11 ms·

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on plat

I say Bah to the entire censorship debate! My critique of Substack is that our lesson from the last ten years is simple: speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. Our problem isn't censorship. Our problem is that our political/economic/religious/public health discourse is entirely mediated by corporations that are helmed by clever and well-educated folks and funded by the tippy-top of the elite financier class, who expect exceptional ROI.

daveevad 5y ago
> in the public interest define this and rejoice
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Tax code literally already does.
  - daveevad 5y ago
    If you have a pointer to that definition I'd love to read it. I mean that earnestly.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation The platforms where we talk online should be most analogous, legally, to a library or city hall.
      - daveevad 5y ago
        I've wondered in the past if something like 1st.gov shouldn't exist, basically a Twitter clone protected by the 1st Amendment payed for by the citizens of the United States.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        That would be horrible. Web hosting, sure. A Twitter clone, with (next to) no moderation‽ It'd better have better self-moderation tools than I've seen on any Twitter clone ever. A Twitter clone is a good environment for metric maximisation: what makes you click “share” thrives, being reworded and altered occasionally, in a manner analogous to evolution (but with a more deliberate mutation process than randomness). Something has to fight that process if you want the site to have value to anyone but sociologists.
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        Doesn't have to be one thing. You can let there be a market of platforms. Just no profiteering, either directly or indirectly. Easier said than done, of course. Also, shouldn't be .gov. Public benefit but not government-owned.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Sounds like the Fediverse.
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        The crux is disallowing or otherwise destroying the profit motive for platform creation, as much as or more than creating a functional alternative.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Pretty much none of the Fediverse is for-profit. People have tried, before. Nobody uses the for-profit Fedi services, because they're just bad. (There are for-profit hosting providers like Masto.host, but I don't think they count.)
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        Right but how do you mandate the use of Fediverse (as opposed to tiktok/fb/insta/twitter/substack/etc.)?
drc500free 5y ago
Consumers choose to speak on platforms that are profit-seeking. How are you going to force your fellow citizens to stop doing so, and to use the non-profit versions instead?
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  I can't. It's a critique, not a bill. There are, realistically, probably a bunch of things you could do. Repeal Section 230 except for public benefit corps and setup stringent rules about how they are run / how for-profits interact with them. And so on. I assume at least one constitutional amendment would be required, since money is speech. I don't pretend the solution is easy, but I know for DAMN sure that yet another VC-funded social media company (substack) is not the answer. I am sure they disagree. I am also sure that Zuckerberg was sincere in the early days about bringing the world together. Again, it's a critique.
pdonis 5y ago
> speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. No such platform has ever existed. How would you propose building one?
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  It's an interesting thought exercise and I have some experiments I have to get running. Instead of half-assing a bad answer, I'll think about this in the shower for the next few days and try to return to this later with an actually well-thought out answer. But to be honest, my intent was mostly critique. If you're taking VC money and running a for-profit entity where your paycheck comes from getting folks to talk about divisive topics, I view you as part of a profoundly horrible problem and assume that your position on the censorship spectrum to be mostly about market positioning.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    I love this website and its users. You're right, it's an interesting thought exercise. It reminds me of that experiment where a man tried to disappear. https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff-vanish2/ https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff-vanish2/
- iqanq 5y ago
  The American government should provide citizens with a basic public web hosting service where constitutional freedoms are respected.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Why limit it to citizens?
    - philipkglass 5y ago
      Consider speech that is legal but likely to offend most Americans. For example, a picture gallery of American soldiers killed in Iraq, where each picture is captioned "Death to Crusaders, death to America!" If the 1a.gov platform is limited to citizens, it limits the number of accounts that can use that platform for agitating against Americans. If the platform is open to anyone in the world, it's going to end up as the #1 host of terrorist-sympathetic media in the world. Most of the pro-ISIS videos that the big platforms scrubbed back in 2015 or thereabouts were not illegal under the "imminent lawless action" test [1]; platforms mostly cleaned up under color of Terms of Service, not color of law. It would be hard enough to adamantly protect the First Amendment while removing actually-illegal material [2] if limited to Americans. Opening it to the whole world would make the moderation problem truly Sisyphean. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action [2] It would publicly host worst content, for longer, because (I presume) it couldn't just use automated classifiers and outsourced workers to determine when a published item or a whole account crosses the line to illegality. If it did use these tools, it would end up recreating the "banned without clearly stated reasons or possibility of appeal" problem that makes people unhappy with the platforms that already exist.
version_five 5y ago
