4 ms·

The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read.

kannanvijayan 4y ago
> The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read. As do I, and you. I was pretty happy when all of those ISIS accounts that were spewing violence and hate got shut down. I'm sure you have your boundaries on what you'd want society to allow and restrict on public mediums. The specific details of what those boundaries are will depend on your personal notion of what constitutes communication which can be considered abusive. As it will for any other person. Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. I guarantee you if we have a back and forth discussion we will discover where your boundaries lie across the myriad issues where people typically want to control public discourse.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that. If I want to press the ban/blacklist button on tag, account, group, or whatever social unit to not see it again that's my decision. Sure, some of them should be default (probably don't want people to get porn the second they sign up), but user should be in power to moderate and filter their own stream. > Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. 3/4 of what you mentioned is illegal in most places in the first place so it isn't point of contention. And that isn't really a problem. Site deciding this or that political view is now bad is. You try to put removing the illegal/disturbing content in same category as worldview manipulation. The first is way more black and white than the second and should not be considered together, even if similar systems are used for them.
  - kannanvijayan 4y ago
    The distinctions you're bringing up seem kind of perfunctory to me. The wanker at the twitter office that was presumably appointed by twitter management to do that, yes? And some people want to appeal to that particular seat of power to influence and limit discourse along some dimension, within twitter. And yet other appeals to higher powers, such as governments - control communication with deeper consequences across broader domains. What's legal or illegal evolves with politics and culture. So there's no fundamental purchase there for the kind of moral conversation you were trying to elicit. If in a few years the people you accuse of wanting to control other people's speech are able to get some laws passed making the speech they want controlled properly illegal, I'd venture you would resist accepting that as suddenly legitimate - even if those things would be "straight up illegal" at that point. I guess I should have been more explicit in the first response - but what I'm suggesting is that this conversation is better had in less absolutist terms than what you proposed. There was the implication that the other person somehow inherently wanted to control communication in a qualitatively different way than you (or I did). That's not to go down the path of sophistry - but just to suggest to orient the conversation around where the boundaries should be placed in practical terms, and discuss where the differences in boundaries lie and on an issue by issue basis evaluate that, rather than absolutist/ideological terms. "You want to control speech (and I don't)" doesn't really lead anywhere in terms of discourse. It's a dead end.
    - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
      > (parent) Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that. > What's legal or illegal evolves with politics and culture. So there's no fundamental purchase there for the kind of moral conversation you were trying to elicit. If in a few years the people you accuse of wanting to control other people's speech are able to get some laws passed making the speech they want controlled properly illegal, I'd venture you would resist accepting that as suddenly legitimate - even if those things would be "straight up illegal" at that point. The parent commenter was simply saying that the abhorrent examples you provided were not a point of contention, and not relevant to a conversation about free speech. They weren't attempting to put the word of the law onto a pedestal as you seem to suggest, they were simply pointing out that the things you mentioned are universally considered bad all around the planet, whereas freedom of speech is not. The situation you've outlined in which one political party successfully silences their opponents through legal means is exactly why a "Site deciding this or that political view is now bad" is so dangerous.

> The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read. As do I, and you. I was pretty happy when all of those ISIS accounts that were spewing violence and hate got shut down. I'm sure you have your boundaries on what you'd want society to allow and restrict on public mediums. The specific details of what those boundaries are will depend on your personal notion of what constitutes communication which can be considered abusive. As it will for any other person. Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. I guarantee you if we have a back and forth discussion we will discover where your boundaries lie across the myriad issues where people typically want to control public discourse.

ilyt 4y ago
Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that. If I want to press the ban/blacklist button on tag, account, group, or whatever social unit to not see it again that's my decision. Sure, some of them should be default (probably don't want people to get porn the second they sign up), but user should be in power to moderate and filter their own stream. > Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. 3/4 of what you mentioned is illegal in most places in the first place so it isn't point of contention. And that isn't really a problem. Site deciding this or that political view is now bad is. You try to put removing the illegal/disturbing content in same category as worldview manipulation. The first is way more black and white than the second and should not be considered together, even if similar systems are used for them.
- kannanvijayan 4y ago
  The distinctions you're bringing up seem kind of perfunctory to me. The wanker at the twitter office that was presumably appointed by twitter management to do that, yes? And some people want to appeal to that particular seat of power to influence and limit discourse along some dimension, within twitter. And yet other appeals to higher powers, such as governments - control communication with deeper consequences across broader domains. What's legal or illegal evolves with politics and culture. So there's no fundamental purchase there for the kind of moral conversation you were trying to elicit. If in a few years the people you accuse of wanting to control other people's speech are able to get some laws passed making the speech they want controlled properly illegal, I'd venture you would resist accepting that as suddenly legitimate - even if those things would be "straight up illegal" at that point. I guess I should have been more explicit in the first response - but what I'm suggesting is that this conversation is better had in less absolutist terms than what you proposed. There was the implication that the other person somehow inherently wanted to control communication in a qualitatively different way than you (or I did). That's not to go down the path of sophistry - but just to suggest to orient the conversation around where the boundaries should be placed in practical terms, and discuss where the differences in boundaries lie and on an issue by issue basis evaluate that, rather than absolutist/ideological terms. "You want to control speech (and I don't)" doesn't really lead anywhere in terms of discourse. It's a dead end.
  - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    > (parent) Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that. > What's legal or illegal evolves with politics and culture. So there's no fundamental purchase there for the kind of moral conversation you were trying to elicit. If in a few years the people you accuse of wanting to control other people's speech are able to get some laws passed making the speech they want controlled properly illegal, I'd venture you would resist accepting that as suddenly legitimate - even if those things would be "straight up illegal" at that point. The parent commenter was simply saying that the abhorrent examples you provided were not a point of contention, and not relevant to a conversation about free speech. They weren't attempting to put the word of the law onto a pedestal as you seem to suggest, they were simply pointing out that the things you mentioned are universally considered bad all around the planet, whereas freedom of speech is not. The situation you've outlined in which one political party successfully silences their opponents through legal means is exactly why a "Site deciding this or that political view is now bad" is so dangerous.