Hold your horses. It is not "the internet". It is private chat.

You need to understand difference between communication that is meant to be public from one that is meant to be private.

Law makes clear distinction.

Facebook is not a common carrier. You aren't having a private conversation on any of its properties. You're communicating with Facebook and they relay non-public messages to recipients.

It is private conversation because it is not meant to be made public by its users. Not because Facebook isn't "common carrier".

Piece of paper isn't common carrier. If I write a note to my wife and give it myself it is private because I wanted and expected it private. If I taped it to a billboard it means I no longer expect it private and it is public.

You’re mixing up two legal concepts: expectation of privacy and common carriers.

Despite phone companies being common carriers (and thus being required to carry communications without censoring them), the Supreme Court has made it clear that people should have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they relay communications through a pay phone. The reasoning was that you give up your right to privacy when you involve a third party to your conversation. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).

So the two can coexist.

Only common carriers are forced to carry speech unimpeded, regardless of its content. Expectation of privacy is irrelevant to common carrier status. The former is about whether it can be intercepted. The latter is about whether it can be impeded.

Katz v. United States held the opposite: “The Government’s activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner’s words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a ‘search and seizure’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”

More recent decisions suggest that the third party doctrine, according to which there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in information voluntarily turned over to third parties, is unlikely to apply to private messages on Facebook:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Warshak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States

Crap, my bad. You’re right. Clearly I misremembered the case and should have reviewed it first. I withdraw my point about that.

As you said, Katz did say that we do have a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to person-to-person communications. However, that has no bearing on whether the carrier can or cannot block the communication. That still hinges on whether the carrier is a common carrier.

I would suggest blocking and selectively editing messages is different.

Conversation on messenger is multiple messages, blocking would be preventing entire conversation. Removing some messages selectively changes meaning of other messages

It's not a private conversation. It's content sent to, and hosted on Facebook's servers. Why should Facebook (or HN, or any site) be compelled to host content that it doesn't want? If you ran a web site, should you be disallowed from moderating what user content is available?

> It's not a private conversation.

It is according to Facebook. Here is a quote from their own website:

> We’re dedicated to making sure Messenger is a safe, private, and secure place for you to connect with the people who matter.

Reddit shadowbans in private chat too. Gmail does shadowban equivalent. HN doesn’t have private chat, but I imagine they’d use the tool if they could.

If you’ve never moderated anything halfway popular you have no idea what “uncensored” means in 2021.

It isn’t early 90s usenet. It’s endless spam, porn, etc

Facebook is not an outlier in this case: Reddit shadowbans affect DMs too.

Not sure why you brought the law up, as far as I know what FB is doing is 100% legal.

Do you not understand what private communication is and how it is different from Reddit?

Serious question: What's the difference, for your definition of "private communication", between a FB Messenger message and Reddit DM?

I can't think of any reason one would be considered private and the other not.

Same way I can expect my phone operator to not change meaning of my texts between me and my wife but allow me to block messages from strangers I don't want to be bothered by.

This doesn't answer my question, which I will restate:

Why is FB Messenger 'private' while Reddit DMs are 'not private'?

No, I actually really would. I grew up with the uncensored internet and it was, on the whole, less abusive and manipulative than today's internet culture.

It felt like actual tool or big box filled information you could dug through and find stuff you needed. It wasn't restricted by corporate greed or policed by variety of groups who were trying to impose opinions, policies or "culture" on other people claiming at the same time it's for everyone's sake. It wasn't of course a perfect place but it wasn't commercialized as it is today - and that's what happen: the years of simplicity we're done and it was necessary to make the Internet appealing and accessible to average people, by a certain price.

Seeing the monopoly of Google in browser sector, the whole predatory ads sphere, manipulative social media and the attitude corporations and politicians have towards ordinary people regarding the technology, I don't think I want to see what will be the next big thing in the evolution of the Internet and related tech.

It was a tiny, tiny elite who were online compared to today.

As late as 2003, 90% of the world was not on the internet.

