regimes.
nickff 5y ago
>"I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets." Profit is definitely one motivation for censorship, but there has been plenty of censorship in non-profit-centric situations. Communist countries and other government actors have been leaders in censorship, with no obvious profit motive.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  OP is clearly referring to censorship in the "admin bans you from their website if you say things they don't like" sense, not the "government throws you in jail if you say wrong thing" sense. These conversations tend to become unproductive and devolve when folks conflate these two senses of the word censorship. IMO, we should use "content moderation" for the former and "censorship" for the latter, congruent with historical usage. But people who are against content moderation will claim I'm being biased, even though I view the whole debate as a bit of red herring that distracts from the real issues. So I'd settle for "private-sector censorship" and "government censorship". But in any case it's almost always counter-productive to conflate the two, to the point that it's a logical fallacy which should be named.

ameminator 5y ago

I doubt that, in a decent number of cases, these censors have the best of intentions.

paulpauper 5y ago

The argument I sometimes see is that censorship is justified to prevent indirect harm of misinformation. If you want to be unvaccinated, that is your choice, but posting anti-vax content may have externalities , such as convincing other ppl to not be vaxed.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
> posting anti-vax content may have externalities , such as convincing other ppl to not be vaxed. Oh erudite student of history, what then will stop the toxic vaccines and unethical medical studies from being halted then? Such as: The Cutter Incident [1] , The SV40 Contamination [2] , The Swine Flu Vaccine Debacle [3], The Vaccine Contamination disaster [4] , The Tuskegee Syphilis Study [5] , just to name a few. We should be skeptical about the pros and cons of medical interventions, and also, non-interventions too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC452549/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC452549/ [3] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-the-fiasco-of-the-us-swine-flu-affair-of-1976 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-the-fiasco-of-th... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/politics/johnson-covid-vaccine-emergent.html?referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/politics/johnson-covid... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
water8 5y ago
Well there’s been an astronomical number of breakthrough cases on the vaccine so maybe the problem is people like you talking in such a definitive terms over something that is clearly not 100% effective
- Nursie 5y ago
  Can you site claims of 100% effectiveness? Did they come from medical authorities? As far as I'm aware, even early on in the cycle, realistic claims of effectiveness were being made, with some quibbling over data transparency that were resolved. As we now have variants to contend with, that effectiveness in preventing infection has dropped precipitously. However the effectiveness at preventing hospitalisation and death is still pretty high. If it was sold to you as 100% effective you were lied to. But if you were told that there were claims of 100% effectiveness which were clearly a lie, by someone trying to put you off vaccination, then you've been given false information there too.

usernomdeguerre 5y ago

Except that it works. In fact it works for a population of 5 times our size (China). So it seems to me that the only people who have their heads up their asses are us, who seem to think that censorship is a childs model for maintaining power and influence. In our technological society censorship can work better than ever before. Frankly, imo, in the absence of effective accountability for ones' words or deeds, censorship becomes one of the only few remaining tools for stability.

ksdale 5y ago
I think it's far too early to pass judgment on whether it works in China. Lots of very oppressive states have lasted for decades, apparently successfully, until they implode spectacularly. Less than a century ago, many in the West sang the praises of communism as (unkown to them) a million people died in the Gulag. Things aren't always as they appear.
- adolph 5y ago
  Preference falsification is the act of communicating a preference that differs from one's true preference. The public frequently conveys, especially to researchers or pollsters, preferences that differ from what they truly want, often because they believe the conveyed preference is more acceptable socially. The idea of preference falsification was put forth by the social scientist Timur Kuran in his 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies as part of his theory of how people's stated preferences are responsive to social influences. It laid the foundation for his theory of why unanticipated revolutions can occur. The concept is related to ideas of social proof as well as choice blindness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification More about Kuran: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/11/why-timur-kuran-is-one-of-our-most-important-thinkers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/11/wh... Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4-timur-kuran-economics-revolution-mass-deception/id1469999563?i=1000447329487 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4-timur-kuran-economic...
emptysongglass 5y ago
It is a child's model. Look at how it is used by the ruling party. As a child with their toys. Look at the childish displays of outrage when we tell them you can't sexually abuse (and then disappear) your tennis players without consequences. Who even does that? "Oh, that toy said something mean to me so I threw it away." Adults don't do that, children do. When we condemn slave labor it's more childish tantrums. That's what wolf warrior diplomacy is really. It's a state of more than a billion under its care yet on the political stage it's a huge Akira-sized baby with a big toy baton smash-smash-smashing any who dare discipline it.

