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Fan Forums => The RPGPundit's Own Forum => Topic started by: jhkim on January 13, 2021, 04:23:51 PM

Title: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on January 13, 2021, 04:23:51 PM
This was a side topic in the political debate, which I thought maybe should be its own topic. Trump had vetoed the defense spending bill to demand that it overturn the Section 230 protection that social media corporations get. In general, the problem is that social media corporations have far too much control over the public debate than many people are comfortable with, but also, many people don't like the idea of regulating them to substitute government control.

From the other thread:

No, online platforms should NOT be responsible for anything anyone posts in their site, and they are NOT good at detecting and shutting down copyrighted material precisely because they consistently shut down fair-use of music and other media. It is not the role of tech companies (or of self-entitled users within their platforms going after people they personally don't like) to make legal determinations about ANYTHING. They're not lawyers, they're not legal scholars or judges or law enforcement and have NO role in the government or legal procedures. These are NOT functions that fall within the purview of fucking monopolistic tech giants. It is not their job and they are not properly equipped to determine whether or not a supposed "tHrEaT oF vIolEnCe" or any other questionable post is legally actionable material. That is the job of the FBI, or equivalent agencies when it comes to users outside of the US. It's supposed to be THEM who make that determination, not our self-appointed tech overlords. That is why section 230 exists, and their insistence on stepping beyond their bounds is precisely why we're on this mess.
What do you think about Trump's calls to remove Section 230 protections for social media?

https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/trump-ndaa-veto-section-230/

I'm not sure exactly where I stand on how to reform Section 230, but I do think that it is *not* simply the purview of the FBI and police to handle all lawbreaking. Citizens have a responsibility to report crime and not participate in it.

For example, someone tells me a slanderous rumor about someone else - I then write it up and send it to a newspaper, which prints it. I think both I and the newspaper have some responsibility here - both legally and ethically. Just mindlessly repeating what one is told is wrong. People should be responsible for what they say and publish. That is a standard that newspapers are held to, but social media companies get a special legal loophole.

That said, I'm not eager for social media companies to be the determiners of truth. *If* we give them a legal loophole to avoid responsibility, though, then there need to be strings attached that make the social media more functionally public and allowing of free speech.

To explain a little more about the "public" thing -- I've used the analogy of making a town newspaper to today. In the past, if one had a printing press, one could stand on the street beside the newsstand, and have similar visibility to the main newspaper. However, on the Internet, there is essentially no public space - no public visibility. Visibility depends on private companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter linking to you. If they refuse to post links to you - then no one can find your site.

I'll try to address other points in following posts.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Daztur on January 13, 2021, 11:05:57 PM
Economically it comes down to network effects: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Even if you hate Facebook and love another site you're going to get a lot more benefit out of using Facebook simply because more people use Facebook. This means that monopolies are a lot stronger with social media than with other stuff. Monopolies or oligopolies are market failures and often call for government intervention.

What could be useful could be a sort of newsreader program for social media that could load posts from your various social media accounts into one feed, that way if people get banned from one service and move to another your newsreader program would just switch over to them without you having to change much.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: EOTB on January 13, 2021, 11:30:49 PM
Protection under policy 230 comes through use of a standard TOS provided within the policy, which may not be modified/customized in any way

The TOS prevents interfering with speech on the platform by its owners or staff unless speech exceeds the limits on speech as set in court precedent, or as otherwise directed by a court in specific circumstances.  (Along with other TOS provisions covering other aspects)

Companies desiring greater control over what appears on their platform do not receive liability protection, but they are free to act as social media companies are acting currently
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: myleftnut on January 14, 2021, 12:47:21 AM
What we should do?  Break them up as monopolies


What we will do?  Cry and whine while they gain more power. 
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Ratman_tf on January 14, 2021, 12:53:53 AM
What we should do?  Break them up as monopolies


What we will do?  Cry and whine while they gain more power.

Yep. I hate to go meta on the thread, but I think it's too late.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: oggsmash on January 14, 2021, 12:58:36 AM
  Well, there are ALOT of town newspapers that are owned by just a couple media companies these days.  I think the end is there must be some sort of restrictions on any monopolies. The main reason is you end up with corporations that have way to much influence on people, and basically own the government.  It seems we are headed towards a cyberpunk dystopia.

  Project Mayhem seems like the only solution likely to do anything to shake the chokehold of big tech.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: EOTB on January 14, 2021, 01:29:11 AM
Repeal the 1996 law allowing consolidation of media, which was previously restricted
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Ghostmaker on January 14, 2021, 08:16:01 AM
Protection under policy 230 comes through use of a standard TOS provided within the policy, which may not be modified/customized in any way

The TOS prevents interfering with speech on the platform by its owners or staff unless speech exceeds the limits on speech as set in court precedent, or as otherwise directed by a court in specific circumstances.  (Along with other TOS provisions covering other aspects)

Companies desiring greater control over what appears on their platform do not receive liability protection, but they are free to act as social media companies are acting currently
The problem is enforcement. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to bring companies to heel for trying to hide behind Section 230 protections when they clearly don't abide by the strictures.

I absolutely loathe the idea of more regulation, but holy shit, after watching Parler get completely pulverized by that coordinated attack, it's clear this is getting out of control.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: moonsweeper on January 14, 2021, 09:07:44 AM
Repeal the 1996 law allowing consolidation of media, which was previously restricted

I don't know if even that would help at this point.


I absolutely loathe the idea of more regulation, but holy shit, after watching Parler get completely pulverized by that coordinated attack, it's clear this is getting out of control.

One positive (if you want to call it that) is that they can't hide their true nature after crossing the moral event horizon.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: KingCheops on January 14, 2021, 10:50:32 AM
Well the problem circles back around to the issue that the American system has been thoroughly infiltrated and broken.  An impartial Judiciary was supposed to keep the Legislative and Executive branches in check and supposed to curb these sorts of things.  They've been captured by corporations and side with their masters against the people and constitution when the corporations are blatantly abusing the rights and protections of the people.

If you could reasonably expect to have your 1st amendment rights protected by a judge in a case against Twitter then no reform of 230 would be needed.  But Twitter just kills you with its megabucks in a giant PR smear, erasing your ability to interface with modern society, and intimidating/disbarring any lawyer that dares to represent you.  If any of that fails they just shop around for a judge they've purchased.

It'll be interesting to see what happens after the oligarchs get overthrown -- tyranny or a return to republic?
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on January 14, 2021, 01:56:58 PM
Well the problem circles back around to the issue that the American system has been thoroughly infiltrated and broken.  An impartial Judiciary was supposed to keep the Legislative and Executive branches in check and supposed to curb these sorts of things.  They've been captured by corporations and side with their masters against the people and constitution when the corporations are blatantly abusing the rights and protections of the people.

If you could reasonably expect to have your 1st amendment rights protected by a judge in a case against Twitter then no reform of 230 would be needed.  But Twitter just kills you with its megabucks in a giant PR smear, erasing your ability to interface with modern society, and intimidating/disbarring any lawyer that dares to represent you.  If any of that fails they just shop around for a judge they've purchased.

I don't think the problem is the judges. The problem is the current law. Under the law, a social media website is a privately-owned service -- no different than this forum. If Pundit wants to ban me or delete my posts, the law supports him. It's his site, and I can't successfully sue him for violating my First Amendment rights if he bans me. It's the same with Twitter. It's a private site, and people can't demand the right to post there - any more than I can post signs on your lawn.

If we want to change that, we have to reform the law in Congress.


Repeal the 1996 law allowing consolidation of media, which was previously restricted

I guess you're talking about the Telecommunications Act of 1996? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

That had a huge number of changes - many of them considered beneficial to competition, though overall some think it was harmful. However, simply disallowing mergers only slows down the trend towards monopolies, it doesn't stop it. If smaller companies are less successful, then the larger companies will just slowly push them out of the market by spending rather than acquiring them. In any case, the 1996 law mostly only applies to television - and the topic is social media.

I think there are changes that can be made to streamline regulations in a way that favors small companies, but it is tricky.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on January 14, 2021, 02:52:22 PM
I'm pulling from the other thread (https://www.therpgsite.com/the-rpgpundit-s-own-forum/live-coverage-of-rally-for-president-trump-in-dc!-01062021/msg1160612/#msg1160612) to reply here where it's more on topic.

Yes. The Ron Paul ban is bullshit.

In the long run any of that broad deplatforming will survive scrutiny in the courts.

As I noted on this thread, under current law, private providers like Twitter and Facebook aren't legally required to accept everyone. It's their private site, and no one has a First Amendment right to post on their private site - just as they don't have a right to walk into Fox News studios and get on television.

I would lean towards removing Section 230 protection *unless* the provider abides by some sort of free speech provisions similar to what is allowed on public streets. (It's still valid to block or ban based on incitement, obscenity, or possibly other behavior that could get someone kicked off a city street.)

Incidentally, Ron Paul's Facebook seems to be working currently - he just posted, https://www.facebook.com/ronpaul

Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on January 14, 2021, 02:57:26 PM
Well the problem circles back around to the issue that the American system has been thoroughly infiltrated and broken.  An impartial Judiciary was supposed to keep the Legislative and Executive branches in check and supposed to curb these sorts of things.  They've been captured by corporations and side with their masters against the people and constitution when the corporations are blatantly abusing the rights and protections of the people.

