So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely by accident.
(I'm not arguing against the argument against censorship... it's just that I think the censorship issue is mostly a massive red herring when it comes to the issues that are discussed in the article.)
This is not congruent with profit motive, so they will fail. Either as a company or as at this goal. Almost certainly the latter.
Google set out to not be evil and Zuckerberg set out to connect the world. Both, I'm sure, sincere.
One thought experiment that has helped me get my mind around the problem is "why is it necessary that parents shield children from some information?"
I think free speech might have a context that is invisible to us. Something like a prior, or trained neural net, in which free speech and no censorship is absolutely the right thing. And then there might be other contexts where it is wrong, and harmful.
In other words, "dangerous ideas" may be the wrong way of thinking about free speech--it might be "dangerous contexts" of our minds--such as childhood. If so, what then?
A great analogy is to think of an eggshell with a chick inside. The eggshell provides protection for a long time but is also restrictive. When the chick is strong enough it will break free. But if it breaks free too early it won’t be strong enough to survive in the world.
If so, how was "manipulation" defined exactly?
Breaking an eggshell requires effort, and seems kind of like a "test" to me. But in most human societies, it's possible to simply let time pass and you will reach the "age of majority" (usually 18 or 19 years old). I wonder if we're doing a disservice by allowing children to cross that boundary without any "eggshell test".
I'm strongly for free speech. But it logically entails allowing people to lie as much as they want.
I'd argue that paternalism is particularly justified in relationships that are literally paternalistic.
The issue is that the justification for my neighbor paternalistically dictating how I should live my life is much weaker a parent dictating to their child. We shouldn't deeply have to delve into why this is the case.
Don't think it is an accident. The ruling class has set this stage by design. There is little to no critical thinking being taught in K-12. Create a malleable population, then push censorship to protect them from themselves.
And while it can be quite important, it's also super exhausting. I think people's tolerance for that kind of work exists along a spectrum (probably with at least some biological component) but that no one can really do it all the time.
any subject requires a motivated attitude to succeed. Critical thinking also requires an attitude to value the topic IRL - but arguable that ought to be the case for all topics.
> It's the attitude of never taking anything you read or hear at face value.
A class in philosophy (or history) of science will teach you all the ways in which people where wrong before the process was established, and will make you see the value of science. CT is the same thing applied to everything, not just formal physical studies.
> it's also super exhausting
Only because most things are written to manipulate. If publications actually suffered for their reputation b/c of poor articles the whole thing would be easier. Also, if journalists set out to prove their claims, and properly source them - arguably something like Wikipedia is a group effort to do what is hard for the individual (I think it fails, btw, by leaning too much on published material).
Or to think about it from an information security perspective, once you adopt a specific defense mechanism, someone will look for ways to exploit it. This one is particularly easy to exploit.
Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual.
Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of equilibrium between the powers of the government and the powers of individuals. The point of equilibrium is fuzzy and ill-defined, but it's characterized by an increase in stability.
The point is that free speech is not a sacred irreducible holy thing. It's an important thing that serves a purpose. It's not absolute. It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech.
It is part of human dignity, at least for some people: not to be muzzled by somebody else on the account that (s)he is of a) nobler birth, b) dominant religion, gender or race, c) physically stronger, d) elected to decorate some office etc.
This is an intangible, but very important human asset. So many people live in countries where they would like to walk free and criticize what they do not like, but must cast down their eyes in fear of every uniform. The feeling of liberation when such a regime falls down is indescribable.
I saw the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution unfolding. It wasn't just a technical adjustment; for the first time in years people could (verbally or literally) spit on their former tyrants and walk free.
As an example, in both Czech Republic and Slovakia denying Holocaust is a crime. I’m sure new examples will come in future, though I hope we will not have to endure another mass horror and/or loss of life for that.
So, how about as a thought experiment we invert the aforementioned construct “allowed = everything except set X” and think of it as “allowed = one giant set Y”. Looks like we believe we must allow only certain things for humanity to exist and progress—so what is the criteria shared by speech in set Y? Random idea; what if it has less to do with what is said but the intent of it? However, the intent can never be communicated perfectly or proven, so it doesn’t seem feasible to restrict based on it, and we have to resort to substance banning instead.
