hardnose
What changed wasn't the signal to noise ratio, but rather how the internet judged reputation of speakers. We went from forcing everyone to analyze the ideas presented, to offering them shortcuts in the form of "curation" or "moderation" that selected for better content.
Then, the gatekeepers of the "curation" and "moderation" systems developed cliques and hugboxes. They built balkanized, loyal audiences in this way. Call this the Fark, SomethingAwful, Bodybuildingforums, etc. era.
The strong balkanized cliques formed by this iteration pivoted their cliques into social media, and content began to be selected for based on who you were - how much money you had, who was on your friends list, what job positions you held. These cliques established fairly stringent, unwritten ideological litmus tests for admittance. And nobody is better at passing ideological litmus tests than motivated power seekers (i.e. activists) in fields like politics, academia, and journalism, who quickly discovered that they could blackmail/extort their way into the gatekeeping positions.
That leads us to today, where myopic moderation by ideological activists is sold to the public as "curation" and your ability to choose which speakers to hear is sold as a negative externality and a threat to public safety.
So what's the path forward? I posit that we could achieve much by actively suppressing these newer forms of gatekeeping, and returning in as much as possible to the original form that allowed internet discussions to thrive - anonymous text coupled with broad based evaluation of ideas, not speakers' allegiances, possessions, and public personas.
One of the things that worked about internet discussions of the past is that they prioritized quality of ideas, not importance of identity or who you know or any of that. Social media turned that on its head, I think a successful model might involve turning it back. More like UseNet than Facebook.
What's the alternative? Every collective effort is a series of individual efforts.
I checked the Wikipedia entry, but the only reference it maintains for the Smithsonian having helped the Wright brothers is that they apparently gave Wilbur an award in 1910, after having tried unsuccessfully to steal credit from him for building the first heavier than air flyer. Somehow I doubt that's the kind of government contribution to innovation to which the previous poster intended to refer.
...oh. OK. Hmmm.
Starting to get a little worried about the neutrality of coverage. It's never good when technical issues and technical projects get polluted with political animosity.
And the point about "URLs I dont know" is exactly my point - the move towards hosting content on websites of dubious operational security is a net negative for internet security. Sites like Facebook may not be perfect, but at least we know who runs them, that they've got skin in the game and incentives to adhere to their stated policies as well as laws and regulations, and where our data is located.
If I clicked that link, and bladerunner.social served me malware, where is the "throat to choke"?
There is no alternative to freedom.
OwO
He makes good stuff, and doesn't frequently go on weird aimless rants motivated by clearly disguised personal animosity. So there's that.
If you believe that, then you also support efforts to force big tech to respect freedom of political speech, yes?
Don't confuse that with "social credit" systems, whereby China prevents you from riding trains if you say something naughty.
Failing to develop that technology, leaving it to China or some other authoritarian state to do, would be more likely to harm liberties, wouldn't it?
Seems like you're just "damned if you do, damned if you don't"-ing, no offense.
He grew up on the internet. At a time when everyone was turning their internet web pages black to protest censorship. At a time when "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" was a slogan touted proudly by technologists and philosophers.
It's not Elon Musk that changed, it seems to me. It's the cultural values on the internet that have changed, and arguably not for the better - more control, more censorship, more centralization.
Not to US social mores, to some weird averaged out amalgamation of Western social mores. In the US, firearms are very normal and a regular part of life, but try doing a YouTube stream or channel about them and you'll quickly find yourself "sanitized" anyway.
Why is it so hard to believe that Musk genuinely believes in exactly the version of "freedom of speech" that everyone in his generation grew up with, that served as the impetus for much of the internet's creation, etc.?
No, the implication is that Google collects as much of your personal data as possible, stores it forever, and monetizes it. You can tell because that's what I actually said. What you're responding to is a red herring - you brought up third parties, not me.
If I use the Apple Mail app with default settings from my iCloud account to e-mail ten lawn care services, I won't start seeing web ads for lawn care. If I use Gmail with default settings, I will.
> The main thing that Apple does differently is, that they took stronger measures to ensure that the data THEY collect from their users can only be collected by THEM.
No, the main thing that Apple does differently is make their money by selling hardware, software, and services directly to end users. This is in stark contrast to Google, whose typical business model offers free services that make the end users into the saleable product.