
I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It - petethomas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/opinion/cesar-sayoc-robert-bowers-social-media.html
======
wickedOne
"Technology is exciting, but people are awful, and they keep finding the worst
ways to apply it." (the way the verge introduced the third series of black
mirror.)

i think applies to this scenario as well.

personally i think the internet has outgrown it's "flower power" stage so we
either should adjust our sentiment or do something about it

~~~
core-questions
Consider a world where the speech that you believe in is being censored by
governments and corporate powers. Would you not want there to be some
protection for your ability to speak truth to power?

You may disagree with the people who are doing this now, but that doesn't mean
that censorship is the correct way to solve the problem. It's not going to
make any of them change their minds.

> we either should adjust our sentiment or do something about it

What are you implying?

~~~
wickedOne
that already is the world we live in: i think every law that constitutes the
right to free speech comes with limitations, so regardless there are certain
rules you're expected to abide to.

i'm not saying i disagree with anyone or that we should censor everything on
the internet, i'm just saying that the internet is no longer that obscure
thing where everything is rainbows and unicorns and has become of big
corporate and political interest.

so we _should_ excpect it to be like the newspaper, the television, the
pamflets in your mailbox, etc. (re: "I cannot tell you how sad that is to
write, because when I first saw the internet way back when, I hoped that it
would help eliminate the attitudes that had fueled those horrible letters to
me. I naïvely thought a lone man sending a reporter a missive of malevolence
could not find such refuge on the wide-open internet, where his hate would be
seen for what it was and denounced and exorcised"): lies and ways to steer you
have become part of the game and it's up to you to see through that.

at this point "do something about it", i think, has boiled down to "delete the
internet".

~~~
core-questions
> so we _should_ excpect it to be like the newspaper, the television, the
> pamflets in your mailbox, etc

You want the internet to degrade to a centrally-controlled, one-way medium
rather than enabling the kind of dialogue you and I are having right now?

> lies and ways to steer you have become part of the game and it's up to you
> to see through that.

This is arguably how it has always been. Never before have we had such great
resources to see through things. Sometimes, what we end up seeing makes us
uncomfortable, because the world isn't as nice as we would like for it to be.
We can either accept truths and work to change them to be better, or accept
pleasant fictions and outright lies to spare ourselves.

Deleting the internet won't solve any of these issues. Well, it might help
teen bullying some....

~~~
wickedOne
> You want the internet to degrade to a centrally-controlled, one-way medium
> rather than enabling the kind of dialogue you and I are having right now?
> quite the opposite actually. i think we should be skeptic about the things
> we read on the internet and steer away from the "it must be true if it's on
> wikipedia" mentality. so _do_ your research if it's concerning a sbject you
> feel passionate about and _do_ engage in discussions and stay open minded.

most of us consume content rather than generating it and as the internet has
become of such great interest to big companies and governments, parts of the
(news) information we consume is biased and sometimes plain false, just like
it is in the offline world.

> Never before have we had such great resources to see through things
> absolutely true, but people have to be willing to see through things / be
> skeptic. i think (assumption) the largest part of the people using the
> internet do not question what they read and are not likely to do so in the
> future, hence my suggestion to "delete the internet"...

------
forapurpose
She buys into an assumption that the hate speech is grassroots, meaning that
it is from ordinary citizens.

There is a lot of evidence that much comes from powerful parties such as
governments and political actors, who seek to promote conflict, division,
and/or the far right (EDIT: and others too, but the far right seems especially
prominent). For example, one report I read said that the Russia government's
Facebook activity for the 2016 U.S. election focused "overwhelmingly" on
race,[0] and recently I read that Russian government Twitter bots sent
thousands of tweets criticizing NFL anthem protestors.[1] I'm going to try to
find the links and add them. (None of this is surprising: During the Cold War
the Soviets tried to aggravate U.S. racial division; for example, a former
officer said that they would send racist hate mail to African-American
leaders, then 'leak' to the press that the leaders had received hate mail.)