Another thought, if we eliminate all mental issues and insecurities that cause people to attack (and agitate others to join) a group or generally behave in a way that is detrimental to others for personal gain, would we still need to restrict freedom of speech? Or is that an unrealistic scenario generally?
It's important because it's a human right.
> Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose.
No, it's a human right. Thinking that "human rights" are tools to serve a purpose is authoritarian thinking, where we grant people fictitious "rights" only if they serve some greater social purpose, but if that social purpose is threatened by those rights, we reserve the right to oppress them.
That said, I agree that recognizing free speech is a right doesn't mean it must be unrestricted. Other rights exist too after all.
Someone decided to add it to the list of human rights. They did it because it is a useful tool (and likely because humans without it are somehow less than humans with it).
I don't think your answer is as useful as perhaps an explanation of why it is a human right.
So people are wise to insist on their right to make live hard for government. Until it repents this will not change.
The government is "individuals"! Every bit of power you take from the individuals in society, you give to the individuals in government. And historically the vast majority of these people have been corrupt and self-serving, because such kinds of people are attracted to positions of power, and most voters can't tell the difference between a good person and a skilled liar. Government attracts narcissists, as it requires a certain kind of narcisissm to go about telling people that they should live their lives how you want, not how they want.
So, it's not, it's just the first change to an already existing document. The first article of your constitution describes the legislatives institutions. I (vaguely) know that, I'm not even American.
Some states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut) ratified the Constitution before the Bill of Rights was formally drafted[1] and initially without requiring the Bill of Rights. The Massachusetts Compromise was an agreement that the Bill of Rights would be packaged with the new Constitution (with the BoR being active at ratification, before the Constitution) and was required before some of the remaining states would ratify the Constitution.
It's worth pointing out that the Bill of Rights was ratified 2.0 years after the first elections for national office and 1.5 years after the constitution was finally ratified. [1]
[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
I feel this question about human rights falls into a similar category. They are required. If you want to go deeper into the reasons, you need to spend a lifetime studying philosophy and ethics and whatnot.
The "Human Rights" discussion is different from a law of physics. It is a human-curated list of rights and they all have restrictions and exclusions, which is core to the "censorship by private companies on their properties" discussion.
It's helpful to discussions of "Human Rights" or "Natural Rights" to point to a written document that disambigautes the terms and enumerates the specific rights, so we know we are discussing the same thing.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 says
> Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.[1]
[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
Why are they required and what are they required for? Countries exist that don't have the exact same human rights, so clearly those rights don't need to exist for a nation or an individual to successfully exist.
Any time someone invokes "human rights" or "natural rights", it's worth at least referencing a common basis of facts written somewhere. Without this, such discussion is likely to follow two diverging paths and the people discussing it likely aren't talking about the same concepts. The relevant Human Rights document is usually the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1] and Free Speech/Expression is Article 19.
Some people sat down and decided the list of things that are "human rights". Lots of other people object to some of the items on that list, so it's not exactly infallible.
North Korea is a good example of a place with the lack of 1A protected speech from government interference, but it also has lots of other "human rights" violations, so you aren't really clarifying the problem with free speech by using it as an example. North Korea frequently violates most of the 30 UN declared human rights articles, so the connotation of using that country as an example leads to conflation of other issues.
Everything that creates or improves "personal feelings" isn't a human right, so that doesn't help the discussion much either.
[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
In particular to the Freedom of Speech discussion, the most important part is the list of exemptions. Even China would argue they give their people Freedom of Speech, but they have more restrictions/exemptions than other countries. Hence, they are not universal in a practical sense and the details must be discussed.
Extrapolating from your examples it seems that only democracies (and the hypothetical benevolent dictator) grant individuals human rights. The question is: What comes first, democracy or human rights?
Reading your post helped me feel calm and at ease, nudging me back towards this realization. So thank you.
