6 ms·

It is not topics that are censored, it is behaviour

thinkingemote 5y ago
"A long thread on how I used to believe in Free Speech but now don't" "Free speech changed, it was about being free to behave badly on certain topics against repressive forces in charge. Now we are in charge, so it's different"
- recursivedoubts 5y ago
  "When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."
- wwweston 5y ago
  Freedom of speech doesn't actually matter to to someone who mischaracterizes what Wong said so profoundly and misses so many important and useful points he made.
lozenge 5y ago
What behaviour deserved censorship in this example? https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-over-incompetent-fact-check-of-bmj-investigation/ https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-o...
- ec109685 5y ago
  It’s discussed in the thread. At one point (and maybe it was wrong) such findings were weaponized to the detriment of the community — i.e. vaccines are dangerous. I agree though with your point that he’s being a bit sanctimonious. It’s not just about community civility — there’s an overarching “we are doing what’s best for world” attitude that Facebook and the like are also employing.
  - MBCook 5y ago
    I didn’t get a sanctimonious tone. I got a frustrated/tired one. Like a warning from someone who has seen it happen 100 times and can’t put a lot of energy into it anymore. Just “I’ve been there, this is what’s going to happen, sorry but it really sucks.“
    - ec109685 5y ago
      You’re right. I meant the idea that the only thing platform owners do is optimize for the community.
HideousKojima 5y ago
>Both sides think the platform is institutionally biased against them. Hilarious coming from someone who used to work at Reddit. Apart from blatantly illegal stuff, the one thing most likely to get a subreddit in trouble with Reddit's Anti-Evil Operations is allowing open debate about whether trans women are women. Even if the mods take every effort to make rules and remove posts calling for violence etc. and merely allow debate over whether or not they are women, they are guaranteed to run afoul of the AEO team. There is a subreddit I frequent that allows this, and the mods there are very transparent about when the AEO removes posts, and it is pretty much always posts about whether trans women are women (the remainder of ones that get removed by the AEO tend to be people arguing about lowering the age of consent, but the ratio of trans to aoc posts that get removed is like 10:1).
- boppo1 5y ago
  Well he mentions that porn is "imagined moral degeneracy". I imagine he believes debating trans people's status is "actual violence".
- CrispinS 5y ago
  To be fair, Yishan was CEO from 2012 to 2014, and back then they did way less content moderation. This was a time when blatantly racist subs like /r/coontown were allowed, as well as fringe subs like /r/watchpeopledie.
- wwweston 5y ago
  I'm not seeing anything in your comment that actually refutes the substance of what Wong said. Volunteering to show your own oppression receipts isn't evidence against the idea that people from many political poles thing the platform is institutionally biased against them. It actually reinforces his point. Particularly when he takes pains to point out that anyone running this kind of circus is always going to find out that no single stable system or rules are going to be adequate to address behavior that surrounds discourse with limited accountability. I frequent at least one sub where trans-skeptical discussion is certainly present (/r/JordanPeterson , in spite of the fact that it's largely a political fun-house mirror now more than a venue for discussing his work). I see that kind of discussion regularly. You may want to consider that something else is going in the sub you're referring to. Particularly considering it's one in which apparently both lowering the age of consent and trans-skeptical topics are a staple (the potential behavioral red flags almost throw themselves). > ratio of trans to aoc posts that get removed is like 10:1). What's the ratio of trans posts that don't get removed to those that do? What's the ratio of shitposts where the frame is ultimately about how one should behave towards trans people vs posts that are courteously principled with the obvious point of exploring what gender/sex actually are and how might know? What's the ratio of worldview to discourse?
sudden_dystopia 5y ago
- mcphage 5y ago
  That's not them caring about politics, that's them not wanting a repeat of "but her emails".
happytoexplain 5y ago
I wish more people could see the complexity of the world's systems, both technical and social (not comprehend it of course - just see that it exists). "Bad faith" is essentially the default tone now. Most of what he's saying makes perfect sense to me. But people will dismiss the entire thing, pointing to weak examples ranging from individual instances of actual bad behavior to honest mistakes to tangential events of tenuous relevance to complete falsehoods.
- hfbjh 5y ago
  Most of what he's saying makes sense to me as well. But isn't he a rich capitalist dude, who greatly benefited from the rise of the mentioned platforms? Thus incentivizing him greatly to take the decisions motivated by money and not some imaginary neutrality or "fight the bad behaviors" concept? He mentioned this tangentially right before delving into how hard those jobs are which one absolutely doesn't have to take. So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. p.s. I would also prefer Elon to work on spaceships, cars, leaving social platforms to run for somebody else
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. No, the whole thread is "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, so Elon should just not do it."
    - hfbjh 5y ago
      fair enough, but didn't Elon specifically say he didn't care about the economics of the whole endeavor? Doesn't this, essentially, underpin the whole endeavor?
      - 5y ago
notadev 5y ago