Internet culture represents the average person now whereas it didn't at all up through the first Internet bubble and bust.

Not by today's standards. Typical messaging services with teenagers were utterly filled with what we'd now call 4chanish or spouting hate or cyberbullying. That culture isn't really compatible with prim and proper normal parents and other parent-like people that are now on the internet and throwing their weight around.

It’s way more likely to me that this is simply because the Internet used to be the (nearly) exclusive domain of people who were culturally like you: educated, technologically sophisticated, libertarian-leaning affluent white males. Not that you’re necessarily any or all of these things, but if you were around for “the uncensored Internet” you likely felt comfortable with that as your cultural in-group. I say this as someone who is many of these things, and was also around in the “good old days”.

These days people of every cultural background get a seat at the table. That changes things. And that’s to say nothing of the advent of professional, anonymous astroturfing and disinformation campaigns.

Going back would be an abject disaster.

You didn’t make a point in your reply.

You may have missed it in your rush to downvote me.

I did not downvote you at all, I replied because I wanted to discuss it with you. Others have replied, and I think its really interesting you think an unruly playground needs to be moderated. Others have pointed out you just "go to your corner" or dont engage so to speak. But you seem to think it needs to be moderated. I am not saying you are wrong I 'm curious as to why.

The problem is that I can “go to my corner” but I can’t stop people with no intention of playing by any set of rules from coming with me.

We’ve gone to our own corner here on Hacker News. And yet there’s moderation to keep discussion on-topic and respectful. In my estimation you likely choose to participate in this corner of the Internet because of the moderation of both link submissions and comments. Without it, HN would devolve into a cesspool over time like every other attempt at unmoderated forums that’s been tried. Well-meaning participants would be driven out by trolls, spammers, and angry people with an axe to grind.

I disagree, I come here because the articles I see and comments are read are reached by consensus. Bad comments are normally at the bottom of the page and easy to ignore.

There is shadow banning on HN and I disagree with it, but I should be able to make the above generalisation of why HN seems to work with less moderation than expected.

On sites like 4chan, there is some moderation, but again, the few interesting comments that exist get automatically highlighted by the engagement that occurs within the page. Moderation does not allow this to exist, census does. Moderation just helps but I argue the site would work without it, and thats how the internet used to work. Even newgroups that used the wrong mechanic to handle consensus based uploading, and suffered from spam , had content that was good and easy to find, without any moderation that I could see.

> There is shadow banning on HN and I disagree with it, but I should be able to make the above generalisation of why HN seems to work with less moderation than expected.

I respectfully suggest that HN has significantly more moderation than you believe it does.

I had not realised but I will take your word for it - thanks.

I think I missed it too. I didn't even downvote.

Conversation at dinner with a group of your friends and their friends is going to function a lot more smoothly than one at a table of atheists, christian fundamentalists, Jews, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Americans, Russians, Chinese, Tibetans, Israelis, Pakistanis, Indians, liberals, conservatives, socialists, capitalists, libertarians, fascists, anarchists, environmentalists, trans people, cis people, homophobes, racists, sexists, “the woke”, narcissists, sociopaths, frauds, manipulators, trolls, geniuses, average people, and imbeciles.

The Internet might have seemed “better” back then and like it didn’t need moderation. From many people’s perspective it probably was. But that was likely a function of the reality that most people on the Internet at the time had a lot in common with one another.

We don’t get the benefit of that luxury today.

I disagree with your take -I don't see it being a question of moderation. You had many of those groups online (if not all of them) in the 90's and 00's. Unlike today, if you didn't like the forum you were on you could go to another one where you fit in.

There was a greater diversity of social gathering places.

Now -there's facebook, twitter, reddit and HN.

Moderation has ALWAYS been a factor and that's not what made the old internet better.

What made the old internet better was that it was open and more diverse (in terms of viewpoint and choices). The new internet is basically (on a social level) a few social media corporations which are becoming increasingly sterile.