1. Some things are good in themselves, some for the sake of other things, some both.
2. Thus there must be an ultimate good that is good only in itself
3. “Happiness” seems to be to be that ultimate good.
4. “What is happiness” takes more than a sentence, but my money is that it’s closely related to things that are unique to humans.
5. That rules out much, but “reasoning”, particularly to the degree that we do it, is clearly unique.
6. I therefore identify the ability to reason as a core aspect of the happiness.
7. Given that we are naturally social creatures, it’s a short step to say that communicating our reasoning to others is a necessary consequence of the reasoning itself.
The result is that I see free speech as one of the top goods in a society. One in the neighborhood of the ultimate good and so indispensable in living a complete life.
To enshrine it in law for everyone rather than let individual power dictate who gets de facto FOS is to state that everyone deserves a full human life.
It’s not a mere tool or means to some other minor end.
Some people may agree or disagree with this sentiment, that an action can be inherently right or wrong. Afterall, context makes all the difference.
> 3 “Happiness” seems to be to be that ultimate good.
Unfortunately, we know that this isn't the case. Even is an absolute morality exists (meaning that a thing could inherently right without relying on some other authority), we know that happiness is not it's ideal, because then Utilitarianism would be fundamentally right in all scenarios, and it just isn't.
Furthermore, if we characterise happiness as an absolute goal, then why not just hook your brain directly up to a Seratonin IV for the rest of your life?
=====
Free Speech is important because just having someone tell you something is true isn't enough. There needs to ALWAYS be an open forum for disagreement, of anything. Even if you think something is right, it shouldn't be free from criticism.
If an idea isn't strong enough to stand in a free speech debate then it isn't worth holding onto.
You could see lungs as a tool to breathe, it doesn’t mean they aren’t essential.
> Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose.
You seem to hold that view that each legal right granted to people is a tool for a purpose. But some things are held, by some, to be worthwhile for their own sake. They are regarded as intrinsically worthwhile.
Consider:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [...]"
That famous text talks about noble ideas such as life, freedom and justice as intrinsically worthwhile. They are not being granted as tools to provide some other social utility. They are the goals themselves.
It doesn't say life is protected because it makes society better, or that freedom is granted because it makes society more efficient or something.
It's the other way around. Within that framework for thinking about values, society and government are the tools; and life, freedom and happiness are the worthy goals.
Is it such a stretch to consider that free speech is part of personal freedom itself, therefore free speech is an intrinsically worthwhile goal to protect in and of itself?
If you do believe free speech is intrinsically worth protecting as part of life, freedom and happiness, you will surely butt up against the hard reality that it causes injustice and misery in some contexts by its effects. Speech has effects which deprive other people of these same intrinsically worthwhile things, including depriving other people of meaningful free speech. Ethical dilemmas do exist around free speech. Nonetheless, if you believe that it's intrinsically worthwhile because freedom is, you will surely make every effort to resolve ethical dilemmas in a way that keeps free speech as an elevated, worthwhile goal in and of itself, without it needing to be justified as a tool for any other purpose.
You say free speech is a tool that serves a purpose. Then you imply that the purpose of the tool is to push the balance of power toward the individual. The goal in pushing the balance of power to the individual is to have an equilibrium between the individuals' and the government's power. This equilibrium is characterized by an increase in stability. It seems fair to summarize this as "free speech is a tool that serves the purpose of increasing stability".
You conclude: "It's possible for something in a given situation to be more important than free speech." I think it's implied here that this "something" is (an increase in) stability. If stability is more important than free speech, it implies free speech should be restricted in order to achieve stability. In other words, censorship should be applied in order to achieve more stability.
Every single Western democracy on this planet restricts free speech in exactly the way parent described - as a trade-off between the rights of the individuals and the rights of the souvereign [1]. Even the US has a long list of restrictions to free speech.
The question is not whether to restrict free speech, the question is where to draw the line.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country
You're making a false assertion that attaching consequences to some speech is censorship. No one can prevent you from yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater. There are however post hoc consequences for doing so falsely, as doing so is very dangerous to others.