> prohibited from profit-seeking A more pragmatic goal might be that they are not ad or attention driven. It's the fight for attention (specifically "content" as a ruse to get you to see adds) that has led directly to the current censorship problems, as well as many other issues, in part because its created these big platforms that try to make everyone watch ads that are lightning rods for interests that want to control what people say. I don't think subscription models suffer from the same problem, because their "content" is the actual product, not the bait, and so the communities they support are very different and their attack surface is smaller.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  If anything, the substack incentives are even worse. At least radicalizing was a second-order effect of Google/FB incentives. It's damn close to the first-order optimization objective for a company that depends on getting people so worked up that they'll pay to join a mailing list. (Who pays to join a mailing list?! never in my life....) Answer: the Most True Believers.
  - yakireev 5y ago
    > Who pays to join a mailing list?! Every newspaper subscriber over the course of history.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      That’s not the same. It’s more analogous to subscribing to only one particular column.
ksdale 5y ago
My question is how does your platform differ from what Substack is already trying to do?
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Substack is trying to generate returns for venture capitalists. That they agree with one piece of your politics at this particular moment in their company's growth and at this particular point in the evolution of your political beliefs is a massive red herring. Let me repeat. Substack is trying to generate returns for venture capitalists.
  - ksdale 5y ago
    Just because their interests are opposed to mine doesn't mean I can't trust them. Teacher's unions can use their poor performance as a justification for increasing their own pay which comes straight out of my pocket and yet I'm able to trust them. I'm evaluating their deeds, not their motivations. Calling something a non-profit doesn't magically make it pure. The Red Cross and Goodwill have plenty of problems, as do governments around the world.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      You asked what substack is trying to do, and I think I gave the only accurate answer. That said, your point is well-taken. I think one of my other comments already captures my thoughts on the point your making; let's move there to discuss: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30093683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30093683
      - suslik 5y ago
        While accurate, it isn't a full answer. Substack does provide profits for venture capitalists, but it does so by fulfilling a particular market demand - demand for a censorhsip-free (or censorship-lite) platform. It is a somewhat niche demand, obviously - but it is the only aspect that differentiates them from facebooks of the world.
thephyber 5y ago
This comment just feels like you are only pointing fingers at large corps while ignoring the massive numbers of smaller niche websites (like forums) run by people with small pockets, which allow differing amounts of diversity of discussion. The Facebook/Twitter backlash is pretty far along and some people have migrated to Gab, Parler, Truth, etc. They are low SNR for me, so I don’t care to join them, as much of the US hasn’t either. This country was founded 2000 years before the modern internet and discourse was fine back then. People can invite others to their houses. There is still a town square concept, although it is increasingly private property (because governments are outsourcing lots of their functions). There is almost no barrier to entry to create a news/media company from scratch. But even then people were ostracized from communities/families and people were kicked out of bars/homes or arrested or sued for their words — I get the feeling that those who advocate for maximum freedom don’t have a good understanding of history of the USA. Yes, large corps can affect discourse, but it is because humans are averse to using the scarce attention / memory they have. We don’t like the cognitive load of changing social media platforms every 2 weeks.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > This comment just feels like you are only pointing fingers at large corps Good to know. That's not my intent. I am distinguishing between platforms and forums, not big vs. small. Platforms tend to be large corps, but there are many smaller players in the platform space. You named a few. I think all of those should be forced to be public benefit corps as well. The line between forum and platform is weird, but I think I'd roughly define it using something like Section 230. Forums are for cohesive groups. > I get the feeling that those who advocate for maximum freedom don’t have a good understanding of history of the USA. I tend to agree. My current stance on social media issues comes from walking around Boston during the pandemic and thinking about exactly this topic. > This country was founded 2000 years before the modern internet 2,000 years? Damn straight! Jesus was white as a pearl, 'Murican as you or I, and died for our freedom! (Let's not forget to laugh ;-))
  - thephyber 5y ago
    > 2000 years Heh. One too many zeros. x.x Personally I think the solution is to have some sort of downward pressure on clauses in ToS contracts. Right now, those things could grow nearly infinitely long and clients would have to tolerate it. If corps had a significant reason to minimize the restrictive clauses, there would be a little more freedom for all.
dash2 5y ago
But if you ban profit-seeking speech that is also a kind of censorship, and a rather open-ended one. Plus you’ve now banned speech on the wrong kind of platform. I mean, if you think that’s a solution fine, but then don’t claim to be against censorship.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Profit Uber Alles is going to destroy western democracies.
74B5 5y ago
I dont think you reached the core of the problem and i agree, that missing trust is an issue but not the primary one. IMO cognitive deficiencies and the lack of education for counteraction and awareness are to blame. Even on a non-profit platform, some sort of ideological mindset may seek to dominate debates by any measure. Same outcome, different motive.

