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Censorship The Internet Technology

Gab Wants To Add a Comments Section To Everything On the Internet (cnet.com) 308

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Okian Warrior writes: Free speech social network Gab has launched a new comments platform, Dissenter, which allows users to make comments on every single website on the Internet without fear of censorship or banning. The Dissenter platform, which integrates with Gab as either a website or a browser extension, allows users to comment on any web page in the world, with the ability to upvote, downvote, and reply to other comments.

"A free, open-source utility that allows people to dissent from orthodoxy and express what they are really thinking, without fear of reprisal, is essential in order to wrest control of the Internet and public discourse from Silicon Valley tech giants," said Gab founder Andrew Torba. "Gab.com and dissenter.com lead the way in keeping the Internet free. All people are welcome to use our products to express themselves freely." One example of recent comment censorship was review website Rotten Tomatoes' removal of comments for unreleased movies this week, which the review website claimed was due to "trolling."
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Gab Wants To Add a Comments Section To Everything On the Internet More

Gab Wants To Add a Comments Section To Everything On the Internet

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  • First post (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @03:58PM (#58190388)

    Unless everyone is commenting using Gab or Dissenter ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by davecb ( 6526 )

      I use Hypothesis to track the annotations I have created when "marking up" a series of discussions to use as reference in a paper or argument. It's very uninteresting to anyone else: no-one particularly wants to read my links.

      I expect lots of tiny echo-chambers, and some private sexual discussions.

      • I expect lots of tiny echo-chambers, and some private sexual discussions.

        Also lots of dissent against the orthodoxy. The orthodoxy in question being the "political view" that we shouldn't merder Jews.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Lots of tiny echo chambers but when you start with with 7 BILLION, even tiny fractions represent a huge number and each echo chamber will inevitably reverberate with adjoining echo chambers, spreading the most popular tunes across the internet.

        Reality is lies only sell in the absence of truth, in the truth being censored, no matter how isolated that echo chamber, if it contains the truth people will find it and spread it. Exactly what is happening now and why the corporate establishment with the fucking fi

        • Re:First post (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @06:18AM (#58192952)

          Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am not that convinced. Lies sell if they're presented louder and more often than reality. And since people concerned with the truth usually have real jobs that keep them busy, what you get to hear the most is the loudmouths that don't but need a scapegoat to pretend it's not because they're pathetic losers but because the Illuminati and Teh Elitez are keeping them down.

  • Good potential (Score:5, Interesting)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@ c o m c a s t . net> on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:00PM (#58190402)

    The interesting thing will be to compare the comments left via the extension and those left directly on the website. It could be a good way of exposing just how prevalent censorship has become in the modern town square.

    • Gab, the reichtard supremacist infowars cult site? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:05PM (#58190428)

      Yeah we sure need to pay attention to them trying to put unfiltered comments on everything on the internet, what a great fucking {SLUR} {SLUR} {THREAT OF VIOLENCE} the fucking {SLUR} {CONSPIRACY THEORY} {SLUR}'s will have then!

      You {SLUR} {SLUR} {EXPLITIVE} eater.

    • Re:Good potential (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:05PM (#58190434)

      It could be a good way of exposing just how prevalent censorship has become in the modern town square.

      I don't think it would. As, based on my understanding of the tool, one would have to be using "Dissenter" in order to view the comments on it, while anyone can view the comments directly on the website, many people will never see the "Dissenter" comments.

      I foresee it being more of a situation where one side will primarily post publicly and then the other side would post on "Dissenter" and it turns into a twisted echo chamber...kind of like Facebook.

      • I like the idea of this Gab extension. However on a pragmatic level I'm inclined to think that you will probably be right.

      • Considering you can still see comments when the "doesn't exist" page appears, I think it may.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Google already tried this with a product called "Sidewiki". It failed because few people bothered to install the add-on, and because the comments were unmoderated and unfiltered and sorted chronologically they were a toxic mixture of spam and trolling. Useful discourse was impossible.

        So pretty much like the main Gab site really. All the people booted off Twitter concentrated in one place. The best you can say about it is that it strongly supports free speech, but you don't go there for the quality of the co

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          So pretty much like the main Gab site really. All the people booted off Twitter concentrated in one place. The best you can say about it is that it strongly supports free speech, but you don't go there for the quality of the content.

          No, the best that can be said about it is that, at least in theory, it will keep the people who generate that kind of content busy spewing garbage in a semi-offline, crap-filled cesspool while the rest of us have intelligent conversations on the adult version of the Internet. W

    • Re:Good potential (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:07PM (#58190452)

      Gab is basically a haven for the extreme right wing who have been cut off from traditional platforms like Twitter. The comments on anything mainstream (even main stream conservative like Fox News) will be foaming at the mouth insanity which won't tell you anything aside from how the people who want to bring back the Holocaust need to start with themselves.

