6 ms·

I generally agree with you, but one thing that's been making me extremely uncomfortable lately (since 2016) is the attacking of alternate platforms/communities

• starfallg 5y ago
  That's really about monopolies on information and other gateways more than anything. We are so used to consolidation to one or few large platforms for us to access information or services. This is in large part due to network effects, but also due to poor regulation as well as us being lazy. So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views. You might not get a platform, but that doesn't mean you're being persecuted.
  • Mezzie 5y ago
    It is, but I would argue that was one of the reasons for the establishment of free speech. Back when we were conceiving of free speech as a right, it was in direct response to a monopoly on information. In that case, it was the government backing up their monopoly on information with their monopoly on force. Now, it's companies backing up their oligarchy on information with their resources. I think the problem is the monopoly on information, not its source. I understand some people disagree. > So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views. You might not get a platform, but that doesn't mean you're being persecuted. I agree with this. It's just important to still let those extreme places exist.
    • starfallg 5y ago
      From my understanding of history which is probably incomplete, free speech is freedom from government restriction and prosecution, not about availability of information in the private sector. It boils down to the principle that we can't force other people to repeat your views. Free speech as a concept has definitely been abused by people distributing mis-information. That's more of a modern problem as network effects and technology made mass distribution and co-ordination of mis-information affordable outside of governmental organisations. In terms of "extreme places", the Internet is pretty free from restrictions already. You can pretty much set up a website with content that's not acceptable on any of the large media platforms.
      • Mezzie 5y ago
        Yes, that is how and why free speech was established. My argument is that we actually were reacting to the availability of information, but since the government (and outside of the US in some places the Church for whatever religion the state follows) was the only source of the monopoly, we assumed the problem was government. Like if you have somebody running around committing arson and you exile them but don't bother criminalizing arson; you addressed that particular actor but not the underlying problem. > Free speech as a concept has definitely been abused by people distributing mis-information. That's more of a modern problem as network effects and technology made mass distribution and co-ordination of mis-information affordable outside of governmental organisations. This is true, however, I would say it needs to be balanced against the situation before, where institutions acted unchecked and it was often impossible to act at all outside of them. I am sympathetic to the argument that misinformation is a problem and I even agree with it, I just think the ways we discuss solving the problem would be worse. It's not enough to solve a problem: We should try to solve it in a productive way. Otherwise we end up with a Pyrrhic victory. > In terms of "extreme places", the Internet is pretty free from restrictions already. You can pretty much set up a website with content that's not acceptable on any of the large media platforms. This is why I focused on things like pressure to buy out, DDOSes, immense legal resources being brought to bear, etc. You can set up a website, but if it becomes big enough, people start going after it with things other than just speech, and THAT'S where I draw the line.
• twofornone 5y ago
  >subreddits try to get their 'alternatives' banned Every once in a while I come across a rumor that AHS and affiliated subreddits employ a strategy of posting illegal content (like child pornography) on subreddits/platforms that they want shut down for wrongthink. At some point it doesn't matter that the government allows for free speech if a small minority is able to control the flow of ideas for the rest of society; the effect is the same and technically an authoritarian government could trivially benefit from such censorship while ostensibly remaining neutral. And, for the record, /b/ was the birthplace of hundreds of internet-wide memes in its heyday, with next to zero moderation. The fact that the average person can't stand an unmoderated forum doesn't mean that such fora have no place - especially considering the likelihood that there are campaigns (by the same type of people who try to get alternatives dehosted) to keep such places unusable by deliberately posting offensive and off topic content.
  • photochemsyn 5y ago
    Well, that's where the whole business of Internet anonymity comes into play. What if people had to post their state-supplied identifying information at all times, so there was no doubt about who they were? This is more or less how traditional journalism works: the reporter doesn't generally get to hide behind a screen of anonymity. Editorial board op-eds are often unsigned, however. I think anonymity is OK personally, it falls into the tradition of anti-government pamphleteering in pre-Revolution colonial North America under British Royal rule, and samizdat literature in the USSR.
    • jdmichal 5y ago
      No, the journalist will just report from an "anonymous source" instead.
• mschuster91 5y ago
  > Now it's more common to try to get 'bad' platforms dehosted altogether (e.g. Parler/Gab) Well, no company can be forced to host antisemitism, holocaust denial and similar content [1] - most companies don't even want to host such content, simply because of how despised (or, in the case of Europe, illegal) it is. [1] https://fortune.com/2020/11/13/parler-extremism-hate-conspiracy-theories-qanon-social-media-adl/ https://fortune.com/2020/11/13/parler-extremism-hate-conspir...