daveevad 5y ago

> in the public interest define this and rejoice

throwawaygh 5y ago
Tax code literally already does.
- daveevad 5y ago
  If you have a pointer to that definition I'd love to read it. I mean that earnestly.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation The platforms where we talk online should be most analogous, legally, to a library or city hall.
    - daveevad 5y ago
      I've wondered in the past if something like 1st.gov shouldn't exist, basically a Twitter clone protected by the 1st Amendment payed for by the citizens of the United States.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        That would be horrible. Web hosting, sure. A Twitter clone, with (next to) no moderation‽ It'd better have better self-moderation tools than I've seen on any Twitter clone ever. A Twitter clone is a good environment for metric maximisation: what makes you click “share” thrives, being reworded and altered occasionally, in a manner analogous to evolution (but with a more deliberate mutation process than randomness). Something has to fight that process if you want the site to have value to anyone but sociologists.
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        Doesn't have to be one thing. You can let there be a market of platforms. Just no profiteering, either directly or indirectly. Easier said than done, of course. Also, shouldn't be .gov. Public benefit but not government-owned.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Sounds like the Fediverse.
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        The crux is disallowing or otherwise destroying the profit motive for platform creation, as much as or more than creating a functional alternative.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Pretty much none of the Fediverse is for-profit. People have tried, before. Nobody uses the for-profit Fedi services, because they're just bad. (There are for-profit hosting providers like Masto.host, but I don't think they count.)
        throwawaygh 5y ago
        Right but how do you mandate the use of Fediverse (as opposed to tiktok/fb/insta/twitter/substack/etc.)?

drc500free 5y ago

Consumers choose to speak on platforms that are profit-seeking. How are you going to force your fellow citizens to stop doing so, and to use the non-profit versions instead?

throwawaygh 5y ago
I can't. It's a critique, not a bill. There are, realistically, probably a bunch of things you could do. Repeal Section 230 except for public benefit corps and setup stringent rules about how they are run / how for-profits interact with them. And so on. I assume at least one constitutional amendment would be required, since money is speech. I don't pretend the solution is easy, but I know for DAMN sure that yet another VC-funded social media company (substack) is not the answer. I am sure they disagree. I am also sure that Zuckerberg was sincere in the early days about bringing the world together. Again, it's a critique.

pdonis 5y ago

> speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be prohibited, of course, but so should any form of profit seeking. No such platform has ever existed. How would you propose building one?

throwawaygh 5y ago
It's an interesting thought exercise and I have some experiments I have to get running. Instead of half-assing a bad answer, I'll think about this in the shower for the next few days and try to return to this later with an actually well-thought out answer. But to be honest, my intent was mostly critique. If you're taking VC money and running a for-profit entity where your paycheck comes from getting folks to talk about divisive topics, I view you as part of a profoundly horrible problem and assume that your position on the censorship spectrum to be mostly about market positioning.
- nicbou 5y ago
  I love this website and its users. You're right, it's an interesting thought exercise. It reminds me of that experiment where a man tried to disappear. https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff-vanish2/ https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff-vanish2/
iqanq 5y ago
The American government should provide citizens with a basic public web hosting service where constitutional freedoms are respected.
- adolph 5y ago
  Why limit it to citizens?
  - philipkglass 5y ago
    Consider speech that is legal but likely to offend most Americans. For example, a picture gallery of American soldiers killed in Iraq, where each picture is captioned "Death to Crusaders, death to America!" If the 1a.gov platform is limited to citizens, it limits the number of accounts that can use that platform for agitating against Americans. If the platform is open to anyone in the world, it's going to end up as the #1 host of terrorist-sympathetic media in the world. Most of the pro-ISIS videos that the big platforms scrubbed back in 2015 or thereabouts were not illegal under the "imminent lawless action" test [1]; platforms mostly cleaned up under color of Terms of Service, not color of law. It would be hard enough to adamantly protect the First Amendment while removing actually-illegal material [2] if limited to Americans. Opening it to the whole world would make the moderation problem truly Sisyphean. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action [2] It would publicly host worst content, for longer, because (I presume) it couldn't just use automated classifiers and outsourced workers to determine when a published item or a whole account crosses the line to illegality. If it did use these tools, it would end up recreating the "banned without clearly stated reasons or possibility of appeal" problem that makes people unhappy with the platforms that already exist.

version_five 5y ago

> prohibited from profit-seeking A more pragmatic goal might be that they are not ad or attention driven. It's the fight for attention (specifically "content" as a ruse to get you to see adds) that has led directly to the current censorship problems, as well as many other issues, in part because its created these big platforms that try to make everyone watch ads that are lightning rods for interests that want to control what people say. I don't think subscription models suffer from the same problem, because their "content" is the actual product, not the bait, and so the communities they support are very different and their attack surface is smaller.

