Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen:
* The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement, which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content.
* Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click.
* Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs?
* Are social media companies publishers, like broadcast TV networks, magazines, and newspapers? Should social media companies be held to decency standards, like all publishers?
I watched it entirely. He is arguing for censorship (because terrorism, pedophiles and racism), nothing new here. Attacking Facebook of course helps to gain attention of people who are happy to be separated from freedom.
"Speech is not reach" - he's clearly not supporting censoring posts. He is advocating for Facebook to restrict the type of messages that can be amplified with their insanely effective programatic advertising tools (have you ever used lookalike audiences!? it's amazing.. and a little scary). Posts are speech ads are not.
Maybe I need to rewatch it, but what I got from it was that he's not arguing against the right to free speech, he's arguing against allowing the right to free speech to impinge on other rights - specifically in his words, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That’s exactly what I got from it. What he’s proposing is censorship. Have everything posted anywhere be vetted by someone.
I also think that saying “Google shows you all these neonazi sites” (probably not an accurate quote, but he said something of that sort) demonstrates ignorance of what Google is supposed to be.
Do you think that anyone should be able to pay network TVs to display any political message (including lies) that they want?
Should accumulated wealth be the equivalent of having the loudest megaphone?
I think there's a line there between free users of social media vs. paid advertisements. Still, I'm not sure social media is public space rather than an establishment, so the idea of how you apply freedom of speech has to be carefully weighed.
Thank you for providing a summary of this, and suggesting that the whole video should be watched before commenting. I attempted to produce a similar summary when posting the video, but I wasn't able to create one as succinct and eloquent as this one.
Why is this unique to social media? This is the media establishment as a whole. E.g. news capitalizes on constant doom and gloom b/c that's been getting them the eyeballs for the longest. Notice how all the blockbusters are full of violence, horror and sex.
Oh, this applies to social media too. Super surprised. Thanks Sacha.
In his speech he specifically says it isn't different than other media establishments. He goes on to point out that other media establishments can't get away with what happens on social media. He certainly speaks from experience on that as someone who has routinely fought against the standards and practices of the MPAA and various television networks. So why does social media get away without those same restrictions?
I grew up in a tightly controlled communist place but I always thought their censorship/propaganda bureaus would have salivated over the power of the social media platforms for that sort of thing.
I've done a lot of reading on this, from neil postman, to nicholas carr, sherry turkle, jaron lanier, tim wu, to plato's allegory of the cave. We've been worried about these issues for eternity. As a consumer of information, how do you tell what is real and what isnt? As a publisher, what role do you have to tell people what is real and what isnt? As a content provider, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
As a software developer myself I'm always looking to discuss this topic with layman and other software developers since we're always looking to develop a new architecture/a new paradigm for conveying better and more concise data to clients. Even without the business model, how would you create a scalable model for all of humanity, regardless of culture or creed, that displays the information people need to do what they need to do? And what does that even mean, "information people need to do what they need to do?" The toughest part of programming is designing scalable architecture. It's so complicated and difficult that we've all but given up on trying to figure this shit out and now we're just building AI hoping something computationally faster and less human can possibly do it better.
These are all valid points but as humans we’ve never encountered anything like this so we shouldn’t think about it using old world examples.
Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. Why? Because politicians cant control their agendas with open social media platforms.
Corporates should not be responsible for regulating their content, unless they are publishers. Social media platforms should be open with the onus on society to teach truth and government to prevent threatening behavior.
Publishers should then be directly held accountable for anything that’s posted on their sites. Fake news, racism, slander, etc.
> Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal.
This is a flimsy comparison. The sale and use of cigarettes is tightly regulated, with sale banned to minors and use banned in most public and commercial spaces. If there was anywhere close to this level of restriction on social media usage you might have a point.
P.S. Facebook also contributed to the killing of thousands in Myanmar. So there’s that.
>> Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. Why? Because politicians cant control their agendas with open social media platforms.
The current crop of populist politicians are benefiting far more from social media platforms than they are from cigarettes.
I did. I guess you have to be fan. I agreed there's an issue. I didn't agree with any of his suggested solutions.
> * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement,
How would you change it? All media is powered by engagement. Look at the covers of most magazines at the checkout counter. They'll are covered in sensational titles.
> * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs?
That analogy breaks pretty quick it seems to me. If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault? I'd say no. So who's fault is it when my dad posts climate change is a lie posts on Facebook? It's my dad's fault.
I'm as worried as everyone else about how to deal with this but I'm having a hard time finding a cure that's not worse than symptoms. It's hard for me not to imagine too many false positives in targeting fake news. It would be interesting to make a quick site and have people judge what they'd take down. I suspect it would show in issue pretty quick. I'm also not sure how you couldn't get around it just by hedging. "Many scientists say X is false". Who decides what's "many"? It doesn't say "all". It doesn't say "most" or "a majority".
Let's take an example (i'm not taking a side here, only pointing out what I perceive as difficult).
Mr. Cohen mentioned getting some white middle America guy to profess his racism against muslims. Another POV might look at what Muslim's profess to want and think "No, if that's what they want then they are not welcome". Examples
> In South Asia, high percentages in all the countries surveyed support making sharia the official law, including nearly universal support among Muslims in Afghanistan (99%). More than eight-in-ten Muslims in Pakistan (84%) and Bangladesh (82%) also hold this view. The percentage of Muslims who say they favor making Islamic law the official law in their country is nearly as high across the Southeast Asian countries surveyed (86% in Malaysia, 77% in Thailand and 72% in Indonesia)
You can go through sharia law and find that you likely wouldn't agree with it.
I'm not trying to single out Islam or sharia here. Older Christian beliefs are just as bad. The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as
> at least half of Muslims who favor making sharia the law of the land also favor stoning unfaithful spouses
Note, the point above is not to pick a side. I have no idea if those facts are correct. The point is Mr. Cohen seemed to be saying bring up topic like that should be banned because it's racist against Muslims. It's arguable there's more to it. It should be discussable but of someone says "The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here" who decides if that's a racist statement or a prudent one given certain data?
I have muslim friends and they're great and seem mostly tolerant but I get an ear full from my non-Muslim Malaysian friends about all the ways the law in Malaysia favors Muslims over non-Muslims. The point being there's an arguably valid POV to be worried about the influence of a lot of people coming into your neighborhood with those beliefs.
> How would you change it? All media is powered by engagement. Look at the covers of most magazines at the checkout counter. They'll are covered in sensational titles.
Sure they are, but a magazine is liable for what he does, both from a social stand point, but also a legal one.
We all have a similar power as theses magazines through social media, but Facebook promote the worst kinds because they are the most sensational ones. If something wrong come outs of its, they just push the responsibility to the one that made the post/ads. A magazine can't do that, because they still chose to publish it nonetheless.
> If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault?
I'm pretty sure that would certainly trigger some kinds of major investigation which would certainly affect Ford itself. There's no way there wouldn't be any kind of regulation added on Ford cars in that case.
> The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as
Why do you think that happens? Is it because we hated Christians for theses older beliefs or because we hated theses older beliefs? It's pretty hard to make someone change his whole belief at once, I'm pretty sure it's actually impossible. What you can do though, is to change the issues that come from that belief and for that, you need to accept him to be able to interact with him in a civil manners.
> The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here
The issue is with the end of that sentence. them is the muslims or the majority? The thing is, most people is saying the former, which is the racist part of it. Condemn the wrong behavior, that's fine, but don't put everyone in the same bucket.
I find it funny that you believe that Ford shouldn't be liable for belief of others, but you certainly believe that if it's a Muslim.
I just watched it, in its entirety. Some quotes that stuck with me:
Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.
There is such a thing as objective truth.
They could fix these problems, if they wanted to.
I've said this before, but we need the government to step in and provide a "free speech" public platform for people to say whatever they'd like, uncensored. The new public space is the internet, but currently it is only managed by private entities. We need to carve out a government-protected space if free speech is going to survive online. It's clear we can't depend on private businesses to do it.
Half of the arguments I see that are pro private-platform censorship revolve around the idea that "private businesses can censor who they want." Fine, that's fair. If you believe that, then also you shouldn't have any problem with a public space online being uncensorable. But pro-censorship people will have a problem, because that's the true issue, isn't it? What they really want to stop is the spreading of ideas that they cannot control. People arguing for pro-censorship under the facade of supporting the rights of private businesses are only doing it because it's a convenient tool. Take that out of the equation and you'll see that it's not about the rights of private businesses at all. But we need that public space online and we need it fast.
