Has anyone read a serious proposal for how to enforce platform manipulation rules on social media at scale?
I think that the reactionary take on "deplatforming" is largely right (it's not something that should happen in a free society and is a violation of the principle of open dialogue in a liberal society), but it misses the forest for the trees. Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc DO have a legitimate interest in keeping disinformation, garbage, and kiddy porn off of their platform if for no other reason than pol-bots make for a terrible user experience. And notice that when so-and-so gets “deplatformeed” it’s almost always for being involved in large scale platform “reach manipulation” not for being repugnant.
I am tired to death of conversations that end with, “but ma’ speech!” but would love to hear a serious policy proposal of what the platforms or governments should do about the legitimate UX problem here. What is a scalable solution to policing reach manipulation that doesn’t look like censorship from the outside?
I think eventually market forces will take over in this situation, just like they did with tv, radio, newspapers. Twitter especially, but other big platforms have now taken sides and have lost all trust with the "right". It's only a matter of time before they get "unbundled" from a political angle, Parler is a perfect example.
You can't have moderation free platforms because there are a lot of profane an wierd people. Platforms will need to pick which side they are on, and cater to those users. Just like TV channels, newspapers etc have all picked between left and right.
For TV and radio there’s a finite resource (radio spectrum) which is then allocated by government permission. OTOH, it’s much easier to set up a website and publish some content or even host conversations, than it is to set up a TV station. So the finality of the state you describe seems far from obvious — determined folks (a minority) will likely have the opportunity to opt out. It’s a different matter whether the same “ease of forking” which allows new platforms also promotes fragmentation. Maybe people learn to value community enough that some of these niche platforms coalesce to coexist & flourish.
To have fruitful interactions does not require the platform to have “scale”. And over you take away scale, most of the problems afflicting these platforms also goes away; they are problems of our own making.
Speech on Facebook and Twitter has been unmoderated (aside from illegal stuff) for a long time. Why can't people just stop demanding deletion when they see views they dislike and do something else about it instead?
Couldn't Facebook just put more effort into giving users the power to filter content on their own? They have an interactive, infinitely flexible medium, tons of money and some of the brightest people in the world working there. Perhaps they could do a little better than cable TV?
I mean, we're talking about an industry where at least one company fudged with their publishing algorithm to see if they could make people sad. (Spoiler: they could.)
In light of that, this convo seems naive especially given the participants. It's surreal, like reading an in-depth report about how women in Scientology aren't given equal access to e-meters.
It's fun to watch well-paid insular MSM people come at Glenn Greenwald and bounce off.
Meanwhile younger leftists dislike him because he correctly identifies our current leftist and youth cultures as obsessed with the mechanics of identity categories and privilege, a perfect distraction from class and from US foreign policy. I have a fairly different political worldview than Greenwald but he is totally unique in his principles and consistency in speaking truth to power. For like a decade he has refused to call himself a liberal or leftist, letting his actions (like profiling AOC before really any other outlet noticed her) speak for themselves.
Greenwald has been carefully explaining what is wrong with Silicon Valley censorship for years[1][2]. Hopefully Snowden will convince some people.
>Meanwhile younger leftists dislike him because he correctly identifies our current leftist and youth cultures as obsessed with the mechanics of identity categories and privilege,
I'm sorry but that's simply absurd, his treatment of people like Sam Harris and Majid Nawaz shows that he himself is deeply in bed with identity politics and other SJW BS.
The Internet as conceived originally is doomed, if not already dead with no chance of a comeback. Maybe some isolated underground networks will remain with the members being branded as criminals in the best case and being sent to jail in the most probable case.
Ironically I found this conversation on censorship with 19 upvotes flagged and dead here on HN. Vouched for it to bring it back. It is 30 minutes long, but the fact that there was an attempt at censoring it, made it much more likely that I will listen to the entire thing.
The HN community is using political speech guidelines to clamp down in critique against MSM (Main Stream Media) and Silicon Valley conduct. At the same time I find political topics all the time on the front page that are deemed fine as long as they stay away from the above topics or are leaning "liberal" or "progressive".
It's been three weeks and I still can't use Instagram. They are still blocking #hashtag-recent-lists with a banner:
"Recent posts from all hashtags are temporarily hidden to help prevent the spread of possible false information and harmful content related to the election."
The hashtag I used to check is #handtoolwookworking. Very political indeed.
Its really hard to call what HN does any serious form of censorship. You can still see flagged/dead links on HN. Also the content isn't removed or modified on their source site.