“You really want to avoid censorship on social networks? Here is the solution: Stop arguing. Play nice. The catch: everyone has to do it at once. I guarantee you, if you do that, there will be NO CENSORSHIP OF ANY TOPIC on any social network.” This is a great idea. If all countries just stopped fighting there’d be no more war!
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  That's part of the point. "Censorship" in this context is essentially moderation gone wrong (either subjectively or objectively, either by accident or on purpose via a bad actor) so as long as there is content to moderate, there will be "censorship". There are platforms with zero moderation (aside from very surface level stuff, like banning illegal content or off-topic threads) - that space is not starving, but those platforms by their very nature can't be a popular enough option to displace the moderated platforms.
hintymad 5y ago
This thread is amazingly good. Yishan’s observation is on the spot: All my left-wing woke friends are CONVINCED that the social media platforms uphold the white supremacist misogynistic patriarchy, and they have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when the platform has made enforcement decisions unfairly against innocuous things they've said, and let far more egregious sexist/racist violations by the other side pass. Woke friends: it's true, right? You have LOTS of examples. All my alt/center-right/libertarian friends are CONVINCED the social media platforms uphold the woke BLM/Marxist/LGBTQ agenda and they ALSO have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when the platforms have made enforcement decisions unfair against them for innocuous things they've said merely questioning (in good faith) the woke orthodoxy, and let far more egregious violations by the other side stand. Right-wingers and libertarians: it's true, right? You can remember PLENTY of examples. Some interesting conclusion too: “They would like you (the users) to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and not have to adjudicate your stupid little fights.”
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    This is very clearly a bad comparison. BLM and LGBT pride rely publicly on positive imagery (regardless of negative examples), while white supremacy and misogyny are inherently negative (there are no positive examples). A more fair comparison (though there really isn't a perfect comparison) would be: Support for BLM and LGBT vs support for police and military. Or, on the negative side: Support for Stalinists and man haters vs support for white supremacists and misogynists. But you chose the less offensive side of "left" things vs the more offensive side of "right" things. Edit: Note that I have no idea what small supports (like logo changing) social media platforms have committed for any of these groups, left or right. I'm just criticizing your logic.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
a_shovel 5y ago
> All my alt/center-right/libertarian friends ... have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when the platforms have made enforcement decisions unfair against them for innocuous things they've said merely questioning (in good faith) the woke orthodoxy Whenever I see vague complaints like this, I'm reminded of a twitter user I once encountered. He was conservative, and he was complaining about how the left controlled all of the media and social media, censoring people for arbitrary actions and disallowing speech they didn't agree with, banning people for the most trivial of things. He waxed lyrical about how nobody should let them have this power, how we should resist them at every turn, about the freedom denied to him and those like him. As I read more, and got more context, it became increasingly clear that he was talking about not being allowed to call people the n-word. (I also found him in the first place in the Emmet Till trend, complaining that it was trending.) What's innocent and acceptable for one group can be unacceptable and offensive for another group, and sometimes the second group has a much better point than the first.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
It’s censorship behavior on behalf of the platform that is not applied evenly. Elon has convinced me to be a free-speech absolutist, you may not like it, I may not like it, but that’s the way it should be.
- beej71 5y ago
  Good luck defining "evenly"! :) I don't think Elon is going to allow Nazi spam, and he shouldn't if he wants the platform to be relevant.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    Absolutism implies achieving even moderation by not moderating - though even that is arguably not "even application", if one side of some issue thrives more on strategies that are harmful to conversation than the other.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Absolutism feels righteous and is simple to describe and follow (and therefore makes it easy to avoid the appearance, real or not, of hypocrisy), but it's just not realistic.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hintymad 5y ago
It puzzles me how this thread is worth flagging. Let me guess, it is not topics that are censored but behavior? There must be the right wingers who censored this /sarcasm
- dang 5y ago
  Probably because the title was badly editorialized, which is against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). A repost is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31044693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31044693
- MBCook 5y ago
  There’s a couple of guesses I can make. First of all a lot of people are really tired of Elon Musk and don’t wanna hear about him. In general that’s where I am. So they flagged it (I didn’t). Then there’s the hard-core Elon fans who don’t want to say anything bad about him. They probably flagged it too. Some people are probably tired of this specific topic. There’s been a lot of stories about Elon Musk and Twitter over the last two days or so, why do we need one more? Everyone’s going to say mostly the same things anyway. Elon is right. Elon is an idiot. He’ll save twitter. He’ll ruin it. I hate twitter. Blah blah blah. So they flag it. He provides a very unique and useful perspective, but it’s not clear from the headline. That probably doesn’t help. Sorry.

