Owner does not seem to be the best communicator, he admits this and says in his defense it has been three days of nonstop emails and calls that he answers even in the middle of the night. So maybe he's not thinking clearly.

Still, pretty ridiculous.

"So we have a solution if you or your family would still like to be able to connect to Facebook or Twitter please let us know and we can add you to the allowed list to be able to not be blocked [...]"

They could have saved a lot of time and anguish if they had simply said "no" to those who originally wanted them blocked.

  they apparently blocked FB and Twitter

I can't tell if this announcement is parody.

Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/idaho-internet-provide..." on this server. Reference #18.6e8e7b5c.1610406044.d4bc76a

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/citing-censorship-...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971

> If your organization uses web tools that allow you to track cookies or the IP addresses of people who visit your website from EU countries, then you fall under the scope of the GDPR. Practically speaking, it’s unclear how strictly this provision will be interpreted or how brazenly it will be enforced. Suppose you run a golf course in Manitoba focused exclusively on your local area, but sometimes people in France stumble across your site. Would you find yourself in the crosshairs of European regulators? It’s not likely. But technically you could be held accountable for tracking these data.

So, I've always wondered what they would do? yell at you harshly ?

But I also understand why US companies are doing this. It's kinda like when my dad got parking and speeding tickets sent home from a foreign country. Most likely nothing would happen if he didn't pay them, but you never know when you want to go back to holiday in $country, and the border agent sees them in your "permanent record".

It's at least imaginable that the EU _could_ do something similar, ask for a fine and if not dealt with, the company (or even worse directors of the company) getting some kind of dent in the proverbial permanent record.

(I'm not saying that it's likely, but if EU visitors aren't a big user base for your local regional news paper, I see why it's so tempting to just check the "Block EU visitors" checkbox.)

Downvoters (not necessarily you): This question is why I made sure to quote the paragraph, rather than just link it. "It does" is the lawmakers intent, regardless of feasibility in enforcing it. Avoiding the question entirely is why various sites have decided to block EU access.

No, it does not, anymore than Iran or China get to dictate rules, and for the same reason: the EU has no jurisdiction and no leverage. The EU of course is free to setup their own Great Firewall and block off anyone they dislike, and for people or businesses with assets under their jurisdiction they have an angle to go after that way. But a person or business entirely out of their territory is completely free to flip them the proverbial (or not so proverbial) bird. That is the fundamental nature of "law".

I'll add it's curious this seems to come up on HN with regards to the GDPR so regularly too, precisely because of my first sentence here. It speaks to a real lack of foundation in understanding the basics of law. Are people writing this actually thinking through the implications of every country being able to unilaterally dictate practice worldwide? Or do they think only the EU has this power?

But even if a company doesn't operate in the EU today, it may want to in the future. Or it may want to be acquired by a company that does. The future is unknowable, so I'd imagine they were advised to follow the law, even if there would be no immediate consequences to breaking it.

No, it doesn't, as you yourself admit two sentences later when you write:

>You're pointing out that they may not be able to enforce the law against an entity that does not operate in the EU.

Yes, which by definition means the law does not apply to that person to entity. That is the fundamental nature of law and sovereignty.

>The law itself says so.

Completely irrelevant, in the same way it's irrelevant if you or I order some societal change on our say so. Law is about power. And again, also in the exact same way that it's completely irrelevant if Pakistan or whomever have blasphemy laws on the books they say apply to everyone, China laws against "disrupting society" or someone sues a US entity under the UK's very plaintiff friendly libel laws. They can all be told to pound sand.

>But even if a company doesn't operate in the EU today, it may want to in the future. Or it may want to be acquired by a company that does. The future is unknowable, so I'd imagine they were advised to follow the law, even if there would be no immediate consequences to breaking it.

Sure, but that doesn't mean the law "applies". A company can voluntarily take whatever actions it wishes that it believes may benefit it in the future, but a core point of law is that it's INvoluntary. Since the GDPR doesn't apply to anyone outside of EU jurisdiction (or under treaties giving it local effect), they may choose to run it because they think it's a good idea, or not. Those within EU jurisdiction do not get that choice.

