7 ms·

They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertise

They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly. So you can lose credibility two ways, one by not doing any censorship because people on the internet will be the worst if you let them. Doing too much censorship is also bad because people don't like that either. Of the big causes of censorship currently, I think of things like youtubes copyright claim process and how that is routinely used as a censorship backdoor by anyone - including the police. Sometimes its not even for any good reason and done by unthinking bots. This is banning more perfectly fine content than anything the government has done. I don't understand why there isn't more pushback against that process to punish people for frivolous claims.

Brian_K_White 2y ago
Theres no push back because only the uploader knows it even happened. The millions of other people who did not get to see that video never knew there was anything that was taken from them. Even after you start to hear about an example here & there, it still feels like an isolated and insignificant example. You as a viewer don't have any way to perceive the scale, the mass of what is being blocked and diverted and modified and bowdlerized. I mean to include all the ways creators taylor their stuff and self-censor so that it will get through, not just plain take downs. Everyone knows it happens, but you have no way to see what that really means in it's totality. I think people would push back a lot if they could see that somehow.
- celdon25 2y ago
  > but you have no way to see what that really means in it's totality. I think people would push back a lot if they could see that somehow. I’ve watched enough Mark Dice videos to know how bad it is, and I regret not taking the blue pill sometimes. He’s shown just about every notable case of it happening (with proof). Though he knows how to game the system to resist being taken offline and you could say it’s part of his brand. You could say that it wouldn’t be worth the risk for others to call it out like he does because it wouldn’t add to the content, and they could slip up. You can disagree with his politics or personality but you probably wont find a leftist channel that covers that kind of censorship. I wish the videos were more categorized, though he doesn’t do it and uses generic video titles because apparently that makes it less likely to get censored.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    Just stop using platforms. For video, use PeerTube (or similar). This was a concern in 2009, but now, 15 years later, people using platforms have only themselves to blame. Stop being part of the problem !
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - celdon25 2y ago
      Did you get that information from Wikipedia?
      - shadowgovt 2y ago
        Yes. Is there anything in their summary you would dispute? At least in my book, buying into the "US orchestrated 9/11" story is pretty cut-and-dried; not much room for debate on whether that makes one a conspiracy theorist.
        celdon25 2y ago
        We have confirmation that the Saudis did it, and that the Bush Administration actively suppressed any investigation into the Saudis and invaded Afghanistan instead. Sen. Bob Graham had a lot to say on it. No need to really say anything more than that. I don't think "Bush did it", but the media censorship industrial complex was complicit in suppressing the truth at minimum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQCkTu3n-KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQCkTu3n-KY A better way to judge if he's a "conspiracy theorist" would be to look at what he says, what he cites as evidence, and judge for yourself if he has any credibility. A more valid disagreement would be his far-right political views. After the Trump shooting he shot down any conspiracy theories that had to do with it being an inside job, said conspiracy didn't make sense without any evidence, and then followed it up with a "simpler explanation: diversity". I consider myself center-right but he's too far to the right even for me (though I'm not a believer in using demographics to make hiring decisions, bias is not a fixable problem). I still think he's done a great job at exposing big tech. Wikipedia probably didn't include the above counter-argument. Disputes on Wikipedia are decided by a vote, and you're crazy if you think there isn't a bias there. I wouldn't trust it as a source for anything political. Even if individual statements are factual, the overall conclusion can't be grounded in truth when facts are cherry-picked.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan The moment you start fighting spam, you’re obliged to make censorship decisions.
ryandrake 2y ago
> They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly. If you look at every attempt to create "The Uncensored Free Speech Version Of [ANY_SERVICE]," they all, inevitably turned into a 4chan-like trashfire. You've got to have some kind of moderation.
- dimitrios1 2y ago
  This is where I really feel my age. Every message board and chatroom (bbs, forums, irc, icq, aol, et all) on the young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all, yet we all mostly got by. You went to the places you knew to go to. The communities mostly self moderated by kicks/bans. It worked really well. So whats changed? Well, I have my thoughts, but one thing is for sure, as soon as the platform itself tried to start moderating, that's when things really started changing.
  - coolbreezetft24 2y ago
    > virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all > self moderated by kicks/bans Also smaller communities tend to be easier to keep from becoming a cesspool
  - thejazzman 2y ago
