Not specifically related to this “child protection” thing, but you can’t deny that the free flow of information also leads to some pretty terrible things, driven by actors such as states, magnified x1000 by social media, and now also AI.
Every platform these days is full to the brim with misinformation and propaganda (which ends up in mainstream media as well), deliberately making many of us hateful and sometimes violent. The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm.
I’m 100% for personal liberty and accountability, and admittedly I don’t have a solution for this.
I do think the Elon Musk approach (“just let people decide for themselves”) is very naive at best.
Again just to be clear this has nothing to do with the UK thing which I strongly disagree with.
You can also see this with the perception gap [1]. Those who are most involved in politics tend to be the paradoxically least knowledgeable about what 'the other side' thinks and believes. Typical contemporary examples would be republicans thinking democrats want to defund the police, or democrats thinking republicans are against immigration.
When you have contrary ideas bouncing against each other, poor ideas are easily demonstrated to be such - and you get a more realistic view of what people 'on the other side' actually think and believe. It naturally tempers against radicalism. But when you start to control information, you get the opposite. This is made even worse by the sort of people that find themselves on a life trajectory to go work, let alone volunteer, for the 'Ministry of Truth'. They tend to be the exact sorts that want to create information bubbles and echo chambers.
----
In general I think the truth tends to trickle up, even if it might get a bit dirty on the way there. I'd appeal to places like the USSR on that. They not only directly controlled absolutely all published information, but strictly controlled migration in and out of the country, informers everywhere making people terrified of speaking their mind, and just generally had a rock solid grip on information. The result? People still knew they were all full of shit. There's a great series of jokes from the era here. [2] On of my favorites, "Why do we need two central newspapers, Truth (Pravda) and News (Izvestiya) if both are organs of the same Party? Because in Truth there is no news, and in News there is no truth."
It's just that the purpose of all this totalitarian control wasn't so that people wouldn't know. It was so that people couldn't do anything about it even if they knew.
The result was achieved, the measures you listed as examples worked effectively.
This is one of the many examples of the consequences of actions stretching out much further than many realize. A famous quote from Stalin is that, "I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy." His Machiavellian vision likely had him seeing himself as the savior of the USSR, when in reality his actions are almost certainly a key reason that it no longer exists today.
Not because the will or the struggle of the people.
Gorbachev began to abolish the aforementioned totalitarian measures, creating the opportunity for a party coup. If totalitarian control had not been weakened, nothing would have prevented the Soviet Union from existing to this day.
> Gorbachev essentially destroyed the USSR
No, he didn't do that. He loosened the totalitarian control, and that was it. Then other opportunistic leaders of the Communist Party took advantage of the situation and seized power, dividing up the resources of the huge country among themselves. And because the old regime was full of shit and everyone knew it, no one stood up for it.
> his actions are almost certainly a key reason that it no longer exists today.
Rather, his actions were the reason why the Soviet regime lasted so long. I mean, the unviability of the socialist project was a proven fact in 1918, long before the USSR was even called that. And everything that happened after that was simply an attempt to cling to power by totalitarian and terrorist methods, first by Lenin, then by Stalin.
Um, I don’t know if you’ve just returned from a long journey in the wilderness or something, but Republicans are definitely against immigration.
Notably this (64%) is higher than even the Democrat level up until about 2012, after the Occupy Wallstreet movement.
[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
For example, somebody might say that they hate tiny airline seats and they’d gladly pay substantially extra for more legroom. But then they’ll be presented with a choice of an airline ticket with more legroom, or the exact same ticket but with less legroom for $3 less, and they’ll choose the latter. Their revealed preference is that they don’t actually value legroom very much, despite what they say.
Likewise, if someone says that they support immigration, but you vote for and continue to support someone who opposes immigration to the point of carrying out heinous human rights abuses against legal immigrants, well, actions speak louder than words.
I’m pretty sure this is the “virtue signaling” that people are always going on about. Supporting immigration is seen as a good thing, so people say they do. But when it comes down to actual concrete policy, they don’t. This used to be covered by the fig leaf of “we support legal immigration” but that’s gone now.
For instance if you went up to an average Republican and said 'So what do you think about the human rights abuses being carried out against legal immigrants?' The overwhelming majority would have literally no clue what you're talking about. If you explained this incident or that, their response is going to be 'Well that's dumb. I hope they're doing something so this doesn't happen again.'
It's like if you went up to the average Democrat and asked them what they think about having explicit LGB books made available to minors in schools? Again the overwhelming majority would have literally no clue what you're talking about. If you explained this incident or that, their response is going to be 'Well that's dumb. I hope they're doing something so this doesn't happen again.'
The 'other side' these bubbles build up simply doesn't exist in reality.
I know Republicans. I talk to Republicans. They know about this stuff and they're fine with it. They know they're not supposed to be, so they deflect. They'll say what's happening to immigrants is no different from being arrested for a crime you didn't commit, then released. They'll insist that the victim was a terrible criminal regardless of the facts. What they don't do is express any reservations whatsoever about it.
