Comment by J5892
4 years ago
He's an old-school internet freedom activist.
Judging from what's happened with many similar activists, I'm guessing a hard-line anti-censorship mindset isn't compatible with today's social/political landscape in which rampant misinformation on the internet has direct effects on meatspace.
Of course, this is purely conjecture. It could be completely unrelated.
Information distribution has always had direct effects on meatspace.
That's what makes an anti-censorship stand relevant and important. Nobody would censor if there were no physical impacts.
i used to be into hardline freedom of speech... now i acknowledge that real life nuances are a lot more complicated.
censorship is messy and complicated and usually involves a dangerous concentration of power, sure...
but truly free and anonymous speech that can originate from places that are immune to it's effects or can be falsely attributed for the purposes of subversion can also result in a dangerous concentration of power.
what's the difference between a censored truth and a chorus of convincing lies originated anonymously that buries the truth?
Just kinda spit balling here so forgive the lack of empathy, but it seems to me like the overall System is perfectly capable of correcting itself when people succumb to "misinformation" to the point it harms them. Yeah we don't want anyone to get harmed, sure sure, yeah, of course, that would be simply... awful. Yet... we learn best from failure, correct?
In other words, at some point every concerned individual needs to let those insistent/destined to fail to do so, and let others learn from their mistakes.
Everyone's gotta stop trying to save everyone else.
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And this is something you believe is best solved through censorship of individuals by large tech companies?
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There is a parable something like this:
The child looks at the forest and sees the forest. The adult looks at the forest and sees all the trees and plants and wildlife and features of the land. The old person looks at the forest and sees the forest.
It's possible to lose sight of what really matters when overwhelmed with nuance.
It's still an open question of whether we're actually seeing the result of too much free speech, or whether we're seeing the result of overly centralized powers popularizing extreme viewpoints to drive engagement. Faceboot et al have essentially installed themselves as middlemen into everyone's interpersonal relationships, and have thus hijacked our sense of social proof.
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Ditto. And then Paradox of Tolerance happened IRL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Banning speech and censorship are impractical. But something has to give.
Now I'm pondering leveling up defamation tort. Like how Alex Jones just got pwned for endangering the lives of the Sandy Hook parents.
Personal responsibility. Say whatever you want. But then you own it. Real life consequences.
All the Freedom Speeches™ zealots, pretending that bots, sockpuppets, and corporations are people.
Pretending that inciting a riot is okey dokey.
Pretending that life is fair, with no power imbalances. So my blog with 100 yearly visitors is the same as the outrage machine.
Parroting slippery slope tropes, eschewing balance and judgement, as though the train hasn't already jumped the track.
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Which censoring society is a role model for you?
Yeah, this is my interpretation as well. I mean, he formulated "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".
Funny enough, if I recall correctly, that quote was specifically in the context of USENET.
And the story of USENET since then might be educational... USENET itself, and the infrastructure running under it, are hard to censor, but many of the individual service providers that ran USENET endpoints and provided them for their customers went "This is more trouble than it's worth" and stopped providing that service. It's harder to get on USENET now than it was in the days AOL offered it.
The Net interprets censorship as damage, but a critical mass of service providers concluding something isn't worth the resources can have the same effect as censorship.
Freedom is serious business and worth dying for. If our freedoms online are taken, make no mistake, it will be war.
I agree, but...
Whose freedom? And what is freedom?
Market dynamics support corporations which can generate the largest numbers of ad clicks. You can't run an organization which doesn't ultimately conform to market dynamics. That leads to polarization, hate, and misinformation. Do we want to go down that path?
Are corporations people? Should corporations have freedom-of-speech? Should corporations be free to lie? Should government employees? Should corporations be free to engage in speech which is known to actively harm people?
I really don't know.
I do feel like some forms of intentional lying should be illegal. If a government employee says something, or an academic does, I should be able to trust they're not being intentionally untruthful. Where does that line lie? I don't know.
I also feel like individuals should have real freedom of speech. Not just freedom from government prosecution after speech, but freedom from economic prosecution, and to some extent, social ostracization.
I feel like we need a serious discussion here, though.
I’m thinking Trump’s new social network will be a very interesting new development.
For a long time those who have wanted not to be censored could always build a competing service.
The new risk now is that people will become more cut off from one another. Having opposing views on the same forum was always a civilizing force.
But now we will see an experiment begin on how segregated echo chambers will effect society.
What happens when people become un-cancellable?
It seems inevitable we will see right leaning equivalents of all the tech platforms.
Funny though that everything hinges on the advertisers, whose risk-averseness appears to be the most effective moderating influence on society we have.
Whether a free speech platform can find a sustainable business model is a big unknown.
War with whom?
The government? Tech companies? ISPs?
All are in some ways restricting certain freedoms, while enabling others.
And what freedoms are you afraid of being taken that have not already been taken in some form?
I'm absolutely not disagreeing with you. I support full and absolute internet freedom. I have the ability to put absolutely anything I want on the internet with zero restrictions, but depending on what it is and how I put it there, there are many ways it may then cause me to lose freedom in some way.
Which one should lead to war?
"This represents a clear and present danger to our constitutionally guaranteed freedom to be online."
> He's an old-school internet freedom activist.
A commenter on The Reg speculated that it's because (according to this commenter) Gilmore has lately veered into arguing publicly for legalising marijuana, and the EFF doesn't want to be associated with that.
If he has, that feels more plausible a cause than him being "an old-school internet freedom activist" per se.