8 ms·

> Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to. Well, or they have a more nuanc

> Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to. Well, or they have a more nuanced view than "censorship no" or "censorship yes" For example, I support laws preventing stores from selling 3 watt LED bulbs in packages claiming they're 5 watt LED bulbs; or selling generic LED bulbs in packages claiming they're Phillips bulbs. Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech. Must I support all censorship, because I support this one bit of censorship?

Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Exactly this. Censorship should be a nuanced topic if anyone gives it any serious thought. Not all censorship is at the same level, and there is obviously a difference between shutting down Twitter and not letting folks criticize the government and, say, not telling folks misinformation that can lead to another's harm or death (fake cures, for example).
- AeroNotix 4y ago
  The problem with allowing the interpretation of whether something should be censored be based on the obvious nuances that it entails is that the exact nuance is not universal among all people. This is why ZERO censorship is the only reasonable form of censorship.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    I have trouble grasping the extend to which you appreciate the degree of thinking done by other parties for your own benefit. It is the case that unless you are a polymath with copious amount of time and money, you will never be able to accumulate sufficient information to make fully educated decisions in a world truly devoid of censorship. By fully educated I mean starting from the bottom up and going all the way through to reach a conclusion. This means that every single resource you will use has to be verified, all experiments need to be conducted and evaluated. If we don’t censor anything, then there is no point in books because editors are censoring information there. What’s the point of journals and publications without a review process to filter out the garbage? You could very well be a reasonable person, but without censorship to varying degrees your capacity filter garbage is hindered by simply not knowing anything to a reasonable degree of certainty exactly because no form of censorship exists. Thus your capacity to limit information based on prior knowledge is hindered as there is not an authority of any kind that you may trust exactly because there is no way to measure quality of one’s speech outside the scrutiny it passes through through established channels and authorities that already have a reputation and we may trust. The reason we do censorship is because not all speech is benevolent, useful, or true. People will abuse the absence of censorship to attack “unwanted” people, to push lies, to misrepresent information, and to push an agenda instead of letting facts do the talking. Why is it difficult for facts to do the talking? > Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."[1][2] Now, the more bullshit that floats the more bullshit propagates and thus the less true information exists, eventually suffocating us in information garbage. If you wish to see this in action, look into antivax groups convinced that vaccinated individuals will start dropping like flies within the next $LATEST_GOALPOST. Or, take a look at how long it took me to explain why absolute absence of censorship simply does not work just from a view of having a consistent world model and having nobody to trust and no way of doing so. One could extend my comment to include damage done to people or entities intentionally or otherwise. Notice how Musk pivoted out of absolute free speech when advertisers left?
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      Care to tell me what I did wrong to warrant this reaction?
  - smallnix 4y ago
    I understand that you mean zero censorship for adults. I am interested in your position regarding people younger than 21/18/16 (exact age depends on the country I guess).
  - status200 4y ago
    It would be interesting to get your opinion on censorship again if a specific lie was gaining exponential traction and threatened the livelihood of your family. Or even if there were something less direct, like if you couldn't go see a movie in a theater because a huge tiktok trend of yelling "Fire!" and filming people trample each other gains the spotlight of millions of users.
    - account42 4y ago
