For instance, in the not-so-distant past many Americans found interracial marriage morally abhorrent. Wikipedia says only 5% of Americans thought interracial marriage should be legal in the 1950s. In today’s environment, that leads to deplatforming those who would’ve supported marriage equality. This is not something we would desire.
People are full of prejudices. I’m sure our grandchildren will look back in horror at ours. Let’s not deplatform them for that.
Your evidence with regards to interracial marriages does not support your point. Whether "something can be discussed" is an entirely different question than than "do you support position X". The very fact that they were able to take a poll is strong evidence that talking about it was not verboten.
What
The idea that algorithms are "neutral" is laughable. There is a loosely organized group of activists out there who are aware of how these algorithms work and actively manipulate them.
"Engagement metrics" are nothing more than these people pushing the buttons.
So why do tech companies cling to this line of being neutral when no one really seems to accept it and they themselves have no intention of being neutral? I feel like there wouldn't be any conflict about policies or complaints they have to deal with if they were more honest. Maybe it has to do with section 230. I don't know but I feel like we would be better off if consumers had more information.
If your view is based on provable falsehoods, your view is worse than valueless.
Tolerating these people is harmful to everyone, but that is not why Google is banning it. It is because it is harmful to Google's bottom line.
At the end of the day, Google owns their servers and can say what is allowed and what is not.
Well that's the problem in a nutshell. It ain't good for our society.
Republicans fought to make companies people, and to be not regulated. And now are crying when it fired back, because forcing a company to publish or block something is actually stepping on its first amendment right.
You won't really have such platform, unless it is done through a well established non-profit or through government (as long as government is Democratic and checks and balances work correctly).
People act like being banned is a life threatening event.
In that free public conversation is centrally crucial to the sanity of our society.
And having that public conversation controlled by a profit-seeking entity is definitely detrimental to that conversation. And thus detrimental to the sanity of our society.
And an insane society is obviously all kinds of threatening.
If they ban you, they are telling you that they don't want you on their private property.
They don't take away your internet connection.
When did society need Google, or Twitter, or FB to function? They do not. Those are simply three websites. There are literally millions more.
If this site banned me, I lost literally nothing. If Google Drive banned me(assuming I have an account, which I do not) I lost literally nothing. Same for FB. Same for Twitter.
They are not required for a functional society.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Because the public conversation requires a public. Right?
They stop you from using their services, that is it.
You have no right to access popular private servers.
You have no right to a conversation because everyone else has the right to ignore you if they so choose.
Again, private companies can not be forced to give you server space. That pesky first amendment thing and all.
Show me where you have the right to have a conversation. That means that others can be compelled to talk to you.
If their service is popular, then the public conversation is to that degree affected. Clearly.
The top performers on FB are conservative pages for crying out loud!
They are afraid of much, which is the problem. It is irrational fear and based on ignorance and hatred.
Parler earned their ban 1000 times over. When sites get shut down by their hosts because its users were openly inciting violence that is not a problem.
I have yet to see someone get booted for following the platform's rules and merely being conservative. People from all over the political spectrum get banned every day.
*By good, I simply mean thoughtful, high quality, factual, educational, or otherwise uplifting content regardless of politics
Algorithms don't discriminate "content" by it's actual content: they keyword match and look for clicks, and build a pretty perfect radicalization pathway more easily then they build a discourse [1].
You have probably experienced this: almost everyone has the experience of wanting to see some particular YouTube video, but opened it in an Incognito tab (or just avoided it) explicitly because they know the topic will prime the YouTube homepage to fill with nothing but things you don't want to see.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/youtube-fa...
But then I remember that the best thinkers the world has ever seen (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, ad nauseum) were never able to look beyond their noses to see the human suffering of others.
Aka, they were perfectly happy to have a society run by slaves, to ignore the plight of the poor and sick, etc.
Worth noting that there were very influential thinkers and entire schools of thought that looked beyond their noses. A good example are cynics/Diogenes the Dog, who may well have been more influential than the Platonic line. E.g. (as per anecdotes we have left) Alexander the Great had great respect to Diogenes, who totally ridiculed Alexander's (and Plato's) position.
Also stoics (e.g. Marcus Aurelius) are quite direct descendants of cynics and not ashamed of this at all.
More I look into classical philosophy, or the "myth" of academia, more it seems that it's mostly a fabrication of perhaps scholastics.
I'm curious what you mean by being a fabrication? Their ideas were real and they've shaped history throughout time one way or another
I don't think it makes the content itself any worse, but it's difficult to know what was really historical.
I don't formally study this, but such problems become quite apparent when I try to e.g. find out historical sources for some philosophical statements or anecdotes. Probably not that different from how people attribute all sorts of "smart stuff" to Einstein.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudepigrapha
Edit: by "scholastic fabrication" I mean that scholastics spent a lot of time "interpreting" especially Aristotle (and tried to make it compatible with the Bible). I'm guessing a lot of what we think is "greek philosophy" may be from these interpretations.
