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Theres so many times I've written a comment, only to delete it on HN. Not because of being afraid of government censorship, but because of the sheer futility o
by intended 11mo ago
Theres so many times I've written a comment, only to delete it on HN.
Not because of being afraid of government censorship, but because of the sheer futility of fighting peoples faith and outmoded ideas of how our market place of ideas works.
Counter speech, is NOT working. "the best ideas rise to the top" is untrue. We don't have an information economy, we have a content economy. Its the equivalent of the junk food era, just for content.
Governments around the world are going to enact speech controls. Voters are clamoring for it. Its going to eventually be a disaster.
I also do not think that there is going to be any effective opposition, if people keep showing up to battle lines drawn in the 90s and 2000s.
If you want a market place of ideas, you have to figure out how to ensure its a FAIR market place. Not a place where you pit regular folk against corporate PR teams, information teams, and behemoths of all kinds.
And for those holding out hope for decentralized solutions (Mastodon, Bluesky): These have a chance, but there is no solution to moderation labour and costs.
- delichon 11mo agoCounter speech is an often weak and ineffective response. It's principle advantage is in being less bad than every other option.
- tim333 11mo agoI think you be overestimating how great things were without a marketplace of ideas. "Perfect is the enemy of good" and all that. What is the better system you'd prefer if you limit yourself to real systems that have been tried out?
- tpm 11mo ago> We don't have an information economy, we have a content economy. We actually seem to have attention economy, that is the really valuable thing, not content. Mostly it's important what catches our attention first. This is also why counter speech does not work - it does not come first. > If you want a market place of ideas, you have to figure out how to ensure its a FAIR market place. Yes and that is obviously not possible at this time.
- intended 11mo agoFor the sake of my analogy, the issue I am focusing on is that we tend to think in terms of Information, when in reality (especially with GenAI) the fundamental unit of transaction is content. Information is content with a flag. I found more traction shifting to thinking of content as the core unit of transaction, and attention the fuel burnt to consume content.
- legsrunny 11mo agoI have read some thoughtful and insightful comments online that really changed my opinion and outlook, and rarely acknowledged this to the author. You will never know what kind of impact you might have had!