Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbozeman | Hacker News Reader

Although Aaron made enormous contributions to many different technologies, I often think of reddit when I think of Aaron.

I often wonder how he would feel, not just about censorship there, but about the direction the entire Internet has taken in regards to censoring of content. I can't - and wouldn't - speak for him, but I would be supremely interested in his thoughts.

View on HN

> censoring of content

The supreme irony of this is that Aaron's role as a co-founder has long been censored from Reddit's founders page [0], despite agreements to the contrary [1].

More generally, Aaron had strong views on censorship [2]:

> I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug – that we should create communications technologies that allow people to send whatever they like to each other. And when people put their thumbs on the scale and try to say what can and can’t be sent, we should fight back – both politically through protest and technologically through software like Tor...

> How is compromising [by a technology company on censorship] supposed to bring greater freedom in the long run? That’s like saying “I’m going to beat you up now so that you don’t have to be hit as much in the long run.” The right answer is to stop beating people up.

But I do think that physical violence resulting in part from the amplification of voices by algorithm would have been hard to foresee. I too would be curious if his thinking would have evolved. Sadly, we'll never know.

[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/aaron-swartz-reddit-founder/

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...

[2] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html

From the second link:

PG's opinion: "Aaron's not wrong to call himself one of the founders. The company behind Reddit was a merger of two startups, one that made Reddit and one that made Infogami, and in that situation the founders of both startups are considered founders of the combined company."

> But I do think that physical violence resulting in part from the amplification of voices by algorithm would have been hard to foresee. I too would be curious if his thinking would have evolved. Sadly, we'll never know.

Something that always seems to be accepted without question in these conversations is that censoring violent language will reduce violent behaviour.

Are we sure this is the case? For example, if you believed the election was stolen and all the platforms which would allow you discuss this civilly have banned you and those who think like you - what do you do?

Sometimes I wonder if restricting peoples ability to express themselves freely (and also talking about them like they are scum for holding certain view points) might actually motative some number of people to make their voices heard through acts of violence.

I also dislike how I've been pushed on to what I'd consider extremist platforms in recent months because a few people I follow have been banned from platforms like Twitter and YouTube. I think I'm strong minded enough to resist the constant bombardment of anti-semitic and racist content I am now exposed to, but I suspect some people are likely to be radicalised by this.

----

To your point though, I often wonder how Aaron would have felt about the internet today. I've seen many people's opinions on free speech change over the years (including my own). Tech platforms when they were the underdogs were overwhelming in favour of free speech - I know early on Reddit and Twitter explicitely expressed their support of freespeech. But in recent years they have become far more powerful and it would seem their opinion on what they will allow us to say has now changed. Ironically they've moved so far on this that if Twitter, Facebook or YouTube were started today they would probably be shut down because of how much extremist content they platform - I remember there was a time when Reddit was full of child porn and even allowed a subreddit dedicated to it to operate.

I guess we'll never know how Aaron would have felt about all of this, but I know if there was anyone would could have proposed a workable solution it would have been him. It's a great shame he's no longer around to contribute to the future of the internet in the same way he did the internet of the past.

Now I’m curious about who you follow that were banned from Twitter and YouTube.

I don’t know if any research has been done on this, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that a normalization effect happens so that more exposure to certain modes of discourse change how you think about them. Our minds are not under our conscious control, even if we would prefer that they are.

I suspect that our president’s mode of discourse has dramatically shifted what is seen as acceptable in a lot of people, for instance.

> I suspect that our president’s mode of discourse has dramatically shifted what is seen as acceptable

Why isn't that a rational response? Many of Trump's actions were wrong. However, he got away with them, and acceptable and normal are about what you can get away with, not what's right.

'normal' shifts with what people get away with, but 'acceptable' does not.

It is not obvious that having someone publicly call for trial by combat at the capitol increases the probability of that happening, compared to no public proclamation? But what you're saying is that removing said content is going to somehow increase the violent behavior? By what means? Because you followed someone into to a cesspool? Then you were already drinking diluted pollution.

People do not get banned simply for being a member of a political party, people get banned for spreading hate and inciting violence. Maybe you should reconsider who you follow if the people you follow wallow in hate and bigotry?

Why doesn't the party of individual responsibility doesn't seem to understand you can just stop following the hate? Seek out and follow reasonable voices. But I'm afraid the whole appeal is more emotional resonance more than reason.

Tolerating hateful violent rhetoric will not de radicalize anyone.

