21st Century censorship is something I don't think we expected in yestercentury

[mikeymikec]

"What we expected in yestercentury" - I think the general concern on the Internet back then was will government X try to censor the general public, slippery slope arguments regarding current events back then, etc.

What's been disturbing me in fairly recent years - and not just since the US electorate let the fascists back in - is that the biggest threat to free speech isn't coming from the government (though the GQP is trying quite hard), it's from corporations, and that concern obviously is magnified significantly by corporations wanting to pander to the GQP's whims.

Here's a basic (non-political) example of what I mean:

https://imgur.com/hPANlF3

"I can't unsheathe it (the sword) or TikTok will take this video down again..."

Videos getting demonetized because "bad words" (e.g. "killed") were said, and as a result code-words are used like "unalived".

'1984' talks about taking the language from the people with which they might voice their discontent, e.g. "double-plus un-good", and I think what's going on is some straight-up 1984 shit. You might say, "if it's a private website, it's their rules", but the fact of the matter is that probably >99.9% of political discourse is communicated over privately owned systems, and "private resource, their rules" applies.

Free speech can be virtually completely locked down without a fascist government writing a single law. The lockdown isn't subject to any oversight whatsoever, and corporations can mould how people communicate for fear of being locked out of those systems. So you protest in the town square. If corpo decides that it's not in their interest that anyone outside that town square sees it, therefore it won't.

Personally I think this is more scary than '1984', and if left unchecked can allow the right wing to rule forever.

 

[biostud]

The problem is that we have moved to social media and think this the only place we can express ourselves. Social media are not about freedom of speech or being social, social media is about keeping your attention so they can sell your data and adds. And until you accept these fact, you will keep running into the same dilemma, believing the actually care about you rights and freedom of speech

In all times there have rules (social, legal, editorial or moderators) about your freedom of speech, otherwise you would just get anarchy, lies and fake news (sounds familiar?)

She could just host all the videos on her own homepage or other sites which are more "lenient" with the content of video files, and she would be able to post whatever she wanted, so she has complete freedom of speech, just not on all platforms.

OnlyFans model explains calculus and machine learning on Pornhub because it pays better than YouTube

Videos earn almost three times as much per million views on Pornhub.

www.pcgamer.com

And for the same reason there are no SoMe platforms on my phone.

 

[mikeymikec]

She could just host all the videos on her own homepage or other sites which are more "lenient" with the content of video files, and she would be able to post whatever she wanted, so she has complete freedom of speech, just not on all platforms.

OnlyFans model explains calculus and machine learning on Pornhub because it pays better than YouTube

Videos earn almost three times as much per million views on Pornhub.

www.pcgamer.com

Bear in mind two things:

1) Your language is intent on blaming the user.

2) All but one of the operating systems we can have on our devices are owned by a corporation. There are stories circulating the Internet that for example non-social-media messages being sent with political keywords have been blackholed by Google (I realise that saying that without a source is weaksauce, I was reading these stories around the time that Facebook decided to block searches for terms like 'Democrat' after the last election, Google removing "woke" calendar events etc, and I don't have one to hand nor a sufficiently good memory to come up with search terms to find it again). Even if there are some "safe harbours", the majority owned by corpos can easily block them on your device using various techniques. If my self-hosted email system was blocked by Microsoft and Google, I'd be up shit creek without a paddle. Which right-wing government is going to kick up a fuss as long as it's not their team's speech that's being infringed?

It doesn't matter if the content is out there, the corpos can just render it invisible to our devices. Sure, you can play a game of cat and mouse with these organisations and find workarounds, but every time the bar is raised, more people are excluded from "wrongthink" narratives. If people think that their grandparents being fed a diet of non-stop-Fox News is a problem, imagine how much more of a problem there will be if there simply is very little way for "wrongthink" info to reach those who are persuadable? In an era where low-effort voting is a problem and poor voter turnout is another problem, this all adds up to society circling the pan.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

the problem is we don’t interact face to face that often anymore. We don’t belong to Churches/Temples or any social groups anymore. Shit we don’t even hang out with friends and family as often as we have.
This is what allows speech to be snuffed out.
Everyone should watch this documentary and it is presented in a fairly entertaining way.

JOIN OR DIE: A film about why you should join a club

A feature documentary on the life and work of civic guru Robert Putnam.

www.joinordiefilm.com

 

[Greenman]

"What we expected in yestercentury" - I think the general concern on the Internet back then was will government X try to censor the general public, slippery slope arguments regarding current events back then, etc.

What's been disturbing me in fairly recent years - and not just since the US electorate let the fascists back in - is that the biggest threat to free speech isn't coming from the government (though the GQP is trying quite hard), it's from corporations, and that concern obviously is magnified significantly by corporations wanting to pander to the GQP's whims.