If you could reasonably expect to have your 1st amendment rights protected by a judge in a case against Twitter then no reform of 230 would be needed.  But Twitter just kills you with its megabucks in a giant PR smear, erasing your ability to interface with modern society, and intimidating/disbarring any lawyer that dares to represent you.  If any of that fails they just shop around for a judge they've purchased.

I don't think the problem is the judges. The problem is the current law. Under the law, a social media website is a privately-owned service -- no different than this forum. If Pundit wants to ban me or delete my posts, the law supports him. It's his site, and I can't successfully sue him for violating my First Amendment rights if he bans me. It's the same with Twitter. It's a private site, and people can't demand the right to post there - any more than I can post signs on your lawn.

If we want to change that, we have to reform the law in Congress.

From what I have heard from Robert Barnes, the problem is the judges in that they are refusing to enforce any of the existing laws in regard to internet companies.

People like Facebook and Twitter are able to get away with things that legacy media like the New York times is not able to.  They are able to make defamatory statements and policies that would get any other company sued.

How is that not a problem with judges.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on January 14, 2021, 03:04:10 PM
How is that not a problem with judges.

The answer is simple. Because the tech giants are currently working in favor of the Democrats, they get a free pass because the Democrats (like all politicians and rich people in general) operate on the logic of "rules for thee but not for me."

That's why we get shit like Chinese govt accounts claiming the Uyghur genocide is feminist and Islamic extremists calling for the destruction of the Israeli state being left alone, while J.K. Rowling gets rape and death threats for saying that womyn and men are biologically different.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on January 14, 2021, 03:06:51 PM
How is that not a problem with judges.

The answer is simple. Because the tech giants are currently working in favor of the Democrats, they get a free pass because the Democrats (like all politicians and rich people in general) operate on the logic of "rules for thee but not for me."

That's why we get shit like Chinese govt accounts claiming the Uyghur genocide is feminist and Islamic extremists calling for the destruction of the Israeli state being left alone, while J.K. Rowling gets rape and death threats for saying that womyn and men are biologically different.

It seems to be bipartisan, the Supreme Court has shut down several prominent cases.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: SHARK on January 14, 2021, 03:08:07 PM
Well the problem circles back around to the issue that the American system has been thoroughly infiltrated and broken.  An impartial Judiciary was supposed to keep the Legislative and Executive branches in check and supposed to curb these sorts of things.  They've been captured by corporations and side with their masters against the people and constitution when the corporations are blatantly abusing the rights and protections of the people.

If you could reasonably expect to have your 1st amendment rights protected by a judge in a case against Twitter then no reform of 230 would be needed.  But Twitter just kills you with its megabucks in a giant PR smear, erasing your ability to interface with modern society, and intimidating/disbarring any lawyer that dares to represent you.  If any of that fails they just shop around for a judge they've purchased.

I don't think the problem is the judges. The problem is the current law. Under the law, a social media website is a privately-owned service -- no different than this forum. If Pundit wants to ban me or delete my posts, the law supports him. It's his site, and I can't successfully sue him for violating my First Amendment rights if he bans me. It's the same with Twitter. It's a private site, and people can't demand the right to post there - any more than I can post signs on your lawn.

If we want to change that, we have to reform the law in Congress.

From what I have heard from Robert Barnes, the problem is the judges in that they are refusing to enforce any of the existing laws in regard to internet companies.

People like Facebook and Twitter are able to get away with things that legacy media like the New York times is not able to.  They are able to make defamatory statements and policies that would get any other company sued.

How is that not a problem with judges.

Greetings!

I agree, Shasarak. The censorship and tyranny of the Big Tech companies is disgusting and outrageous--and it also represents a serious threat to freedom. When these companies engage in such policies, mechanisms should be in place for them to be fined severely, and sued into oblivion. Every time, in a blink, so they get it through their heads that they are not elite masters able to control everyone, and silence anyone they don't approve of.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on January 14, 2021, 03:23:55 PM
I don't think the problem is the judges. The problem is the current law. Under the law, a social media website is a privately-owned service -- no different than this forum. If Pundit wants to ban me or delete my posts, the law supports him. It's his site, and I can't successfully sue him for violating my First Amendment rights if he bans me. It's the same with Twitter. It's a private site, and people can't demand the right to post there - any more than I can post signs on your lawn.

If we want to change that, we have to reform the law in Congress.

From what I have heard from Robert Barnes, the problem is the judges in that they are refusing to enforce any of the existing laws in regard to internet companies.

People like Facebook and Twitter are able to get away with things that legacy media like the New York times is not able to.  They are able to make defamatory statements and policies that would get any other company sued.

How is that not a problem with judges.

As written, different laws apply to Facebook and Twitter compared to legacy media like the New York Times. The key difference is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

Under Section 230, an information service provider like Twitter and Facebook is not treated as a "publisher or speaker" of information posted by a user of the service. It's not that judges are refusing to enforce existing laws - it's that existing laws are different.

But if Section 230 is simply repealed, then Facebook and Twitter will be motivated to be even *more* heavy-handed in moderation and banning, which is what many people are complaining about. I think it would be better to reform it instead.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on January 14, 2021, 03:28:35 PM
The politicians aren't going to do anything because they're money addicts in the pocket of big tech.

I am worried the situation will get much worse before it gets better.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: EOTB on January 14, 2021, 03:37:18 PM


Repeal the 1996 law allowing consolidation of media, which was previously restricted

I guess you're talking about the Telecommunications Act of 1996? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

That had a huge number of changes - many of them considered beneficial to competition, though overall some think it was harmful. However, simply disallowing mergers only slows down the trend towards monopolies, it doesn't stop it. If smaller companies are less successful, then the larger companies will just slowly push them out of the market by spending rather than acquiring them. In any case, the 1996 law mostly only applies to television - and the topic is social media.

I think there are changes that can be made to streamline regulations in a way that favors small companies, but it is tricky.

I responded to a post about newspapers.  Surprised you missed that.

All that has to be done is get rid of cross-media ownership allowed by 1996 bill (and likely other branching bills too, as usual) while also requiring no owner has assets in more than one media market.

It’s not a spend problem.

Social media is not hard to solve either.  Getting people to push the “solve” button is harder.  That’s not the same thing, though
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Brad on January 14, 2021, 03:38:48 PM
As I noted on this thread, under current law, private providers like Twitter and Facebook aren't legally required to accept everyone.

Yes, but better bake that gay wedding cake, right? You're a fucking joke.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on January 14, 2021, 03:43:07 PM
I don't think the problem is the judges. The problem is the current law. Under the law, a social media website is a privately-owned service -- no different than this forum. If Pundit wants to ban me or delete my posts, the law supports him. It's his site, and I can't successfully sue him for violating my First Amendment rights if he bans me. It's the same with Twitter. It's a private site, and people can't demand the right to post there - any more than I can post signs on your lawn.

If we want to change that, we have to reform the law in Congress.

From what I have heard from Robert Barnes, the problem is the judges in that they are refusing to enforce any of the existing laws in regard to internet companies.

People like Facebook and Twitter are able to get away with things that legacy media like the New York times is not able to.  They are able to make defamatory statements and policies that would get any other company sued.

How is that not a problem with judges.

As written, different laws apply to Facebook and Twitter compared to legacy media like the New York Times. The key difference is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

Under Section 230, an information service provider like Twitter and Facebook is not treated as a "publisher or speaker" of information posted by a user of the service. It's not that judges are refusing to enforce existing laws - it's that existing laws are different.

But if Section 230 is simply repealed, then Facebook and Twitter will be motivated to be even *more* heavy-handed in moderation and banning, which is what many people are complaining about. I think it would be better to reform it instead.

From your own quote:

The statute in Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith.

Is that what you think has been happening?  Good faith?

Then you will need new laws that judges can then choose to ignore.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: ArrozConLeche on January 14, 2021, 04:39:29 PM
The brainlet above has a point. If a lawsuit can find that that the moderation policies are applied unequally, they could be held liable. I am not sure what that would mean in practical terms other than having to fork some money over and rewriting their TOS.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Ratman_tf on January 14, 2021, 04:49:07 PM
Incidentally, Ron Paul's Facebook seems to be working currently - he just posted, https://www.facebook.com/ronpaul

I don't know if that's better or worse. Like surviving a mob shakedown, at least they're gone, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on January 14, 2021, 04:55:44 PM
From your own quote:

The statute in Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith.

Is that what you think has been happening?  Good faith?

Then you will need new laws that judges can then choose to ignore.

I'm pretty sure my personal colloquial definition of "good faith" doesn't match the legal meaning. I really don't know what "good faith" would even mean in a practical sense for a giant corporation, much less how judges are supposed to enforce corporations to practice "good faith".

From my personal colloquial definition, I don't think it's possible for any giant corporation to act in "good faith". In order to protect their shareholders, an executive would hire a bunch of lawyers to interpret the law and give recommendations about how to avoid lawsuits. That report from lawyers will be read as some committee oversees writing a policy document. Some corporations are more ethical than others - but they are by their nature big, multi-headed beasts.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: ArrozConLeche on January 14, 2021, 05:23:23 PM
So far as I know, previously banned users have lost their cases in lower courts. The difference is that there hasn't been this unprecedented purging, on this scale in the past. Mayhap, the chances will be higher that someone was wrongfully purged who didn't violate the TOS (i.e. Ron Paul).