throwawaygh 5y ago

The status quo is a messy conflagration where initial beliefs were the brush, a combination of mental health issues and social frustration were the trees, and the perverse incentives of engagement metrics provided the high winds. So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely by accident. (I'm not arguing against the argument against censorship... it's just that I think the censorship issue is mostly a massive red herring when it comes to the issues that are discussed in the article.)

kolanos 5y ago
> So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely by accident. Don't think it is an accident. The ruling class has set this stage by design. There is little to no critical thinking being taught in K-12. Create a malleable population, then push censorship to protect them from themselves.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Newsflash, there is little of anything being taught in K12. Public schooling is a sad joke in the US.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    It’s why I was so unconcerned with the school shutdowns early in the pandemic. Even an entire semester lost wouldn’t noticeably impede the nonexistent learning of US students. However, now that’s it’s been two years of on and off online school, that’s well past the point when detrimental effects would show, even in the US education system.
- lliamander 5y ago
  You can't teach critical thinking. There are techniques you can learn, but critical thinking is fundamentally an attitude. It's the attitude of never taking anything you read or hear at face value. And while it can be quite important, it's also super exhausting. I think people's tolerance for that kind of work exists along a spectrum (probably with at least some biological component) but that no one can really do it all the time.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

But if we let people decide for themselves, they might decide wrong! And our position is clearly and obviously right! But people are stupid and will listen to lies, so we have to remove the possibility of them being exposed to those lies! /s, in case it wasn't obvious... People are more certain of their own position than is warranted. This is true in politics (as C. S. Lewis said, in practice no policy can be more than probably correct). It was true with Covid ("trust the science" when not enough science had been done yet; people talked as if the correct course was obvious and certain, and they were often wrong in hindsight). And it will be true again, and again, and again. And from that false certainty, people regard contrary opinions/interpretations of the data as not just false, but morally wrong. And then they regard people believing the "obviously wrong" position as a sign that people are stupid and not to be trusted with the facts. (Unlike themselves, of course, who clearly can be trusted with the facts, because they reached the right answers!) And people don't see the dichotomy between "people are stupid and evil, and can't be trusted with the truth" and "we (who are also people!) can decide what is true, and can be trusted to only tell them the truth". When you point a finger at someone, four finger point back at you...

Nursie 5y ago
The issue with that approach to me is you end up saying every piece of information is as valid as any other. We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others. So what do you do? I'm not advocating censorship as a solution, but simply throwing up your hands and saying "who are you to judge?" isn't really working either.
- rdtsc 5y ago
  > We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others. It depends on the specific issue. But since we agreed we didn’t want censorship, we err on the side of caution present our evidence with hopefully better and more thorough research supporting it.

unityByFreedom 5y ago

Without any curation, everyone would have to wade through tons of spam.

epgui 5y ago
Exactly this. When it comes to your health, you are what you eat. Why do people think their brains are completely unaffected by their training set? You think what you read/hear. We're just meat computers, and information hygiene (or the lack thereof) actually matters and has a big impact.
- slibhb 5y ago
  Lovely, and who gets to determine which information is "hygienic"? I don't think it's a coincidence that people who support censorship think of humans as "meat computers". I suggest that if someone says "we are meat computers," we start treating them like one, i.e. ignoring them.
  - epgui 5y ago
    I’m not saying this is easy.