Being on the internet and unmoderated doesn't mean you have to engage with everybody. The idea is that you get to choose what sort of conversation to engage in, and who to /ignore. Hardly different from "real life", except that the internet gives you a larger pool to engage with and better tools to deal with it.

The problem isn't you choosing to engage with everybody. It's everybody else choosing to engage with you and those you want to engage with.

If every discussion on HN was derailed by bad actors, you'd go somewhere else. If there was nowhere else moderated to go to, you'd probably just stop engaging altogether.

I don't think you’re wrong in pointing out that the internet is likely more homogenous the further back in time we go. It’s a hard thing to be wrong about with respect to any scene. But I don't think I agree that it means that we must bend on principles of freedom of expression, digital civil liberties, and anti-censorship and anti-central control. And if definitely doesn't mean the internet wasn't possibly still the most diverse place on the planet even shortly after its inception. Now that the internet has taken the world stage, we must continually fight and push for the society we want to build, for what’s right, really. We must educate and in certain ways indoctrinate. Otherwise we risk losing our values to the swaths of normies—especially now that other cultures are vying for their own version of comfortable.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

Respectfully, speak for yourself.

People don't seem to understand the ramifications.

I prefer truth to being enslaved into conformance by "the algorithm".

Every platform that tries "we're 100% free speech no censorship or moderation" winds up learning the same lesson which is that their problem isn't with moderation it's that you don't like the kind of moderation decisions that are being made. Parler ran this gauntlet on fast forward [0], Gettr did it too [1], places that have tried holding on to the free speech absolutist position eventually burn to the ground in one way or another like the various children of 4chan.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200630/23525844821/parle...

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210825/17204647438/trump...

I think the anonymous internet was way better. People tend to group anyway, so it's not like everyone is forced into the same room.

If the_donald proved anything in 2015 and 2016, the loudest most malicious folks intentionally ram themselves into all communities. The suggestion that bad actors will keep to themselves is the absolute opposite of reality.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

I remember the uncensored internet -it was vastly superior to what we have now.

Vastly.

It was not because uncensored content. It was bastly superior because there was a lack of comercialization. Before SEO, before targeted ads, an internet made by educacional institutions and people with hobbies.

Nowadays allow everybody to post anything and you will only see SPAM for the rest of you life, it will become impossible to see anything of value.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with you -you definitely have a point,though.

From my point of view it's less commercial vs non-commercial (though I think most of the problems either stem from, or are aggravated by commercial factors) as much as it is diversity versus consolidation.

Ten, fifteen years ago there was a greater number of varied forums and social gathering places with a greater number variety of viewpoints. Now while there's the odd vb bulliten board here and there you have fewer and fewer populated forums -everything seems to have coalescened (socially speaking) into twitter and facebook.

Basically, from my point of view, Social Media has consumed the rest of the social internet (meaning forums). I think there's more than one cause for that but that's what I see as the main thing making the past superior to the present -the ability to not just have your own place, but to have a chance at it reaching out to more people than just you and your friends.

> From my point of view it's less commercial vs non-commercial (though I think most of the problems either stem from, or are aggravated by commercial factors) as much as it is diversity versus consolidation.

There is a case where I'm pretty sure commercialization is the problem. Phone app stores are modeled on Linux repositories. Linux repositories are good. App stores are awful. The problem is the level of interest from bad actors, and the reason they're interested is the commercialization.

>There is a case where I'm pretty sure commercialization is the problem.

It's a problem, and yes -a major one. But I think that it's just one of many factors contributing (negatively) to the situation.

> everything seems to have coalescened (socially speaking) into twitter and facebook.

And Reddit and Discord.

It is a monumentally difficult task to create a forum these days, from a social PoV.

>It is a monumentally difficult task to create a forum these days, from a social PoV.

and legal, and probably technical PoV as well; yes.

The large platforms have sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and have gained what I feel is an unhealthy control of what can and cannot be said.

I have no idea what can be done to fix the situation; but none the less, there it is.

From a technical perspective, forum software is easy enough to use.

A technical perspective also includes mitigating denial of service attacks and other security issues, including scaling.

