Ask HN: So Censorship is ok in post 2021? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: So Censorship is ok in post 2021?

10 pointstechsin10119 comments

It feels like yesterday that freedom of speech was treated as one of the great traits of our culture and specifically the internet. Internet allowed you to speak your mind and find people who thought like you and escape status quo. With few extreme exceptions, you could discuss things no matter how controversial. But that is apparently no more the case...

For me, it noticeably started with Youtube and Reddit. Extreme censorship in the name of copyright or 'toxicity'.

Companies used to do press release if they would ban something off their platform justifying with proof. But now, say a word that may make any advertiser unhappy and get deplatformed in an instant (cue: twitch). Infact, have some figurative association with someone unpopular and get banned, for no fault of your own.

So much for "I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It."

And very much of the following situation...

First they came for ...Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

For all the 'future' talk YC does, build the future you want to be in, YC companies are sure normalizing censorship. Both twitch and reddit ban as much as possible. Is that the future they wanted?

- Not impartial anymore. Mob mentality.

- They don't care about freedom of speech, especially if it's remotely negative toward bottom line (i.e. can't get ads on it)

Old internet is dead, Welcome to facist family friendly lobbyists approved programming for your minds.

Previous thread that was flagged for no reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742866

Those who support censorship of any kind are unwittingly helping to give birth to the proverbial dystopian overlords that determine how wealth, information, and dopamine are distributed.

Overreaction creates opportunity for actors that seek to tighten social control.

Take from that what you will, but I for one strongly believe that bad ideas can only be fought by better ideas — not by silencing of any ideas, and certainly not by silence itself. Bad ideas fester in darkness, but will wither in the light.

Just my $0.02

It's very important that we distinguish between private companies that don't allow abhorrent behavior on their platforms versus true government censorship.

Government censorship is extraordinarily bad as the government holds a monopoly on violence and killing. If you can't speak out about the government's use of its monopoly, then abuses multiply as history shows.

I think most people support private forms of censorship. You wouldn't want me coming in your house and screaming at you, right? You wouldn't want a white supremacist coming in to where you were work and screaming hateful things at your coworkers right? You wouldn't want to go into a bar where obnoxious people are starting fights with everyone right? By the same token, there are literally hundreds of thousands of social media sites and if some of them don't want abhorrent behavior on their platform, that should just be their decision.

Even private companies should be held to a standard. Question is not if it prosecutable crime but whether you want to leave in a society which is dominated by entities who don't give two shits about free speech

There is a standard and they are held to it. It is the Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people PEACEABLY to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Correct me if I'm wrong but neither Twitter nor Amazon can pass legislation. Parler can buy it's own servers. No one is using force to deny their ability to spread hate. They are simply inconvenienced. Freedom of Speech does not equal Freedom to Lie.

A police officer was murdered. A mob tried to over turn an election by FORCE. A free and fair election is a form of free speech. Let us be clear who is stifling free speech. It is the Mob.

This whole episode has really driven the point home that people are fundamentally tribal - and much of what you believe and feel is right/wrong is determined by which position the 'other' groups are taking. For instance, Glenn Greenwald mentioned that liberals circa 2001 were intensely worried about the No-Fly list, but now people are cheering that MAGA protestors are being put on it with no due process. I've also seen conservatives abandon the idea that private companies should be able to refuse services based on ideology. It's fascinating how malleable people's beliefs can be.

When someone proposes censorship (whether by government or by tech companies), notice that it's never their speech that will be censored. It's always someone else's. It's not even "both yours and mine". It's just someone else's.

That asymmetry should make one question the justifications given for censoring people.

The irony of US companies enjoying Section 230 protections while at the same time punishing other startups such as Parler for not censoring their user content enough, is not lost to me.

"Cutting out a mans tongue does not make him a liar but proves You fear his words"

Are companies that enjoy government protections, contibute vast amounts to political campaigns and count profits in fiat currency stored in government controlled exchanges really private?

Its a symptom of hypercentralized internet, when you complain about facebook/twitter/reddit dictating free speech there is implicit assumption that 'free speech' depends on the mega-platform and there is no alternative. The internet, unlike in cyberpunk dystopias has plenty of alternatives and platforms. If you don't like them, migrate and let the lemmings follow the trends.

> The internet, unlike in cyberpunk dystopias has plenty of alternatives and platforms.

Sort of, but at this rate it seems they won't last. It seems the internet is doomed to just become more and more centralized.

When people's "free speech" is to shut down everyone else's free speech because of inciting violence, hate crimes, and the like…removing it is actually upholding the principles of free speech.

