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America's internet is splitting along party lines

h2odragon 5y ago
First 8chan, then Parler. Tomorrow it might be you. At some point the service providers have to be able to stand on a utility status and provide equal access to all comers.
- tedajax 5y ago
  Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...
  - prasadjoglekar 5y ago
    The article is documenting reaction to the banning; which is to create a parallel set of products. Personally, this is no different than people setting up a rival newspaper or magazine that caters to a different POV. Eventually, the dominant platforms on both sides will regress to the content/banning mean.
  - k__ 5y ago
    I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      Would you want a corporation or government to decide for you which of your neighbors you shouldn't tolerate, without letting you get to know them, or would you like to make an informed decision yourself?
      - esotericimpl 5y ago
      - jaegerpicker 5y ago
        No Corporation has decided anything like that. Corporations are responding to their customers requesting those users to not be tolerated. This isn't Twitter banning anyone because they want to. It's Twitter deciding that enough users have decided that tolerance has run its course. They were in response to campaigns of users to deplatform those who we consider harmful.
        bluescrn 5y ago
        Corporations seem to be responding to tiny but very vocal mobs of activists. These groups don't necessarily represent the majority point of view.
        jaegerpicker 5y ago
        Are you sure? I know a huge number of users that advocate for Users that expose bigoted views or misinformation to be de-platformed. See the recent Joe Rogan podcast push. That wasn't a tiny percentage of users.
    - seneca 5y ago
      Arguments aren't axioms. Karl Popper is not some inherent authority.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      And this in turn makes you intolerant, and I won't tolerate this. Free speech is important and should be protected, even if k__ disagrees with what you said.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        This is actually a good point, and it's important to realize that even Karl Popper acknowledged this. He explicitly argues that some limited tolerance should be extended even to the intolerant to the extent practical, since this helps promote the norm of tolerance in the first place even when intolerant ideas might otherwise appear to be prevalent. The Paradox of Tolerance is more about acknowledging that limits to tolerance must exist somewhere than an actual argument for narrowing those limits.
    - grapeskin 5y ago
      I accept the right of others to say things I find absolutely abhorrent because I recognize that I sometimes say things I believe to be perfectly rational and someone else finds intolerable. Fighting disagreeable speech with more free speech is harder than just banning it, but generations that follow will be better off for it. Just seeing the Russia v Ukraine conflict and seeing how one country can enforce a narrative by law and arrest people as being sympathizers of an “intolerant” regime should be enough to make people aware that regulating verbal “intolerance” is a bad idea.
      - periphrasis 5y ago
        The irony of course being that the American political demographic, MAGA, with the biggest grievances regarding tech “censorship” also appear to be most willing to make excuses for or deny Russian war crimes.
        nsxwolf 5y ago
        I can go on Twitter and see a lot of examples of this and generate that impression, but then I don’t see it in real life. What’s real? How do we know our perception of reality isn’t being distorted by algorithms and sampling bias?
        periphrasis 5y ago
        The question would be a lot easier to resolve if the major MAGA thought leaders would stop making excuses for genocide. Anecdotally, my dad is MAGA-leaning right, and while he opposes the invasion and is happy to see the Russian army destroyed, his immediate response when I brought up the mass graves was “how much of that is propaganda though?”. Skepticism about what we are told about a war is always warranted, but right wing Americans are being actively persuaded right now to deny or doubt Russian war crimes despite overwhelming evidence.
        briandear 5y ago
        What overwhelming evidence? At this point it’s allegations. The crimes haven’t actually been investigated. They should be. But “overwhelming evidence” should be rephrased as “lots of allegations.”
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      There are also arguments for avoiding the breakdown of communication by expressly favoring the most strongly censored and unfashionable ideas at any given time and striving to platform them everywhere, even irrespective of their actual merits. This is what Herbert Marcuse calls for in his Repressive Tolerance. The point there is not to defend society against anything inherently problematic, but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. It's a "chaos monkey" approach to the whole problem of communication 'filter bubbles' and 'echo chambers', or pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name.
    - pyronik19 5y ago
      Most of the people getting caught up in all this banning aren't rabid racist or misogynist or whatever ism or ist they are being smeared with. They are non hateful individuals who don't fall in line with the "current thing" and have a non-approved view point. The woke crowd somehow has been given a monopoly on who has a voice in the modern era. Is someone a "transphobe" and intolerant of trans people because they think the definition of a woman is the same as sex? This isn't intolerance this is a disagreement on the nature of reality.
    - jdasdf 5y ago
      There are well known excuses.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    If there's no 8chan to host the horse porn, who will?
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system. If it's legal, the service provides should have no say. This is like christan toll-bridge operator not allowing people to pass the bridge, if they drove in from the direction of a brothel.
    - snowwrestler 5y ago
      > the service provides should have no say Who’s the censor in this conversation again? I’m having a hard time squaring the idea of free speech maximalism with “a certain group of people should have no say.”
