Silicon Valley companies should censor more content?
No - that's not what they're saying.
If you want to, go read the respective acceptance speeches, in their original form. Actually the only relevant one (for this thread) is Maria Ressa's speech; Dmitry Muratov's speech didn't mention technology or the internet at all, despite what may have been implied in the NPR article.
As to Ressa's speach -- it's quite clear she wasn't advocating censorship, per se. A fair reading of what she was saying is that these companies should stop using algorithms that structurally promote hateful and inflammatory simply because it is more "engaging" -- as they have been caught doing red-handed, basically.
But that is, strictly speaking, different from advocating outright censorship of that material. In my view, quite obviously so.
Indeed. I think the actual entity to be scorned here is NPR, not the laureates. They seem to be twisting the meaning of the speech to promote some other agenda, and in one case outright fabricating the connection.
Social media algorithms amplify whatever is most profitable to amplify. Unfortunately, amplifying sht flinging turns out to be the most profitable. Social media companies have encoded this preference into their algorithms from the very beginning and optimised - a/b tested- for profitability along the way.
Social media are deliberately hiding gems under piles of - pardon my french- sht. How do we call this? Censorship, a specific subset of censorship, or something not quite censorship but very similar? We need to know, because fighting an enemy with no name is difficult! Are there any existing words? What about "deluging"? Any other suggestions?
How do we help people survive the drowning-in-sht effect of this social media deluge? That is the key question! Agency for the social media consumer will be a key part of the answer. In human-speak: "no sht in my feed!".
If, hypothetically, there were 1/3 people who are legitimately easy to manipulate online, then in that hypothetical scenario, what would be a good response that didn’t involve censorship?
What comes to my mind is that it’s largely the algorithms fault. They hyper optimize for strong emotional reactions and not at all for truth or value. It’s the social media companies that are forcing this insane content down peoples throats, it’s not like you can hide the YouTube recommendations panel. Every time I turn off auto play, it turns itself back on (Firefox fixes this). When I turn on my vpn, the things I get targeted with are bonkers
The article is factually incorrect. For instance, the Russian journalist did not mention Silicon Valley companies nor did he intend to mean that social networks are promoting authoritarianism and waging war.
Instead, he referred multiple times to the mainstream media in Russia that is tightly controlled by the state and is acting as a propaganda device that serves short-term goals of the ruling elite, promoting war in Ukraine and anti-western sentiments along the way.
NPR took pretext of an event to present an opinion.
That’s how I read it too. It’s interesting to see how platforms’ freedom to moderate as they please is being assaulted from all sides—some groups are claiming they must be forced to moderate more or be punished for what their users post, while others are claiming they must be forced to moderate less (or not at all) or be punished for what their users post.
The people calling for that have really not thought their positions through. The SV companies have a lot of flaws, but they do appear to be genuine in their belief that their censorship is helping. That is arrogant and not good enough ... but there isn't going to be a better option. The alternatives to them having control enable people who are more arrogant, less able and do more damage when mistakes inevitably get made.
I think, it's about the opposite of censorship: selective amplification by recommendation, governed by engagement metrics.
(What would have once been a mere footnote or a tiny bar fight, is now amplified by bringing in the equivalent of entire cities to the scene. What was small becomes big, and what would have been big goes unseen. This is a manipulation of social discourse in dimensions previously unknown.)
Big Tech ( well arguably only Google and Apple ) has been painting themselves as so righteous and they have now painted themselves into corners. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I always knew the day would come for Google. I just never imagined how things changed under Tim Cook.
As it says in the article you linked, this type of situation js practically the opposite of what was described in Popper's book:
"Nonetheless, alternative interpretations are often misattributed to Popper in defense of extra-judicial (including violent) suppression of intolerance such as hate speech, outside of democratic institutions, an idea which Popper himself never espoused. The chapter in question explicitly defines the context to that of political institutions and the democratic process, and rejects the notion of "the will of the people" having valid meaning outside of those institutions. Thus, in context, Popper's acquiescence to suppression when all else has failed applies only to the state in a liberal democracy with a constitutional rule of law that must be just in its foundations, but will necessarily be imperfect."
I'm not sure how Facebook posts are literal physical violence. Also, it's so weird to keep seeing this supposed paradox cited (incorrectly) ad nauseum to justify basically any infringement on free speech when it was barely a concept he wrote about in passing, with very little thought put into it by Popper himself. Even if it was used correctly, It's just a very small thought exercise written by an author almost a century ago, it's not a natural law lol.
The problem is not that everybody can access information. The problem is that click-bait false information is pushed by ranking algorithms more and more in front of the eyes of people who are ready to believe in them. The information bubble then is making people more and more radicalized.
All the news / post / article I read on Facebook or Twitter are retweets / forwarded by people I followed. It means ultimately I am the one who is actually selectively sourcing all these information. "ranking algorithms" just rank them in better orders.