For one, you could tell idiots (whoever you decided they were) exactly how they felt, without fearing retribution IRL.

Keeping online identities separate from the real world worked both ways. It protected rational critics, trolls and shitposters alike.

The problem never was anonymity or freedom of expression. No. Social media is when life online went into freefall. Curiously, a pillar of its business model is melding real life with internet identity.

So were the people who used it. Times have changed. Maybe the last time you went to a bar you saw the bouncer eject some hulking meth-head, drool dribbling down his bib, for getting handsy with strangers and throwing a bottle at the bartender. Well, that meth-head has a social media presence today too.

Not really -usenet of old had stalkers and harassers; that's how the killfile was invented.

That is a very, very good analogy, however.

The internet of old had a wider variety of establishments that you could go to. If you wanted a rough-and-tumble dive bar experience it was there. If you wanted a polished experience it was there too.

The effect facebook and other social media has had on the internet is the same effect that walmart had on small mom and pop stores -you can still find one here and there but no, not really.

Incidentally, for all of the censorship and increased barriers to entry (for creating forums) your drooling meth head still presents a danger in the form of doxxing, inciting riots (Jan 6th, any one?) and harassing people.

Sure, Usenet had its antisocial users, and quite a few seedy groups, too. My point is that it's worse today... much worse. In the early 90s the net was mostly students, profs, tech workers and professionals.

Think of the scariest person you've ever met (really, take a moment and actually do it) and ask if he or she would have been online in 1995; the chances are they would not. But they are now.

Uncensored internet isn’t the same as uncensored internet now. Everyone is online and everything is trivially automatable.

Mountains of spam, porn, violence, etc

If you’d ever moderated anything halfway popular you’d know. Shadowbans are an essential tool.

They can be way overused. But there is a reason everyone used them. Constant arms race between sites and spammers.

Vaaaaaastly!

> Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation

Does it really work? A lot of people have no trouble working out that it has happened to them. The theory is that a troublemaker won't realise they've been banned, and so will continue sending their trouble into the void instead of coming back as a new account to cause more trouble that everyone else can see. In practice, it doesn't take long for the troublemaker to work out what is going on, so this only slows them down slightly at best. For some major sites, people have even created shadowban detection tools, so even troublemakers who are too clueless to work it out for themselves can discover it.

This site only really has half-shadowbanning. A lot of people have showdead on, read the dead comments too, and vouch for interesting/constructive ones. Maybe that works for this site; but even if that is true, it doesn't really tell us how well a pure shadowban implementation, without showdead, works. Very few sites with shadowbanning have an equivalent to showdead.

Surprisingly yes. It does work. There are some who figure it out eventually, but not before they have spent months wasting their time and saving mine.

I reserve it for people I believe will ban evade or have in the past.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

Respectfully disagree. Watching things get disappeared on Reddit sent me in to an anxiety spiral.

I'll take goatse links over that shit any day of the week.

Goatse links would be the least of your problems. I’m imagining my Gmail account without the spam filter. Everything showing up in my inbox, not just the stuff in my spam folder, but also all the stuff they silently drop that I don’t even see. Email would be unusable.

> I’m imagining

Imagination often does not match reality. I have a (non-Gmail) account that is littered over the web, in git repositories and in multiple leaks. I don't silently drop any emails - the only server-side anti-spam measure I have a regexp to reject the usual spam subjects at submission time, which for normal senders will result in a notification to the user. The amount of spam is hardly at a level that would be anywhere close to making Email unusable.

I am sorry, but the uncensored internet is the only type of acceptable internet. Anything else is just gov or corp interests.

An uncensored internet would become an unusable cesspit.

I miss the uncensored internet, before it went all 2.0-shaped.

I can't think of any direct messaging applications that moderate content.

This is private chat. Get off your high horse.

Secretly blocking specific messages is very different from a shadowban, though.

People use these things as alternatives to SMS or even the telephone (for audio chat). It would be absolutely ludicrous if telecoms started shadowbanning their customers, if Facebook wants to act like one it should play by the same rules.