History is god damn hard. That's why it's useful to read the source material whenever possible.
I don't know how many times I've seen The Parable Of the Cave being used, but reading The Republic, really makes you understand what Plato meant with that story.
It's hard for most people to read that stuff though. I've only scratches the surface. It's easier to trust others to donor for us and distill the information.
And in each century, the lessons learned from the same material may be different too.
For most things it probably doesn't matter that much. For example classical philosophy (or its common translations/interpretations) provides a sort of "shared language" for academia, regardless of how historical it is. That's why I tend to think it more as a myth unless there's something specifically historically intetesting.
Most of the classical stories, e.g. the Cave, have "transcended" the original context anyway, and are in a sense richer nowadays.
But that's an obvious one. What else will be seen as "barbaric" that we don't even think of challenging?
Working 8 hours a day? Having kids? Going outside or staying inside?
I remember the Greeks were not big on private property and instead took great pride in their public buildings. The polar opposite of our society now
Then you first have to make something other than private property the backbone of average peoples' pension funds.
I don't have ideas, you?
Could you point to some readings if you're aware of it? I'd love to know
"Then again, the Stoics were famous for challenging common conceptions, and the founder of the school, Zeno of Citium, had declared slavery an evil in his Republic"
It's important to note that Ceneca and the famous stoics (Marcus Aurelius for example) were rich and benefitted greatly from the status quo.
In the historical environment it led to people being killed by the neighborhood mob when they decided to lynch the black man[1]
In todays environment it leads to genocide[2].
It is morally laughable to compare deplatforming to the consequences of the free spread of misinformation, propaganda and hate rhetoric.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
Vast majority of the consumers probably make pragmatic rather than idealistic consumption choices. Eg when you source a new iPhone, you source certain unethical labor practices. When you make use of the US dollar, you make use of some amount of atrocities that built its international purchasing power (eg any of the petrodollar wars). I bet those rarely bother even the most so-called “idealistic” consumers because a) it is a hard calculus to compute b) it is impossible to live when every “impure” thing is removed from use.
The difference with public content hosting is being able to twist arms to make them take down stuff and conform to an image of virtuousness which we narcissistically and psuedo-religiously identify with. It is not about the real damage the contents pose, it is our intolerance to being seen as a “person who can use such sites”. The threat is to our confirmation bias, in this case the confirmation of an idea that there is a clear right and wrong and we are definitely right.
If the majority of people believe that images of virtuousness are what they want, then that's just what they want. People aren't computing the outcome, their ethics are based on appearances and always have been. The internet doesn't change that fact. Whether it was in the middle ages or the post-industrial period or today, virtue has always been performative. So I don't really see what you think your argument demonstrates.
The enlightenment concept of free speech is likely a minority viewpoint among the people of the world. However I also think it is the correct view and that corporations or governments looking to censor speech are infringing on human rights, and believe in fighting for it the same as I would fight against racism, slavery, religious discrimination, authoritarianism, and so on. Just because a lot of people believe something is ok does not make it right.
What’s the difference between a real car and a perfect cardboard replica? One has functionality and interiority. The other is just exteriority.
In the King Midas story, he wants everything to be mindlessly golden and thus turns them into unusable shiny crap. He got the golden exterior alright, with none of the real goldenness, goodness they would afford him.
But you have to define what is virtuous before you can claim that performative virtue is “fake”. The young people of today are no less virtuous than their elders, despite the fact that their elders (like virtually every generation before them) complain that they are immoral.
It's an actor "performing" as a character for a few hours, and then reverting back to their original personality.
> But you have to define what is virtuous before you can claim that performative virtue is “fake”.
No, strictly speaking you don't have to define anything. Whatever virtue is, it's consistently that. "Performative virtue" is inconsistent, often hypocritical, and therefore inauthentic.
> The young people of today are no less virtuous than their elders...
I can't speak to virtue in general, but with regards to duplicity it does seem like there's increasingly more of it:
1) young people still have access to whatever methods of duplicity old generations had, and can additionally virtue signal on social media on an unprecedented scale.
2) it seems like it's simply becoming acceptable to lie. Politicians will directly contradict their own video evidence, multiple times a day, and everyone shrugs and moves on. We've given up on norms of discourse and civility. To be clear, I'm not surprised that lies are being told; I'm surprised that there appears to be zero interest or any repercussions.
3) objective truth itself is under attack. It's becoming normalized that anyone can say whatever they feel at that moment and that they have "their truth" and I have "my truth". This is incredibly dangerous.
That's exactly the point. It is contrasting the appearance of the thing vs the structural & functional organization (logos) of the thing. Without the second, it is not the thing. One cannot establish an identity relationship just based on appearances. That is why you can't equivocate the appearance of a virtue with being virtuous.
> It sounds almost like you are saying something but you never explain exactly what’s wrong with performative virtue.