I am assuming that the plaintiffs were small fries without a lot of resources (deep pockets of their own or social support behind them).  That could change.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on January 14, 2021, 05:31:40 PM
I'm pretty sure my personal colloquial definition of "good faith" doesn't match the legal meaning. I really don't know what "good faith" would even mean in a practical sense for a giant corporation, much less how judges are supposed to enforce corporations to practice "good faith".

You dont know what good faith would mean in a practical sense?

No I guess not.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: HappyDaze on January 14, 2021, 05:43:13 PM
I recall the line about social media being something like "If you're not paying money for it, you're not the customer, you're the product." While it's a very simplified take on it, how would that apply to laws about discrimination as you're not a paying customer (those are the advertisers), you might even just be considered "loitering" on their site?
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on January 14, 2021, 07:25:56 PM
Make political affiliation a protected status like religion, ethnicity, etc. Sue big tech for discriminating against conservatives.

Alternately, conservatives could encourage interracial marriage with non-white people that share conservative values (which is pretty much the overwhelming majority of non-white people), adopt Chrislam (a real religion, btw) in order to make inroads with the Muslim community (who overwhelmingly hold conservative values regardless of who they vote for), etc etc etc and then use the influx of oppression points to sue big tech for racism by using the woke logic against them.

The woke are racist bigots and always will be, as Robin DiAngelo openly admits to, so the most efficient way to beat them at their own game is for conservatives to literally give up whiteness and then sue the woke bigots for their open racism.

(Obviously I'm being farcical here, but in today's clown world I wouldn't be surprised if this strategy actually worked. That's how far this political farce has come.)
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: rawma on January 14, 2021, 07:51:34 PM
Maybe net neutrality would help, at least to make alternatives feasible. Section 230 doesn't seem to be the actual obstacle; being able to sue Twitter would just mean Twitter would either vanish or become very bland to avoid liability. We need a way to break up any monopolies like the telephone one - forcing the monopoly to give access to small competitors. But it's not just the bandwidth that net neutrality might help with, but hosting and access through internet searches.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: consolcwby on January 14, 2021, 09:18:12 PM
I figured I would put this info here instead of my usual bombastic posts. Interesting?
JACK'S EXPLAINATIONS: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1349510769268850690
JAMES' COMING UP NEXT: https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1349792366786453511

Even the European leaders and the president of Mexico called @JACK out for that. So now @Jack after several days is now trying to justify his actions and explain himself. Sounds like he may have gotten a command from his board to clean up the mess. But it may be too late! THIS is something to keep an eye on, imho!

Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on January 14, 2021, 11:37:45 PM
Maybe net neutrality would help, at least to make alternatives feasible. Section 230 doesn't seem to be the actual obstacle; being able to sue Twitter would just mean Twitter would either vanish or become very bland to avoid liability. We need a way to break up any monopolies like the telephone one - forcing the monopoly to give access to small competitors. But it's not just the bandwidth that net neutrality might help with, but hosting and access through internet searches.

It might be a good start.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: consolcwby on January 15, 2021, 06:38:08 PM
Look, this is what you people wanted: Ban everything your masters disagree with, because you disagree with it too. Now, because it may THREATEN YOU, you want to stop it?
BWA-HAHAHAHAHAH!

SORRY RETARDS - NO NORMALIZATION FOR ME!

All you faggot-maggots can go fuck yourselves in digital-hell for ALL I FUCKING CARE!
(but i did warn you... poor poor babies!)
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Null42 on January 29, 2021, 07:43:21 AM
How practical is a boycott? They shut Parler down...
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: oggsmash on January 29, 2021, 09:20:35 AM
After the stock wars going on, and big tech moving in very fast at the command of the white house and big finance allies, it is looking more and more like Project Mayhem is going to end up being an actual solution to this mess.   I look at it a couple of ways, something like that is likely to hurt people who are not in their intention day to day malicious.  But as the philosophers of the movie "Clerks" discussed, if you choose to work on the deathstar for Lord Vader and the Empire, can you really be that salty if it gets blown up?
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Spinachcat on January 29, 2021, 05:18:16 PM
The solution for social media is simple.
Choose to be a publisher or a platform.
Act accordingly, and if you violate that, get legally hammered.

It's not rocket science if you support free speech. 

But what if somebody says something that offends me???
Pick one:
A) Avoid the platforms and stick to the publishers where all speech is edited / moderated / censored.
B) Grow a pair and stay on the platforms.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on January 29, 2021, 09:54:26 PM
The solution for social media is simple.
Choose to be a publisher or a platform.
Act accordingly, and if you violate that, get legally hammered.

It's not rocket science if you support free speech. 

But what if somebody says something that offends me???
Pick one:
A) Avoid the platforms and stick to the publishers where all speech is edited / moderated / censored.
B) Grow a pair and stay on the platforms.
C) Politely inform them that they offended you and ask them to be more sensitive in the future
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 30, 2021, 07:32:16 AM
It's simple, but not easy: give people ownership of their own data. Currently all my data - age, gender, location, profession, my browsing habits, etc - are given straight over to social media without monetary compensation, and they then sell this data off in the form of targeted advertising.

Historically people were paid to do marketing surveys, etc. So: give people legal ownership of their data. When I sign up for social media, I should be able to go through and tick boxes to rent them my data - and the more data I'm willing to share with them, the more they have to pay me.

This would solve most privacy concerns.

This would have flow-on effects to the censorship concerns. Social media companies would then decide themselves how they want to police their sites. If I'm running a social media company and paying for your data, I am effectively paying for your presence on my site. I will then make a rational decision as to whether your presence is worth what I'm paying for it. Of course, if i kick you off and stop paying you, then I can no longer use your data.

Thus if I as a social media company wish to exclude about one-half the adult citizenry (such as FB excluding conservatives, and Parler excluding lefties), this will limit the value of the data I have to sell to advertisers.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on February 04, 2021, 10:41:35 AM
Here's one approach:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9218405/Florida-governor-Ron-DeSantis-declares-war-big-tech-cartels.html

The governor of Florida is trying to get a bill passed that will fine big tech companies $100,000/day if they deplatform a political candidate.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: zircher on February 04, 2021, 11:58:57 AM
That works for me.  Hit them in the wallet to get their attention if that is what is needed for them to play fair.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: moonsweeper on February 04, 2021, 02:48:04 PM
Here's one approach:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9218405/Florida-governor-Ron-DeSantis-declares-war-big-tech-cartels.html

The governor of Florida is trying to get a bill passed that will fine big tech companies $100,000/day if they deplatform a political candidate.
I do like the idea, but...

The problem is, it won't even phase them.  If they only target a few important ones it won't matter.
Say 10 candidates for 30 days...$30 million in fines...Amazon made $3.3 billion net in Q4 of 2019...they won't even blink with that as a deterrent.

...although it does work as a revenue boost for the state.

They need to be hit with the FEC violations for in-kind contribution but that won't happen.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on February 04, 2021, 03:09:15 PM
The governor of Florida is trying to get a bill passed that will fine big tech companies $100,000/day if they deplatform a political candidate.

They dont even need to deplatform people when they can just crush them under the algorithm.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on February 04, 2021, 03:58:40 PM
It's simple, but not easy: give people ownership of their own data. Currently all my data - age, gender, location, profession, my browsing habits, etc - are given straight over to social media without monetary compensation, and they then sell this data off in the form of targeted advertising.

Historically people were paid to do marketing surveys, etc. So: give people legal ownership of their data. When I sign up for social media, I should be able to go through and tick boxes to rent them
my data - and the more data I'm willing to share with them, the more they have to pay me.

That's the idea behind the EU's "right to be forgotten" laws. By allowing people to take back their data, it in principle allows them to demand more money or services in exchange for their data. They own their data, and can take it back or sell it. The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services. Still, I think "right to be forgotten" is important and could be strengthened by making it easier to be forgotten. Also, forcing privacy to be the default - and collecting personal data to be an explicit transaction.


This would have flow-on effects to the censorship concerns. Social media companies would then decide themselves how they want to police their sites. If I'm running a social media company and paying for your data, I am effectively paying for your presence on my site. I will then make a rational decision as to whether your presence is worth what I'm paying for it. Of course, if i kick you off and stop paying you, then I can no longer use your data.

Thus if I as a social media company wish to exclude about one-half the adult citizenry (such as FB excluding conservatives, and Parler excluding lefties), this will limit the value of the data I have to sell to advertisers.

For the most part, companies don't care about personal data of people who aren't using the product. The value of the personal data is in *combination* with the eyeballs, because it lets them sell more targeted ads. If they can't sell ads because the person isn't using them, then the personal data isn't worth much - though they will happily sell it for cheap to third parties.

We may well evolve to have dual sets of social media companies - just like traditional media companies now specialize in left-leaning (Washington Post) and right-leaning (Breitbart). I don't know if that will change the bigger picture though. If they have to pay more for data, they'll just try even harder to make their products addictive -- luring people in with outrage and clickbait.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on February 04, 2021, 04:34:10 PM
The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services.
That's not true. I'm not going to quote a specific number because it's been several years since I've been involved, but there's a huge market for personal data, and companies regularly pay non-trivial amounts per person. The problem is similar to one of the core problems with healthcare -- the costs are hidden from the end user.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on February 04, 2021, 05:01:44 PM
The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services.
That's not true. I'm not going to quote a specific number because it's been several years since I've been involved, but there's a huge market for personal data, and companies regularly pay non-trivial amounts per person. The problem is similar to one of the core problems with healthcare -- the costs are hidden from the end user.