    Before literally everyone was aware of the numerous low effort ways to exploit others on the internet Now the moment a vulnerability is known, be it social or system, it is exploited by many actors. The moment a new business idea appears to work, it is an overnight saturated market The internet is now driven by hustlers and monetization all the way down RIP AOL COMOUSERVE PRODIGY GOLDEN ERA
  - thegrim33 2y ago
    The internet used to be primarily used by geekier, smarter, tech people, and it used to not be a good propaganda/manipulation target since only a subset of the population used it. Media/newspapers were still the primary propaganda channel. Now that the entire population uses it, the average IQ involved has plummeted, and the political and social payoff for manipulating it with inauthentic content is huge.
woooooo 2y ago
Fighting spam and porn are a different category from censoring political viewpoonts with 25%+ adoption.
- norir 2y ago
  25% is a completely arbitrary number and context dependent. I can guarantee you can find many communities that have majority views that you find abhorrent and would not want to be a part of your community discourse. The problem is that social media gives the illusion of a broad town square where all opinions are heard, but that is not what happened. Everyone on social media is filtered into silos based on what the algorithms predict they will find engaging. In such an environment, it is not hard at all for malicious actors to propagate incendiary lies and exaggerations that metastasize into political beliefs. A fringe belief can easily become mainstream if it is amplified unchallenged, which is exactly what happens every day on social media.
  - woooooo 2y ago
    Yes, it's arbitrary, 20 would also make the same point, 0.1 would not. If you're saying "we must censor abhorrent viewpoints for the good of society", I'll just counter that your viewpoints are horrible and must be suppressed, while mine are good and must be amplified. For the good of society.
    - shadowgovt 2y ago
      Sounds good. Now build a Facebook and get enough users to rally to your cause, and your opinion on suppression / amplification will have some weight to throw around. People seem to forget that Facebook is where it is because users keep showing up, and users keep showing up because the censorship gives them something they want. It's a feedback loop.
      - woooooo 2y ago
        "Might makes right, sit there and take it" might be how the world works in some ways, but it's not exactly a moral cause.
normalaccess 2y ago
Commenting on YouTube: Massive content sites like YouTube have a problem, the owners are a vanishingly small minority when compared to the population. If they ever have a proper public outcry they would lose in an instant. The "Algorithm" and "Automated Systems" are put in place by design to create a buffer in the minds of the people between content creators and staff. That's also why the rules are vague and sometimes randomly applied. When content creators don't know all the rules around what will hurt or help them then they are motivated to be as passive as possible via learned helplessness. A system of random punishment and ever changing rewards will keep people guessing what the "algorithm" wants and what causes strikes. How YouTube operates is a master class in mass manipulation. YouTube MUST randomly abuse people to instill a source-less fear to maintain control. Further Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_bonding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_bonding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome
- intended 2y ago
  We wish it was that smart. Between engagement driven metrics and the sheer ludicrousness of moderation, any sense of order is swiftly smashed. There are more policy updates and clarifications in a year than there are days. Why assume intelligence where randomness would achieve the same.
ffsm8 2y ago
> there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan This is false, because Facebook is bound to your real identity. A completely unmoderated Facebook will never be like every /b/ or /pol/ thread. People aren't quiet as outspoken with derogatory terms and pornography if it their family sees what they've written. Random copy pasted examples: - There are 9 billion people on the planet why don't you nuke china india and africa then get back to us - And? I dont care what race you are, you all need to die. TMD. - To gas glowniggers on-sight? - Hang yourself tranny
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Real genocides have been coordinated through Facebook in the third world. People are proud to put their real identities and their real names behind all kinds of evil ideas.
- bri3d 2y ago
  Creating "burner" Facebook accounts is trivial and most public Facebook group discussions are absolutely chock-full of them.
- mandevil 2y ago
  If only we lived in a world where this was true. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly. It is possible to distinguish between censorship and spam filtering. In the case of censorship, the speaker wants to say something and the listener wants to hear it and the censor prevents this. In the case of spam filtering, the spammer wants to say something and the listener doesn't want to hear it and voluntarily requests that a third party filter it out, with the option to individually disable this filtering. Now, someone could implement censorship and call it a spam filter, e.g. it filters spam and also disfavored facts and people leave it on because there is only a single on/off toggle and they don't want to be deluged with spam. But what this implies is that a "spam filter" with uncorrectable "false positives" is equivalent to censorship.

