By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Once again, I'm going to answer Raph Koster with a blog post rather than a post on Facebook, not only because of length, but because I've always found that the worst possible haters on earth are friends of friends.
On the one hand, if we allow networks to spread falsehoods or hatred without consequence, we create alternative realities that drown out facts with emotion. In this view, free speech falls prey to vulnerabilities from scale that were never anticipated, creating propagandistic universes that destroy society. The only solution is authority employing moderation techniques.
On the other hand, any authority that is handed power over moderation techniques in order to restrict speech that is damaging to the public fabric can inevitably become corrupted -- either in a pure government propaganda way, or even in more subtle ways, resulting in the creation of a different propagandistic universe. Therefore we need completely free speech so that suppression of opinions can never happen.
These feel like cases of choosing to hand over our thinking either to the moneyed or the government. Money wins in complete freedom; government wins in moderated scenarios.
If we want freedom, then we probably can't permit accumulation of money to provide the loudest voice. And if we want moderation, we have to design it in a way that doesn't permit those in authority to shape our opinions to reinforce their power.
Why do I mention this? Because of this horrifying story:
Nothing on this page is real: How lies become truth in online America:
Who's the "we" here, Raph? Let's start with that. Your friends and you in Silicon Valley? You didn't mean Congress, right? You meant perhaps platform providers? Or government? What kind of government? Who is to deliver this pious suppression of free speech for the greater good, no doubt delivered as a coded thing to run mainly automatically with key words? Will we get to elect them?
I read this article through twice to try to see where the "horror" was. Why? It's absolutely normal and is absolutely understandable as the environment that geeks from Silicon Valley created. That Internet environment spawned the Christopher Blairs of the world, cynical trolls with no or dead-end jobs and substandard homes who can make a living by the ad system created to provide just enough democratic access to lure people into thinking it's good.
Such people naturally prey on older women like Shirley Chapian who but for just a few missing connections -- children and grandchildren? a church? a volunteer group? a bar? -- might have stayed closer to their original path of Europe and NOW. But the Internet is the same thing that killed those social connections even if it pretends to save some of them. Where's the horror? It's normal, natural and expected.
The place to rein in cynical geeks is in civic and corporate culture, not by suppression of the First Amendment but changing the nature of how the platform responsibility is viewed. This began with the disrespect of private property (copyright) that ended with disrespect of privacy -- and a hypocritical belief that encryption can't be used for the former but can for the latter, even to the point of keeping the FBI from accessing a terrorist's phone. It means an end to safe harbour. It means in the marketplace of services, Google decides that people with youtubes spawning falsity and hate can't have ads -- but lets them at least copy their uploaded videos before killing them off. Let another provider serve them if they want the possible legal liability, as non-moderation usually leads to extremism fairly quickly -- incitement of imminent action, not just general hatred; child pornography; assassination for hire. You know, like the Silk Road on Tor -- with Jacob Appelbaum. Like that.
What is the solution? Better housing? More church-going? More malls so that you don't have to drive 50 miles to them? Why even reach for moderation and the suppression of the First Amendment when it's about housing or jobs? Or at least, Ocasio-Cortez thinks it is and perhaps she's at least partly right. But where are the jobs? Did the robots take them? Or are they at Amazon? And why is that so terrible?
Shirly Chapian is absolutely right -- if she had kids, she should yank them from school -- because this is the result -- people like Christopher Blair, not fighters for ISIS. Schools only cater to the Internet and tech instead of challenging it.
I really don't understand your pieties, Raph. One thing I know for sure: the people who created this situation can hardly be the ones allowed to moderate with systems they code and rule, given what they think shouldn't be "alternative reality." Because the people who will delete idiocies about sharia law in America may well block any criticism of Islam for violation of the rights of women. They are not to be trusted with this ban hammer.
We "probably can't" allow the freedom of capitalism, i.e. freedom of the press belongs to him who owns one? Why? Who says? The gnomes of the Internet? We're to have Soviet-like uravnilovka (forced leveling)? By whom? So Amazon builds a success building from the Internet created by all your friends and neighbours, and everyone orders online from them, then we are to block them from opening new hubs in our cities? Why? Couldn't we have civic, religious and political institutions under the First Amendment instead? Oh, are those harder to do so you're rather have something coded and run by 20-somethings? But those harder things are required to make it possible for people to sort their way through the minefields created by the trolls and their innocent victims. Not "moderation" except for banning of speech that incites imminent violence.
Yes, it's a lot more hard work in real-time in organic life to make decent people. Ask your mom.
PS
Then this further interesting exchange:
The concerns I listed in the post are that free speech is losing out to money and it is damaging us all; and we can’t moderate because it would infringe rights and be vulnerable to governments that go bad. The whole Constitution is carefully architected to prevent issues with government going bad.
I don’t loathe private industry. I loathe specific private industries *brainwashing people.*
And you might want to ask who the hell is Freedom from Facebook, anyway? Who are those guys? Moveon? Or who? Mitch Kapor? They don't tell you any names, there's no board, even the registration is cloaked. You have to dig around and find the hedge fund guy. But he's not the end of the story.
And good Lord, Raph, there are specific private industries "brainwashing" people?! Which ones? Facebook? Are you serious? If the lady sending out things about Sharia law went to church instead of doing that, you'd call her brainwashed, and if she volunteered for anything but Planned Parenthood, you might well call her brainwashed, too. Nobody can win in your world.
Recent Comments