"A long thread on how I used to believe in Free Speech but now don't" "Free speech changed, it was about being free to behave badly on certain topics against repressive forces in charge. Now we are in charge, so it's different"

recursivedoubts 5y ago
"When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."
wwweston 5y ago
Freedom of speech doesn't actually matter to to someone who mischaracterizes what Wong said so profoundly and misses so many important and useful points he made.

lozenge 5y ago

What behaviour deserved censorship in this example? https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-over-incompetent-fact-check-of-bmj-investigation/ https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-o...

ec109685 5y ago
It’s discussed in the thread. At one point (and maybe it was wrong) such findings were weaponized to the detriment of the community — i.e. vaccines are dangerous. I agree though with your point that he’s being a bit sanctimonious. It’s not just about community civility — there’s an overarching “we are doing what’s best for world” attitude that Facebook and the like are also employing.
- MBCook 5y ago
  I didn’t get a sanctimonious tone. I got a frustrated/tired one. Like a warning from someone who has seen it happen 100 times and can’t put a lot of energy into it anymore. Just “I’ve been there, this is what’s going to happen, sorry but it really sucks.“
  - ec109685 5y ago
    You’re right. I meant the idea that the only thing platform owners do is optimize for the community.

HideousKojima 5y ago

>Both sides think the platform is institutionally biased against them. Hilarious coming from someone who used to work at Reddit. Apart from blatantly illegal stuff, the one thing most likely to get a subreddit in trouble with Reddit's Anti-Evil Operations is allowing open debate about whether trans women are women. Even if the mods take every effort to make rules and remove posts calling for violence etc. and merely allow debate over whether or not they are women, they are guaranteed to run afoul of the AEO team. There is a subreddit I frequent that allows this, and the mods there are very transparent about when the AEO removes posts, and it is pretty much always posts about whether trans women are women (the remainder of ones that get removed by the AEO tend to be people arguing about lowering the age of consent, but the ratio of trans to aoc posts that get removed is like 10:1).

boppo1 5y ago
Well he mentions that porn is "imagined moral degeneracy". I imagine he believes debating trans people's status is "actual violence".
CrispinS 5y ago
To be fair, Yishan was CEO from 2012 to 2014, and back then they did way less content moderation. This was a time when blatantly racist subs like /r/coontown were allowed, as well as fringe subs like /r/watchpeopledie.
wwweston 5y ago
I'm not seeing anything in your comment that actually refutes the substance of what Wong said. Volunteering to show your own oppression receipts isn't evidence against the idea that people from many political poles thing the platform is institutionally biased against them. It actually reinforces his point. Particularly when he takes pains to point out that anyone running this kind of circus is always going to find out that no single stable system or rules are going to be adequate to address behavior that surrounds discourse with limited accountability. I frequent at least one sub where trans-skeptical discussion is certainly present (/r/JordanPeterson , in spite of the fact that it's largely a political fun-house mirror now more than a venue for discussing his work). I see that kind of discussion regularly. You may want to consider that something else is going in the sub you're referring to. Particularly considering it's one in which apparently both lowering the age of consent and trans-skeptical topics are a staple (the potential behavioral red flags almost throw themselves). > ratio of trans to aoc posts that get removed is like 10:1). What's the ratio of trans posts that don't get removed to those that do? What's the ratio of shitposts where the frame is ultimately about how one should behave towards trans people vs posts that are courteously principled with the obvious point of exploring what gender/sex actually are and how might know? What's the ratio of worldview to discourse?

sudden_dystopia 5y ago

mcphage 5y ago
That's not them caring about politics, that's them not wanting a repeat of "but her emails".

happytoexplain 5y ago

I wish more people could see the complexity of the world's systems, both technical and social (not comprehend it of course - just see that it exists). "Bad faith" is essentially the default tone now. Most of what he's saying makes perfect sense to me. But people will dismiss the entire thing, pointing to weak examples ranging from individual instances of actual bad behavior to honest mistakes to tangential events of tenuous relevance to complete falsehoods.

hfbjh 5y ago
Most of what he's saying makes sense to me as well. But isn't he a rich capitalist dude, who greatly benefited from the rise of the mentioned platforms? Thus incentivizing him greatly to take the decisions motivated by money and not some imaginary neutrality or "fight the bad behaviors" concept? He mentioned this tangentially right before delving into how hard those jobs are which one absolutely doesn't have to take. So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. p.s. I would also prefer Elon to work on spaceships, cars, leaving social platforms to run for somebody else
- mcphage 5y ago
  > So to me, the whole thread is like "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, but you still need to make the money, so... poor Elon?" I don't think so. No, the whole thread is "running social platforms and making a lot of money is tricky, because a lot of people will rightfully hate you, so Elon should just not do it."
  - hfbjh 5y ago
    fair enough, but didn't Elon specifically say he didn't care about the economics of the whole endeavor? Doesn't this, essentially, underpin the whole endeavor?
    - 5y ago

notadev 5y ago

“You really want to avoid censorship on social networks? Here is the solution: Stop arguing. Play nice. The catch: everyone has to do it at once. I guarantee you, if you do that, there will be NO CENSORSHIP OF ANY TOPIC on any social network.” This is a great idea. If all countries just stopped fighting there’d be no more war!