> the perspective of someone who seriously does not care what others speak
I'm sorry but I can't help to think that you're only able to speak from this perspective if you were never threatened. Of course I care if someone says all Jews should be killed, because I know the next day someone might actually try to kill me and my children. It's a simple as that. My inner organs shake when I see something like that online because I know some people do actually take it seriously. I'm happy for you that you don't have to worry about this, but history shows that certain words are not only distasteful, they are dangerous.
This only works if you believe speech doesn't influence people. If you believe it does, then you have every right to feel compelled to destroy it if the influence in your opinion is disastrous.
If we're really talking about "most" people? As in, the majority? Then the fact is, they do believe in free speech. It's just that they don't care about free speech. At all. Whether they agree with it or are interested in it or any other thing means absolutely nothing to them because they feel they have more important things to do.
Let me give you a fairly realistic for instance of what the great unwashed masses think about free speech when compared to even something trivial like college football:
Member of great unwashed mass: "What the hell is this f'in free speech debate doing on my tv when LSU is about to play Georgia!?!?!?!"
Young, idealistic, activist: "Well, um, I thought maybe everyone would like to see how their rights are being eroded by increasingly powerful concentrations of industrial and technological weal..."
Member of great unwashed mass: "Shut the F up!!! Put the Ohio State/Wisconsin game back on so I can catch the last little bit of that before LSU/Georgia kicks dick head!"
This is what we're fighting against, and we need to be far more realistic about how powerful apathy is in shaping policy. At least in the US.
> It's like most people lack the ability to simply ignore what they find distasteful.
I don't think that's really it.
First, I will say that I'm not wholly decided on the issue. I think free speech is important, but I also think there are reasonable limitations on that freedom (as with any freedom).
I actively encourage debate. I truly enjoy hearing other people's perspectives and considering things from opposing views. I often find myself changing positions on things because I realize I hadn't thought about an issue in a particular way before. People like me are not so rare, I think (so long as you approach the discussion politely and with manners).
But I believe Facebook (to pick one example) is problematic. That they don't vet political advertisements prior to running them is problematic. That they experiment on people's psyches by manipulating their news feeds is also problematic. That they encourage the formation of echo chambers (for all people) is — you guessed it — problematic. These factors have contributed to an atmosphere of hostility and a lessened desire to listen to opposing view points. People want to hear from other people who think like them, and that's exactly what they get. It radicalizes people (to use a perhaps slightly dramatic term) by exposing them only to notions with which they already agree.
Now getting back to the part of your comment that I quoted.
I do not lack the ability to ignore things I find "distasteful". I ignore Alex Jones and all his conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook. I ignore Flat Earthers, and 911 conspiracists, and other people like them. Interacting with them is not worth my time, and reading their positions never leaves me feeling more enlightened than before I went in.
But I am privileged to not be subjected to some of the things that others are.
To pick another specific example: semi-recent discourse online has contributed to an atmosphere of hostility towards non-white people (at least here in the US where I am). This has real consequences for such people. They find themselves subjected to everything from mild harassment to actual murder.
Suggesting that they should just "ignore" things online which are "distasteful" in this manner is 100% missing the forest for the trees. There is a problem with the fact that people that are violently racist (and I mean "violent" literally) are able to organize and find a platform in the same space as other people. This creates a culture that is unwelcoming and dangerous in a very real sense.
I do believe there is a need for some form of regulation, not because I am unable to ignore things that I do not agree with, but because there are groups of people who must be deprived of their platforms for the benefit of the physical and emotional well-being of others. I do not want everything to be sugar-coated or covered in bubble-wrap, but I do want public platforms to be devoid of open hostility. I don't think that's so much to ask.
I think the idea of a pure free speech space is great in theory, but probably impracticable.
Could I post as much as I want? Do bots that I authored, posting on my behalf, count as my own speech? What if I effectively DDoS the system, will I be censored then? Preventing DDoS is essentially censorship, even though the DDoS is also essentially censorship of others by preventing them from being heard at all. It’s like the paradox of tolerance.
It reminds me of a “free speech wall” in a city I used to live in. At some point all writing on that wall becomes unreadable due to volume. It was also regularly wiped clean.
With FB we’re talking about psychological DDoS of truth, instead of infrastructural DDoS of information.
>I've said this before, but we need the government to step in and provide a "free speech" public platform for people to say whatever they'd like, uncensored
No.
We need people to say whatever they like, and we need the government to prevent anyone from silencing them by force, potentially meaning we need the government to prevent domination of media.
This is a real question. This is not a thing that has existed in the past; why is it necessary that it exist now? If you look back to the founding of the US, political discourse was done frequently through pamphlets. The government didn't provide some "uncensored" pamphlet distribution service, and I find it unlikely that print shops of the time did not occasional reject orders that they didn't like.
Ironically, the one time I know of a government guaranteeing freedom of expression, down to the right to be provided with printing presses if needed was … the Soviet constitution.
(Source: a memory of a comparative politics lecture in college, where the professor used it as an example of what’s written and what’s implemented being sometimes a little different...)
The last thing we need is the government to step in and say, "This is our brand new Free Speech site! Come on in to post whatever you like and pay no attention to the lady in the blue FBI windbreaker behind the curtain."
Such a site could trap many an unfortunate idealist who actually believed they could put whatever they wanted on that site. To me free speech is, you can put whatever you want up, and the government can't stop you in any way. Including potentially, you putting the information up there completely anonymously.
A government controlled space will not allow that.
If you want to win against a view, select a leader from your pocket, make him look plausible and make him take control of the whole view. At any point you desire, let that person discredit himself and take the whole view down.
Here, your view "to provide a free speech public platform" is under attack because such platforms would give people freedom and power. We are about to separate people from freedom. So-called "white" people will go first (they still have some power), the others will follow. Technological evolution is brutal.
The platform provided by the government for the exercise of free speech is the public space. Anybody is free to go outside and tell other people exactly what they believe if they choose to do so. The notion that the government has some obligation to platform bigots and their ilk is farcical.
What's the line? There always is one. Example: Child pornography.
The banning of child pornography is legally sanctioned censorship. The legal argument being that the content is "Child Abuse Material" (CAM), which is audio-video evidence of a crime, which in that legal argument is not protected free-speech.
Obviously child pornography is horrible and should NOT be permitted to be spread due to a variety of negative consequences associated with it, namely for the victims involved. I am highlighting that censorship is a tricky issue.
That said, political speech should always be permitted in the public sphere, even if what is being advocated for is horrific. I believe in allowing people to make complete fools of themselves ("give them a long enough rope"). Sure, Neo-Nazis might gain a few followers by allowing them to stomp around the streets, but I'd wager that 95% of the people who see them immediately classify them as complete assholes and fucking degenerates.
While I'm not a fan of folks being "doxxed" online for holding dumb-ass views, I do have a mental line where if you are actively meeting and assembling physically to advance immoral and un-American causes, I think you should be prepared to stand behind your association with said movement under your real identity. And that will have an impact on your friends, family, employment, social standing, etc.
That is not a bug, that is a feature. It creates self-harmonizing communities where horrible behavior (actions) has social consequences, especially when the viewpoints or behaviors are not actually illegal, but still equally shitty.
Why? It'd just be a government sponsored 4chan. Do we then blame the government for having a platform that the next shooter is going to use to murder 50 or 100 people? What's the point of such a platform? Why would we waste government money on it just to have it filled with hate speech? Why would we, as the people who control the government want such a platform? If people want to publish in such a way, there is already a platform: the Internet. Start a website. Nothing prevents people from doing that. If they're too lazy, they can go to 4chan, etc. The rest of us shouldn't have to subsidize a cesspool of shit that has no positive uses.
Sasha Baron Cohen is a manipulator - that's the basis of his comedy, and for comedy, it's funny. It's not the person who I want to take cues on freedom of speech from.
Yes, you can go to a group of people and get them to sing anti-semitic songs, just as you can bluster them with an unlabeled map or have them fall prey to trivial parlor magic. That's a terrible basis for attacking basic human rights on.