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        Service providers should act as an utility, such as roads, waterworks, sewers, etc. We have laws set in place where we decide who can drive on roads using which kinds of vehicles, and road operators and owners (not sure how road system works in USA, in my country, some roads are country-owned, some are owned by the municipality, and some private ones can join the road system - eg. the long road from the main street to the IKEA entrance), and if the driver has a licence and a stret legal vehicle, s/he can drive on all those roads, even if he carries gay porn and anal dildos, and the municipality is full of christian/muslim radicalists. So, as long as the content is legal (regarding the laws of the country), no service provider should be allowed to block you from using that service and/or connection to view that content.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        peoplefromibiza 5y ago
        > no service provider should be allowed to block you from using that service and/or connection to view that content. that's not how it really works. what you are describing is a totally nuclear society, where everyone is on their own and mind their own business. if in the car you've mentioned in your example there's a kid sitting in the back, I would alert the authorities. Not because it's illegal to dive kids in a car full of gay porn and dildos, not because the content is for gay people or because dildos are not toys for kids, it's not even because I believe in some weird story about magic eternal beings that have nothing better to do that dictate books to their disciples about what I should or should not do, but because it should ring a bell to everybody.
  - seneca 5y ago
    Twitter has just as vile content as anything you can find in the other cesspool. It just happens to overwhelmingly lean the right way politically, so is not only still around but treated as some legitimate source of news.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      twitter itself is left-leaning (in the liberal sense), yes - are we pretending that progressivism and far-right ideology have equal legitimacy? parler was founded to be a haven for the latter. I might be out on a limb with this, but I don't think we should be giving far-right people a platform to spread their views.
      - Jtype 5y ago
        So you think we should be able to label a group of people and restrict their rights? You don't see how this could be a problem?
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        I think that if your views include "we should kill people because of their race", your views should be banned off every platform, yes. Trying to imply that that's the same as racism is a false equivalence.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Let's not pretend that this is just about progressivism (though it's not like even Progressive ideas were ever exempt from being highly problematic: eugenics anyone?). You could find plenty of literal tankies posting on Twitter before Putin made the whole 'tankie' thing rather unpopular.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        are tankies progressive? I think their primary axiom is hating America. Either way, I agree that there's a range of legitimate discourse and it shouldn't just be the current flavour of progressivism. I was more cutting out a negative exception for the far right than a positive exception for libsocs.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yep, but censors (on both sides) cheer for this, because it's not them... yet.. atleast not on 'that' platform.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    Sadly, even on HN we have people arguing for that. You are labeled 'absolutist' if you argue against censorship. It is fascinating really.
    - throwaway82652 5y ago
      You won't find any sympathy for that position here because nobody complaining about social media is actually arguing against censorship, they're arguing against moderation. HN is also not an unmoderated forum. You don't get to post whatever you want here. I also don't get to post whatever I want here, and I'm willing to make that compromise so nobody ruins the place with toxicity and spam and conspiracy theories. You can very easily witness the consequences of not doing that, by taking a look at 8chan or Parler.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
        I am not fishing for sympathy. I am arguing for a set of values that are a supposed foundations of US. Now, I personally find it troubling that so many people seem to want to upend that foundation.
        jermaustin1 5y ago
        > foundations of US. I'm not sure if you are meaning United States or emphasizing humanity, but in either direction: a private company's social media application gets to chose the content that goes on the platform. I'm all for free speech as intended by the constitution. I can say hateful things, and cannot be prosecuted by it. BUT I'm perfectly fine in a world where if I say something against a "Do no harm" policy of a website, I get kicked off that platform.
        5y ago
- throwmeariver1 5y ago
  Ok just stop with the one sided arguing gab, parler and all the "freedom of speech" titled social networks are worse in censoring than your primetime twitter or Facebook they at least pretend to be neutral.
JasonFruit 5y ago
This article is confusing or confused. It conflates the people and companies that use the internet with the network itself, and then supports its argument that the internet is splitting by talking about what's going on with TV networks. There's a lot of division going on in America, but I think they've failed to see its shape.
- wowokay 5y ago
  Agreed. I think the premise is sound. I feel like the US needs to incorporate a new right, similar to the separation of church and state but instead focused on the separation of politics and companies. I have no idea how politics would be defined or how it would be enforced. However similar to the premise of this article I think the one thing both sides can agree on is all of this became worse and jaded when companies became self aware and brandished a political agenda. I mean if we want free speech how can their be disinformation? Even if crazy earl wants to talk about the “good old days” where women stayed home and cooked all day why does a company need to take a stand on eliminating that post? Why do people working at companies feel compelled to incorporate their beliefs into their work? Disney makes movies for kids. I understand that a small % of the population feels marginalized because they don’t have direct representation in media, but kids are inpressional, and if we want to be “Fair” we’d present ALL sides, from straight, to gay, from hero to terrorist. Or Disney could go back to making neutral kids movies about fictional talking animals struggling through life. Why do they need to take a stance on something.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    If disney made all their characters white, people would call that political; if they made their characters diverse, people would call that political too. Media doesn't exist outside the political sphere. Many people call for apolitical media, but I'm not sure that's possible without avoiding any contentious issue whatsoever, and basically everything is contentious at the moment.
