Did the Early Internet Activists Blow It? (slate.com) 128
Mike Godwin, the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes in a column: Another thing we clearly got wrong is how large platforms would rise to dominate their markets -- even though they never received the kind of bespoke regulated-monopoly partnership with governments that, generations before, the telephone companies had received. In most of today's democracies, Google dominates search and Facebook dominates social media. In less-democratic nations, counterpart platforms -- like Baidu and Weibo in China or VK in Russia -- dominate their respective markets, but their relationships with the relevant governments are cozier, so their market-dominant status isn't surprising. We didn't see these monopolies and market-dominant players coming, although we should have. Back in the 1990s, we thought that a thousand website flowers would bloom and no single company would be dominant. We know better now, particularly because of the way social media and search engines can built large ecosystems that contain smaller communities -- Facebook's Groups is only the most prominent example. Market-dominant players face temptations that a gaggle of hungry, competitive startups and "long tail" services don't, and we'd have done better in the 1990s if we'd anticipated this kind of consolidation and thought about how we might respond to it as a matter of public policy. We should have -- the concern about monopolies, unfair competition, and market concentration is an old one in most developed countries -- but I have no reflexive reaction either for or against antitrust or other market-regulatory approaches to address this concern, so long as the remedies don't create more problems than they solve.
What's new and more troubling is the revival of the idea, after more than half a century of growing freedom-of-expression protections, that maybe there's just too much free speech. There's a lot to unpack here. In the 1990s, social conservatives wanted more censorship, particularly of sexual content. Progressive activists back then generally wanted less. Today, progressives frequently argue that social media platforms are too tolerant of vile, offensive, hurtful speech, while conservatives commonly insist that the platforms censor too much (or at least censor them too much). Both sides miss obvious points. Those who think there needs to be more top-down censorship from the tech companies imagine that when censorship efforts fail, it means the companies aren't trying hard enough to enforce their content policies. But the reality is that no matter how much money and manpower (plus less-than-perfect "artificial intelligence") Facebook throws at curating hateful or illegal content on its services, and no matter how well-meaning Facebook's intentions are, a user base edging toward 3 billion people is always going to generate hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives every year. On the flip side, those who want to restrict companies' ability to censor content haven't given adequate thought to the consequences of their demands. If Facebook or Twitter became what Sen. Ted Cruz calls a "neutral public forum," for example, they might become 8chan writ large. That's not very likely to make anyone happier with social media.
What's new and more troubling is the revival of the idea, after more than half a century of growing freedom-of-expression protections, that maybe there's just too much free speech. There's a lot to unpack here. In the 1990s, social conservatives wanted more censorship, particularly of sexual content. Progressive activists back then generally wanted less. Today, progressives frequently argue that social media platforms are too tolerant of vile, offensive, hurtful speech, while conservatives commonly insist that the platforms censor too much (or at least censor them too much). Both sides miss obvious points. Those who think there needs to be more top-down censorship from the tech companies imagine that when censorship efforts fail, it means the companies aren't trying hard enough to enforce their content policies. But the reality is that no matter how much money and manpower (plus less-than-perfect "artificial intelligence") Facebook throws at curating hateful or illegal content on its services, and no matter how well-meaning Facebook's intentions are, a user base edging toward 3 billion people is always going to generate hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of false positives every year. On the flip side, those who want to restrict companies' ability to censor content haven't given adequate thought to the consequences of their demands. If Facebook or Twitter became what Sen. Ted Cruz calls a "neutral public forum," for example, they might become 8chan writ large. That's not very likely to make anyone happier with social media.
Cut the subjective nonsense (Score:1)
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That probably says more about you, than either of those two things.
I remember Slashdot 15 - 20 years ago, where comments were constant in condemning the politics of fear after 9/11 to push hate and unsavoury laws, condemning Sony for their root kitted music CDs, complete anger at Valve forcing you to register games via Steam rather than just being able to install a game and play it and so on.
Nowadays there's not much else other than bootlickers supporting the politics of fear by parroting the usual lines ab
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But it's all subjective nonsense... (Score:2)
(Just a CC of my comment on the original website.)
The google has been ramming this opinion piece at me for some days now. It would be nice to know why the google is trying to manipulate me into reading this piece, but that's not how the google rolls. Quite possibly yet another abuse of my privacy based on long forgotten records of discussions involving me and jm (one of Mike's handles) and others back in the '80s. Mike has made it quite clear in the years since then that he thinks we have nothing further to
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What a stupid notion. The rest of the premise is idiotic. Who is supposed to determine (and by what mechanisms enforce) what the "appropriate amount of free speech" is? Yeah. Piss up a rope. Sounds right.