  • adictator 5y ago
    [dead]
  • Mezzie 5y ago
    I am also an American who disagrees with those European laws, though I understand them and why they came to pass. It's one of the difficulties of the issue: Free speech used to be more of a national problem, now it's larger, and, as you mentioned, international law and culture add even more variables to consider. I understand the desire to abide by European standards, because the Holocaust in particular was so horrific, but there are countries that have laws against things like promoting homosexuality, so clearly legality can't be the only moral arbiter here because the laws are a.) contradictory and b.) we recognize authoritarian governments make oppressive laws and we shouldn't comply with them. Which means we need another standard, one that defines Holocaust denial as impermissible but discussions of being gay as fine. I don't think anybody should HAVE to host holocaust denial, but if somebody does, they shouldn't be attacked for it. (And 'attacked' meaning attempts made to take down the content/sue facetiously/DDOSing, etc. Nothing stopping people from mocking the host or pulling their money). I'm also wary of things like 'hosting anti-semitism' as a justification, because what is considered anti-semitic varies (like most kinds of bigotry). Is it anti-semitic to criticize the government of Israel? What about the gender issues in Ultra-Orthodox communities? (I'm not Jewish, but I feel the same way about groups that I am a part of: I might not LIKE being called a dyke, seeing somebody say all homosexuals are depraved degenerates, etc. but that's not the same as calling for my murder or trying to get me fired.)
    • mschuster91 5y ago
• ladyattis 5y ago
  Dehosting is a problem of capitalism which is why the erosion of the progressive era regulations and the attempts to prevent their reinforcement and update are things that need to be settled now. Today, we live in the second Gilded Age where maybe a dozen people can affect policies that impact millions of people. You want freedom then you have to put limits on what the rich can do or make it unlawful to be that rich (divestment and breakup).
  • martimarkov 5y ago
    I think you'd find dehosting was more prevalent in the USSR and the eastern block than the west even now.
    • op00to 5y ago
      I protested a war in front of the White House. Can’t do that in Russia right now. I am far more worried about the effects of misinformation than I am about people getting booted off Twitter.
    • ladyattis 5y ago
      That's whataboutism. Should there be any concentration of productive forces such that a few people can command or influence others policies to adversely (or even positively) affect millions of people simply because they own stock in said companies?
  • throwaway09223 5y ago
    No, dehosting is a problem common across all socio-economic systems. It is even more prevalent in non-capitalist systems. Much of the driving force behind today's dehosting is a result of increasing government intrusion into how information is shared on the internet. Congress has been openly threatening tech companies about "misinformation" for the past decade or so and this is a very predictable result.
    • Mezzie 5y ago
      I agree. It's a 'power' problem. One historical example that comes to mind that has nothing to do with capitalism is the uproar around the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages because it broke the Church's moral information monopoly.
• cycomanic 5y ago
  I think you need to look at history, "following people into the woods" and much worse than deplatforming has been ongoing for most of the existence of the US (and most/all other countries, just keeping it limited to a US discussion). I mean just look at what happened to people who demonstrated or supported civil rights in the 60s (hint:some were lynched), or gay lesbians in the 80s and 90s (and still). I actually agree that we need to move past these issues, taking a free speech absolutist stance is not the way. This is part of how these groups were and still are discriminated against.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    << taking a free speech absolutist stance is not the way. I genuinely dislike this label. It is not an absolutist stance at all. If anything, it is simple a stance based on the foundational values of US as a country. And there is a reason for it. If you cannot express your real thoughts, the conversation gets confused with attempts to evade censor or completely incomprehensible since language gets too distorted to mean anything at all. It is getting tiring. I am saying this as an immigrant from the old country, where censorship was a thing ( with author writing cringy articles in defense of it -- sounds familiar? ). It is sad for me to see US going that route.
    • deanCommie 5y ago
      > foundational values of US as a country > old country, where censorship was a thing. It is sad for me to see US going that route. Why does this keep coming up? Nobody, absolutely nobody, is advocating for government restriction of free speech. That is the foundation of the US as a country. Twitter didn't exist back then but newspapers certainly did. Town squares certainly did. If the founding fathers wanted to say "if someone is speaking in a town square you can't throw tomatoes at them or shout them down", they would have. Twitter moderating its content has zero to do with the foundations of America or censorship in other countries.