    - mdmdmdk 5y ago
rayiner 5y ago
At least we have an Internet. Imagine the bad old days of the 1980s when everyone had to get their news from CNN! For all the bellyaching conservatives do the fact is that information is freer today than it was in the past. Ultimately we all found out about Hunter Biden’s laptop notwithstanding the Facebook and Twitter blackout. (And when it turned out to be real, I’m sure the Facebook and Twitter censors felt shame, at least the ones who are capable of feeling shame.) That wouldn’t have been true 30 years ago.
- chasd00 5y ago
  so, yet again, the censors were wrong. I've said it before, if you're going to censor you better be right 100% of the time. The moment you get it wrong all credibility and benefit-of-the-doubt is gone and now you must censor by authority and not out of good will. The first case i recall is the lab leak theory censoring and now the laptop thing. The platforms should stop censoring except for content defined as prohibited by law.
  - throwaway82652 5y ago
    >content defined as prohibited by law They weren't wrong, deleting illegal content is exactly what they were doing. Revenge porn is illegal in almost all US states.
    - Jtype 5y ago
      They were wrong about a crapload of things. They completely censored the Biden Laptop story and called it Russian propaganda. Twitter and facebook banned accounts that posted links to the story, for example. Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true.
      - throwaway82652 5y ago
        No, again they weren't wrong. Where did I say I don't believe something? My statement was that these sites don't want to host links to illegal revenge porn. They were absolutely not wrong to delete that, and I bet you would feel the same way if it was revenge porn of you or your loved ones that was being shared so indiscriminately. We're here talking about the story, and I've probably heard about this story thousands of times in the last year, so any statement about it being censored is complete nonsense. Please avoid this type of rhetoric.
mistrial9 5y ago
simple minds are attracted to simple "realizations" .. the Internet by definition has hundreds of dimensions of "splitting" .. someone call the Principal Component Analysis crew and give these journalists a time-out.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
Half of Americans do not identify with either major party. They are not nearly as "split" as the partisans that try to control the political discourse.
- periphrasis 5y ago
  Yet most unaffiliated voters “lean”, often very strongly, towards one party or the other. Most estimates put true independent/swing voters at only 3-4% of the electorate.
  - scythe 5y ago
    There's a big equivocation between your post and GP's: "American" => "voter". But people who are not well-represented by the two major parties are probably less likely to vote.
    - blaser-waffle 5y ago
      If they're not Americans then how are they voting?
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      Because the very least of two evils is neither.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
Well, when the media and politicians work so hard to keep American’s disagreeing, and then hating one another, this is bound to happen. The media, the corporate owned cable television streaming media, is the enemy of the people.
kebman 5y ago
There was a time when most papers in Norway were party papers. And it was totally fine! The reason for it being totally fine was because you'd already know where the paper stood on a certain topic, and with whom. And so when you read an article from that sender, with that very clear affiliation, you could ironically also trust them more, because you would be weary of any attempts of manipulation beforehand, and perhaps you'd even know their "tribal language" as it were. And so it would be much easier to decide for yourself whether it was something you'd believe in, or concern yourself with, or react to. Those who were hardcore "tribalists" would of course only read "their" party's papers, but those who wanted a more balanced view, would simply buy papers from the other parties. For that reason most households would hold several papers from different, and often opposing parties in order to stay up to date. So if the USA's web pages are tribalizing, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because you can always just peek at the competition to get a more even view on things. With that said, it still is a bad thing if our collective "town squares" are monopolized by just one side. That's why I remain positive to Elon Musk's majority buy-up of Twitter stocks, knowing that he's a free speech absolutist. Whether it'll be "good for Twitter" remains to be seen, however I remain hopeful.
- caseysoftware 5y ago
  > There was a time when most papers in Norway were party papers. And it was totally fine! And that's exactly how most newspapers started in the US too. Then they realized that advertising only to their side left out half of the potential readership and therefore lowered the advertising rates they could charge. Now that we have (re-)targeting advertising platforms based not only on the topic of this specific page but informed by the last 2000 sites and pages you visited and products you viewed, the advertising rates are better and targeting a niche becomes a viable option.. but even then, that's only if the financial aspects are the motivators. Sometimes it's a moral cause, not a financial.
netfortius 5y ago
The picture implies a segregation way below the app/social media tier, into the space where the right-oriented xSPs (x = M, I, etc.) and large network providers of such orientation will no longer advertise their IP space outside their own routing areas, with maybe some exceptions for common/shared services (financials, gov, transportation, logistics, supply chains, etc., etc.), and also blackhole the left ones, and the other way around. The right-oriented networks could expand to include the to-be-new Russian IP space, maybe bringing along North Korea, Belarus and the likes. Firewalls could also be built, between right and left, where some [tightly controlled] traffic will be necessary. Interesting times ahead ...