Brian_K_White 2y ago

Theres no push back because only the uploader knows it even happened. The millions of other people who did not get to see that video never knew there was anything that was taken from them. Even after you start to hear about an example here & there, it still feels like an isolated and insignificant example. You as a viewer don't have any way to perceive the scale, the mass of what is being blocked and diverted and modified and bowdlerized. I mean to include all the ways creators taylor their stuff and self-censor so that it will get through, not just plain take downs. Everyone knows it happens, but you have no way to see what that really means in it's totality. I think people would push back a lot if they could see that somehow.

celdon25 2y ago
> but you have no way to see what that really means in it's totality. I think people would push back a lot if they could see that somehow. I’ve watched enough Mark Dice videos to know how bad it is, and I regret not taking the blue pill sometimes. He’s shown just about every notable case of it happening (with proof). Though he knows how to game the system to resist being taken offline and you could say it’s part of his brand. You could say that it wouldn’t be worth the risk for others to call it out like he does because it wouldn’t add to the content, and they could slip up. You can disagree with his politics or personality but you probably wont find a leftist channel that covers that kind of censorship. I wish the videos were more categorized, though he doesn’t do it and uses generic video titles because apparently that makes it less likely to get censored.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Just stop using platforms. For video, use PeerTube (or similar). This was a concern in 2009, but now, 15 years later, people using platforms have only themselves to blame. Stop being part of the problem !
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - celdon25 2y ago
    Did you get that information from Wikipedia?
    - shadowgovt 2y ago
      Yes. Is there anything in their summary you would dispute? At least in my book, buying into the "US orchestrated 9/11" story is pretty cut-and-dried; not much room for debate on whether that makes one a conspiracy theorist.
      - celdon25 2y ago
        We have confirmation that the Saudis did it, and that the Bush Administration actively suppressed any investigation into the Saudis and invaded Afghanistan instead. Sen. Bob Graham had a lot to say on it. No need to really say anything more than that. I don't think "Bush did it", but the media censorship industrial complex was complicit in suppressing the truth at minimum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQCkTu3n-KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQCkTu3n-KY A better way to judge if he's a "conspiracy theorist" would be to look at what he says, what he cites as evidence, and judge for yourself if he has any credibility. A more valid disagreement would be his far-right political views. After the Trump shooting he shot down any conspiracy theories that had to do with it being an inside job, said conspiracy didn't make sense without any evidence, and then followed it up with a "simpler explanation: diversity". I consider myself center-right but he's too far to the right even for me (though I'm not a believer in using demographics to make hiring decisions, bias is not a fixable problem). I still think he's done a great job at exposing big tech. Wikipedia probably didn't include the above counter-argument. Disputes on Wikipedia are decided by a vote, and you're crazy if you think there isn't a bias there. I wouldn't trust it as a source for anything political. Even if individual statements are factual, the overall conclusion can't be grounded in truth when facts are cherry-picked.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan The moment you start fighting spam, you’re obliged to make censorship decisions.

ryandrake 2y ago

> They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly. If you look at every attempt to create "The Uncensored Free Speech Version Of [ANY_SERVICE]," they all, inevitably turned into a 4chan-like trashfire. You've got to have some kind of moderation.

dimitrios1 2y ago
This is where I really feel my age. Every message board and chatroom (bbs, forums, irc, icq, aol, et all) on the young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all, yet we all mostly got by. You went to the places you knew to go to. The communities mostly self moderated by kicks/bans. It worked really well. So whats changed? Well, I have my thoughts, but one thing is for sure, as soon as the platform itself tried to start moderating, that's when things really started changing.
- coolbreezetft24 2y ago
  > virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all > self moderated by kicks/bans Also smaller communities tend to be easier to keep from becoming a cesspool
- thejazzman 2y ago
  Before literally everyone was aware of the numerous low effort ways to exploit others on the internet Now the moment a vulnerability is known, be it social or system, it is exploited by many actors. The moment a new business idea appears to work, it is an overnight saturated market The internet is now driven by hustlers and monetization all the way down RIP AOL COMOUSERVE PRODIGY GOLDEN ERA
- thegrim33 2y ago
  The internet used to be primarily used by geekier, smarter, tech people, and it used to not be a good propaganda/manipulation target since only a subset of the population used it. Media/newspapers were still the primary propaganda channel. Now that the entire population uses it, the average IQ involved has plummeted, and the political and social payoff for manipulating it with inauthentic content is huge.

