But in contrast, web communities run on moderation, i.e. a sort of intolerance of bad content. The lesson is that technical issues and social issues really don't mix. You can't conclude anything from one versus the other. Case in point, cryptocurrency was supposed to be the anarchist's dream, but now it's being adopted by some central banks.
> technical issues and social issues really don't mix
I don’t think that’s true in the least. I think it’s true there are no technical solutions to social problems, but any and all technology comes from people forming societies and seeking solutions.
This comment feels the same as people saying “Stick to sports” about athletes talking politics. Everything is political. If you don’t think something is, it tends to be because one is insulated from the politics that affect it.
There's a clear line, and it is when it starts to involve other people. Example: reverse engineering the firmware on your thermostat so you can use it after Google shuts down - technical problem. Not releasing it because you're worried about DMCA and/or Google lawsuits - social problem.
Two races: white and "political"
Two genders: Male and "political"
Two hair styles for women: long and "political"
Two sexualities: straight and "political"
Two body types: normative and "political"
I wonder whether people who disagree about this are talking at crossed purposes. I think there's politics in a narrower sense (concerning partisanship and state intervention) and politics in a wider sense (concerning power relations and decision making). To depoliticise things in the former sense (by depolarising and deregulating) isn't to depoliticise them at all in the latter sense. In society, arguably everything is economic, legal, psychological, etc. Presumably, what people mean when they say "everything is political" is that politics in the wider sense is both important and on this list.
I see. I disagree with them if they think everything really is political propaganda, but I think in a sense everything is political (in the wider sense) in its causes and consequences, so perhaps it might as well be propaganda, even if those involved don't think of it that way.
To return to your previous comment that "everything is political" is a tedious worldview, maybe there's a possible compromise. We could accept the idea that "non-political" everyday things have a (small) political significance, while never (or rarely) engaging with that political significance in any specific instance.
> To return to your previous comment that "everything is political" is a tedious worldview
It is tedious specifically because of the "in the wider sense" you put in parens
It is an overly broad definition of political to the point of uselessness and absurdity
Edit; for example, consider the case of a child throwing a ball for their dog.
The child is not political. The dog is not political. Yes, you can say that there's politics in letting people own pets like dogs. There are politics in having a public space where children are allowed to play fetch with their dogs. There are politics involved in the parents deciding to have children in the first place, or where they choose to live and work.
> It is an overly broad definition of political to the point of uselessness and absurdity
I don't think it's useless or absurd, just not usually applicable. After all, each action has a specific political significance.
> It's also just tedious
Fair enough, but couldn't we say the same about many other things? For example, Brownian motion might not usually warrant our attention, but it's there for when we decide it is of interest.
Not an intolerance of bad content, but an intolerance of bad behaviour.
Technical issues are often social issues: bad process, bad incentives, bad faith. Moderation is a social issue that people constantly fail to solve with technology, because there are rarely technological solutions to social problems. At best you can mitigate the issue with technology.
The internet I grew up on barely had any moderation at all. Or polarization. Or algorithms that feed on that polarization.
I grew up in a conservative, religious family. The internet, forums, and IRC exposed me to lots of ideas outside my upbringing and helped shape who I am today.
I was already starting to really dig biology, science, and evolution as a teenager. Early internet culture helped tip the scale. I'm now LGBT, moderate, atheist. I did my undergrad in molecular bio and computer science. Without the internet, I really don't think that would have happened.
Critically, the internet was not so polarized back then. Conservatives and socialists and liberal democrats (were they a thing?) could all talk amongst one another and generally get along.
There was mud-slinging, to be sure, but nothing like what we see today. The platforms today willingly feed on this hate. We reward outrage and division. We ban posts and people we disagree with and then rub it in their faces.
Freedom from censorship used to be a liberal idea. Conservative culture dominated in the 80's, 90's, and early 00's. Conservatives were the chief agents of censorship. (There were tv shows about God and Jesus on prime time TV back then! "Touched By An Angel", FFS.)