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
This is where censorship and propaganda leads. The split is as much of (or more) a reaction to Big Tech and Big Media collusion than it is political. If truth and discourse weren't censored there would be no need for this. Customers should boycott products they disagree with or that are opposed to their beliefs. New companies springing up to meet the market demand is capitalism working as expected. A monopoly of companies controlling public free speech is not.
giaour 5y ago
The hand wringing and gnashing of teeth in this article is a bit much. Is America splitting by sexuality because different dating apps and media properties are popular with each group? Some balkanization is inevitable when systems with network effects and low initial switching costs serve a heterogenous population.
1970-01-01 5y ago
"America's internet" The first two words of the headline are wrong. Applications are not the Internet. This must be some kind of record for HN headlines.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > "America's internet" > The first two words of the headline are wrong. Applications are not the Internet. This must be some kind of record for HN headlines. It's not actually wrong: you just have to realize that words have different meanings. The internet is simultaneously: a TCP/IP network and the collection of applications built on top of that network that people use. The first meaning is technical jargon, the second is a more colloquial meaning. Technical meanings are not more correct than other kinds of meanings.
  - 1970-01-01 5y ago
    OK fine, but going with this logic is how you get to "a series of tubes"
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      >> It's not actually wrong: you just have to realize that words have different meanings. The internet is simultaneously: a TCP/IP network and the collection of applications built on top of that network that people use. The first meaning is technical jargon, the second is a more colloquial meaning. Technical meanings are not more correct than other kinds of meanings. > OK fine, but going with this logic is how you get to "a series of tubes" No, obviously not. You get to "series of tubes" when you try force a layman grasp the technical TCP/IP network definition instead of accepting their use of the colloquial definition centered on applications.
      - 1970-01-01 5y ago
        Sorry, I don't follow. Colloquial diction is unacceptable in business, legal, and engineering contexts because it causes confusion. Using laymen terms such as "internet" in a headline yields more misinformation and confusion about what the system actually is. I agree colloquial word choice is not wrong for a blog, however applications are not the network, and they will need to do better if they want my click.
incomingpain 5y ago
I'm not that familiar with axios but by the looks of things they are left-wing. Left of center for sure. This is important context because it's wonderful to see their point of view for what is going down. They are focusing on dailywire vs disney and other symptoms of the problem. >Progressives are focused on making sure that the existing media and online platforms crack down on misinformation. But who gets to define what is misinformation. Obviously progressives have taken this upon themselves to define. >Conservatives increasingly feel disenfranchised by media from mainstream news outlets to social platforms and have begun to invest in alternatives. because of... oh wait we just discussed it. Progressives have taken it upon themselves to define what is misinformation and are censoring conservatives. The conservatives then look at their criticisms fairly. Lab Leak was misinformation and censored. Oh wait that's pretty much fact now. Hunter Biden's laptop suddenly found to be legit? Nope, misinformation and needs to be censored. And they are investing in alternatives? No no. that was years ago. There's now a dozen that are self-sufficient and better yet, growing to the size they are unstoppable. The progressives who were pretty happy to censor legitimate stories are now pissed off they suddenly have no power anymore. They can't get on parler and censor their 'misinformation' stories. >On the right, Donald Trump's new social network, which is struggling to launch Shrug? It was years late. It's not even a big contender at all. >Conservative billionaire Rebekah Mercer co-founded and funded conservative Twitter alternative Parler. Yes but oh look again those progressives tried to cancel parler as well. Parler going offline for awhile kind of killed it. >Media companies and online platforms in the past have thrived by serving as big an audience as possible without regard to political bent. Who is creating this split? One side takes sole blame here. >Zoom out: Since the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot when most internet companies de-platformed former President Donald Trump, conservatives have been aggressively building out alternative communications infrastructure, including their own cloud storage and cryptocurrency companies. You're starting to see the picture. You dont even see 1/4 of the picture year but you're starting to see it. >The bottom line: As this trend continues, companies that have long positioned themselves as apolitical will face overwhelming pressure to choose sides. This doesn't make sense. You can be on twitter and parler at the same time. You dont have to pick sides. Companies that are apolitical can continue to do so. In fact, what's more important is to see why they even say this. It's the same reason this article doesn't even name the actual replacements. They want to say Trump's new network is floundering. Attack, attack, attack. The 'progressives' built their platforms on the backs of everyone and then ejected the right. Then are now angry that the conservatives didn't just roll over and die? What did you think would happen?
nunez 5y ago
idk I don't have data to back this, but I feel like the Internet was always split between "party lines". You can always find what you want to find on the Internet, regardless of whether it's "right" or "wrong." Hell, Google Maps represents countries completely differently depending on where you're using the product. Hell, Google isn't even really a thing in China! That's a huge part of Western internet that is represented completely differently elsewhere.