He calls the openness of platforms a defect, and he would like to censor every single word before it is public - that is not freedom, it is authoritarianism.
I suspect he believes that most people are dumb sheep - this is after all how he made his money - and he sees himself as protecting the poor sheep. He believes that because his intent is just, his actions are just - that the end justifies the means. He is the most dangerous kind of strongman: the self-righteous kind.
It's amazing how his past movies, made not that long ago, would be completely verboten today. Using racial and ethnic and homophobic stereotypes to make audiences laugh... and raking in millions for doing so.
And... it makes sense. Can you imagine if his movie portrayed a ridiculous caricature of a Jewish person, the way he portrayed a ridiculous caricature of a gay man ten years ago, today?
It is funny that Why Isn't Sacha Baron Cohen Working Anymore video was posted just three months before his latest show started airing on Showtime. It is also weird seeing the video feature criticism of him from the ADL considering this speech was at his acceptance of an award from the ADL. It doesn't seem like his image needed much repairing after all.
With all due respect, you don't understand his comedy whatsoever. I suspect you believe Bill Hicks is also a misanthrope. These are extremely gauche interpretations, it's like saying Picasso didn't care about painting because he didn't paint realistic flowers and horses and barns like a "proper painter" would.
Cohen performed his bits without the audience knowing they were part of it - and he only shows the bits that had the outcomes he wanted (or were at least funny). There are more then a few security cam clips of the bits that didn't go so well - and I recommend finding them.
Cohen isn't a surrealist who is using a medium to convey the depth of life, he's just a comedian with an editing team.
> and he would like to censor every single word before it is public - that is not freedom, it is authoritarianism
He never said that. He said that a publishing delay just enough to filter out potential illegal content (snuff, hate speech are illegal under US law) would benefit the society overall.
Neither "snuff" (unless you're talking about CSE or other specific categories) nor hate speech are illegal in the US. The supreme Court has repeatedly ruled on this:
And who decides what's filtered? Unless it's the judicial system, don't want it.
If you have 2 opposing views, and one is delayed long enough, you've effectively censored it, in favor of the other.
Which is exactly what's going to happen. Once the dissenting view "passes filter", the news cycle is over, the unfiltered view remains in everyone's retinas, the filtered one ignored, despite any merits it may have.
This is just preparing the field for stronger, more arbitrary censorship.
Smashing a speaker that deafens those around it doesn't inhibit free speech. Believing that building such a thing is an act of freedom is authoritarian.
I would encourage every single person who sees this headline to take the time to watch this speech. Its incredibly well done. Many of the commentators here demonstrate that they only read the headline, which in itself is disturbing.
I mean, it's a nice speech but it's not surfacing any new thinking or ideas.
SBC's argument is self-contradictory. On the one hand, he paints tech companies as greedy, untrustworthy, and arguably evil. At the same time, he feels that these companies should be trusted to regulate speech to a degree beyond what they already are doing. (In his example, through regulatory force telling them to do so.)
In general, he wants the end (no "bad" speech) but doesn't provide a clear picture of the means to get there. This is common.
The argument against companies regulating more speech is that people who are not Nazis will be caught in the crossfire, and that will lead to unintended consequences. In his speech, SBC admits as much, citing Twitter's claim that algorithmic regulation of speech would result in de-platforming politicians. SBC claims that this may not be a bad thing. This illustrates the problem: SBC like many others are perfectly fine with people being de-platformed not just for true hate speech, but for speech they disagree with, because it is algorithmically similar to hate speech. This is the crux of the issue, and it's at least good for someone to admit it: typically proponents of centralized speech regulation pretend like the issue of false positives doesn't exist. Such false positives will result in law-abiding citizens being de-platformed, and that is unacceptable to many.
To whatever degree that strategy is taken, you can bet your money on these companies losing their power to decentralized platforms. If it's no longer possible to post on social media without a reasonable risk that your words will get nuked because of being mis-flagged (and your reputation unjustly soiled) -- people will move elsewhere. The irony will be that the net effect will be way worse than today: completely unmoderated, unregulated speech with global reach. (this is probably inevitable for a variety of reasons, but this current dynamic probably accelerates it.)
edit: appreciate the downvotes, feel free to check back here in 10 years when facebook + twitter are no longer serious platforms because they're policed by over-zealous, government-mandated moderators, and anyone posting anything interesting is on a decentralized platform or some new centralized platform which has yet to be put under public scrutiny.
Wow this touches really deeply and closely - given I use social media all. the. time.
My love for the Web and freedom of discussion and how it would free us from the powers of authority. This was me imagining the future of information in the early 2000s.
I'm thinking this may very well be a lie: as Sasha so eloquently and comedically touches several points about how these social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc) have developed algorithms to satisfy our most basic "monkey brain" instincts: we want information that is agreeable.
The comparison he made with "fake scientists" on the internet getting more attention than nobel prize winners really hit me hard.
The issue seems to be that with the internet we got rid of authority, but another type of hierarchy grew out of this: algorithm hierarchy. Where we don't have authorities in charge of giving us information, rather we have algorithms.
An obvious solution to this (from a programmer's point of view) would be to allow users to freely and openly (through an open source kind of movement) change these algorithms to fit their needs. For instance I want information that is "not biased" and I can quickly get the "non biased algorithm" from github (as an example) and plug it into my social media. If I want information from academica I would get the "academia algorithm" and plug in. And so on.
I don't know how something like this can help, but it seems we may need to stop thinking in terms of social media companies being the problem; it's the fact that we can't change these algorithms that is the problem.
my fear of everything being decided by algorithms that exist to please us, is us being trapped in the past and creativity being extinguished. if netflix makes shows based on what it knows will be popular, what happens to visionaries that have an idea nobody else can comprehend. risk, exploration, adventure, new, is replaced by nostalgia, familiarity, comfort.
we can debate fighting google and facebook, or we can come up with a "Human Best Practices" behavior guide for how to best consume content, and spread it. There will always be temptation, moderation is either taught or learned. If not facebook, there will be another mind drug to over indulge. Spend effort countering the concept of unlimited "picked-just-for-me feed" or "whats popular with everyone today" intake, not attacking this specific villain. We need new ways to surface and propagate novel, intelligent, thought provoking content, AND we need to teach people to resist human hedonistic urges and impulses, and offer social support and encouragement to deviate from consuming new and fresh news. Watching the news (on tv anyway) is, and shouldnt be, looked up to.
I believe it's an economic problem. There is no reason all of these comfort services cant exist to help keep the peace among people uninterested in anything else. If they make up the majority of the economy, then we have other problems to solve though.
After all, we do need comfort for sleep - so it could be .. maybe the role of BIG companies should be comfort focused.
Visionaries can still exist - we would only need to improve their discoverability and ensure they are not at risk of financial crisis as a result of going outside the line
We most definitely did not get rid of authority, we got rid of central authority. Every nation used to closely control media so all of their citizens were on the same page. What they believed was biased propaganda with a strong illusion of truth due to dominance in commonly consumed media channels and the echo chamber of talking to others who drank from the same trough. It was far from being high quality information but at least your neighbors had the same beliefs as you so it was less contentious. There never was an authority of truth - only a facade of one. Critical thinking by individuals was discouraged to avoid conflict. Now that people can get their information from anywhere they are completely unprepared to use their minds to separate the good from the bad so they try to find "authoritative sources" instead of using their own judgement. Except their are no authoritative sources, and there never were.
Do we have actual reason to believe that really high adoption rates of people using their own judgement actually is a good thing?
I think there is inherent need for specialization to occur on digesting information and drawing conclusions from it. And when someone is good at it, we should want them to leverage other people parroting what they say to help signal boost
For a while, I thought decentralization could help with this problem. If people just published websites and there were no central social media, you can better control what content is seen and not seen. But then Google came around and aggregated these websites and made them searchable and now has it's own algorithm for maximum engagement.
Sasha's idea of delaying the spread of information via a timer is very interesting. It can get people a chance to second guess their posts and also give a chance for something in-between to publish or not. If every retweet was delayed then the network spread slows down a lot which might have really interesting consequences.
But ultimately I believe the problem we have is we have chosen the mall over the public park.
An important question is how would it even be possible to have a public park without government intervention?
You have to buy and maintain your own server and pay for uptime. That all costs a continued stream of knowledge and money and it’s very hard. Maybe not for you and I, but for many other people.