They claim that any company that has dealings with an EU citizen has to follow their laws. Of course they can’t do that. They could have passed a law forbidding their citizens from interacting with businesses that didn’t follow certain rules, since they have the ability to make rules for their citizens, but for some odd reason they decided not to.

Yes, they can.

So can (and does!) the US.

Either may have trouble enforcing them in some cases, but that’s true even of laws within their own territorial domain.

No, the whole point of sovereignty is that if you have it, you are ultimately the arbiter of your laws, including the bounds of where they apply.

You may have practical problems getting your hands on people to apply them, of course, but that’s a separate issue.

No, it's a total bullshit false equivalency. Basic physical infrastructure, using public rights of way and subsidies, that is for most people going to be their sole and exclusive choice, is not in any fucking way the same as social media. Stop it.

This is such a ludicrous statement I honestly am having trouble thinking out to respond. Companies in different industries being treated differently is the universal rule throughout the world and human history. Airliners aren't accountants aren't computer hardware manufacturers aren't electrical companies aren't sports operations aren't restaurants aren't railways aren't... etc etc. A physical infrastructure company isn't an internet platform, and shouldn't be. Seriously what!?

>your frame here is kind of irrelevant to the question of whether there's irony to be had from censoring someone over censorship

No, it's not remotely irrelevant precisely because different areas of society have different rules. However much you hate Free Speech saurik, at least in America it is the law, and the humans that make up, own, and direct the entities of Twitter or Facebook have the exact same 1st Amendment rights that the rest of us do. It's not "censorship" for you, me, or any other regular private entity to refuse to actively provide help for others' speech. You aren't entitled to my money or property to spread your message, nor am I to yours, unless we are making use of certain public resources.

And that last bit brings us back to ISPs, or USPS/FedEx/UPS for that matter. A physical infrastructure company using public money and rights of way and escaping liability for providing carriage via Common Carrier does not have those same rights, anymore than a public university has the same rights as a private one.

Section 230 was created when Twitter (and the likes) were much less important for public discourse.

I'm willing to bet that it's going to be amended, just like the EU version of it was.

Consider this precedent :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

> The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in.

> In its conclusion, the Court stated that it was essentially weighing the rights of property owners against the rights of citizens to enjoy freedom of press and religion. The Court noted that the rights of citizens under the Bill of Rights occupy a preferred position. Accordingly, the Court held that the property rights of a private entity are not sufficient to justify the restriction of a community of citizens' fundamental rights and liberties.

Section 230 (which was part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 10 years before Twitter was founded) has nothing to do with this. This is about the First Amendment. Section 230, by allowing moderation that isn't 100% perfect, certainly does encourage forums to be much more tolerant towards speech since only those who make the speech will be liable. But if Section 230 didn't exist, it wouldn't stop bans one single bit and in fact would only encourage vastly more stringent moderation and banning (assuming any unvetted user created content continued to be allowed at all on the general web).

>Consider this precedent :

Look, particularly with 1A SCOTUS has made many changes over the years and EXCLUSIVELY in the direction of more, not less. So if you're going to cite very old case law you really, really need to double check to what extent it's been superseded since. In this particular case the cite is in fact done for you, because if you'd actually read all the way to the bottom of the very Wikipedia[1] piece you cited you'd have noticed that it already has dealt with this:

>In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh v. Alabama* and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it.

>Recently the case has been highlighted as a potential precedent to treat online communication media like Facebook as a public space to prevent it from censoring speech. However, in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck* the Supreme Court found that private companies only count as state actors for first amendment purposes if they exercise “powers traditionally exclusive to the state."*

SCOTUS, particularly the current one, isn't going to eliminate the general 1A rights of organizations despite the authoritarian fever dreams of many.

----

1: Incidentally, the end of 230 would mean that Wikipedia-the-organization would be directly liable for everything users contributed which would result in certain changes, the exact nature of which will be left as an exercise to the reader.

That's one way to look at it. On the other hand :

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

> smart lawyers will say that the best way to avoid that kind of liability is not to moderate at all. So Section 230 explicitly overruled that judicial decision, and eliminated liability for moderation choices.

