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Not everyone believes censorship is a feature worth compromising the design of a network. How does the USPS prevent libel? How does the global telephone netwo

Not everyone believes censorship is a feature worth compromising the design of a network. How does the USPS prevent libel? How does the global telephone network prevent slander?

_heimdall 2y ago
Are libel, slander, and censorship all similar concerns in you opinion? I see libel and slander concerns over what another person says while censorship is an entity with more authority/power stopping me from what I want to say. The implied power imbalance alone makes censorship a much bigger concern to me, though maybe I'm biased there.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  Censorship is required if one wants to prevent libel and slander. There are some people who won't stop doing it unless an entity with more authority/power stops them from saying it.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Everyone has more authority over their mailbox than any sender. Hence local spam filters block a lot of content without bring censorship. People can share their findings about the patterns of spam, hence collaborative / federated spam rejection lists. They are not dominated by any single entity or a small clique, and every user is free to heed or ignore any part of the list, or none at all. Hence it's not censorship. This mechanisms formed in the email network long before the current oligopoly formed, and still works. So I hope there is a honest way to filter out generally objectionable content by.a collective effort of the users who care, without turning the filter into a censorship tool.
    - ArneBab 2y ago
      This actually happens in the original Freenet (now Hyphanet): the communication tools use propagating trust and blocking. So if someone you communicate with regularly sees something objectionable and blocks it, it disappears for you, too. But you can always create a new identity that does not trust the other person — or set your own local trust — to see the content anyway. The important point is that this way resistence against disruption of communication scales better that the disruption (spam, libel, harassment, ...).
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    In your opinion, how do you weigh collateral damage when it comes to censorship and free speech? I've always been of the mind that I'd rather let 10 guilty people walk free than imprison one innocent person. I extend that to free speech as well. I'd rather let 10 lible or slander complaints work their way through the court system rather than wrongfully censoring one person's speech.
  - sanity 2y ago
    Anonymous libel does little damage because it has no credibility.
kristopolous 2y ago
I presume you've flipped the bozo bit on me and will take my response in bad faith but I'll do so anyway. There's a difference between something that is intentionally anonymized, distributed and designed for perpetuity. These make freenet have an affordance for potential malicious use. here's some recent instances, specifically with freenet: https://news.google.com/search?q=freenet%20arrest https://news.google.com/search?q=freenet%20arrest There's no server to seize, no way to take it offline, it's there forever. Last time I tried it, there was no way for me to blacklist content I did not want to be a node for. If a policeman had seized my laptop, who knows what they could have found in the Freenet databases, I certainly had no idea. Maybe these people in prison are innocent non-technical normal computer users that just downloaded Freenet a long time ago, poked around for 20 minutes and it's been running for years without them knowing. A jury of 12 non-technical people hear "This person's computer downloaded and distributed gigabytes of child porn" from the testifying police officer, and that's all that's needed I'd suspect. You can call this the "4chan" problem. Regardless of the virtues of the people who built it, there weren't enough safeguards to prevent the bad actors from becoming the dominant users and eventually the inmates who ran the asylum. I want the principles held by Freenet to be preserved and not polluted by propagandists, fabulists, scammers, and pornographers.
- ElFitz 2y ago
  > There's no server to seize, no way to take it offline, it's there, encrypted, for perpetuity. I usually disagree with any argument trying to compromise on anonymity, privacy, and free speech. Fifteen years ago I was fascinated by Freenet and I2P as a teenager. A censorship-free resilient world-spanning network. One populated by actual anarchists, cypherpunks, and their manifestos, where I could perhaps learn how to make rockets from ping pong balls. Until one day I clicked on one random nondescript link too many. After the initial shock I got rid of Freenet, then and there, for good. And I2P. And I have never looked back on my brief cypherpunk phase. You just reminded me that what I saw that day is still out there, probably will be until the day Freenet dies, and nothing can be done about it. Just the thought of it makes me sick. I am aware this is anecdotal personal experience, but it’s the kind that makes it harder to remain strongly committed to absolute anonymity, censorship-resilience, and privacy, over all else.
indigochill 2y ago
> worth compromising the design of a network That depends on what the design of the network is. In my mind Freenet is too free for reasons discussed in sibling comments (but in short, literally no safeguards against Not Safe For Life content, by design). For me, practically, federation provides a far improved middle ground. People can still freely distribute content without being beholden to any particular middle man, but there is more visibility afforded to node operators about what they're hosting and they therefore can both remove content that they don't want to be hosting and remove users from their network who are making problems. Gossip protocols are another solution which also works for similar reasons. Ultimately, anonymity is an anti-pattern in the same way that the hot new zero-trust stuff is in the blockchain world. Humans, social beings that they are, fundamentally operate on trust, which fundamentally requires identification. Removing either of those creates more problems than it solves.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Ultimately, anonymity is an anti-pattern in the same way that the hot new zero-trust stuff is in the blockchain world. Humans, social beings that they are, fundamentally operate on trust, which fundamentally requires identification. Removing either of those creates more problems than it solves. Quite the opposite. Forced identification is an instrument of fascism. There is a reason the phrase "papers, please" is associated with the villains. Communities can then be layered on top. But even there, what you need is a persistent identifier with which to build a reputation, not a government tracking number with which to be extracted from your bed at 4AM and shipped off to a prison cell if you're accused of crimethink. The talk of "community standards" gets to the root of it. To have community standards you have to have a community, and each community will have its own standards. Which means the standards belong in the community and not in a generic protocol at the core of the network used by diverse communities with mutually incompatible ideals.
  - indigochill 2y ago
    I think we're agreeing. > But even there, what you need is a persistent identifier with which to build a reputation, not a government tracking number The persistent identifier is all I mean. I agree that tying it to a government-issued identification is problematic since it then gives the government the administration/moderation power. As long as there is a persistent identifier (and one the community owns so it can take meaningful moderation/administration action when necessary), then we're good. By "anonymity" I mean the absence of a persistent identifier (for example, someone uploading something to BitTorrent is anonymous by default, as far as I know). > To have community standards you have to have a community, and each community will have its own standards. Which means the standards belong in the community Also agree with this. This is where federation really shines in my book, as it lets each community apply its own standards while also enabling networking across communities with sufficiently compatible ideals while retaining the autonomy of each community.
tshaddox 2y ago
Do you have any rhetorical examples that supports broadcasting or mass communication? The USPS has significant regulations around bulk mail and commercial mail, including restrictions on the content of the mail. Likewise there is heavy regulation in the United States of robocalling, telemarketing, and mass texting.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Those are laws. It is also illegal to distribute libelous material via Tor or Freenet. The relevant point is that the USPS doesn't unseal your envelopes and read your mail and anyone can stick a stamp on that sealed envelope and drop it into a mailbox with no return address and it will be delivered.
  - tshaddox 2y ago
    In your analogy, what is the equivalent of unsealing envelopes for Freenet, or for that matter, the World Wide Web? I thought what we were talking about was whether there is (or should be) active enforcement of regulations around the content you distribute on a particular medium.
    - k8svet 2y ago
      Huh? This entire subthread is about Freenet and moderating the medium. The analogy is that if USPS were trying to do so, it would be absurd. It also highlights why I think this is nearly intractable. Distributed, censorship-resistant designs lend themselves to resiliency and permanence. I just have this gut feeling you don't get both. And frankly I think the people trying to shove the cat back into the bag are a bit naive.
      - tshaddox 2y ago
        But unsealing envelopes doesn’t work as an analogy with FreeNet or the web, which are largely not private communication. We’re talking about removing public content, not reading private messages. And my point is that, while the USPS will (presumably) not unseal envelopes, they will go after you if you send certain content via the postal service.

