Just a mental note, just because a social network allows for anything to be posted without restriction, it doesn't...
Just a mental note, just because a social network allows for anything to be posted without restriction, it doesn't mean that it values freedom or has any particular righteous cause to throw off oppressively censored networks.
And in the same manner, those networks that help to keep some amount of decorum, are not necessarily overlords wanting to control everything in sight.
Let's see how the comments go...
And in the same manner, those networks that help to keep some amount of decorum, are not necessarily overlords wanting to control everything in sight.
Let's see how the comments go...
gab_irl
ReplyDeleteJust commenting to see comments later on.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. My preference is always going to be for a site that moderates content but states their policies upfront and clearly. Flickr did really well with their adult content policies for instance, they are clear and concrete. Pillowfort likewise.
ReplyDeleteI am freaked out by sites that use ambiguities like "obscene" and "pornographic" and "extremist" because historically those have often been used to mean whatever the site owner or the authorities want them to mean at any given moment.
/🕵️
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is some networks don't define well what they're forbidding and then they remove things that they consider "wrong" which is subjective and biased.
ReplyDeleteIf, for example, someone says "X group of people should not exist" and someone else says "Y group of people should not exist" both messages should be treated equally, either allowing or removing them, but that has not being the case sometimes (for both X and Y groups of people).
Well depends on what are we talking about no? The devil is in the details, because certain kind of speech doesn't foster freedom of communication but is designed to shut it down and make it feel others threatened...
ReplyDeleteKirby Iwaki No if one of the groups is advocating for the disappearance of a protected group, and the other is saying that said hate group should not exists. Both messages are not equal
ReplyDeleteI didn't mean "disappear" as a group, but as individuals (i.e. "X group of people should die").
ReplyDeleteIf someone says "I wish Trump died" it should be the same as someone saying "I wish Hillary died". You either tolerate both or remove both.
Clarifying, I don't wish anyone would die, just thinking what could be treated as hate speech xD
First I want clear guidelines (I choose to join in, or stay FAR away)
ReplyDeleteThen I want moderators to enforce their chosen guidelines (no religion means none, including not picking a fight about it)
But I want to see public posts before I weigh up one and two.
If 'free' speech means we welcome hate speech - then I choose to move along, nothing to see here.
"freedom of speech" is limited by laws anyway, at least in most countries. A social network should and must reflect and honor that in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteKirby Iwaki That's why I chose to start my blog on WordPress instead of Google's own Blogger. If the powers-that-be at Blogger think that blogposts violate Terms of Service, they just unceremoniously close down the blog, without so much as a by-your-leave!
ReplyDeleteI'm on VK! I love all the naughty stuff going around there :-D
ReplyDeleteKerem Go Tried VK and found it too slow. It looked like FB without any clutter and with a very ergonomic interface, but its infrastructure is evidently under par. I left not because it wasn't good but because I could not wait for screens to load.
ReplyDeleteThere's a tremendous difference between stated policy and actual effect. And it can very well be that policies around "free speech" or "real names" or "zero tolerance" fail, backfire, or have precisely the reverse of the intended or stated effect.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most eloquent commentators on this has been Yonatan Zunger, Google+'s own (former) chief architect. Yonatan's since left Google entirely and found his tongue ... considerably loosened. He's not cast (much) shade or raked muck, but he has written candidly on the corrosive effects of the exceptionally misguided "Real Names" policy at G+, and here, on the limitations of absolutely unfettered free speech:
So what does healthy policy look like? You look for things which systematically cause people to feel uncomfortable engaging. Things that make people not post in the first place, because they know what will happen if they do. You shut down big bad things quickly and visibly, before they can pull the entire conversation to be around them. You reduce interaction opportunities for things which are known to be toxic.
You try to avoid "toxic meetings," period.
And the key to all of this is to define an editorial voice for the platform, separate from that of its users. That voice is your de facto set of rules for "No, this is not OK here; you don't like it, go somewhere else." Here's the big operational secret: 90% of what makes online policy hard is trying to do it while claiming neutrality.
Via Threadreader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/914605545490857984.html
Twitter original: https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/914605545490857984
G+ discussion: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/LEj68e4zFwB
Previously:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/NNUjNN8CSaB
I've written a few times recently on the FS issue, which is far more complex than most participants (on either side of the debate) realise. Sadly, that nuance is rarely even nodded at, let alone addressed directly.
This ... remarkably on-the-rails discussion at P:TBiN:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/e7ZdC7GquZR
Tim Berners-Lee: Minute 22:50 -- how do we design systems so that when we drop a drop of hate into it, falls away dissipates, but when we drop a drop of love in, it propagates and spreads -- preserving free speech but influencing us for the good.
