

Censorship By Glut - amichail
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/01/1643227

======
TomOfTTB
Web 2.0 often thinks its solved problems it hasn't and this is just another
example. The only people who will be surprised by this are the people who
bought into the hype that "everyone's opinion is equal in the new social web"

The truth is you have to work hard to be listened to and sometimes you have to
keep repeating your good idea over and over and over again until someone
listens. There was a flurry of posts just a few weeks ago (started off by Paul
Buchheit: [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-
success-t...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success-
takes-long-time.html)) that pointed out how "Overnight Successes" are often
things someone has been working on for many years. But it was only when they'd
been around long enough to be trusted that people started actually paying
attention.

But if you work to establish yourself you will eventually be listened to and
that is why this isn't censorship.

------
xenophanes
"Censorship by Glut" is a very bad equivocation.

It compares censorship (by force) to not being heard (no force used). It takes
a word that means force, and applies it to a situation with no force.

~~~
Donald
The victims of both "soft" and "hard" censorship suffer a similar loss of
voice and power. One of the author's implied points is that "Censorship by
Glut" has the same societal effect as "Censorship by Edict."

~~~
xenophanes
Force and freedom have different societal effects!

~~~
diN0bot
please explain.

~~~
xenophanes
e.g. compare censorship via china's internet firewall thing to "censorship" by
America's total lack of internet firewall thing. isn't it pretty obvious the
resulting internet communities are different?

------
nikete
I am not sure the slashdot author understand the paper he read, he says:"the
best often rise to the top, the very worst rarely do," yet the paper says: "In
general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do
extremely well, but almost any other result is possible."
[http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.pdf)

Namely, the paper does not say that the best often rise to the top, simply
that they are unlikely to do badly.