First 8chan, then Parler. Tomorrow it might be you. At some point the service providers have to be able to stand on a utility status and provide equal access to all comers.

tedajax 5y ago
Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...
- prasadjoglekar 5y ago
  The article is documenting reaction to the banning; which is to create a parallel set of products. Personally, this is no different than people setting up a rival newspaper or magazine that caters to a different POV. Eventually, the dominant platforms on both sides will regress to the content/banning mean.
- k__ 5y ago
  I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    Would you want a corporation or government to decide for you which of your neighbors you shouldn't tolerate, without letting you get to know them, or would you like to make an informed decision yourself?
    - esotericimpl 5y ago
    - jaegerpicker 5y ago
      No Corporation has decided anything like that. Corporations are responding to their customers requesting those users to not be tolerated. This isn't Twitter banning anyone because they want to. It's Twitter deciding that enough users have decided that tolerance has run its course. They were in response to campaigns of users to deplatform those who we consider harmful.
      - bluescrn 5y ago
        Corporations seem to be responding to tiny but very vocal mobs of activists. These groups don't necessarily represent the majority point of view.
        jaegerpicker 5y ago
        Are you sure? I know a huge number of users that advocate for Users that expose bigoted views or misinformation to be de-platformed. See the recent Joe Rogan podcast push. That wasn't a tiny percentage of users.
  - seneca 5y ago
    Arguments aren't axioms. Karl Popper is not some inherent authority.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    And this in turn makes you intolerant, and I won't tolerate this. Free speech is important and should be protected, even if k__ disagrees with what you said.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      This is actually a good point, and it's important to realize that even Karl Popper acknowledged this. He explicitly argues that some limited tolerance should be extended even to the intolerant to the extent practical, since this helps promote the norm of tolerance in the first place even when intolerant ideas might otherwise appear to be prevalent. The Paradox of Tolerance is more about acknowledging that limits to tolerance must exist somewhere than an actual argument for narrowing those limits.
  - grapeskin 5y ago
    I accept the right of others to say things I find absolutely abhorrent because I recognize that I sometimes say things I believe to be perfectly rational and someone else finds intolerable. Fighting disagreeable speech with more free speech is harder than just banning it, but generations that follow will be better off for it. Just seeing the Russia v Ukraine conflict and seeing how one country can enforce a narrative by law and arrest people as being sympathizers of an “intolerant” regime should be enough to make people aware that regulating verbal “intolerance” is a bad idea.
    - periphrasis 5y ago
      The irony of course being that the American political demographic, MAGA, with the biggest grievances regarding tech “censorship” also appear to be most willing to make excuses for or deny Russian war crimes.
      - nsxwolf 5y ago
        I can go on Twitter and see a lot of examples of this and generate that impression, but then I don’t see it in real life. What’s real? How do we know our perception of reality isn’t being distorted by algorithms and sampling bias?
        periphrasis 5y ago
        The question would be a lot easier to resolve if the major MAGA thought leaders would stop making excuses for genocide. Anecdotally, my dad is MAGA-leaning right, and while he opposes the invasion and is happy to see the Russian army destroyed, his immediate response when I brought up the mass graves was “how much of that is propaganda though?”. Skepticism about what we are told about a war is always warranted, but right wing Americans are being actively persuaded right now to deny or doubt Russian war crimes despite overwhelming evidence.
        briandear 5y ago
        What overwhelming evidence? At this point it’s allegations. The crimes haven’t actually been investigated. They should be. But “overwhelming evidence” should be rephrased as “lots of allegations.”
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    There are also arguments for avoiding the breakdown of communication by expressly favoring the most strongly censored and unfashionable ideas at any given time and striving to platform them everywhere, even irrespective of their actual merits. This is what Herbert Marcuse calls for in his Repressive Tolerance. The point there is not to defend society against anything inherently problematic, but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. It's a "chaos monkey" approach to the whole problem of communication 'filter bubbles' and 'echo chambers', or pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name.
  - pyronik19 5y ago
    Most of the people getting caught up in all this banning aren't rabid racist or misogynist or whatever ism or ist they are being smeared with. They are non hateful individuals who don't fall in line with the "current thing" and have a non-approved view point. The woke crowd somehow has been given a monopoly on who has a voice in the modern era. Is someone a "transphobe" and intolerant of trans people because they think the definition of a woman is the same as sex? This isn't intolerance this is a disagreement on the nature of reality.
  - jdasdf 5y ago
    There are well known excuses.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  If there's no 8chan to host the horse porn, who will?
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system. If it's legal, the service provides should have no say. This is like christan toll-bridge operator not allowing people to pass the bridge, if they drove in from the direction of a brothel.
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
    > the service provides should have no say Who’s the censor in this conversation again? I’m having a hard time squaring the idea of free speech maximalism with “a certain group of people should have no say.”
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      Service providers should act as an utility, such as roads, waterworks, sewers, etc. We have laws set in place where we decide who can drive on roads using which kinds of vehicles, and road operators and owners (not sure how road system works in USA, in my country, some roads are country-owned, some are owned by the municipality, and some private ones can join the road system - eg. the long road from the main street to the IKEA entrance), and if the driver has a licence and a stret legal vehicle, s/he can drive on all those roads, even if he carries gay porn and anal dildos, and the municipality is full of christian/muslim radicalists. So, as long as the content is legal (regarding the laws of the country), no service provider should be allowed to block you from using that service and/or connection to view that content.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
        > no service provider should be allowed to block you from using that service and/or connection to view that content. that's not how it really works. what you are describing is a totally nuclear society, where everyone is on their own and mind their own business. if in the car you've mentioned in your example there's a kid sitting in the back, I would alert the authorities. Not because it's illegal to dive kids in a car full of gay porn and dildos, not because the content is for gay people or because dildos are not toys for kids, it's not even because I believe in some weird story about magic eternal beings that have nothing better to do that dictate books to their disciples about what I should or should not do, but because it should ring a bell to everybody.
- seneca 5y ago
  Twitter has just as vile content as anything you can find in the other cesspool. It just happens to overwhelmingly lean the right way politically, so is not only still around but treated as some legitimate source of news.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    twitter itself is left-leaning (in the liberal sense), yes - are we pretending that progressivism and far-right ideology have equal legitimacy? parler was founded to be a haven for the latter. I might be out on a limb with this, but I don't think we should be giving far-right people a platform to spread their views.
    - Jtype 5y ago
      So you think we should be able to label a group of people and restrict their rights? You don't see how this could be a problem?
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        I think that if your views include "we should kill people because of their race", your views should be banned off every platform, yes. Trying to imply that that's the same as racism is a false equivalence.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Let's not pretend that this is just about progressivism (though it's not like even Progressive ideas were ever exempt from being highly problematic: eugenics anyone?). You could find plenty of literal tankies posting on Twitter before Putin made the whole 'tankie' thing rather unpopular.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        are tankies progressive? I think their primary axiom is hating America. Either way, I agree that there's a range of legitimate discourse and it shouldn't just be the current flavour of progressivism. I was more cutting out a negative exception for the far right than a positive exception for libsocs.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Yep, but censors (on both sides) cheer for this, because it's not them... yet.. atleast not on 'that' platform.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  Sadly, even on HN we have people arguing for that. You are labeled 'absolutist' if you argue against censorship. It is fascinating really.
  - throwaway82652 5y ago
    You won't find any sympathy for that position here because nobody complaining about social media is actually arguing against censorship, they're arguing against moderation. HN is also not an unmoderated forum. You don't get to post whatever you want here. I also don't get to post whatever I want here, and I'm willing to make that compromise so nobody ruins the place with toxicity and spam and conspiracy theories. You can very easily witness the consequences of not doing that, by taking a look at 8chan or Parler.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      I am not fishing for sympathy. I am arguing for a set of values that are a supposed foundations of US. Now, I personally find it troubling that so many people seem to want to upend that foundation.
      - jermaustin1 5y ago
        > foundations of US. I'm not sure if you are meaning United States or emphasizing humanity, but in either direction: a private company's social media application gets to chose the content that goes on the platform. I'm all for free speech as intended by the constitution. I can say hateful things, and cannot be prosecuted by it. BUT I'm perfectly fine in a world where if I say something against a "Do no harm" policy of a website, I get kicked off that platform.
      - 5y ago
throwmeariver1 5y ago
Ok just stop with the one sided arguing gab, parler and all the "freedom of speech" titled social networks are worse in censoring than your primetime twitter or Facebook they at least pretend to be neutral.

