4 ms·

> speech should happen primarily on platforms that are prohibited from profit-seeking and run in the public interest. Censorship on these platforms should be pr

by 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.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      "Only citizens can post here" is among the most censoring systems out there today. How many legal non-citizen residents are in the US? "Oh these millions of people cannot speak" is a hilarious statement coming from a "free speech platform."
    - adolph 5y ago
      > 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. Is it not more advantageous to collect the metadata regarding disagreeable content and shadowban it to decrease engagement? How would citizenship be established to the platform? Would it not allow pseudonymous content? Do parents get to control the platform use of minor children?
      - philipkglass 5y ago
- ThunderSizzle 5y ago
  I dont want the FBI providing my internet. I dont mind local publicly owned utilities providing internet while still allowing private competition, but anything on the state or federal level has too much power over the individual.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    Yes, important problem. Probably you'd want something like a public benefit corp or class of public benefit corps with damn strong protections from political intferefernce, rather than a literal .gov setup.
  - yabbutz88 5y ago
- Bud 5y ago
  It seems to me like this sort of suggestion betrays a fundamental lack of comprehension about what "Constitutional freedoms" actually are. All of the kinds of "censorship" being griped about on here are not remotely protected against by the First Amendment. In any way.
slim 5y ago
using tax money. as simple as that
- pdonis 5y ago
  See Beltalowda's comment upthread.
Beltalowda 5y ago
Many countries have public media organisations that are funded by taxes or a license fee, and run in the public interest without a strong profit motive. The BBC is a well-known example, but many countries have their own version. I don't think this is a solution though. These organisations are distrusted just as much as anything else.
- voxic11 5y ago
  The BBC is regularly censored by the government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English...
  - Beltalowda 5y ago
    That's the judicial system (not "the government") that decided that someone's privacy was more important than having their private life all over the street (which was hardly directed at the BBC, but more the tabloids). You can of course argue about these things and where the balance should be, but most of these cases are little more than "some vaguely famous person fucked someone" and are not really "in the public interest" as such. Certain sections of the British press seem to think that you have no right to any privacy at all after you've appeared on TV two or three times. To summarize that with "the BBC is regularly censored by the government" is quite misleading.
kragen 5y ago
The Boston Common is such a platform.
- daveevad 5y ago
  Hasn't Speaker's Corner[0] been DDOS'd IRL by radicals? [0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers%27_Corner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers%27_Corner)
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    Of all the issues raised in this thread, preventing a DDOS of a virtual Boston Common is the only one I can claim -- with confidence -- that I know how to prevent ;-)
  - kragen 5y ago
    I don't think Speaker's Corner is in the Boston Common, but in general, yes, DDOS is an effective form of censorship, and freedom of speech ceases to exist where it holds sway.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
The internet? Anybody can dangle their own leaf on this inconceivably large tree.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  This is 100% what I used to think re: the censorship debate, so hear me out. The problem isn't censorship or dangerous speech. The problem is NOT censorship! Literally everyone can throw apache on an old laptop and then punch a hole in port 80 on their home router. Some issues with that setup, sure, but we had billionaire POTUS crying censorship. Fucker could buy a bunch of data centers with a week's income or whatever, so clearly has the ability to speak, but also isn't wrong that his speech on twitter/fb is being curtailed. The problem is not dangerous speech either, though. Something happened over the last 10 years that I'm absolutely certain would not have happened if we were still hosting everything on geocities or BBSes. The problem is platforms and profit motive.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    To add on to your thought, I think the problem is somewhere closer to "network effects" or "expected reach". Hear me out: there is Ana increasing expectation, realistic or not, that every voice CAN be heard (or words read, or whatever disability compliant version you like) by everybody else. That you have the RIGHT to be heard. That if you aren't heard (and maybe even amplified), you are being unfairly punished. In the U.S. and E.U. and others there is some aspect of that enshrined in the founding documents, in the form of right to petition[1] but it generally doesn't spill over into the right for your ideas to be spread to your fellow citizen/countryman/human/otherkin beyond the government. After all, why should [popular person] get so many views when MY videos or writings or recordings are so much better? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition
yabbutz88 5y ago
wickedsickeune 5y ago
Well in ancient Athens, they had the agora which was a free "platform" for public speech. Unfortunately OG democracy doesn't scale :(