I suppose you might make an argument that this deflection indicates an overall approval of immigration since they need to find excuses to support the administration's anti-immigration actions. I would argue that if you claim to believe one thing, but you always find an excuse to defend actions against it, then you don't actually believe it.
Polls are not magic opinion-finding systems. They report what people say. This demonstrably frequently diverges from what people actually do, think, and feel.
This is why conversation, and free flow of information, from people of different worldviews is so critical for a functioning society and avoiding radicalism. And I have to say I'm still not certain what you're even talking about, whereas I assume you think literally every American knows exactly what you are trying to reference. But this is again an issue about bubbles, and what I was getting at with if you asked an average person about some trending talking point. On the overwhelming majority of issues, most people's response is going to be 'What are you even talking about?'
You say people don’t know about this stuff. My experience is otherwise. Maybe you’re right. I don’t think so.
Many of the people sent there were in the US legally.
But thank you for illustrating the deflection I was talking about. This is how these conversations always go for me. First the ignorance, "I don't even know what you're referring to." Then the minimization, "it's not so bad," "you're being hyperbolic." Finally the justification, "this is nothing new," "they were all illegals anyway."
The US does not get to dictate what happens to a person in a country once they're deported. That is up to the host country. El Salvador has been going through an extreme crackdown on gangs over the past several years sending them from one of the most dangerous countries in the world with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, to a country with a homicide rate a fraction of the US' and one of the 10 safest countries in the world! [1] The deal between the US and El Salvador for hosting prisoners was for a relatively small number of deportees who were vile enough that even their home countries refused to accept them back, leaving them in a state of limbo.
And the deportees were overwhelmingly not in the country legally. The media made this claim based on people who were admitted to the country via the CBP One app. But those admittances were all rescinded in April. At that point users of the App were notified of the change, the app was updated to 'CBP Home' and updated to work as a tool to help people self deport in a way that would not imperil their chance of legally applying for a visa or citizenship to the US in the future. Those who chose to stay in the US beyond that point were doing so illegally, and were informed that they would be arrested, deported, and permanently prevented from ever legally entering the US.
https://www.gallup.com/analytics/356996/gallup-global-safety...
You think (or at least say) it's a tangent because you're deflecting. This is basically a No True Immigrant argument. I point out immigrants being abused, you come up with reasons why that doesn't count. I'm sure this would continue. I could talk about, say, a green card holder who gets arrested by ICE because of a decades-old marijuana offense and then after being held in bad conditions for several days is released into the middle of the night with no way to get in touch with anyone she knows, and you'll just say that they have a right to do this because of that marijuana offense, or this is standard treatment, or some other such faff.
Because if not this is of course rather silly, as the two have little in common besides moving. Legal immigration to the US is absurdly difficult and entails extensive vetting, qualification, and a lengthy process of 'proving' oneself. Illegal immigration requires breaking the law to enter a country, breaking the law to remain in that country, and then generally also continuing to break the law as you reside in the country. So with one you're getting the best of the best and with the other you're getting people who view the law as something to be followed when convenient.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." You can't claim to only be against dishonest men when you do this sort of thing.
I do think that this administration's actions against illegal immigrants have been so bad that everyone responsible should be imprisoned. But they are not only against illegal immigrants.
Obviously you don't think people like this are desirable immigrants, so this likely gets back to the bubble issue. While it's possible I'm referencing the wrong case, I suspect the issue is more like that whatever bubble you consume did genuinely just frame this as 'Trump deports man for decades old marijuana conviction' when I think you can see that that is plainly false. But if anybody mentioned this in your bubble, they would certainly be rapidly silenced because rage is far more relevant than facts in these bubbles.
And consider that the media you're consuming is driving you to think that not only are these actions "heinous" but even that the current administration should be imprisoned for what they're doing, and I expect you probably wish even worse - though may not be willing to say it. This is the exact radicalizing phenomena I was talking about at the very top of this thread.
[1] - https://www.newsweek.com/vorasack-phommasith-green-card-revo...
She wasn't deported, hooray! She was still held in bad conditions for over a week, denied necessary medical care, and then released far from home with no resources.
Do you think this is acceptable treatment of a legal immigrant? Or do you believe that an old marijuana conviction is enough to consider her "illegal" and thus doesn't count as an action against legal immigrants? Or maybe it's just cherry-picked and not representative?
Please explain how "the media [I'm] consuming is driving [me] to think that" sending people to CECOT without trial is heinous. (Note that the "without trial" part is an intensifier, but it would still be heinous even with one.) I'm pretty sure it's the conditions in CECOT and a belief in basic human rights that drives me to think that. Are you asserting that CECOT is actually fine and I'm getting a distorted picture of what it's like there? Are you asserting that my belief that it's heinous to imprison people in awful conditions would disappear if I had a more objective view?
