Debate with Andrew Feinberg

I'm going to paste in this debate from Facebook with Andrew Feinberg, a Washington, DC tech writer whom I've sparred with many a time before (starting with the famous trip by Scoble to Washington). Facebook is annoying for debates because of the way the columns are set up -- you can't make paragraphs with "return" without in fact posting your comment. So everything is smushed together. Facebook dumbs down debate. In that sense G+ doesn't impose that smush on you, but it has other problems.

I didn't debate everything he said -- I didn't have time. So I'm going to come back and answer some of the challenges he made to my ideas. But I will say this to the common nonsense that corporations don't have to supply the First Amendment blah blah. Why always cede everything to corporations? Why give up y our rights just because you come online?

And the context here was indeed about GOVERNMENT Facebook and Twitter and livestream activity. I've been in a Second Life government-sponsored meeting in which I was told to shut up when I typed a query about the war in Afghanistan. That can't stand. It's one thing if someone crashes a server or has particle wars or spams or retypes a million dumb comments urging the legalization of marijuana. There you might want to move posts to a rage pile, or even mute if it is spam or obscenities, like television would. After all, this is a kind of public broadcasting. But if I sit quietly in the backchat -- not speaking aloud in voice, but typing in the room chat -- that the US would make its peace claims about supporting civil society in Egypt if it didn't have the Iraq and Afghan wars on its conscience (this was a meeting about Egypt way before the unrest in Tahrir Square) -- then I shouldn't be told to shut up.

BTW go on any OWS Livestream and watch the moms on there -- it's always the 40-something moms who take this role -- censoring the crap out of everyone -- muting people whom they view as disruptive. It's scary. Direct democracy brings you this sort of thing instantly; it's not free at all.

As for corporations, they should strive more for First Amendment standards than they do. I'm not for coercing and compelling them to do this, as that trumps freedom of association. But I'm for them raising the bar past the million nasty geeky abuse reporters right out of the police state who want to shut down other's speech and rattle platform owners to do so, or for the nuisances claiming libel or hate speech if you merely disagree with them.

Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick via Alec Ross

‎21st Century Statecraft seems to involve collecting a lot of ardent fans and talking about the tech -- like Scoble! Reprinting my comment in case it gets "hidden" or I get "muted":

Alec, can you make clear whether you are for or against SOPA, because saying worries about laws that are only bills isn't a persuasive argument for already-hysterical technologists. Alex said that you said that ""What applies to the telephone applies to social media," said Ross. Ergo, due process and lawful intercepts apply to e-criminality." I took that to mean that the Internet can't hide behind being special forever. SOPA *is* in fact all about due process and lawful takedowns -- law-enforcers have to make their case. But Alex has taken another comment of yours about the balance between openness and security to be an anti-SOPA statement. So...does that what social media ultimately enable officials to do, appear to be all things to all men? Which is it?

https://www.facebook.com/alexhoward/posts/127265427392326

www.facebook.com

Like · · Unfollow Post · Share · January 11 at 2:21pm

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    Andrew Feinberg

    I'm curious, why a) the seemingly random attack on Scoble and b) the apparent paranoia about getting "muted," which I guess you think would be done by some "powers that be" reacting to your comments, which I guess you see as a threat to some established order that favors people who plunge headlong into acquiring an inordinate number of friends with whom they can share their opinions, which are almost always favorable towards the newest kind of technology.
    
    I get how you might disagree with Alec's politics or be skeptical of his ideas. But why does it always come back to Scoble with you?

    January 12 at 2:04am · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    a) it's not an attack on Scoble at all; it's merely an explanation of the cultural patterns laid down by the Silicon Valley Early Adapters -- they collect gadzillion fans or friends, the use social media like a broadcasting device, then they mute/ban people they don't like. Scoble doesn't have me on ban as it happens, but others do. And recently Arrington, Leo Laporte and others began to bemoan the inability to mute/hide people on Facebook, which they've come to thoroughly enjoy on G+. What that means is that these big guys come on, articulate whatever enthusiastic policy or tech talk or political idea they like, their fans ooh and ah, and any critics are called trolls and muted. All social media works in that fashion. While you might concede that Scoble as a private person or representing a private company gets to do that, I've always STRENOUSLY questioned these memes and patterns and cultural habits as I knew that before long, they'd migrate to government. And here we all are. And here Ross and others are doing the same thing, collecting lots of friends and fans, broadcasting, and basically just using it as a PR thing. It remains to be seen whether they will mute or ban or turn off comments, like Beth Noveck did during her time at the White House. As for "paranoia," the only Facebook-related big tech influencer who has muted me is the Fastbook gal Lora Kolodny, she didn't like my probing of her anti-SOPA views which she tried to pretend she didn't have. It's not about some narrow notion of "the new technology," either. The new technology comes with an ideology baked into it which is why I oppose it often, it's not free. That ideology is basically technocommunism. I hope to blog on Ross' thing soon and make it more clear.