(which would also be bad of course)

So I wouldn't be surprised if in the next years we would see changes :

There could be an intermediary status between hoster and editor : a "displayer" would not be liable for what its users do. It would (unlike a hoster) be liable for the moderating choices that he decides to do.

There might be additional requirements to benefit from the hosting status : of size, power, economic model, &c.

https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/10/16/un-tiers-mediaire/ (fr)

(Some of this has now been implemented in the EU.)

As for Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, you'll note that it was decided by 1 voice, and there recently was a change in the SC, and the USA generally seems to have entered a very unstable time, so who knows what the future holds ?

  Twitter or Facebook have the exact same 1st Amendment rights

For example, Western society tolerates to some extent (and it should) bigots, racists, jingoists, people who take religious texts as literal manuals to life, antivaxxers, antimilitary activists, anti police activists, anti globalist activists, environmental activists, etc. These groups are known to be intolerant of some things and some classes of people. And society should tolerate them and allow them the same guarantees of free speech as to other people. There may be exceptions like neonazi/supremacist propaganda in Europe etc. but each exception should be carefully introduced and accepted in the population.

You have to imagine they realize the nature of it. But it's kind of like "this statement is false." It's a challenge to have somebody stop them. And if that happens, they turn it around the other way.

For north Idaho I'm sure that's the only option in town for high speed internet.

"Build your own Facebook"

"Build your own hosting service"

"Build your own iphone/android"

"Build your own ISP"

I don't like where we're heading

An "email like" structure, rather than single company lock in.

Cool.

I guess "reading the entire article" isn't as catchy as trying to get a quip in the the HN comments.

I think they are back-pedaling after seeing the public response.

It has more leftists than southern Idaho, but still, it's not exactly a bastion of progressive thinking. In fact, the state legislator doesn't have a single dem elected north of the boise metro, so I'm not sure how you're quantifying it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

Idaho (particularly northern idaho) is still nazi town.

Fun story, the guy from the oatmeal grew up in northern idaho and made a blog post about the nazis there.

https://theoatmeal.com/blog/bus

Can you name any ten Nazis there? Five? Three?

Then what? Residents won't have any choice guaranteeing free access to all websites.

I don't see that working.

The worse one would be that they actually can block sites and access to the internet is forever changed, now at the will of the ISPs. (fortunately, this would be more plausible under a Republican government, and they're leaving.)

Assuming private companies have the moral right to fully regulate their services, they're just blocking a specific resource for violating their policy. If you build your case on blocking Facebook, you must argue that the utility chain leads all the way to Facebook. It is all or nothing.

The reason something should be an utility has to do with competition and how much power customers. The primary argument in favor of having Internet providers be an utility is that creating an competing Internet is not really an realistic concept, and the power customers of ISP has in their customer-provider relation is close to nothing. Utility laws exist to solve this specific situation in the market, and making every single company an utility would not be very efficient way to make use of those laws.

1. The utility of an ISP is that of an ad hoc communication platform. Here we must ask why an ISP is an ad hoc communication platform and Facebook is not. Either both are or neither is.

2. The utility of an ISP is derived from providing access to Facebook. Again it is either both or none.

edit: s/an ad hoc/a/

An ISP hooks up the wires, lays and maintains the infrastructure for web connections for which you can build communications on but are not in themselves sufficient as communications. You can also build more than just communications on ISP infrastructure.

As examples, you watch Netflix on the infrastructure of an ISP but Netflix is not communications and you may bank on your bank's website on an ISP and that is not communications those are movie watching and banking respectfully.

I could continue to provide examples, but my point being is an ISP is not in itself sufficient for communications to be established and that you can establish more than communications on an ISP and that is why I don't agree.

This would be like Amazon banning a specific end user from accessing and AWS hosted product.

This implies you agree with the ban on Network Neutrality, I do not.

It's about supporting authoritarianism & getting people to tolerate the idea.

Sometimes people resign in protest knowing full well the person replacing them will acquiesce more...

Amazon, Twitter, FB, Apple, Google—none of them have to tolerate calling for murder and destruction and they aren't going to risk liability by ignoring it and letting people come to harm. If you feel like not being able to call for lynchings of left leaning Americans is curtailing your speech then you need to reflect on why you want Americans dead so badly.