Do note that every time you justify one of these things, you're proving my point. You need to go for the ignorance angle if you want to argue that a vast majority of Republicans support immigration. Arguing that they are aware of what's happening but it just doesn't qualify as being against immigration is not going to work.
As for CECOT, I've already answered this. The US does not deport El Salvadorans to CECOT. They deport them to their home country, and that country then decides what to do with them. Don't break immigration law in the US and this is a nonstarter. If I had connections, tattoos, or any other indicator that might lead El Salvador to believe I was a gang member, I'd certainly make sure I wasn't also breaking immigration law in the US.
And again you haven't posed any arguments related to immigration itself, instead you're focusing entirely on your opposition to enforcement of illegal immigration, yet even there you are struggling to come up with any coherent example that isn't overwhelmingly driven by misinformation and falsehoods.
And more generally, again look at what you're doing here. You're not really making any argument against the claim that e.g. Republicans support immigration. You're instead looking for some random anecdote that turned out poorly on the enforcement against illegal immigration. People in the hundreds of thousands have now been deported. If 99.9% of these cases are handled in the most amazingly professional and reasonable manner, that still means hundreds would not be. You're fishing for that 0.1% to try to frame that as being representative of the 99.9%. I think it's equally obvious that there probably are some issues at the fringe, there always are, as that that things are going perfectly smoothly and reasonably in the overwhelming majority of cases.
As for CECOT, I've already answered this. The US does not deport El Salvadorans to CECOT. They deport them to their home country. What happens at that point is up to their home country. And El Salvador has cracked down hard on any sort of viable gang affiliation which has sent their country from one of the most dangerous in the world to one of the top 10 safest places in the world with a genuine government approval rating that is at 90%+.
Your incredible condescension is not helping your argument any. I got the entire story at once. The only thing that saved her from being deported was the timely action of her husband and her lawyer to get the conviction vacated before that could actually happen. If the lawyer hadn't been quite as good, or the local court hadn't been quite as fast, she would have been deported like ICE wanted to. Do you find that acceptable? Do you think that doesn't qualify as being anti-immigration?
A million fucking apologies for being imprecise with my description, jesus.
> The US does not deport El Salvadorans to CECOT.
Absolutely complete 100% horseshit. The administration deported them in full knowledge of where they were going to end up. They knew it, and you know they knew it. Saying they didn't deport people to CECOT is like saying that I didn't kill the guy, I just pushed him out the window, gravity and the pavement are what killed him. Civilized countries do not deport people when they're facing horrible human rights abuses on the other end.
And what about all the Venezuelans who got deported to CECOT? Did their home country suddenly switch? Is Venezuela too dangerous and CECOT was better? Did the administration think El Salvador was a nice safe place for them to go, and were totally blindsided when they ended up in CECOT? Come on, man. You're either being ridiculously disingenuous in a bizarre attempt to make a point, or you're proving my point by doing exactly what I said these supposedly "pro-immigration" people do, making the absolute worst excuses to defend the clearly anti-immigration actions of this administration.
The reason the Venezuelans were deported to CECOT is because Venezuela refused to accept them. They needed to be deported but no country wanted them. So they ended up in CECOT with the US paying a tidy sum of money for that. They were eventually transferred from CECOT back to Venezuela in exchange for Venezuela releasing a number of political prisoners. Obviously there's some classified behind the scenes stuff going on beyond that, but it's a pretty good ending to the story there.
And once again the treatment of illegal immigrants and being for or against legal immigration are two very different things. In those 0.1% of cases where something goes awry obviously I absolutely hope they improve their systems to do a better job. But, by and large, they seem to be doing a phenomenal job of dealing with a problem that never should have been allowed to reach its current magnitude.
1. What republican constituency wants and what republican polices are do not align. For example, most Republicans support Donald Trump. Most do not know anything about Donald Trump's policies. Most will directly say they disagree with a policy, and yet they will still support Trump. If you tell them said policy is a Trump policy, they will either say that it's not true or say that they misspoke, and they do agree with it.
For example, practically all of Project 2025 has been well underway. Prior to the election, it was clear that republican constituents DID NOT support Project 2025. However, if you simply say Project 2025 policies without using the word "Project 2025", then they do support it.
2. Republicans and conservatives at large will just lie if they believe you are willing to make a moral judgment on them.
For example, if you ever go on Hinge or Tinder or whatever dating app you choose, Republican voters will almost all be "apolitical" or "not interested in politics". They will not mention who they voted for and they will purposefully deceive potential partners so they can avoid what they feel is a moral judgement.
Probably republican voters here felt the question was asked in a pointed or morally judgmental way, so I'm sure a good amount just lied and said they do support immigration. If you then poll how many voted for, say, Trump, who is explicitly anti-immigration (not anti-illegal immigration, anti-immigration) then your numbers will change.