    January 12 at 8:05pm · Like
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    Andrew Feinberg

    I'm curious...so what if Mike Arrington wants to be able to ignore people that annoy him? When last I checked he was a private citizen with who owes nothing to no one. Yes, he, like others are influential in some circles. But does that confer on them a responsibility to listen to the rants and opinions of everyone who reads him? I feel like you credit so-called influencers with wider influence than they actually have.
    
    As for Alec (who i admittedly knew back when he ran One Economy), I don't see him thinking or acting any differently in his current role than he did in the private sector. Now I am just as annoyed as you are when official government blogs turn off comments, but you have to realize that the alternative isn't reasonable. Any attempt at moderation to prevent real trolls or plain obscenity would risk crossing the line into censorship. Better to disable them and let discussion take place elsewhere. Or do you have a better idea.
    
    I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that social media has ideology "baked in" in any way. The same technology gets used by groups up and down the spectrum.
    
    I remember a few years ago, when I was planning Robert's trip to DC, you adamantly insisted that we had some sort of hidden partisan agenda and were driven by some ulterior motive. I wonder now if your real problem is that not only are many so-called influencers and their followers liberal, and but now that there is a liberal administration in power, they get to use the visibility that comes with power to push (you say broadcast) their ideas.
    
    I'm sure you have unfairly been called a troll when you choose io start screaming in an unfriendly forum. That doesn't mean that all social media is imbued with your ideology, but that you are not in the right place.
    
    Oh, yeah...as many people told me from 2001 to 2008, elections have consequences. If you dislike what government officials are saying in public forums, you get a chance to take away their soapbox every four years.

    January 12 at 8:39pm · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    Mike Arrington needs to grow a thicker skin. But he lets it get to him. He has a funny solution. On his blog, he allows comments. Possibly because he has the tools to remove the really hateful ones there. On Facebook, he shut comments down completely, leaving only "like" and "share" Oh, you and your geeky snarky "last time I checked". Arrington isn't a private citizen; he's a public figure and investor in technology and blogger with enormous influence. My critique of the Silicon Valley influencers, from day one, when your friend Mr. Scoble went to Washington to get Congressmen on Twitter, is that they were using tools, into which they had baked ideological principles, where they had the advantage as early adapters and beta testers as the devs' friends, to take over the public space, indeed take over the state. Indeed they DO have to listen to rants and raves WHEN THEY TRY TO TAKE POWER. These are not mere bloggers; these are people TRYING TO TAKE POWER. Haven't you watched their insane, hysterical, crazed and well-funded onslaught on Congress over SOPA? No intellectual property owner is safe! Of course you had a hidden agenda, and it's working out well -- you have the Goverati of Gov 2.0 in power everywhere, and Ross' meetings are an exemplary of this -- the South African writer he touted sums it all up: the purpose of social media is to put in power small groups of people, and disrupt the existing institutions. Absolutely. He's absolutely open about the essentially Leninist agenda. I don't care if I'm called "a troll". I'm a persistent dissident when it comes to this huge power grab and I'm right to be -- our very body politic and our very freedoms are at stake. If your geek pals had their way, it wouldn't be that they take away officials they don't like, *they'd take away the system of voting itself, they'd take away Congress itself" and run everything from their smart phones with their pals. This is not an exaggeration; read what they write.

    January 12 at 9:46pm · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    The First Amendment MUST apply on these government social media jamborees. Absolutely. The right of the people to assemble and express their grievances! That you think that government officials get to shut off "trolls" means you think the First Amendment has to end because some thin-skinned geek pal doesn't like getting criticized. I don't trust you to know the difference between what really is unprotected speech and what SHOULD BE protected. As for baked-in ideology, if you don't want to hear it from me, read what Drupal's founders say about themselves, and read what Disqus wrote to me about their lovely ideology bake-in. You're soaking in, that's why you think it's "for everybody". It's not. I just explained how it isn't, due to these very tools of mute/ban/hide/filter etc. The very fact that we can't "dislike" or "vote no" on things on Facebook unless we make a stupid poll says it all!