Not everyone believes censorship is a feature worth compromising the design of a network. How does the USPS prevent libel? How does the global telephone network prevent slander?

_heimdall 2y ago

Are libel, slander, and censorship all similar concerns in you opinion? I see libel and slander concerns over what another person says while censorship is an entity with more authority/power stopping me from what I want to say. The implied power imbalance alone makes censorship a much bigger concern to me, though maybe I'm biased there.

aidenn0 2y ago
Censorship is required if one wants to prevent libel and slander. There are some people who won't stop doing it unless an entity with more authority/power stops them from saying it.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Everyone has more authority over their mailbox than any sender. Hence local spam filters block a lot of content without bring censorship. People can share their findings about the patterns of spam, hence collaborative / federated spam rejection lists. They are not dominated by any single entity or a small clique, and every user is free to heed or ignore any part of the list, or none at all. Hence it's not censorship. This mechanisms formed in the email network long before the current oligopoly formed, and still works. So I hope there is a honest way to filter out generally objectionable content by.a collective effort of the users who care, without turning the filter into a censorship tool.
  - ArneBab 2y ago
    This actually happens in the original Freenet (now Hyphanet): the communication tools use propagating trust and blocking. So if someone you communicate with regularly sees something objectionable and blocks it, it disappears for you, too. But you can always create a new identity that does not trust the other person — or set your own local trust — to see the content anyway. The important point is that this way resistence against disruption of communication scales better that the disruption (spam, libel, harassment, ...).
- _heimdall 2y ago
  In your opinion, how do you weigh collateral damage when it comes to censorship and free speech? I've always been of the mind that I'd rather let 10 guilty people walk free than imprison one innocent person. I extend that to free speech as well. I'd rather let 10 lible or slander complaints work their way through the court system rather than wrongfully censoring one person's speech.
- sanity 2y ago
  Anonymous libel does little damage because it has no credibility.

kristopolous 2y ago

I presume you've flipped the bozo bit on me and will take my response in bad faith but I'll do so anyway. There's a difference between something that is intentionally anonymized, distributed and designed for perpetuity. These make freenet have an affordance for potential malicious use. here's some recent instances, specifically with freenet: https://news.google.com/search?q=freenet%20arrest https://news.google.com/search?q=freenet%20arrest There's no server to seize, no way to take it offline, it's there forever. Last time I tried it, there was no way for me to blacklist content I did not want to be a node for. If a policeman had seized my laptop, who knows what they could have found in the Freenet databases, I certainly had no idea. Maybe these people in prison are innocent non-technical normal computer users that just downloaded Freenet a long time ago, poked around for 20 minutes and it's been running for years without them knowing. A jury of 12 non-technical people hear "This person's computer downloaded and distributed gigabytes of child porn" from the testifying police officer, and that's all that's needed I'd suspect. You can call this the "4chan" problem. Regardless of the virtues of the people who built it, there weren't enough safeguards to prevent the bad actors from becoming the dominant users and eventually the inmates who ran the asylum. I want the principles held by Freenet to be preserved and not polluted by propagandists, fabulists, scammers, and pornographers.