Now, this IS NOT to say that republican voters are stupid or liars. The republican party is, right now and for the past decade and then some, run by populist leaders.
This is the direct result of populist messaging. There are also populist leftist leaders - they just do not currently exist in the US.
On the other hand, you'll find plenty of Republicans today who would say that they think legal immigration is great.
The main point is neither of those were ever true and the situation with Democrats was largely caused by the outsized influence of vocal minorities, not of actual sentiment. Similarly, there are plenty of Republicans who think that the current actions of ICE are over the line but won't speak up.
And yes, there are people—like you—who continue to act like there is "the other side" when the way people characterize themselves outside of partisan affiliation is much more nuanced and complex. Eg there are many, many Americans who are anti-war, but there is simply no anti-war vote on most ballots, nor certainly any anti-war party.
In other words, manufacturing consent got us into this mess, social media just makes us anxiously aware of how bad mainstream media was at capturing the political sentiments of the people who live here. That includes, yes, radicals (violent bigots & ideologues), but this also includes realizing that many or most people have no idea what the party whose candidates they vote for actually stand for.
I've put a lot of effort in surrounding myself with people very unlike myself in the last year for reasons, in-person, around real-life activities and scenarios, where politics is simply not relevant outside of stimulating conversation. What I've put together is that basically nobody in this country is both well-educated about politics and satisfied with either party. We've somehow created a two-legged monster that doesn't want to do, you know, the actual substantial end of democracy. Now, I discovered this in the real world, but social media has made it much easier to see if you relentlessly block all "both sides"/"other side" partisans and look directly to values, struggles, desires, etc.
But, this does take discipline, and if you're trying to tune out, you're a prime candidate to be taken directly into outragetainment.
No, that's the natural result of a representative democracy. You only get one vote so all nuance has to be boiled down to a single choice.
Different technologies are in different places on the "societal usefullness versus danger" spectrum. Nuclear weapons are obviously on the "really fricking dangerous" side, no country lets a civilian own them. Forks are obviously on the "useful" side, even though you can technically use one to gouge somebody's eye out.
What's the right tradeoff for guns, printing presses, typewriters and social media companies is a matter of some debate.
Yet
The irony as you parrot brainwashed tropes.
So edgy. Do your parents know you're shit-posting on HN instead of doing your homework?
> The irony as you parrot brainwashed tropes.
You clearly insulted them, and now you're lying by claiming that you didn't. Nobody is falling for it, as evidenced by the fact that your comment was killed by flags.
> as people like you tend to say "your feelings aren't my problem"
...and now you're being bigoted and clearly breaking the HN guidelines. You should stop now.
No it doesn’t. I can easily go to any number of local shops and buy a knife without any hassle.
The Us has even higher limits - many things are banned to many adults. Alcohol, lottery tickets etc.
Not trying to start an argument, because I could indeed be missing some crucial info here, but what kind of adults aren't allowed to purchase alcohol or lottery tickets in the US?
The most scrutiny I ever got while attempting to purchase either alcohol or lottery tickets in the US was the establishment's employee glancing at my ID (and even that happens less than 1/5 of the time for me).
My question was about the stricter limits on purchasing alcohol or lottery tickets in the US (which were brought up in the comment I originally replied to), because that was the first time I heard about that. I was curious what those alluded-to limits were, and I still have zero idea.
As far as IDing to confirm age, I haven’t been IDed in the U.K. since I was 2007. I was IDed in DC last year.
There are a handful examples of overzealous officers misunderstanding and detaining for the wrong reasons, and plenty of examples of people who pretended to the media it was for innocent reasons until the court case showed otherwise.
For your point about forks, I'll note that they are actually covered by the same law; as are all pointed objects.
This is a reasonable enough metaphor but we don't have to pretend to be idiots either and act like every single technology is totally neutral in its design. Knives are a good example, actually. Kitchen knives are totally adequate for killing people (I assume, I'm no expert) but they clearly have a design meant for something else. A nuclear weapon, to choose a stupidly obvious example, has no capability other than mass death. It seems reasonable to ask ourselves whether we want these two objects to be under the same regulatory regime.
A 30-kiloton nuclear explosion was used by the USSR to extinguish a large natural gas fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtabulak_gas_field
They would be used for constructive purposes far more if not for mutual distrust between nuclear powers, and the public hysteria around anything associated with the word "nuclear":
Yes, one could cook up all sorts of uses for the things called nuclear weapons, which we designed by people to kill other people. But we don't have to pretend to be stupid and assume nuclear weapons don't, I don't know, exist in a context of warfare which shapes their design and warrants actual thought about their use and regulation?
I thought the Elon Musk approach was to control the algorithm and decide for his users what they see. Or just ban journalists he dislikes.
The whole "my kid will be left out" thing is so bizarre to me. So what? My kid is already banned from Roblox and that means of her whole circle, she's the only one who doesn't play and oh well. When I was a child it wasn't uncommon for a child to be without something their peer group had usually for money reasons. I don't see technology as any different. Kid has stuff their friends don't and vice versa.