      • Re:Good potential (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:28PM (#58190590)

        Possibly true, but not all things are political. I know of a particular situation on an old game (EverQuest) where the company is known for blatant, over the top censorship and sock-puppeting. An alternative, well known forum like this would be welcome. Just last week they did a mass ban and lockdown on anyone who disagreed with their particular "rebranding" of a long-awaited, but ultimately bizarrely out of touch pair of servers. After spending two weeks grappling with all the rants and negative feedback, they just started locking things down and banning, while issuing a very slight but inconsequential modification (and changing their words).

        It is quite welcome to have contrasting points of view as up front as possible, quite often companies take a giant shit on something you are paying good money for, and try to silence all opposition. Sure, it undoubtedly will involve a lot of racism, trolling, off-topic posts and namecalling, so some form of meta moderation will be needed to squelch people who just cannot control themselves.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I don't see how screaming into the void of some browser add-on that the EverQuest staff certainly don't have installed is helpful. I suppose it's a way to vent for people who need to let off some steam, i.e. it might reduce the moderation load a bit. I'm guessing that's not what you want though.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Z80a ( 971949 )

        It will get saner as less insaner people get deplatformed by the insane left until twitter start banning people for the mere act of being white and shit hits the fan.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:17PM (#58190512)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

        Now look at the type of people who currently use Gab. Are they representative of the nation as a whole?

        Gab is representative of the nation as a hole.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      It certainly has good potential to contain the racist trolls in their own echo chamber. But I'm not sure it would work, as it defeats their whole purpose of posting if nobody who sees their comment is offended by it, so I expect they will continue their shitposting in the general comments sections.

    • Spoilers: It'll only be a good way of exposing your eyeballs to a lot of white nationalist drivel.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Maybe, but more likely all it will show is the differences between the users of the website and the users of Gab.

    • BBC will have to block this.
      There is no way they can let people leave comments like "does that include lifting the sanctions and returning the money you've stolen" when they post an "all options are on the table" Venezuela propaganda piece.

  • Truly history repeats itself (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:00PM (#58190410)

    Any of you old enough to remember VPlaces?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Places_Chat

    It was exactly as the summary describes, except a chatroom instead of a comment section.

    • Re: Truly history repeats itself (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Virtual_Raider ( 52165 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:11PM (#58190472)
      I'm well old enough, but never heard of it. On its face isn't a bad idea, and I even agree with the stated reasons. But most of the current audience of the originating site have zero interest in open discussion. They want to censor opposing opinions as much as the "tech giants" by shouting down and booing (and doxing) their pet dislikes. I guess if it keeps them off the main comment sections they may become a bit more readable...

  • That's interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Crash Dummy Redux ( 5616896 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:03PM (#58190420)
    YouTube wants to turn off the comment sections [washingtonpost.com] on children videos because they attract child predators. All those displaced child predators can now go to Gab to comment on those videos. Unless, of course, Gab's TOS doesn't allow child predators to do that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      news flash:
      bad people will do bad things by any means they can

  • More freedom (Score:3)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:05PM (#58190426) Journal
    To communicate, share, think, comment is always good.
    Not having social media brands use censorship is great.
    The freedom to write, comment, publish and the freedom to keep publishing on any topic.
    • I personally don't agree that freedom to sound off on _any_ topic is a good thing, but I'm happy to note the disagreement and not try to change your mind. However, a lot of people these days imagine that freedom to say whatever they want includes from dealing with the fallout if what they said. This is not true, has never been true, and likely never will be. But when they are confronted with said consequences, they cry foul and censorship. I don't have a magic formula or solution, I'm only pointing out th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Freedom of speech and freedom after speech has been working well for the USA for many, many years.

    • To communicate, share, think, comment is always good.

      No! Jesus christ on a cracker, no it's not! The ability to talk unchecked with no consequence for being wrong or inaccurate, is literally killing people. The anti-vaccination movement is driven entirely by the wrong people communicating, sharing, and commenting utter nonsense and people - mostly children - are dying because of it. Communicating, sharing, commenting is only good when there are consequences for what you've communicated, shared, or commented. And sometimes the consequence needs to be getting

  • Gab has proven not to censor things so far and taken a lot of heat for it.

    • Re:The only way this works is if people trust Gab. (Score:5, Informative)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @05:07PM (#58190856) Journal

      Gab has proven not to censor things so far and taken a lot of heat for it.