yabbutz88 5y ago

steelstraw 5y ago

There is something miserable in the figure who enjoyed in their youth the freedom of speech, but from the comfort of age seeks to deny it to others; some deformity of the soul. -Edward Snowden

Fricken 5y ago
In my youth there was no internet and no one was complaining that they couldn't use it. Now propaganda and conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. There's no need to censor anything because few can tell fact from fiction anyhow.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

EarlKing 5y ago

> best of intentions .......what does Marcellus Wallace look like?

yaboy 5y ago
a bitch?
prehistoricdog 5y ago
wh-what?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

epgui 5y ago

Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again? Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual. Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals. The point of equilibrium is fuzzy and ill-defined, but it's characterized by an increase in stability. The point is that free speech is not a sacred irreducible holy thing. It's an important thing that serves a purpose. It's not absolute. It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech.

logicchains 5y ago
>Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals. The government is "individuals"! Every bit of power you take from the individuals in society, you give to the individuals in government. And historically the vast majority of these people have been corrupt and self-serving, because such kinds of people are attracted to positions of power, and most voters can't tell the difference between a good person and a skilled liar. Government attracts narcissists, as it requires a certain kind of narcisissm to go about telling people that they should live their lives how you want, not how they want.
- epgui 5y ago
  In the context of my post, the meaning of "government" is basically Hobbes' Leviathan, or a more modern version of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)#Part_II:_Of_Commonwealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)#Part_I...
jimkleiber 5y ago
I really appreciated reading your post. So much of what I read online and then come to even believe myself pushes me towards one extreme or the other. I almost argue I need to do A or B. Again and again, something nudges me back to realizing it's a balance, an oscillation between the two sides, never fully settled, always with a little bounce and overshooting. Reading your post helped me feel calm and at ease, nudging me back towards this realization. So thank you.

BeefWellington 5y ago

Here's what I don't understand about this argument: Why do slander and libel laws exist? There's already limitations on free speech in place. The article's broader point is that trust is low in a lot of institutions (for good reasons and bad) and thus the focus shouldn't be on censorship but on improving that trust. I agree with this approach. However I think it is also important to recognize that propaganda has only become a more effective tool with the advent of social media. I don't think outright censorship is the correct path but I also don't believe slapping a "misleading" or similar tag on things actually qualifies as censorship.

piaste 5y ago
> Here's what I don't understand about this argument: Why do slander and libel laws exist? I would be interested in abolishing both, in fact. I suspect society might adapt well. Currently, when someone makes an unsubstantiated statement towards someone, it still carries _some_ weight precisely because the audience thinks that the slanderer wouldn't risk punishment for no reason. Especially if the slander is written and signed. (And we've carried over this mentality even in the age of the Internet where anonymous slander is largely risk-free. For some reason, when @Goku69420 tweets 'Everybody knows that Joe Blow is a goat-botherer!', our brains treats it more like a fellow citizen writing a letter to the editor, rather than as the digital version of toilet-wall graffiti.) Imagine if we let a generation or two of legalized slander and libel pass. I suspect we might become used to the idea that even the nicest people will occasionally have random strangers claiming awful things about them, and slander not backed up by evidence or at least substantial credibility will become a non-issue. Then again, I might be too optimistic. In the heyday of the 'yellow press', did most ordinary people treat their bylines with skepticism and amusement, like most people do nowadays with e.g. the Weekly World News? Or did they have a large audience of long-term believers, like even the most partisan talk shows do nowadays?
nradov 5y ago
There are no US federal criminal laws against slander and libel. Those are civil issues and don't represent a limit on free speech.

Vinnl 5y ago

> But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. The main point, from my POV, is that it's already being decided which information is appropriate for people to be exposed to, by "the algorithm" guessing which posts are most likely to get people to engage, and exposes them to those. I don't particularly think censorship is the option. Unfortunately, the European Parliament just rejected a proposal to ban personalised algorithms in general, but I wouldn't be surprised if we'd need something like that to deal with this.