I don't think you're actually disagreeing that people are happy to give away their own personal data in exchange for free services. When companies buy personal data, they're buying aggregated and digested personal data of many users. It's the data collection and formatting that they're paying for.

Generally, users can avoid collecting personal data - for example, by using incognito mode on their browser. But then they don't get to the sites and services that they want that way, so they are willing to go ahead and give up the personal data.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on February 04, 2021, 05:52:17 PM
The problem is that right now, the market price for personal data is quite low - effectively free. People are happy to give away personal data in exchange for free services.
That's not true. I'm not going to quote a specific number because it's been several years since I've been involved, but there's a huge market for personal data, and companies regularly pay non-trivial amounts per person. The problem is similar to one of the core problems with healthcare -- the costs are hidden from the end user.

I don't think you're actually disagreeing that people are happy to give away their own personal data in exchange for free services. When companies buy personal data, they're buying aggregated and digested personal data of many users. It's the data collection and formatting that they're paying for.

Generally, users can avoid collecting personal data - for example, by using incognito mode on their browser. But then they don't get to the sites and services that they want that way, so they are willing to go ahead and give up the personal data.
I'm disagreeing with the part I quoted. I said nothing about whether people are happy. You have some idea of the general issues, but you clearly don't have any experience with the ecosystem of companies buying and selling personal data or how tracking works, so some of the details are misleading or even wrong. For instance, incognito mode doesn't really do anything except hide what web sites you visit from other users of the same computer. All the sites you visit still track you, because they can do that without cookies.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Spinachcat on February 04, 2021, 10:47:54 PM
C) Politely inform them that they offended you and ask them to be more sensitive in the future

Fuck you and your sensitivity, both now and in the future.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Spinachcat on February 04, 2021, 10:58:12 PM
They dont even need to deplatform people when they can just crush them under the algorithm.

True, but they love removing wrongthinkers as a show of virtue.

The only way forward is a strict separation of Publishers vs. Platforms. But that's not happening under the Xiden regime. If anything, Big Tech will be given more powers to crackdown on wrongthink until places like Gab will have to exist only on the dark web.

I won't be surprised when Zucky & Osama Bin Dorsey write the new section 230 language to require every online site, domain registrar, and hosting service to remove "hate speech" and "misinformation" when notified of its existence.
 
Posting how the election was stolen will be treated the same as posting child porn.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: KingCheops on February 05, 2021, 10:31:14 AM
Posting how the election was stolen will be treated the same as posting child porn.

That means it's totally A-Okay to post about the election being stolen because Jack and Twitter have exactly ZERO problem with Child Porn.  MAPs are just misunderstood... you fucking bigot!  They don't actually exploit children...they just choke the snake looking at images of OTHER people abusing children.  Totally victimless!
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Mjollnir on February 26, 2021, 02:08:38 AM
What we should do?  Break them up as monopolies


What we will do?  Cry and whine while they gain more power.

Mandate that they uphold the First Amendment or their executives go to prison.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: RandyB on February 26, 2021, 08:59:03 AM
What should we do?

delenda est

Beyond their conduct, the services they offer are clearly a net negative. We would be better off without those services at all.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Brad on February 26, 2021, 10:09:01 AM
What should we do?

delenda est

Beyond their conduct, the services they offer are clearly a net negative. We would be better off without those services at all.


100% true. For all the benefits that social media offers, it has such a huge downside that it might actually be the most dangerous tool used to bring down Western civilization. No hyperbole. What we need is a massive internet blackout for about a month or two and I guarantee 95% of the alleged problems that exist in the Western world would disappear.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: RandyB on February 26, 2021, 11:24:59 AM
What should we do?

delenda est

Beyond their conduct, the services they offer are clearly a net negative. We would be better off without those services at all.


100% true. For all the benefits that social media offers, it has such a huge downside that it might actually be the most dangerous tool used to bring down Western civilization. No hyperbole. What we need is a massive internet blackout for about a month or two and I guarantee 95% of the alleged problems that exist in the Western world would disappear.

Yes.

Social media capitalized on previous generations of undermining Western Civilization, and it has been even more devastating thereby.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: jhkim on February 26, 2021, 03:21:58 PM
100% true. For all the benefits that social media offers, it has such a huge downside that it might actually be the most dangerous tool used to bring down Western civilization. No hyperbole. What we need is a massive internet blackout for about a month or two and I guarantee 95% of the alleged problems that exist in the Western world would disappear.

Social media capitalized on previous generations of undermining Western Civilization, and it has been even more devastating thereby.

I agree that social media is a net negative, but I also think that people of all political views are still inclined to use it. (Also, taking out the Internet as a whole would also collapse a huge amount of useful communication.) If I could wave a magic wand and have people not use Twitter and Facebook and similar, I would totally do that. But magic doesn't exist.

Taking the Internet down or making Twitter illegal isn't a workable approach. We need a cultural shift for people to not *want* to use it. I wonder if education should play a part here, and kids should have school classes that cover responsible media use. Because the trend definitely seems to be even more social media use in younger generations.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Brad on February 27, 2021, 02:30:38 PM
100% true. For all the benefits that social media offers, it has such a huge downside that it might actually be the most dangerous tool used to bring down Western civilization. No hyperbole. What we need is a massive internet blackout for about a month or two and I guarantee 95% of the alleged problems that exist in the Western world would disappear.

Social media capitalized on previous generations of undermining Western Civilization, and it has been even more devastating thereby.

I agree that social media is a net negative, but I also think that people of all political views are still inclined to use it. (Also, taking out the Internet as a whole would also collapse a huge amount of useful communication.) If I could wave a magic wand and have people not use Twitter and Facebook and similar, I would totally do that. But magic doesn't exist.

Taking the Internet down or making Twitter illegal isn't a workable approach. We need a cultural shift for people to not *want* to use it. I wonder if education should play a part here, and kids should have school classes that cover responsible media use. Because the trend definitely seems to be even more social media use in younger generations.

LOL why would government run schools want to get rid of their most effective brainwashing tool?
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: oggsmash on February 28, 2021, 12:19:01 AM
100% true. For all the benefits that social media offers, it has such a huge downside that it might actually be the most dangerous tool used to bring down Western civilization. No hyperbole. What we need is a massive internet blackout for about a month or two and I guarantee 95% of the alleged problems that exist in the Western world would disappear.

Social media capitalized on previous generations of undermining Western Civilization, and it has been even more devastating thereby.

I agree that social media is a net negative, but I also think that people of all political views are still inclined to use it. (Also, taking out the Internet as a whole would also collapse a huge amount of useful communication.) If I could wave a magic wand and have people not use Twitter and Facebook and similar, I would totally do that. But magic doesn't exist.

Taking the Internet down or making Twitter illegal isn't a workable approach. We need a cultural shift for people to not *want* to use it. I wonder if education should play a part here, and kids should have school classes that cover responsible media use. Because the trend definitely seems to be even more social media use in younger generations.

  I have to LOL on this one.  Fucking public schools can not even teach kids basic financial responsibility, or most likely, have no interest in doing so as their real masters dont want them financially competent.  I think the only teaching for social media should come from parents, and it needs to be 100 percent abstinence.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: oggsmash on February 28, 2021, 12:20:07 AM
100% true. For all the benefits that social media offers, it has such a huge downside that it might actually be the most dangerous tool used to bring down Western civilization. No hyperbole. What we need is a massive internet blackout for about a month or two and I guarantee 95% of the alleged problems that exist in the Western world would disappear.

Social media capitalized on previous generations of undermining Western Civilization, and it has been even more devastating thereby.

I agree that social media is a net negative, but I also think that people of all political views are still inclined to use it. (Also, taking out the Internet as a whole would also collapse a huge amount of useful communication.) If I could wave a magic wand and have people not use Twitter and Facebook and similar, I would totally do that. But magic doesn't exist.

Taking the Internet down or making Twitter illegal isn't a workable approach. We need a cultural shift for people to not *want* to use it. I wonder if education should play a part here, and kids should have school classes that cover responsible media use. Because the trend definitely seems to be even more social media use in younger generations.

LOL why would government run schools want to get rid of their most effective brainwashing tool?
  heh, or maybe their second most effective brainwashing tool after said government schools. I guess its a race for number 1 these days.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Brad on February 28, 2021, 03:20:50 PM
It’s amusing to me that certain sorts of people always talk about education as if you can only learn things in a formalized setting with a government-mandated curriculum. It’s like their brains refuse to acknowledge the existence of parents who should be publicly humiliating their kids for doing stupid shit like using social media.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Tubesock Army on January 02, 2022, 07:47:05 PM
looks like our own beloved Admin has the solution to the social media problem. He's trying to share it on Twitter, but apparently, a noted constitutional lawyer is having a hard time understanding Pundit's explanation of the First Amendment. Check it out! You'll laugh! You'll cry (from laughing so hard)!

https://twitter.com/KasimirUrbanski/status/1477775943326482432
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Daztur on January 02, 2022, 08:30:50 PM
looks like our own beloved Admin has the solution to the social media problem. He's trying to share it on Twitter, but apparently, a noted constitutional lawyer is having a hard time understanding Pundit's explanation of the First Amendment. Check it out! You'll laugh! You'll cry (from laughing so hard)!

https://twitter.com/KasimirUrbanski/status/1477775943326482432

The First Amendment specifically is a lot different than Free Speech more generally. If Pundy banned me because I called him an asshole that would limit my free speech but that wouldn't violate the First Amendment.

