It's a shame, but it really does feel like "free speech" has become a near dog-whistle. Almost any time I hear of a service billing itself with free speech as a primary selling point, a quick visit is more than enough to turn me off of ever returning.

Besides this, there's a clear feedback loop that happens regardless of the intent of the service's creators. The people most likely to get kicked off of social media platforms nowadays seem to be far-right kooks. So when they are looking for a new platform, they'll go somewhere that advertises for no moderation. What happens next is pretty obvious; the more those sort of people migrate to the service, the more visible their content will be to any visitor. And that content tends to be pretty effective at driving away non-kooky users, which leads to a reinforcing cycle that, over time, turns you into yet another take on Voat.

I'm about as close to a free-speech absolutist as there is, and it's very frustrating that the market for these platforms seems to be settling into ruts where we have to choose between the hyper-conformity of highly managed platforms and the dumpster fires of the unmanaged platforms. I think the feedback loop you describe is a big part of it. I also wonder if we're experiencing a decline in education and critical thinking skills that could be fueling these ruts.

This greatly saddens me. Can't there be some way to build a platform that encourages intelligent, reasonable, polite debate? Discussions of ideas based on their merits instead of personal attacks and tribal allegiances? Some way to provide free speech without providing free amplification? Has society devolved to a point where this is no longer possible?

> Can't there be some way to build a platform that encourages intelligent, reasonable, polite debate?

Yes. They are called journals and academic conferences.

Most people aren't interested in these things and if you build forums for everybody, it definitely will not turn into scholarly debate.

There can, I’m surprised no one has implemented this:

Start everyone off with a maximum influence credit of say 10 people, like in your local neighborhood.

As you contribute to thoughtful discussion, as determined by the diversity and ratio of up/down arrows, your maximum influence credit grows as a function of your geography.

> There can, I’m surprised no one has implemented this:

The reason is you're inappropriately applying an technical solution to a social problem.

You also make at least one critical error:

> As you contribute to thoughtful discussion, as determined by the diversity and ratio of up/down arrows

Upvotes/downvotes pretty much never measure "thoughtfulness," because for them to do so would require a level of social cohesion that would probably make upvotes/downvote unnecessary.

Taking this idea further, maybe part of the problem is that platforms reduce the quality metric for posts down to effectively a single dimension: upvotes / likes / thumbs up.

What if there were separate dimensions for: Factually accurate, Morally agreeable, and Polite?

A machine learning algorithm could quickly work out which groups of users have different ideological positions, and which topics are likely to devolve into flame wars, so it could require that users have a minimum politeness score to be able to participate in a debate.

It could also, as you say, check for echo chambers forming and incentivise people with differing opinions to enter a discussion to balance it out.

This might be the most HN thing I've ever read.

Yes, I believe HN does a pretty good job with this. The only way to provide what you are asking is active moderation, or the opposite of absolute free speech. There will always be people for whom the only solution is to ban them off your platform to create a good environment.

I tend to straddle the line between Republican and libertarian, so I consider myself more conservative than liberal. But I have to agree with you. I recently tried out Voat. Holy hell, what a dumpster fire.

Can we agree that there is a difference between an on screen nipple or saying fuck on TV and the POTUS actively undermining democracy?

The general talk of free speech and censoring is not really useful here without specifics. Just like someone can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, there are other things we are finding that may be similar in nature. I think a more useful discussion could be around the specifics. Should the POTUS be able to communicate anything they want? Should platforms be forced to carry it?

So you think Trump is the first POTUS to make objectively false statements and have those amplified over mass media?

I think he’s the first to do so on the scale of thousands of such statements.

First? No. Most prolific? I think so. He's also one of the first to make heavy use of direct social media, which is different than mass media of old.

Notice also I didn't say Trump, but POTUS in general. What do we want to do here going forward? Should the POTUS be treated differently than a private citizen?

What this current period reminds me of historically is McCarthyism, except we have the POTUS lobbing baseless claims instead of a senator. I don't think McCarthyism impacted the general public as much as claims undermining the election does though.

The problem is not all the claims you might consider baseless actually are and neither you nor I have any way of really knowing.

Which one hasn't, might be a better question.

>the POTUS actively undermining democracy?

I think the "POTUS actively undermining democracy" is a gaslighting / pearl clutching for what is a crass person but otherwise business as usual in the White House...

Apparently Patriot Act, mass surveillance, Guantanamo, the "WMD", Echelon, trillion dollar bailouts, false congress testimonies, etc weren't "undermining democracy", but an old guy tweeting some braggadocio/BS is.

And those that designed, established, and voted those things (e.g. Clinton, Bush, and Obama) are all love for each other, and all stand "united" against the "big threat" that is this guy...

Talk about a circus...

We're downvoting you, but there is a valid point: many of those things are also bad. The false narrative that started the Iraq war had bi-partisan support and was popular with the public.

Treating everything as if there were only two sides is part of the problem. But I see dissent within the democrat party over these issues - and not within the republican party, who have supported everything that Trump has said and done.

I think this reveals that the conservative sudden claim for free speech is exactly this kind of hypocrisy?

You can be against censorship and also be against the type of racist, xenophobic, sexist etc content you find unchecked on places like Parler, Gab, 4chan.

Kind of like how you can be against crime and also against prisons.

The fact is that every decision is a balance of consequences.

