Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

I was sort of with it until it seemed to pivot abruptly into poor reasoning for breaking up big tech companies.

The article seems to make contradictory arguments that (1) censorship is good, (2) big tech is the only way censorship can be enforced, (3) big tech must be broken up to enable smaller companies.

The article also only focuses on examples of obvious right-leaning types of inflammatory content and excuses itself and its equal weight in dividing us.

NYT also presents itself as the last beacon of hope, the only place such an article could be published in the future. Which is the biggest joke in the world for free speech; just read the paper daily and you will observe that it has one of the biggest self-applied filters anywhere.

Big media doesn't like that people don't need it anymore, and it sees breaking up competing large institutions as part of what will save it.

It is trying to use its weight and influence to squelch competition, which is what it accuses others of doing. But goes one step further by asking for it to be enforced politically.

Maybe the papers should be broken up.

It's definitely not making arguments 1 or 2. The underlying premise is that we don't want to build our digital infrastructure such that "fascism, harassment and crime" can be memetic. It then argues that as long as our online communication is dominated by a couple giant services, we won't be able to prevent that.

It's certainly possible to build services to limit the damage of e.g. harassment, without censorship. Look at Mastodon. If you run your own instance, you can publish whatever you'd like. By default, any two instances can communicate. If one instance doesn't like what another publishes, they can block it.

Also, with regard to your allegations around NYT's opinion of itself: the article was written by Cory Doctorow. I doubt he's particularly rooting for NYT to be an even more powerful gatekeeper.

Re #1, my other comment below:

> I think if the author were calling for censorship to be lifted, his first and loudest argument would be for it to be removed from existing networks. But his ultimate judgment is that the existing networks are bad because they can't properly apply censorship, and that the answer is smaller networks. What criteria would a large, abstract social network be broken up by? The only answer is content, meaning ideas would be relegated to certain spaces so that they cannot propagate as easily. That's an argument for censorship while trying to sell it as something else.

Re #2, From the article:

> Only the largest companies can afford the kinds of filters we’ve demanded of them, and that means that any would-be trustbuster who wants to break up the companies and bring them to heel first must unwind the mesh of obligations we’ve ensnared the platforms in and build new, state-based mechanisms to perform those duties.

I don't know a whole lot about Mastodon yet, but the reason it "solves the problem" (according to you and the author) isn't because of how it changes network dynamics, but because it is federated and technically limited. Meaning it is not meant for any single instance to handle the load of e.g. Twitter. Its design basically prevents people from interacting as they would like to, which means we're deferring the power of our speech to an inferior technology designed for a different use case. If that was all we had, then someone would invent a large centralized network because that is what people want because that is how information travels quickly. Mandating federated networks would be an attack on the rights to free speech and property.

As for who the author is, I don't think it matters, it still supports NYT's whole viewpoint of itself and the world.

No current networks are "censoring" anything. They have policies against certain types of content. If I run a printing press for anyone to use but won't let people use it for what I consider to be harassment, am I "censoring" those people?

Mostly, we're talking about social norms that cover behavior and speech. These get called "censorship" to form a negative connotation, but literally zero people are consistently against them.

For example, there's a norm against child pornography (this one actually is government censorship). NDAs are a form of government censorship too, but people are generally okay with it because you opt into it explicitly. What if you continually insult your boss? There's no law against it, but you'll probably get fired. If you divulge all your family secrets, are you being "censored" if you no longer get invited to the holidays?

Behavior that violates norms gets pushed to the margins. That's how society works. Centralized networks are making people uncomfortable because it's centering behavior that people want marginalized; that's a bug, not a feature.

And when we do force them to marginalize it, they'll do it badly. Because we're placing a lot of power and responsibility in a few giant corporations, accountable to their shareholders and clumsily coerced by voters. Which is why the article supports breaking up the networks: the best way to ensure everyone has a voice is to distribute power to them.

Re: Federated networks, people don't care whether their networks are centralized. Email has existed federated for decades! People care that they can easily talk to the people they want; the ability to do this is orthogonal to how centralized the network is.

> Maybe the papers should be broken up.

I mean, definitely [1], but that doesn't invalidate his argument. Both tech and media consolidation is a problem.

[1] http://cgi.rumormillnews.com/pix0/Screen-shot-2012-07-19-at-...

Is it? There are more forums on the internet than there have ever been. It's not like FB and Twitter are the only 2 platforms that exist.

