<story><title>Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)</title><url>https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>colllectorof</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;10 or 15 years ago people looked at web 1.0, saw many good communities and valuable conversations and said &amp;quot;we need to protect free speech&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Today people looks at Twitter&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;YouTube&amp;#x2F;Reddit, see mismanaged cesspools and declare that we need centralized speech control.&lt;p&gt;This is understandable, but highly reactionary and irrational. Speech control is facilitated by big tech at their own discretion. Advocating for more of it means you&amp;#x27;re advocating for giving more power to the companies who fucked up the system in the first place.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fareesh</author><text>I remember watching a very strange segment on American news about a man who owns a mattress and pillow company who was banned from Twitter because he continuously expressed his disbelief in the legitimacy of the election result of 2020, and was organizing various events along this theme.&lt;p&gt;From what I recall the 2016 election was frequently attributed to some vague accusation of hacking from Russia but the same standard was not applied at the time, nor is it applied today. The people espousing this view were eventually proven inconclusive in all the different inquiries into the matter, and they were far more influential than a man who sells pillows.&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a very disproportionate level of enforcement towards offenders on the social media platforms, and this seems to stem from the personal politics of the people working there.&lt;p&gt;If the employees at these companies had the opposite politics, I am quite sure the rhetoric around this issue would be framed in terms of authoritarianism. Are you not allowed to criticize your government anymore in the USA? I find that to be quite incredible.</text></comment>
<story><title>Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)</title><url>https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>colllectorof</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;10 or 15 years ago people looked at web 1.0, saw many good communities and valuable conversations and said &amp;quot;we need to protect free speech&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Today people looks at Twitter&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;YouTube&amp;#x2F;Reddit, see mismanaged cesspools and declare that we need centralized speech control.&lt;p&gt;This is understandable, but highly reactionary and irrational. Speech control is facilitated by big tech at their own discretion. Advocating for more of it means you&amp;#x27;re advocating for giving more power to the companies who fucked up the system in the first place.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrumbut</author><text>I look at it this way: 10-15 years ago many of us were complaining the web was being turned into TV.&lt;p&gt;I think that was basically right, and now social media is rediscovering the other things that made TV work, which is that you can&amp;#x27;t just continually show the most upsetting&amp;#x2F;titillating media 24&amp;#x2F;7.&lt;p&gt;And with the benefit of hindsight, I don&amp;#x27;t believe Twitter&amp;#x2F;Facebook have the obligation to be the venue where we exercise our freedom of speech. They tried and it turned out they were very bad at it.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s time to move on and use those services for keeping in touch with old classmates or whatever they are good at and develop platforms that are good for holding serious conversations.</text></comment>