We saw all that coming (Score:2)
All the stuff the EFF supposedly didn't see coming is rewriting history. There would've been no .com domain if we didn't know about commercial interests, there were social networks and chat groups from the very beginning (IRC) and commercializing them has been going on for decades.
And there is nothing wrong with it (Score:2)
As long as a) people voluntarily join these services, and b) it is not illegal to advise them against doing so, there is no problem.
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The whole shtick against content providers is a poorly disguised call for censorship, to take our eyes off the real monopoly of service provision, where your entire connection is held hostage.
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In my opinion, the Internet would have flourished if it had not been released from the NSFnet. Had the universities and libraries been the routers and providers through dial-up and later DSL technologies, there still would have been progress with the share of information. What would have been different however is that the NSF strictly forbade any commercial interest. That means no buying or selling, but we couldn't allow that in this consumerist society.
So here comes Al Gore, the inventor of the Internet,
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The "internets" is a great, big series of unintended consequences and collateral damage.
Mixed in the "bad", is some inestimably, good, helpful and wonderful stuff! Lest we forget!
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Re:We saw all that coming (Score:4, Insightful)
On top of that, did you also think that same company would own the largest advertising network, and the largest video collection, and the OS with the largest install base, and also be competing to be the top home automation company?
Because I would have said that seems rather unlikely. Turns out it's not unlikely.
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I wish I had spotted this story earlier. Already on the edge of expiration.
If your reference to "you" is to Godwin, then I can go back before 1995, when both of us were living in Austin and meeting with various other friends for meals and drinks... My main reaction is that Godwin doesn't seem to have learned much in all those years. He was always big on trivia, but never seemed able to see the forest for the trees.
Then again, I'm living in the glass house, too, so I better stop with the stones. My problem i
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Mike Godwin, author of the article.
Also creator of Godwin's Law.
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He who owns the pipe sets the rules (Score:1)
we thought that a thousand website flowers would bloom and no single company would be dominant.
Well! The ISPs thought differently, didn't they? If/when we get around them, and there will be a zillion *website flowers*, more like website weeds, but at least the system would be open to everybody on equal footing.
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Then you add mega-profits from advertising and everyone wants to get in on the act.
Why did YouTube get so big? Free postings from people that othe
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AOL failed because it was too slow. If they worked harder at trying to connect with content, rather than trying to monetize it, they'd have lasted longer. But the Internet moved and changed faster than AOL, so anyone on AOL was paying $25 a month for "free" email. People realized this and dropped AOL. AOL also didn't work on moving to DSL (outside a few major cities), so was stuck as "slow" dial-up.
Just like Windows use to be, inertia in a market m (Score:2)
Just like we saw with Windows, inertia in a market matters. Prior to Linux having inertia, Windows was largely it and MS used their weight. If someone wants to step into the game for anyone of these other players, they need to have the money, will power, a differentiated idea and time to spend supplanting Google, Facebook and others. Good luck finding funding for taking those companies on.
Complete and utter drivel. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech advocates absolutely know the tradeoffs and overwhelmingly they support more freedom and less censorship.
BECAUSE history has shown us every time where there is a framework for censorship for any spurious reason, someone who disagrees with YOU will use it to stop your speech when its convenient for them.
Sooner or later someone who disagrees with you will have the power and will use this stupid idea to stop your speech.
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BECAUSE history has shown us every time where there is a framework for censorship for any spurious reason, someone who disagrees with YOU will use it to stop your speech when its convenient for them.
I was thinking the same thing, only probably not the same way you were. The term "internet activists" immediately draws parallels in my head with hacktivism, which I never thought was morally acceptable. Even on slashdot I debated with people who thought it was acceptable to DDoS walmart's website simply because you don't like them. A website, even if it allows commerce, is still a form of speech.
Nonetheless, those same hactivists were the pioneers that showed what kind of effect a DDoS can have, and becaus
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All of the worst totalitarian regimes started with or later included suppression of speech. It's one of the hallmark characteristics of a oppressive regime.
It must be fought at every stage.
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Fuck you and Fuck that idiot, "professor".
I say we don't allow you to talk.
