intopieces

>paying taxes to, or simply being a member of the US (or almost any country) is contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human harm.

I agree with that. But I also assert that people have an ethical obligation to opt-out of systems that cause harm when / if they are able, or at least advocate to change them.

I don't have the ability to change Facebook. But I have the ability to opt out of it, though my actions on the Internet, and the ability to advocate for others to do the same. So, here I am.

I can't say for sure, since I don't know every site. But I would posit that ethical operation is inversely correlated with user base size.

>And again, you run into the problem where nobody wants their website to work like that.

Cancer patients don't want chemo, but it's better than dying, some might say.

>Other sites like Hacker News, Reddit, youtube, and various other forums aren't even designed with the concept of friends that are the sole consumers of your content.

Right, which is why those sites (besides HackerNews) would require slightly different solutions.

Reddit: Limit subreddits to 500 participants at most. Eliminate the number next to upvotes. Verify accounts. Limit posting.

YouTube: Not sure. This one is video-forward, probably the most difficult problem in terms of bad content. Definitely remove the algorithm for targeting people based on interest, though.

>That's not a social media thing. That's just an internet thing where most things are visible to everyone.

This is not any feature inherent to the Web, it's a function of sites that purposefully link together and allow people to rapidly post information. Pre-social media, to get your idea out you had to build a website. There was friction. The earl y web had little moderation because you really had to go searching for bad stuff.

>And again, people still post horrible content to small groups just like they post it in large ones. You've divided the problem up, but you haven't really solved anything. Someone has to moderate the content.

Dividing the problem up is a strategy that I propose lessens the impact to both the users (because content can't spread as fast) and the moderators (because there will be less content to moderate).

Elimination of advertisers and the implementation of cost (as a form of friction), I think, would also go a long way. Cost per post would be ideal.

> But the problem doesn't go away when you shrink the size of the social media site. The same people will still try to post disturbing content. In fact, you're giving them more places to post that content, so potentially more people will have to moderate it.

I’m not sure I follow. A site like Facebook already has mechanisms for detecting multiple accounts, and in any case, multiple accounts don’t mean that there are more “places” to post. It’s still Facebook.

I don’t propose breaking Facebook into smaller websites. I propose limiting the reach of a single individual on those sites. Basically, normalizing the localness of social media to be more meaningful.

As well, I think Facebook and other platforms need to reckon with the consent when it comes to posting images of people, in general. That’s why I suggested limiting the posts to only those of friends who consent.

I agree that no one wants this.

Size is not the determining factor. It's a single factor that highly influences the value in posting damaging content. It's clear from the rise of influencers on YT, IG, Twitter, etc -- as well as the prolific use of these platforms by terrorists and other malefactors -- that being able to reach many people with a single post is a significant driver of people to post content.

My concern is not primarily with the outsourcing of moderation, but with the type of moderation that is required. There are ways to limit the kind of content that people post. Making things less sharable is one way of doing that. Creating barriers to entry is another. My list of suggestions encompasses both. Of course, these are two suggestions which are antithetical to the ad-riddle, growth-driven social network model, so there is no way they would ever be implemented.

I should add another solution to my wish-list: remove ads entirely.

> What specifically is the reason you consider those particular platforms to be unethical, and what is the solution.

These platforms are so large that they require hundreds of thousands of moderators in order to remove vile, illegal content, causing trauma for a vast underclass of foreign workers.

Here’s a few solutions:

Limit the number of people that a person can be friends with to 150, the Dunbar number.

Restrict the posting of photos to those which have been identified as having you or your friends in the picture, or no humans at all. Require permission from all human participants to post.

Charge a fee for access.

HackerNews is a limited-focus link aggregation and comment platform. It doesn't require the kind of moderation that larger scale, broad-focus social media platforms do.

I don't envy the work that Dan and Scott have to do in the slightest, but I don't think they'll end up with PTSD from it. At least, that's what I gathered when I read "The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News"[0], especially this description of it: "Pressed to describe Hacker News, they do so by means of extravagant, sometimes tender metaphors: the site is a “social ecosystem,” a “hall of mirrors,” a “public park or garden,” a “fractal tree."

[0]http://archive.is/bbzan

Every time you use Facebook, see an advertisement there, or click it, every time you share content on Facebook and get others to engage with that platform, you are contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human psychological harm, in many different ways.

Same for Twitter, and for Reddit, and Instagram... and probably TikTok.

I don’t believe the use of these platforms can be considered ethical.

>Though I don't fully understand their ridiculously long trousers.

As others have pointed out, they hem them for free. This is a clever bit of optimization for them, for two reasons:

(1) Fewer SKUs to stock. Each type of pant only varies in waist, not length.

(2) The pants become non-returnable after alternation. This reduces the number of items that can be returned substantially, since very few people fit the dimension of the pants.

India banning TikTok creates a fourth Internet.

