However I think that this hypothetical scenario will never happen because the idea will never reach this wide adoption. It'll inevitably be fragmented into a few segments with rules and moderation. Want comments from the theoretical physicist community? Subscribe to sci.data.org in your extension config. Want to know what 4chan folks think? Add unfiltered.comments.com to your config - it'll be an unreadable mess anyway and you'll need to make some non-trivial effort to add that url.
But I think there will be an archive with all the comments for research purposes: physically, it will be a big data server that keeps connections with all other data servers and pulls all the comments it can.
How is an open source browser going to ban an extension that throngs of people want?
OK. Explaining ruins the humor but I'll explain.
The pithy point I was making is that a bunch of words on a comment thread is not likely to harm humanity any more than the printing press did.
Or the writing on a toilet stall wall for that matter, now that I think about it.
The larger point I was alluding to is that the people who would call for the banning of text from a printing press are probably the people we should really be worried about.
Free speech says “yes”, but if you find a way to stably write sentences on the sky, you will quickly discover that the majority of people do not agree that free speech applies to writing in the sky.
There’s a nuance that we as tech haven’t explored properly between “you have the right to speak unhindered by the government” and “you have the right to impose your speech upon an unwilling audience”, which relates to why street speech generally can’t use PAs or bullhorns without triggering a local government response. Similarly, this is why coordinated protests must be super careful to block their rowdier elements.
Setting up a system of global commentary that “grafts”, “appends”, “overlays”, “applies” a collection of third-party uncontrolled speech onto a non-consenting website — so, literally, the addon linked by this post — could very well be considered “coordinating and imposing your speech on an unwilling audience”. This, then, is the ethical and social policy question.
Does this addon hinder free speech by encouraging and enabling unwanted, uncontrolled speech to be inserted into - using DOM overlays or browser sidebars - someone else’s controlled private forum?
For whatever reason, tech in general seems absolutely terrified to consider this question. I suspect that’s partly because it is a nuanced consideration that violates two popular tech precepts:
1) “uncontrolled speech is an inalienable right”
2) “anything that can be done technically must be permitted to be done”
Neither of those principles is true in general society, and so I hope someday tech confronts this dissonance and resolves it - rather than simply pretending that “this addon isn’t illegal” is sufficient to defend ignoring the wider ethical issues of its effects.
It's ridiculous to consider that to be "imposing your speech on an unwilling audience".
Your sky writing argument is also ridiculous as the difference between sky writing and a website should be obvious. The internet is not the real world.
You are being illogical and I'm done explaining.
The implied assumption here is that it's a "basic problem" that most sites do not have a readily-discoverable public commentary board.
Sites such as Reddit, HN, and Facebook are popular, readily-discoverable public commentary boards about other sites. This much is true. However, it is incorrect to say that the absence of this is a "basic problem" as stated above. Given the past few years* of events and discoveries about the human impacts of these public comment boards, it may be that we incorrectly solved a "problem" that turned out to be a feature keeping humanity from harming itself with its own speech.
* three examples, cited by paraphrase: "speech encouraging harm to others"; "coordinated worldwide attacks upon individuals"; "like counts may do psychological harm"