JasonFruit 5y ago

This article is confusing or confused. It conflates the people and companies that use the internet with the network itself, and then supports its argument that the internet is splitting by talking about what's going on with TV networks. There's a lot of division going on in America, but I think they've failed to see its shape.

wowokay 5y ago
Agreed. I think the premise is sound. I feel like the US needs to incorporate a new right, similar to the separation of church and state but instead focused on the separation of politics and companies. I have no idea how politics would be defined or how it would be enforced. However similar to the premise of this article I think the one thing both sides can agree on is all of this became worse and jaded when companies became self aware and brandished a political agenda. I mean if we want free speech how can their be disinformation? Even if crazy earl wants to talk about the “good old days” where women stayed home and cooked all day why does a company need to take a stand on eliminating that post? Why do people working at companies feel compelled to incorporate their beliefs into their work? Disney makes movies for kids. I understand that a small % of the population feels marginalized because they don’t have direct representation in media, but kids are inpressional, and if we want to be “Fair” we’d present ALL sides, from straight, to gay, from hero to terrorist. Or Disney could go back to making neutral kids movies about fictional talking animals struggling through life. Why do they need to take a stance on something.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  If disney made all their characters white, people would call that political; if they made their characters diverse, people would call that political too. Media doesn't exist outside the political sphere. Many people call for apolitical media, but I'm not sure that's possible without avoiding any contentious issue whatsoever, and basically everything is contentious at the moment.
  - mdmdmdk 5y ago