The real question is how powerful the technology is. How effectively can you
manipulate public opinion? I hardly see that issue discussed.

[0] [https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-
found-...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-
facebook-ads-russians-accused-election-meddling/602319002/) More coverage:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-
russia-fake-accounts-126-million)

[1] [https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/22/russian-twitter-trolls-
nfl...](https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/22/russian-twitter-trolls-nfl-national-
anthem-protests-bots) which links to [https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-
russian-trolls-inflamed-nfl...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russian-
trolls-inflamed-nfls-anthem-controversy-1540233979)

EDIT: Minor edits to make my comments more consistent with the citations.

~~~
core-questions
Something tells me you haven't spent any time in the gutters of the Internet
if you really think all controversial speech is funded. Plenty of people hold
opinions that you might want to censor.

The "they're all russian bots!" meme is getting old, and doesn't actually bear
scrutiny in reality. If you don't believe me, then go and spend some time in
the darker parts of the internet to see what the discourse is like. Engage
with the people there if you're feeling brave.

~~~
forapurpose
> if you really think all controversial speech is funded

Not what I said at all. That Russian grassroots propaganda campaigns exist
certainly does bear up to scrutiny.

------
rasengan
I always believed the web would stop control over the narrative from single
centralized powers, not spread it.

~~~
forapurpose
When corporations and governments run social media campaigns, isn't that a
single centralized power influencing the narrative?

~~~
dragonwriter
> When corporations and governments run social media campaigns, isn't that a
> single centralized power influencing the narrative?

No, “corporations and governments” are not “a single centralized power”.

~~~
forapurpose
Well, they are centralized powers, but I agree they are not the only powers.
Who are you thinking of?

~~~
dragonwriter
A government may be a single centralized power in some context.

A corporation might be in another context.

Multiple of each, however, attempting through similar media to influence the
same narrative are, however, not.

~~~
forapurpose
OK, so who are you referring to as the "single centralized power"?

------
323454
the new york times saying that the internet is a bad thing is like the
catholic church saying that the printing press is a problem

------
olivermarks
What a shame Swisher appears to have joined the censorship and anti free
speech police

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core-questions
What is this dreck?

Somehow it's the fault of a Saudi prince's exploratory investments that people
in the USA want to use their constitutionally-protected right to free speech
on the Internet? How absolute dare they!

There is no such thing as hate speech. There is free speech, and there is
censorship. Kara Swisher seems to be mad that there is not yet enough
censorship for her tastes, which I think would extend to domain registrar or
even ARIN deplatforming of any site or network that dares host the comments of
someone who says something she is uncomfortable with.

I find it reprehensible that anyone can even consider curtailing speech as a
kneejerk reaction to violence. It's crystal clear to me that further
censorship is actually going to add fuel to the fire, as those with evil
opinions will have no outlet, no chance of counterargument or of being
convinced toward nonviolent action, no support from other people in their
emotional struggle. As though censorship will be successful this time at
enabling the security of the establishment, even though it didn't work in
China or Russia.

We'll painfully rediscover the lessons of the past, probably with more death
and mayhem. Just as much of it will be on the hands of the censors as is on
the hands of those who facilitate speech; it's up to you to decide if that's a
nonzero amount.

~~~
charlesism

        I find it reprehensible that anyone can even consider curtailing speech as a kneejerk reaction to violence.
    

Can we still curtail the yelling of "fire" in a crowded theatre?

~~~
core-questions
This tired, tired meme. It's a few hundred years old by now, isn't it? Does
anyone who has a reasonable outlook on life really think that issuing a
command that instantiates an instant tribal mob mentality on a cloistered
group of people is the same as political speech?

False equivocations that you don't even really believe yourself aren't exactly
good counter-arguments.

~~~
charlesism
I have no enthusiasm for our exchange, to be honest. We won't have enough
common ground. So I'll just bow out, and wish you a lovely evening.