You get a lot of bizarrely narrow definition of Free Speech in some corners were NOTHING that doesn't specifically violate the First Amendment has anything to do with Free Speech.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 02, 2022, 11:31:09 PM
looks like our own beloved Admin has the solution to the social media problem. He's trying to share it on Twitter, but apparently, a noted constitutional lawyer is having a hard time understanding Pundit's explanation of the First Amendment. Check it out! You'll laugh! You'll cry (from laughing so hard)!

https://twitter.com/KasimirUrbanski/status/1477775943326482432

The First Amendment specifically is a lot different than Free Speech more generally. If Pundy banned me because I called him an asshole that would limit my free speech but that wouldn't violate the First Amendment.

You get a lot of bizarrely narrow definition of Free Speech in some corners were NOTHING that doesn't specifically violate the First Amendment has anything to do with Free Speech.
Yes, that happens a lot. And it doesn't seem to be possible to make any of those people realize that freedom of speech might be more than a single law passed in 1789.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 02, 2022, 11:38:43 PM
I would simply change the law so that the behaviour of the social media corporation, search engine or whatever determines whether they are treated as a platform or a publisher. The key distinction is behaviour: a publisher edits, a platform - like the old town corner - doesn't edit.

If you are a platform, you only remove or edit material which breaks laws like child pornography, etc. You are not liable for non-criminal stuff like defamation, etc appearing on your platform. If I stand up in a bar and yell that all Jews must die (shortly before necking myself), the pub owner is not legally responsible for my hate speech. If I get into a brawl and he doesn't direct his bouncers to stop the brawl, he may be legally responsible for the assaults occurring.

If you are a publisher, you may remove or edit material for non-criminal law reasons, such as "misinformation", "hate speech", etc. You are now liable for defamation, etc, just as a newspaper would be if it'd published that same post as a Letter To The Editor.

Which you are treated as depends on your behaviour. So for example Facebook removes people's posts or edits them, and is thus behaving as a publisher. Thus if I go onto Facebook and say that John Kim is a storygamer and he sues me for defamation, Facebook would be a co-defendant in that suit.

I'd set those guidelines and then leave it up to the respective companies which they want to be. I suspect Facebook would not be able to decide, and would just collapse. Google would remain a platform, and would refrain from the editorial actions it's ventured into recently.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Ghostmaker on January 03, 2022, 04:13:03 PM
I would simply change the law so that the behaviour of the social media corporation, search engine or whatever determines whether they are treated as a platform or a publisher. The key distinction is behaviour: a publisher edits, a platform - like the old town corner - doesn't edit.

If you are a platform, you only remove or edit material which breaks laws like child pornography, etc. You are not liable for non-criminal stuff like defamation, etc appearing on your platform. If I stand up in a bar and yell that all Jews must die (shortly before necking myself), the pub owner is not legally responsible for my hate speech. If I get into a brawl and he doesn't direct his bouncers to stop the brawl, he may be legally responsible for the assaults occurring.

If you are a publisher, you may remove or edit material for non-criminal law reasons, such as "misinformation", "hate speech", etc. You are now liable for defamation, etc, just as a newspaper would be if it'd published that same post as a Letter To The Editor.

Which you are treated as depends on your behaviour. So for example Facebook removes people's posts or edits them, and is thus behaving as a publisher. Thus if I go onto Facebook and say that John Kim is a storygamer and he sues me for defamation, Facebook would be a co-defendant in that suit.

I'd set those guidelines and then leave it up to the respective companies which they want to be. I suspect Facebook would not be able to decide, and would just collapse. Google would remain a platform, and would refrain from the editorial actions it's ventured into recently.
In theory this is how section 230 is supposed to work. The problem is that there's no real way to enforce it (and the perils of having actual enforcement are not lost on me).
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 03, 2022, 04:58:37 PM
That's why I prefer my earlier suggestion of giving people ownership of their personal data. Currently even in places where there are decent privacy laws, we can keep our personal data secret, or we can give it away - but we can't sell it. Once someone else has got it they can sell it, though.

This is rather like allowing us to refuse sex, have it for free with someone, and allow others to pimp us out - but not allow us to sell our sex services. It makes no sense, except for the pimp.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Mistwell on January 03, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
What we should do?  Break them up as monopolies



How?

Phone companies were broken up into regions. I guess we could do that, but I don't see how that addresses the issue. OK, so now you have a Western, Southern, Northern, and Eastern Facebook (or whatever). How does that change the issue we're discussing of what speech is and is not allowed on Facebook?

Or a court could order firewalls between Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger and its main social networking service. But that again doesn't address the issue.

How does addressing the monopoly aspect of Facebook alter the speech aspect of Facebook?

Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Daztur on January 04, 2022, 01:49:39 AM
looks like our own beloved Admin has the solution to the social media problem. He's trying to share it on Twitter, but apparently, a noted constitutional lawyer is having a hard time understanding Pundit's explanation of the First Amendment. Check it out! You'll laugh! You'll cry (from laughing so hard)!

https://twitter.com/KasimirUrbanski/status/1477775943326482432

The First Amendment specifically is a lot different than Free Speech more generally. If Pundy banned me because I called him an asshole that would limit my free speech but that wouldn't violate the First Amendment.

You get a lot of bizarrely narrow definition of Free Speech in some corners were NOTHING that doesn't specifically violate the First Amendment has anything to do with Free Speech.
Yes, that happens a lot. And it doesn't seem to be possible to make any of those people realize that freedom of speech might be more than a single law passed in 1789.

What happens is this basically:
1. "Everyone" knows "free speech" is good.
2. Many people don't actually want free speech.
3. So they definite free speech very narrowly so all of the bits they don't like are excluded.

The thing is NOBODY is a free speech absolutist. Pundy takes free speech very seriously but he bans people for anti-Semitism among other things. A lot of the powers that be on the internet cracked down HARD on pro-anorexia sites a while back and nobody complained. You're going to kick people out of your home for mouthing off about your family. Free speech is an important thing but it's not the only important thing and can be weighed differently against other things depending on what you value.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 02:13:46 AM
You're going to kick people out of your home for mouthing off about your family.
That's not what free speech is about to me. Free speech is public discourse, not private. A home is where you can shut the doors, including shutting out other people. You can see this in the attempts to weaponize "it's a private company" by the exact same people who talk with hate about corporate personhood, as if it were really a thing. The essential problem with that being that the new public spaces are privately owned, and there are no common carrier rules.

Free speech at the personal level is about listening to other people, actively seeking out different views as well as just passively listening. Free speech at the social level is about carving out spaces where no voices are erased just because some people don't want anyone else to listen. These included public squares, classic New England town meetings, libraries, and the the internet -- at least the dream version of the 1990s.

These spaces need to be carved out because they're not the default. The default is the home, the private sanctuary. Public spaces aren't that; they're not sanctuaries. They're rough and tumble, and voices survive not because they're protected but because people listen to them.

Free speech is pushing back against the attempt to co-op everything as private. It's about ensuring these spaces exist, and are broad, vast, and are everywhere they need to be. It's about ensuring they exist in politics, in education, on the radio, and across forums.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 10:15:33 AM
The spirit of the law with free speech I find is more important then the raw rules. The idea is that if you don't like listening to other opinions, then you at least tolerate them having a platform.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: HappyDaze on January 04, 2022, 10:28:37 AM
The spirit of the law with free speech I find is more important then the raw rules. The idea is that if you don't like listening to other opinions, then you at least tolerate them having a platform.
Of course, many still have the Not in My (Digital) Backyard view about the platforms that host the opposing views. Depending on how marginal the view, there may be few with means and desire to offer a platform, which, unlike a true public space, are all controlled by someone.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 10:56:55 AM
Of course, many still have the Not in My (Digital) Backyard view about the platforms that host the opposing views. Depending on how marginal the view, there may be few with means and desire to offer a platform, which, unlike a true public space, are all controlled by someone.

Which is what I mean by 'spirit'. Legally do whatever, but ethics wise is something else.

And I have defended free speech from those that would want to deplatform opinions I disagree with (even on this site), so I have a high priority view on freedom of speech. My only exception is direct (not implied) calls to violence, and I guess defamation is a bit of a gray zone.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 11:36:09 AM
My only exception is direct (not implied) calls to violence, and I guess defamation is a bit of a gray zone.
Those American colonists can complain about taxes and unrepresentative government all they want, but anyone who speaks out in support of the violent insurrection in Boston harbor must suffer the consequences!
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 11:45:05 AM
Those American colonists can complain about taxes and unrepresentative government all they want, but anyone who speaks out in support of the violent insurrection in Boston harbor must suffer the consequences!
If your planning a violent revolution, then the base idea is you don't care about the current governing set of rules anyway.
Like...yeah no shit if you run a government, and then there are people planning on violently overthrowing you....Well unless your a denmark pussy king who just steps down, your gonna do something about it.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 01:36:24 PM
Like...yeah no shit if you run a government, and then there are people planning on violently overthrowing you....Well unless your a denmark pussy king who just steps down, your gonna do something about it.
You just made the argument that all forms of government are illegitimate. They're not based on the idea of a social contract and voluntarily people agreeing to give up some of their rights in order to make society work better. The privileges of the governing will be defended by force.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 01:54:28 PM
You just made the argument that all forms of government are illegitimate.
I think government is generally bad, but we live in a generally bad universe. Any choice taken or not - taken will always leave some people unhappy for reasonable reasons.