"Performative" virtue, a more accurate designation would be "demonstrative virtue", is an oxymoron. You cannot be virtuous without conforming to the structural & functional organization of the thing, i.e. without really being virtuous. Real virtue is a participatory endeavor. A display of virtuosity is like the cardboard car, it doesn't function as a virtue. Making people take down content for narcissistic reasons does not make the world a better place, because it is devoid of at least two core properties that is rationality and proportionality.
> But you have to define what is virtuous before you can claim that performative virtue is “fake”.
This topic is systematically discussed since Aristotle, and you would appreciate the absurdity of trying to give an exhaustive definition in this forum. But I've given you two properties of it that narcissistic censoring violates.
Build your own data center and upload anything you want. Don't demand that a private company give you an unfettered soapbox.
Also "source a new iPhone"? Can we dispense with the meaningless buzzwords, please?
Can you pinpoint the moral difference between "Google should be allowed to refuse to host content that they dislike" and "Restaurants should be allowed to refuse to serve ethnicities that they dislike"?
It is a feature of free markets that consumers choose where to spend their money; but it is also a feature of liberal societies that the law precludes the majority from driving out an unpopular minority by refusing to do business with them.
Isn't that a sign of a moral panic? Back in the 90s, my parents didn't want to patronize companies that signed deals with pornographers. Even though I was only 10, that sounded ridiculous. Good luck finding any large company that doesn't.
While they don’t host porn, they do host a host of porn performers.
If Google and Apple ban you from their products and platforms, and Visa shuts down your payment processing, there is nowhere to go. You're done. This and much more has happened many times.
You're making the "just build your own internet bro" argument.
They could also accept checks via the mail. Or cash via the mail. Or cryptocurrencies. Or gift cards. Or barter. There are multiple options available to them.
The only thing you mention there that is a serious alternative are cryptocurrencies. And those are constanly fluctuating, needing very complex hedging against sudden value changes. And still something that most consumers will really struggle with. Most will not have a clue how to obtain crypto or how to deal with it (safely).
It might work for a really highly educated niche, but not for 99% of consumers. They just want to put in their paypal or credit card details and click buy now.
I don't need them to do anything at all.
There are competitors to Visa.
I can do anything I want without Apple, Visa, Google and even Amazon and Microsoft.
Really? How can you even know which services or products depend in some way on GCP, Azure, or AWS (not to mention product and services that are built using other services that depend on those)?
Because you said
> I can do anything I want without Apple, Visa, Google and even Amazon and Microsoft.
So if "some service" that you use uses them, then you're not doing anything you want without them.
When the American concept of free speech was coined, it was valuable because you could go stand in a government owned square and communicate your message for free. It was a good balance between not forcing private companies to accept speech but still allowing the speech to happen.
Online we don't have the concept of a government run square, and so your speech can be totally stifled by private companies.
But the difference is that when you're standing in the town square shouting nonsense, your reach is constrained, your ability to reproduce your speech is low (you have to just stand there and keep shouting) and everyone knows who you are. Damaging speech just can't be that damaging. Online is totally different.
I think the argument of "Google can't censor you, only the government can" is not great because there's no gov't equivalent of the town square. But I don't think the answer is just "make Google accept all speech" or "create a gov't equivalent of the town square" is necessarily the answer either. I think we should be starting from first principles and understand what free speech is trying to accomplish and come up with a framework that helps us accomplish it.
Free speech has always been about distribution as well - publishing a book or a newspaper, distributing pamphlets - those had similar reach to a random FB post or YT video today (in terms of percentage of the population).
Of course newspapers had no obligation to carry anyone's message, but, far more importantly, a newspaper couldn't be censored by government for printing stuff the government didn't like.
It's also important to remember that there used to exist many more newspapers - factories would have newspapers, most towns would have one or two, many clubs and similar organizations would have one.
Publishers (like newspapers) had full control over their content, and also had full responsibility for it (e.g., if they printed something libelous, they could be sued).
Common carriers (like the phone company) had no control over the content, and no responsibility for it, either (you couldn't sue the phone company if someone used the phone to plan a crime, for instance).
Google and their ilk want to have it both ways. They want the full control of publishers, and the zero responsibility of common carriers.
Historically, power without responsibility has invariably been a recipe for abuse.
I think they should have to choose one or the other.
I don’t have a better answer.
Justice Thomas is hardly a reliable source for making it so.
AT&T is an ISP among other carrier things.
How can a server, or a set of servers be anything more than an endpoint?
That you would compare ATT and FB shows a remarkable misunderstanding of the internet and WWW.
Consumers only get to choose out of what's available, and in this market, it's hard for an entrepreneurial consumer to make some things available when the market isn't providing them.
Isn't the point of the free market that consumers are free to vote with their dollars?
I don't want to give my money to companies that host things that I find morally abhorrent. That doesn't mean other companies can't host that data, simply that I don't want any of my dollars to go to those companies.
If the vast majority of consumers also don't want to give money to companies that host that content, that's the hosting company's problem. The free market is speaking. Nobody is making it illegal for that data to be hosted, but nobody is obliged to pay for it to be hosted. So it seems to me that things are working as intended.