Johannes Buchinger that's not necessarily true. While even the most liberal (euro definition) English people I know are in favor of outright bans on certain speech, there do appear to be some Europeans who favor absolute free speech, at least in selective audience forums
Christof Harper generally speaking, as open book is located in the Netherlands it'll have to apply to EU legislation and (like all other social networks) to local legislation for the countries it targets. E.g. here in Germany we have - in addition to the usual laws regarding libel, defamation and harassment - a law that requires social media platforms to remove hate speech and post that contain 'Volksverhetzung' after being noticed with hefty fines if the platform does not comply.
This law still has to pass the EU parliament and if it does (chances just got higher as Germany switched from oppose to accept in exchange for France accepting the 'Nord Stream II' gas pipeline - sigh) it'll probably be contested at the EU human rights court which in the past already dumped a few stupid laws. So there's still hope for the internet and that we'll not switch from a (more or less voluntary) 'remove after reported' to a full blown proactive censorship system. For readers in the EU, here's a petition to sign if you think this goes to far: change.org - Petition unterschreiben
That's the legal situation - a completely different thing on the other hand are house rules aka TOS. (xkcd 1357 anyone?) I do not expect from a social network to be a family restaurant, but I expect the owner to show rampaging hools the door if other guests feel (rightly) harassed. And I'll for sure will not set my foot into that other restaurant that openly invites such hools because 'bouncing is communism'.
My hope is, that openbook will become a network where people can share ideas and can discuss different opinions in a civilized matter, with an open minded but clear cut moderation. Best IMO one that applies Popper's tolerance paradox.
Johannes Buchinger that's very informative on the legal situation, thank you.
As for the moderation and poppers tolerance Paradox, the answer is always blocklists and rooms. To use the Public Square and Allergy that we are so fond of in the United States, what you need is multiple public squares in your service.
Johannes Buchinger you see, among other things, there is no actual legal classification of hate speech in the United States. Our first amendment protections are extremely Broad and it's very difficult to even manage to bring a libel suit.
Given that social media is where we perform our public speech, our political speech, our religious speech, all of our protected speech... which is like 99% of speech, you can't have any arbitrary moderation or censorship and really make it work.
Add to that the fact that has people have referenced in this community, anyone who allows people with bad think on their platform is politically corrupt.... well, the options for replacement are very difficult.
Christof Harper dont forget its really hard to enforce hate speech for any country in the internet. anyone who trys will fail, not even china can stop them.
Christof Harper back in the days when the internet was young ;) I had a hardcore libertarian stance on free speech but the recent years have changed my mind. I was full on "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (not a quote by Voltaire btw). But this only works in an idealized world, where people argue based on facts and respect each other - that is not the world we're living in.
Many of the people that claim "free speech" rights today would happily first thing take away the rights of those who spoke out against them if they got to power. And these people fight dirty, they spread misinformation to incite fear and hate, use sockpuppets and bots to appear as a bigger number as they are and there are even state actors who use those methods to destabilize other countries. (The 'Petersburg Troll factory' had a huge impact on the outcome of the Brexit vote, in Germany we have a new Nazi party in the parliament who would not have been successful without FB and Twitter and so on.)
Giving these people a platform endangers true free speech IMO I still believe everybody is entitled to his/her opinion, everybody should be allowed to speak out even the greatest stupidities and tell the most outrageous lies (if they keep it to themselves, how should I speak out against them - also an important principle o free speech many of these people don't grasp: you may say but not unchallenged) but helping them to do so is a bad idea.
So for me, I added a bit to that not-Voltaire quote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it - And.Now.Get.Off.My.Lawn!"
And, yeah - I believe this is what social media platforms should do, too
Johannes Buchinger that only works when social media platforms are not the public square.
Over the past 21 years that I have been involved with the internet, I have grown more adamant about the so called "libertarian" free speech model.
One of the reasons is exactly what you stated. Using the idea of a rationality and logic as a means to control speech with humans is a path to real Badness.
Any rationality that you do find is an overlay over your emotions and your evolutionary social functioning. You're emotional and Mythic psychology always comes first. And any ideas about restricting Free Speech need to come not from rationality but from an acknowledgement of what humans are and an understanding of how humans actually Act
Christof Harper the question we need to ask, is a social media platform truly public square? The Internet: yes, but a platform is operated by a company so to me this seems more like private property. And this entitles the owner to set up house rules. Even a restaurant is entitled to deny service to some customers - not based on race, origin, religion but bad behavior counts.