It literally "wasn't okay" until Ellen and "Will and Grace" started breaking down barriers. Until that point, it was the more liberal minded folks on the internet that espoused freedom from censorship, sharing of different perspectives, acceptance, and understanding. (Interestingly, the ACLU at that time supported both sides of the political aisle! No favoritism - our rights matter regardless of politics or beliefs.)
After Obama's win, liberal culture and values started taking over. The internet was reaching widespread adoption throughout not only America, but the rest of the world.
It was shortly after this point that "Tumblr culture" started giving platform to more extreme and less tolerant liberal ideas. The people that used to uphold the values of freedom from censorship started being overshadowed by the ones that instead weaponized censorship against political enemies at the platform level. The Obama presidency was an incubation period to normalize this. Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of other forums became dominated by liberals censoring conservatives.
The first Trump presidency flipped the pendulum back. Media censorship used against liberals. The second Trump presidency got censorship at the platform level and garnered tech company alignment.
We just need to stop.
Stop the algorithmic ranking of content. Stop the extreme polarization. Stop the tit-for-tat banning of people. The indoctrination into hating the "other side".
I appreciate that we won't easily come together and find unity. But at the same time, why use that as an excuse to stop trying? When people and ideas can freely be exchanged without folks attacking one another, there can be friendship even amongst disagreement.
If we keep building tools to censor "the other side" they will eventually be used against us.
We're building 1984 and thinking it serves us. It doesn't.
LITERALLY THIS. I hope I can stress more point on it but we need to stop extreme polarization and the social media and how its centralized and controlled by a few too.
> We're building 1984 and thinking it serves us. It doesn't.
You just have to convince the masses that 1984 is something that serves them when it doesn't and sell that I suppose to seize power yourself bribed by lobbying too.
I think that censorship grew because the internet did.
When the crowd grows bigger, it becomes a market. Then you get people who are only here out of self interest, and you need rules to deal with them.
When the crowd gets too big, the conversation is too loud and fast to be polite, and the loudmouths take over. Only hot takes anger people enough to speak above the miasma.
I don’t think it’s a red versus blue issue because there exist people outside of the United States. About 8 billion of them.
> Critically, the internet was not so polarized back then. Conservatives and socialists and liberal democrats (were they a thing?) could all talk amongst one another and generally get along
Really? 4chan has been around preaching death and hatred to all sorts of minorities for, like, 20+ yeara at this point and it's hardly the first or only.
It's great that there are better places on the web than 4chan, but those places, without exception, are better because they ban the hateful and intolerant.
> The Obama presidency was an incubation period to normalize this. Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of other forums became dominated by liberals censoring conservatives
This is such a weird lie to insert in the middle of this rant and it really makes you wonder about the rest of it.
No one is required to tolerate assholes spewing hate no matter how liberal or tolerant you are supposed to be.
Present day racism is carefully calibrated to cause hurt and outrage. That wasn't really a thing in the 2000s even on 4chan. 4chan was more freakshow culture than what Gaming The Algo for Clicks did to our media diet
> This is such a weird lie to insert in the middle of this rant
Either I should have expanded on that or you're not recalling the same period of time I am.
The Obama years were when Millennials went to college. They're when broadband and smartphones proliferated.
This is when IRC and the indie web died. This is when platforms became predominant and when censorship became top-down mandated. This is when "app stores" over "unlimited web installs" won.
Everyone entering the internet during this period entered into a world where censorship was normalized. Where the algorithm started to take over.
Those of us who used the internet before the Obama years remember a vastly different internet.
It's not that it was Obama that did this. It's simply a marker in time to denote confluence of changes and generational coming of age that coincided with it.
What is interesting is that the Trump presidencies swung the pendulum of who was being censored in the opposite direction of the pop culture that had originally adopted the platforms and set the 2010's status quo.
> 4chan
I remember an internet before 4chan.
Their anonymity, ironically, became something of a protest to the platformization of the years that followed.
Wasn't there once a lot of pro-LGBT stuff on 4chan? I avoid it, but I've read that it's a melting pot? Just very extreme?
I'm more concerned about Kiwi Farms type places. I know friends of Near, and bullying is something that irks me.
In crypto the people who cannot grok the maths behind are incapable of being free agents in any way. They need the masters and oppression. The same goes for any community.
