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That's right. Authoritarian censors found an exploit. They couldn't use the government to clamp down on civil liberties because of the pesky constitution, so th

That's right. Authoritarian censors found an exploit. They couldn't use the government to clamp down on civil liberties because of the pesky constitution, so they invaded the administrative layer of big tech. It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies with Silicon Valley ideals. They were never intended to be used this way and are secretly horrified. > play moral police at the moment Moral fashion police

version_five 3y ago
From what I understand re twitter and others, it's the government that found a loophole. They used big tech to censor according to their agenda. The administrative class, while I agree probably has been invaded in some sense, is really just risk aversion run amok, like it always it, and will self organize to do what it can to minimize controversy.
- momirlan 3y ago
  i think it's rather the political establishment has allowed big tech to set the agenda for what it considers to be "the truth"
  - ddingus 3y ago
    Big Tech was told they can either see regulation they don't like, or get with the program and ignore corruption like old media has done for decades.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      They should have taken the regulation. At least that forces it into the public eye and allows for accountability via voting. This way only generates a shadow government. Apart from the obvious 1a violation.
      - ddingus 3y ago
        Yup.
- freejazz 3y ago
  Might as well have written this post with (((they))) given how conspiratorial it is
  - timtas 3y ago
    This is not speculation much less crazy theorizing. Read the Missouri v Biden injunction. It’s crystal clear that FedGov infiltrated and basically zombified social media platforms to perform constitutionally prohibited censorship.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
In an interesting way it is also an exploitable facet of small government. If the private sector is susceptible to moral policing then then government downsizing implies a larger attack surface.
- chrischattin 3y ago
  I think the implication is government putting pressure (or working with) businesses to censor speech. Smaller government would mean less attack surface in that case. Market forces and competition should help keep speech free because if a private company doesn't allow x group to use their platform, it is likely a competitor will spring up to capture the orphaned market. We see this play out in reality.
  - Levitz 3y ago
    >Market forces and competition should help keep speech free because if a private company doesn't allow x group to use their platform, it is likely a competitor will spring up to capture the orphaned market. This doesn't really apply in the same way in social media. Social media platforms organically turn into monopolies. X and Facebook and Reddit and Hackernews and Whatsapp are all social media, sure, but they are not in direct competition. One does not start or stop using Instagram because they use Reddit. Same with Hackernews and X, etc etc. The product is different. When you ban an ideology or a group from a piece of social media, they do run to competitors, but "competitors" which can never penetrate the market because they don't have the userbase, which is the main incentive of social media. So far-right people get banned from Twitter and they run to Gab, but Gab and Twitter aren't really competitors because Twitter can't ever penetrate into Gab's market (they banned that market to begin with) and Gab can't penetrate Twitter's market (because Twitter is the more attractive platform to begin with, having more users) The better product is better because of its userbase. There is no real competition, and as such, no upholding of freedom of speech due to it.
- psychlops 3y ago
  Are you suggesting that government (big or small) is immune to moral policing and that it's confined to the private sector? Any centralized system is subject to attack, the bigger the better.
chonkerz 3y ago
From the article, the EFF explicitly calls out the government for failing to enforce existing laws which would have shut down Kiwifarms >That’s what must happen here. The cops and the courts should be working to protect the victims of KF and go after the perpetrators with every legal tool at their disposal. We should be giving them the resources and societal mandate to do so. Solid enforcement of existing laws is something that has been sorely lacking for harassment and abuse online, and it’s one of the reasons people turn to censorship strategies. Finally, we should enact strong data privacy laws that target, among others, the data brokers whose services help enable doxxing.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > the EFF explicitly calls out the government for failing to enforce existing laws which would have shut down Kiwifarms Eh, maybe, but don't most of these laws mostly fail to work across international borders anyway? I mean, I haven't seen many cryptolocker authors appearing before US courts. And wikileaks remains online despite the best efforts of US authorities. Surely anything that could shut down or block kiwifarms could do the same to wikileaks and pirate bay and sci-hub?
  - foven 3y ago
    The operator of the kiwifarms is himself a US citizen with a US business. It is an advertised fact that if a police force comes after or shuts him down with a legal reason, it will cease to exist and he himself has stated he wouldn't operate it out of any other country than the US. Pirate bay and sci-hub get affected by copyright law more than anything else and, to the best of my knowledge, kiwifarms is protected by section 230 in that respect and has always complied with legitimate takedown requests.
    - chonkerz 3y ago