Even then you have the opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. You may have been thought there was a fire in the theater but simply been mistaken. That's why laws include clauses of intent.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech.
suppression of speech != restriction of free speech
It is a very very delicate and complicated balance - what I am objecting to is to ignore that this balance exists.
If you disagree with the word "restriction", let me rephrase as "free speech has limits" or "free speech is not the end goal".
"In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is restricted by time, place and manner"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
> a restriction of speech that you agree with
It doesn't matter whether I agree or disagree. It matters whether we, as a society, can find a balance between the rights of the individuals and the rights of the sovereign/state.
Yes. And this is called... censorship. Even when we, the good guys, do it. You can't just change the definition of words based on whether a western democracy or an authoritarian hellhole does it, when they're doing exactly the same thing.
Edit:
> Censorship usually (also) refers to restrictions of free speech typical for non-democratic societies [1], which doesn't lead to productive discussions (in my experience). It is not uncommon to see the false conclusion "censorship is used in authoritarian countries therefore free speech must not be restricted".
If people make a faulty argument, point out the fault in the argument. No need to change the definition of words so the ground shifts under their feet. FWIW, I think "censorship is a prime feature of authoritarian governments" is a perfectly valid argument against, ahem, restricting free speech.
> they're doing exactly the same thing.
No, they aren't, baseline and context matters. You are falsely equating the removal of say, anti-vax conspiracy content in the US, with the removal of say, political/homosexual/religious/ethnic content in an authoritarian regime. If you don't believe me, ask somebody who was forced to flee their country due to any of the above reasons.
> point out the fault in the argument.
Let's assume 'censorship' == any restriction to free speech. We already agreed that every Western democracy has such restrictions or 'censorship'. How can "authoritarian regimes use 'censorship'" now be an argument against 'censorship'?
To paraphrase (not a perfect analogy), murderers use knives, and chefs use knives, but "murderers use knives" is not valid argument against knives?
I understand if you disagree with already existing restrictions of free speech in Western democracies, is that what you mean?
For eg.: copyright is a form of censorship.
Free speech and stability are not in competition with each other. They’re different categories of things.
Please help me out a little and try really hard to not interpret what I said in the worst possible way.
I don't feel like I'm interpreting your posts in a particularly negative way. I'm just trying to be explicit about the kind of tradeoff you're proposing. If you find yourself flipping your stance once the flowery rhetoric is translated into basic, actionable language, someone is getting fooled and it's not me.
1. Do you, or do you not, think that there can be something which is more important than free speech and which leads (among other things) to increased stability?
2. Do you, or do you not, think that if this something is more important than free speech, the consequence of this is that free speech can be restricted for this thing?
2.) yes
/s, in case it wasn't obvious...
People are more certain of their own position than is warranted. This is true in politics (as C. S. Lewis said, in practice no policy can be more than probably correct). It was true with Covid ("trust the science" when not enough science had been done yet; people talked as if the correct course was obvious and certain, and they were often wrong in hindsight). And it will be true again, and again, and again.
And from that false certainty, people regard contrary opinions/interpretations of the data as not just false, but morally wrong. And then they regard people believing the "obviously wrong" position as a sign that people are stupid and not to be trusted with the facts. (Unlike themselves, of course, who clearly can be trusted with the facts, because they reached the right answers!)
And people don't see the dichotomy between "people are stupid and evil, and can't be trusted with the truth" and "we (who are also people!) can decide what is true, and can be trusted to only tell them the truth". When you point a finger at someone, four finger point back at you...
We know some things are wrong, we have evidence that they're wrong, and believing in some of those things can cause people to take actions which endanger and even kill others.
So what do you do? I'm not advocating censorship as a solution, but simply throwing up your hands and saying "who are you to judge?" isn't really working either.
That concerns you as well. Thats the whole issue. There is no "reasonable default" to fall back on. That you have identified some rather obnoxious idiots doesnt mean you are suddenly smart enough to tell the rest of the world what to do. Especially since chances are you have fallen for sock puppets aimed at creating a reaction in you to get you to accept and call for authoritarian solutions.