rayiner 5y ago

At least we have an Internet. Imagine the bad old days of the 1980s when everyone had to get their news from CNN! For all the bellyaching conservatives do the fact is that information is freer today than it was in the past. Ultimately we all found out about Hunter Biden’s laptop notwithstanding the Facebook and Twitter blackout. (And when it turned out to be real, I’m sure the Facebook and Twitter censors felt shame, at least the ones who are capable of feeling shame.) That wouldn’t have been true 30 years ago.

chasd00 5y ago
so, yet again, the censors were wrong. I've said it before, if you're going to censor you better be right 100% of the time. The moment you get it wrong all credibility and benefit-of-the-doubt is gone and now you must censor by authority and not out of good will. The first case i recall is the lab leak theory censoring and now the laptop thing. The platforms should stop censoring except for content defined as prohibited by law.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  >content defined as prohibited by law They weren't wrong, deleting illegal content is exactly what they were doing. Revenge porn is illegal in almost all US states.
  - Jtype 5y ago
    They were wrong about a crapload of things. They completely censored the Biden Laptop story and called it Russian propaganda. Twitter and facebook banned accounts that posted links to the story, for example. Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true.
    - throwaway82652 5y ago
      No, again they weren't wrong. Where did I say I don't believe something? My statement was that these sites don't want to host links to illegal revenge porn. They were absolutely not wrong to delete that, and I bet you would feel the same way if it was revenge porn of you or your loved ones that was being shared so indiscriminately. We're here talking about the story, and I've probably heard about this story thousands of times in the last year, so any statement about it being censored is complete nonsense. Please avoid this type of rhetoric.

mistrial9 5y ago

simple minds are attracted to simple "realizations" .. the Internet by definition has hundreds of dimensions of "splitting" .. someone call the Principal Component Analysis crew and give these journalists a time-out.

jandrewrogers 5y ago

Half of Americans do not identify with either major party. They are not nearly as "split" as the partisans that try to control the political discourse.

periphrasis 5y ago
Yet most unaffiliated voters “lean”, often very strongly, towards one party or the other. Most estimates put true independent/swing voters at only 3-4% of the electorate.
- scythe 5y ago
  There's a big equivocation between your post and GP's: "American" => "voter". But people who are not well-represented by the two major parties are probably less likely to vote.
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    If they're not Americans then how are they voting?
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    Because the very least of two evils is neither.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

Well, when the media and politicians work so hard to keep American’s disagreeing, and then hating one another, this is bound to happen. The media, the corporate owned cable television streaming media, is the enemy of the people.

kebman 5y ago

There was a time when most papers in Norway were party papers. And it was totally fine! The reason for it being totally fine was because you'd already know where the paper stood on a certain topic, and with whom. And so when you read an article from that sender, with that very clear affiliation, you could ironically also trust them more, because you would be weary of any attempts of manipulation beforehand, and perhaps you'd even know their "tribal language" as it were. And so it would be much easier to decide for yourself whether it was something you'd believe in, or concern yourself with, or react to. Those who were hardcore "tribalists" would of course only read "their" party's papers, but those who wanted a more balanced view, would simply buy papers from the other parties. For that reason most households would hold several papers from different, and often opposing parties in order to stay up to date. So if the USA's web pages are tribalizing, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because you can always just peek at the competition to get a more even view on things. With that said, it still is a bad thing if our collective "town squares" are monopolized by just one side. That's why I remain positive to Elon Musk's majority buy-up of Twitter stocks, knowing that he's a free speech absolutist. Whether it'll be "good for Twitter" remains to be seen, however I remain hopeful.

caseysoftware 5y ago
> There was a time when most papers in Norway were party papers. And it was totally fine! And that's exactly how most newspapers started in the US too. Then they realized that advertising only to their side left out half of the potential readership and therefore lowered the advertising rates they could charge. Now that we have (re-)targeting advertising platforms based not only on the topic of this specific page but informed by the last 2000 sites and pages you visited and products you viewed, the advertising rates are better and targeting a niche becomes a viable option.. but even then, that's only if the financial aspects are the motivators. Sometimes it's a moral cause, not a financial.

netfortius 5y ago

The picture implies a segregation way below the app/social media tier, into the space where the right-oriented xSPs (x = M, I, etc.) and large network providers of such orientation will no longer advertise their IP space outside their own routing areas, with maybe some exceptions for common/shared services (financials, gov, transportation, logistics, supply chains, etc., etc.), and also blackhole the left ones, and the other way around. The right-oriented networks could expand to include the to-be-new Russian IP space, maybe bringing along North Korea, Belarus and the likes. Firewalls could also be built, between right and left, where some [tightly controlled] traffic will be necessary. Interesting times ahead ...