      >and has always complied with legitimate takedown requests. Then why do people who issue takedown requests get plastered all over the site and harassed?
nullifidian 3y ago
>so they invaded the administrative layer of big tech. Not exactly. While there are certainly people who espouse anti-free-speech views in the big tech, I'm pretty sure the companies themselves are pressured/threatened with increased regulatory scrutiny, anti-thrust action and anything else that is at congress/government's disposal. These congress/senate hearings about misinformation are exactly that.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago, at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet. In fact recent activism coming from the engineer levels at Big Tech (google, Amazon, FB, etc) has me believe that that administrative layer is not really in control, and the policy changes are a reflection coming from the activism in the engineering layer We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities.
- ghostzilla 3y ago
  Exactly right. Most of the new engineers have nothing of the libertarian spirit of the 2600 era. It was engineers who implemented censorship at online platforms, most incredulous of which was PayPal charging customers $2,500 in damages for spreading "misinformation." I cancelled my PayPal account the moment I read the news. For shame. But, things go in cycles. What was once great becomes a ruin, and then rises again. We are now in the heading steadily towards the ruin phase.
  - Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
    > engineers who implemented Implementation is the guys holding the shovels, not the guys saying where to dig.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago And thank fuck for that. > at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet. People are so glib about this and it's such a catastrophic failure to engage in empathy and respect for other human beings that it simply blows my mind that people can say things like this and think they're in the moral correct. "Being bullied to death by the Internet" isn't even that uncommon anymore. Especially for people who will have a hard time finding community in the real spaces in which they live, Internet communities of like-people become a literal lifeline. Entire relationships both communal and intimate are carried out through the lens of online communication. "Words on the internet" indeed. And if said words can be a lifeline of communication and community to like-minded people and alleviate suffering, you can be damn well assured that works the other way too. Having personally known and helped people through being the subject of online alt-right hate mobs, I assure you, "words on the internet" can absolutely kill people. I have watched in happen in real time and pulled people back from the precipice. > We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities. Yeah I don't particularly want to use software, especially pay to use software, made by people who want to exterminate people I call friends and family. If a developer comes out on their social media and broadcasts about how my friends are some combination of insane/dangerous for being who they are, no, I'm not using their product ever again and I will spread word about it to people I know who feel similarly. This is just how social networks (in the sociology sense, not the technological sense) work and always have. I guess what I'm saying is if you want maximum capture on your product, tell your team to park their opinions on which groups of people deserve to die on personal, anonymous accounts. I don't think this is a massive ask, personally, but I also don't want anyone dead so I can't really comment on it.
moomin 3y ago
You need to decide if these are private companies or public utilities. If they’re public utilities, the government should provide them. Restricting company’s freedom to choose a business model is not the answer. You might not like it, but that’s kind of the point, either let the market decide or take the market out of it.
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  > Restricting company’s freedom to choose a business model is not the answer. Only, that's not how it works in our (and pretty much any) society. We, as a society, choose what we think is acceptable. And then we make laws to enforce that people behave in a way consistent with that. A company is not free to deny service to someone that is gay, or black, or married; just because that is their chosen business model.
  - wredue 3y ago
    They are, however, free to stop you from pushing Nazi propaganda on their resources. I’m quite discouraged by this thread not being taken down despite the very obvious brigade of alt-right Nazi sympathizers pretending that being gay is the same as yelling for the genocide of gay people.
    - pauldenton 3y ago
      Yes. But we saw how quickly censorship went from Alex Jones being banned from having a Twitter,Reddit, Twitch, Mailchimp, Shopify, YouTube/Google, Facebook/Instagram account, and being banned from all those platforms simultaneously. To having Donald Trump the Republican Nominee and at the time sitting duck President having his Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, Mailchimp, Shopify, YouTube/Google, Facebook/Instagram account being banned simultaneously. Starting off with "we want to stop Nazi propaganda" turning into banning Republicans is like saying "We want to stop Communist Propaganda" and Blacklisting Liberals
      - heavyset_go 3y ago
l3mure 3y ago
> It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies with Silicon Valley ideals. They were never intended to be used this way and are secretly horrified. Such a laughable statement given that Silicon Valley was from the beginning a military project, with social control as an explicit aim. Milquetoast lamentations about a lost libertarian dream are no different than old cries about the closing of the Western frontier or Jeffersonian myths about a pastoralist capitalism corrupted by industry.