throwawaygh 5y ago
If anything, the substack incentives are even worse. At least radicalizing was a second-order effect of Google/FB incentives. It's damn close to the first-order optimization objective for a company that depends on getting people so worked up that they'll pay to join a mailing list. (Who pays to join a mailing list?! never in my life....) Answer: the Most True Believers.
- yakireev 5y ago
  > Who pays to join a mailing list?! Every newspaper subscriber over the course of history.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    That’s not the same. It’s more analogous to subscribing to only one particular column.

ksdale 5y ago

My question is how does your platform differ from what Substack is already trying to do?

throwawaygh 5y ago
Substack is trying to generate returns for venture capitalists. That they agree with one piece of your politics at this particular moment in their company's growth and at this particular point in the evolution of your political beliefs is a massive red herring. Let me repeat. Substack is trying to generate returns for venture capitalists.
- ksdale 5y ago
  Just because their interests are opposed to mine doesn't mean I can't trust them. Teacher's unions can use their poor performance as a justification for increasing their own pay which comes straight out of my pocket and yet I'm able to trust them. I'm evaluating their deeds, not their motivations. Calling something a non-profit doesn't magically make it pure. The Red Cross and Goodwill have plenty of problems, as do governments around the world.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    You asked what substack is trying to do, and I think I gave the only accurate answer. That said, your point is well-taken. I think one of my other comments already captures my thoughts on the point your making; let's move there to discuss: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30093683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30093683
    - suslik 5y ago
      While accurate, it isn't a full answer. Substack does provide profits for venture capitalists, but it does so by fulfilling a particular market demand - demand for a censorhsip-free (or censorship-lite) platform. It is a somewhat niche demand, obviously - but it is the only aspect that differentiates them from facebooks of the world.

thephyber 5y ago

This comment just feels like you are only pointing fingers at large corps while ignoring the massive numbers of smaller niche websites (like forums) run by people with small pockets, which allow differing amounts of diversity of discussion. The Facebook/Twitter backlash is pretty far along and some people have migrated to Gab, Parler, Truth, etc. They are low SNR for me, so I don’t care to join them, as much of the US hasn’t either. This country was founded 2000 years before the modern internet and discourse was fine back then. People can invite others to their houses. There is still a town square concept, although it is increasingly private property (because governments are outsourcing lots of their functions). There is almost no barrier to entry to create a news/media company from scratch. But even then people were ostracized from communities/families and people were kicked out of bars/homes or arrested or sued for their words — I get the feeling that those who advocate for maximum freedom don’t have a good understanding of history of the USA. Yes, large corps can affect discourse, but it is because humans are averse to using the scarce attention / memory they have. We don’t like the cognitive load of changing social media platforms every 2 weeks.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> This comment just feels like you are only pointing fingers at large corps Good to know. That's not my intent. I am distinguishing between platforms and forums, not big vs. small. Platforms tend to be large corps, but there are many smaller players in the platform space. You named a few. I think all of those should be forced to be public benefit corps as well. The line between forum and platform is weird, but I think I'd roughly define it using something like Section 230. Forums are for cohesive groups. > I get the feeling that those who advocate for maximum freedom don’t have a good understanding of history of the USA. I tend to agree. My current stance on social media issues comes from walking around Boston during the pandemic and thinking about exactly this topic. > This country was founded 2000 years before the modern internet 2,000 years? Damn straight! Jesus was white as a pearl, 'Murican as you or I, and died for our freedom! (Let's not forget to laugh ;-))
- thephyber 5y ago
  > 2000 years Heh. One too many zeros. x.x Personally I think the solution is to have some sort of downward pressure on clauses in ToS contracts. Right now, those things could grow nearly infinitely long and clients would have to tolerate it. If corps had a significant reason to minimize the restrictive clauses, there would be a little more freedom for all.

dash2 5y ago

But if you ban profit-seeking speech that is also a kind of censorship, and a rather open-ended one. Plus you’ve now banned speech on the wrong kind of platform. I mean, if you think that’s a solution fine, but then don’t claim to be against censorship.

throwawaygh 5y ago
Profit Uber Alles is going to destroy western democracies.

74B5 5y ago

I dont think you reached the core of the problem and i agree, that missing trust is an issue but not the primary one. IMO cognitive deficiencies and the lack of education for counteraction and awareness are to blame. Even on a non-profit platform, some sort of ideological mindset may seek to dominate debates by any measure. Same outcome, different motive.