Here's a basic (non-political) example of what I mean:

https://imgur.com/hPANlF3

"I can't unsheathe it (the sword) or TikTok will take this video down again..."

Videos getting demonetized because "bad words" (e.g. "killed") were said, and as a result code-words are used like "unalived".

'1984' talks about taking the language from the people with which they might voice their discontent, e.g. "double-plus un-good", and I think what's going on is some straight-up 1984 shit. You might say, "if it's a private website, it's their rules", but the fact of the matter is that probably >99.9% of political discourse is communicated over privately owned systems, and "private resource, their rules" applies.

Free speech can be virtually completely locked down without a fascist government writing a single law. The lockdown isn't subject to any oversight whatsoever, and corporations can mould how people communicate for fear of being locked out of those systems. So you protest in the town square. If corpo decides that it's not in their interest that anyone outside that town square sees it, therefore it won't.

Personally I think this is more scary than '1984', and if left unchecked can allow the right wing to rule forever.

Pretty much off base from top to bottom. If you're using a "free" service, you play by their rules. The right to bitch is determined by how much you pay. The other issue is that most people don't want free speech, they want their own beliefs protected and those other stupid people shut down.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Pretty much off base from top to bottom. If you're using a "free" service, you play by their rules. The right to bitch is determined by how much you pay. The other issue is that most people don't want free speech, they want their own beliefs protected and those other stupid people shut down.

Fuck that noise. You enter into a social contact when you provide a service and unless it's explicitly stated that you aren't allowing certain words on your site, you don't get to restrict them.

Besides that shit ain't free, humans are the product. You want to use me and decide what I can say? Psshh.

 

[mikeymikec]

Pretty much off base from top to bottom. If you're using a "free" service, you play by their rules. The right to bitch is determined by how much you pay. The other issue is that most people don't want free speech, they want their own beliefs protected and those other stupid people shut down.

I salute your unerring strategy to ignore the actual topic when it suits you.

 

[biostud]

Bear in mind two things:

1) Your language is intent on blaming the user.

2) All but one of the operating systems we can have on our devices are owned by a corporation. There are stories circulating the Internet that for example non-social-media messages being sent with political keywords have been blackholed by Google (I realise that saying that without a source is weaksauce, I was reading these stories around the time that Facebook decided to block searches for terms like 'Democrat' after the last election, Google removing "woke" calendar events etc, and I don't have one to hand nor a sufficiently good memory to come up with search terms to find it again). Even if there are some "safe harbours", the majority owned by corpos can easily block them on your device using various techniques. If my self-hosted email system was blocked by Microsoft and Google, I'd be up shit creek without a paddle. Which right-wing government is going to kick up a fuss as long as it's not their team's speech that's being infringed?

It doesn't matter if the content is out there, the corpos can just render it invisible to our devices. Sure, you can play a game of cat and mouse with these organisations and find workarounds, but every time the bar is raised, more people are excluded from "wrongthink" narratives. If people think that their grandparents being fed a diet of non-stop-Fox News is a problem, imagine how much more of a problem there will be if there simply is very little way for "wrongthink" info to reach those who are persuadable? In an era where low-effort voting is a problem and poor voter turnout is another problem, this all adds up to society circling the pan.

1) I'm blaming media and tech companies for not being transparent and honest. I blame people for not caring and do some critical thinking.

As @Fanatical Meat says, we as a collective need to meet face to face more, join a club whatever. Drop SoMe, it is not what our lives should be filled with.

 

[Brainonska511]

I salute your unerring strategy to ignore the actual topic when it suits you.

He's the western interpretation of the Three Wise Monkeys. Always turning a blind eye to the Republican bullshit nonsense that he's supported for decades.

 

[mikeymikec]

1) I'm blaming media and tech companies for not being transparent and honest. I blame people for not caring and do some critical thinking.

As @Fanatical Meat says, we as a collective need to meet face to face more, join a club whatever. Drop SoMe, it is not what our lives should be filled with.

On either point: first step however is idle curiosity, a chance encounter with content that challenges the person. With what I'm talking about, that's somewhat less likely to occur.

 

[biostud]

On either point: first step however is idle curiosity, a chance encounter with content that challenges the person. With what I'm talking about, that's somewhat less likely to occur.

Just to be clear I fully agree with your OP, but it is us as people or society who has to do something.

We (here in Denmark) still have politicians who care about the society, and try to "fix" problems even though you might not agree to the methods.