Even anarcho-capitalism would eventually form into what is effectively a government. Due to mankinds desires for stability and the addictive nature of power.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 03:15:37 PM
You just made the argument that all forms of government are illegitimate.
I think government is generally bad, but we live in a generally bad universe. Any choice taken or not - taken will always leave some people unhappy for reasonable reasons.

Even anarcho-capitalism would eventually form into what is effectively a government. Due to mankinds desires for stability and the addictive nature of power.
I don't think anarcho-capitalism is functional. The more successful anarchies have been more in the Conquest of Bread camp, and even those don't scale well.

But to put checks on government, we need to remove the rose-colored glasses and acknowledge that government is based on force, that inflation is taxation, that taxation is theft, that power corrupts, that first step toward tyranny is centralizing power, and all the other negatives that are ignored by big government statists. That will give people the intellectual grounding to spot the excesses of government and restrain them. Instead, we live in a world where many people unironically say "someone [the government] should do something", under the naive assumption that just throwing money at something or getting the right people in power can fix any problem.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 03:20:40 PM
Instead, we live in a world where many people unironically say "someone [the government] should do something", under the naive assumption that just throwing money at something or getting the right people in power can fix any problem.

I mean your preaching to the choir here. Which is why I said I have to compromise my principle of 'Free speech all the time' with 'Except calls to violence and defamation', because reality isn't perfect. If it means curtailing a rightous revolution, thats a price I see as acceptable to curtail things like mobs of people just using social influence to end the lives of others.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 03:35:07 PM
Instead, we live in a world where many people unironically say "someone [the government] should do something", under the naive assumption that just throwing money at something or getting the right people in power can fix any problem.

I mean your preaching to the choir here. Which is why I said I have to compromise my principle of 'Free speech all the time' with 'Except calls to violence and defamation', because reality isn't perfect. If it means curtailing a rightous revolution, thats a price I see as acceptable to curtail things like mobs of people just using social influence to end the lives of others.
That's where we disagree. I think there are valid reasons to reject the use of force at this particular time, but I also completely reject the idea that the use of force is never acceptable. Tyrannies tend not to go quiet in to the good night.

The main reason to avoid the use of force now are pragmatic. We're in a hyper-sensitive safety-focused society driven by sensationalized media, so incidents involving violence can be blown up completely out of proportion and garner very strong reactions. This is a highly selective lens, with most incidents of violence being completely ignored; but which incidents are selected and how they're presented is highly politicized (cf. Floyd vs. Rittenhouse, the 1/6 "Insurrection" vs the 2020 "peaceful protests", etc.). It's not true that all publicity is good publicity, because incidents of force by anyone opposing the progressive narrative are used as weapons to destroy them and everyone who can be tentatively or even falsely linked with them. So there's a very good argument to completely avoid any violent resistance, because even one trivial incident will be used for years to bolster the mainstream narrative.

However the retention of the tools of force, like guns, are absolutely vital to the continuation or reestablishment of a free republic. If those are ever surrendered, there might not be any coming back.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 03:41:43 PM
That's where we disagree. I think there are valid reasons to reject the use of force at this particular time, but I also completely reject the idea that the use of force is never acceptable. Tyrannies tend not to go quiet in to the good night.
I didn't say that. I said I can understand the legal structure of the state not having a 'initiate a legal violent revolution against me' clause.

In addition 9 times out of 10 what happens after a violent revolution is a worse dictatorship then before that makes everybody regret it happening in the first place. Its just the nature of force and power. Because the people doing the revolution have to break many moral scruples to win, and then those morals don't come back after their in charge. Or they never had said morals in the first place.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Ghostmaker on January 04, 2022, 04:14:07 PM
"Treason ne'er prosper; why, what's the reason?
If it doth prosper, then none dare call it treason."

Granted, going full insurrection is a lot like flipping the game board in a Monopoly game and trying to fistfight with the banker. Nothing's the same afterward.

Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 04:48:02 PM
That's where we disagree. I think there are valid reasons to reject the use of force at this particular time, but I also completely reject the idea that the use of force is never acceptable. Tyrannies tend not to go quiet in to the good night.
I didn't say that. I said I can understand the legal structure of the state not having a 'initiate a legal violent revolution against me' clause.
Okay. Except that almost never happens. Usually, it's the state that initiates the violence. For instance, Ruby Ridge. Or the Civil War. In both cases it was the state (the Union in the latter case) that exerted force. The state just decided it couldn't let them go, or let them be, and ultimately resorted to force. The reason that's an important distinction is because so many people deny things like taxation are violence, under the rationale that the state doesn't immediately send stormtroopers to your door. Instead, they issue a warning, then maybe send a citation, or expect you to pay a fine, and then there's a hearing, maybe a warrant somewhere in there, and then a court date, and a trial, and only at the end of the process do they resort to violence. But that's still exercising force, and all the obfuscation and indirection doesn't change that.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 05:41:56 PM
Okay. Except that almost never happens.

What happens? A state exists with a 'initiate violence against me' clause? Well yeah. If it had that, it wouldn't exist and be replaced by a state without said clause.

Quote
But that's still exercising force, and all the obfuscation and indirection doesn't change that.

I know. Again, you are preaching to the choir. I know how the state operates. I also know how people operate and a state is the logical outgrowth of human nature.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 04, 2022, 06:52:37 PM
Okay. Except that almost never happens.

What happens? A state exists with a 'initiate violence against me' clause?
People initiating violence against the state. Usually, the state initiates it.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 06:55:24 PM
People initiating violence against the state. Usually, the state initiates it.
I mean yes, the state exists through force. But im not sure how thats relevant to the arguments about free speech.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on January 04, 2022, 07:13:14 PM
Instead, we live in a world where many people unironically say "someone [the government] should do something", under the naive assumption that just throwing money at something or getting the right people in power can fix any problem.

I mean your preaching to the choir here. Which is why I said I have to compromise my principle of 'Free speech all the time' with 'Except calls to violence and defamation', because reality isn't perfect. If it means curtailing a rightous revolution, thats a price I see as acceptable to curtail things like mobs of people just using social influence to end the lives of others.

Have you ever thought that Free Speech without calls to violence is not Free Speech at all?

Maybe it all started to go downhill when you could not challenge your accuser to a Duel at dawn.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 04, 2022, 07:15:39 PM
Have you ever thought that Free Speech without calls to violence is not Free Speech at all?
Well possibly, but I can only see that sort of thing ending in a chaotic mob rule situation.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Ocule on January 04, 2022, 08:47:54 PM
It's totally a problem with the judges. Imo any social media company engaged in "editing" to include removing posts or censoring groups of people should lose 230 protections and become editors. Would be plenty of incentive to either serve as a communication platform or be responsible for each and every poster on their platform.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shasarak on January 04, 2022, 09:12:05 PM
Have you ever thought that Free Speech without calls to violence is not Free Speech at all?
Well possibly, but I can only see that sort of thing ending in a chaotic mob rule situation.

Only if the mob has the only Guillotine.

Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 04, 2022, 11:13:16 PM
It's totally a problem with the judges.
It might also be a problem with the scale. I can't find it now but the other day I glanced at a study - I was on the train, which is why I can't now find it and didn't read it properly - which talked about how the productivity of an online discussion forum or group essentially dropped to nil past 150 members or so. Dunbar's number and all that.

It's like how if you have more than a dozen or so chickens, they forget their pecking order and start to fight among themselves, if you want a larger flock then you have to put a rooster in there to sort them out.

Likewise, if you have a large forum of discussion - whether in-person or online - past a certain number nobody can possibly know and get along with everyone and fights will break out, so you put in roosters. This is why we get political parties and then factions within them and so on.

Within a small group of friends, you can get some pretty good tolerance of a fairly wide variety of opinions. But stand up in front of 1,000 people and someone's going to throw cabbage at you, and eventually it occurs to someone to ban people from saying certain things just to keep the peace.

We've spent 120,000 or so years of human history living in little tribal groups, and not much since living in big cities and countries. We're still adapting.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 05, 2022, 01:04:25 AM
^ If you do find the study, I'd be interested.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 05, 2022, 11:33:54 PM
^ If you do find the study, I'd be interested.
It took me a bit because I just couldn't remember it. Then I was glancing over Brave New War by John Robb, and I always dog-ear the pages with stuff I want to look further into. This was one of them - so I'd not seen the study, just the passing mention of it. And then I went looking just now and it's less a study and more just discursive observations, but perhaps there's more recent rigorous stuff. It's a guy called Chris Allen.

http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

For those who don't know, essentially the idea is that maintaining a relationship requires "social grooming", like monkeys picking bugs out of each-other's fur. They do it far more than required for health - it maintains relationships. Having language means that human monkeys can groom more efficiently and effectively, and have larger social groups.

As well though, it's not enough to know about my relationship with Anna and my relationship with Bob, I have to know how Anna and Bob feel about each-other. If Anna likes Bob and I badmouth him, I piss her off; likewise if she dislikes Bob and I praise him, I piss her off. So it becomes more complicated as the number in the group goes up, and you have to spend more and more time figuring out who's who and how they all feel about each-other - and less time doing other stuff.