Re:Complete and utter drivel. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't stop nazis from talking without turning the world into an absolute hell with microphones everywhere and everyone being monitored for every post.
If they're having any success into convincing people into their absolute retarded ideals, you should actually see the fuck they're doing and actually combat it with more speech.
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The problem is that trying to fight their speech with more speech is what has led to our present reality of mainstreamed bigotry and resurgent fascism. The experiment has revealed that the disease is faster and more virulent than the vaccine, and we're living in the aftermath.
There is a happy medium between absolute free speech and microphone-bedazzled surveillance hell though: deplatforming. You don't actively prevent nazis from speaking using the force of government, but you do your best to avoid helping
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The problem is that trying to fight their speech with more speech is what has led to our present reality of mainstreamed bigotry and resurgent fascism. The experiment has revealed that the disease is faster and more virulent than the vaccine, and we're living in the aftermath.
There is a happy medium between absolute free speech and microphone-bedazzled surveillance hell though: deplatforming. You don't actively prevent nazis from speaking using the force of government, but you do your best to avoid helping them speak using your privately-owned resources. It's compatible with even extreme free-speech jurisdictions like the US, and it works, which is why it drives the nazis and their sympathizers into a satisfying tizzy.
No, it doesn't work:
https://www.jta.org/2018/04/25... [jta.org]
Why is it that, among all places in the world, America is one of the few that jews can wear a yarmulke in public without fear of being randomly assaulted for most of the last decade? European governments go so far as even fining, jailing, and media shaming people for making a harmless off-color joke, and yet anti-semitism is so bad there that American jews traveling to Europe are commonly advised to not wear any clothing that might identify them as jewish
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That's particularly egregious cherry-picking at this time, the US has more than its fair share of anti-Semitic hate crimes, with a massive rise in the Trump era:
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
https://www.dissentmagazine.or... [dissentmagazine.org]
We know that keeping the rats in the closet keeps them from breeding. We've witnessed the population explosion from letting them run wild. Pushing hate underground works, it only makes them slightly harder to track but greatly reduces their ranks. It's a very worthwhile tradeoff.
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Trump has supported Israel more than any recent Administration, yet you claim he's responsible for a rise in Antisemitism??
There is only one circumstance under which that could be true, which is that the Leftists are maddened by Trump's support of Israel and they take it out on the nearest Jew they can find.
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He doesn't "support" Israel (as in giving their apparent efforts to construct an apartheid state every free pass and blank cheque in the book) because he particularly likes Jews, he does it because he sees it as an easy path to "peace" and because he wants the support of Evangelical Christian Zionists and islamophobes - and wouldn't mind having a good relationship fellow crooked wannabe-strongman Netanyahu either. Trump's publicly made some casually racist statements against Jews before, and of course playe
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Trump ... 's responsible for a rise in Antisemitism??
There is only one circumstance under which that could be true...
I hope you're going to say something along the lines of 'it turns out that bigots are not particularly fussy about who they pick as the target of their bigotry, and once they've been emboldened it should come as no surprise that there's been a rise in hate crimes across the board'.
which is that the Leftists are maddened by Trump's support of Israel and they take it out on the nearest Jew they can find.
Ah, nope. As a non-partisan non-American it appears that your blinkers very firmly attached.
Re: Complete and utter drivel. (Score:2)
I'll just leave this here:
https://reason.com/2020/01/29/... [reason.com]
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So the TL;DR version of that article would be that anti-Semitic attitudes haven't worsened, just anti-Semitic actions. Is that supposed to be...less-bad?
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First, America isn't New York. If it was, America's overall violent crime rate would be increasing, but the total opposite is happening. Second, there's quite a difference between a spike and a trend.
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The problem is that trying to fight their speech with more speech is what has led to our present reality of mainstreamed bigotry and resurgent fascism. The experiment has revealed that the disease is faster and more virulent than the vaccine, and we're living in the aftermath.
No, not the aftermath, the prequel. We are at the dawning of a plague of the mind that spreads via ideals with an end result of producing personality disordered people in a psychopathic world because that is the only way to survive constant war, constant advertising and, constant pressure to produce more and more to buy more.
Even Orwell had no idea how insidious it would become.
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It's sad that the ACLU has just become a spokeperson for the left. Regulating free speech is what the Civil Liberties Union should be against.
Re:Complete and utter drivel. (Score:5, Informative)
Let us consider the reality of today's society where somehow, white supremacist and Nazi rhetoric is actually normalized enough that people will defend it for "free speech".