That's why I get mad about age restriction laws on the internet. I do want to introduce my child to some of these things in a supervised way so I can teach her about them. Something I can't do if it's literally illegal because other parents decided to shove a phone/tablet in their kid's face and walk away.
I know way too many parents who never bother to use parental controls and learn that they're not actually will to live through their kid's whining about their restrictions.
I remember what it was like before the internet, and misinformation and propaganda were just as pervasive and perverse, except you couldn't be sure about it unless you read a book, did actual research or talked to an expert, and you sure as shit weren't going to change anyone's mind or at least be able to say "you're wrong and here's why" when you hear obvious bullshit.
IMO, there was a big change in the nature of harmful misinformation once you could Google things like "did convenience store workers really celebrate on 9/11" when that particular urban myth spread in the aftermath of the attack.
I do agree that the nature and vector of misinformation and propaganda are different. The ways in which we're wrong and dumb changed, but we were just as wrong and dumb before the internet, and we were statistically more hateful and violent then, too.
I think the let people decide for themselves is the best option as any alternative is by definition tyranny/control and why the parent quote is so spot on.
But propaganda as a weapon is not a thing to underestimate. As investigated e.g. Jessika Aro https://www.igpub.com/putins-trolls/ and some might argue about the role of election interference for the Trump election and re-election as well.
Even highly educated people are susceptible to propaganda eventhough they consider not https://www.mpg.de/24132917/0205-bild-online-misinformation-...
So, if the leaders are dictators and hates people, it wont be good with or without new surveillance laws as there are already existing ways to do that.
Actually, having "misinfo everywhere" goggles can push people think that everything is propaganda or nothing can be trusted. This is also one way Russia and China is using its propaganda: give so much multi meaning information that normal governance information is also considered as something that cannot be trusted. Or atleast trying.
The main misinformation you see on the Internet is attention-grabbing women pretending to care about you and people trying to misrepresent mass-made white-label Chinese stuff as indie original designs.
Few people spread hate other than to say our society is a disaster and we'd be better off with communism or anarchy which has been typical discourse of young men since the dawn of the modern age.
In general I've found much higher quality of content on the Internet than elsewhere, with genuine testimonies, in-depth analyses, and a variety of opinions and experiences. Whenever I watch the news on TV I am appalled by how superficial and one-sided it is, sometimes misunderstanding the issue altogether, completely out of touch and misrepresenting reality.
Sure, chain emails existed before, but they had a pretty low ceiling of how many it would reach. It didn't scale well.
In other words, you should regulate the amplification mechanism ("algorithm"), not what information is allowed to be said. I think forcing platforms to go back to subscribe+reverse chronological feeds would be a pretty good start.
All of the corporate-owned social media platforms have censorship, curation, and selection policies which impose an editorial slant on what's boosted and what isn't.
All of them. No exceptions.
None of them offer anything resembling a free, open, flow of information. (Mastodon does, or at least tries to, but it has very little reach compared to others.)
And all of them are poisoned by the output of huge well-funded bot farm networks posting harmful content. Whether it's anti-vax nonsense, climate change denial, inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric, divisive political rage bait of all kinds, or covert propaganda designed to look reasonable and pull people into a rabbit hole of fake activism and misinformation, all of these networks are acting as a public brainwashing service for political ends.
There is no "marketplace of ideas." Nothing that happens on social media is truly organic and bottom-up.
And this is not an accident. These are primarily influence, behaviour modification, and persuasion networks, tailored using personal profiling, but disguised as entertainment and social connection, and allowing just enough dissent from the official party lines to create a superficial veneer of free speech.
This process is essentially unregulated. There used to be some FTC oversight, but there isn't any more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
Being alive is a prerequisite to being able to suffer, die, etc. None of the things you listed are unique to free flows of information, in fact misinformation and propaganda are even worse in a closed loop of information.
Look at North Korea, and tell me that they'd be worse off propaganda-wise if they had unfettered access to internet.
> The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm.
No, the entities flooding social media have also flooded all the pre-internet, closed-loop media as well. Right-wing propaganda like Fox News, Alex Jones (first started his radio show in 1996), and literally the entire Cold War-era Red Scare propaganda, on radio and tv, all predated social media. And those were not free-flow channels, the information they put out was 100% controlled by the owners.
I can and I will.
The free flow of information doesn't get people to do bad things, teaching people to blindly trust information from authorities does.
Perhaps more appropriate:
* Instructions for making an illegal firearm
* Unpopular political opinions
* Instructions for engaging in illicit speech without detection
* Silently standing still with head bowed and hands folded in public
* Using a VPN
* Holding a sign at a protest
There are probably many more examples like the above, which would engender a more nuanced discussion.
This is an exercise in censorship, in a sense. So is blocking spam.