I struggle as to how we could regulate massive companies like Facebook and Google from opening up their algorithms in a verifiable way.
Perhaps a better way to attack this is to allow them to continue, but break them up - ie, mandate competition, and admit that monopolies in markets like search and social media (not to mention specific segments of advertising) are as dangerous as monopolies in operating systems or telephone services.
I run an email newsletter[1] that aims to combat exactly this issue. It's a single link every day to something interesting, the kind of blog posts that you come across every once in a while that really make you think. The overwhelming feedback is that being able to read the kind of non-viscerally-targeted news and analyses that aren't easily found online is incredibly valuable.
My solution would be similar, but the user can use a drop down/settings menu to change algorithms rather than install a different algorithm from github.
I frequently ask myself, if Hitler took power today - how many of our government officials, engineers, and soldiers, would get in line behind him. He would have no problem getting the census data and locations of subversives.
If I understand this correctly, he's pulling back from offline comments he's made about Hollywood (vis Jewish people) and of course years of negative Jewish stereotypes in his work.
Before this, he "bent the knee" with his portrayal of Eli Cohen. Wasn't a terrible film but his reverence for the character was a bit much.
FB is a dumpster fire, I don't think anyone argues otherwise these days. But differentiating between freedom of speech and "reach" is just as dangerous as saying we need to treat freedom of speech on a case by case basis.
We either have freedom of speech or we don't. If we don't, sooner or later we're all fucked.
There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
We need to work on the fundamental issues, not grant more power to groups with specific political / authoritarian agendas.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous.
Shouting fire in a crowded theatre that could lead to a stampede that puts people in danger. Deliberately misinforming people about the risk of an action they are about to take could be too.
I hate when people use this metaphor. Not because it's inaccurate to say that speech can cause imminent harm in some circumstances. But because its origin was a Supreme Court opinion that argued against the right to speak out against the draft in WW1, which I don't think too many people using this analogy today would agree with. Also, this legal argument has been rejected since then.
Point is, this exact argument could be (and has been) used to justify some pretty bad ideas.
This reply already gives too much credit to the original claim. The acoustic vibrations generated by mouth sounds could physically cause damage, like an opera singer breaking glass, or shouting next to a microphone.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
Now open your mouth and make the sounds "education is bad, our young people are being corrupted by an educational elite that is destroying America".
In that sense everything is dangerous and the word 'dangerous' is nearly meaningless. Just because the idea is stupid and it would be dangerous if people take it seriously doesn't mean saying it should be treated as dangerous.
We can cope with people saying stupid things. It happens regularly.
The issue is that 'danger' is in the eye of the beholder. There are plenty of people who would love to ban advocacy of Socialism or Communism. There are people who want to ban 'hurtful' speech. And people who want to ban 'blasphemous' speech.
In the end, they are all self-interested parties who want to ban speech that they disagree with.
There is no magic wand that can ban harmful speech without creating a framework for authoritarian meddling, with very few exceptions, which are already on the books.
It's about differentiating (i.e. creating a distance) between speech and our reaction to it, or, in other words, it's about taking responsibility for our reactions.
In my opinion, prohibition of symbols, under the premise that they're subversive, like the Nazi ones, is one of the biggest cultural blunders of our time. It castrates entire generations of the possibility to experience the difference between ideas and their effect on us. It is ceding to the symbols, saying "you have power over us, with which we cannot come to terms with, the only thing we can do is prohibit your use".
The seeming culture-wide inability to discuss politics, religion or other dividing topics in a constructive way is part of the same phenomenon, in my view.
As much as I admire Sacha Baron Cohen's efforts to uncover hypocrisy of our society, I agree with your comment and disagree with him - that social platforms have to filter content; just on the basis that this filtering, even if done with good intentions initially, may later be seized by individuals with their own agendas, which may not at all be virtuous.
If we mute people talking about races and skin color, prohibit to single out minorities, do we actually relieve the pressure in the society, or help build it up to a radical level and fuel even more hatred that way?
But Facebook already filters content in various ways. They boost content according to its engagement which downgrades/hides the other content from your feed. They sell targeted ads to the highest bidder which implies that you do no see the ads of the other bidders.
If Facebook would just stop manipulating and selling your attention it would have a better defense against calls to filter the content on it.
Reflexively, the only way to neuter the danger of speech is to suppress everything that isn't already accepted. Then nobody can effect change on the grounds that change might be harmful.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous.
This might just be revealing a lack of imagination on your part. I'd argue the opposite: there are sounds you can make with your mouth that can change the course of history.
If you don't have a gun, your hands are clearly visible, and you make no threatening actions, the worst they had better do is get you gently into a quiet room and arrange a psych eval.
Which dovetails perfectly with the intent of the OP... police just as much, or arguably even more, than every other person, need to think about what they here and not just knee jerk respond.
Ill jump on this one too and say I am consistently impressed with the engineering quality of their teams, and appreciate their contributions to open source communities. The scale and up-time of their product over its lifetime is impressive, as is their ability to make so many underlying changes and survive with the same user interface for a decade each iteration.
> I argue that Facebook isn't a dumpster fire. I use it mostly to share photos with my friends and family, and I see little or no propaganda on my feed.
So Facebook, a site used by hundreds of millions of people, is fine because... you don't see any propaganda?
> But differentiating between freedom of speech and "reach" is just as dangerous as...
I don't think so.
> those people are dangerously ignorant.
I think that is a gross oversimplification.
Much of the repulsive vile speech, such as hate speech, is generally festered among a group bouncing their ideas off each other. You may or may not label such groups as echo chambers. Part of the reason for this is that many people find comfort organizing into groups and generally fear/distrust originality. In other words many people value conformance more than the message to which they are conforming because an idea or message gains credibility the less original it appears and because there is security in numbers.
Mild changes of technology will not instantaneously cure original hateful speech any more than it will instantaneously modify behavior in advance or increased originality or critical thinking. It can, however, vastly alter the reach of that speech allowing vile ideas to proliferate or be constrained to faithful believers.
The balance there is if you modify technology to open wider reach then all speech, including vile hate speech and conspiracy theories, are widely available. If you modify technology to restrict reach then all speech is restricted including objective research and educational material.
My personal solution is to just avoid the online swamps where people congregate merely for the point of gathering and try not to worry about the loud volume of amplified stupidity that leaks out. When the stupidity confronts me in the real world I respond as directly as I can without regard for making people feel stupid or embarrassed, because I generally presume when people bring the full force of unoriginal ideas to me conversationally they do so in a quest to solve their personal insecurities. Don't waste time with stupid.
There are indeed sounds you can make that are dangerous, here are some examples:
1. Follow this instructions to build a bomb with materials bought at a drug store: ......
2. There's an American spy in North Korea going by the name Ichi working at ...
3. (As a woman) Michael raped me (when he didn't).
Work on "fundamental" issues takes time and no one has stopped working on education.
But in the current environment noise and distraction is incentivized and amplified and that makes things like education even more complicated and time consuming.
Just break the advertising business model. Literally that's it. Don't allow data sharing with advertisers, and don't allow political advertising, solved. Overnight the internet's better.
Now you just have to define data, data sharing, advertiser, political, advertising, and political advertising in a way that can be affected by such a policy without all the obvious and non-obvious harms.
> If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
With reeducation camps reappearing in parts of the world and sensitivity, bias and other types of training in other parts ... that makes me somewhat uncomfortable as idea. The ones in power always want to educate the wrongthinkers.
And judging how easily Democrats learned to hate everything Trump related and before them Republicans - everything Obama, and hating each other - I would say that it is not a problem with education. People hate because it is fun and pleasurable.
That's why Cohen's speech is all the more important. To be clear, I don't agree with everything he said but he is absolutely right that there are some facts that are objectively true. Filtering out misinformation from fact and opinion means those political parties can still have their debates where they slam their opponents but they cannot make lies nor baseless allegations.
The problem we have these days is it's become impossible for the casual observer to separate fact from fiction. Which then just encourages people to take information spread within their own echo chamber at face value (since, rightly or wrongly, that's the network they trust). If we can at least remove the falsehoods from the conversation that is a step forward in having open debates.
Someone will no doubt point out that there's a fuzzy line between a lie and something that is true but intentionally misleading, so where do you draw the line. Unfortunately there's no easy answer to that. However I personally believe things have gotten bad enough where it's now worth the trying.