    January 12 at 9:52pm · Like
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    Andrew Feinberg

    What about Dropal or Disqus? Are you saying that ALL implementations of Drupal or Disqus are imbued with the politics of the people that developed them? That's ridiculous -- technology itself is non-ideological even if an inventor is himself an ideologue. You ascribe far too much power to people and things that are only as powerful as the systems they inhabit allow them to be. Second, I don't appreciate being told that I don't believe in free speech because I question your logic and think you are seeing conspiracies where none exist and giving people and things power they do not have. Number 1, a PERSON'S Facebook account is PRIVATE. That means YES, Michael Arrington (who I am not good friends with and hardly speak to despite our Facebook friendship) can block you or me or anyone if he wants to on Facebook, for any reason. He has NO obligation to interact with you or me or anyone on his personal Facebook account. I agree that he might be a public figure (in the same way that I've been told I am one as well) but he is still a private citizen. Even a public figure has the right to ignore you on the street if he doesn't want to talk to you. I also don't know why you call Facebook as a whole a "government social media jamboree." It's a private company. It;s not a public utility. Oh, and even a government employee like Alec Ross can ignore you on his own Facebook account. And BTW, if you had read what I wrote above you would have seen that I said that GOVERNMENT WEBSITES that disable comments are not idea, but because I BELIEVE IN THE FIRST AMENDMENT I understand why not allowing public comments on a blog is better than having any sort of moderation. You have many, many ways to express yourself and publiish your ideas. Commenting on a blog is not a right, even if it is a government-owned blog. If they don't have comments it in no way restricts your ability to write a rebuttal or comment on a blog post of your own. For an anticommunist you seem to have a problem with the concept of private property. And for someone who cares about privacy you don't seem to care at all about certain people's privacy if they are a popular blogger.

    January 12 at 10:49pm · Like
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    Andrew Feinberg

    Let's be clear, here. Facebook doesn't give the option of "turning off" comments -- but you can adjust your privacy settings to restrict comments to friends. "Like" and "Share" are the only options because the code has limitations. Not because of some desire to manipulate people's freedom of expression. Michael Arrington isn't trying to silence you, he's just not your Facebook friend. And let's remember that even if I accept the premise that people like Mike and Robert are public figures, being a public figure does not mean that someone loses the right to ignore someone in their own home. To be a public figures means you lose some legal remedies under tort law. But even a public figure doesn't have to let you run amok over their private space, or even their social networking accounts. Even a public figure can have some privacy, such as it is. The President is always covered by a reporter wherever he goes. But he can tell the pool photographer to stay out of his bedroom. Similarly, as a blogger, Mike Arrington has a public space where let you rant and call him all sorts of things . He's a blogger, and it's part of the job. But his own Facebook page. isn't theTechcrunch comments section. You rail against people who oppose SOPA, possibly because you care about property rights. But you don't seem to respect a person's right to be left alone.
    
    I also do no see where you get the idea that technology influencers wield outsize amounts of influence in the realm of public policy. You attribute to them ego and ambition that would be normal for someone who is a successful community organizer or someone who travels in circles with close proximity to the real levels of power in the country. I think if you got to know Mike or Robert (and I have only spent significant time with Robert so I am really guessing about Mike), you'll find that they are pretty happy with what they have accomplished while writing in their own little niche catering to a niche audience. Niche audiences can be large, but they are still niche audiences with little impact elsewhere. For reasons I cannot decode, you see something sinister in these people who in truth, have very little name recognition, much less influence, outside the world of technology and telecommunications. They're TECH BLOGGERS!!!
    
    I am an educated man, but I am truly baffled by your assertion that tech bloggers and silicon valley social media entrepreneurs are engaged in some sort of meticulously planned and carefully coordinated campaign to seize control of public discourse and through that the state. I think you will find that while many entrepreneurs have outsize visions of their company's impact bordering on the messianic (see Zuckerberg, Mark),, their companies started to develop pragmatic solutions to mundane problems. Facebook was a tool to let college students to communicate with other students. Twitter began as a side project, and for the longest time no one was adding features with any sort of grand vision for the site except for it to stop crashing under the weight of its rapid growth.
    
    I also categorically disagree with the idea that social media users are mindless sheeple baahing at the beck and call of Scoble and Arrington, the great early adopters. FACT: Scoble wasn't even close to being an early adopter of Facebook. I was on here in 2004, years before it was open to the general public. And even when the public came, people like Scoble and Arrington weren't able to increase their influence by leveraging power gained as an early adopter of Facebook. Even when Twitter was at its most buzz-worthy, Robert only had 10,000-some followers out of the hundreds of thousands that joined. He evangelized the hell out of Friendfeed, but did that become as widely adopted as Facebook? No. Is Google+ growing because of Scoble and Arrington? Not really. Geeks may flock there because of them, but sites don't make money because of geeks -- they survive on the people who don't care about Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington. Early adopters don't have any more power than the mainstream crowd. Even the Silicon Valley influences have limits.
    