ElFitz 2y ago
> There's no server to seize, no way to take it offline, it's there, encrypted, for perpetuity. I usually disagree with any argument trying to compromise on anonymity, privacy, and free speech. Fifteen years ago I was fascinated by Freenet and I2P as a teenager. A censorship-free resilient world-spanning network. One populated by actual anarchists, cypherpunks, and their manifestos, where I could perhaps learn how to make rockets from ping pong balls. Until one day I clicked on one random nondescript link too many. After the initial shock I got rid of Freenet, then and there, for good. And I2P. And I have never looked back on my brief cypherpunk phase. You just reminded me that what I saw that day is still out there, probably will be until the day Freenet dies, and nothing can be done about it. Just the thought of it makes me sick. I am aware this is anecdotal personal experience, but it’s the kind that makes it harder to remain strongly committed to absolute anonymity, censorship-resilience, and privacy, over all else.

indigochill 2y ago

> worth compromising the design of a network That depends on what the design of the network is. In my mind Freenet is too free for reasons discussed in sibling comments (but in short, literally no safeguards against Not Safe For Life content, by design). For me, practically, federation provides a far improved middle ground. People can still freely distribute content without being beholden to any particular middle man, but there is more visibility afforded to node operators about what they're hosting and they therefore can both remove content that they don't want to be hosting and remove users from their network who are making problems. Gossip protocols are another solution which also works for similar reasons. Ultimately, anonymity is an anti-pattern in the same way that the hot new zero-trust stuff is in the blockchain world. Humans, social beings that they are, fundamentally operate on trust, which fundamentally requires identification. Removing either of those creates more problems than it solves.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Ultimately, anonymity is an anti-pattern in the same way that the hot new zero-trust stuff is in the blockchain world. Humans, social beings that they are, fundamentally operate on trust, which fundamentally requires identification. Removing either of those creates more problems than it solves. Quite the opposite. Forced identification is an instrument of fascism. There is a reason the phrase "papers, please" is associated with the villains. Communities can then be layered on top. But even there, what you need is a persistent identifier with which to build a reputation, not a government tracking number with which to be extracted from your bed at 4AM and shipped off to a prison cell if you're accused of crimethink. The talk of "community standards" gets to the root of it. To have community standards you have to have a community, and each community will have its own standards. Which means the standards belong in the community and not in a generic protocol at the core of the network used by diverse communities with mutually incompatible ideals.
- indigochill 2y ago
  I think we're agreeing. > But even there, what you need is a persistent identifier with which to build a reputation, not a government tracking number The persistent identifier is all I mean. I agree that tying it to a government-issued identification is problematic since it then gives the government the administration/moderation power. As long as there is a persistent identifier (and one the community owns so it can take meaningful moderation/administration action when necessary), then we're good. By "anonymity" I mean the absence of a persistent identifier (for example, someone uploading something to BitTorrent is anonymous by default, as far as I know). > To have community standards you have to have a community, and each community will have its own standards. Which means the standards belong in the community Also agree with this. This is where federation really shines in my book, as it lets each community apply its own standards while also enabling networking across communities with sufficiently compatible ideals while retaining the autonomy of each community.

tshaddox 2y ago

Do you have any rhetorical examples that supports broadcasting or mass communication? The USPS has significant regulations around bulk mail and commercial mail, including restrictions on the content of the mail. Likewise there is heavy regulation in the United States of robocalling, telemarketing, and mass texting.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Those are laws. It is also illegal to distribute libelous material via Tor or Freenet. The relevant point is that the USPS doesn't unseal your envelopes and read your mail and anyone can stick a stamp on that sealed envelope and drop it into a mailbox with no return address and it will be delivered.
- tshaddox 2y ago
  In your analogy, what is the equivalent of unsealing envelopes for Freenet, or for that matter, the World Wide Web? I thought what we were talking about was whether there is (or should be) active enforcement of regulations around the content you distribute on a particular medium.
  - k8svet 2y ago
    Huh? This entire subthread is about Freenet and moderating the medium. The analogy is that if USPS were trying to do so, it would be absurd. It also highlights why I think this is nearly intractable. Distributed, censorship-resistant designs lend themselves to resiliency and permanence. I just have this gut feeling you don't get both. And frankly I think the people trying to shove the cat back into the bag are a bit naive.
    - tshaddox 2y ago
      But unsealing envelopes doesn’t work as an analogy with FreeNet or the web, which are largely not private communication. We’re talking about removing public content, not reading private messages. And my point is that, while the USPS will (presumably) not unseal envelopes, they will go after you if you send certain content via the postal service.