The fact that you think Cohen "bent to knee" sounds creepy to me, like you're implying some secret Jewish cabal that made him do it. It reminds me of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
What exactly has Cohen ever said that's anti-Semitic? The racism in his work, like Borat, is satire. If anything, he should've offended Kazakhs by implying they ignorantly hate Jews.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
OK, so let's say we agree that the fundamental problem is lack of education. That's great in theory, but that doesn't solve a problem today.
There are societies where unfettered lies about groups caused genocides. You can lament the poor education that contributed, but that doesn't change the fact that it can happen again.
The real issues are that lies are much harder to undo than they are to create; that many people are resource-poor, under-educated, and susceptible to lies; and that we have a biological tendency toward out-group violence that requires a thick layer of socialization to counteract.
Nothing FB is doing is threatening speech in the US. If you want them to have less power over the broadcast of speech, I'm on your side, and I'll be voting for people who want to break them up and decrease Zuckerberg's power.
Disgusting and hypocritical. Given that the ADL already has outsized censorship abilities on Google and Twitter amongst other platforms, everyone should read the transcript to see how self-righteous and presumptuous Cohen is and their aligned vision of controlling what information you are allowed to access: https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-...
This coming from the guy who played Borat and Bruno- it was ok when he did it, because he is on the right side of history you see.
Then you're not paying attention. The ADL and the SPLC, though the latter is suffering some issues presently, are basically the key arbiters of what is classified as "hate speech" today. FAANG will not go to bat for the free speech rights of anyone the ADL has classified as verboten, because going up against anything the ADL does or says is anti-Semitic.
>Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, among others, are joining with the ADL to form a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab, the companies and the civil rights group said Tuesday. They'll exchange ideas and develop strategies to try to curb hate speech and abuse on the companies' various platforms and across the internet.
>"These companies have an added responsibility to do everything within their power to stop hate from flourishing on their watch," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. "We look forward to tackling this pressing challenge together."
If by "controlling what information you're allowed to access" you mean removing hate speech, then yeah they have the right and the duty to do that. I really wonder why you're against that.
There's no such thing as "hate" speech. The label is a tool to suppress speech the accusers don't agree with and I've never encountered anyone who uses the term to do so objectively.
I agree. I'm deeply suspicious of Cohen. He has used 'comedy' to trick and ridicule people but taken it to another level by taking statements they make and twisting meanings. A religious jew disguised as a visitor to the US from Kazachstan going to a provincial US bar and singing 'throw the jew down the well' and then subsequently openly ridiculing and shaming the audience for singing along is a form of baiting and hate speech, the sort of thing the ADL should be commenting on. I'm surprised Kazachstan hasn't officially protested this misrepresentation, maybe they have....
I'm normally pretty well versed in dry humour, being a near native speaker of such. But I'm failing to comprehend whether you're being satirical or serious... perhaps I need more tea. Can you clarify?
I was going to point out that no one made them sing that but you've already got a subthread going where people are saying that he's hypnotizing them. You can't make this stuff up.
>If you pay them, Facebook will run any ‘political’ ad you want, even if it’s a lie
Most media outlets are propaganda machines, full of white lies. The problem many have with facebook is there's no longer a high barrier to entry to control people's opinions.
I think it is more about the targeting. Anyone can see what Fox, CNN or MSNBC are saying but Facebook ads can be targeted practically to the individual and few know what messages are being shown to others.
Furthermore, it's not just about targeting but about silent targeting. I'm not the target audience for Fox but I can still, if I choose, see what they're saying and thus know what sort of (mis)information other people are being exposed to, and possibly respond accordingly. But silently-targeted ads mean people can be shown lies all day long without anyone else ever knowing about it.
You should be opposed to this even if you believe strongly in the marketplace of ideas, because one of the bedrock principles of the marketplace of ideas is that people can fight false claims by responding to them. But if they aren't aware those false claims even exist because Facebook is secretly only showing them to targeted subsets, that assumption is broken.
I've been thinking about this as well. it's not only the low barrier to entry, because large scale is still expensive. the problem is public visibility and scrutiny. if I spread false information in a newspaper, everyone can see it and expose the lies. on Facebook, each highly targeted ad will be seen by very few people and is therefore unlikely to be publicly exposed as misinformation.
That said, it's not like people fact-check CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, Fox News etc (though Fox News probably gets fact-checked more than the rest). There have been many times just this year that all of the above have gotten stories wrong, or published disinformation because it fit a narrative.
This doesn't even get into the number of blog-style news orgs out there. And it's coming from all sides, and really hard sometimes to tell what is, and isn't actually truthful. I'm not sure I can expect FB/Twitter to be able to handle it on an even larger scale.
Everyone is in their bubbles and it's pretty toxic in a lot of ways. And I'm not sure I could even begin to suggest a way out...
I've been trying to convince people to take the week of Christmas off social media (5-9 days, depending on weekends) ... and no traction at all. I don't have a large follower base.
I could never put my finger on what makes social advertising more scary than traditional media until I read your comment. Maybe the solution is that every ad needs to be published in a public form that people can review and comment on.
Has he seen the political ads that ran on local television over the last 30-40 years?
I can't believe people WANT Facebook to ascertain the veracity of political ads. How do you do that? How does Facebook look at an ad for something like the recently proposed 'Green New Deal' and apply a truth value to it? And if they do 'allow' it, now it's an implicit statement of support for the position (the way Twitter's blue-check marks are a de facto mark of some kind of recognition by Twitter) and if they disallow it, it's not.
In it, SBC includes the basic point that Facebook and similar are publishing companies. As such, they should "abide by basic standards and practices just like newspapers, magazines, and tv news do every day".
This issue is not about opinion, omissions, or so called "white lies". It is about outright falsehoods, many of which are detailed in this speech. SBC himself in this speech includes an anecdote where he himself replicated his own version of the Milgram experiment; he convinced someone that antifa were attempting to induce spontaneous sex changes in babies at a protest. He gave this person fake devices which he was told would kill these people, and the person in fact went off and used them as instructed; that is, he willfully murdered three people as far as he was aware. (found a link describing this: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/403743-sac...)
this is not about dissatisfaction with the various biases of the news media, this is about weaponized propaganda. There is a difference, and these companies have more than enough resources to successfully tell the difference.
Readit News
Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM
Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen:
* The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement, which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content.
* Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click.
* Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs?
* Are social media companies publishers, like broadcast TV networks, magazines, and newspapers? Should social media companies be held to decency standards, like all publishers?
I'm barely scratching the surface.
Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing!
I also think that saying “Google shows you all these neonazi sites” (probably not an accurate quote, but he said something of that sort) demonstrates ignorance of what Google is supposed to be.
Should accumulated wealth be the equivalent of having the loudest megaphone?
I think there's a line there between free users of social media vs. paid advertisements. Still, I'm not sure social media is public space rather than an establishment, so the idea of how you apply freedom of speech has to be carefully weighed.
Oh, this applies to social media too. Super surprised. Thanks Sacha.
This is the business model of many companies and industries, including advertising and marketing, legacy media companies, and gaming.
As a software developer myself I'm always looking to discuss this topic with layman and other software developers since we're always looking to develop a new architecture/a new paradigm for conveying better and more concise data to clients. Even without the business model, how would you create a scalable model for all of humanity, regardless of culture or creed, that displays the information people need to do what they need to do? And what does that even mean, "information people need to do what they need to do?" The toughest part of programming is designing scalable architecture. It's so complicated and difficult that we've all but given up on trying to figure this shit out and now we're just building AI hoping something computationally faster and less human can possibly do it better.
Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. Why? Because politicians cant control their agendas with open social media platforms.
Corporates should not be responsible for regulating their content, unless they are publishers. Social media platforms should be open with the onus on society to teach truth and government to prevent threatening behavior.
Publishers should then be directly held accountable for anything that’s posted on their sites. Fake news, racism, slander, etc.
This is a flimsy comparison. The sale and use of cigarettes is tightly regulated, with sale banned to minors and use banned in most public and commercial spaces. If there was anywhere close to this level of restriction on social media usage you might have a point.
P.S. Facebook also contributed to the killing of thousands in Myanmar. So there’s that.