    And finally, Let's look at the anti-SOPA campaign. Honestly, I don't see much difference from the reaction to the 1996 Communications Decency Act save for the fact that the campaign against the CDA was waged in the courtroom because it was passed as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act rather than as its own bill. I also see no difference between the outcry over SOPA and any other group's attempts to influence legislation. I'm unsure what the danger you say IP owners are not safe from is other the reaction of an angry public over a piece of legislation that may have a legitimate purpose, but is rather ham-handed and overreaching in how it seeks to achieve its aims. I certainly wouldn't call the anti-SOPA campaign hysterical. Passionate, yes. Hysterical? No. And the reason the anti-SOPA sentiment is gaining traction is because people are realizing this is a poorly written bill that gives copyright holders the power to silence a web site singlehandedly, without any sort of judicial finding or jury verdict. You worry about techno-communism, but using the power of the state to protect the property and interests of corporations without regard to its impact on the rights of citizens has a name too -- it's called fascism.

    Friday at 12:05am · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    No, you don't get it, because you're rather just sound off and sound superior, than study the actual events of the past week. Go and read Arrington's and Laporte's and other's posts. These are their PAGES not the "friendship" thing. They are people we SUBSCRIBE to, not people we are "friends" with. So naturally people object (and far from only me) -- we are supposed to subscribe, give the influencer the custom, but we don't get to comment or talk back? That's wack. There's no need for that. He has the power to go over to the little arrow and HIDE any comments he finds disruptive -- instead, he cuts all comments off because he can't be bothered to deal with possibly hundreds of trolls in his posts that get thousands of views, can't you grasp that? It is indeed about his own attitude and his hijacking, like all the big guys, of the social media tools for BROADCASTING. It's wrong. None of us are in anybody's "home" here. That's the biggest silly fraud on two legs. This indignation that someone isn't "civil" in "your home". This is the Internet, Andrew. it's not your frigging front porch. It's not his, either. It is a public square. Public issues, not his private life, are being discussed. Matters of politics and policy. So none of this "get off of my lawn" crap is justified WHATSOEVER.

    Friday at 1:28am · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    Of course they're sheeple. By the time you get to Lora Kolodny (go read her), you have nothing but gushing, adoring fans who justify her every ban like a bunch of police informants. It's sickening to watch (another event I will have to blog on later). Of course they're involved in a meticulous plan, that's not a conspiracy theory, it's a report. Have you been actually watching the anti-SOPA campaign? It is extremely widespread and methodical with the most manipulative methods in the metaverse. Viral videos without outrageous hysteria; "secret messages" from geek to geek in insiders' gamerz video; Tumblr blocking their own site with a hysterical message; Reddit going to darken their site in protest. Where have you been? Of course it is planned and operational. And there are 100 things like that. You're completely wrong that the early adapters and influencers don't have influence. Of course they do. Taken as a class of people, they have completely hijacked the SOPA debate, as they did net neutrality and many other issues, technical and political (immigration, China, etc.) The geek tech news sites are the highest traffic in search in Google; they are privileged then in a sense and they have massive influence. There are millions and millions of people they whipsaw in their enormous empire; it makes moveon.org look like a block party. The outcry over SOPA is far, far more furious, hysterical and widespread. Every teenager on Facebook and Tumblr is in hysterics. You just haven't seen it. SOPA isn't poorly written. It's had enormous numbers of changes to it and expert advice and technologists have in fact participated in it, and pro-Silicon Valley elected representatives like Issa, who are agitating against parts of themselves now. It's just that the most extreme technologists haven't had their way. Copyright holders definitely do not get the power to silence an entire site over their one piece of content. That's one of the many propagandistic idiocies propagated in this fight -- read the damn bill, there isn't anything remotely like that. If an entire site is devoted to commercial benefit with large amounts of pirated material, *then* the site might be ordered to cease and desist and eventually closed but that would have to be a site *devoted to piracy*, not some teen's Tumblr blog or not some music site with one wrong video on it. The dajaz1 example is completely dodgy as I've explained on my blog. There isn't any "fascism" in a normal, liberal, democratic effort under the rule of law to stop crime. Crime doesn't get to hide behind the Internet.