They went out of business within the year.

Ah the good old days where people actually had more than one choice of internet provider. I miss those days.

In civisilised society / discourse one must assume rules of engagement in order for co-operative interaction between agents to take place. To take an extreme demonstration - if you club me over the head and steal my meat while I approach you to trade, then a co-operative interaction cannot take place; physically so.

If we impose the additional rule that we must continue to observe those rules of engagement with agents who themselves have ignored them - then it's pretty clear (at least in the extreme example) that we expose ourselves to exploitation. And many philosophies and cultures do impose this rule (Christianity - for example).

In the process of discourse - it's plausible to argue that the ability to express oneself is one such rule of engagement. So, this ISP might feel that FB etc have broken the rules of engagment, and they might feel that they are under no obligation to adhere to those rules for agents that themselves aren't playing ball.

Now you can challenge this line of thinking on all sorts of interesting grounds - and I encourage folks to do so. However - the discussion gets nuanced fast...

I don't think you can just claim this action as prima-facie self contradictory - and to do so, I feel exposes the bias and lack of generosity in those attempting understand this action.

There's the Progressive Left who point at the established Democrats and the mainstream media for tactics used to hurt progressive causes (like Bernie's nomination) [1].

There's the general Left who point at Trump for his abuses of power and propaganda [2].

There's Trump and his supporters who point to election fraud [3].

There's the general Right who point to the Democrats for schemes to pack the court [4].

I don't want to suggest that all of these claims are equally valid, but I do believe supporters of these sides all strongly believe these claims and are willing to use them as justification for bending the rules. In fact, I believe it would be foolish not to, given that is seems clear no matter who your opponent is, they will certainly bend the rules given the chance.

What I meant by "sadly" in my previous comment is I see the situation in the US in contrast to a government like New Zealand. In New Zealand opposing sides aren't focused on subverting the rules but instead sometimes work together to fuel positive outcomes for the whole country [5]. "Researchers have pored over the views of nearly 20,000 Kiwis and found, over the past decade at least, we haven't drifted toward polarised politics". [6]

[1] https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1295957460726030337 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2020/el... [4] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pressure-on-democrats-commi... [5] https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711820023/new-zealand-passes-... [6] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/partisan-politics-are-kiwi-vot...

Courts Mostly Back FCC Assault on Net Neutrality https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx5a9/courts-mostly-back-fc...

"Recent studies have found that state-level religious and political conservatism is positively associated with various aggregate indicators of interest in pornography. "

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231209084...

No matter stance you take on it, the CESTA amendment to 230 protections holds pornhub accountable, meaning they nuked all their non-verified user content.

I'll reiterate that this should be a starting point, not necessarily a hard and fast rule - there may be more nuanced situations where the standards that are appropriate for the government are inappropriate for social networks.

There's also the question of what levels of the stack it's appropriate for any censorship to occur at. Even if censorship of a particular class of speech is appropriate in general, it may not be appropriate for an ISP specifically to conduct that censorship.

But society is losing sight of that.

Also the suspension/bans of individual people and groups for violating well established ToS by a private company, vs banning entire sites out of petulance with no actual grounds.

The obvious follow up is for FB, et al to block the ISP so everyone switches to a different ISP.

I thought ISPs were classified as common carriers and thus are obligated? Or are we saying we _don't_ want net neutrality now?

So it's all good your ISP can do whatever.

Thinking about it this way, what if you worked for Facebook or Twitter as WFH and they blocked these sites. What now, do you move? Get a new job? Suppose they also block VPN traffic as that is a known way around their blocking.

Censorship is just a classification of what they are doing. In both cases, it is selectively application of blocking of contents based on one's political believes. Calling them censorship is not an assessment whether they have a legal/illegal/legit/reasonable/unreasonable cause to carry out such acts.

I just find this approach somewhat ironic.

I'd be happy if every mainstream ISP does this. Not because I agree to be clear, but because we could use some more competition in the market.

Now where does blocking facebook fall in this distinction. If you block it to hide information, then it is censorship. If you block it because of privacy reasons it is not censorship. This case is not as clear cut as either of those examples, but I would still say the motivation is not to hide information, and so not call it censorship.