Authoritarian solutions dont work. Just wanting them to work doesnt work, a short look into history shows that. Reality in the end is really complex. Too complex to just force other people around no matter how smart somebody feels on the topic. Because thats how stupid people always think of themselves, "smart enough" to understand the implications of forced actions just this one time.
edit: All of this not to mention that it always create a reaction in people. Which leaves us with conflict on topics we should be able to find a consensus.
It would be shocking if communication was literally the only area of human endeavor which couldn't or shouldn't be regulated. Stranger yet to pose the idea on a moderated forum. Turns out authoritarian solutions do work.
Regulating communication is one of the most dangerous kinds of regulation, as it regulates what people think. And once you limit on your ability to think its very likely that you are about to crash into something, seeing as stupidity boils down to being unaware of another perspective. Its akin to blindfolding drivers of cars so they dont get distracted to reduce crashs.
Just to add - I specifically said I didn't advocate censorship, and asked what actions might be taken. Do you have any ideas in that direction? Or is the idea of taking any action, however small (for instance better education in evaluating information) offensive to you in an axiomatic way?
Differently put, you are looking for somebody smart to fix the situation for you. I looked around and there dont seem to be any to spare so we will have to do with us idiots. And once idiots start forcing other idiots around, those idiots push back. Which leaves us with a lot of pushing and pulling in a worse situation all together.
>Do you have any ideas in that direction?
Most idiots seem to mean well so lets see if we cant agree on a consensus about the state of reality and our criteria for acceptable solutions till some smart aliens show up to run this shitshow for us. We wont find a solution for everything but i am confident we could get really far by just agreeing on a reasonable minimum.
I think the problem stems from the lofty goal of finding actual solutions that arent horrible and applicable everywhere. Which we dont have now. Best we can do is look at existing solutions for specific problems and see if we cant agree on improvements. Being motivated by understanding the cost and risk of authoritarian solutions. Which we can communicate. Which just requires a willingness to communicate which goes out of the window once you create a conflict.
tldr: Trying to dictate what people think was tried and failed multiple times before. Its a really really bad idea. Wanting it to work doesnt change that, since you can explain why it fails reliably. Its the same reason that makes the idea so tempting in the first place.
You seem to be lost in a sea of relative opinion, and of all viewpoints being equally valid/stupid. That's far from always the case.
Again, by this logic, we should never address crime because by it's very nature a court case is trying to establish what are or are not real facts about a case in the face of conflicting opinion. Are we too stupid to have courts?
If not, then we're not too stupid to evaluate reality. That doesn't mean censorship. I'm not advocating censorship. I just don't think we're on such a foundation of sand as your comments assert.
Edit: I am rate limited so can’t respond below, but I wanted to say in response - I disagree that we don’t have the ability to say some things are counterfactual, and I also disagree that admitting this implies censorship or other authoritarian action is either good or necessary. I further disagree that communication is sufficient on its own when propagation of counterfactual information costs lives. Is there another solution? I don’t know, but I do think better education has to form part of it.
Does scientific knowledge “dictate facts”? It tells us some things are wrong, while leaving open the possibility of further learning.
edit: was an answer to the first sentence before the edit
To the rest, the problem is finding a basis solid enough for authoritarian action on such a delicate problem as speech (which requires another level then say a court case). Its not either quicksand or a rock but a minimum required level on the spectrum. If you dictate facts, you are dictating that this description encompasses all perspectives and every additional one is wrong. More then that, you dictate that those are all the implications. Its claiming you reached the end of knowledge.
You either can convince people that you are talking about facts or you cant. The problem is communication and not lack of force. As the issue here is only solvable with the former without accepting an inevitable crash in the future. You bringing up censorship is counterproductive for this reason. Somebody (not necessarily me) being able to explain that should be an example for an alternative.
Should have had a coffee first sorry
It's an interesting exploration of the problems with fact checkers and weaponised use of 'facts' in online discourse.