OP’s point stands. Information flow requires regulation in any society. I’ve been something of a free-speech absolutist most of my life, but I’m strongly re-thinking that after seeing Europe and America fall to what can only be described as populist stupidity.
The hope is that the punishment proscribed by the law is enough to make people think again before breaking it, and, if the law involves depravation of liberty (jail), that people who do break it are removed from society for a limited amount of time to prevent them further transgressing.
This is civics 101, honestly, anyone that's a student of history understands that laws are created because all other forms of preventing what society agrees to be bad behaviour have failed.
Laws, therefore, are the last resort, because everything else has failed.
Edit: I just want to add (here, because it's too late to edit my original comment) that someone /flagged/ my comment that disagreed about there being a thing where speech/information flows completely uninhibited - hilariously proving my point :-)
Shame and ostracisation handled this through antiquity. There is no evidence introducing those elements online cannot work.
> would at best create an echo chamber of government supported online stupidity and misinformation
But that’s what we got anyway.
It’s just as clearly the case that a lack of regulation amplifies people willing to be stupid online. Taking that amplification away takes us back, per your worst case, to what we have now.
I agree! But where to draw the line? Your examples include crimes (distinct from whatever speech/expression) that are far beyond where anyone is saying should be allowed. This seemed a bit disingenuous to me. I was trying to engender a higher-quality discussion.
That's the thing, when you draw the line you no longer have "free" speech/expression, you only have "speech that's not considered a crime"
The examples are what society have collectively decided are forms of speech/expression (yes they are all speech/expression) that people shouldn't be free to use.
Your definition of "reasonable" is always going to be someone else's "too broad" or "too narrow", "too woke" or "too fascist". There's no escaping that.
The comment I was replying to was
> "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, 'U.N. Declaration of Rights' "
You've spent your time since trying to define what can and cannot be spoken about - which is exactly what the original comment said was bad.
1. Who Are YOU to define what can or cannot be spoken about?
2. Why do you think that YOUR contributions are "reasonable" but someone pointing out several of the existing restrictions on "free speech" that people happily agree on isn't?
Also, FTR I thought to also include the following speech restrictions:
- Trademark infringement
- Copyright infringement
- Patent infringement
- Non Disclosure Agreements
edit: The fact of the matter is, people generally don't realise how restricted speech is in the world (regardless of where you are)
If a state wants to further censor people all they need to do is convince people that the speech category is harmful in some way or other, and boom, it's illegal.
Meanwhile your children are absolutely going to find a way to get that content regardless, likely in darker corners of the internet, exposing them to much, MUCH worse content than if they would have just gone on the good old hub (plus actual predators) while also making it basically impossible for you to control instead of just making it a firewall rule away from locking it yourself instead of letting the government do it.
Alcohol is a perfect example as well, because I personally drink it only occasionally but would very much rather see it completely banned, as I think it would solve a lot of problems with society. In reality it likely wouldn’t, but the gut feeling is there. If I were to blindly follow my instinct and not know history, I would call for a total ban on it to protect the children.
The same is happening here, but at a much more dangerous level.
As someone who has been a kid, I would call such restrictions "performative" rather than a "good idea".
I'll advocate for freedom of speech but I don't want to have to listen to everything.
Alas, I have no choice in the matter, but I would very much prefer I did.
While I understand some content HAS to be regulated (CSAM) doesn’t mean everything has to be, because inevitably that will devolve into the government policing wrongthink.
Nobody is preventing you from filtering out at the client side whatever it is that you don't want to hear.
That said, I think the showdead setting in HN is good to have, so you can still opt to see content that would otherwise be filtered.
Except that's exactly what is happening when the "moderation" is mandated by law. Which is the topic of discussion here.
But yes, in a world where "moderation" is mandated by law, there'd be no alternatives.
Because these are ultimately excuses for spying on adults
Kids do not only have access to their own devices (for one, these days schools provide them with devices that parents have little say over often with only trivial filtering). And that is assuming the best case scenario where parents have the technical know-how to put in place non-trivial limits. Most don't.
And frankly, I don't give enough of a shit about other peoples' kids to believe that internet usage should require identification like is being pushed by major governments. I want good things for these kids, I want them to grow up in a good society and a good world, and I dont want harm to come to them. But I recognize that a "good society" and a "good world" and one that minimizes harm to people is one where information is available without restrictions and without censorship and without the risk of a government that might decide it wants to commit genocide against you in the not-so-distant future using your search history to persecute you. Pardon my riffing off Flowbots' Handlebars there, but this really is the world that people live in today; powerful world-stage governments want to restrict information about topics they do not like, and are persecuting people who posess this information; the next steps are very, very well documented.
Creating the monster we are watching grow is not worth anything anyone could ever promise you.
Children can also be groomed over text messages, should we let the government read all our text messages now?