It doesn't matter how good your blackbox algorithms are. Junk in And Junk out.
Social media always censors in a way by promoting certain content and burying other content. It is mediated communication not direct communication, and these platforms are neither fair nor open. They haven’t been since the advent of algorithmic timelines and engagement maximization.
The most worrisome part is that we have a perfect example in history of the casino/gaming industry being censored essentially to the point of irrelevance. Can you imagine what Las Vegas would look like if speech in the form of gaming machine design had been allowed to flourish instead of squashed?
Now even free games on an Iphone run circles around the kind of engagement a meatspace casino can garner.
It's a bit unnerving to see this stuff so often, really. Demands to censor speech you don't like, and which almost uniformly comes from your political opponents, in the name of fighting authoritarianism is blatantly contradictory. It'd startling how popular this sort of thinking has become.
Nobody is "saving democracy" by denying people the right to participate in the democratic process. In fact, it does quite the opposite by destabilizing the political discourse. The "solution" is to stop trying to control people.
To what? People discussing and voting for their favorite candidate? Before it got censored as fake news, parts of social media were pretty damn correct on the pandemic and its origins. All of regular media followed the narrative, some afraid of the truth, because Trump may have ran with it.
> How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity of facts?
This is about integrity/virtue of opinion. Conflate facts with opinions or political views and you lose right to talk facts. People voting in an authoritarian do not believe they are voting in an authoritarian, but an opposing voice to the evil socialist. It is poignant to defend democracy and at the same time complain of the rise of authoritarianism brought about by democracy.
In so many ways, you are then saying people are voting on the wrong people, because they do not read your newspapers, but their Facebook timelines.
It is censorship by definition. The question here is if this form of censorship is currently permitted or not permitted by law, and if it should or should not be permitted by law.
This is known as the paradox of tolerance and was figured out right after WW2 by Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher who witnessed the rise of the Nazis.
Authoritarians use the framework of a free society to rise to power until they are strong enough to topple it. A free society must be able to defend itself against that approach, even if it might seem contrary to its own values.
Here's the way he formulated it:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
You say this was “figured out” like you think it’s some kind of natural law that was discovered by scientists. It’s not. It’s a value judgement. It’s not at all clear the trade-off is worth it and the very quote you supplied argues for “intolerance of intolerance” as a kind of a last resort, once things turn violent.
Second, as a practical matter, it’s not at all clear what constitutes intolerance. If you think the state has standing to adjudicate intolerance, then I can’t imagine you’ve been paying attention to the kind of routine social errors that are labeled intolerance on social media. The notion that it’s a legitimate function of the state to weigh in on these banal disagreements is risible.
If the content leads to destabilizing social life for the majority, passing laws that give government control of peoples health, advocates for violence, then yeah.
Freedom from some other twats mental illness means more to me than their freedom to be a twat.
Stop oversimplifying like a child. There are real impacts to enabling systemic bias.
If you want moral relativism because maybe subjugating people out of your view is ok, why waste effort when you’re the cohort being abused?
As in stop pouring gasoline on pathological behavior (attention hijacking, emotional triggering, propaganda, etc.) through dark patterns/algorithms? Or censor everyone who has heterodox opinions?
You should make a distinction here, because I think most people assume you mean censorship.
Honestly reading the title, I assumed the article would argue the exact opposite since that's already one of the most authoritarian things Twitter et al. is doing right now.
vanusa|4 years ago
No - that's not what they're saying.
If you want to, go read the respective acceptance speeches, in their original form. Actually the only relevant one (for this thread) is Maria Ressa's speech; Dmitry Muratov's speech didn't mention technology or the internet at all, despite what may have been implied in the NPR article.
As to Ressa's speach -- it's quite clear she wasn't advocating censorship, per se. A fair reading of what she was saying is that these companies should stop using algorithms that structurally promote hateful and inflammatory simply because it is more "engaging" -- as they have been caught doing red-handed, basically.
But that is, strictly speaking, different from advocating outright censorship of that material. In my view, quite obviously so.
seneca|4 years ago
markvdb|4 years ago
Social media algorithms amplify whatever is most profitable to amplify. Unfortunately, amplifying sht flinging turns out to be the most profitable. Social media companies have encoded this preference into their algorithms from the very beginning and optimised - a/b tested- for profitability along the way.
Social media are deliberately hiding gems under piles of - pardon my french- sht. How do we call this? Censorship, a specific subset of censorship, or something not quite censorship but very similar? We need to know, because fighting an enemy with no name is difficult! Are there any existing words? What about "deluging"? Any other suggestions?
