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When "free speech" is the primary selling point of a social media website, it tends to only attract people who feel slighted by the platform they're migrating from. Unfortunately this has the opposite effect of Parler's stated goal of being "the world's town square" since it simply isn't attractive to people with opposing views of those who did move.

I think free speech is important and I think that social media platforms can be a bit overzealous in their moderation of the content of its users. I just don't think you can sell a platform on it alone. It should be a feature of your platform, not the only thing going for it.

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It's a shame, but it really does feel like "free speech" has become a near dog-whistle. Almost any time I hear of a service billing itself with free speech as a primary selling point, a quick visit is more than enough to turn me off of ever returning.

Besides this, there's a clear feedback loop that happens regardless of the intent of the service's creators. The people most likely to get kicked off of social media platforms nowadays seem to be far-right kooks. So when they are looking for a new platform, they'll go somewhere that advertises for no moderation. What happens next is pretty obvious; the more those sort of people migrate to the service, the more visible their content will be to any visitor. And that content tends to be pretty effective at driving away non-kooky users, which leads to a reinforcing cycle that, over time, turns you into yet another take on Voat.

I tend to straddle the line between Republican and libertarian, so I consider myself more conservative than liberal. But I have to agree with you. I recently tried out Voat. Holy hell, what a dumpster fire.

I'm about as close to a free-speech absolutist as there is, and it's very frustrating that the market for these platforms seems to be settling into ruts where we have to choose between the hyper-conformity of highly managed platforms and the dumpster fires of the unmanaged platforms. I think the feedback loop you describe is a big part of it. I also wonder if we're experiencing a decline in education and critical thinking skills that could be fueling these ruts.

This greatly saddens me. Can't there be some way to build a platform that encourages intelligent, reasonable, polite debate? Discussions of ideas based on their merits instead of personal attacks and tribal allegiances? Some way to provide free speech without providing free amplification? Has society devolved to a point where this is no longer possible?

There can, I’m surprised no one has implemented this:

Start everyone off with a maximum influence credit of say 10 people, like in your local neighborhood.

As you contribute to thoughtful discussion, as determined by the diversity and ratio of up/down arrows, your maximum influence credit grows as a function of your geography.

Taking this idea further, maybe part of the problem is that platforms reduce the quality metric for posts down to effectively a single dimension: upvotes / likes / thumbs up.

What if there were separate dimensions for: Factually accurate, Morally agreeable, and Polite?

A machine learning algorithm could quickly work out which groups of users have different ideological positions, and which topics are likely to devolve into flame wars, so it could require that users have a minimum politeness score to be able to participate in a debate.

It could also, as you say, check for echo chambers forming and incentivise people with differing opinions to enter a discussion to balance it out.

> There can, I’m surprised no one has implemented this:

The reason is you're inappropriately applying an technical solution to a social problem.

You also make at least one critical error:

> As you contribute to thoughtful discussion, as determined by the diversity and ratio of up/down arrows

Upvotes/downvotes pretty much never measure "thoughtfulness," because for them to do so would require a level of social cohesion that would probably make upvotes/downvote unnecessary.

This might be the most HN thing I've ever read.

Yes, I believe HN does a pretty good job with this. The only way to provide what you are asking is active moderation, or the opposite of absolute free speech. There will always be people for whom the only solution is to ban them off your platform to create a good environment.

> Can't there be some way to build a platform that encourages intelligent, reasonable, polite debate?

Yes. They are called journals and academic conferences.

Most people aren't interested in these things and if you build forums for everybody, it definitely will not turn into scholarly debate.

"free speech" of this type also doesn't really exist on the internet - because bots are a thing. You can't have a digital equivalent of a town square because whatever else you do, it's simply not possible to create in-person pseudo-anonymous supporters.

But on the internet, this is easy - it's a damn service you can buy and it scales on the orders of 1-to-1000 or (usually much more) voices.

CAPTCHA's don't solve it - because this is also a service - breaking CAPTCHA's by the hundred and supply account keys in bulk.

You simply cannot have a digital space which works like a physical one, and as such you cannot meaningfully not moderate it because human participants cannot out-pace bots and sockpuppet accounts. Facebook's entire, unearned initial trust was because notionally it solved this problem - people forget it was initially limited to student's with student email addresses at school's it knew. It was very much, initially, exclusive enough that it kept something of a lid on this problem.

The feeling about it has persisted far beyond the now non-existence of this mechanism.