We need to discern between speech regulation applied by state and by private businesses.
A state should not limit what you can or cannot say in public. It should not regulate what you put on the Internet (some limitations under penal law apply).
But companies like FB, Twitter, Google - they have every right to ban people if they don't like how these use the provided platform. and the banned people are free to look out for another platform or set up one themselves. And to me this is the true libertarian spirit of the internet.
Johannes Buchinger bad behavior is a business currebtly only counts if the person Behaving Badly is not of a protected class. Notice what has happened recently when protected class people have been removed from restaurants for bad behavior.
The problem with the private business idea is that when a private business is providing a public service, the Public Square, a monopoly position, a centralized single Authority where 90% or even 40% , or even 10%of political discourse takes place over an entire nation?
I'm not a Libertarian. I don't believe that corporations can gain that much market share and have no responsibility because they are private and anyone else can just go out and build what they want. Because it doesn't work that way. Anti-competitive measures are always going to be present.
Remember your Adam Smith, Men of the same trade seldom gather together, even for merriment, without they engage in a conspiracy against the public.
That applies just as much if it's one company having a boardroom luncheon.
If you want to create a social media platform specifically for furries, and you have heavy moderation and censorship on non for a topics, that's different. Because you've created something for a specific limited purpose. Facebook, Twitter, even Instagram, are not created for a limited purpose.
Of course, there is a balancing beam approach to this where you have to determine at what level you become a public utility or a public platform. Certainly, decisively and openly positioning yourself as one is a pretty good metric.
It is certain, looking at how things have been progressing lately, that the idea of bad behavior is specifically targeted.
While I would support an artist, even a confectionery artist, not engaging in a ritual such as marriage, which is generally considered to have religious significance, for people who he feels are doing something against his moral code,
I would certainly not support Denny's turning away a table of 8 people who went to a gay pride March because there's no particular artistic religious or significant personal involvement.
Christof Harper I'm not a libertarian either. I do not believe in companies doing things for the good or self regulating markets. And I'm quite worried about how Google, FB, Amazon etc accumulate data and market shares. When I say 'libertarian spirit of the internet' I think of Barlow's Internet Manifesto, of the possibility that everyone has the option to become a publisher. I believe (hope?) that the death of G+ is just the beginning, that FB and Twitter will only last a few more years, that we'll see more and more small specialized platforms and that the next big thing will be meta platforms to join all this together. A little bit like it was in the 'good old days' of the usenet (which was also filtered based on what groups the owner of the server you used thought were appropriate).
I need to leave the discussion for today (Thanks! It was a great) but one last thought. If I was an restaurant owner and somebody identifiable as a Nazi (e.g based on the tattoos) would enter - I'd not deny him water and food but I'd also not place him with the other guests as I'd fear that this could disrupt my service. And as I know how many Americans feel about display of sexuality (help, a nipple! burn the witch) and how gay pride parade costumes look a small part of me can understand the reasoning behind denying the service (the reasoning but not the decision)
The main problem is not that social media platforms engage in censorship, but that there is no right of appeal. If the government passes any law and you are convicted of contravening it, you have the right to appeal your conviction and sentence or even argue before the courts that the law is unconstitutional. Even mass murderers have the right of appeal. Privately run social media platforms make it near to impossible to appeal their decisions and their are lots of stories of users being banned because some faction didn't like an individuals political opinion on some controversial issue.
New comments on this blog are moderated. If you do not have a Google identity, you are welcome to post anonymously. Your comments will appear here after they have been reviewed. Comments with vulgarity will be rejected.
If you want to support development, have a look here:
ReplyDeleteindiegogo.com - Openbook: It's time for a better social network.
Am waiting for it
ReplyDeleteLooks like we will get something this month.
ReplyDeleteCensorship model is?
ReplyDeleteChristof Harper openbook.social - Openbook | A social network for a better tomorrow. if that helps
ReplyDeleteDon McCollough doesn't answer my question. I understand privacy and I understand open source and I understand informed consent to share data.
ReplyDeleteI've been dealing with this since livejournal days, my question is who is the censor and what are the standards of censorship?
Christof Harper Then you might want to use the Contact Us tab and send the request. I am a bit surprised not to see it in the FAQ either.
ReplyDeleteThey're usually very quick at responding to questions on their Slack account
ReplyDeleteopenbookorg.slack.com - Slack
Garry Knight Good to know, thank you!
ReplyDeleteChristof Harper they're based in Europe. So the censorship model will be communism - if not worse!
ReplyDeleteJohannes Buchinger that's not necessarily true. While even the most liberal (euro definition) English people I know are in favor of outright bans on certain speech, there do appear to be some Europeans who favor absolute free speech, at least in selective audience forums
ReplyDeleteChristof Harper arggh - I just accidentally deleted quite a lengthy reply. I'm way past bedtime - will follow up tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteIs it federated or
ReplyDeletecentralised? I would not go for anything centralised again. Too bad if they close down for whatever reason.
Christof Harper generally speaking, as open book is located in the Netherlands it'll have to apply to EU legislation and (like all other social networks) to local legislation for the countries it targets. E.g. here in Germany we have - in addition to the usual laws regarding libel, defamation and harassment - a law that requires social media platforms to remove hate speech and post that contain 'Volksverhetzung' after being noticed with hefty fines if the platform does not comply.
ReplyDeleteThere's more legislation in the works for the EU though, a law that'll force all social media platforms to filter out copyrighted material and extremist content before it gets posted. ("Article 13").
https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/terrorist-upload-filters/
https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/council-worst-article-13/
This law still has to pass the EU parliament and if it does (chances just got higher as Germany switched from oppose to accept in exchange for France accepting the 'Nord Stream II' gas pipeline - sigh) it'll probably be contested at the EU human rights court which in the past already dumped a few stupid laws.
So there's still hope for the internet and that we'll not switch from a (more or less voluntary) 'remove after reported' to a full blown proactive censorship system. For readers in the EU, here's a petition to sign if you think this goes to far:
change.org - Petition unterschreiben
That's the legal situation - a completely different thing on the other hand are house rules aka TOS. (xkcd 1357 anyone?)
I do not expect from a social network to be a family restaurant, but I expect the owner to show rampaging hools the door if other guests feel (rightly) harassed. And I'll for sure will not set my foot into that other restaurant that openly invites such hools because 'bouncing is communism'.
My hope is, that openbook will become a network where people can share ideas and can discuss different opinions in a civilized matter, with an open minded but clear cut moderation. Best IMO one that applies Popper's tolerance paradox.
Johannes Buchinger that's very informative on the legal situation, thank you.
ReplyDeleteAs for the moderation and poppers tolerance Paradox, the answer is always blocklists and rooms. To use the Public Square and Allergy that we are so fond of in the United States, what you need is multiple public squares in your service.
I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteJohannes Buchinger you see, among other things, there is no actual legal classification of hate speech in the United States. Our first amendment protections are extremely Broad and it's very difficult to even manage to bring a libel suit.
ReplyDeleteGiven that social media is where we perform our public speech, our political speech, our religious speech, all of our protected speech... which is like 99% of speech, you can't have any arbitrary moderation or censorship and really make it work.
Add to that the fact that has people have referenced in this community, anyone who allows people with bad think on their platform is politically corrupt.... well, the options for replacement are very difficult.
Christof Harper dont forget its really hard to enforce hate speech for any country in the internet. anyone who trys will fail, not even china can stop them.
ReplyDeleteChristof Harper back in the days when the internet was young ;) I had a hardcore libertarian stance on free speech but the recent years have changed my mind. I was full on "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (not a quote by Voltaire btw).
ReplyDeleteBut this only works in an idealized world, where people argue based on facts and respect each other - that is not the world we're living in.
Many of the people that claim "free speech" rights today would happily first thing take away the rights of those who spoke out against them if they got to power. And these people fight dirty, they spread misinformation to incite fear and hate, use sockpuppets and bots to appear as a bigger number as they are and there are even state actors who use those methods to destabilize other countries. (The 'Petersburg Troll factory' had a huge impact on the outcome of the Brexit vote, in Germany we have a new Nazi party in the parliament who would not have been successful without FB and Twitter and so on.)
Giving these people a platform endangers true free speech IMO
I still believe everybody is entitled to his/her opinion, everybody should be allowed to speak out even the greatest stupidities and tell the most outrageous lies (if they keep it to themselves, how should I speak out against them - also an important principle o free speech many of these people don't grasp: you may say but not unchallenged) but helping them to do so is a bad idea.
So for me, I added a bit to that not-Voltaire quote:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it - And.Now.Get.Off.My.Lawn!"
And, yeah - I believe this is what social media platforms should do, too
:)
Johannes Buchinger that only works when social media platforms are not the public square.