The current crop of populist politicians are benefiting far more from social media platforms than they are from cigarettes.
I did. I guess you have to be fan. I agreed there's an issue. I didn't agree with any of his suggested solutions.
> * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement,
How would you change it? All media is powered by engagement. Look at the covers of most magazines at the checkout counter. They'll are covered in sensational titles.
> * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs?
That analogy breaks pretty quick it seems to me. If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault? I'd say no. So who's fault is it when my dad posts climate change is a lie posts on Facebook? It's my dad's fault.
I'm as worried as everyone else about how to deal with this but I'm having a hard time finding a cure that's not worse than symptoms. It's hard for me not to imagine too many false positives in targeting fake news. It would be interesting to make a quick site and have people judge what they'd take down. I suspect it would show in issue pretty quick. I'm also not sure how you couldn't get around it just by hedging. "Many scientists say X is false". Who decides what's "many"? It doesn't say "all". It doesn't say "most" or "a majority".
Let's take an example (i'm not taking a side here, only pointing out what I perceive as difficult).
Mr. Cohen mentioned getting some white middle America guy to profess his racism against muslims. Another POV might look at what Muslim's profess to want and think "No, if that's what they want then they are not welcome". Examples
> In South Asia, high percentages in all the countries surveyed support making sharia the official law, including nearly universal support among Muslims in Afghanistan (99%). More than eight-in-ten Muslims in Pakistan (84%) and Bangladesh (82%) also hold this view. The percentage of Muslims who say they favor making Islamic law the official law in their country is nearly as high across the Southeast Asian countries surveyed (86% in Malaysia, 77% in Thailand and 72% in Indonesia)
You can go through sharia law and find that you likely wouldn't agree with it.
I'm not trying to single out Islam or sharia here. Older Christian beliefs are just as bad. The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as
> at least half of Muslims who favor making sharia the law of the land also favor stoning unfaithful spouses
Note, the point above is not to pick a side. I have no idea if those facts are correct. The point is Mr. Cohen seemed to be saying bring up topic like that should be banned because it's racist against Muslims. It's arguable there's more to it. It should be discussable but of someone says "The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here" who decides if that's a racist statement or a prudent one given certain data?
https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig...
I have muslim friends and they're great and seem mostly tolerant but I get an ear full from my non-Muslim Malaysian friends about all the ways the law in Malaysia favors Muslims over non-Muslims. The point being there's an arguably valid POV to be worried about the influence of a lot of people coming into your neighborhood with those beliefs.
Sure they are, but a magazine is liable for what he does, both from a social stand point, but also a legal one.
We all have a similar power as theses magazines through social media, but Facebook promote the worst kinds because they are the most sensational ones. If something wrong come outs of its, they just push the responsibility to the one that made the post/ads. A magazine can't do that, because they still chose to publish it nonetheless.
> If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault?
I'm pretty sure that would certainly trigger some kinds of major investigation which would certainly affect Ford itself. There's no way there wouldn't be any kind of regulation added on Ford cars in that case.
> The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as
Why do you think that happens? Is it because we hated Christians for theses older beliefs or because we hated theses older beliefs? It's pretty hard to make someone change his whole belief at once, I'm pretty sure it's actually impossible. What you can do though, is to change the issues that come from that belief and for that, you need to accept him to be able to interact with him in a civil manners.
> The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here
The issue is with the end of that sentence. them is the muslims or the majority? The thing is, most people is saying the former, which is the racist part of it. Condemn the wrong behavior, that's fine, but don't put everyone in the same bucket.
I find it funny that you believe that Ford shouldn't be liable for belief of others, but you certainly believe that if it's a Muslim.
Half of the arguments I see that are pro private-platform censorship revolve around the idea that "private businesses can censor who they want." Fine, that's fair. If you believe that, then also you shouldn't have any problem with a public space online being uncensorable. But pro-censorship people will have a problem, because that's the true issue, isn't it? What they really want to stop is the spreading of ideas that they cannot control. People arguing for pro-censorship under the facade of supporting the rights of private businesses are only doing it because it's a convenient tool. Take that out of the equation and you'll see that it's not about the rights of private businesses at all. But we need that public space online and we need it fast.
It's really a shame, from the perspective of someone who seriously does not care what others speak.
It's like most people lack the ability to simply ignore what they find distasteful. They instead feel compelled to destroy it.
These tendencies are at the core of our current online reality. It's a scary world out there!
I'm sorry but I can't help to think that you're only able to speak from this perspective if you were never threatened. Of course I care if someone says all Jews should be killed, because I know the next day someone might actually try to kill me and my children. It's a simple as that. My inner organs shake when I see something like that online because I know some people do actually take it seriously. I'm happy for you that you don't have to worry about this, but history shows that certain words are not only distasteful, they are dangerous.
If we're really talking about "most" people? As in, the majority? Then the fact is, they do believe in free speech. It's just that they don't care about free speech. At all. Whether they agree with it or are interested in it or any other thing means absolutely nothing to them because they feel they have more important things to do.
Let me give you a fairly realistic for instance of what the great unwashed masses think about free speech when compared to even something trivial like college football:
Member of great unwashed mass: "What the hell is this f'in free speech debate doing on my tv when LSU is about to play Georgia!?!?!?!"
Young, idealistic, activist: "Well, um, I thought maybe everyone would like to see how their rights are being eroded by increasingly powerful concentrations of industrial and technological weal..."
Member of great unwashed mass: "Shut the F up!!! Put the Ohio State/Wisconsin game back on so I can catch the last little bit of that before LSU/Georgia kicks dick head!"
This is what we're fighting against, and we need to be far more realistic about how powerful apathy is in shaping policy. At least in the US.
I don't think that's really it.
First, I will say that I'm not wholly decided on the issue. I think free speech is important, but I also think there are reasonable limitations on that freedom (as with any freedom).
I actively encourage debate. I truly enjoy hearing other people's perspectives and considering things from opposing views. I often find myself changing positions on things because I realize I hadn't thought about an issue in a particular way before. People like me are not so rare, I think (so long as you approach the discussion politely and with manners).
But I believe Facebook (to pick one example) is problematic. That they don't vet political advertisements prior to running them is problematic. That they experiment on people's psyches by manipulating their news feeds is also problematic. That they encourage the formation of echo chambers (for all people) is — you guessed it — problematic. These factors have contributed to an atmosphere of hostility and a lessened desire to listen to opposing view points. People want to hear from other people who think like them, and that's exactly what they get. It radicalizes people (to use a perhaps slightly dramatic term) by exposing them only to notions with which they already agree.
Now getting back to the part of your comment that I quoted.
I do not lack the ability to ignore things I find "distasteful". I ignore Alex Jones and all his conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook. I ignore Flat Earthers, and 911 conspiracists, and other people like them. Interacting with them is not worth my time, and reading their positions never leaves me feeling more enlightened than before I went in.
But I am privileged to not be subjected to some of the things that others are.
To pick another specific example: semi-recent discourse online has contributed to an atmosphere of hostility towards non-white people (at least here in the US where I am). This has real consequences for such people. They find themselves subjected to everything from mild harassment to actual murder.
Suggesting that they should just "ignore" things online which are "distasteful" in this manner is 100% missing the forest for the trees. There is a problem with the fact that people that are violently racist (and I mean "violent" literally) are able to organize and find a platform in the same space as other people. This creates a culture that is unwelcoming and dangerous in a very real sense.
I do believe there is a need for some form of regulation, not because I am unable to ignore things that I do not agree with, but because there are groups of people who must be deprived of their platforms for the benefit of the physical and emotional well-being of others. I do not want everything to be sugar-coated or covered in bubble-wrap, but I do want public platforms to be devoid of open hostility. I don't think that's so much to ask.
Because sometimes it really is about the children.
Could I post as much as I want? Do bots that I authored, posting on my behalf, count as my own speech? What if I effectively DDoS the system, will I be censored then? Preventing DDoS is essentially censorship, even though the DDoS is also essentially censorship of others by preventing them from being heard at all. It’s like the paradox of tolerance.
It reminds me of a “free speech wall” in a city I used to live in. At some point all writing on that wall becomes unreadable due to volume. It was also regularly wiped clean.
With FB we’re talking about psychological DDoS of truth, instead of infrastructural DDoS of information.
No.
