It is also very telling that when independent discussion platforms do start to reach critical mass (4chan, voat, wherever else) there is often collusion or pressure to take down their hosting or stop payment processors from working with them.

It used to be that fringe opinions were expressed on street corners on literal soapboxes and never got much further unless they had a certain level of credence. Now with the likes of Twitter and Facebook, these individuals have a global stage to broadcast to where they'll find a massive audience regardless of how bizzare and unfounded they may be, thanks to the legitimizing effect of the "communities" around these ideas. In the hands of someone charismatic this can be dangerously destablizing to society, because it's the perfect recipe for cultivating a following that believes almost anything imaginable, including ideas which directly conflict with demonstrable reality.

I don't agree with some of the things the internet has collectively decided to clamp down on but I do think it makes sense to not give just anybody the grand stage and spotlight.

This is a common fear. But nobody is really worried that some charismatic guy who believes that aliens are secretly draining humans of their precious bodily fluids is going to take over the world.

Those in power are always concerned about maintaining their power. Somebody who shows up and says, "hey, these people in power are saying things that are not true and are engaging in damaging and dangerous practices," well, it's quite easy to cast that person as a Dangerous Individual Who Is Secretly A Lunatic. Everybody has some nutty idea, so you focus on that nutty idea, and presto, you have a bona fide nutcase who can be shut down for "misinformation".

I get the argument. But the practical working aspect of it is it puts great power into the hands of already powerful people. That's fine, if you want to have a technocratic/political aristocracy. If you do not, then there isn't many other options other than open discourse.

I think reasonable people are worried about exactly that. Enraged violent people managed to get a few meters away from a room full of Congresspeople validating an election, in support of their charismatic guy who believes much worse.

Q-Anon has believers currently sitting in Congress, and is predicted to gain more seats this year[1].

1: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-36-qanon-supporters-runn...

Enraged violent people rioted and burned cities, and a lot of the same Congresspeople cheered them on.

The two are not at all equal. A sitting congressperson supporting BLM protests is not the same thing as a sitting congressperson openly encouraging and even participating in overthrowing a free election.

No matter how much the right wants it, the two situations are not even close to being equal.

Kamala Harris encouraged people to donate to the MN bail fund, which was used to bail out rioters.

>No matter how much the right wants it, the two situations are not even close to being equal.

You are correct: the Jan. 6 protests were far less deadly and less damaging than the BLM protests.

Sorry, that is a far more uncomfortable situation, whether you know it or not. Perhaps you are hoping that mainstream social media sites can be forced to allow the type of content found in voat or 4chan. It is equally more likely that a government will, at some point, disallow the content found in voat or 4chan everywhere, if that angle is opened, IMHO. It, of course, will depend on who is in charge.

China, for instance, currently has heavy influence on exactly what kind of content is allowed within social media, complete with a Great Firewall and large armies of censors to enforce this policy. Their social media has been shaped many times based on the whims of Xi Jinping. China heavily moderates gaming and politics, and outright bans things like porn. I doubt a 4chan or voat in Jinping's China would get very far. In the Western Internet, there are big social media sites with various content moderation policies that some people may not like. But alternative sites exist.

At present, social media sites are relatively free to moderate how they wish. A few social media sites have semi-monopoly power, and that is a big issue. The payments processing duopoly is even more of a problem. But don't confuse monopoly power issues with "censorship". The government is not telling what the social media companies to do, in general.

That feels like a non-sequitur. People can both use mainstream platforms for work/school and create/find their own platforms for other parts of their life.

The problem is that you have to 'integrate with this very short list of megacorps, and if they don't like you you are not allowed to operate'.

At any substantial scale at all, these are true:

- If Cloudflare doesn't like you, you can't have a website.

- If Google doesn't like you, you can't get discovered.

- If Visa and Mastercard don't like you, you can't get paid.

We never elected these corporations; they power they wield is illegitimate.

Sure, that's $$$$$, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that operating "at substantial scale" is any sort of entitlement. Or that "investing to build the systems and services that tens of millions of people have chosen to use" is "illegitimate." You think "legitimate", political-backed power is would be better? Of the "Shut the internet down when people are protesting something the government does?" variety?