It's also pretty much exactly what I was talking about when I said I was not talking about censorship, which you repeatedly ignored in the above discussion.
There are other avenues to explore here, in which we can look at whether information is correct and put it in context, than just heavy handed government action or merely better presentation of one side of an argument.
I have a slightly different opinion from /u/ cf141q5325's. I think the problem isn't stupidity, it's hunger for power.
When you grant someone the authority to decide what other people should do, you can optimize for intelligence all you like, but the ones who will actually _struggle_ to get that position are the ones who want to be able to tell other people what to do.
Separation of powers is a partial remedy to this. You can either make the rules, or enforce the rules, but not both. (Democracy is another remedy, also partial.) We _can_ have courts because becoming a judge isn't quite as attractive as becoming a dictator.
A gigantic issue with the current 'fight against misinformation' is that it features no separation at all. When it comes from the government, it's typically designed, evaluated, and enforced by the executive branch alone. And when it comes from private entities, it's completely arbitrary and tyrannical according to whatever mood the CEO wakes up in that morning.
It depends on the specific issue. But since we agreed we didn’t want censorship, we err on the side of caution present our evidence with hopefully better and more thorough research supporting it.
Again, please don’t interpret this as “we need censorship”, that’s not what I’m getting at.
The notional “marketplace of ideas” is clearly not functioning in the presence of a lot of people who are not interested in whether their ideas stand up or not, and a whole boatload of motivated mudslingers. I don’t know a good answer, but “present your arguments better and hope” doesn’t seem to be one.
There's already limitations on free speech in place.
The article's broader point is that trust is low in a lot of institutions (for good reasons and bad) and thus the focus shouldn't be on censorship but on improving that trust. I agree with this approach.
However I think it is also important to recognize that propaganda has only become a more effective tool with the advent of social media. I don't think outright censorship is the correct path but I also don't believe slapping a "misleading" or similar tag on things actually qualifies as censorship.
I would be interested in abolishing both, in fact. I suspect society might adapt well.
Currently, when someone makes an unsubstantiated statement towards someone, it still carries _some_ weight precisely because the audience thinks that the slanderer wouldn't risk punishment for no reason. Especially if the slander is written and signed.
(And we've carried over this mentality even in the age of the Internet where anonymous slander is largely risk-free. For some reason, when @Goku69420 tweets 'Everybody knows that Joe Blow is a goat-botherer!', our brains treats it more like a fellow citizen writing a letter to the editor, rather than as the digital version of toilet-wall graffiti.)
Imagine if we let a generation or two of legalized slander and libel pass. I suspect we might become used to the idea that even the nicest people will occasionally have random strangers claiming awful things about them, and slander not backed up by evidence or at least substantial credibility will become a non-issue.
Then again, I might be too optimistic. In the heyday of the 'yellow press', did most ordinary people treat their bylines with skepticism and amusement, like most people do nowadays with e.g. the Weekly World News? Or did they have a large audience of long-term believers, like even the most partisan talk shows do nowadays?
Now propaganda and conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. There's no need to censor anything because few can tell fact from fiction anyhow.
Once the idea of dangerous speech becomes aknowledged, censorship just becomes a game of degrees.
Substack's incentives are even worse than YouTube or Facebook.
If you think YT and FB were good for western democracy, then I guess you can die on that hill.
Otherwise, die on the hill of "fuck those profiteers and the very specific capitalists very much among us right now in this exact setting that enable them, who should probably know better by now"
We're just meat computers, and information hygiene (or the lack thereof) actually matters and has a big impact.
I don't think it's a coincidence that people who support censorship think of humans as "meat computers". I suggest that if someone says "we are meat computers," we start treating them like one, i.e. ignoring them.
The main point, from my POV, is that it's already being decided which information is appropriate for people to be exposed to, by "the algorithm" guessing which posts are most likely to get people to engage, and exposes them to those.
I don't particularly think censorship is the option. Unfortunately, the European Parliament just rejected a proposal to ban personalised algorithms in general, but I wouldn't be surprised if we'd need something like that to deal with this.