by pdonis 5y ago

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.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    "Only citizens can post here" is among the most censoring systems out there today. How many legal non-citizen residents are in the US? "Oh these millions of people cannot speak" is a hilarious statement coming from a "free speech platform."
  - adolph 5y ago
    > 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. Is it not more advantageous to collect the metadata regarding disagreeable content and shadowban it to decrease engagement? How would citizenship be established to the platform? Would it not allow pseudonymous content? Do parents get to control the platform use of minor children?
    - philipkglass 5y ago
ThunderSizzle 5y ago
I dont want the FBI providing my internet. I dont mind local publicly owned utilities providing internet while still allowing private competition, but anything on the state or federal level has too much power over the individual.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Yes, important problem. Probably you'd want something like a public benefit corp or class of public benefit corps with damn strong protections from political intferefernce, rather than a literal .gov setup.
- yabbutz88 5y ago
Bud 5y ago
It seems to me like this sort of suggestion betrays a fundamental lack of comprehension about what "Constitutional freedoms" actually are. All of the kinds of "censorship" being griped about on here are not remotely protected against by the First Amendment. In any way.

slim 5y ago

using tax money. as simple as that

pdonis 5y ago
See Beltalowda's comment upthread.

Beltalowda 5y ago

Many countries have public media organisations that are funded by taxes or a license fee, and run in the public interest without a strong profit motive. The BBC is a well-known example, but many countries have their own version. I don't think this is a solution though. These organisations are distrusted just as much as anything else.

voxic11 5y ago
The BBC is regularly censored by the government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English...
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  That's the judicial system (not "the government") that decided that someone's privacy was more important than having their private life all over the street (which was hardly directed at the BBC, but more the tabloids). You can of course argue about these things and where the balance should be, but most of these cases are little more than "some vaguely famous person fucked someone" and are not really "in the public interest" as such. Certain sections of the British press seem to think that you have no right to any privacy at all after you've appeared on TV two or three times. To summarize that with "the BBC is regularly censored by the government" is quite misleading.

kragen 5y ago

The Boston Common is such a platform.

daveevad 5y ago
Hasn't Speaker's Corner[0] been DDOS'd IRL by radicals? [0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers%27_Corner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers%27_Corner)
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Of all the issues raised in this thread, preventing a DDOS of a virtual Boston Common is the only one I can claim -- with confidence -- that I know how to prevent ;-)
- kragen 5y ago
  I don't think Speaker's Corner is in the Boston Common, but in general, yes, DDOS is an effective form of censorship, and freedom of speech ceases to exist where it holds sway.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

The internet? Anybody can dangle their own leaf on this inconceivably large tree.

throwawaygh 5y ago
This is 100% what I used to think re: the censorship debate, so hear me out. The problem isn't censorship or dangerous speech. The problem is NOT censorship! Literally everyone can throw apache on an old laptop and then punch a hole in port 80 on their home router. Some issues with that setup, sure, but we had billionaire POTUS crying censorship. Fucker could buy a bunch of data centers with a week's income or whatever, so clearly has the ability to speak, but also isn't wrong that his speech on twitter/fb is being curtailed. The problem is not dangerous speech either, though. Something happened over the last 10 years that I'm absolutely certain would not have happened if we were still hosting everything on geocities or BBSes. The problem is platforms and profit motive.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  To add on to your thought, I think the problem is somewhere closer to "network effects" or "expected reach". Hear me out: there is Ana increasing expectation, realistic or not, that every voice CAN be heard (or words read, or whatever disability compliant version you like) by everybody else. That you have the RIGHT to be heard. That if you aren't heard (and maybe even amplified), you are being unfairly punished. In the U.S. and E.U. and others there is some aspect of that enshrined in the founding documents, in the form of right to petition[1] but it generally doesn't spill over into the right for your ideas to be spread to your fellow citizen/countryman/human/otherkin beyond the government. After all, why should [popular person] get so many views when MY videos or writings or recordings are so much better? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition

yabbutz88 5y ago

wickedsickeune 5y ago

Well in ancient Athens, they had the agora which was a free "platform" for public speech. Unfortunately OG democracy doesn't scale :(