version_five 3y ago

From what I understand re twitter and others, it's the government that found a loophole. They used big tech to censor according to their agenda. The administrative class, while I agree probably has been invaded in some sense, is really just risk aversion run amok, like it always it, and will self organize to do what it can to minimize controversy.

momirlan 3y ago
i think it's rather the political establishment has allowed big tech to set the agenda for what it considers to be "the truth"
- ddingus 3y ago
  Big Tech was told they can either see regulation they don't like, or get with the program and ignore corruption like old media has done for decades.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    They should have taken the regulation. At least that forces it into the public eye and allows for accountability via voting. This way only generates a shadow government. Apart from the obvious 1a violation.
    - ddingus 3y ago
      Yup.
freejazz 3y ago
Might as well have written this post with (((they))) given how conspiratorial it is
- timtas 3y ago
  This is not speculation much less crazy theorizing. Read the Missouri v Biden injunction. It’s crystal clear that FedGov infiltrated and basically zombified social media platforms to perform constitutionally prohibited censorship.

kelseyfrog 3y ago

In an interesting way it is also an exploitable facet of small government. If the private sector is susceptible to moral policing then then government downsizing implies a larger attack surface.

chrischattin 3y ago
I think the implication is government putting pressure (or working with) businesses to censor speech. Smaller government would mean less attack surface in that case. Market forces and competition should help keep speech free because if a private company doesn't allow x group to use their platform, it is likely a competitor will spring up to capture the orphaned market. We see this play out in reality.
- Levitz 3y ago
  >Market forces and competition should help keep speech free because if a private company doesn't allow x group to use their platform, it is likely a competitor will spring up to capture the orphaned market. This doesn't really apply in the same way in social media. Social media platforms organically turn into monopolies. X and Facebook and Reddit and Hackernews and Whatsapp are all social media, sure, but they are not in direct competition. One does not start or stop using Instagram because they use Reddit. Same with Hackernews and X, etc etc. The product is different. When you ban an ideology or a group from a piece of social media, they do run to competitors, but "competitors" which can never penetrate the market because they don't have the userbase, which is the main incentive of social media. So far-right people get banned from Twitter and they run to Gab, but Gab and Twitter aren't really competitors because Twitter can't ever penetrate into Gab's market (they banned that market to begin with) and Gab can't penetrate Twitter's market (because Twitter is the more attractive platform to begin with, having more users) The better product is better because of its userbase. There is no real competition, and as such, no upholding of freedom of speech due to it.
psychlops 3y ago
Are you suggesting that government (big or small) is immune to moral policing and that it's confined to the private sector? Any centralized system is subject to attack, the bigger the better.

chonkerz 3y ago

From the article, the EFF explicitly calls out the government for failing to enforce existing laws which would have shut down Kiwifarms >That’s what must happen here. The cops and the courts should be working to protect the victims of KF and go after the perpetrators with every legal tool at their disposal. We should be giving them the resources and societal mandate to do so. Solid enforcement of existing laws is something that has been sorely lacking for harassment and abuse online, and it’s one of the reasons people turn to censorship strategies. Finally, we should enact strong data privacy laws that target, among others, the data brokers whose services help enable doxxing.

michaelt 3y ago
> the EFF explicitly calls out the government for failing to enforce existing laws which would have shut down Kiwifarms Eh, maybe, but don't most of these laws mostly fail to work across international borders anyway? I mean, I haven't seen many cryptolocker authors appearing before US courts. And wikileaks remains online despite the best efforts of US authorities. Surely anything that could shut down or block kiwifarms could do the same to wikileaks and pirate bay and sci-hub?
- foven 3y ago
  The operator of the kiwifarms is himself a US citizen with a US business. It is an advertised fact that if a police force comes after or shuts him down with a legal reason, it will cease to exist and he himself has stated he wouldn't operate it out of any other country than the US. Pirate bay and sci-hub get affected by copyright law more than anything else and, to the best of my knowledge, kiwifarms is protected by section 230 in that respect and has always complied with legitimate takedown requests.
  - chonkerz 3y ago
    >and has always complied with legitimate takedown requests. Then why do people who issue takedown requests get plastered all over the site and harassed?

nullifidian 3y ago

>so they invaded the administrative layer of big tech. Not exactly. While there are certainly people who espouse anti-free-speech views in the big tech, I'm pretty sure the companies themselves are pressured/threatened with increased regulatory scrutiny, anti-thrust action and anything else that is at congress/government's disposal. These congress/senate hearings about misinformation are exactly that.

