Comment by nine_k
12 days ago
Open-source software was created by people who wanted to address their own needs, and we're lucky that we share the same needs. Commercial software companies and media companies were and are unhappy about that, because they lost control and profits.
Regulated, constrained versions of Internet are being built by governments and some large corporations, to meet their needs. While EU's constraints may look benign (even though they are not), the versions built in PRC, Russia, India, Türkyie are in various degrees openly anti-citizen. As long as citizens' needs (like privacy and unrestricted access) do not align with the ideas of the governments and corporations, we, citizens, are usually the losing side.
The fix is obvious: regulations should be liberty-preserving, and for that, governments that are better aligned with our, citizens', interests should be voted in.
And here we encounter a hard problem.
Open source must be a part of Europe's digital sovereignty (a crucial piece of a post-american internet). The continent otherwise doesn't have the resources to pull it off. Projects like https://eurostack.eu/ are a baby step in that direction.
Unfortunately that's just one piece of the puzzle. They also need a level of physical infrastructure that will take ages (or a miraculous breakthrough) to build. That too is a hard problem.
It isn't that hard. A democracy can be maximally liberal, including the internet, up to the Tolerance Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
The people that govern Big Tech have said as much as that they don't believe in democracy, they show they don't believe in fair markets, and they are put to work to implement the threats of a crazy but powerful clique, attacking free and social democracies with an endless stream of sponsored garbage. If the EU had any leaders instead of weasels, they would have closed the sewers that brings lies, hate, conspiracy theories and division. If the EU does not act, it will go down, taken apart by the oligarchs.
Tolerance Paradox is not a "Tolerance Threshold" - it's a Paradox. You cannot be maximally liberal "up to Tolerance Paradox" - as soon as you are maximally liberal to any threshold, you are no longer liberal - hence the paradox.
It seems you define liberal in a rigid way. What I tried to convey is that for any Tolerance to exist, it has room to tolerate anything except Anti-Tolerance, as part of its essence. Paradox isn't a contradiction ("you are no longer liberal"), it is something that might seem like a contradiction. But maybe we agree about that and my wording was confusing.
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This Tolerance Paradox is something I’ve been discussing lately with family and friends, but was having a hard time articulating. Thanks for the link.
I see tons of parallels with today’s world, on both sides of the spectrum (left/right, woke/unwoke etc).
Like, I do agree that most speech should be free and that dark humour and unpopular ideas and whatnot should be allowed even if you or a portion of the population don’t like it.
However I also think you can’t just say whatever you want and hide behind that free speech protection, because that opens the door to really nasty stuff that the human species has lived through.
But where’s the line?
That comedian arrested in the UK for a tweet[0], for instance. Do I agree? No. Do I think it was an intolerant thing to say from my POV? Yes. Do I think it is in fact inciting violence and deserves arrest? No.
On the other hand, you have people preaching white supremacy and talking about inferior races. We know where that led us.
So where’s the line? Same thing applies for these “regulated” surveillances. CSAM sounds like a good reason, but the same tools can be used to limit or monitor other speeches and behaviors. (Not to get into the debate of effectiveness, since bypassing is doable if you really want to).
I don’t have an answer, and I don’t think there is a clear line to be drawn.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07p7v2nn8mo.amp
The last line of that news article is quite important here. He was also arrested for a harassment charge which if memory serves was more serious than his tweets alone.
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