We need people to say whatever they like, and we need the government to prevent anyone from silencing them by force, potentially meaning we need the government to prevent domination of media.
This is a real question. This is not a thing that has existed in the past; why is it necessary that it exist now? If you look back to the founding of the US, political discourse was done frequently through pamphlets. The government didn't provide some "uncensored" pamphlet distribution service, and I find it unlikely that print shops of the time did not occasional reject orders that they didn't like.
(Source: a memory of a comparative politics lecture in college, where the professor used it as an example of what’s written and what’s implemented being sometimes a little different...)
I'm completely against that.
The last thing we need is the government to step in and say, "This is our brand new Free Speech site! Come on in to post whatever you like and pay no attention to the lady in the blue FBI windbreaker behind the curtain."
Such a site could trap many an unfortunate idealist who actually believed they could put whatever they wanted on that site. To me free speech is, you can put whatever you want up, and the government can't stop you in any way. Including potentially, you putting the information up there completely anonymously.
A government controlled space will not allow that.
Here, your view "to provide a free speech public platform" is under attack because such platforms would give people freedom and power. We are about to separate people from freedom. So-called "white" people will go first (they still have some power), the others will follow. Technological evolution is brutal.
The banning of child pornography is legally sanctioned censorship. The legal argument being that the content is "Child Abuse Material" (CAM), which is audio-video evidence of a crime, which in that legal argument is not protected free-speech.
Obviously child pornography is horrible and should NOT be permitted to be spread due to a variety of negative consequences associated with it, namely for the victims involved. I am highlighting that censorship is a tricky issue.
That said, political speech should always be permitted in the public sphere, even if what is being advocated for is horrific. I believe in allowing people to make complete fools of themselves ("give them a long enough rope"). Sure, Neo-Nazis might gain a few followers by allowing them to stomp around the streets, but I'd wager that 95% of the people who see them immediately classify them as complete assholes and fucking degenerates.
While I'm not a fan of folks being "doxxed" online for holding dumb-ass views, I do have a mental line where if you are actively meeting and assembling physically to advance immoral and un-American causes, I think you should be prepared to stand behind your association with said movement under your real identity. And that will have an impact on your friends, family, employment, social standing, etc.
That is not a bug, that is a feature. It creates self-harmonizing communities where horrible behavior (actions) has social consequences, especially when the viewpoints or behaviors are not actually illegal, but still equally shitty.
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Yes, you can go to a group of people and get them to sing anti-semitic songs, just as you can bluster them with an unlabeled map or have them fall prey to trivial parlor magic. That's a terrible basis for attacking basic human rights on.
He calls the openness of platforms a defect, and he would like to censor every single word before it is public - that is not freedom, it is authoritarianism.
I suspect he believes that most people are dumb sheep - this is after all how he made his money - and he sees himself as protecting the poor sheep. He believes that because his intent is just, his actions are just - that the end justifies the means. He is the most dangerous kind of strongman: the self-righteous kind.
https://youtu.be/tF_2QZo90lw
Kind of like Eminem and Michael Vick, it'll probably work.
And... it makes sense. Can you imagine if his movie portrayed a ridiculous caricature of a Jewish person, the way he portrayed a ridiculous caricature of a gay man ten years ago, today?
Edit: misspelling.
Cohen isn't a surrealist who is using a medium to convey the depth of life, he's just a comedian with an editing team.
He never said that. He said that a publishing delay just enough to filter out potential illegal content (snuff, hate speech are illegal under US law) would benefit the society overall.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.V._v._City_of_St._Paul
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_St...
False - explained by a 1st Amendment lawyer: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-white-first-amen...
If you have 2 opposing views, and one is delayed long enough, you've effectively censored it, in favor of the other.
Which is exactly what's going to happen. Once the dissenting view "passes filter", the news cycle is over, the unfiltered view remains in everyone's retinas, the filtered one ignored, despite any merits it may have.
This is just preparing the field for stronger, more arbitrary censorship.
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SBC's argument is self-contradictory. On the one hand, he paints tech companies as greedy, untrustworthy, and arguably evil. At the same time, he feels that these companies should be trusted to regulate speech to a degree beyond what they already are doing. (In his example, through regulatory force telling them to do so.)
In general, he wants the end (no "bad" speech) but doesn't provide a clear picture of the means to get there. This is common.
The argument against companies regulating more speech is that people who are not Nazis will be caught in the crossfire, and that will lead to unintended consequences. In his speech, SBC admits as much, citing Twitter's claim that algorithmic regulation of speech would result in de-platforming politicians. SBC claims that this may not be a bad thing. This illustrates the problem: SBC like many others are perfectly fine with people being de-platformed not just for true hate speech, but for speech they disagree with, because it is algorithmically similar to hate speech. This is the crux of the issue, and it's at least good for someone to admit it: typically proponents of centralized speech regulation pretend like the issue of false positives doesn't exist. Such false positives will result in law-abiding citizens being de-platformed, and that is unacceptable to many.
To whatever degree that strategy is taken, you can bet your money on these companies losing their power to decentralized platforms. If it's no longer possible to post on social media without a reasonable risk that your words will get nuked because of being mis-flagged (and your reputation unjustly soiled) -- people will move elsewhere. The irony will be that the net effect will be way worse than today: completely unmoderated, unregulated speech with global reach. (this is probably inevitable for a variety of reasons, but this current dynamic probably accelerates it.)
edit: appreciate the downvotes, feel free to check back here in 10 years when facebook + twitter are no longer serious platforms because they're policed by over-zealous, government-mandated moderators, and anyone posting anything interesting is on a decentralized platform or some new centralized platform which has yet to be put under public scrutiny.
My love for the Web and freedom of discussion and how it would free us from the powers of authority. This was me imagining the future of information in the early 2000s.
I'm thinking this may very well be a lie: as Sasha so eloquently and comedically touches several points about how these social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc) have developed algorithms to satisfy our most basic "monkey brain" instincts: we want information that is agreeable.
The comparison he made with "fake scientists" on the internet getting more attention than nobel prize winners really hit me hard.
The issue seems to be that with the internet we got rid of authority, but another type of hierarchy grew out of this: algorithm hierarchy. Where we don't have authorities in charge of giving us information, rather we have algorithms.
An obvious solution to this (from a programmer's point of view) would be to allow users to freely and openly (through an open source kind of movement) change these algorithms to fit their needs. For instance I want information that is "not biased" and I can quickly get the "non biased algorithm" from github (as an example) and plug it into my social media. If I want information from academica I would get the "academia algorithm" and plug in. And so on.
I don't know how something like this can help, but it seems we may need to stop thinking in terms of social media companies being the problem; it's the fact that we can't change these algorithms that is the problem.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...
my fear of everything being decided by algorithms that exist to please us, is us being trapped in the past and creativity being extinguished. if netflix makes shows based on what it knows will be popular, what happens to visionaries that have an idea nobody else can comprehend. risk, exploration, adventure, new, is replaced by nostalgia, familiarity, comfort.
we can debate fighting google and facebook, or we can come up with a "Human Best Practices" behavior guide for how to best consume content, and spread it. There will always be temptation, moderation is either taught or learned. If not facebook, there will be another mind drug to over indulge. Spend effort countering the concept of unlimited "picked-just-for-me feed" or "whats popular with everyone today" intake, not attacking this specific villain. We need new ways to surface and propagate novel, intelligent, thought provoking content, AND we need to teach people to resist human hedonistic urges and impulses, and offer social support and encouragement to deviate from consuming new and fresh news. Watching the news (on tv anyway) is, and shouldnt be, looked up to.
If I were making a tldr of guide v.01, it would start: "Supplant your facebook, google, and reddit intake with https://aldaily.com/ https://redef.com/ https://longform.org/ https://longreads.com/ "
and here i am now moving on to the next n.yc post.
After all, we do need comfort for sleep - so it could be .. maybe the role of BIG companies should be comfort focused.
Visionaries can still exist - we would only need to improve their discoverability and ensure they are not at risk of financial crisis as a result of going outside the line
I think there is inherent need for specialization to occur on digesting information and drawing conclusions from it. And when someone is good at it, we should want them to leverage other people parroting what they say to help signal boost
Sasha's idea of delaying the spread of information via a timer is very interesting. It can get people a chance to second guess their posts and also give a chance for something in-between to publish or not. If every retweet was delayed then the network spread slows down a lot which might have really interesting consequences.
