Being against censorship of even very stupid shit is absolutely in line with the old school hacker ethos.
"The internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it" was absolutely a thing.
[[shakes crutch at the kids on his lawn]]
"The internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it" was absolutely a thing.
[[shakes crutch at the kids on his lawn]]
Like, my main objection with censorship isn't "I think that this particular idea is worthy of defending", it's that any mechanism that lets people censor bad opinions could also by used to censor good opinions, and that mechanism is way too powerful and prone to abuse for my comfort.
Left, right, commerical, political, it doesn't matter. Suppress them all.
Like, call me out if this is the wrong acronym, or if I'm misinterpreting, but wouldn't all these be banned then?
> Get out and vote!
> Get vaccinated!
> Sign your kids up for school by August 15th!
> Read to your kids!
> File your taxes by April 15th!
Like, is that actually your position? Not trying to rebut (yet), but that seems like a very very different standard than what exists today if so.
Mainly targeting advertisements and political messaging. More prosaic stuff like filing your taxes on time can be conveyed effectively without commanding people to do things. "Taxes are due by April 15th" would work fine, for example.
Is that a bad thing?
> "Taxes are due by April 15th" would work fine, for example.
"Climate action is due now"
Couple that with some of the evidence as to why and you have a pretty good message to get out.
So very many people don't like being told what to do, and all we do is yell at them with commands and imperatives. Personally it has given me a burning contempt for the kind of folks that promulgate this stuff. If someone wants to compel me into action then they need to convince me on its merits, and those merits alone.
This message also fits.
Can't practice tolerance without being intolerant to intolerance, for example...
How does the availability of a website that you dislike affect your ability to be left alone in the quiet of your own thoughts?
And what exactly makes politics mandatory in an article about brewing beer? Curing meat? If people stick to the essence of what they are trying to convey without getting lost in political rhetoric people can, in fact, communicate clearly. But you have to stick to the matter at hand.
"Actually, women should be able to vote" would absolutely have been censored entirely had the establishment then had the sort of tools people are advocating to build now.
So, is there a better system? A way we can bubble "good" ideas up and suppress "bad" ideas, ideally without some corruptible central arbiter? And, will such a system inevitably be viewed as "censorship" by some, purely on the principle that the current shouting-based system favors them more than a meritocratic one would?
It was actually never a thing. The internet has always been censored, everywhere, all the time.
People just think it wasn't because sometimes it let them be edgy racist shitlords and they confused that with unfettered freedom of speech. Still do, unfortunately.