      Gab has its own speech rules, and they have banned users over certain speech. For example, no doxxing, child porn, revenge porn, credible threats, spam, or selling drugs or weapons.

      So see, there are always limits. There is no freedom that exists without limits and/or consequences. We can discuss where to draw the line, but there is always a line. If someone tells you that there is such a thing as an "absolute freedom", they're full of shit.

  • Haven’t wee seen this before? (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:05PM (#58190438)

    I seem to recall some browser add-on from 10-15 years ago which promised the ability to comment on any website.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sebby ( 238625 )

      I seem to recall some browser add-on from 10-15 years ago which promised the ability to comment on any website.

      Third Voice [wikipedia.org].

    • I do too, and I think it doesn't do much unless you have a critical mass of people, or a community that cares. "Pinterest sucks". There. I just made a comment about an arbitrary web site, but you have to be part of Slashdot to see it. Pinterest itself only lives because it has a community that has reached a critical mass... of people who don't care about ruining our search results.

      As somebody who doesn't use Gab, their ability to "comment on any URL" doesn't appeal to me. It's not enough to make me a p

    • Yeah, but I think it was more like 20 years ago. Called Gooey I think. IIRC, it was more like graffiti that you could put on any website, seen only by others using Gooey.

  • IE had something like this built-in. I've never seen it working, It was always an empty panel when I turned on.

  • The censorship going on right now is scary.

  • Take Two (Score:3)

    by Mandrel ( 765308 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:11PM (#58190476)
    Genius [genius.com] tried to do the same, allowing you to use a browser extension to add annotations to any website text. Their extension was banned (for "interfering" with content?). As Gab expects, they will be banned as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You can side-load add-ons in Chrome and Firefox, so it's really impossible to ban Gab's little project. Same with the Gab app.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mandrel ( 765308 )
        Invisibility and install hoops make for an effective banning.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Failure to assist is not censorship or banning.

          Also note that Fortnight, the incredibly popular game with millions of Android users, deliberately chose to use side-loading to avoid giving 30% to Google. It's clearly not that onerous.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Mandrel ( 765308 )

            For Windows users to install a non-Play extension on Chrome, one must download the extension, unpack it, enable Developer Mode, load the extension from disk, and put up with a warning bubble every time they start the browser.

            To install a non-Play Android app one has to change one setting.once.

  • Didn't we already have something like that in the late 90s? With the "page" running in n iframe or something similar....

    • Discus? I can't tell, because while I can log into my Discus account on their site, I can't make comments on any of the sites that use it. I've contacted their support, but that was two months ago, and so far, nothing.

  • HuffPo, Vox, InfoWars, etc. could be hurt really badly by this if it takes off. Personally I would love to see that happen...could be a really good way to fight fake news.

  • quality (Score:2, Interesting)

    by doom ( 14564 )

    "Not enough freedom" is not actually what comes to mind when most people think of internet commenting-- nearly everyone is interested in better quality and/or improving the tone or direction of on-line discussions.

    There's a certain kind of nerd that thinks the freedom to shout [censored epithets] is just what the world needs... most of us feel like we can live without it.

    (Slashdot's "lameness filter" prevented me from citing actual examples of epithets in the last paragraph-- ironic infinite loop detected

    • Have you read most of the comments on this post? They consist of mostly anonymous people calling anybody who supports free speech of being a (Nazi, racist, xenophobe, bigot, part of the patriarchy) etc. Maybe the problem isn't where you think the problem is. Go watch a couple hours of Dave Rubin's youtube channel and get back to me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        Go watch a couple hours of Dave Rubin's youtube channel and get back to me.

        Well, there's a compelling argument. "Go watch some random person spout garbage on Youtube that they were too lazy or incompetent to write down." Sure, I'll get right on that.

  • What's old is new again! (Score:4, Funny)

    by jlv ( 5619 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:18PM (#58190522)

    What's old is new again! This is the 4th or 10th iteration of something like this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's just Gab trying to be relevant. They were hoping a lot of people would migrate from Twitter, following people like Carl Benjamin and Milo Yiannopoulos who got booted. But it didn't really work, not least because much of those characters' appeal was the drama when interacting with other people on Twitter, and the other people had no interest in going to Gab just to get more abuse.

      In fact, Carl in particular tries to sneak back on to Twitter at least three or four times a year.

      Which gave Gab an idea. Wha

  • A way to post comments to slashdot containing unicode characters

  • Can gab.com be use to comment on gab.com? And can that process continue to recurse?

