Comment by whimsicalism
4 years ago
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.
4 years ago
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.
I don't disagree with this, but there's a threshold in which the misinformation becomes the prevailing "truth" for a portion of the population, and is no longer able to self-correct.
If there is a force actively working towards this as a goal, do you not think that force should be actively opposed?
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> (...) 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.
For this hypothesis to be valid, you'd require a population which:
a) had decent critical thinking,
b) consumed reliable information from reliable sources,
c) wasn't targeted by bad actors who hijack information channels to saturate it with disinformation,
d) wasn't radicalized to the point where even basic health and safety precautions are attacked as being partisan politics.
What we have been seeing for the past year or so is that the system is unable to self-correct if attacked hard enough. Also, we also that the system indeed has some capacity to self-heal if the volume of disinformation is actively tuned down.
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And this is something you believe is best solved through censorship of individuals by large tech companies?
i'm arguing that the situation is more complicated. we live in a world that is still somewhat e-communication naive, while the internet has completely rewritten the rules of the game bringing e-communication into focus.
when the us constitution was written, it wasn't written with the idea in mind that anyone in the world could anonymously participate in the local political process. that would have been crazy talk!
so i think maybe there may be some weirdness in terms of keeping the peace in the short term as more naive generations die off and more saavy generations come up. i also think that maybe some ideas we thought were principles were actually implementation strategies built for a very different world and that perhaps we'll need to look at what the underlying principles were and how they might be upheld in a world without information borders.
perhaps freedom of speech, which was written with the idea of preventing government from getting too powerful and controlling people, would need to be reduced to the idea of any entity amassing undue power by consolidating information capabilities to control people. from that, maybe you build up a freedom of speech paired with a required assertion of identity...
but honestly, i don't know. it sure does seem that the old principles were written for a different game though.
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I believe tech companies should have the freedom to decide who gets to post on their own platforms, regardless of the size/reach of the platform.
To restrict that freedom would be a direct restriction of freedom of speech.
1 reply →
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.
It all boils down to ad revenue and clicks. It’s no coincidence that all this started happening the same time old media was threatened by the digital age.
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.
You watch too much TV news.
Any argument that appeals to fear and relies on boogeymen is trying to short-circuit the logical, rational parts of your brain. They're trying to make you part of the mob. You would do well to take such arguments and their prophets and burn them with hot coals. Literally tar and feather them and run them out of town.
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Which censoring society is a role model for you?