This is exactly why I believe a dutiful representation of the 1st amendment in the Internet includes anti-botting measures, since bots flood the town-hall with un-measured broadcasting, shuttering out any and all active speech. But beyond anti-botting and one or two other very minor holds, a public forum should have no other restrictions of moderation. There is an exact restriction needed for the moderation to itself not be speech-impacting either by too much or too little of it.

The problem you will run into is that the 1st amendment is a US thing and the internet is a global thing.

Well all the major internet firms are based in the United States, if they want to hold to foreign markets they would need to hold separate divisions in separate countries, or in coalition dealings. There is a reason USA law Section 203 debates (which doesn't address the core problem) are so contentious regarding Social Media.

Agree, we will likely end up with right leaning town square and left leaning town square. And because every company seems to think they need to pick a side on political topics, it may extend beyond speech platforms. For instance I wouldn't be surprised if at one point conservative leaning viewers would migrate away from the likes of netflix for been fed up of being preached woke catechism in every TV show. And perhaps calling your customers sexists and bigots isn't the best advertising strategy for shaving products. Etc.

I really hope Netflix learns from the awfulness of Star Trek Discovery.

Please explain.

Netflix doesn't carry it in my country.

Star Trek Discovery is awful for many reasons.

How do they intersect?

Plenty of people love Star Trek Discovery. It’s successful enough that it’s already been renewed for a 4th season by CBS.

Discovery had a ropey start with the secrecy in the first few episodes, but it really grew in S2, and S3 is awesome.

As a Star Trek fan and appreciator of well-written TV, I can't agree with this at all. The first season was hot garbage with maybe 3 watchable episodes, S2 was a little better but most of that was Pike. S3, despite finally being free of continuity baggage, is so far about as poorly written as S2.

Netflix consumption is 90% from recommendations page right?

So they could segregate every side into their own little recommendation bubble, if they have the content range for it. Seems to work for youtube.

That assumes that content from both sides of the political spectrum gets produced. Not my experience recently.

From what I've heard (I don't use Parler) one of their selling points it actually that they're quicker than Twitter as censoring.

Twitter allows (and promotes?) hate mobs while Parler supposedly doesn't.

How does that work? Since most of the hate mobs are in Parler now?

There's no hate mob in Parler, they're all conservatives, why would they hate each other.

Because at this point, there is a sharp divide between conservatives who care about fiscal responsibility and family values, and "conservatives" who care about unmasking (((conspirators))) in pizza restaurants. Although to be fair, the platform will likely attract nothing but the latter.

Not sharp enough to say, vote for a better candidate

> There's no hate mob in Parler, they're all conservatives, why would they hate each other.

There’s no hate in the KKK. They are all white. Why would they hate each other?

See the problem with this construction?

Everybody likes the "in-group" and hates the rest. Although the word hate tends to mainly be used about other people.

Absolutely not.

You are implying that hating people based on something they cannot control (e.g. ethnicity) is normal.

Actually that's not what I said it all. The concept on in/out-group can be completely arbitrary, e.g. assigned by flipping a coin. The principle still holds.

That said, since you bring it up, the history of humanity is largely the history of war between different ethnic groups. So yes, hating people based on ethnicity has been the norm for most of human history. It's still largely the case in varying degrees in different parts of the world.

> since you bring it up

Nice try.

> So yes, hating people based on ethnicity has been the norm for most of human history

There you go.

And yet history proves you wrong, starting with the roman empire and the middle ages.

> Nice try.

You did. Right here: "e.g. ethnicity". That's a quote from you. I mentioned in-group, you added ethnicity.

> There you go. And yet history proves you wrong, starting with the roman empire and the middle ages.

At this point I wonder if you are trolling. The roman empire waged war on pretty much every single other ethnic group around them and enslaved them. Which the other ethnic groups around them were also trying to do at the time. Then we have the middle ages with the crusades and such... etc etc etc

> most of the hate mobs are in Parler

Unless you provide proof, there is no reason to discuss this.

> It should be a feature of your platform, not the only thing going for it.

edit: oops pasted wrong thing!

Totally agree with this. It should be baked in, not the defining feature.

They can claim that all they want but a quick glance at their sign up flow shows you that they’re really only interested in peddling extreme right wing personalities and associated accounts.

And it can’t be a coincidence that “Gaming” with a capital G is the only topic that I saw suggested for me to follow.

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