Not every decision to remove some content is censorship.
Users flagged it. It seems weird to me to call that censorship but the word has become diluted enough that people use it for whatever they dislike, so have at it I guess.
Some users flag these things for political reasons while others flag them because they lead to crap threads, like the current thread, and because these discussions have become so tedious and predictable that there is no curiosity left in them and no learning possible.
This is one of the reasons why I switched to alternative HN viewers like http://hckrnews.com/ which are less affected by flagging of controversial posts.
Private entities have a right to free speech. Nobody has ever pretended that social media platforms or any other type of bulletin board system is a public utility. The government or any other entity leveraging the legal system to force them to carry content would be a violation of their free speech.
If you do not like the way they run their platforms Voat and 8chan are perfectly fine options. But larger audiences stay away from those platforms because they are unmoderated cesspools. Could it be that what the “anti censorship“ crowd really wants is a free audience?
[+] [-] tdaltonc|5 years ago|reply
I think that the reactionary take on "deplatforming" is largely right (it's not something that should happen in a free society and is a violation of the principle of open dialogue in a liberal society), but it misses the forest for the trees. Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc DO have a legitimate interest in keeping disinformation, garbage, and kiddy porn off of their platform if for no other reason than pol-bots make for a terrible user experience. And notice that when so-and-so gets “deplatformeed” it’s almost always for being involved in large scale platform “reach manipulation” not for being repugnant.
I am tired to death of conversations that end with, “but ma’ speech!” but would love to hear a serious policy proposal of what the platforms or governments should do about the legitimate UX problem here. What is a scalable solution to policing reach manipulation that doesn’t look like censorship from the outside?
[+] [-] zpeti|5 years ago|reply
You can't have moderation free platforms because there are a lot of profane an wierd people. Platforms will need to pick which side they are on, and cater to those users. Just like TV channels, newspapers etc have all picked between left and right.
[+] [-] ssivark|5 years ago|reply
To have fruitful interactions does not require the platform to have “scale”. And over you take away scale, most of the problems afflicting these platforms also goes away; they are problems of our own making.
[+] [-] _bfhp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zarkov99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jancsika|5 years ago|reply
In light of that, this convo seems naive especially given the participants. It's surreal, like reading an in-depth report about how women in Scientology aren't given equal access to e-meters.
[+] [-] _bfhp|5 years ago|reply
Meanwhile younger leftists dislike him because he correctly identifies our current leftist and youth cultures as obsessed with the mechanics of identity categories and privilege, a perfect distraction from class and from US foreign policy. I have a fairly different political worldview than Greenwald but he is totally unique in his principles and consistency in speaking truth to power. For like a decade he has refused to call himself a liberal or leftist, letting his actions (like profiling AOC before really any other outlet noticed her) speak for themselves.
Greenwald has been carefully explaining what is wrong with Silicon Valley censorship for years[1][2]. Hopefully Snowden will convince some people.
[1] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/918451881940344833
[2] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1077912022187163648
[+] [-] postingpals|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] deeeeplearning|5 years ago|reply
I'm sorry but that's simply absurd, his treatment of people like Sam Harris and Majid Nawaz shows that he himself is deeply in bed with identity politics and other SJW BS.
[+] [-] cambalache|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsflover|5 years ago|reply
Please join I2P [0] to make it a new normal instead.
[0] https://geti2p.org
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] djsumdog|5 years ago|reply
https://battlepenguin.com/politics/is-meaningful-section-230...
I doubt we'll see anything like this though.
[+] [-] aleyan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eiji|5 years ago|reply
It's been three weeks and I still can't use Instagram. They are still blocking #hashtag-recent-lists with a banner: "Recent posts from all hashtags are temporarily hidden to help prevent the spread of possible false information and harmful content related to the election." The hashtag I used to check is #handtoolwookworking. Very political indeed.
[+] [-] dgrin91|5 years ago|reply
Not every decision to remove some content is censorship.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
Some users flag these things for political reasons while others flag them because they lead to crap threads, like the current thread, and because these discussions have become so tedious and predictable that there is no curiosity left in them and no learning possible.
[+] [-] cfmcdonald|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidf18|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] troughway|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sxp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsjs92ja|5 years ago|reply
If you do not like the way they run their platforms Voat and 8chan are perfectly fine options. But larger audiences stay away from those platforms because they are unmoderated cesspools. Could it be that what the “anti censorship“ crowd really wants is a free audience?
[+] [-] _bfhp|5 years ago|reply