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

This is where censorship and propaganda leads. The split is as much of (or more) a reaction to Big Tech and Big Media collusion than it is political. If truth and discourse weren't censored there would be no need for this. Customers should boycott products they disagree with or that are opposed to their beliefs. New companies springing up to meet the market demand is capitalism working as expected. A monopoly of companies controlling public free speech is not.

giaour 5y ago

The hand wringing and gnashing of teeth in this article is a bit much. Is America splitting by sexuality because different dating apps and media properties are popular with each group? Some balkanization is inevitable when systems with network effects and low initial switching costs serve a heterogenous population.

1970-01-01 5y ago

"America's internet" The first two words of the headline are wrong. Applications are not the Internet. This must be some kind of record for HN headlines.

tablespoon 5y ago
> "America's internet" > The first two words of the headline are wrong. Applications are not the Internet. This must be some kind of record for HN headlines. It's not actually wrong: you just have to realize that words have different meanings. The internet is simultaneously: a TCP/IP network and the collection of applications built on top of that network that people use. The first meaning is technical jargon, the second is a more colloquial meaning. Technical meanings are not more correct than other kinds of meanings.
- 1970-01-01 5y ago
  OK fine, but going with this logic is how you get to "a series of tubes"
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    >> It's not actually wrong: you just have to realize that words have different meanings. The internet is simultaneously: a TCP/IP network and the collection of applications built on top of that network that people use. The first meaning is technical jargon, the second is a more colloquial meaning. Technical meanings are not more correct than other kinds of meanings. > OK fine, but going with this logic is how you get to "a series of tubes" No, obviously not. You get to "series of tubes" when you try force a layman grasp the technical TCP/IP network definition instead of accepting their use of the colloquial definition centered on applications.
    - 1970-01-01 5y ago
      Sorry, I don't follow. Colloquial diction is unacceptable in business, legal, and engineering contexts because it causes confusion. Using laymen terms such as "internet" in a headline yields more misinformation and confusion about what the system actually is. I agree colloquial word choice is not wrong for a blog, however applications are not the network, and they will need to do better if they want my click.

incomingpain 5y ago

I'm not that familiar with axios but by the looks of things they are left-wing. Left of center for sure. This is important context because it's wonderful to see their point of view for what is going down. They are focusing on dailywire vs disney and other symptoms of the problem. >Progressives are focused on making sure that the existing media and online platforms crack down on misinformation. But who gets to define what is misinformation. Obviously progressives have taken this upon themselves to define. >Conservatives increasingly feel disenfranchised by media from mainstream news outlets to social platforms and have begun to invest in alternatives. because of... oh wait we just discussed it. Progressives have taken it upon themselves to define what is misinformation and are censoring conservatives. The conservatives then look at their criticisms fairly. Lab Leak was misinformation and censored. Oh wait that's pretty much fact now. Hunter Biden's laptop suddenly found to be legit? Nope, misinformation and needs to be censored. And they are investing in alternatives? No no. that was years ago. There's now a dozen that are self-sufficient and better yet, growing to the size they are unstoppable. The progressives who were pretty happy to censor legitimate stories are now pissed off they suddenly have no power anymore. They can't get on parler and censor their 'misinformation' stories. >On the right, Donald Trump's new social network, which is struggling to launch Shrug? It was years late. It's not even a big contender at all. >Conservative billionaire Rebekah Mercer co-founded and funded conservative Twitter alternative Parler. Yes but oh look again those progressives tried to cancel parler as well. Parler going offline for awhile kind of killed it. >Media companies and online platforms in the past have thrived by serving as big an audience as possible without regard to political bent. Who is creating this split? One side takes sole blame here. >Zoom out: Since the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot when most internet companies de-platformed former President Donald Trump, conservatives have been aggressively building out alternative communications infrastructure, including their own cloud storage and cryptocurrency companies. You're starting to see the picture. You dont even see 1/4 of the picture year but you're starting to see it. >The bottom line: As this trend continues, companies that have long positioned themselves as apolitical will face overwhelming pressure to choose sides. This doesn't make sense. You can be on twitter and parler at the same time. You dont have to pick sides. Companies that are apolitical can continue to do so. In fact, what's more important is to see why they even say this. It's the same reason this article doesn't even name the actual replacements. They want to say Trump's new network is floundering. Attack, attack, attack. The 'progressives' built their platforms on the backs of everyone and then ejected the right. Then are now angry that the conservatives didn't just roll over and die? What did you think would happen?

nunez 5y ago

idk I don't have data to back this, but I feel like the Internet was always split between "party lines". You can always find what you want to find on the Internet, regardless of whether it's "right" or "wrong." Hell, Google Maps represents countries completely differently depending on where you're using the product. Hell, Google isn't even really a thing in China! That's a huge part of Western internet that is represented completely differently elsewhere.