> Maybe you should reconsider who you follow if the people you follow wallow in hate and bigotry? Why doesn't the party of individual responsibility doesn't seem to understand you can just stop following the hate? Seek out and follow reasonable voices.

There are a LOT of facets to an answer to that, but one that is entirely enabled by the technology industry is the concept of an algorithmic news feed promoting unsolicited content from not-yet-followed sources, especially when that algorithm is based on a function of "all of your activity over an extended period of time" and "the activity of people you interact with but whose views you never explicitly endorsed."

You cannot simply "just stop following the hate" when the hate is repeatedly shoved down your throat daily in conspicuous "join this group" ads in Facebook. And this is far, far more prominent than we had believed, per https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-platforms-must-pay-for-t... :

> Facebook’s own research revealed that 64 percent of the time a person joins an extremist Facebook Group, they do so because the platform recommended it. Facebook has also acknowledged that pages and groups associated with QAnon extremism had at least 3 million members, meaning Facebook helped radicalize 2 million people.

The frustrating thing about conversations about censorship on platforms is that you're not starting from a baseline of neutrality, because the algorithm itself is picking winners even if it wasn't coded that way. Any algorithm that takes engagement-after-clicking-a-promotion as an input will start to take advantage of people who are more susceptible to extremist content. Knowing what we know now, does the continued deployment of those algorithms constitute intentional corporate speech that emphasizes extremism? And in that case, would the removal or manual tuning of said corporate speech really be the censorship we're worried about?

> Something that always seems to be accepted without question in these conversations is that censoring violent language will reduce violent behaviour.

Are we sure this is the case?

Yes, there have been studies on the correlation and causative links between the two. Ethical experimentation to prove causation definitively is difficult to say the least, but there have been various "natural experiments" that can be learned from.

At the very least, an extreme skeptic would still have to grudgingly acknowledge that violent speech is a leading indicator for violent behavior, and that interventions that reduce violent speech also reduce violent behavior, but the evidence is strong that the link goes beyond mere correlation. Here is one recent study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2013.85...

A quote from the abstract: "Across all three experiments, mild violent metaphors multiply support for political violence among aggressive citizens, especially among young adults."

Not really a surprising result, but those who wish to employ violent speech for their own ends are of course quite resistant to the notion that there is a cause and effect link to be found.

Aaron seemed very opposed to large corporations and their control of information. The increase of control seems to be timed and in favor with the incoming administration. Government using business to do its bidding is very troubling, and I'm sure Aaron would have been very concerned about that. Remember, this increase of power can be wielded by the next populist leader and there are plenty of dark possibilities outside of the current Overton Window.

I've often spoken with my more left-leaning friends about the need to try and find middle ground with my more right-leaning friends, and quickly.

Donald Trump was an incompetent, by almost any measure you want to use. However, he shifted the Overton Window dramatically. When the Republican version of Barack Obama bursts onto the scene - someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to move effectively in the political sphere, there could be a very real problem for Democrats.

I'm bullish on Democrats due to demographic shifts, but they'll need to gain more senators from rural states if they want to pass major legislation.

GOP has to somehow consolidate Trumpists with Never Trumpers, may be tricky to do. How will independents respond to GOP after Trump is finished? Will they forgive and forget?

So, in my view, both parties need to adapt or they will not achieve that much. Imagine if Dems had 49 senators, how little would get done in Biden's term, indeed that may be the case after midterms.

Which demographic shifts specifically?

Or remove the electoral college (which is an anti-democratic contrivance originally meant to cajole then-slave states into remaining in the Union[0]) and make voting mandatory to completely nuke the GOP's strategy of voter disempowerment (which is their best hope as demographic shifts increasingly favor the Democrats).

0: https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

The South could have a 3/5 slave vote with or without an electoral college. That was related to total votes and representatives in congress. If anything, Shay's Rebellion was the real reason. The majority (farmers) voted with their guns to steal from the minority (bankers).

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for supper. Several Federalist papers are dedicated exclusively to this idea and the problems of previous democracies. Defending minorities (specifically religious minorities) was the primary reason for going with a Constitutional Republic instead.

The Senate was a similar concession that smaller or less populous states deserved equal voice to larger states. I'd note that if slavery were the reason for the formation, then the Senate would have been a bad idea as it stripped power away from the Southern states (as that article points out, Virginia alone had more than 10% of the total House votes).

> I’d note that if slavery were the reason for the formation, then the Senate would have been a bad idea as it stripped power away from the Southern states (as that article points out, Virginia alone had more than 10% of the total House votes).