I'm skeptical that "breaking them up" would really do anything. People would continue to use the thousands of other platforms that are out there, but there would still be a desire for a sufficiently abstract social network that another one would grow. Then there would be calls to break that one up...

To fight against large social networks is to fight against natural human organization and interaction. Attempting to is pointless and probably even harmful, since the velocity of good ideas would be reduced along with the bad.

> Then there would be calls to break that one up...

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Many markets naturally tend towards monopolies - that is no reason not to break them up.

As for the thousands of other platforms - those can't sway elections like Facebook can.

What is really being asked to be broken up isn't a monopoly, but the way people interact with each other and organize themselves, which so far has manifested as large corporations because it has been the most efficient expression of our own built-in networking.

What I hear when you say "smaller platforms can't influence elections like facebook" is "citizens vote differently when they are disconnected from their peers - in a way that I like".

>the way people interact with each other and organize themselves, which so far has manifested as large corporations because it has been the most efficient expression of our own built-in networking.

[citation needed]

> isn't a monopoly, but the way people interact with each other

But it's more than just the way people interact - it's also a company controlling it. E.g. no-one is calling for breaking up IRC or XMPP - because you couldn't.

I'm just not comfortable giving a handful of companies so much soft power over national/global discussion.

I think the point is that even if such a service were completely decentralized, there would be the same calls to action against it.

The point being made in the article is not so much about the companies themselves, it's about how people communicate with each other on such platforms (even if the author intended otherwise).

They may not technically be the only platforms (extending to include all big tech), but practically speaking they are effectively the only platforms, which is what really matters. Someone may technically be able to change from Comcast to Verizon, but if it would cost them 10k then it becomes rather impractical and the net effect is the same as if Comcast was the only option. The barrier to switching must be considered as well as the existence of options.

However I agree that breaking them up may not be the solution - mandated interoperability may be. At least then there would be the benefits of having freedom of choice with plenty of options without the downsides of losing access to your data and your social network (which I think constitute the majority of the switching barrier). Similar mandates in healthcare and education would also be beneficial. This would of course not immediately solve the problem, but I would rather have to deal with getting developers to be mindful of the needs of their users than face the impossibility of getting users in the first place.

An entity should be allowed to be as successful as they can manage, so long as the practical barriers to competition are not affected (ie, network effects)

Switching costs are low. People use YouTube, Telegram, Slack, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit all day. Countless smaller forums are wildly popular for specific interests.

If they fell, whatever platform is next in line would start receiving the criticism.

But further, I think we've seen many times in tech that about the time something gets so large that people start wanting to regulate it is about when tides are shifting anyway. The thing to reduce the influence of these networks won't be regulation, it will be some combination of boredom, disillusionment, a better alternative, the next generation wanting something different from their parents, etc. To force split before that happens just ensures the market-provided solution is weaker and less revolutionary than it could be, since the competition it is overcoming has artificial handicaps. That makes progress slower overall.

I disagree hugely and have seen a massive move towards the decentralization of media. Which is exactly what's causing a rise in extremism. How does a more diverse media environment NOT lead to more extremism by its very nature? It means people have more access to more extreme views. Extremism is a double edged sword, tends to accelerate societal progress but tends to result in more loons mucking things up.

New York Times as society's moral arbiter will never happen again. I'm not sad either. For all this high minded talk about protecting people from extremism I'll never forget how much blood they have on their hands from back when they reported fake news that helped sell the Iraq war. That has killed way more people than the rise of extremism has. Their FUD about how we have to break up the NYTs competition doesn't sway me.

The NYT also loves extremism so long as it's the kind they approve of. Neo-victorian social media lynching of men accused of sexual indiscretions? Well they're on board with that because it advances women's rights and the collateral damage is exaggerated anyways.

Maybe I missed it, but where is it arguing that censorship is good? I thought he was arguing the exact opposite, that it's bad and doesn't actually solve the social problem.

It does come off that way at the start, but I felt that about 1/3 of the way through, the undertone shifts in a way that presumes censorship is desirable.

I think if the author were calling for censorship to be lifted, his first and loudest argument would be for it to be removed from existing networks. But his ultimate judgment is that the existing networks are bad because they can't properly apply censorship, and that the answer is smaller networks. What criteria would a large, abstract social network be broken up by? The only answer is content, meaning ideas would be relegated to certain spaces so that they cannot propagate as easily. That's an argument for censorship while trying to sell it as something else.

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