I normally lament how bad things are today where two people with different beliefs cannot manage to hold a civil conversation without insults being hurled back and forth but... to the above, I've gotta say: you're either entirely ignorant of the battle fought over free speech in the US over the last +/- half century, or you're a fucking liar who is doing their level best to undermine the very freedoms that you take for granted.
The sheer irony of quoting someone from the ACLU on the subject, followed by what I have quoted above boggles the mind. In the event you ARE merely ignorant, here [wikipedia.org] is the ACLU fighting for the rights of members of the American Nazi party--literal, ACTUAL fucking Nazis, and not "You don't believe that "gender" is how you're feeling today, therefore you are a fascist"--to be allowed to demonstrate publicly.
The sheer fucking gall to claim that this is somehow a modern aberration is absolutely disgusting. "I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Remember that?
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You're quoting a case from the 70's, the ACLU has changed. It's now a mouthpiece for communists.
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The sheer fucking gall to claim that this is somehow a modern aberration is absolutely disgusting.
I get where you are coming from, because I know the same things you do. There are new people born every minute and their point of view is that history may have happened, but reality is right here right now so who cares about history, they will learn it if/when they have time. Right here right now, the Nazi problem is HUGE. How could people hate so much? We must do everything we can to fight them, including censoring them.
I suffered from this issue myself when I was younger. As it turns out, almost every tho
Re:Complete and utter drivel. (Score:5, Insightful)
That was a long time ago that the ACLU did that.
That was one of the points I was making. To reiterate, you said:
Let us consider the reality of today's society where somehow, white supremacist and Nazi rhetoric is actually normalized enough that people will defend it for "free speech".
You're making the disingenuous statement that this is somehow a "new" thing, and the speech is defended because it is normal. And yet half a century ago, when WW2 and all of its horrors was not much further in the rearview mirror than 9/11 is today, it was defended. Because that was the morally right thing to do, the intellectually honest thing to do when you espouse a free exchange of ideals.
No matter how vile those ideals may be. The Nazi platform IS abnormal, and it IS abhorrent, and for all that, it is still worth defending. The lesson has been learned many times over by generations before this one: the power of the state and the power of the mob are great when they are turned against your enemies. But one day, it will turn toward you, and where will you be? We defend these abhorrent speech because we defend ALL speech.
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In the US, the free speech is so absolute that peop
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In the US, you are "innocent until proven guilty" yet, your name is publicly listed with the crime you committed before conviction.
Actually you're listed as a suspect.
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that absolutist free speech rules in the United States fail to weigh the value of speech against the harms that speech can cause, and argued that we ought to regulate speech that can cause P.T.S.D. and "stereotype threat."
That's pretty much the rational of every dictator ever. To wit, a quote of one of the earliest uses of a two-word idiomatic expression that today is a pejorative, and back then was intended as a compliment:
“All journalists must have a permit to function and such permits are granted only to pure ‘Aryans’ whose opinions are politically correct. Even after that they must watch their step.”
(emphasis mine)
We've seen in history that the very fact that we allow certain people to talk normalizes their speech, and there's the possibility of their narrative being accepted and even being widespread in the society. Let us consider the reality of today's society where somehow, white supremacist and Nazi rhetoric is actually normalized enough that people will defend it for "free speech".
It only seems to be less normalized over time. The civil war, and the subsequent martial law declared in the south to end the original kkk, marked its first big decline. Just because the internet makes it easier to find, doesn't mean that it is more commonplace.
Free Listening (Score:4, Insightful)
A professor from Yale said that "free speech has been weaponized by the Right" in order to attack higher education and that we need to protect the institution.
John A. Powell recently ... argued that we ought to regulate speech that can cause P.T.S.D. and "stereotype threat."
I'm a staunch defender of freedom of speech and have a career in anti-censorship lobbying efforts, you've hit on some very important points that lay just below the surface of your argument which drive home why free speech has a sobering responsibility attached to it. I also share this as someone who has had the misfortune of having had a sociopath in my life use speech to uncover psychological weaknesses in my psyche to conduct abuse.
Powell mentioned P.T.S.D however it is C.P.T.S.D which is the driving force in relation to speech and mental illness. Words do cause harm when uttered by a skillful orator and some personality disordered people in the cluster B spectrum of the DSM/V are particularly skillful orators. For them psychological abuse is an art form.