      And it would be interesting to get your opinion on censorship if saying things you believe in meant the government would hunt down and execute your entire family. Of course that is a ridiculous scenario, as are most straw man arguments. And the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" trope was original made in support to argue for censorship of speech opposing the draft during WWI so if anything it's an example for why we should absolutely defend free speech even if there are seeming arguments to restrict it. The better solution to prevent stampedes in crowded spaces is to have safety regulation requiring adequate exits and occupancy limits, which we do have. Movie theaters are also not public spaces so they can easily ban people for causing a disturbance.
  - petsfed 4y ago
    I worry that the nuance here is not actually down to interpretation, but the consequences of extremely rapid dissemination of information. I don't even think those of us in tech have come to grips with how that matters, let alone if/how we should make efforts to get around it. The latency on information coming from a newspaper or even TV news is limited to how rapidly those sources can vet the information before publishing it, and then the latency of the publication method. If someone wants to use those avenues to spread misinformation, they have to do a lot of legwork to make the lie sound plausible enough that the publisher will put the effort into publishing it. What's the legwork for someone planning to spread misinformation via twitter? How long does it take "for new facts to emerge" that address the misgivings incredulous consumers hold? The power of social media is that the real truth can emerge very quickly, regardless of what the powers that be want. But the threat of social media is that there's basically no organic way to prevent abuse of that power. Others are right that the line between misinformation and difference of opinion is often quite narrow. But I don't believe there is no difference, and every society must choose and hold its line, according to its own values.
alphanullmeric 4y ago
Your scenario is not equivalent. A buyer and seller shake on an implicit contract when a purchase is made, and enforcement of a contract you agreed to is not censorship. A more accurate comparison would be me posting a picture of a 3 watt bulb online, claiming it is a 5 watt bulb. I don’t believe that should be illegal, and you would if you were consistent.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  You've missed the point. It's not desirable to have listings which contain false advertising; the remedy for that is to restrict false advertising, not make every buyer chase the seller in a contract dispute after the fact. That would be insanity.
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    Nope, your comparison is just not equivalent. A sale is a transfer of property. We enforce the implicit contract that goes along with that. The buyer will pay, the seller will deliver, the product is accurate, etc. This discussion is about speech, for which no such contract exists. If you disagree, then you should have no problem arresting people for showing off a 3 watt bulb they claim to be 5 watts.
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      Advertising is speech; there is no sale.
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        If there is to be no sale, then is it really advertising at all? If I "advertise" that I own a thing with no intention of selling that thing, then laws about honest advertisement don't apply to me. My car (not for sale) has a nuclear reactor and can travel through time.
        4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pmontra 4y ago
That's not censorship. That's preventing fraud. Censorship would be preventing you to talk against those frauds.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech. This is a terrible analogy, and evidence that the people who claim we can't protect all speech have no idea what "free speech" actually is. Hint: no, it's not fraud.
- guelo 4y ago
  Now that you've accepted that we should censor fraud speech you have to define the grey line between unacceptable fraud and acceptable disinformation.
  - d110af5ccf 4y ago
    > fraud speech This is you fundamentally misunderstanding what is meant by "speech". The statement itself is not illegal. The act of misrepresenting the transaction being agreed to is what's illegal. A specific act that involves many components, only one of which happens to be speech, has been made illegal. The speech component itself has not. There are certain situations where speech itself is restricted. This is not one of them though.
    - guelo 4y ago
      This is just wrong. There is all kinds of commercial speech, especially around advertisement, that is banned before any transaction is agreed to.
ipaddr 4y ago
Fraud and censorship are different. Saying these bulbs have 5 when they have three is a lie but shouldn't be censored. Selling someone 3 but saying it is 5 is fraud. Selling/buying have different laws and standards.