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1RDGlWApbogKL?t=8s
John Stuart Mill, often considered the premier defender of unvarnished free speech ... isn't. He puts his finger on the scale for the less advantaged
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/8T9bQSeBZ4n
Section 230 of the Online Decency Act (US) does not require platforms to be "neutral":
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-not-require-platforms-be-neutral
Nor do free speech rights (in general) apply to private property, or systems, though there are some exceptions in the case of common carriers. A classification internet providers (sites and ISPs) have been keen to avoid.
A certain frequently-mentioned platform here apparently speaks with forked tongue on free speech policies:
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/+ChristopherMeid/posts/fkff4md7upe
Even the ACLU, as close to a free-speech absolutist organisation as there is in the US, draws the line at defending armed rallies:
http://archive.is/jMLRB
Vlogger sensation Contrapoints makes exceedingly well-considered videos on complex topics, and her treatment of the free speech question is excellent even by her very high standards. In two parts:
Part one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGTDhutW_us
Part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUuBd5VRbY
Reddit: "Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen: These are very complicated issues, and we are putting a lot of thought into it."
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/
On G+: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/DBE5agbYSb8
There's the disturbing, and quite noticeable, links between mainstream Libertarianism in the US (more specifically: Rothbardian/Randian Libertarianism of the von Mises school, exemplified by such organisations as the Cato Institute, the Atlas Network, and Reason Magazine):
https://medium.com/@elliotgulliverneedham/why-libertarians-are-embracing-fascism-5a9747a44db9
There's this bit I'd written in August 2017: "Dear EFF: If Daily Stormer wants a space on an Internet, they can build their goddamned onw. And then I'l personally see that it's destroyed".
The EFF itself ties itself in knots trying to justify its ideological stance that private organisations (including Cloudfront, Google, and various domain registrars, as well as peering, DNS registrars, etc.) have the right to determine what traffic they carry or what information they will resolve, and the right of an organisation whose sole cause for existence is the elimination and extermination of arbitrarily-defined "others" to spread, organise, threaten, and effect violence upon others.
It pleads its best argument: slippery slope.
Because the positions cannot be squared.
Because speech is not an absolute. Society is the absolute.
Yeah, that thing that Dame Maggie Thatcher, the Wicked Witch hereself, said doesn't exist.
Free speech exists in the support, foundation, health, strength, and commonality of society. Not the other way around.
Those who critique society, as did the Anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the Anti-War movements dating from WWI through present protests against escallation in Syria or elsewhere, the Gay Rights movement of the 1970s - 2000s. Hell, the EFF and cipherpunk movements seeking the rightful protections of strong crypto for all. They have a right to their speech because the manifest reason for their speech was to in fact create a stronger and better society, for all.
Sometimes in error, yes. But never with the interest of destroying society or of creating an unequal advantage for themselves against a party already disadvantaged.
ReplyDeleteJohn Stuart Mill's argument in favour of free speech in "On Liberty" is at its strongest for the minority, underprivileged, disadvantaged view. The view which comes from the party at the business end of guns, not holding the trigger:
Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners. On any of the great open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being, represents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on most of these topics.
The denial of others of economic access, of liberties, of the freedom of where to live, of life itself, is NOT in any defensible sense "obtaining less than its share". But this is the specific aim, goal, speech, and threat of violence by organised force of arms against civil authority, which the EFF now stands in support of.
That slope is not in the least slippery, and will never be, so long as those who seek to grease it with the blood of those they presume to annihilate are denied the means, and voice, to do so.
The EFF are in grave error, and could not be more wrong.
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/KMqVtaQeENc
I guess I'm not entirely ambivalent on this point.
Another frequent rhetoric point is "the marketplace of ideas". That itself is an idea which ... entered the marketplace only quite recently (the 1950s, via a US Supreme Court decision), and ... has both an exceptionally questionable empirical basis and a quite profoundly ideological one (free market advocates of the 19th and 20th centuries, largely):
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/2ZZW4mitSyY
Walter Lippmann on the Basic Problem of Democracy (1919):
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/9sy5QUZiboY
https://archive.org/stream/BasicProblemOfDemocracyWalterLippmann/The_Basic_Problem_Of_Democracy_Walter_Lippmann#page/n0/mode/2up
And, meta-commentary, something I will miss from G+ is both the excellent discussions had (see the many posts above) and, as of a year or so ago, the ability to turn those up with relative ease. My search on "free speed from:me" has proved interesting:
https://plus.google.com/s/from%3A104092656004159577193%20%22free%20speech%22/top
I am South African. Grew up with free speech of Black Sash. No gathering allowed so a woman, ONE woman, would stand on the pavement next to morning rush hour traffic. Holding her banner. (Not me, I was a child) That takes deep courage and profound conviction.
ReplyDelete