But having said that, this is an action by a small isolated ISP. They are completely powerless compared to facebook or twitter. They only thing this amounts to is a symbolic statement of disapproval. It is not surprising that they are now backtracking as if they kept it up, they would have started losing customers.

Finally if ISP's start blocking websites it will quickly turn ugly, and I hope this does not happen.

Edit: it seems the ISP is walking this back already.

While true on a global scale, internet access is not exactly a super competitive market. I think any one ISP likely has significant local power over individuals who live in their service area.

I.e., is an ISP implicitly contracted to route packets between its customers and the entire publicly visible Internet?

Plenty of ISPs block certain traffic. Anything from DDOS to torrents.

My impression is that some commercial practices can be widespread, and still fail under eventual court challenge. I'm thinking of the U.S. case regarding the advertised-vs-visible diagonal sizes of CRT monitors back in the day.

Not any crazier than losing your sponsorship because of something your father said before you were even born.

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/...

If you're genuinely worried about this with regards to your ISP, consider writing to your lawmakers that ISPs should be treated like utilities as well.

I also disagree with what the other companies did in the first place is censoring. They're removing rule breakers. You can still share your political views, just don't organize and call for the government to be other thrown because you believe everything you read online. You wouldn't freak out because a child porn distribution platform was turned off and claim it's censored.

They don’t regulate transmission because that is federal territory.

Now the article is slightly misleading because they didn’t block Twitter and Facebook globally. They only blocked traffic for those users that asked them to do so.

Washington's net neutrality law covers home service.[1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/first-state-net-...

Why do you say that?

For the record, I don't think that twitter or facebook banning/blocking whatever they want is censorship[2], legally speaking... And neither is this, for the same reasons.

[1]: And some others who don't care and go as far as to say that censorship is okay and free speech doesn't work, among other things.

[2]: Unethical, manipulative, a betrayal of the spirit if not the law of "free speech"? Totally, but still not censorship.

c/o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

my comment: There is no automated way to define justice and tolerance. You can't take a shortcut from thinking.

Until the blocked customers get all up in arms, and the ISP backtracks and says "whoa, will add you to a white list".

How about the fucktards just install pihole at home and block Facebook and Twitter themselves?

You could always subscribe to a VPN service and bypass the shitshow.

No one pays money to post or read FB and Twitter and participation is voluntary.

But if I pay money to an ISP and the ISP decides that I can't access certain web services for what are essentially random (political) reasons with no legal justification beyond "We don't like them" - there's a good chance that's not going to end well if it gets to court.

Reference #18.4c4fXXXXXXXXXXX

Eh, from Europe.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/citing-censorship-...

BTW, is anyone else getting "You don't have permission to access <URL> on this server" on that page too?

This would’ve just been for web browsers pointing directly to facebook’s website, right?

Not necessarily other Facebook-owned companies?

What about Facebook ads/tracking on the pages of Facebook customers?

I really don't see how that's possible

I know it’s a hugely important question that’ll have repercussions for years to come, and I know if you want an intelligent debate on the matter, HN is probably the best place for it, but politics sincerely gives me stress, and I use Hacker News because it is (or was) one of the few places that generally avoids it

I’m of the position that the human brain isn’t really geared for dealing with dangers on a geopolitical level

This is a little amateur psychologyish, but when you perceive danger, the brain releases chemicals that won’t let you rest until you’re convinced you’re free of that danger - the fight or flight response. So far this is essentially common wisdom, but - and here’s where I stray into the region of am-psych - I suspect that our unconscious mind finds it difficult to distinguish between immediate dangers and threats to our life, and geopolitical dangers that, while important, are rarely a threat to your life

The problem, for me, lies in the fact that in the news media, with a few exceptions (Reuters, BBC News), and social media, with almost no exceptions, the political content which rises to the top is the content that is most capable of triggering that response in you

If this wasn’t the case, then it would be okay, as the content would be easy to avoid, but I am weak to it, most of us are. The news media has what’s getting on for centuries of practice in triggering these emotions, triggering your unconscious mind to chemically scream at you to fight or run. Who am I to withstand that?