  • They need to step up their naming game! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ToTheStars ( 4807725 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:32PM (#58190614)
    Come on, using an actual word? Real tech start-ups make creative (and trademarkable) misspellings by dropping vowels and stuff...I would take them much more seriously if they called it "Dissentr".

  • Can't say I've been drawn to Gab (or Twitter for that matter) but having the ability to comment on any site without having to worry about the site censoring it sounds rather awesome actually.

  • We've seen this before... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @04:36PM (#58190664) Homepage

    We've seen extensions letting you comment on any webpage before. The obvious downside is that you need to inform a third party of what URL you are visiting in order to fetch the comments.

    So it's basically spying on users, and it would be very hard to implement this in a way that does not spy.

    • Let me introduce you to DHT from BitTorrent. (Although with your 6-digit ID though, you probably already know this. So let's start a discussion.)

      Basically, think of a website. Strip the leading // from it, and then md5sum (pick your poison, I like double ROT-13) the rest, producing a long number. Store all comments by that number.

      That's a trapdoor function. Give the site you can easily generate the number. Given just the number you CAN'T generate the originating site. You could get lucky and watc

  • This has been done before by a place called Third Voice. However, because they really didn't have any ability to make money from it, they wound up closing their doors.

    How can Gab make money from something like this?

  • (which CommentNow has superceded since plugin messed up its plugin system, but, yes, not a new idea at all)

  • Original NCSA XMosaic supported annotations, but was dropped on the way.

    Here some discussions about this feature from 1993: http://1997.webhistory.org/www... [webhistory.org]

  • So basically they want to be able to target any site on the internet. But it's the sites that are the problem, not them.
  • Or at least it will be. Unless the article on this just neglected to mention such an important fact, I'm going to assume this isn't decentralized and relies on some central infrastructure somewhere? If so, it will get pushed off host and provider after host and provider until it falls completely off the net entirely. If someone really wants to do this, it's got to be decentralized.

  • Have people learned NOTHING about the internet over the past 2 decades?

    There is a reason a lot of the comment sections on website have been shuttered. They are abused. They become troll platforms, spam platforms, a place for the most disgruntled among us to make a whole lot of nonsense noises.

    This is a monumentally foolish idea. We need more moderation of this stuff, not more free-wheeling comment sections for the worst of us to spew their nonsense.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      The problem is people do learn from history, just not always the same lessons. Moderation tends to produce better results for most users, but the trolls, spammers, and harassers have been getting increasingly upset and have turned it into a "F"reedom cause.
  • It's basically like having comments filter set at -1. Who wants to do that, especially on Gab which advertises itself as "free speech" but is in effect a favorite of far-right or alt-right users who have been banned or suspended from other service.
  • Totally unmoderated comments, with unlimited up/down votes.

    This will degenerate to devastated torched landscape by never ending flame wars. Any one remember soc.men and soc.women in the good old usenet? That happened when usenet users had quaint notions of netiquette, and Bjorne Soustroup himself was participating in comp.lang.c++ . In this day and age? It will be trolled to death

  • This is like a proprietary, non-distributed version of the Annotea project (circa 2001): https://www.w3.org/2001/Annote... [w3.org]
  • Oh God Please No. How does that help anything?
    • They get to enjoy the freedom offered by an untamed wilderness. You get enjoy seeing less of them around.
  • Ugh. I can recall years back trolls, when they couldn't bug people directly on sites, would actually message people with 'hey, you should come over to XYZ instead and see all the horrible things they are saying about you!' and keep trying to taunt people into visiting forums they controlled. This strikes me as just a somewhat easier to use version of that... which given the company already courts the 'we are so oppressed!' white nationalists community, will probably just be more dumpster fire that they wan

  • Cue lawsuits arguing they are infringing copyright of the displayed page.

  • ...where people would have to congregate in say, a church, or a town square, or a stadium to meet people of like inclinations and have discussions in civilized tones, a healthy ruckus of many voices speaking.

    Imagine, then, that another group with opposing views invades the former's space and start yelling and using bullhorns to say things that the former group can't or won't tolerate.

    What do you think would happen? I think the word "Riot" covers it fairly well.

    I'm firmly convinced that because the internet

  • Turn the entire internet into usenet or reddit or 4chan or 8chan.

    What could go wrong?

  • The usual formula applies: with a laissez-faire commenting policy, the trolls will proliferate to the point where the forum's content is too toxic and offensive for anyone else to dare to participate.

    Then the trolls will eventually realize that the only people left to troll are each other, and they will abandon the platform for greener pastures.

    Then the forum will be deserted, except for the occasional "is anybody still here lol" tumbleweed. Finally, the hosting company will realize that they are paying I

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