Chaos in the sense of instability, of constant change, of randomness. Earlier ecologists like Frederic Clements thought that ecosystems tended towards a stable climax, but this theory has been largely disproven by more rigorous data analysis that shows ecosystems are more influenced by chance of physiological and environmental condition than by competition.

If you're interested in reading more, I found Kricher's "The Balance of Nature" to be a highly engaging read. There's a good retail PDF available from Princeton University Press [0]

[0]https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691138985/th...

As much as I agree with Lovelock's sentiments about the environment, Gaia is more wishful thinking and certainly doesn't have its foundations in science. That is, the world does not tend towards stability. Ecosystems tend towards chaos and don't return a norm.

It’s important to consider not your specific implementation, but the common implementation that is Android. And that implementation is chock full of spyware/adware/malware.

Android is open, and therefore exhibits the classic tension of liberty: free to do what you want, including harm yourself.

Were rioters looting private homes? I don't think it makes sense to buy a gun to defend your local Wal*Mart.

Do you have a history of suicidal ideation, either in you or in your family? Consider this when you get a gun. 60% of gun deaths in the US are suicides [0].

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-da...

While I agree in principle, I don't think this is manageable given how diverse the content is on the Internet. What sort of thing are you going to sell me when I'm reading a news article about wars in the Middle East?

There's the law, and then there's the law's practical application. These rarely line up, especially for foreigners. Iran isn't really interested in making world news by executing foreigners.

>where being member of Groups A, B, and C means you must hold Ideas X, Y, and Z because those must be the views you hold as a member of those groups.

This was never more obvious to me than when I was in college. As an out gay guy who studied Arabic, this seemed to short-circuit the expectations of my peers; being in awe of Islamic art, and wanting deeply to travel to Iran and see the mosques of the world was something that, for some reason, didn't compute to them. "But don't they hate your kind over there?" was not an uncommon reaction. I get it, I really do, but sometimes it felt like I wasn't allowed, in their eyes, to have access to those beautiful things in the world, or else I was considered "brave" for trying to access them. But to me they have been wholly distinct interests from the start, and only incidental that they happen to coexist in me as a individual person.

To the earnest speaker, many abhorrent things are both unorthodox and true. So, I can’t see that as a uncontroversial qualifier itself.

This article seems to praise people for not being "conventional minded," as if being unorthodox in itself is something to be cherished and rewarded. That is too low of a bar to clear. There are lots of opinions and viewpoints that are unorthodox for good reason -- because they are just bad ideas, or are factually untrue no matter how many times you argue it. It's as if PG is saying to us "Think Different," and just stopping there. What he should be saying is "Think Different, but be prepared to prove it," as well as "Be a little tolerant of people who are doing their best to prove it."

The problem is that, unless you're speaking to someone with whom you have a great deal of trust, that second part -- the earnestness of their unorthodoxy -- is difficult to prove.

I know that it would be a bridge too far, but having worked at a business (movie theater) that had prices only ending in 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, or .00, I would love for the whole country to just have quarters and be done with it.

Though, since I rarely handle change at all — if I do use cash, I usually find the first place near my hand to donate whatever metal comes back to me - I suppose I’m not the target audience anyway.

If you're a fan of customization, BTT-GoldenChaos [0] has made the Touch Bar indispensable for me; I don't like using a laptop without a Touch Bar because of this app.

[0]https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-complete...

That was not my intention. Could you clarify how your statement:

> If congress doesn't change something, then that means they have determined no change is necessary.

Is not accurately reworded as:

>this lack of specific consensus on action is actually a form of broad consensus on inaction

It does indicate a consensus is not met, and merely that; the GP claimed the this lack of specific consensus on action is actually a form of broad consensus on inaction, a leap in logic that is unfounded because it ignores the political game theory that is employed in obstructionism.

It also ignores the fundamental brokenness of the system through a sort of circular logic: things didn’t change since they didn’t need to be changed.

> If congress doesn't change something, then that means they have determined no change is necessary.

This not accurate. Congress failing to act due to deadlock does not indicate that either party agrees that no change ought to be made, only that congress couldn’t come to an agreement about how it should be made.

To say otherwise is akin to saying that, because you and your husband can’t agree on where to eat for dinner, you must not be hungry.

Both parties might believe that a law needs to be changed, but changed in opposite directions: one might want it repealed, the other strengthened.

Queer people are typically not present in traditional histories. This raises the awareness that queer people existed then too, albeit in different circumstances.

>Which civil rights? Whose?

Maybe the Rohingya? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

>For $20,000/year we'll put you up in a spartanly furnished apartment and with a servicable car and you'll get your staple foods and toiletries delivered every other week.

This would be amazing, and I would subscribe. It sounds like Basic Income.

Even better - if you think universities are leftist and want to defund them, this deprives those universities of tuition.

I asked about the privacy practices of the company and 66% of your answer is about the founder and not the company. I specifically wanted information about DDG, not the founder. This kind of response makes me more suspicious of the outrage.