It's not that simple. Xenophobic content, for example, is "unchecked" on any U.S. owned platform, so is some racism, but not racism against black people specifically. At the same time in most other countries in the world racism, and especially racism against black people, isn't even a thing, but xenophobia is. So it's very unlikely for someone to truly sincerely be both against racist content and xenophobic content at the same time and even more unlikely to also sincerely be against censorship, then it's getting into very dystopian views territory, you can't hold such views without being exposed to massive amounts of propaganda.

I think this comment gets at part of the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100584

"free speech" of this type also doesn't really exist on the internet - because bots are a thing. You can't have a digital equivalent of a town square because whatever else you do, it's simply not possible to create in-person pseudo-anonymous supporters.

But on the internet, this is easy - it's a damn service you can buy and it scales on the orders of 1-to-1000 or (usually much more) voices.

CAPTCHA's don't solve it - because this is also a service - breaking CAPTCHA's by the hundred and supply account keys in bulk.

You simply cannot have a digital space which works like a physical one, and as such you cannot meaningfully not moderate it because human participants cannot out-pace bots and sockpuppet accounts. Facebook's entire, unearned initial trust was because notionally it solved this problem - people forget it was initially limited to student's with student email addresses at school's it knew. It was very much, initially, exclusive enough that it kept something of a lid on this problem.

The feeling about it has persisted far beyond the now non-existence of this mechanism.

This is exactly why I believe a dutiful representation of the 1st amendment in the Internet includes anti-botting measures, since bots flood the town-hall with un-measured broadcasting, shuttering out any and all active speech. But beyond anti-botting and one or two other very minor holds, a public forum should have no other restrictions of moderation. There is an exact restriction needed for the moderation to itself not be speech-impacting either by too much or too little of it.

The problem you will run into is that the 1st amendment is a US thing and the internet is a global thing.

Well all the major internet firms are based in the United States, if they want to hold to foreign markets they would need to hold separate divisions in separate countries, or in coalition dealings. There is a reason USA law Section 203 debates (which doesn't address the core problem) are so contentious regarding Social Media.

Agree, we will likely end up with right leaning town square and left leaning town square. And because every company seems to think they need to pick a side on political topics, it may extend beyond speech platforms. For instance I wouldn't be surprised if at one point conservative leaning viewers would migrate away from the likes of netflix for been fed up of being preached woke catechism in every TV show. And perhaps calling your customers sexists and bigots isn't the best advertising strategy for shaving products. Etc.

Netflix consumption is 90% from recommendations page right?

So they could segregate every side into their own little recommendation bubble, if they have the content range for it. Seems to work for youtube.

That assumes that content from both sides of the political spectrum gets produced. Not my experience recently.

I really hope Netflix learns from the awfulness of Star Trek Discovery.

Plenty of people love Star Trek Discovery. It’s successful enough that it’s already been renewed for a 4th season by CBS.

Please explain.

Netflix doesn't carry it in my country.

Star Trek Discovery is awful for many reasons.

How do they intersect?

Discovery had a ropey start with the secrecy in the first few episodes, but it really grew in S2, and S3 is awesome.

As a Star Trek fan and appreciator of well-written TV, I can't agree with this at all. The first season was hot garbage with maybe 3 watchable episodes, S2 was a little better but most of that was Pike. S3, despite finally being free of continuity baggage, is so far about as poorly written as S2.

From what I've heard (I don't use Parler) one of their selling points it actually that they're quicker than Twitter as censoring.

Twitter allows (and promotes?) hate mobs while Parler supposedly doesn't.

How does that work? Since most of the hate mobs are in Parler now?

> most of the hate mobs are in Parler

Unless you provide proof, there is no reason to discuss this.

There's no hate mob in Parler, they're all conservatives, why would they hate each other.

Because at this point, there is a sharp divide between conservatives who care about fiscal responsibility and family values, and "conservatives" who care about unmasking (((conspirators))) in pizza restaurants. Although to be fair, the platform will likely attract nothing but the latter.

Not sharp enough to say, vote for a better candidate

"both sides" eh?

Both sides.

> There's no hate mob in Parler, they're all conservatives, why would they hate each other.

There’s no hate in the KKK. They are all white. Why would they hate each other?

See the problem with this construction?

Everybody likes the "in-group" and hates the rest. Although the word hate tends to mainly be used about other people.

Absolutely not.

You are implying that hating people based on something they cannot control (e.g. ethnicity) is normal.

Actually that's not what I said it all. The concept on in/out-group can be completely arbitrary, e.g. assigned by flipping a coin. The principle still holds.

That said, since you bring it up, the history of humanity is largely the history of war between different ethnic groups. So yes, hating people based on ethnicity has been the norm for most of human history. It's still largely the case in varying degrees in different parts of the world.

> since you bring it up

Nice try.

> So yes, hating people based on ethnicity has been the norm for most of human history

There you go.

And yet history proves you wrong, starting with the roman empire and the middle ages.

> Nice try.

You did. Right here: "e.g. ethnicity". That's a quote from you. I mentioned in-group, you added ethnicity.

> There you go. And yet history proves you wrong, starting with the roman empire and the middle ages.

At this point I wonder if you are trolling. The roman empire waged war on pretty much every single other ethnic group around them and enslaved them. Which the other ethnic groups around them were also trying to do at the time. Then we have the middle ages with the crusades and such... etc etc etc

> It should be a feature of your platform, not the only thing going for it.

edit: oops pasted wrong thing!

Totally agree with this. It should be baked in, not the defining feature.

They can claim that all they want but a quick glance at their sign up flow shows you that they’re really only interested in peddling extreme right wing personalities and associated accounts.

And it can’t be a coincidence that “Gaming” with a capital G is the only topic that I saw suggested for me to follow.