Its true that with the apportionment of House votes in the Constitution, the Senate (by comparison) had weaker representation of the South (30.8% in the Senate, 35.4% in the House), but, as with terms explicitly protecting slavery, the concern wasn’t for the immediate effect, but as insurance against trends that were already apparent with the expected internal and external expansion of the US and its political development.

With the first Congress seated after the apportionment due to the 1790 Census (which included Kentucky, admitted in 1792), the Senate already was slightly more favorable to the South than the House (the South had 38.4% of the Senate and 37.1% of the House). With the Congress seated after the 1800 apportionment, the South had 46.1% of the Senate, and 39.0% of the House.

The idea that the Senate would have been a “bad idea” in terms of political power in the South assumes that no one at the time of the Constitution had even considered the possibility of thinking a few years down the road.

That's a single legal scholar's interpretation, not even a historian's.

In this election, Trump received more votes than any other sitting president in history. He lost and now the Democrats seem to assume that those 75M people will suddenly change their beliefs because 78M people hold different beliefs. Moreover, it seems that people voted against Trump more than for Biden because they thought Trump was rude and distasteful.

They fail to recall that this was actually a political route for Democrats. Democrats lost seats in the House when they were expected to gain. They eked out parity in the Senate that probably disappears in 2 years. More importantly, they lost almost all state government races.

Remember, Trump's biggest policy positions (bring our troops home, bring our jobs back, hard on china, the wall, etc) were all Democrat positions a mere 5-7 years ago. Now that the Republicans have taken over those more centrist ideas, they have gained a huge number of supporters.

The Democrats are fractured between centrists and progressives. That fracture is much worse than the Republicans because it is ideological while the Republican fracture is a cult of personality.

Trump will fade. Another person will replace him. They will have all of his populism and charm (yes, he's a natural entertainer). They won't have his rude abrasiveness. He'll then have the majority needed to censor the other side now that the Republicans have decided they agree with the progressives on that point.

I do hope that happens. Seeing that all principles here on censorship essentially turn into "censor those not on my side", I'd derive some meagre satisfaction from that backswing, even if I too well burn at that same stake.

I can't reply directly to hijile below, so I'll leave this here:

>>Democrats seem to assume that those 75M people will suddenly change their beliefs

as long as 78M people continue to hold their beliefs, I really don't think the democrats care. A minority vote is a minority vote - whether its 4.9 percent or 49 percent. Personally, I think the dems will work more towards eliminating the EC and gerrymandering thats gone against them.

edit: change second '4.9' to '49'. I really need more coffee..

I agree. As someone pretty far on the left I was shook by the banning of Donald Trump, and this trend of censorship makes me really, really, really scared.

If you're anything but a very centrist Democrat, this should scare the crap out of you.

The actual Left has been a target of private censorship and public suppression even when the Right got a free pass for so long that, as someone on the Left, I’m not at all scared that some private censorship is happening to violent extremists on the Right (mildly surprised, but not scared.)

Though “you should be scared because what has been happening to the Left longer, and much more severely, than to the Right might happen to you” is a pretty common propaganda theme directed at the Left by the Right recently.

Unlike the Right, which has had an existence of extreme privilege where even the KKK got a pass on government scrutiny because it was valued loyal organization around the same time that the second big round of government institutionalized anti-Communist hysteria, the Left has been built around organizations to route around establishment suppression for over a century.

And most people to the left of center-right neoliberal Democrats are quite aware of that.

While this is true, on the internet at least I haven't seen leftists sites like revleft or crimethinc get denied access to hosters, yet.

But yes, you're right that the left is the source of private censorship for a long time, which is why lemmy is developped by a lot of leftists, for example. If they're ready to ban a right wing president though, I can imagine how severe the crackdown on the left would be.

Honestly, if leftists start calling for violent Revolution because they lose an election, I’m not going to be too upset if they get deplatformed too. Perhaps I’m just too comfortable with my life, but I suspect most other people would agree.

Leftists spaces online got censored because they said things as benign as "killing slave owners is morally justifiable when necessary", so I think they still have a point.

This can only be true if Republican efforts at voter suppression continue to be successful while also states don’t choose to forgo the electoral college. Republicans only win because of a tremendously successful campaign to not let people vote. They are very much a minority party by any measure except outsized influence.

They have fewer voters.

Fewer people identify with them.

Fewer people support their policies.

If Democrats can continue to get voters out, like in GA, they will lose seats.