In essence I think one of the issues driving divisions in our political systems is the presence of these personality disordered types on both sides of the political spectrum. Once that is understood it is clear to see that no matter which side of the political spectrum they reside their goal is to create vexing unsolvable division.
Therefore we must consider two opposing forces when contemplating the nature of free speech when it is used. The first is the correction of culture that free speech allows, these corrections are important so that the structure of our civilization maintains its integrity over time. The second is the knowledge that these personality disordered types use free speech as a means to inflict psychological abuse on unsuspecting victims and, that this threat of mental illness is the single most ubiquitous issue destabilizing society.
Consequently I observe the difficulty of achieving the kind of balance that most sane people seek on both sides of politics because anyone who points it out gets pilloried by the personality disordered types who take free speech hostage as a means to create the neural patterns in others that are amenable to future manipulation.
You can observe them for yourself if you engage in "free listening" where you divorce your emotions from the content of the speech and find they boil down to two camps, "Outrage Mongers" and "Outrage Seekers". Both camps are addicted to the endomorphine responses that are created within the brain from the "outrage" that shuts down the neocortex leaving the mammalian and limbic brain to deal, often badly, with the situation.
So whilst I don't agree with regulating free speech at all, it is wise to keep in mind that some of those people do intend to cause harm with free speech and have no intention of using it responsibly. Free listening, with a rational mindset, helps you to quickly identify those people who attempt psychological abuse because it keeps your neocortex engaged and critical of the ideas you are exposed to.
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Thank you for pointing this out; I've thought about this for quite a while as people being addicted to outrage, but you put it in more specific and interesting terms. What is a population to do, though, when education doesn't help teach people the detachment and critical thinking needed to bypass this sort of manipulation?
Psychological abuse is constructed so the abused carries the torment with them. It's designed so they can't detach, however the healing process is that of "detaching" entanglements by sorting through the manipulation.
Personally, I'm wondering if some day in the far distant future we'll be able to show the psychological harm done by these people, allowing conviction and hopefully treatment for people who act this way. The justice system needs reforming, sure, but psychological harm should be handled/rehabilitated in the same ways as physical harm imo. Maybe someday...
I don't think it is a legal matter, it can be however the best out come is to become aware of their abuse and allow them to continue on their path of self destruction. It sounds simple, but it turns out to be one of the most difficult things to do if you aren't aware of the abuse and the chem
Re:Complete and utter drivel. (Score:4, Informative)
Nazi and White Supremacist speech has been defended as "free speech" for decades.
Indeed. The Supreme Court ruled that Nazis have free speech [wikipedia.org] in 1977.
Yet somehow free speech didn't cause the sky to fall.
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. . . cause the sky to fall.
But wouldn't we characterize Chicken Little's speech as incitement of some sort? I don't think that's protected, actually.
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. . . cause the sky to fall.
But wouldn't we characterize Chicken Little's speech as incitement of some sort? I don't think that's protected, actually.
Like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater? But Chicken Little really believed the sky was falling.
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The Left are worse (Score:2, Insightful)
Mr. Goodwin tries to present "both" sides as equally at fault, which they aren't.
Because, the Conservatives' censorship effort was against porn itself, not the discussion of it (That they may well have had a point [bbc.com] is ano
Re:The Right are worse (Score:3, Insightful)
shut even the discussion
And that's free speech and free association too. That you won't be arrested for speaking doesn't mean that you have a right to compel people to listen to you, to have them treat your ideas with respect, to have them continue to employ you or do business with you or interact with you at all, or to not be shouted down by others who disagree with you.
The right is worse because they seek to compel people to speak or not speak as the powerful command, using the apparatus of government. The left is simply speak
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Ah, but you can be — if not now, then soon [washingtonpost.com].
And what's, perhaps, worse is that your employer can already be compelled to fire you — because, if they don't, the government will gleefully help the offended coworker sue the employer for "failing to address hostile work-environment [hracuity.com]" or some such B.S.
No, they don't.
Nope, with the pos
Re:The Right are worse (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, with the possible exception of the actual pornography, this has never happened
In the late 18th century there were federal laws against sedition.
In the early 19th century, the US Mail would not carry abolitionist content to the South.
In the early 20th century federal laws against sedition came back as well as laws against speaking and teaching German. There was also widespread censorship of films by various government bodies; depicting things like pregnant women, or smoking, were known to be banned in some areas.