Broken_Hippo 4y ago

Exactly this. Censorship should be a nuanced topic if anyone gives it any serious thought. Not all censorship is at the same level, and there is obviously a difference between shutting down Twitter and not letting folks criticize the government and, say, not telling folks misinformation that can lead to another's harm or death (fake cures, for example).

AeroNotix 4y ago
The problem with allowing the interpretation of whether something should be censored be based on the obvious nuances that it entails is that the exact nuance is not universal among all people. This is why ZERO censorship is the only reasonable form of censorship.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I have trouble grasping the extend to which you appreciate the degree of thinking done by other parties for your own benefit. It is the case that unless you are a polymath with copious amount of time and money, you will never be able to accumulate sufficient information to make fully educated decisions in a world truly devoid of censorship. By fully educated I mean starting from the bottom up and going all the way through to reach a conclusion. This means that every single resource you will use has to be verified, all experiments need to be conducted and evaluated. If we don’t censor anything, then there is no point in books because editors are censoring information there. What’s the point of journals and publications without a review process to filter out the garbage? You could very well be a reasonable person, but without censorship to varying degrees your capacity filter garbage is hindered by simply not knowing anything to a reasonable degree of certainty exactly because no form of censorship exists. Thus your capacity to limit information based on prior knowledge is hindered as there is not an authority of any kind that you may trust exactly because there is no way to measure quality of one’s speech outside the scrutiny it passes through through established channels and authorities that already have a reputation and we may trust. The reason we do censorship is because not all speech is benevolent, useful, or true. People will abuse the absence of censorship to attack “unwanted” people, to push lies, to misrepresent information, and to push an agenda instead of letting facts do the talking. Why is it difficult for facts to do the talking? > Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."[1][2] Now, the more bullshit that floats the more bullshit propagates and thus the less true information exists, eventually suffocating us in information garbage. If you wish to see this in action, look into antivax groups convinced that vaccinated individuals will start dropping like flies within the next $LATEST_GOALPOST. Or, take a look at how long it took me to explain why absolute absence of censorship simply does not work just from a view of having a consistent world model and having nobody to trust and no way of doing so. One could extend my comment to include damage done to people or entities intentionally or otherwise. Notice how Musk pivoted out of absolute free speech when advertisers left?
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Care to tell me what I did wrong to warrant this reaction?
- smallnix 4y ago
  I understand that you mean zero censorship for adults. I am interested in your position regarding people younger than 21/18/16 (exact age depends on the country I guess).
- status200 4y ago
  It would be interesting to get your opinion on censorship again if a specific lie was gaining exponential traction and threatened the livelihood of your family. Or even if there were something less direct, like if you couldn't go see a movie in a theater because a huge tiktok trend of yelling "Fire!" and filming people trample each other gains the spotlight of millions of users.
  - account42 4y ago
    And it would be interesting to get your opinion on censorship if saying things you believe in meant the government would hunt down and execute your entire family. Of course that is a ridiculous scenario, as are most straw man arguments. And the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" trope was original made in support to argue for censorship of speech opposing the draft during WWI so if anything it's an example for why we should absolutely defend free speech even if there are seeming arguments to restrict it. The better solution to prevent stampedes in crowded spaces is to have safety regulation requiring adequate exits and occupancy limits, which we do have. Movie theaters are also not public spaces so they can easily ban people for causing a disturbance.
- petsfed 4y ago
  I worry that the nuance here is not actually down to interpretation, but the consequences of extremely rapid dissemination of information. I don't even think those of us in tech have come to grips with how that matters, let alone if/how we should make efforts to get around it. The latency on information coming from a newspaper or even TV news is limited to how rapidly those sources can vet the information before publishing it, and then the latency of the publication method. If someone wants to use those avenues to spread misinformation, they have to do a lot of legwork to make the lie sound plausible enough that the publisher will put the effort into publishing it. What's the legwork for someone planning to spread misinformation via twitter? How long does it take "for new facts to emerge" that address the misgivings incredulous consumers hold? The power of social media is that the real truth can emerge very quickly, regardless of what the powers that be want. But the threat of social media is that there's basically no organic way to prevent abuse of that power. Others are right that the line between misinformation and difference of opinion is often quite narrow. But I don't believe there is no difference, and every society must choose and hold its line, according to its own values.

alphanullmeric 4y ago

Your scenario is not equivalent. A buyer and seller shake on an implicit contract when a purchase is made, and enforcement of a contract you agreed to is not censorship. A more accurate comparison would be me posting a picture of a 3 watt bulb online, claiming it is a 5 watt bulb. I don’t believe that should be illegal, and you would if you were consistent.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
You've missed the point. It's not desirable to have listings which contain false advertising; the remedy for that is to restrict false advertising, not make every buyer chase the seller in a contract dispute after the fact. That would be insanity.
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  Nope, your comparison is just not equivalent. A sale is a transfer of property. We enforce the implicit contract that goes along with that. The buyer will pay, the seller will deliver, the product is accurate, etc. This discussion is about speech, for which no such contract exists. If you disagree, then you should have no problem arresting people for showing off a 3 watt bulb they claim to be 5 watts.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    Advertising is speech; there is no sale.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      If there is to be no sale, then is it really advertising at all? If I "advertise" that I own a thing with no intention of selling that thing, then laws about honest advertisement don't apply to me. My car (not for sale) has a nuclear reactor and can travel through time.
      - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pmontra 4y ago

That's not censorship. That's preventing fraud. Censorship would be preventing you to talk against those frauds.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech. This is a terrible analogy, and evidence that the people who claim we can't protect all speech have no idea what "free speech" actually is. Hint: no, it's not fraud.

guelo 4y ago
Now that you've accepted that we should censor fraud speech you have to define the grey line between unacceptable fraud and acceptable disinformation.
- d110af5ccf 4y ago
  > fraud speech This is you fundamentally misunderstanding what is meant by "speech". The statement itself is not illegal. The act of misrepresenting the transaction being agreed to is what's illegal. A specific act that involves many components, only one of which happens to be speech, has been made illegal. The speech component itself has not. There are certain situations where speech itself is restricted. This is not one of them though.
  - guelo 4y ago
    This is just wrong. There is all kinds of commercial speech, especially around advertisement, that is banned before any transaction is agreed to.

ipaddr 4y ago

Fraud and censorship are different. Saying these bulbs have 5 when they have three is a lie but shouldn't be censored. Selling someone 3 but saying it is 5 is fraud. Selling/buying have different laws and standards.