In other words, I'll defend your right to say "it"! Er, that is, unless your "it" is that you wish I were dead.

I can't imagine anyone on the old internet agreeing with forcing someone to publish something. Server owner decides - it was that from the beginning. Sometimes there were kicks and bans for no reason whatsoever - that's life.

old internet wasn't as centralized even if you pissed off one admin there were million others

Old internet was more centralized. Your site essentially didn't exist unless AOL knew about it. There were only a few big webhosts a long time, and it was nontrivial to run your own server -- especially because a lot of ISPs banned it unless you paid a lot more every month.

So for a long time, you options were: host on one of the big services (Geocities, for example) or run your own server.

Now there are potentially millions of hosts. The centralization problem is exclusive to search, but you can still change search engines if it bothers you.

Maybe really old, but things are definitely more centralized then it was at the peak. IRC and forums are dead. Everyone has moved to things like FB and reddit, who have then killed off and censored many of these communities.

So when was the "peak" for you, and what was different?

> IRC and forums are dead.

IRC was always doomed because it wasn't discoverable or usable for a typical person. I think it's more fair to complain that XMPP/Jabber died, because those were widely used by everyone who used Google Talk (and the original FB Messenger maybe?) and then were killed off. The big companies have done some awful bait-and-switch in terms of interop.

> Everyone has moved to things like FB and reddit, who have then killed off and censored many of these communities.

I think the perspective you are missing is that the censorship is the value for a lot of people. I personally didn't start using reddit until they started actively banning neo-Nazis and abandoning their "everything except violence is fine" policy.

The ultimate unregulated venues used to be (or maybe still are) forums, and I personally run a niche industry forum that has a lot of traffic. The problem with forums is that they require extensive, aggressive moderation to prevent spam just as a starter.

Then what you're left with is a choice of what culture you want. Do you want a mainstream culture that appeals to lots of people? Because you can't have that unless you create the kinds of rules that the corporate giants have created.

In summary, I think the issue with censorship is that everyone loves it and wants it in their social networks, but no one can 100% agree on what should be censored or not.

Can you imagine if a newspaper were obligated to publish your opinions?

Is refusing to do so censorship?

It is not censorship, these platforms are making editorial decisions, and since they are making editorial decisions they should be held liable for content published on their platforms.

> Previous thread that was flagged for no reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25742866

I was running a poll which was flagged for no reason, “Poll: Do you agree with Amazon, Apple and Google cutting off Parler?” – 136 comments! – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25732809

It is noticeable that there are a lot more articles on /. relating to the current so-called "tech purge" than there are on HN.

The information situation now is more like leaded gasoline than it is "freedom vs censorship", as much as a treatment of that is beyond the pale.

To discover this for yourself you should look at two things:

1. The ads on the local evening newscast on your network affiliate

2. The ads from Taboola that appear on the bottom of every page

---

(1) is hate speech that causes TV viewers to hate their fellow viewers, politicians, institutions, etc.

A long time ago there was the story that the media invites people to fantasize that they are in a higher class than themselves and you still see that in magazines like Vouge and the Economist (e.g. all those ads for $15,000 first-class seats)

TV is not like that today. You'd imagine that the viewer doesn't have any money of their own, as all of the ads are about how to spend either a government benefit or health insurance, or how you can get a big payday if you get hit by a car and call William Matar. (You do see ads for car dealers, but if nobody bought a car than nobody would git hit by a car and the ambulance chasers would be out of business.)

In the lead-up to November the air is full of political ads that are entirely hate speech.

I remember seeing an ad in 2010 that I thought was a scam and it turned out in 2018 it really was a scam. But for 8 years everyone was asleep at the switch and let it happen -- a conspicuous display of incompetence that undermines people's trust in the media, government, themselves, human nature, etc.

As for (2) I still see articles to the effect that "Isrealis working for Taboola learned to kill Palestinians with NVIDIA GPUs and now they have a supercomputer cluster that serves personalized ads."

Look at Taboola ads, those crap ads on the bottom of most news web sites and you see the old people with bad skin, scam supplements, car insurance in some town you're not from (a running gag for years), and lately ads for burial vs cremation.

If you are harassed with this for years you are going to think that 80% of your fellow Americans are stupid old people who have no ability to think critically, vote for Trump, etc.

Thus it promotes hate and is "hate speech".

So long as people are in pervasive environment of this kind of communication they're going to naturally hate, fear and mistrust anybody different from them.

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