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0 pointskragen7y ago0 comments

I didn't elect these big companies to censor the public discourse

Well, there are things you can do about it, but I didn't want to get into that when describing the incentives that make it difficult or impossible for them to censor the public discourse unilaterally, but possible to do as a cartel. I think it's important for people to have a solid factual understanding of what's going on in order for their normative judgments, and the plans they make based on those judgments, to be well-founded.

The "logic" depends on the normative judgement that what would result from a free market would be bad

No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.

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stcredzero7y ago

If you are acknowledging that a cartel in collusion with the government is acting to censor everyone's speech, that's at least a start.

No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.

The sneaky conceit is that you've constructed a causal scenario that presupposes the undesirability of a supposedly inevitably caused future. If we had more commerce, more free speech, more sharing of culture, and more cultural change, we would have less extremism. History shows us this quite clearly. It's when big, centralized powers start mucking about with the lives of individuals, that extremism rears its ugly head and becomes a problem.

kragenOP7y ago

What leads you to believe that I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King? Perhaps you aren't from the US, so you don't understand the cultural context of my example of extremism? Or did you mean that I am claiming that the formation of a censorship cartel is supposedly inevitable? I wasn't claiming that; I was claiming that in the absence of a censorship cartel, people will tend to move to platforms whose recommendations aren't censored, and so they will have access to Martin Luther King and other extremist content.

stcredzero7y ago

I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King?

I'm tiring of your willful redirection of referents, which I think is the point of your construction. Your "logic" (that basically amounts to censorship is necessary because it's inevitable that bad people will win) smacks of the same mental gymnastics people used to "prove" the existence of god.

people will tend to move to platforms whose recommendations aren't censored

Yes, and this will eventually result in MLK (whose positions are now centrist) winning and authoritarians on both extremes losing. Your scheme uses a lot of words to attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand.

kragenOP7y ago

Again, I am not arguing that censorship is "necessary", nor am I saying anything about bad people. I am saying that individual websites are not in a position to impose censorship unilaterally in a very effective way, and those who attempt it will lose users to those that do not, but that a cartel of a sufficiently large group of popular websites is in a position to impose censorship. This is true entirely independent of whether censorship is good, bad, or mixed. Furthermore, it doesn't imply that censorship is either inevitable or impossible, since the formation and continuation of such a cartel is an uncertain contingency upon which effective censorship is conditioned.

As to whether MLK's positions now being "centrist", I suspect you're one of those people who haven't read anything he wrote other than "I Have a Dream", and haven't even read more than excerpts from that, but all of that is irrelevant to the argument, because in my original post, I was talking about today's equivalent to MLK, who is by definition not centrist.

Your accusations of dishonesty — "You[]…attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand" — are false and unfounded, and you need to withdraw them immediately.

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stcredzero7y ago

If you are acknowledging that a cartel in collusion with the government is acting to censor everyone's speech, that's at least a start.

No, none of the cause-and-effect relationships I described depend on anything being bad. They function in exactly the same way regardless of whether that would be good or bad.

kragenOP7y ago

stcredzero7y ago

I presuppose the undesirability of people supposedly inevitably having access to Martin Luther King?

people will tend to move to platforms whose recommendations aren't censored

kragenOP7y ago

Your accusations of dishonesty — "You[]…attempt a pretty transparent sleight of hand" — are false and unfounded, and you need to withdraw them immediately.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse