> That said, I think crossing this content line for an infrastructure company is a big deal, and I hope it's not repeated.
It's an incredibly terrible move. Such an arbitrary and biased move.
What has happened in the past few years where everyone defended free speech to everyone deciding arbitrary and whimsical censorship is something to be lauded? It feels like someone just flipped a switch and people became pro-censorship.
The tech industry is doing the same the chinese or russians are doing. Justifying censorship for "good/morals/etc".
Hate the nazis all you want but we are hurting ourselves by allow censorship on this level. These peole aren't going away. But now there is terrible precedent where social media/tech/etc can censor whatever they want. It's incredible.
> The concerted effort by the pro-censorship crowd to exploit nazis to promote censorship is rather worrying.
This, right here, is a straw-man that I've seen repeated countless times. I am not pro-censorship, but I'm sure as hell not for forcing companies to provide services to Nazis and other scum.
There's a huge, gaping difference between those two things and I'd appreciate it if you stopped conflating them.
> It's a private company, they should be free to choose what kind of content they want to provide
Censorship is just a classification of what they are doing. In both cases, it is selectively application of blocking of contents based on one's political believes. Calling them censorship is not an assessment whether they have a legal/illegal/legit/reasonable/unreasonable cause to carry out such acts.
> > it sounds more like you’re fine with it because you agree with who they’re censoring...
> Yes…
Well, at least you’re honest about supporting censorship of the “right” people.
> I will worry about this when authoritative information about important topics gets removed from all platforms at the whim of one or two companies
By then it’d already be too late. Though again I doubt you’d care even as long as the “right” people disappeared from your view. You don’t seem particularly worried about authoritarianism as long as the content you’ve been told is “harmful” has been “reviewed” and summarily removed.
> The biggest one for me in recent history was Cloudflare arbitrarily deciding to stop hosting the Daily Stormer. Sure, DS is vile, but at the point we start enforcing censorship on a whim instead of hardened policies that aren't selectively enforced, I think it becomes worrisome.
If there's a fairly cogent set of guidelines I'm fine with it. I realize that it's subjective but we're not idiots and it's THEIR company.
If you went to a friends house and he had a nazi meeting in his basement you wouldn't accept "free speech" as a reason for them to be there - you'd think your friend was a Nazi.
>The best stance is not to take a side, but to make sure both sides are civil in the expression of their beliefs.
I agree with that. It would help if these companies stopped seeking "virality" and "eyeballs" or whatever metaphor you want to use of user engagement and "notoriety/reward".
Otherwise, this is exactly the same argument China's (or Russia's) censors would make. Absolutely not different in any way.
> if we decide as a society that deleting information from publishing platforms goes against the common good, then we can do that.
Yeah this sounds nice and all but ultimately someone has to make the rules about what can and cannot be said. Should we never delete any content period? What about child abuse or calls to violence? who gets to define violence? Is telling people that masks don't work a call to violence? Maybe not but you could make the argument.
Ultimately it comes down to who we want to wield this power, and right now it's between corporate interests and the US government. Considering that the ruling party is the one pushing the tech giants into this kind of censorship (pretty evident if you watched the tech hearing last year), I think I'd rather let the corporate interests have the power for now. The funny thing is, me from ten years ago would be outraged by this take. Things have changed pretty fast.
> Id say the stance on platforms is stifiling free speech.
This was a point I tried to make when censoring extreme views / hate speech first started being a thing. While I’m vehemently opposed to said content, it’s a slippery slope once you start censoring. Everyone has their own opinions on what’s “bad content”, and while there is a lot of overlap in society, it doesn’t stay constant over time. I wish instead we’d form together as an industry and appropriately tag so you can then filter the web to your preferences. Sadly doubtful that approach would work in reality though.
> The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech. Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense.
Strongly disagree. This is how China does it: they won’t tell companies what exactly to censor, but the companies will be punished if they don’t censor what the government wants to be censored in retrospect. It is much worse than governments forcing censorship explicitly, because otherwise companies are led to guess at government intentions and will be very conservative in what speech they allow.
> Recent events have demonstrated that they love them some censorship, when they do it.
I'm not sure that I would conflate running a business with loving censorship.
> I can't believe the tech press isn't picking up on a supposed cloud provider threatening to shut down someone's account unless they make their website behave in a particular way.
What would the headline be exactly? "Business drops client for violating agreement and bringing negative attention to their service."