      • A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
        Sure. And the moment alternative to Twitter is even suggested, it is curbstomped from hackers, who see it as a 'permissible' target ( and seemingly it is based on the cheering that follows a hack ) and various service providers, who won't let it exist. It is all fine and dandy to say 'build your own public square', but its point is somewhat lost, when you have a hard time even getting basic materials.
• ajmurmann 5y ago
  I really want to believe in free speech absolutism, but have been really concerned how successful the "flooding the zone with shit" strategy in propaganda has been. This seems to have destabilized many western countries to varying degrees. The best solution I've heard for this is that we need better algorithms for what gets amplified by platforms and what doesn't. Similar to how thirty years ago I could have shouted all day about the moon landing being fake and it would have never made it into the evening news unless there was something more to it. What's your thoughts on how we can defend against the shit flooding? I find yhis entire problem area really hard.
  • Mezzie 5y ago
    The flipside is that the old ways enabled institutions to lie to the people more easily. Remember Iraq? I just bring this up to keep us from getting rose-tinted nostalgia glasses about how much better things were before. Another caveat to what I'm about to say is that I think we're in for a century of legal and political upheaval, so long term solutions will need to fit into whatever we build next. That said, I think that there some things we could do. I'd like to see/hear more about looking into the possibility of regulating sentiment, for example. Maybe you can write any POSITION you want on culture war issue X, but you can't write it in such a way it's only meant to inflame anger/cause despair/etc. Or perhaps you can, but you have to have some kind of warning label, or that content is allowed but turned off/blurred by default (like NSFW pics on Reddit), so you have to actively go out of your way to consume things that are 'bad' for you. Also give people more tools and nudges. Like let people click through a Twitter profile and see that 80% of a person's Tweets are angry or about political topics. Somebody brought up tax policy as an example of something that doesn't get this treatment, and that's because tax policy is BORING and Slate/Newsmax aren't writing hit pieces about tax policy. People care about culture topics because the media whips them into a frenzy. We could also force the companies to do due diligence in their R+D/feature implementations; maybe Twitter should be forced to prove that each new algorithm change makes people HAPPIER (or at least doesn't have terrible mental health effects). Also I advocate for digital history and basic internet infrastructure information to be taught at the K-12 level; so much of the problem is that people don't understand how any of this works at a VERY BASIC level.
• SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
  "Bad" platforms aren't bad because "we disagree with them." They're bad because they're lying to people en masse and inciting rebellion. And yes, I absolutely think that behavior that reaches that bar should be squelched. The dangers of enabling the spread of misinformation are entirely too visible in today's society. The slippery slope argument is garbage in this case. No one has been banning political speech from major platforms. Heck, they bent over backwards to allow Trump and company to say the most outrageous things for years before finally stepping in and putting a stop to it. And Parler being deplatformed for enabling the public organization of rebellion against the United States hardly seems like an "oh no, we're becoming Nazis!" moment. It's only the most extreme views that result in deplatforming; "your view on taxes is different than mine" will never rise to that level, so there's no slippery slope. So in what case can we justify enabling platforms to lie to people and incite violence? It simply can't be done.
  • Mezzie 5y ago
    Is the first or the second the issue? If it's the first, I can find a TON of lying and misinformation on 'mainstream' sites and institutions. Off the top of my head, I can think of examples in the past year where the NYT and ACLU lied or misrepresented information, for example. There's also a shit ton of information flying around respectable Dem Twitter and Reddit whenever news events happen. Remember how many people thought that the people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black and tried to stoke racial tensions using that talking point? So obviously it's not the lying. So let's talk about 'inciting rebellion.' Everybody involved in the January 6th riot is a braindead moron. Trump is a braindead moron. And, frankly, if Trump were arrested, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. That doesn't mean we crack down on speech. It'd be like ordering the USPS to open letters and report people if they plotted their stupid Dollar Store peasant rebellion using paper letters, or tapping everybody's phones. I'm also exceptionally uncomfortable with the idea that inciting rebellion is inherently bad, as somebody who does believe we should resist tyranny and people have the right to rebel. They should have been able to talk about how much the government sucks all they want, they crossed the line when they showed up to break into Congress. > It's only the most extreme views that result in deplatforming; "your view on taxes is different than mine" will never rise to that level, so there's no slippery slope. Taxes, probably not, but it'll be really interesting to see how union discussions, for example, are handled. Also I could definitely come up with some tax policies that would get me deplatformed from the big spaces. We just haven't dragged taxes into the culture war yet.