There's an interesting problem here, though, which is why the US federal government is structured as it is: there are fewer people in, say, Utah than in California. And generally people in California may have different interests than those in Utah. But as citizens of the US, Utah(ians?) deserve representation at the national level, which they just wouldn't have in a first-past-the-post popular vote. A direct popular vote would always give the advantage to candidates who represent coastal and urban interests because that's where people are overwhelmingly concentrated, and this would leave rural voters disenfranchised.

It might be interesting to re-evaluate whether representation by geography still makes sense. I'm more partial to the parliamentary approach, where parties get representation proportional to votes cast for them, so this way there could be a "rural interests party" which rural voters could vote for and receive representation proportional to their population. This might also do an end-run around the mind-bogglingly corrupt practice of gerrymandering?

The question of what to call citizens of Utah is a long and thorny one; currently the US Government Printing Office uses "Utahn." [0]

Apparently this was a big 'issue' in the 80's, when the US government usage was "Utahan" or "Utahian," while the local usage was "Utahn." Webster's currently lists "Utahan" as the correct usage, as far as I can tell (their website is trash - searching for "Utahan" and "Utahn" just redirects to the "Utah" entry.

[0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf...

If a sitting President can be deplatformed from the Internet, then wouldn't a Presidential Candidate be? Would said candidate be able to run a successful campaign without it?

> someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to move effectively in the political sphere

How will they be able to deplatform that? Are you endorsing deplatforming anyone to the right of Joe Biden?

No, just extrapolating from here. It could be used against the next Bernie too. Any populist candidate, whether from the left or right.

If they incite violence yeah. Is that confusing?

Check back when Bernie (or the next Bernie, if he doesn't run again) is deplatformed, and we'll see who was confused.

Just remember back to how the media and establishment pulled together to stop Bernie during the primaries. Think this new tool won't be used the next time they're in danger of losing power to an outsider?

If "the next Bernie" promotes violence then he's not the next Bernie and I won't support him and I don't understand what's so hard to understand about that.

Y'all think "it's both sides" but, in America, this call to violence (straight up armed insurrection) is unique in right wing politics. And if it showed up in the Left I wouldn't tolerate it.

Show me someone on the right who was deplatformed who didn't preach hate.

I can show you people on the left who got deplatformed.

What's that feminist lady who literally got banned for saying, "Men are not women."? I forget her name. I'm waiting for Joanne Rowling to get deplatformed for having the audacity to think that there's a portion of transgender men who are using certain aspects of the left's current moral panicking to infiltrate women's spaces.

How dare she have an opinion that's critical of ... shuffles cards... whatever group we feel the need to swoop in and save to assuage our guilt for being the world's most successful society!

Deplatforming is when a company kicks someone off its service for violating TOS. Canceling is when a community who previously supported someone sees another side of them and changes its mind. I believe you're conflating the two. But neither is a call to violence. As others have said, stop the false equivalence.

There's exactly a call to violence, because that's all you left for the person you're censoring.

As soon as you take the position that words can no longer be exchanged, the only other option you've left open is violence.

This isn't - or at least shouldn't - be hard to understand.

The president was censored (for violating TOS) after he called for violence.

I experience linear time, how about you?

Please stop with the false equivalencies.

Donald Trump directed a mob to storm the Capitol while they were certifying election results, the ensuing riot led to at least five deaths.

He is being deplatformed because of the impending threat of violence he presents. This isn't a hypothetical situation - he held a rally, incited a riot, and people died.

Not saying it is or will be the same. It isn't and won't be.

This is about a TOOL. You don't have to use a tool the same way every time.

Frankly, when the Republican version of Barack Obama arrives, it's game over for the United States as a democracy.

> The increase of control seems to be timed and in favor with the incoming administration. Government using business to do its bidding is very troubling

Is that really the case with Facebook, Twitter, et al.? Didn't Facebook and Twitter have favorable standing with Trump's administration (vis a vis keeping Trump on the platform despite his violating their ToS repeatedly)?

I have some doubts about this claim of Trump "violating their ToS repeatedly" I just google'd "trump tos violations list" and nothing like a clear list came up. That should be relatively easy, right? Especially after 1/6? Here's a search from before this year:

https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+twitter+violations+%22...

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" came to mind (you have to go to archive.org to view it, which is kinda sad in a way... are videos of the 3rd Reich next to go?):

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701003329/https://www.latim...

Can anyone come up with one?

Part of the current dilemma is people think only other people's comments are removed [1]. The more people who discover how it works, the less people can take advantage of those who don't.

[1] https://www.reveddit.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com