There's negative vs positive spin you could put on this, you know. Things like Twitter let people be heard to a much larger extent than they would've been in the past. Good or bad, it definitely has consequences, and one of them is that some powerful people listen to people who would normally be outside their circle.

Getting paid is more interesting, this is probably easier than it was in the past - there were always pretty limited options, but crypto is a new interesting one.

No, but that's not an argument against the thing you're arguing against. It's a false dichotomy. "Three or four unelected rich white dudes should not have this power" does not mean three or four elected rich white dudes should either.

There are a number of other CDN vendors. Akamai, AWS, GCP, Azure come to mind. Besides, Cloudflare doesn't have any problem with porn anyway, the only thing they do not want is CSAM or explicitly illegal stuff such as material violating copyright or unauthorized releases ("revenge porn").

Sure we did. We voted with our wallets. I'm not sure why you believe it would be any different if we _had_ elected these companies with votes.

In the current policital landscape in much of the western hemisphere has lots of people arguing for restrictive policies around speech or access to healthcare.

At least with the megacorps there is the potential to build a competitor. If they were heavily regulated good luck getting your account reactivated when the government sanctioned monopoly decides it doesn't like you.

Give an equal alternative to Google or cloudflare? If I can't get a comparable product from someone else whose views align more with my own, than I can't exactly "vote" with my wallet can I? They are essentially "running" unopposed.

It's also very convenient that the voting system is "whoever can spend the most money wins" when we're dealing with corporations who have more money than entire nations. We need something a lot better than "deposit cash to cast vote" when it comes to choosing who controls what we're allowed to see and hear.

No one stops people from going to Trump rallies.

There are plenty of ways to get your message out if people want to hear it. It’s work. But it can be done.

Rallies? Trump had like a hundred million Twitter followers. The total number of people who even can go to a rally is like 30,000 at extreme scale. Even if he had a massive rally daily (impossible) with no repeat visitors (absurd) in a year he still wouldn't get to 1/10 of the people he could reach via Twitter. And he'd be able to reach them each once. Plus he'd never get any casuals or outsiders like me - people who go to rallies are already committed. Rallies are not a substitute for the entire edifice of modern social media.

A hundred million twitter followers isn't worthless or meaningless. If someone you liked was ever silenced like that, you'd be up in arms and rightly so.

Conservatives love the free market until it’s not working for them. If the situation had been reversed, they would be the first ones screaming how regulation prevents innovation.

Trump is listed as one of the 400 richest people in the US, he really can’t get his message out there? I live in the South, I assure you that if he did some advertising and started heavily promoting Truth Social it would be successful.

Trump supporters: we are being treated unfairly and we can’t get our message out because of Twitter and Facebook, how will we ever Make America Great Again? Life is so unfair.

The civil rights movement: we are being beaten, we are being lynched, attacked by police, jailed, spit on just for trying to send our children to school, etc. Let’s start a grass roots organization.

There are definitely more MAGAs in proportion to the population and they are better funded than there were people working toward civil rights during the 60s. Maybe it’s not a matter of being persecuted it’s just incompetence when it comes to leadership?

Trump supporters overwhelmingly consider themselves Christians. If they really want to organize, they can do the same thing MLK did - go into the churches.

Not to mention he has a ton of media, sycophants and critics immediately amplifying every little toot he makes.

I used to agree with you, but watching Kiwi Farms get cut off from the internet has been pretty sobering.

> On September 6, 2022, The Daily Dot confirmed that VanwaTech was providing content delivery network services to the site, hence bringing it back online.[60][61] Other websites running on VanwaTech infrastructure experienced availability problems as a result, including The Daily Stormer and 8chan.[62]

Also keep in mind that Kiwi Farms was only blocked because of the massive backlash Cloudflare received. If your site only gets a few hundred visitors a month, you're not going to get this backlash.

(Not to mention, porn is considered much more acceptable than doxxing and targeted threats, relatively speaking)

They now are struggling against a constant stream of DDoS and targeted hacks due to a lack of protection previously provided by CloudFlare.