
Instagram’s CEO Wants to Clean Up the Internet - kawera
https://www.wired.com/2017/08/instagram-kevin-systrom-wants-to-clean-up-the-internet
======
CrystalLangUser
> To Systrom, it’s pretty simple: Freedom of speech does not mean the freedom
> to shitpost. His network isn’t a public square; it’s a platform people can
> choose to use or not. When pressed on the matter, he asks, _“Is it free
> speech to just be mean to someone?”_ Jackson Colaco makes the same point
> more sharply. “If toxicity on a platform gets so bad that people don’t even
> want to post a comment, they don’t even want to share an idea, you’ve
> actually threatened expression.”

Yes, it is free speech to just be mean to someone. The fact that this man is a
leader of anything at all troubles me.

Neural Nets and computers aren't impartial. We should never be putting any
power into them to affect real human discourse that NLP cannot possibly hope
to accurately parse at this time.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't understand how we got to a place where it's censorship unless private
entities will distribute shitposting garbage.

------
avaer
> Is it free speech to just be mean to someone?

Yes. But thankfully for internet platforms, they are not bound by free speech.

> If toxicity on a platform gets so bad that people don’t even want to post a
> comment, they don’t even want to share an idea, you’ve actually threatened
> expression.

No, you've only threatened the appeal of the platform. Expression and free
speech lives on outside of it.

------
Powerofmene
Personally I agree that certain platforms have become so toxic that a portion
of the users are leaving or failing to participate as they had before because
of the right to free speech that many exercise simply for the purpose of being
rude, hateful, or crude.

I will always advocate for an individuals right to free speech but at the same
time I feel that a mom should be able to post pictures of her kids without
trolls coming along and saying they are fat or ugly or worse, making
inappropriate sexual comments about them. I do not think our founding fathers
had this type of speech in mind when they protected speech as that was an
enactment of a different time.

The internet allows the worst in people to rear its ugly head and we find
ourselves here, at a moment in time where we have to question if a business
owner is overstepping boundaries by putting in place systems to protect people
from scummy comments.

I recognize the difficulty in balancing the rights of opposing sides. Surely
there is a solution. At least Systrom and Ev William's have lofty goals in
trying to clean up the internet.

------
minademian
Why can't CEOs just build products and help customers and abstain from moral
crusades?

~~~
dvhh
Because they need to provide some value to lure in the eye for the advertising

~~~
minademian
Great answer.

