You don't think state actors could make X operations inconvenient or costly like this or this? Couldn't that play part in the solution?
lmmarsano
joined 2 months ago
because calling out nazis as liars about their interest in free speech has got to mean abandoning freedom of speech.
No duh insincere people claiming to advocate for free speech don't really mean it. This isn't exactly new or debatable: what is argued with it is debatable.
Earlier, you write about "statements nearly impossible to implement" & looking for "solutions" as if free speech needs solving. It doesn't. Free speech is its own solution: it means free for speech you dislike and for speech to answer it. There's nothing to solve but a lack of dedication to & endurance of free speech.
application of ethical principles may change
this is a nice summary statement here.
Not to be lifted out of context, "people’s awareness & recognition of" is an important part of that quote.
It doesn't mean their application to the same circumstances changes. What changes is people's awareness/recognition, not that it applies or how (it always applied the moment it was possible to apply). Like finally recognizing equal rights apply to women or minorities. Or that protesting topless is protected speech. Or that free speech applies to communication over new technologies.
If you got that, though, then it's a nice summary.
Technologies
yes
and ethics continuously change
no
and adapt to new technologies
Yes. Technology may change, people's awareness & recognition of the application of ethical principles may change, however that doesn't mean the principles themselves change.
In terms of ethical reasoning, the essence of a matter may remain the same regardless of superficial guises (like technology). Adapting to a technology means applying the same general principles to novel, special cases. The principles concern rights & moral obligations people have to each other. Technology isn't essential or relevant: the use of technology to perform an action is irrelevant to whether that action is right or wrong. The principles themselves can be timeless, immutable, and concern only essentials necessary to evaluate actions. Thinking otherwise indicates confusion & someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
I’m not interested in discussing the analogies of going from codexes to printed books vs. going from printed hard copies to human-human interactions being hijacked by human-passing bots, because to me these are evidently not comparable.
Well, you're wrong. They're ultimately ways of disseminating expression. Just because you think some shiny, new, whizzy bang doodad fundamentally changes everything doesn't mean it does.
It probably indicates lack of historical perspective. These problems you think are new aren't. People have long been complaining about lies spreading faster than truth, the public being disinformed & easily manipulated. In the previous century, the US has been through worse with disfranchisement, Jim Crow, internment camps, violent white supremacy, the red scare, McCarthyism. Yet now contagious stupidity spread through automations is an unprecedented threat unlike the contagious stupidity of the past? Large scale stupidity isn't new. Freedom of speech was essential to anti-authoritarian, civil rights, and counterculture movements.
There's something contradictory about trying to defend liberal society by surrendering a critical part of it.
The fact that this discussion is taking place on Lemmy and not Xitter tells plenty about the actual complexities of this story.
Not really. Decentralization is part of the solution.
Some people never liked Twitter.
Claim it, twist it, poison it, ruin it.
Nothing new historically. You don't have to accept their false premises by surrendering ideas to them.
things people used to care about or that used to be innocuous
Free speech is power, not innocuous: authorities fear it. It belongs to the people unless they surrender it.
Used to care about? Only if you let them stop you.
That's just technology & fearmongering. Socrates was critical of writing out of concerns it would deteriorate minds & make superficial thinkers. Critics were concerned the printing press would lead to widespread moral degradation with the abundance of low-quality literature. People criticized television & media for brain rot.
Guess what you're the next iteration of?
Technologies change, yet good principles hold regardless.
You know what you can do with free speech? More free speech. No one has a monopoly on LLM, bots, or algorithms. If people were inclined, they could launch these technologies to counter messages they oppose. People can choose to tune out & disregard expressions. Much more can be done with free speech.
Does anyone?
Yes, old-school liberals, the ACLU, etc.
It's bizarre & disappointing that newer generations seem to associate freedom of speech with right-wing authoritarians when freedom of speech has been a firmly liberal value advanced through the enlightenment & civil rights movement. Everyone ought to defend it.
The point of my post is that some of the loudest proponents of free speech have ulterior motives.
So what? Free speech is still right: everyone should fervently defend it. Whether they're sincere about it or not, free speech is indispensable to a liberal democracy.
The problem isn't free speech. The problem is people who want to take it all away. If you fall into the trap of abandoning basic values from the enlightenment when they make it inconvenient, then you play into their game & help them set back society.
Why not instead flood X with tons of pro-Canadian content/shitposting (for great justice)? Maybe they could band together with other countries & do an all-out offensive against X, overwhelming their servers?
I'd bring out popcorn for that.
Right: the moderation is really to serve themselves including by protecting brands of commercial interests & advertiser revenue, but these platforms have deluded users into buying the pretext that it's an essential part of a "safe, non-toxic" culture.
Though that may be the case with references to Luigi, they'll happily abide by much senseless moderation like
- blanket blocks of comments containing links of any kind in subreddits such as r/mildlyinfuriating
- blocks of meta discussions
- strange ideas of brigading that treat a link to a post in another subreddit as "community inference"
- practical bans of subreddits airing grievances about bad moderation
- blocking any insult even when it doesn't amount to harassment
- blocking any expression of violence even when it's not incitement until it swings back & strikes against expressions of class consciousness that refer to Luigi.
With newer platforms like mastodon & bluesky, it seems like more of the same: their advocates often gush proudly of their robust moderation & claim that their extra moderation is indispensable to a safe, non-toxic experience.
I think all we need from moderation is removal of illegal content & perhaps offloading of off-topic content somewhere else. Rather than block offensive content, they could label it & let users decide whether to filter it out. Bluesky already does this, but they hardcode their in-house moderation, so users can't opt out as we saw when they blocked the Trump toe-sucking Elon deepfake video.
Reddit sucks because of the moderation, yet the current zeitgeist continues to be that this extra moderation is some wondrous, beautiful thing that improves everything it touches, and new platforms need more of it. Fuck that & fuck Reddit.
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That's the most delulu & citation-free comment I've read in recent time: good job!
The premise of free expression is that the people get to decide what speech they want to hear, and it's not the role of an authority to decide that for them. Seems you oppose that liberty & want an authority to decide. Isn't there a name for people who oppose freedom & want everyone to obey authority? Aren't there some rather unsavory characters who agree with you? That's some awfully bad company: despite your superficial differences, you're a bit too alike.