Big Tech deplatforming should be disturbing for everyone, regardless of politics | Hacker News Reader

Big Tech deplatforming should be disturbing for everyone, regardless of politics

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30 pointsCOGlory15 comments

Indeed. It seems that the chickens on the left are cheering on the wolves who have eaten the chickens on the right who disagreed with them.

Big Tech have too much control and will come for anyone and are certainly not your friends.

> Under current law, Big Tech platforms have the final word on their services. They have the right to decide which thinkers, politicians, and businesses are allowed onto their platform and which they will expel. This seems reasonable until you consider Big Tech’s scale and how fundamental the internet is to modern-day life.

I think that's the heart of the matter. I've thought about this quite a bit, but when we say break them down, how does that work ?

Could there be legal thresholds such as what already exists with regards to ( actual ) hate speech and encouraging violence, based on publicly agreed upon standards ?

Platforms being legally accountable for enforcing arbitrary or biased deplatforming or shadowbanning ? They are a special kind of service ...

I guess you'd need a watchdog with teeth. Does anyone have a link to something that covers all this in depth ? Could well be a HN thread ( maybe this one .. )

A simple and more robust strategy is to force players to open up communication protocols, allowing end-users a variety of (federated) clients to communicate through. Users no more held hostage, that will encourage healthy market mechanisms in policy/curation decisions be it “disinformation” or whatever heuristic. And it would be great to have services with a variety of different policies so people can choose what they like and where to self-associate.

That way there’s no need for detailed and heavy-handed regulation, only an enforcement of a common protocol.

Users are 100% of the power, and getting rid of network effects would reduce platform adoption to the quality of the platform..

I think it's great actually. It's the first real step towards open federated/decentralized internet in the last 15 years. The technology didn't go away, we just stopped using it, and now there's finally some motivation to use it again. I am looking forward to email-like social network protocols.

What does an email like social network protocol provide over something like Usenet or IRC?

Maybe these are alright and better client app is needed, I am not sure

It sounds like activity pub is the protocol you're looking for.

If a company doesn't want to provide services to another company, that's their choice. You don't have a right to use their software, nor should they be forced to provide services to people or companies that violate their rules.

We already know. They're a private platform and they can remove / censor / de-platform whoever they want and you're only 'licensed' to use their software unless you violate their ToS.

Here goes the cycle.

1. De-platformed from Twitter or Facebook, Don't like it? build your own social network.

2. De-platformed off of AWS, GCP, Azure, Don't like it? build your own servers (i.e self-hosting)

3. De-platformed off of the internet payments level. Don't like it? Use cryptocurrencies.

4. De-platformed off of the IP level. Don't like it? Register and assign your own ASNs.

But don't worry, de-platforming won't happen to us, I'm sure that big tech always listens to their users! /s

I can't think of a single voice that I wanted to hear, nor a single entity with which I wanted to interact, that was successfully de-platformed through any of these pathways.

Yeah but I'm OK making the decision about who I want to interact with myself. I don't need other people to make it for me.

All of those points are correct. "Big Tech" can remove me if they want. Why are they required to serve me?

Be careful what you wish for

This is happening every where, including here at HN. One of my highest upvoted comments (71) was flagged and silently removed by this corruption. Ironically, the removed comment was about censorship. I'm ready to make a change but outside of burning down our current system, I don't know what will fix it.

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