As Allen writes,

Quote
This all leads me to hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups -- as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups, such as villages -- hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. Anything more than this and the group has to spend too much time "grooming" to keep group cohesion, rather then focusing on why the people want to spend the effort on that group in the first place -- say to deliver a software product, learn a technology, promote a meme, or have fun playing a game. Anything less than this and you risk losing critical mass because you don't have requisite variety.
I would suggest that this is the reason for things like the oppressive moderation on places like rpg.net, and it being so ideological. To handle the relationship between me, Anna and Bob no ideology or grand principles are needed. But to handle the relationships between thousands and thousands of people you may need some broader principles.

Anyway, the 150 is more-or-less a maximum. There are some individuals who'll have networks up to 250 or so, however the group as a whole will be limited by the lower end of the range, as the people whose limit is 150 end up causing trouble when the group climbs to 250.

There are some other details of the model which talk about some group sizes struggling and then improving with more members, which explains a lot of things like the historical sizes of infantry sections or game groups, platoons or extended families, infantry companies or villages, and how adding things like survival challenges change it.

Anyway, it's interesting stuff to look into. It's helped me have good insights into being a gamer and a trainer, for example 4-5 people seems to be a productive group, but 6 or more means there'll never be only one conversation going on. So for my game groups I aim for 5 people, and in my gym I aim for 6.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Mistwell on January 06, 2022, 10:05:19 AM
A lot of the powers that be on the internet cracked down HARD on pro-anorexia sites a while back and nobody complained

Huh. I had not heard about that one. Any idea where I'd find out more information about that? Not doubting you at all, just a topic that was completely not on my radar that sounds like it might be worth reading more about.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 06, 2022, 10:15:42 AM
It's a guy called Chris Allen.
....
I would suggest that this is the reason for things like the oppressive moderation on places like rpg.net, and it being so ideological.
Wow, you really brought it full circle. (Christopher Allen is one of the founders of Skotos, i.e. the owners of rpg.net.)

And I really doubt that conclusion. If it were true, then rpg.net's moderation would have become more oppressive and the site would have become more ideological as it increased in size, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It was wild and woolly at its peak, and then became more intolerant as it shrunk.

I think the fixation on a single number is a bit of a distraction. I do agree with the grooming aspects of speech, and that social networks become more difficult to manage as they scale in size. But I also think there are too many differences between an online "community" and a tightly-knit hunter-gather tribe in the Neolithic to port over the math. It also misses the advent of the city, which clearly developed a set of social norms to minimize and formalize interaction, and allowed humans to scale from villages of 100 to metropolises of 10,000,000. Online forums are even more distant, interacting solely by text.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 06, 2022, 06:55:11 PM
Yes I agree we shouldn't be overly-focused on a few exact numbers, as tempting as that is. Nonetheless we can note patterns in behaviour.

As for rpg.net's moderation and other online forums and the like, I'd say that all this Dunbar's Number stuff is part of the explanation, but not all of it. No single factor is going to explain all of human behaviour.

As you note, when rpg.net was growing, they were fairly loose; as they shrank, they became more exclusionary. And that ties in with what we've discussed in another thread about civilisations and resource use: when a civilisation is increasing its effective use of resources, the leadership can afford to be generous. Thus the corn dole in the Roman Republic as it ran around conquering its neighbours, and Prussia's workplace injury schemes in the late 19th century, and various social welfare programmes across the West in the late 20th century.

Likewise, a growing forum has enough (human) resources to be generous and let people scrap amongst themselves a bit. If some of them get pissed off and leave, it doesn't matter, there are plenty more and they care about as much as McDs in the 1980s care about criticisms of their food as unhealthy.

But as an economy shrinks all those social welfare programmes get too much. The Romans spent so much on their military defending stuff they had no money left to spend on something worth defending. Plus they had to spend lots of money bribing the elites to keep them in line. They then wondered why the commoners sometimes welcomed the invaders. So the leaders disdained the commoners, became more authoritarian, and spent a lot of time fighting amongst themselves.

Likewise on a shrinking discussion forum, there'll be more fighting over getting a larger slice of a shrinking pie - in this case, influence on the direction of the forum. Of course, whatever you or I think of any particular ideology present in a forum, the fact of the matter is that designing it to appeal to only 10% (say) of the people - whichever 10% that might be - is going to shrink it further. Trying to appeal just to the Woke leads you to the same place trying to appeal just to players of RIFTS - you might have a period where you do fairly well, but eventually it'll fade and you'll disappear into obscurity.

But of course, there are other factors. The number of participants influences things, but also whether the number is growing or shrinking, and the wider cultural context, and then there are commercial considerations, and...

As a side note: for a few years I was a moderator on bodybuilding.com, which is to bodybuilding what rpg.net is to rpgs. They had a "Misc" subforum which was the 15-25yo male's version of Tangency, where they said a lot of really fucking stupid shit. It was just 15-25yo male living with his parents stupid shit rather than tertiary-educated office worker stupid shit.

At one point bb.com was huge, literally a hundred thousand posts a day. The moderators basically just knocked back spam and porn, that was it. As it shrank, they became more picky. The law also got involved. That guy Elliot Rodgers who was jealous that other guys were getting laid and spent a day murdering couples and women in California had an account there called "SupremeGentleman", and some poor bastard called "CandyJunkie" livestreamed his suicide with people posting "do it, phaggot." Now the Misc still exists, but it's hidden from public view.

Drama everywhere. Humans.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 06, 2022, 11:52:23 PM
And that ties in with what we've discussed in another thread about civilisations and resource use: when a civilisation is increasing its effective use of resources.

Public attention and status are always finite resources. This I just disagree with because its a constantly stable pie.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 07, 2022, 07:06:05 PM
Public attention and status are always finite resources. This I just disagree with because its a constantly stable pie.
Good point! But the ingredients can change. Being well-known and influential took a different path in 2000 than in 1900, or 1200. And some obscure people in 2019 suddenly started appearing on tv every day and affecting millions of people's lives in 2020.

I would just qualify it by saying that "the public" is rather a modern concept, and it's certainly an urban concept. I just finished reading The White Ship about Henry I and the Anarchy in England around 1200, and "the public" don't really feature as a factor. That's because most people lived in villages, and never went more than a day or two's travel from their village. Anyone coming from outside the village was coming to levy troops, demand taxes, or burn the place to the ground (including their own king, who might burn it so its resources wouldn't be available to some approaching rival).

Going from "stranger - danger!" to "oh look, another 2,223 people clicked "like" on the picture of my booty" is really a significant cultural shift.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 07, 2022, 07:32:49 PM
Going from "stranger - danger!" to "oh look, another 2,223 people clicked "like" on the picture of my booty" is really a significant cultural shift.
But I don't think it really fully ties together into the pie idea. I know resources are finite and competition begins when they are strained and reached, but I feel this is more the experiment where the mouse was wired to recieve direct pleasure stimulus when it pushed a button so it starved to death pushing it in place of doing anything else.

I don't think the resource limit has been really reached both in terms of social and physical goods. But its more our primitive brains are designed to handle a wholly different set of circumstances and when we can 'hack' those circumstances, we get all screwy.

People aren't having replacement level children at all for instance. And many countries have a growing culture of people that just don't want to do anything and settle for being ultra low status part time workers, even in nations with effectively 0 social security like china.

Social media ties into that. It can replicate some surface level elements of interaction, without providing most of the real benefits of the real deal.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 07, 2022, 08:23:52 PM
Well, historically if you were a lazy dropout you became a monk or something. That's something we often don't appreciate about earlier times. People being gay, transgender, asexual, lazy or whatever is not really anything new, and every society found something to do with them.

In 2021, if you're a heterosexual and ambitious woman, you can marry well, just as you could in 1221. But you can also build a career of your own, however while you'll have children, the number will be closer to 1 than 6, since to achieve your ambitions you can only have so many interruptions to your career.

But if you're an asexual and ambitious woman you go and study law and become a career woman - at most you might marry so your husband's status can help yours, but you won't have children. In 1221 you were a noblewoman who took up the veil and was immediately made abbess.

And of course societies have long had eunuchs and janisseries and childless academics and so on and so forth. I don't think the behaviour is anything new, it's just how that particular society allows that behaviour to be expressed.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on January 07, 2022, 11:02:17 PM
And of course societies have long had eunuchs and janisseries and childless academics and so on and so forth. I don't think the behaviour is anything new, it's just how that particular society allows that behaviour to be expressed.
I think your underplaying all these elements by a wide margin, and trying to lump it all into a past equivalent. I can get some of that, but to the extent your doing I think is wrong.

A Trireme and a Carrier are both warships, but they exist in radically different theatres of war with very different consequences.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Zelen on January 29, 2022, 01:59:08 PM
The fact that there's something like 1000% increase in people identifying as LGBT within a time frame of less than 10 years is prima facie evidence that this isn't some revealed preference or organic phenomenon.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Kyle Aaron on January 29, 2022, 07:31:55 PM
It originates in the US, the same as terms like "people of colour" and so on. There was a interesting article the other day by Shelby Steele (https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inauthenticity-behind-black-lives-matter-11606069287), in which she said,

Quote
Whites need blacks they can save to prove their innocence of racism. Blacks must put themselves forward as victims the better to make their case for entitlements.

This is a corruption because it makes black suffering into a moral power to be wielded, rather than a condition to be overcome. This is the power that blacks discovered in the ’60s. It gained us a War on Poverty, affirmative action, school busing, public housing and so on. But it also seduced us into turning our identity into a virtual cult of victimization—as if our persecution was our eternal flame, the deepest truth of who we are, a tragic fate we trade on. After all, in an indifferent world, it may feel better to be the victim of a great historical injustice than a person left out of history when that injustice recedes.