How do we help people survive the drowning-in-sht effect of this social media deluge? That is the key question! Agency for the social media consumer will be a key part of the answer. In human-speak: "no sht in my feed!".
seany|4 years ago
gentleman11|4 years ago
What comes to my mind is that it’s largely the algorithms fault. They hyper optimize for strong emotional reactions and not at all for truth or value. It’s the social media companies that are forcing this insane content down peoples throats, it’s not like you can hide the YouTube recommendations panel. Every time I turn off auto play, it turns itself back on (Firefox fixes this). When I turn on my vpn, the things I get targeted with are bonkers
Kinrany|4 years ago
Educate people. Replace advertisement with search tools and opt-in configurable recommendations.
chroem-|4 years ago
sam_lowry_|4 years ago
Instead, he referred multiple times to the mainstream media in Russia that is tightly controlled by the state and is acting as a propaganda device that serves short-term goals of the ruling elite, promoting war in Ukraine and anti-western sentiments along the way.
NPR took pretext of an event to present an opinion.
anjbe|4 years ago
roenxi|4 years ago
masswerk|4 years ago
(What would have once been a mere footnote or a tiny bar fight, is now amplified by bringing in the equivalent of entire cities to the scene. What was small becomes big, and what would have been big goes unseen. This is a manipulation of social discourse in dimensions previously unknown.)
smt88|4 years ago
khazhoux|4 years ago
How about: the spread of dipshit articles won't stop until dipshits stop sharing articles.
throwawaylinux|4 years ago
Would questioning the validity of an election be an example of it?
gorwell|4 years ago
ksec|4 years ago
I always knew the day would come for Google. I just never imagined how things changed under Tim Cook.
wklauss|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
That doesn't mean that companies should be free from scrutiny or consequences if they overstep.
mardifoufs|4 years ago
"Nonetheless, alternative interpretations are often misattributed to Popper in defense of extra-judicial (including violent) suppression of intolerance such as hate speech, outside of democratic institutions, an idea which Popper himself never espoused. The chapter in question explicitly defines the context to that of political institutions and the democratic process, and rejects the notion of "the will of the people" having valid meaning outside of those institutions. Thus, in context, Popper's acquiescence to suppression when all else has failed applies only to the state in a liberal democracy with a constitutional rule of law that must be just in its foundations, but will necessarily be imperfect."
I'm not sure how Facebook posts are literal physical violence. Also, it's so weird to keep seeing this supposed paradox cited (incorrectly) ad nauseum to justify basically any infringement on free speech when it was barely a concept he wrote about in passing, with very little thought put into it by Popper himself. Even if it was used correctly, It's just a very small thought exercise written by an author almost a century ago, it's not a natural law lol.
vimy|4 years ago
kaplun|4 years ago
ksec|4 years ago
It doesn't matter how good your blackbox algorithms are. Junk in And Junk out.
hugi|4 years ago
api|4 years ago
jancsika|4 years ago
Now even free games on an Iphone run circles around the kind of engagement a meatspace casino can garner.
return1|4 years ago
seneca|4 years ago
ekianjo|4 years ago
that may not have been implied by the advocates, but that's always the take of NPR, as the mouth of the government.
philjohn|4 years ago
chroem-|4 years ago
F6F6FA|4 years ago
> How can you have election integrity if you don't have integrity of facts?
This is about integrity/virtue of opinion. Conflate facts with opinions or political views and you lose right to talk facts. People voting in an authoritarian do not believe they are voting in an authoritarian, but an opposing voice to the evil socialist. It is poignant to defend democracy and at the same time complain of the rise of authoritarianism brought about by democracy.
In so many ways, you are then saying people are voting on the wrong people, because they do not read your newspapers, but their Facebook timelines.
toss1|4 years ago
lostmsu|4 years ago
malermeister|4 years ago
Authoritarians use the framework of a free society to rise to power until they are strong enough to topple it. A free society must be able to defend itself against that approach, even if it might seem contrary to its own values.
Here's the way he formulated it:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
dionidium|4 years ago
Second, as a practical matter, it’s not at all clear what constitutes intolerance. If you think the state has standing to adjudicate intolerance, then I can’t imagine you’ve been paying attention to the kind of routine social errors that are labeled intolerance on social media. The notion that it’s a legitimate function of the state to weigh in on these banal disagreements is risible.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
thoraway66|4 years ago
Freedom from some other twats mental illness means more to me than their freedom to be a twat.
Stop oversimplifying like a child. There are real impacts to enabling systemic bias.
If you want moral relativism because maybe subjugating people out of your view is ok, why waste effort when you’re the cohort being abused?
2OEH8eoCRo0|4 years ago
[deleted]
rubicon33|4 years ago
prohobo|4 years ago
You should make a distinction here, because I think most people assume you mean censorship.
gorwell|4 years ago
And would your definition reflect Instagram's definition, as seen in the following example?
https://twitter.com/GaiaRiot10/status/1468787960216797190
throwawaylinux|4 years ago
[deleted]
anonytrary|4 years ago