Why does everyone assume that businesses have a moral obligation or imperative? When a company goes around saying "We value..." they're really saying "By uttering the magic phrase we hope to make more money off you".
> I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor.
This is actually a right-wing authoritarian stance: you're advocating that the government (or do you mean some other entity?) force private businesses to publish speech that they disagree with.
You're conflating private entities freedom to publish or not publish what they wish with censorship, which only comes from a legal authority.
> Personally, I think a better perspective is to reduce and/or avoid censorship altogether, especially as far as internet infrastructure is concerned.
Yes! Systems ought to be designed such that censorship is impossible. Not just that we won't censor because we're so liberal and all. No, just plain uncensorable by design.
> This just feels like an excuse to find a way to filter human communication
Interesting. I've modded a fair amount of communities and the censorship argument to moderated discussion comes up frequently as new rules are implemented.
From an online discussion point of view I don't think it holds merit at all. If I run a football board and have a rule that says "no basketball talk" that's my prerogative.
As long as it's not government driven, censorship is perfectly fine (if you don't like the rules of my service, you are free to use someone else's). When it is government driven, censorship is murky territory at best, but not immediately bad and illegal/unconstitutional. The FCC in some form or another has rules against broadcasting certain types of content. You can't swear, you can't show nudity (or certain types of nudity anyways). That's government driven censorship, and its largely accepted.
Slashdot had a hands off approach for a long time. I couldn't go to their site without seeing a n-word reference in the comments because their approach was abused. If you go to reddit, facebook, twitter, snapchat, instagram, or any other major site you run into astroturfing campaigns. We've grown to accept that Microsoft is good at it and Sony is bad at it. But somehow when AT&T does it, it's evil.
I don't know what the solution looks like. I just know that we need to evolve. Filtering communication is part of it. A bigger part of it would be finding ways to drive healthier habits.
> What rules do we put in place that they have to host some of this content? Blatant misinformation, vague encouragement of violence... hate?
Why do they have to be rules? Why can't we have a culture of tolerance? Robots aren't running these companies. They're people, just like you and me. They can choose to be tolerant.
Tolerance is about tolerating the most horrid things. Not because it's nice or those things have some value. They're horrid, they have no value. It's because the alternative is worse. Because censorship is worse. Because when a person is censored, when they can't speak, they resort to violence and through censorship, you encourage violence. And violence can't be censored. It can only be suppressed with further violence.
> The social platforms aren't censoring you (or some idea you like) because they disagree with you. They are censoring because they are large social platforms, and ideas are POWERFUL and DANGEROUS.
> Let me be clear: if you run a large social network, you will be forced by inexorable circumstance to censor certain things, you will be forced to "arbitrate" on topics you have an (inevitably) limited understanding of, and it will all be really really shitty.
> (The alternative is just collapse of the platform, so I guess you do always have a choice - but then you're not a social platform anymore)
I'd love if he provided an example of these powerful and dangerous ideas that must be censored. This is exactly the kind of language that any powerful organization that is scared of losing power says - it's all in the interest of saving lives... okay, what are the examples? Why is this not a matter best handled by law enforcement?
This just further convinces me that social media is a cancer to society.
> I kind of wish they would just ban every word in the dictionary so we can move on from their control of the web.
You know, when a company doing stupid things cause the entire world to self-censor, it means there's something very wrong with the intended democracy where it's hosted and the other ones letting their people being preyed upon.
> Unless you're trying to create a gigantic following (presumably to make money), why would that matter?
Is that what you think this is about? Money? Censorship is almost always about power and the desire to destroy opposition. It is a means to instill fear and stifle the discussion of any 'unpopular' ideas. It separates people. Money comes later.
I have few issues in communicating with friends or family. But now I have to think twice about what I say in public. Conversations must be limited to topics approved by the tech giants and the people who hold power. And I can't easily hear what a lot of other people say. It's definitely limiting. McCarthyism again?
Your solutions are interesting but don't address the problem I'm interested in. Thanks for the thoughtful discussion.
It's an incredibly terrible move. Such an arbitrary and biased move.
What has happened in the past few years where everyone defended free speech to everyone deciding arbitrary and whimsical censorship is something to be lauded? It feels like someone just flipped a switch and people became pro-censorship.
The tech industry is doing the same the chinese or russians are doing. Justifying censorship for "good/morals/etc".
Hate the nazis all you want but we are hurting ourselves by allow censorship on this level. These peole aren't going away. But now there is terrible precedent where social media/tech/etc can censor whatever they want. It's incredible.
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