Children can also be depicted wrong in photos, should we let the governments of the world have access to our photos so they can check for themselves if that is happening or not?
(both are hypothetical questions, the answer is no of course not. This is the responsibility of the caretaker in their life to guide them safely through the world.)
It’s not like the internet was censored when I was coming up, and I don’t think less of kids today than I do of myself.
Kids stumbling across something when browsing innocently isn’t really a major issue, and if they seek it out: they will find it, you won’t stop them, kids are smarter than you think (just, immature and unwise).
The best method, honestly, is for parents to be forethcoming..
however you have now successfully reframed the discussion into “what about the kids”, when in reality it’s about getting everyone’s ID so that they can better enforce their draconian internet comment laws… the government even outright said this. https://archive.is/3pave
if the government really cared about protecting children, they would’ve made a freely available child protection software that anyone can install in their home network, or subsidised its deployment at ISPs as an advertised opt-in.
I'm mid-late 40s and the internet was not really there when I was growing up. Someone ten years younger than me would have much more porn available to them, easily, in the home during their formative years. But even since then it's likely become more pervasive and present by an order of magnitude, and people have connected devices with them all the time in a way they wouldn't have back then.
So it's not so much "I think less of kids today" but that the landscape has changed, significiantly.
Note - I'm not defending the clusterfuck that is the OSA. But the world is not always as it was.
We also have lots of academics saying that porn is changing attitudes to sex and what is acceptable behaviour (the rise of choking, for instance)
I’m 35 now, so in the 00’s I had my entire pre-teen and teenage years.
My brother and sisters are 26, 28 and 33- we aren’t worse than our parents (we have 3 different mothers between us) or grandparents from a mental health or moral perspective; and we were all exposed to liveleak and 4chan in various ways.
I’m not sure how else to measure to he honest with you.
The thing is, the tech and infra for this is already out there. For example DNS services that offer adult-website filtering. The cost to implement this at the ISP level really wouldn't cost much (at at technological level).
Is it? Children viewing porn has been a thing ever since the invention of the printing press, or at the very least, ever since the first Playboy got printed.
That is not that new either, BDSM has been a thing for decades. "Histoire d'O" for example came out in 1975, the literary work it's based on is even older. And the panic back then about these books is exactly the same kind of bullshit we're seeing today.
> The question is how to prevent that harm without depriving adults of their rights and liberties, not whether such a thing is harmful to a child's future ability to form healthy relationships.
Teach your kids about sexuality from early age. That also helps cutting down on cases of sexual abuse - think of all the clergy and sports trainer scandals. A lot of these failed prosecution or went on far too long because the kids lacked the vocabulary to describe what happened to them, or didn't recognize that what they went through was wrong.
The problem is, anything veering into this direction is immediately attacked by Conservatives, religious extremists and the likes.
But decades ago it was not possible to reach content like that in a few seconds, using magical device we carry 24/7.
Parents now would probably be arrested and their kids end up in foster care for giving their children a similar education.
What did not exist in that that time was the avalanche of extreme content that has become mainstream and accessible to the point that it would even overwhelm my own parents' teaching methods, let alone those of most parents who were much less open or equipped to have such conversations.
I encountered BDSM porn around the time I was 12, and was groomed over IRC by an adult posing as a minor who wanted to have sex (this was 1992). That person sent me VHS tapes in brown boxes through the mail. I can't stress how extreme and unusual this was at that time, and I'm lucky I had the parents I had.
My rationale for thinking that this is a problem is that (1) most parents do not prepare their kids for this, and (2) such a thing becoming commonplace is a massive societal burden that will result in psychological damage not just to individual kids, but to their own offspring and to society as a whole.
Letting children see nude pix in Playboy and explaining to them how sex works has been considered taboo and borderline abuse since I was a kid in the 80s, but my parents did it anyway. I agree with you that educating your kids is the best way to protect them from real abuse. But in this context, the outside world has to be considered all groomers and abusers. The world is full of pedophiles and people who want to take advantage of others. Porn sites and the infiltration of extreme BDSM into the mainstream are examples of this. I stress that it's fine for adults and no adult should have their private lives pried into by any government. I'm just saying that there is a real problem, societally, with allowing kids to be exposed to the lusts of random people on the internet, and that problem will compound over time until you have a society like Russia or Appalachia where everyone is raped at 12 and rapes children when they're adults. In other words, a death spiral.
> The violence of what is today mainstram porn would have been extremely fringe
> Seeing a woman being gang raped, choked and beaten
The thing is, in the UK, porn websites are already blocked by default by most ISPs and mobile networks. Only the account owner can unblock that content, either by calling the provider or by changing something in their account settings. And yes, you'll need to verify that you're an adult if you signed up to the service without providing them with details (possible with some mobile providers).
This has been the case for the past 10 or so years, so why exactly do we need this age verification stuff?
If porn was the only thing getting affected, I would gladly support all these surveillance tactics, every single one of them. Porn and prostitution in general is riddled with trafficking, drug addiction and other forms of exploitation.
