4 ms·

Speech isn't the problem, everybody can voice their opinions from the age they learn to speak. It's the platforms the speech is carried over. Are you broadcas

Speech isn't the problem, everybody can voice their opinions from the age they learn to speak. It's the platforms the speech is carried over. Are you broadcasting a message over television? The stations have strong control over the content of your message, and will charge you for the privilege. This actually meant that vulgar content generally stayed out of mainstream television. Is the message distributed online, over a social media platform? These companies don't care about the content as much because it's harder (more expensive) to police content generated by millions of users as opposed to a handful of advertisers. They'll care to the extend of the law, but now your seeing more vulgar content of the lowest common denominator, placed along side some of the best content ever made. Are you shouting in your park? Well, your local municipality might not want you shouting vulgar things in the presence of children and kids. There also seems to be a psychological aspect where people are drawn to outrage and explicit content, which fuels the click-driven algorithms, and the news networks that rely on invested viewers. One of the best parts of the internet, in my opinion, is Wikipedia. It's a user-driven, content-focused website that doesn't sell to advertisers. It's not perfect, but it shows that a good platform with clear and carefully chosen rules and it's own source of funding can actually be a great benefit to humanity.

jfengel 2y ago
There are many who consider Wikipedia a disaster of propaganda, and that its "neutral" point of view is in fact biased against them. They believe it does considerable harm to humanity. I consider that absurd, but then, I would say that, wouldn't I? We have nothing but my word against theirs to go on.
systemvoltage 2y ago
By that extension, NYT or Fox News should be banned as they have and they do broadcast incorrect information all the time.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Instead of banning them, we have the ability of individuals to not support them and to ignore them.
  - systemvoltage 2y ago
    They still broadcast to millions of people despite of being occasionally wrong. Individuals can support them or not, they can be funded by other means (WaPo by Jeff Bezos). It doesn’t change the central point I was trying to make: they put out incorrect information to an extremely large audience. Often corrections are late and the damage is done. Viewership of correction is a few magnitude of orders less. I am not advocating banning them. I was trying to make a point that by the extension of OP’s logic, the existence of press seems in line with their characterization.
Etheryte 2y ago
I suspect you're not familiar with the backrooms of Wikipedia, nor the reputation it has for it. Wikipedia has done a lot for sharing information globally, but I wouldn't really call it a good example in this context. Most of the site moderation is done by a very small circle of insiders, and it's moreso how these specific individuals define neutral, rather than carefully chosen rules, that dictate how content is presented on the site.
- swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
  How do we determine the truthfulness of a statement on the internet? This is a hard question I have been thinking about for some time. The internet is digital, which means it's divorced from reality, everything on the internet is either typed in, uploaded, or generated. You could rely on publishers and scientific journals to ground the content with some authenticity. But we're seeing a similar issue with these scientific journals, where there's too much publishing and not enough peer review. You could require proof in the form of video evidence, but in this new age of generated AI and video editing, video evidence is suspect. A small circle of insiders has been the status quo in the scientific for a long time, sometimes to the detriment of scientific progress. Now they're also dealing with a much larger circle of outsiders and the enormous volume of content they're producing. I'm not sure what the answer is, except that maybe the answer isn't found online.
  - drewcoo 2y ago
    Science isn't really concerned with truth. That's more of a mathematical or philosophical concern. Science is concerned with useful models that fit observations.

jfengel 2y ago

There are many who consider Wikipedia a disaster of propaganda, and that its "neutral" point of view is in fact biased against them. They believe it does considerable harm to humanity. I consider that absurd, but then, I would say that, wouldn't I? We have nothing but my word against theirs to go on.

systemvoltage 2y ago

By that extension, NYT or Fox News should be banned as they have and they do broadcast incorrect information all the time.

shadowgovt 2y ago
Instead of banning them, we have the ability of individuals to not support them and to ignore them.
- systemvoltage 2y ago
  They still broadcast to millions of people despite of being occasionally wrong. Individuals can support them or not, they can be funded by other means (WaPo by Jeff Bezos). It doesn’t change the central point I was trying to make: they put out incorrect information to an extremely large audience. Often corrections are late and the damage is done. Viewership of correction is a few magnitude of orders less. I am not advocating banning them. I was trying to make a point that by the extension of OP’s logic, the existence of press seems in line with their characterization.

Etheryte 2y ago

I suspect you're not familiar with the backrooms of Wikipedia, nor the reputation it has for it. Wikipedia has done a lot for sharing information globally, but I wouldn't really call it a good example in this context. Most of the site moderation is done by a very small circle of insiders, and it's moreso how these specific individuals define neutral, rather than carefully chosen rules, that dictate how content is presented on the site.

swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
How do we determine the truthfulness of a statement on the internet? This is a hard question I have been thinking about for some time. The internet is digital, which means it's divorced from reality, everything on the internet is either typed in, uploaded, or generated. You could rely on publishers and scientific journals to ground the content with some authenticity. But we're seeing a similar issue with these scientific journals, where there's too much publishing and not enough peer review. You could require proof in the form of video evidence, but in this new age of generated AI and video editing, video evidence is suspect. A small circle of insiders has been the status quo in the scientific for a long time, sometimes to the detriment of scientific progress. Now they're also dealing with a much larger circle of outsiders and the enormous volume of content they're producing. I'm not sure what the answer is, except that maybe the answer isn't found online.
- drewcoo 2y ago
  Science isn't really concerned with truth. That's more of a mathematical or philosophical concern. Science is concerned with useful models that fit observations.