In the same way that being very rich generally gives you effectively much more power than having a single vote, and so is a corruption of democracy, I think we see a similar thing with online discourse, where those with extra resources are able to essentially "flood the zone" and dominate the discourse.
So the question is what should be the effective response? Those pushing the censorship/free speech framing argue that removing voices is wrong -- banning, deplatforming, etc. That may be right, but it's also incomplete as it doesn't address the dynamic of the well-resourced voices overwhelming everyone else.
I don't know what an effective solution _is_ here, but I know what it _looks_ like -- all voices with equal access. I don't think the censorship/freedom framing gets us there.
Now that the Net has devolved into a political battlefield, how do you draw the line between a censorship regime and a spam filter? Was there ever a difference?
It's a good point, but the loud voices that have been driving this "anti-free speech" shift are also a loud minority. The people who got Alex Jones banned everywhere, got YouTube to start demonetising videos, got Trump banned from Twitter, were essentially a small group of influential Twitter users (some of whom also had jobs in the media, giving them huge platforms to put pressure on these companies). It's a "natural law" of human societies that the 1% are disproportionately loud, on any issue, and drive what the other 99% hear and think; not just a feature of online spaces. When you think of a liberal, or a conservative, or a college student, for example, whatever you picture in your head is just the loudest, most visible portion of that group, but is likely a tiny minority of that group. Whatever opinion you have on science, or nutrition, is driven by a very tiny loud minority, whether that's lobbyists, or a few influential individuals (maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson, maybe Al Gore, maybe a prominent scientist, or maybe the Coca Cola company). Without them, the popular mind might think quite differently.
Ergo; the "censorship shift" isn't about giving the minority their voice, it's two warring minorities struggling for control of the Overton window.
I had to laugh - this could easily describe Alex Jones and Trump as the proximate cause of their own bans.
In a public physical venue, it's much easier to allocate one person, one time slice to present their views. There are exceptions (lobbying is a huge hack on this, and indeed, there's a reason many see lobbying as anti-democratic). But in contrast: online speech is dominated by whoever has either the most leisure time to toss at an online forum or the willingness and resources to sock-puppet up and turn their one voice into an echoing hydra. Factor in state spending on those hydras and the situation turns pretty un-democratic pretty fast.
John's attitude is so old school. Shaping the attitude of the populace through selective amplification is now.
b) As far as I can tell, Gilmore was not trying to censor anyone. It seems more like the EFF has put Gilmore on the other side of their firewall.
The irony is that the EFF routed around Gilmore's presumed obstruction.
For the record, I'm increasingly of the view that free-speech absolutism is very badly flawed. If my reading of the situation is correct, then I'd agree with the action. That said, I'm as much in the dark as anyone whose information is the Register piece itself, so don't read too much into what I'm saying.
What I'm evolving toward is a sense of interrelated, and often opposing, rights and obligations around communications.
Free expression, a right to truth, privacy in general, though some obligation for disclosure in public interest or concern, freedoms of and from association or expression, among others.
The benefit to this is that it gives a unified scope for looking at what have been a set of distinct and discrete rights. The disadvantage is that there's no simple or clear guidance, only trade-offs. Though (another benefit) at least those trade-offs are made clear, explicit, and the relationships are established.
I've found a few others thinking along similar lines, with some work out of the Berkman Klein Center (at Harvard) and UC Berkeley, the latter specifically addressing a right to the truth. I can dig up specific names if requested.
The very earliest advocates for free speech, most notably Milton, excluded established powers from its protections, notably the Catholic Church:
I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled.
-- John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.
Someone probably learned a new word today here. Or was reminded of an unfamiliar one.
And yes, there's virtue as well in clarity. Sometimes that comes from precision.
// No comments needed to explain this one!
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=antepenultimat...
We're here because the same sophisticated discussions in new technologies don't happen in our language. Please make what you write accessible to us as well.
I still remember hearing a Mexican friend whose English was, at the time, very basic use the word "polemical" and I could hardly believe it. I'm not sure most English speakers could use it correctly; I'm all but certain that I at the time couldn't.
Sometimes using a word outside the register [0] or literary style is just a way to include a nice lexical nugget.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
It's the same reason a doctor might use words like "etiology" instead of "cause".
Aside from the 1984 reference (which is appreciated), the fact is that hanging a negative prefix (or suffix) on an adjective doesn't actually capture the meaning of the antonym. Or if it is defined to be equivalent, then you're missing out on various useful shades of meaning. Consider the uses of the phrases 'not good', 'not very good', 'not bad', 'not too bad', etc.
For example, 'not good' often doesn't actually mean 'bad', it is (usually) closer in meaning to 'not good enough', or perhaps 'mediocre'. When 'not good' actually does mean 'bad' or even 'very bad' it is because the speaker is using understatement.
Orwell was trying to make a point about the totalization of language and constraining thinking to promote binary thinking (us/them, for/against, good/bad). But he failed to really account for human perversity, which would have immediately produced phrases in NewSpeak such as 'not ungood', 'un-doubleplus ungood', etc., not to mention the use of sarcasm, which in the UK can be so deadpan that it is undetectable unless you have a lot of context.
Oddly, while Orwell obviously understood both satire and parody, and employed both to great effect, sarcasm seems to have largely eluded him. His characters are nearly always earnest and sincere. A few are insincere, euphemistic, even mendacious, but I don't think many (or any?) are ever sarcastic. It's an odd omission.
Anyone is welcome to look up words they don’t understand.
And I thought knowing what penultimate meant was fun. For those that don't know, penultimate means second to last and antepenultimate means third to last.
Here, though, the quest for elegant variation must prematurely conclude at 'quasihemidemisemiquaver'.
Reading "A quarter note triplet consists of three-quarter notes over the same amount of time as two-quarter notes" causes Baby buddha Jesus-Mohammad to cry and kick puppies in frustration at where humanity has gotten.
It's sort of vindicating to start seeing others feel the same way finally.
Can you elaborate on why you've stopped supporting EFF? I'm just curious as I've basically been a blind supporter of them for years, and this removal has reminded me that I should actually pay attention to what's going on in the organization if I'm going to donate to it.
The Bill would make the Register of Copyrights position accountable to both the legislative and executive branches of government and selected by committee. It also established eligibility requirements to hold the position. Currently the position is appointed directly by the Librarian of Congress with no oversight (effectively only accountable to the executive, in the sense that the President can order the Librarian to select a new Register or risk the Librarian's job).
The EFF is extremely buddy-buddy with the Library of Congress and from what I can gather lobbied hard against the Bill to protect their friends from diluted political power.
It's a position that's completely opposed to principals one would hold if they wanted a transparent, accountable government. It's not a position that I thought made any sense for the EFF to support.
I challenged Katharine Trendacosta on their Activism Team who sent out the fear-mongering mailer and was given the brush off.
He's widely credited as the source of the famous aphorism "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
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The EFF has routed around John Gilmore now.