In the mid-20th century there were federal laws against advocating for the overthrow of the government.
The Nixon administration famously tried to engage in prior restraint of newspapers.
And of course let's not forget about laws against blasphemy and the old days when truth was not a defense to libel; what mattered was simply whether you had besmirched the reputation of your betters.
You may wish to do something about your ignorance before attempting to press forward with your ill-thought out claim.
No, that's your kind's trait -- what you like ought to be mandatory, what you hate ought to be illegal.
And what, precisely, is my 'kind'? And where did I advocate for making any speech illegal?
You did convince me of one thing: You are an asshole -- I've no more need to couch it with 'may.'
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Too little critical thinking ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... that maybe there's just too much free speech ...
There has always been a sh*t-ton of crackpot BS or political fabrications. Absolutely nothing new here.
What is different is that there is too little critical thinking. People judging something by the kind heart or good intentions behind it, or that if its aligned with their politics regardless of the "speech's" validity, or the it sounds nice, or that the person who said something was cute. Basically its that people are far more gullible today, even more easily tricked.
Again, its not like cons didn't exist in the past. Its just that they are easier to sell today.
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... that maybe there's just too much free speech ...
There has always been a sh*t-ton of crackpot BS or political fabrications. Absolutely nothing new here.
The major difference is that it is easier than ever to enter a bubble. Which is both good and bad, as most things are. Trans community? Great! Meet someone who accepts you for that. Questioning if you are trans? Have an issue about biological men in women's sports? Wondering if there are an scientific indicators for trans behaviors? Good luck getting anything meaningful out of the same community.
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Nawh. The term "snake oil salesman" goes back to late 1800's. And you can ferret out swindles and stupid concepts all the way back in written history. One of the Babylonian tablets is a complaint from one man writing about being cheated. Major gullible concepts go back even further.
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Nawh. The term "snake oil salesman" goes back to late 1800's. And you can ferret out swindles and stupid concepts all the way back in written history. One of the Babylonian tablets is a complaint from one man writing about being cheated. Major gullible concepts go back even further.
You are conflating gullibility's historical existence with today's level of gullibility. Its not that it is new, its that it is at a record level.
The term "snake oil salesman" is alluding to the suspicions, doubts, of past generations. I'm not sure how that counters the notion that today's denizens of the digital world have less suspicion and doubt than past generations.
This is a failure of legislature not activists (Score:1)
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Why do you need legislation for any of that? The first amendment regulates free speech, net neutrality was called common carrier - until Obama regulated what a common carrier can not get in trouble for, we have privacy laws - the 4th amendment, what does minimum wage have to do with the Internet and why regulate contract workers - they enter into a contract, government has no business or rights there.
Even open platforms have problems (Score:4, Interesting)
We need a new revolution on the internet, but people would rather get obese on Google-aid instead of drinking healthy web sites.
I have to disagree (Score:2)
The early Internet didn't allow commercial activities. You couldn't buy and sell things.
It was for education and research (and fun)
Once commercial access to the Internet was "allowed", the future became quite predictable, quite quickly. "There's gold in them there wires!"
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NAT is cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
> Back in the 1990s, we thought that a thousand website flowers would bloom
NAT/IPMasqm, the cost of static IPs, and asymmetrical bandwidth from ISPs put the nail in this coffin.
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Hosting has never been cheaper. Free for most content.
Running a site from home was never a good option. Low availablity and slow response times, easy to Slashdot.
Activists were beset from all sides... (Score:1)
It is lucky that any free Internet lasted for as long as it did. It was just sheer luck that ISPs won the race, otherwise we would be doing "internet" stuff on cable set-top boxes, paying for E-mail "stamps", and paying for online hours used, with little to no advancements.
It was also luck that the CDA got stuck down. The original drafts of that document were Draconian, where if someone sent a message with curse words passed through your network, the sender, receiver, and everyone in between could go to U
Never underestimate the power of laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, there was nothing stopping sites on the
Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. exploit our laziness, offering us easy-to-use stuff, then data-mining it or charging us up the wazoo for it. Open source advocates could've done the same, except based on my observation, their laziness is with dealing with users and accepting their feedback into their products. OSS prefers to noble/serf model, where the coders can do whatever they want, and serfs are merely people who exist to worship them and whose opinions are unworthy of consideration. Compare this to the commercial model where the coders' paychecks depends on satisfying the users, so the users actually hot the sway over the coders (albeit insulated by several layers of management).