happytoexplain 5y ago
That's part of the point. "Censorship" in this context is essentially moderation gone wrong (either subjectively or objectively, either by accident or on purpose via a bad actor) so as long as there is content to moderate, there will be "censorship". There are platforms with zero moderation (aside from very surface level stuff, like banning illegal content or off-topic threads) - that space is not starving, but those platforms by their very nature can't be a popular enough option to displace the moderated platforms.

hintymad 5y ago

This thread is amazingly good. Yishan’s observation is on the spot: All my left-wing woke friends are CONVINCED that the social media platforms uphold the white supremacist misogynistic patriarchy, and they have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when the platform has made enforcement decisions unfairly against innocuous things they've said, and let far more egregious sexist/racist violations by the other side pass. Woke friends: it's true, right? You have LOTS of examples. All my alt/center-right/libertarian friends are CONVINCED the social media platforms uphold the woke BLM/Marxist/LGBTQ agenda and they ALSO have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when the platforms have made enforcement decisions unfair against them for innocuous things they've said merely questioning (in good faith) the woke orthodoxy, and let far more egregious violations by the other side stand. Right-wingers and libertarians: it's true, right? You can remember PLENTY of examples. Some interesting conclusion too: “They would like you (the users) to stop squabbling over stupid shit and causing drama so that they can spend their time writing more features and not have to adjudicate your stupid little fights.”

HideousKojima 5y ago
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  This is very clearly a bad comparison. BLM and LGBT pride rely publicly on positive imagery (regardless of negative examples), while white supremacy and misogyny are inherently negative (there are no positive examples). A more fair comparison (though there really isn't a perfect comparison) would be: Support for BLM and LGBT vs support for police and military. Or, on the negative side: Support for Stalinists and man haters vs support for white supremacists and misogynists. But you chose the less offensive side of "left" things vs the more offensive side of "right" things. Edit: Note that I have no idea what small supports (like logo changing) social media platforms have committed for any of these groups, left or right. I'm just criticizing your logic.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago

a_shovel 5y ago

> All my alt/center-right/libertarian friends ... have plenty of screenshots and evidence of times when the platforms have made enforcement decisions unfair against them for innocuous things they've said merely questioning (in good faith) the woke orthodoxy Whenever I see vague complaints like this, I'm reminded of a twitter user I once encountered. He was conservative, and he was complaining about how the left controlled all of the media and social media, censoring people for arbitrary actions and disallowing speech they didn't agree with, banning people for the most trivial of things. He waxed lyrical about how nobody should let them have this power, how we should resist them at every turn, about the freedom denied to him and those like him. As I read more, and got more context, it became increasingly clear that he was talking about not being allowed to call people the n-word. (I also found him in the first place in the Emmet Till trend, complaining that it was trending.) What's innocent and acceptable for one group can be unacceptable and offensive for another group, and sometimes the second group has a much better point than the first.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

It’s censorship behavior on behalf of the platform that is not applied evenly. Elon has convinced me to be a free-speech absolutist, you may not like it, I may not like it, but that’s the way it should be.

beej71 5y ago
Good luck defining "evenly"! :) I don't think Elon is going to allow Nazi spam, and he shouldn't if he wants the platform to be relevant.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Absolutism implies achieving even moderation by not moderating - though even that is arguably not "even application", if one side of some issue thrives more on strategies that are harmful to conversation than the other.
happytoexplain 5y ago
Absolutism feels righteous and is simple to describe and follow (and therefore makes it easy to avoid the appearance, real or not, of hypocrisy), but it's just not realistic.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hintymad 5y ago

It puzzles me how this thread is worth flagging. Let me guess, it is not topics that are censored but behavior? There must be the right wingers who censored this /sarcasm

dang 5y ago
Probably because the title was badly editorialized, which is against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). A repost is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31044693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31044693
MBCook 5y ago
There’s a couple of guesses I can make. First of all a lot of people are really tired of Elon Musk and don’t wanna hear about him. In general that’s where I am. So they flagged it (I didn’t). Then there’s the hard-core Elon fans who don’t want to say anything bad about him. They probably flagged it too. Some people are probably tired of this specific topic. There’s been a lot of stories about Elon Musk and Twitter over the last two days or so, why do we need one more? Everyone’s going to say mostly the same things anyway. Elon is right. Elon is an idiot. He’ll save twitter. He’ll ruin it. I hate twitter. Blah blah blah. So they flag it. He provides a very unique and useful perspective, but it’s not clear from the headline. That probably doesn’t help. Sorry.