Yet there is an elephant in the room. It is simply that we blacks aren’t much victimized any more. Today we are free to build a life that won’t be stunted by racial persecution. Today we are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination. Moreover, we live in a society that generally shows us goodwill—a society that has isolated racism as its most unforgivable sin.

This lack of victimization amounts to an “absence of malice” that profoundly threatens the victim-focused black identity. Who are we without the malice of racism? Can we be black without being victims?
Being in Australia and white, I can't speak to the assertion that blacks aren't victimised much any more. But whether they are or not, it's easy to see from America's cultural exports that being a victim is part of many blacks' identities, and blacks being victims is part of many whites' culture - so they can be saviours, even if all they do to "save" them is delete comments on Facebook or rpg.net.

So then you get comfortable middle class white kids who look at all that, and at some point shortly after adolescence realise that actually they are not that unique and special. "But perhaps if I were a victim then I could be special?" This led to that Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black, an act which even a decade later is considered insultingly - dare I say it? - transgressive, even though it was once an act of white liberalism written up in a book and widely-praised - Black Like Me (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42603.Black_Like_Me).

Anyway, back to our angsty middle-class white kid. "Okay, so who are still victims? Well, gays are a bit, they get AIDS and people hate them... no, wait, it's not the 1980s anymore, and in fact they can even marry... which group can I become a member of who is at least a bit shunned by society and victimised?"

That's also why we get a bunch of lost Westerners running off to join radical Islamic groups - and they're more likely to be the ones turning up as terrorists, joining ISIS, etc. They have to prove something to themselves. They don't actually give a damn about Allah, they just like that victim-identity thing the radical Islamists have going on. It's also why a rising number of people claim to have been sexually assaulted.

Taking this back to social media: it's easier to bullshit people online than in person, and it's also easier to find fruit loops. In the old days if 1 in 1,000 people thought like you, you could go your whole life without meeting another one. Nowadays if it's 1 in 1 million you can organise a convention of 300 of you just in the United States, and your internet forum or Lamebook group will have 8,000 people commenting on it, and they'll tell you they know thousands of people like them, and before you know it there are 16,000 commenting. Then Oprah or Tucker mention you online and suddenly the fucking Huffington Post or Fox News are doing stories about you, blah blah.

Before you know it there's a midwestern university with a Chair of Fruit Loop studies, and of course it spreads out from the US and across the world online and in media.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Fheredin on January 31, 2022, 01:02:55 PM
And I really doubt that conclusion. If it were true, then rpg.net's moderation would have become more oppressive and the site would have become more ideological as it increased in size, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It was wild and woolly at its peak, and then became more intolerant as it shrunk.

Replying to a decently old post to make a point:

That general trend--wild and wooly to intolerant and small--is true of most Leftism in general over the past decade. I would say that about the mid-point of the Obama years, the majority of Left influencers abandoned the ideal of tolerance in favor of power-play, and one of the ways that played out was infiltrating social media.

I am quite curious about what decentralized/ censorship-proof social media will look like, and there are companies like Aave trying to do that. But frankly I prefer the old Forum model of pseudonymity and online personas to real names, if given a chance, Real names creates too much of an incentive to collate data and implement dystopian social credit systems a la China.

I think the best course of action is not to "do" anything in particular to social media, but to redesign classic web forums so they outcompete social media. Social media outcompeted forums back in the mid 2000s because they had superior monetization with economy of scale, user data, and ad volume. The best way to turn the tables is to give forums a way to out-monetize social media. Say, crypto token functionality instead of advertisement and selling user data.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 31, 2022, 02:58:18 PM
And I really doubt that conclusion. If it were true, then rpg.net's moderation would have become more oppressive and the site would have become more ideological as it increased in size, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It was wild and woolly at its peak, and then became more intolerant as it shrunk.

Replying to a decently old post to make a point:

That general trend--wild and wooly to intolerant and small--is true of most Leftism in general over the past decade. I would say that about the mid-point of the Obama years, the majority of Left influencers abandoned the ideal of tolerance in favor of power-play, and one of the ways that played out was infiltrating social media.

I am quite curious about what decentralized/ censorship-proof social media will look like, and there are companies like Aave trying to do that. But frankly I prefer the old Forum model of pseudonymity and online personas to real names, if given a chance, Real names creates too much of an incentive to collate data and implement dystopian social credit systems a la China.

I think the best course of action is not to "do" anything in particular to social media, but to redesign classic web forums so they outcompete social media. Social media outcompeted forums back in the mid 2000s because they had superior monetization with economy of scale, user data, and ad volume. The best way to turn the tables is to give forums a way to out-monetize social media. Say, crypto token functionality instead of advertisement and selling user data.
Don't think that's possible. Social media is primarily about the web of connections, which forums lack. It's also been the driver of their monetization, because those networks are tremendously lucrative via targeted advertising.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Fheredin on January 31, 2022, 03:54:25 PM
And I really doubt that conclusion. If it were true, then rpg.net's moderation would have become more oppressive and the site would have become more ideological as it increased in size, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It was wild and woolly at its peak, and then became more intolerant as it shrunk.

Replying to a decently old post to make a point:

That general trend--wild and wooly to intolerant and small--is true of most Leftism in general over the past decade. I would say that about the mid-point of the Obama years, the majority of Left influencers abandoned the ideal of tolerance in favor of power-play, and one of the ways that played out was infiltrating social media.

I am quite curious about what decentralized/ censorship-proof social media will look like, and there are companies like Aave trying to do that. But frankly I prefer the old Forum model of pseudonymity and online personas to real names, if given a chance, Real names creates too much of an incentive to collate data and implement dystopian social credit systems a la China.

I think the best course of action is not to "do" anything in particular to social media, but to redesign classic web forums so they outcompete social media. Social media outcompeted forums back in the mid 2000s because they had superior monetization with economy of scale, user data, and ad volume. The best way to turn the tables is to give forums a way to out-monetize social media. Say, crypto token functionality instead of advertisement and selling user data.
Don't think that's possible. Social media is primarily about the web of connections, which forums lack. It's also been the driver of their monetization, because those networks are tremendously lucrative via targeted advertising.

Yes and no. Yes, networking was Facebook's original vision, but in practice it has moved much more into an advertisement platform which basically exists for its own sake, and has networking functionality for legacy purposes. Most people on my Friends list on FB are people I haven't seen in years, and what little FB activity I do have with people I interact with IRL can often be done via email just as well, and often is for official purposes.

This argument also doesn't apply to Reddit or Twitter, either, which are pseudononymous.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Pat on January 31, 2022, 04:17:05 PM
And I really doubt that conclusion. If it were true, then rpg.net's moderation would have become more oppressive and the site would have become more ideological as it increased in size, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It was wild and woolly at its peak, and then became more intolerant as it shrunk.

Replying to a decently old post to make a point:

That general trend--wild and wooly to intolerant and small--is true of most Leftism in general over the past decade. I would say that about the mid-point of the Obama years, the majority of Left influencers abandoned the ideal of tolerance in favor of power-play, and one of the ways that played out was infiltrating social media.

I am quite curious about what decentralized/ censorship-proof social media will look like, and there are companies like Aave trying to do that. But frankly I prefer the old Forum model of pseudonymity and online personas to real names, if given a chance, Real names creates too much of an incentive to collate data and implement dystopian social credit systems a la China.

I think the best course of action is not to "do" anything in particular to social media, but to redesign classic web forums so they outcompete social media. Social media outcompeted forums back in the mid 2000s because they had superior monetization with economy of scale, user data, and ad volume. The best way to turn the tables is to give forums a way to out-monetize social media. Say, crypto token functionality instead of advertisement and selling user data.
Don't think that's possible. Social media is primarily about the web of connections, which forums lack. It's also been the driver of their monetization, because those networks are tremendously lucrative via targeted advertising.

Yes and no. Yes, networking was Facebook's original vision, but in practice it has moved much more into an advertisement platform which basically exists for its own sake, and has networking functionality for legacy purposes. Most people on my Friends list on FB are people I haven't seen in years, and what little FB activity I do have with people I interact with IRL can often be done via email just as well, and often is for official purposes.

This argument also doesn't apply to Reddit or Twitter, either, which are pseudononymous.
Facebook's advertising is entirely driven by the relationship network. It's all about who likes who and who friends who. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the book because it feels like a romance novelist wrote a technical book, but it's covered in detail in Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism.
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: Redwanderer on February 01, 2022, 03:25:58 PM
Well, it would take self-control and sacrifice, even some courage, things the 92% LACKS, but here's an idea- stay away from them. Keep your kids away from them. Just like anyone whining about the woke needs stop giving money to Hollywood and cable.

This person is convinced social media gets a lot of money supplying mobs on demand. Leftist mobs. So why the hell do the 92% keep using them?
Title: Re: What to do about social media corporations?
Post by: rajeshzamesh on April 26, 2023, 12:49:29 PM
Apologies for reviving a months-old thread, but I'm hunting for similar info. I agree that social media corporations have much control over public debate, and it's a tricky issue to navigate. On the one hand, we don't want government regulation to substitute for corporate control. Still, on the other hand, we need to ensure that the information being spread on social media is accurate and not harmful.
I do think that social media companies should have some responsibility for what is posted on their platforms, but at the same time, we don't want them to be the sole determiners of truth. It's a tough balancing act.
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