    Friday at 1:36am · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    Again, Arrington or LaPorte or Dan Gillmor all want the glory and the exposure and the hits and the influence that come with the masses, but they don't want to let the masses talk back. They want all the power, and none of the democratic legitimacy and accountability. And u ltimately, the reason we have congressmen instead of Mike Arrington is because we don't have direct democracy where everyday, a congressman has to deal with a million people in their face trolling in the comments and screaming about the legalization of pot, even as the majority of people in their district don't want to legalize pot -- in other words, that's not how representative democracy works. The congressman has staff; he has automatic mail; he deals with some constituents; he gets some interactivity going, including even with social media, but he's not required to answer everything nor be run like a puppet from commentariat. The problem with the tribal/social media model that Arrington uses is that he wants the tribal leadership but then he gets stuck with direct democracy from the commentariat who won't let him go and wear him out. He doesn't have staff and he can't work as a *representative* instead a lightning rod. Direct democracy isn't democracy. It's the tyranny of who shows up.

    Friday at 1:40am · Like
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    Andrew Feinberg

    But tech bloggers aren't congressmen -- and they don't need legitimacy to maintain readership, they need credibility. That's why even on their pages to which people subscribe, are they under no obligation to allow feedback. But what I want to know is how you can go around shouting dire warnings about some coordinated lefty plot to take over the state using social media other than the sort of advocacy that is part and parcel of the political process. I get that you don't approve of open source software, but using open source doesn't mean you don't believe in property rights.

    Friday at 2:40am · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    They don't believe in property rights, especially other people's property, especially digital content. They want to seize power. And they aren't just a lobby or a constituency, they are the tool makers who baked their ideology into the tools. They indeed aren't congressmen, but want even more power than congressmen, to tell people what to buy and how to use it and to invoke its features to utterly shape the discourse. Indeed there is a dire plot and indeed I will go around shouting warnings -- SOPA will be a very big indicator of whether organic life can go on controlling the machine of the Internet with human judgement, or whether coders and code-as-law will defeat organic democratic institutions. It's indeed a frightful moment.

    Friday at 2:43am · Like
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    Andrew Feinberg

    Wait a second, even if I accept your premise that being against SOPA means being wholeheartedly in the "code as law" camp, SOPA failing would not represent a defeat for organic democratic institutions, but it would show that anti-SOPA groups were able to successfully make use of those organic democratic institutions. One can believe in other people's property rights under the law while acknowledging limits to what actions should be permissible to enforce those rights. As someone who studies Internet policy for a living, I don't think SOPA should be litmus test for property rights. Even if you don't believe that copyright law as it is today provides adequate protection for intellectual property in the digital age, the solution put forth in SOPA would likely have a chilling effect on both online commerce AND technological innovation unless a provision like the safe harbor language in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. But the problem is that SOPA contains such overly broad SOPA as to preclude a safe harbor provision. Either way, I think you are being a bit alarmist at this point.

    Friday at 3:14am · Like
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    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick

    No, no, no. They wouldn't be making use of them at all. They would have in fact succeeded in overthrowing them with sheer force -- the force of blackmailing and persecuting businesses like Go Daddy that supported SOPA; the force of overwhelming all major social media platforms and bombarding Congress with screeching hate mail; the force of Google with its enormous bear footprint stepping in howling; the force of Silicon Valley lobbyists weighing in everywhere and threatening to remove their cooperation on other compromise deals (like net neutrality and other FCC issues). Currently, most congress people involved are FOR SOPA; only Daryl Issa and some of the other Silicon Valley representatives like Zoe Loefgren are offering amendments, but not opposing the whole bill. So if this bill is defeated out of nowhere, through massive acts of "self-immolation" (Reddit going dark, etc.) and even hacking protests and other forms of vandalism, then that means that democracy, our representative government, isn't holding against the networked mob. It means that what we vote for doesn't count and is overthrown by radical grouplets. It means my congressmen, Charles Schumer, who supports SOPA, and whom I support, with my microbusiness in SL that depends on intellectual property, and with my largely ideological (not business related) support of SOPA, doesn't count, even though he represents hundreds of thousands of people. Copyright law isn't adequate because technologists daily overthrow it. Google blandly reported 5 million DMCA notices of which a whopping 75 percent they complied with -- the rest weren't necessarily bogus, they just didn't have good lawyers and persistence. The DMCA is merely a sop to make people run and fetch and Google say "catch me if you can". You've obviously never been involved in a DMCA takedown procedure or you wouldn't glibly refer to it as remedy. There isn't anything overly broad in SOPA. It's to stop piracy. Piracy on mainly a few dozen sites. And to get corporate responsibility out of Google on Youtube. Alarmist is definitely what i'm going to be, and if SOPA doesn't pass I will take it as a very, very bad sign for our country that the Bolshevism is truly beginning, and I'm not kidding when I say that.

    Friday at 3:13pm · Like
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