What I think this means is that if you keep up with politics consistently, and allow it in, you will either be in a near constant state of fight or flight, or you will become numb. Either state, while both useful in certain circumstances, is not pleasant. It’s not conducive to a happy life. It’s stress or jade

So this is my impassioned plea to the mods: Please prune back the constant political content. It’s unhealthy, it’s not what I’m here for, and, I suspect, although I may be wrong, that others feel the same way. Of course, if this comment gets heavily downvoted, (assuming people even read it) then I accept that I am simply in the minority, and that’s okay

>In a phone call with KREM, the owner of the company, Brett Fink, again said the websites would only be blocked for customers who asked.

>"We've had customers asked to be blocked by it. That is what the email was about, so no we are not blocking anybody, only the ones that have asked for it," Fink said.

So the entire premise of the article up to that point, as well as the article's subtitle are based on a non-event.

-- edited for formatting

They have a screen shot of the email that says they'd block it for everyone and if you want it unblocked you'd have to call and ask for that. It's a report of an entire event, from start to finish, not just the part where the ISP realized they were making a mistake and decided to change their mind.

Some examples of isps meddling with unencrypted connections:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh

https://thenextweb.com/insights/2017/12/11/comcast-continues...

Personally I think it makes sense for Twitter and Facebook to use their power to prevent Trump's false claims about election fraud, especially given the harm it appears to be fostering [1]. That said, I believe there are many good faith arguments about why censorship in this instance could be harmful to the aims of a free society. However, I don't believe "right of free speech" or "censorship is always bad" are good arguments, instead I would like to see arguments about the purported benefits/harms to society of this censorship.

[1] I'm not the arbiter of truth here, there are many court cases affirming no voter fraud and the recent Capitol Building invasion is demonstration of the potential harm.

Welp, it's a race to the bottom of the tech stack now.

Telling 150 million people to sit down and shut up because their party happened to lose an election is a really, really bad idea that has no possible good ending for those doing it.

What country have we shifted to talking about, because no US party has 150 million people, and the one that recently lost a national election—if you apply the percentages from Party ID surveys to the whole US adult population–has about half that many who identify with it.

No, its not. Its not even the 21% of voters who actively support the storming of the Capitol [0]. Its just the even smaller group actively advocating new and further political violence.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

46.8% of the people who care about this stuff are being told that they no longer have the right to speak on platforms where it would matter. That's a very serious problem.

Yes, as I said we are talking about a much smaller group than even that. Nor are we actually talking about silencing them, we're talking about certain forums not serving as megaphones for them.

> We are talking about silencing an entire party of people.

No, we aren’t. I mean, not with any connection to reality, we aren’t.

> Donald Trump received approximately 46.8% of the popular vote.

Yes, but no major platform is adopting a rule that would cutoff access to people who voted for Donald Trump, so that’s not relevant.

> Is that not slightly less than half of the voting public?

Yes, but no one is talking about silencing people based on membership in that group.

> You’re talking about silencing slightly less than 1/2 of the the people who care about this stuff.

No, literally no one is talking about doing that.

I really hope you're right, but I am also very skeptical. For every centralized platform that a community is cut off from, another centralized platform opens to accept them.

And then you have decentralized platforms that specifically build in censorship in the stupidest places [0] in an effort to stave off "rightoids." It seems most of the people building the decentralized platforms aren't actually interested in the merits of open communication or free thought, but rather pushing their inconsistent, amorphous identity politics bullshit down everyone's throats (and I'm saying this as a communist). They bring their ruling-class-approved "us vs them" mentality into the platforms they are building and try to force participants to "bend the knee" or be banished. Sure, you can run your own instance, but why would you on a platform where you're not sure where you stand? Decentralized social media platforms will need to exercise a bit more tolerance before they see mass adoption.

I'm excited for things like Holochain though, which might help to turn everything on its head.

[0]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816

i do think you mean 74M? anyways i agree with you, it's a recipe for disaster. (and i'm not sure why you're being down-voted here.)

it'd be much more healthy to actively engage this cohort of people; allow them to present "facts" as they see fit and offer evidence to either support or refute their views.