But ultimately I believe the problem we have is we have chosen the mall over the public park.
You have to buy and maintain your own server and pay for uptime. That all costs a continued stream of knowledge and money and it’s very hard. Maybe not for you and I, but for many other people.
Perhaps a better way to attack this is to allow them to continue, but break them up - ie, mandate competition, and admit that monopolies in markets like search and social media (not to mention specific segments of advertising) are as dangerous as monopolies in operating systems or telephone services.
[1] https://thinking-about-things.com
Before this, he "bent the knee" with his portrayal of Eli Cohen. Wasn't a terrible film but his reverence for the character was a bit much.
FB is a dumpster fire, I don't think anyone argues otherwise these days. But differentiating between freedom of speech and "reach" is just as dangerous as saying we need to treat freedom of speech on a case by case basis.
We either have freedom of speech or we don't. If we don't, sooner or later we're all fucked.
There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
We need to work on the fundamental issues, not grant more power to groups with specific political / authoritarian agendas.
Shouting fire in a crowded theatre that could lead to a stampede that puts people in danger. Deliberately misinforming people about the risk of an action they are about to take could be too.
Point is, this exact argument could be (and has been) used to justify some pretty bad ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Now open your mouth and make the sounds "education is bad, our young people are being corrupted by an educational elite that is destroying America".
Thank god those sounds aren't dangerous.
We can cope with people saying stupid things. It happens regularly.
In my opinion, prohibition of symbols, under the premise that they're subversive, like the Nazi ones, is one of the biggest cultural blunders of our time. It castrates entire generations of the possibility to experience the difference between ideas and their effect on us. It is ceding to the symbols, saying "you have power over us, with which we cannot come to terms with, the only thing we can do is prohibit your use".
The seeming culture-wide inability to discuss politics, religion or other dividing topics in a constructive way is part of the same phenomenon, in my view.
If we mute people talking about races and skin color, prohibit to single out minorities, do we actually relieve the pressure in the society, or help build it up to a radical level and fuel even more hatred that way?
If Facebook would just stop manipulating and selling your attention it would have a better defense against calls to filter the content on it.
Bad ideas spread through exposure.
If speech can effect change, how can you be sure it is incapable of being dangerous?
This might just be revealing a lack of imagination on your part. I'd argue the opposite: there are sounds you can make with your mouth that can change the course of history.
Which dovetails perfectly with the intent of the OP... police just as much, or arguably even more, than every other person, need to think about what they here and not just knee jerk respond.
So you're arguing that Osama Bin Laden, who did not himself commit violent acts but merely persuaded others to do so, was in fact not dangerous?
(Agree with your other points.)
So Facebook, a site used by hundreds of millions of people, is fine because... you don't see any propaganda?
I don't think so.
> those people are dangerously ignorant.
I think that is a gross oversimplification.
Much of the repulsive vile speech, such as hate speech, is generally festered among a group bouncing their ideas off each other. You may or may not label such groups as echo chambers. Part of the reason for this is that many people find comfort organizing into groups and generally fear/distrust originality. In other words many people value conformance more than the message to which they are conforming because an idea or message gains credibility the less original it appears and because there is security in numbers.
Mild changes of technology will not instantaneously cure original hateful speech any more than it will instantaneously modify behavior in advance or increased originality or critical thinking. It can, however, vastly alter the reach of that speech allowing vile ideas to proliferate or be constrained to faithful believers.
The balance there is if you modify technology to open wider reach then all speech, including vile hate speech and conspiracy theories, are widely available. If you modify technology to restrict reach then all speech is restricted including objective research and educational material.
My personal solution is to just avoid the online swamps where people congregate merely for the point of gathering and try not to worry about the loud volume of amplified stupidity that leaks out. When the stupidity confronts me in the real world I respond as directly as I can without regard for making people feel stupid or embarrassed, because I generally presume when people bring the full force of unoriginal ideas to me conversationally they do so in a quest to solve their personal insecurities. Don't waste time with stupid.
But in the current environment noise and distraction is incentivized and amplified and that makes things like education even more complicated and time consuming.
With reeducation camps reappearing in parts of the world and sensitivity, bias and other types of training in other parts ... that makes me somewhat uncomfortable as idea. The ones in power always want to educate the wrongthinkers.
And judging how easily Democrats learned to hate everything Trump related and before them Republicans - everything Obama, and hating each other - I would say that it is not a problem with education. People hate because it is fun and pleasurable.
The problem we have these days is it's become impossible for the casual observer to separate fact from fiction. Which then just encourages people to take information spread within their own echo chamber at face value (since, rightly or wrongly, that's the network they trust). If we can at least remove the falsehoods from the conversation that is a step forward in having open debates.
Someone will no doubt point out that there's a fuzzy line between a lie and something that is true but intentionally misleading, so where do you draw the line. Unfortunately there's no easy answer to that. However I personally believe things have gotten bad enough where it's now worth the trying.
What exactly has Cohen ever said that's anti-Semitic? The racism in his work, like Borat, is satire. If anything, he should've offended Kazakhs by implying they ignorantly hate Jews.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
OK, so let's say we agree that the fundamental problem is lack of education. That's great in theory, but that doesn't solve a problem today.
There are societies where unfettered lies about groups caused genocides. You can lament the poor education that contributed, but that doesn't change the fact that it can happen again.
The real issues are that lies are much harder to undo than they are to create; that many people are resource-poor, under-educated, and susceptible to lies; and that we have a biological tendency toward out-group violence that requires a thick layer of socialization to counteract.
Nothing FB is doing is threatening speech in the US. If you want them to have less power over the broadcast of speech, I'm on your side, and I'll be voting for people who want to break them up and decrease Zuckerberg's power.
This coming from the guy who played Borat and Bruno- it was ok when he did it, because he is on the right side of history you see.
Can you explain this? I dont know what censorship ability the ADL has on Google and Twitter?
>Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, among others, are joining with the ADL to form a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab, the companies and the civil rights group said Tuesday. They'll exchange ideas and develop strategies to try to curb hate speech and abuse on the companies' various platforms and across the internet.
>"These companies have an added responsibility to do everything within their power to stop hate from flourishing on their watch," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. "We look forward to tackling this pressing challenge together."
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Most media outlets are propaganda machines, full of white lies. The problem many have with facebook is there's no longer a high barrier to entry to control people's opinions.
You should be opposed to this even if you believe strongly in the marketplace of ideas, because one of the bedrock principles of the marketplace of ideas is that people can fight false claims by responding to them. But if they aren't aware those false claims even exist because Facebook is secretly only showing them to targeted subsets, that assumption is broken.
This doesn't even get into the number of blog-style news orgs out there. And it's coming from all sides, and really hard sometimes to tell what is, and isn't actually truthful. I'm not sure I can expect FB/Twitter to be able to handle it on an even larger scale.
Everyone is in their bubbles and it's pretty toxic in a lot of ways. And I'm not sure I could even begin to suggest a way out...
I've been trying to convince people to take the week of Christmas off social media (5-9 days, depending on weekends) ... and no traction at all. I don't have a large follower base.
I can't believe people WANT Facebook to ascertain the veracity of political ads. How do you do that? How does Facebook look at an ad for something like the recently proposed 'Green New Deal' and apply a truth value to it? And if they do 'allow' it, now it's an implicit statement of support for the position (the way Twitter's blue-check marks are a de facto mark of some kind of recognition by Twitter) and if they disallow it, it's not.
In it, SBC includes the basic point that Facebook and similar are publishing companies. As such, they should "abide by basic standards and practices just like newspapers, magazines, and tv news do every day".
This issue is not about opinion, omissions, or so called "white lies". It is about outright falsehoods, many of which are detailed in this speech. SBC himself in this speech includes an anecdote where he himself replicated his own version of the Milgram experiment; he convinced someone that antifa were attempting to induce spontaneous sex changes in babies at a protest. He gave this person fake devices which he was told would kill these people, and the person in fact went off and used them as instructed; that is, he willfully murdered three people as far as he was aware. (found a link describing this: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/403743-sac...)
this is not about dissatisfaction with the various biases of the news media, this is about weaponized propaganda. There is a difference, and these companies have more than enough resources to successfully tell the difference.
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