Your error is in trying to break it down into conservative vs progressive.
PEOPLE want more censorship of ideas they disagree with, less censorship of ideas they disagree with. This is why one of the tenets of freedom of speech in the 20th century (which sadly seems to have been lost among people who grew up in the 21st century) was "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It signified how the concept of Freedom of Speech was orthogonal to personal beliefs. The principle is that people always have the right to speak their mind without fear of reprisal (sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me), it's only when they act upon disagreeable speech that we take steps to counter them.
But the current PC trend of shaming and silencing opponents has completely thrown those concepts out, and ushered in a second age of McCarthyism. Where mere association with unpopular ideas (Communism back then) was enough to get you fired, blacklisted from jobs, friends to stop associating with you. Popularity shouldn't matter. Free speech is only free speech if it applies to everyone and to all ideas regardless of how popular or mainstream they are.
Best post on /. in a very long time (Score:3)
It hails back to when people didn't worry about TL;DR responses and actually thought out their arguments.
I also agree with the concept 100%. The "natural man" in all of us want to feel good about what others are saying and have to put in as little effort as possible thinking about it.
Free speech is only free speech if it applies to everyone and to all ideas regardless of how popular or mainstream they are.
That requires effort - so why even bother to listen to it when a simple swipe makes the dissonant op
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The principle is that people always have the right to speak their mind without fear of reprisal
People should definitely have the right to speak their mind without fear of reprisal from the government. But people who speak their mind and the people who hear it have equal amounts of freedom: freedom to speak out against the person speaking and their views, even to the extent of shouting them down; freedom to refuse to assist in spreading speech by deplatforming them; freedom to refuse to listen; freedom to refuse to associate with people they dislike or disagree with by blackballing and boycotting th
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It's not. It's talking while they're talking, and talking louder. There's no rule that says free speech requires taking turns, or being polite. It's nice to be polite, but never mandatory and sometimes not a good plan.
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Then there came a moment when the first shock had worn off and when, in spite of everything-in spite of their terror of the dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years, of never complaining, never criticising, no matter what happened-they might have uttered some word of protest. But just at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of- "Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!" It went on for five
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Not all people are worth treating politely, not all opinions are valid or worth considering. Some are so abominable that they should be stamped out whenever possible. Not by the state, but by society condemning it.
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I won't! Did you think otherwise?
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You mean apart from the enormous cost of the server hardware, bandwidth and programming time?
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The level playing field of the Internet is that anyone can purchase hosting and a domain name relatively cheaply, and put together a site offering some sort of service. The thing is, 99.9% of people are too lazy to do this, and would rather use a site someone else has put together rather than build one of their own for other people to use.
This is a little disingenuous, and unnecessarily pejorative.
First of all, "anyone" can't. Sure, Joe Blow physically could register a domain name, get some hosting, and put WordPress on it, but actually getting all the pieces together and understanding enough to make it work isn't going to happen for most people.
Could a lot of people though? Sure, but most of them have better things to do. You can call that "laziness", but we all make choices. I probably intellectually could learn some Mandarin, but I don'
Com-Priv archives 1987 - 1990 (Score:2)
Find the archives for this early online group Com-Priv. I don't remember this story's assertion squaring blame against the activist pioneers framed the way the author has assigned it so matter of factly.
The real start of the Internet, bandwidth to the belly button and debate was whether data was content to be metered and charged like cable OR infrastructure plumbing charging only access to the pipe.
It was an amazing moment to see capitalism at work in a whole new medium surrounded by a democracy.
"8chan writ large" (Score:3)
Good.
An important fact about chans is that their reputation is mostly bullshit. Illegal activity happens on them at about the same rate and for the same reason as it does on Facebook: it's literally impossible to consistently police.
It needs to be understood that social media is inherently unhealthy, and the toxic content is far from the main reason. There is no more powerful tool for organizing real-world events, but if you're not doing that, the best case scenario is that you're commiserating with a bubble of people with the same flavor of crazy as you. With this in mind, the toxic content is actually a vital form of harm reduction. The people who say awful things need a place to do that so they aren't isolated in their own bullshit to the point of violence, and the people who don't want to read awful things need a constant reminder to log the fuck off.
Regulation is not now nor has ever been the issue (Score:2)
TPC grew to be an out-sized, dominant behemoth well before government regulation entered the picture. Regulation restrained further cancerous growth. That regulation was the result of the deal TPC cut to be allowed to continue to exist as a monolith.