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago, at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet. In fact recent activism coming from the engineer levels at Big Tech (google, Amazon, FB, etc) has me believe that that administrative layer is not really in control, and the policy changes are a reflection coming from the activism in the engineering layer We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities.

ghostzilla 3y ago
Exactly right. Most of the new engineers have nothing of the libertarian spirit of the 2600 era. It was engineers who implemented censorship at online platforms, most incredulous of which was PayPal charging customers $2,500 in damages for spreading "misinformation." I cancelled my PayPal account the moment I read the news. For shame. But, things go in cycles. What was once great becomes a ruin, and then rises again. We are now in the heading steadily towards the ruin phase.
- Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
  > engineers who implemented Implementation is the guys holding the shovels, not the guys saying where to dig.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago And thank fuck for that. > at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet. People are so glib about this and it's such a catastrophic failure to engage in empathy and respect for other human beings that it simply blows my mind that people can say things like this and think they're in the moral correct. "Being bullied to death by the Internet" isn't even that uncommon anymore. Especially for people who will have a hard time finding community in the real spaces in which they live, Internet communities of like-people become a literal lifeline. Entire relationships both communal and intimate are carried out through the lens of online communication. "Words on the internet" indeed. And if said words can be a lifeline of communication and community to like-minded people and alleviate suffering, you can be damn well assured that works the other way too. Having personally known and helped people through being the subject of online alt-right hate mobs, I assure you, "words on the internet" can absolutely kill people. I have watched in happen in real time and pulled people back from the precipice. > We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities. Yeah I don't particularly want to use software, especially pay to use software, made by people who want to exterminate people I call friends and family. If a developer comes out on their social media and broadcasts about how my friends are some combination of insane/dangerous for being who they are, no, I'm not using their product ever again and I will spread word about it to people I know who feel similarly. This is just how social networks (in the sociology sense, not the technological sense) work and always have. I guess what I'm saying is if you want maximum capture on your product, tell your team to park their opinions on which groups of people deserve to die on personal, anonymous accounts. I don't think this is a massive ask, personally, but I also don't want anyone dead so I can't really comment on it.

moomin 3y ago

You need to decide if these are private companies or public utilities. If they’re public utilities, the government should provide them. Restricting company’s freedom to choose a business model is not the answer. You might not like it, but that’s kind of the point, either let the market decide or take the market out of it.

RHSeeger 3y ago
> Restricting company’s freedom to choose a business model is not the answer. Only, that's not how it works in our (and pretty much any) society. We, as a society, choose what we think is acceptable. And then we make laws to enforce that people behave in a way consistent with that. A company is not free to deny service to someone that is gay, or black, or married; just because that is their chosen business model.
- wredue 3y ago
  They are, however, free to stop you from pushing Nazi propaganda on their resources. I’m quite discouraged by this thread not being taken down despite the very obvious brigade of alt-right Nazi sympathizers pretending that being gay is the same as yelling for the genocide of gay people.
  - pauldenton 3y ago
    Yes. But we saw how quickly censorship went from Alex Jones being banned from having a Twitter,Reddit, Twitch, Mailchimp, Shopify, YouTube/Google, Facebook/Instagram account, and being banned from all those platforms simultaneously. To having Donald Trump the Republican Nominee and at the time sitting duck President having his Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, Mailchimp, Shopify, YouTube/Google, Facebook/Instagram account being banned simultaneously. Starting off with "we want to stop Nazi propaganda" turning into banning Republicans is like saying "We want to stop Communist Propaganda" and Blacklisting Liberals
    - heavyset_go 3y ago

l3mure 3y ago

> It's not the engineers who built the web and these companies with Silicon Valley ideals. They were never intended to be used this way and are secretly horrified. Such a laughable statement given that Silicon Valley was from the beginning a military project, with social control as an explicit aim. Milquetoast lamentations about a lost libertarian dream are no different than old cries about the closing of the Western frontier or Jeffersonian myths about a pastoralist capitalism corrupted by industry.