The reality is that what's at stake here are things that (unlike porn) are not harmful to us, but very important to us. Like the ability to have a free space for thought and information sharing without the oversight of anybody else, not least a potential adversary. This defence is very important against a tyrannical state.
But let's ignore all that and instead make it about children's right to "explore their gender and sexuality" on the internet. This is what I saw some guy arguing a few days ago.
Until we can decouple those things, banning porn has the effect of criminalizing LGBTQ lives.
If you wouldn't allow child porn (which 4chan deletes/doesn't allow), where exactly do you draw the line between blocking sites with cp, and allowing sites like 4chan which host porn without consent (voyeur/spy/revenge)?
Facebook, Youtube and others put in effort to take down illegal content.
4chan only does the bare minimum such that they don't gain too much relevancy in the public eye.
UK or other countries may decide that 4chan doesn't to enough and ban it because of the help of 4chan in faciliating the spreading of illegal content.
So again, where is the difference between 4chan which hosts/spread illegal content and other sites where we're fine with banning them?
> Prosecuting crimes on the internet is near impossible due to the restrictions and often anonymity.
This had until recently been only tested for top-down information. Nowadays, everyone can be a broadcaster and we're seeing quite different results.
Seriously, I'm glad we narrowly averted that one.
Rather than the angry denial and cries of censorship that often occur after someone points it out.
IMO, free flowing information still remains the best safeguard against tyranny.
Put another way - is this a case of the tyrannical calling the free tyrants? If Orwell or Huxley taught us anything it's that this how a state maintains its illusion/power - manipulating language and perception to make their control seem necessary/liberating.
Individual broadcasters are also the largest detractors along with supporters.
You can't even make this shit up.
Doesn’t mean a locked down system is better though. With that they don’t have to bother.
What you need is a decentralized system resistant to propaganda techniques.
Rather what you need is a means for propaganda to be rapidly identified and refuted with counterarguments in a way that its would-be victims can see it.
This is how populism works.
We already have largely decentralized speech in the US via the internet. And much like how the printing press gave everyone a voice or how radio created Hitler, the internet is the modern age vehicle of populist messaging.
The reason someone like Trump can rise to power and consolidate said power is because he speaks simple and lies work in a decentralized system. Populist messaging is built on the fact that humans are naturally drawn to simple solutions and emotional responses. 90% of the time throughout American and European history, if you just tell people "this is ethnic/racial group X's fault!", that works.
Meanwhile the centralized platforms then have the incentive to maximize engagement and the power to structure things that way. And that's how you get Trump, because polarization drives engagement.
Only if you ignore everything about what got Hitler elected.
"Populists" winning is ALWAYS a result of the status quo being unacceptable to the general population. If the establishment is unwilling to fix that then they deserve to be removed from government. Free flow of information isn't responsible for that.
If you have a centralized system with Sean Hannity getting on the television and saying things which are clear, simple and wrong, you still have the exact same problem. Decentralization can only improve it because then it's not only him and the more complicated truth is at least available instead of the simple lie being the only thing on offer.
And this is what I mean by "in a way its would-be victims can see it".
People don't have time to investigate every throw-away simple lie, but it gives you the opportunity to sample. You follow Bob and he says a bunch of stuff and every time there is a whole complicated discussion that you usually don't read because you don't have time. But once in a while you do.
If every time you do, it turns out Bob is right, you can be more confident that the stuff he says is usually right even when you don't have time to check. If every time you do, it turns out Bob is wrong, the opposite. It provides the opportunity to evaluate credibility.
But that only works if you have a system where anybody can reply to anything and actually be seen. If you have a system where a central gatekeeper can make criticism and counterarguments invisible, you lose.
That's why we are where we are, because "both sides" want to have that control, they just want it for themselves and not those that disagree with them.
Counter to the above is that, your bad actor may be my leader. People like convenience. When someone is expressing what you want to say, in a better and smarter way, you just reshare/retweet them. And the 'other side' will feel like your leader is a 'bad actor' who is flooding the system. So even the method of resharing/retweeting needs some sort of provenance/single use only. So you can 'agree' with your thought leader, but they shouldn't be able to mass manufacture consent. Since you might even reshare 'fake news' since you generally trust your leader. It's messy, not sure what that would look like - every post that starts getting traction needs to be fact checked? Community Notes on X is a step in the right direction maybe.
Are there? It sounds like you consider the general public to be your enemy in which case you absolutely should have no say in how a democracy is run.
That would be nice. What's becoming increasingly clear is that the current system (optimizing for engagement) is not that.
The individual isn't a broadcaster - the new broadcasters are YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and all the other platforms that choose which content to amplify.
The content recommendation algorithms are designed by humans, who are just following orders from the wealthiest, most powerful people on earth.
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, 'U.N. Declaration of Rights' "