[citation needed]
.......what does Marcellus Wallace look like?
I would contend that profit is at least partially the intention of these actors, largely indirectly by people who are invested in stock markets.
Capitalism is a symptom of power and information asymmetries. A few years ago, Zuckerberg said that all problems would be solved if everybody told the truth all the time. It's not that simple though. There's a Greg Egan story about a couple that undergoes a procedure to experience all the thoughts and feelings of each other for a period of time, which ultimately results in their breakup.
Free speech absolutists tend to jump to the defense of free speech and in the process ignore a real problem. Pro-censorship/content moderation folks tend to jump to the defense of censorship/moderation. In the process, the debate gets framed around "speech vs. censorship" instead of the serious issues with our political commons being dominated by sophisticated profit-seeking entities.
Everyone 'going transparent' in other words
The circle is looking more and more like the 1984 of our time
if you want to talk about power and information asymmetries, I suggest you look at Communist regimes.
Profit is definitely one motivation for censorship, but there has been plenty of censorship in non-profit-centric situations. Communist countries and other government actors have been leaders in censorship, with no obvious profit motive.
IMO, we should use "content moderation" for the former and "censorship" for the latter, congruent with historical usage. But people who are against content moderation will claim I'm being biased, even though I view the whole debate as a bit of red herring that distracts from the real issues. So I'd settle for "private-sector censorship" and "government censorship".
But in any case it's almost always counter-productive to conflate the two, to the point that it's a logical fallacy which should be named.
This implies you don't think "content moderation" is a "real" problem, which suggests to me you are biased. Also, "moderation" to me suggests mere moderation (consistent with fair, stated guideline) versus moderation "if you say things they don't like".
This kind of fight happens all over the place (e.g. what counts as hate/rape/murder etc), but I feel "moderation" is fairly neutral sounding without the implication of injustice befitting the act of being deprived of a a voice on omnipresent and monopolising platforms. It's also clear to me that some publications use comments sections as a way to manipulate public opinion, so cherry-picking/censoring them is an exercise in PR if (and only if) it isn't clear that result are being manipulated.
> i am not so sure if the distinction still exists when every conversation online is covered by private-sector censorship
That's certainly fair, and I think a particularly prescient observation in favor of the conclusion that it's time to severely restrict legal protections for social media platforms.
Oh erudite student of history, what then will stop the toxic vaccines and unethical medical studies from being halted then?
Such as:
The Cutter Incident [1] , The SV40 Contamination [2] , The Swine Flu Vaccine Debacle [3], The Vaccine Contamination disaster [4] , The Tuskegee Syphilis Study [5] , just to name a few.
We should be skeptical about the pros and cons of medical interventions, and also, non-interventions too.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC452549/
[3] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-the-fiasco-of-th...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/politics/johnson-covid...
As far as I'm aware, even early on in the cycle, realistic claims of effectiveness were being made, with some quibbling over data transparency that were resolved.
As we now have variants to contend with, that effectiveness in preventing infection has dropped precipitously. However the effectiveness at preventing hospitalisation and death is still pretty high.
If it was sold to you as 100% effective you were lied to. But if you were told that there were claims of 100% effectiveness which were clearly a lie, by someone trying to put you off vaccination, then you've been given false information there too.
They are still more likely to be infectious for longer, they are still more likely to clog up the hospital system, occupy ICU beds, and indirectly harm others who would usually be able to be treated but now can't.
And they're still dumbasses.
Frankly, imo, in the absence of effective accountability for ones' words or deeds, censorship becomes one of the only few remaining tools for stability.
When we condemn slave labor it's more childish tantrums. That's what wolf warrior diplomacy is really.
It's a state of more than a billion under its care yet on the political stage it's a huge Akira-sized baby with a big toy baton smash-smash-smashing any who dare discipline it.
Less than a century ago, many in the West sang the praises of communism as (unkown to them) a million people died in the Gulag. Things aren't always as they appear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
More about Kuran:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/11/wh...
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4-timur-kuran-economic...