woooooo 2y ago

Fighting spam and porn are a different category from censoring political viewpoonts with 25%+ adoption.

norir 2y ago
25% is a completely arbitrary number and context dependent. I can guarantee you can find many communities that have majority views that you find abhorrent and would not want to be a part of your community discourse. The problem is that social media gives the illusion of a broad town square where all opinions are heard, but that is not what happened. Everyone on social media is filtered into silos based on what the algorithms predict they will find engaging. In such an environment, it is not hard at all for malicious actors to propagate incendiary lies and exaggerations that metastasize into political beliefs. A fringe belief can easily become mainstream if it is amplified unchallenged, which is exactly what happens every day on social media.
- woooooo 2y ago
  Yes, it's arbitrary, 20 would also make the same point, 0.1 would not. If you're saying "we must censor abhorrent viewpoints for the good of society", I'll just counter that your viewpoints are horrible and must be suppressed, while mine are good and must be amplified. For the good of society.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Sounds good. Now build a Facebook and get enough users to rally to your cause, and your opinion on suppression / amplification will have some weight to throw around. People seem to forget that Facebook is where it is because users keep showing up, and users keep showing up because the censorship gives them something they want. It's a feedback loop.
    - woooooo 2y ago
      "Might makes right, sit there and take it" might be how the world works in some ways, but it's not exactly a moral cause.

normalaccess 2y ago

Commenting on YouTube: Massive content sites like YouTube have a problem, the owners are a vanishingly small minority when compared to the population. If they ever have a proper public outcry they would lose in an instant. The "Algorithm" and "Automated Systems" are put in place by design to create a buffer in the minds of the people between content creators and staff. That's also why the rules are vague and sometimes randomly applied. When content creators don't know all the rules around what will hurt or help them then they are motivated to be as passive as possible via learned helplessness. A system of random punishment and ever changing rewards will keep people guessing what the "algorithm" wants and what causes strikes. How YouTube operates is a master class in mass manipulation. YouTube MUST randomly abuse people to instill a source-less fear to maintain control. Further Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_bonding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_bonding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_woman_syndrome

intended 2y ago
We wish it was that smart. Between engagement driven metrics and the sheer ludicrousness of moderation, any sense of order is swiftly smashed. There are more policy updates and clarifications in a year than there are days. Why assume intelligence where randomness would achieve the same.

ffsm8 2y ago

> there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan This is false, because Facebook is bound to your real identity. A completely unmoderated Facebook will never be like every /b/ or /pol/ thread. People aren't quiet as outspoken with derogatory terms and pornography if it their family sees what they've written. Random copy pasted examples: - There are 9 billion people on the planet why don't you nuke china india and africa then get back to us - And? I dont care what race you are, you all need to die. TMD. - To gas glowniggers on-sight? - Hang yourself tranny

carlosjobim 2y ago
Real genocides have been coordinated through Facebook in the third world. People are proud to put their real identities and their real names behind all kinds of evil ideas.
bri3d 2y ago
Creating "burner" Facebook accounts is trivial and most public Facebook group discussions are absolutely chock-full of them.
mandevil 2y ago
If only we lived in a world where this was true. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly. It is possible to distinguish between censorship and spam filtering. In the case of censorship, the speaker wants to say something and the listener wants to hear it and the censor prevents this. In the case of spam filtering, the spammer wants to say something and the listener doesn't want to hear it and voluntarily requests that a third party filter it out, with the option to individually disable this filtering. Now, someone could implement censorship and call it a spam filter, e.g. it filters spam and also disfavored facts and people leave it on because there is only a single on/off toggle and they don't want to be deluged with spam. But what this implies is that a "spam filter" with uncorrectable "false positives" is equivalent to censorship.