What we're seeing is the same old scenario playing out all over again.
#ChangeTheFuckingChannel (Score:2)
People today are too damn soft.
At the least little disappointment or opposition, they begin weeping and their whole world becomes an unending tragedy.
Someone says something you don't like?
Ignore them or critique them.
Someone does something you don't like?
Ignore them or critique them.
There's 7+ BILLION people on this planet.
The chances everyone on the planet will agree 100% of the time is basically non-existent.
And we HAVE to live along side one another.
So there's a LOT of growing up to do. For everyone inv
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What can I say. I have this irrepressible streak of optimism.
But that can't last...
Too much deregulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Before 1996, the internet access was by one or two companies in every place, with dial-up to compete. To open up regulation, the Bells were deregulated, and were forced to CLEC ISPs into their exchanges.
The result was that the dial-ups moved into the exchanges, and it was "trivial" for an ISP to compete directly with the Bells. But, the deregulation still favored the ILEC such that Bell bought AT&T. Consolidation crushed the growth.
The death of the Internet was 1996. In 1996, UUNET was growing its backbone at $1M per day. After MCI bought them, that all stopped, and MCI crushed everything that made the largest ISP in the world great. MCI killed the Internet by buying something it didn't understand, and destroying it. Had MCI not bought UUNET, the "bubble" wouldn't have happened. The "old" companies were linear. UUNET would have continued to grow at a large but sustainable rate, and Global Crossing and the other upstarts that bought bandwidth, bought customers by selling at a loss then sold out to BT and the like adding no value and only enriching vulture capitalists couldn't have competed. A solid base, grown responsibly would have prevented much of the boom/bust. Sure, the server/service boom bust would have still been there, but it would have been a much smaller cycle without all the ISP boom/bust on top of it.
The capitalists bought out and killed the socialist Internet. The Internet was always a network of peers. Then the core of peers was accessed by users who paid to get on. The commoditization of the access and the loss of a core of peers made the whole system collapse to where Comcast extorts Netflix
The PC itself was the proof (Score:2)
The way the PC industry squashed everything in its path was a standout example of how free-markets always go to a monopoly. And the freer it is the faster that monopoly forms.
'Freedom of Speech' and the Internet (Score:2)
Then there were newspapers, and your 'voice', in print, would still be limited by how far it would 'carry' -- in this instance, as far as the paperboy could carry it, or as far as someone buying a copy from the newsstand could carry it.
Somewhere in there, your 'Freedom of Speech' extended to as far as the telegraph lines
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Nope. [localhistories.org] Newspapers came first.
To the opposite side of the globe? The rest is really just talking about speed of delivery. Until...
Fine. As long as I get to set them.
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Business will always figure out how to make money (Score:2)
Legal monopoly or not, businesses will figure out ways to stifle competition and make money. Business will always be one step ahead of the government. This is by design, government is, and must be, reactionary, when it comes to abuses. There is no way to predict what abuses will be invented, and trying to do so will only make criminals out of good people and direct business priorities elsewhere.
The Internete IS still basically free (Score:3)
You can post pretty much whatever you want on your own Web site, and like-minded groups can do the same. The problem is getting people to come to your site. Most regular people aren't attracted to strident, opinionated sites that lean one way or another. These are the ones being left out, for the most part.
If you want people in droves to come to your site, you have to produce and host content that people want, and avoid hosting content that repulses the majority.
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You can always find a provider, perhaps in another country, that will host your content. This is one of the beauties of the Internet: National borders don't mean much. This means that if your own country is oppressive or takes down your content, you can host it somewhere else that is more friendly.
Just too much free speech? (Score:1)
The right to publish, be the press, read, comment, speak.
If the people in charge of the world (Score:2)
The Left are far worse offenders. (Score:2)
I read the following in a 2nd Amendment debate thread elsewhere, It struck a chord, and I think it applies here as well: We anticipate and accept a certain amount of chaos as part of a free society. There will always be the misbehaved, and those that take advantage, but we realized long ago that the alternative is far too repugnant.
We (I'm pretty centrist) roll our eyes at the Nazi/etc. websites and rallies, but recognize that it could all too easily be ours or someone's grey area opinions about, I don't
real identity (Score:2)
If all internet users are forced to use their real identity, they would be much less likely to behave like assholes.
no matter how well-meaning Facebook's intentions (Score:2)