ReplyDeleteOver the past 21 years that I have been involved with the internet, I have grown more adamant about the so called "libertarian" free speech model.
One of the reasons is exactly what you stated. Using the idea of a rationality and logic as a means to control speech with humans is a path to real Badness.
Any rationality that you do find is an overlay over your emotions and your evolutionary social functioning. You're emotional and Mythic psychology always comes first. And any ideas about restricting Free Speech need to come not from rationality but from an acknowledgement of what humans are and an understanding of how humans actually Act
Christof Harper the question we need to ask, is a social media platform truly public square? The Internet: yes, but a platform is operated by a company so to me this seems more like private property. And this entitles the owner to set up house rules. Even a restaurant is entitled to deny service to some customers - not based on race, origin, religion but bad behavior counts.
ReplyDeleteWe need to discern between speech regulation applied by state and by private businesses.
A state should not limit what you can or cannot say in public. It should not regulate what you put on the Internet (some limitations under penal law apply).
But companies like FB, Twitter, Google - they have every right to ban people if they don't like how these use the provided platform. and the banned people are free to look out for another platform or set up one themselves. And to me this is the true libertarian spirit of the internet.
Johannes Buchinger bad behavior is a business currebtly only counts if the person Behaving Badly is not of a protected class. Notice what has happened recently when protected class people have been removed from restaurants for bad behavior.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the private business idea is that when a private business is providing a public service, the Public Square, a monopoly position, a centralized single Authority where 90% or even 40% , or even 10%of political discourse takes place over an entire nation?
I'm not a Libertarian. I don't believe that corporations can gain that much market share and have no responsibility because they are private and anyone else can just go out and build what they want. Because it doesn't work that way. Anti-competitive measures are always going to be present.
Remember your Adam Smith, Men of the same trade seldom gather together, even for merriment, without they engage in a conspiracy against the public.
That applies just as much if it's one company having a boardroom luncheon.
If you want to create a social media platform specifically for furries, and you have heavy moderation and censorship on non for a topics, that's different. Because you've created something for a specific limited purpose. Facebook, Twitter, even Instagram, are not created for a limited purpose.
Of course, there is a balancing beam approach to this where you have to determine at what level you become a public utility or a public platform. Certainly, decisively and openly positioning yourself as one is a pretty good metric.
It is certain, looking at how things have been progressing lately, that the idea of bad behavior is specifically targeted.
While I would support an artist, even a confectionery artist, not engaging in a ritual such as marriage, which is generally considered to have religious significance, for people who he feels are doing something against his moral code,
I would certainly not support Denny's turning away a table of 8 people who went to a gay pride March because there's no particular artistic religious or significant personal involvement.
Even if you find what they do to be hateful
Christof Harper I'm not a libertarian either. I do not believe in companies doing things for the good or self regulating markets. And I'm quite worried about how Google, FB, Amazon etc accumulate data and market shares. When I say 'libertarian spirit of the internet' I think of Barlow's Internet Manifesto, of the possibility that everyone has the option to become a publisher.
ReplyDeleteI believe (hope?) that the death of G+ is just the beginning, that FB and Twitter will only last a few more years, that we'll see more and more small specialized platforms and that the next big thing will be meta platforms to join all this together. A little bit like it was in the 'good old days' of the usenet (which was also filtered based on what groups the owner of the server you used thought were appropriate).
I need to leave the discussion for today (Thanks! It was a great) but one last thought. If I was an restaurant owner and somebody identifiable as a Nazi (e.g based on the tattoos) would enter - I'd not deny him water and food but I'd also not place him with the other guests as I'd fear that this could disrupt my service. And as I know how many Americans feel about display of sexuality (help, a nipple! burn the witch) and how gay pride parade costumes look a small part of me can understand the reasoning behind denying the service (the reasoning but not the decision)
Have a good day!
The main problem is not that social media platforms engage in censorship, but that there is no right of appeal. If the government passes any law and you are convicted of contravening it, you have the right to appeal your conviction and sentence or even argue before the courts that the law is unconstitutional. Even mass murderers have the right of appeal. Privately run social media platforms make it near to impossible to appeal their decisions and their are lots of stories of users being banned because some faction didn't like an individuals political opinion on some controversial issue.
ReplyDeleteIt's already 02.16 and i do not see changes on website or any hilighted news.
ReplyDeleteAlso, i see only mobile screenshots, it is available on desktop?