Denmark to ban phones in schools

The Danish government has announced that smartphones will be banned in schools and after-school clubs.

www.bbc.co.uk

Danish commission recommends no smartphone and tablets for kids under 13

Children should not have their own smartphone or tablet before the age of 13, according to recommendations released on Tuesday by a Danish government commission.

www.thelocal.dk

 

[mikeymikec]

Just to be clear I fully agree with your OP, but it is us as people or society who has to do something.

I agree. I want to get more politically active and I'm still collecting my thoughts about what I want to talk about.

 

[SMOGZINN]

the biggest threat to free speech isn't coming from the government (though the GQP is trying quite hard), it's from corporations, and that concern obviously is magnified significantly by corporations wanting to pander to the GQP's whims.

The goal of a corporation is not to allow you to have free, or any other kind, of speech. Their goal is to make a profit, and they don't care at all how they go about that.
Corporations are intentionally designed to be sociopaths. If you try to equate them to humans, every single one of them would be clinically insane, and that is a design goal.

The problem here is that we have allowed corporations to gain this much power in the first place. You want to solve this problem, then you need to solve the problem of megacorporations basically replacing governments. That means heavy regulations. That means actually holding them responsible both legally and financially. That last one means you need to not be afraid of placing fines on corporations that completely wipe out their profit when they do something wrong.

Because right now we tend to fine corporations millions of dollars for breaking laws that made them billions. Corporations find that an acceptable trade off.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

The goal of a corporation is not to allow you to have free, or any other kind, of speech. Their goal is to make a profit, and they don't care at all how they go about that.
Corporations are intentionally designed to be sociopaths. If you try to equate them to humans, every single one of them would be clinically insane, and that is a design goal.

The problem here is that we have allowed corporations to gain this much power in the first place. You want to solve this problem, then you need to solve the problem of megacorporations basically replacing governments. That means heavy regulations. That means actually holding them responsible both legally and financially. That last one means you need to not be afraid of placing fines on corporations that completely wipe out their profit when they do something wrong.

Because right now we tend to fine corporations millions of dollars for breaking laws that made them billions. Corporations find that an acceptable trade off.

I agree and I want to add for outrageous stuff the C Suite should be eligible for jail time. That’s what these guys fear, being locked up and having a criminal record.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I agree and I want to add for outrageous stuff the C Suite should be eligible for jail time. That’s what these guys fear, being locked up and having a criminal record.

Absolutely, that near immunity to criminal charges is one of the main reasons corporations are sociopaths. Fix that and at the very minimum they will be much more carful about doing nefarious things. The problem here is that politics follows money, and corporations are made of it.

 

[biostud]

I agree. I want to get more politically active and I'm still collecting my thoughts about what I want to talk about.

I've been member of a political party since 2003, but passive for the last 10 years as I want to focus on my family while my children are small, and still want to spend time with me

 

[fskimospy]

Fuck that noise. You enter into a social contact when you provide a service and unless it's explicitly stated that you aren't allowing certain words on your site, you don't get to restrict them.

Besides that shit ain't free, humans are the product. You want to use me and decide what I can say? Psshh.

Pretty sure all those sites say they can moderate at their discretion in the TOS. It's their platform and their speech - you can't force them to broadcast your words if they don't want to. Similarly you don't have to speak on their website if you don't want to.

I'm very sympathetic to the topic of the thread in that a handful of extremely powerful corporations control channels lots of people use to communicate through and could use that control for nefarious ends. Really hard to see any way to stop them from doing this that would not have major second order effects. If sites can't moderate speech they don't like then you're going to end up with Nazis and CP all over it. If they can moderate speech then shouldn't they be making the rules? It's not like the patrons of a bar get polled to decide if a drunk gets kicked out, the people who own the place make that decision.

I think concentrated wealth is the problem and this is just way 10,000 in which it manifests itself.

 

[hal2kilo]

The problem is that we have moved to social media and think this the only place we can express ourselves. Social media are not about freedom of speech or being social, social media is about keeping your attention so they can sell your data and adds. And until you accept these fact, you will keep running into the same dilemma, believing the actually care about you rights and freedom of speech

In all times there have rules (social, legal, editorial or moderators) about your freedom of speech, otherwise you would just get anarchy, lies and fake news (sounds familiar?)

She could just host all the videos on her own homepage or other sites which are more "lenient" with the content of video files, and she would be able to post whatever she wanted, so she has complete freedom of speech, just not on all platforms.

OnlyFans model explains calculus and machine learning on Pornhub because it pays better than YouTube

Videos earn almost three times as much per million views on Pornhub.

www.pcgamer.com

And for the same reason there are no SoMe platforms on my phone.

It's about selling clicks, no matter what damage it causes.

 

[biostud]

It's about selling clicks, no matter what damage it causes.

Exactly.