How will the media and society deal with these sorts of situations if decentralised alternatives to these social media sites take off? There won’t be any one place or person or company to blame, no? Did the media write about email being used negatively when it was taking off? (That’s an honest question, I’m too young and a cursory search didn’t turn up anything interesting).
Relatedly, assuming it's wrong for Facebook to host this content, where should the line be drawn when it comes to systems that are already decentralized? Is it wrong for email systems to transport emails with such content? Is it wrong for a browser to render such web pages? For a feed reader to allow subscriptions to such a feed? Does the answer change if a "centralized" component is involved (eg: webmail, a vpn or http proxy, or a web based feed reader)?
- are you exercising administrative control over the system?
- have you been made aware of the content?
That makes it clearer; there isn't a general obligation for every email sysadmin to check every message for terrorism, but that doesn't mean that hosting their email after you've been informed about them is a totally innocent act. Providing software that is installed on the customer's systems (no administrative control) is generally fine (the browser/feed reader examples), but the web based ones re-assert the administrative control element.
My ISP is exercising administrative control over the systems that deliver all packets to me. Should they be held responsible for filtering out forbidden content?
We'd just be back to the time where the powers that be demonized the internet for what it was: something they couldn't control or sometimes even understand.
Email is a different beast, being private communication. But Usenet is exactly what you describe, a decentralized forum. And unsuprisingly it had both the best and the worst of humanity in there.
You get one guess as to which of those two got portrayed more in the media.
It seems to me, hopefully, that when there isn't one person or company to blame, there won't be one person or company to trust.
When you have decentralized social media infrastructure, hopefully, the cognitive overload of being active on all of them will be overwhelming enough to prevent people from not paying too much attention to it. And hopefully, it will remain out of our political lives.
I think the distinction is "reach". Emails are generally directed to dozens, maybe hundreds of individuals, whereas with modern social media, an individual can reach millions of people. It begins to enter the realm of traditional media organizations.
But unlike traditional media organizations, there are far fewer laws in place regulating the responsibility that comes with that reach.
It is an interesting problem, and I'm not sure there is a good solution, other than try to combat it head on with education (how to properly evaluate the information you accept), and possibly PSAs.
It's also a matter of "endorsement" which is what Facebook tacitly does when they they host this stuff.
You are free to say or feel whatever you want in your own living room, amongst your friends, private function, your head, email, decentralised hate-sites or even reddit or 4chan.
Precisely the problem with Facebook is that they are actively stirring the pot to sell ads. They are making money off this stuff.
There have been social panics over communications technologies since the start of industrialisation. While most of them have been spurious, some aren't and there can be very nasty downsides to stirring up murderous panic. The Rwandan genocide was effectively led by hate-filled talk radio, for example.
The decentralised stuff will probably be left alone until people start getting killed by it in the West. Once that happens there's a choice: allow it to escalate or start banning it.
It's very hard to imagine a country that makes everyone submit to the TSA allowing decentralisation to continue once it's used by a non-white terrorist group to start blowing up airliners.
>Did the media write about email being used negatively when
>it was taking off?
E-Mail is the first useful mainstream service of the Internet. It's already in reasonable use since the 80s. Not sure when one would consider E-Mail having taken off - no History expert. But at some point Spam was a big issue and it was covered in the news, same was true for phishing.
Spam seems to me a solved problem. Phishing at least to some degree, I think it's quite unlikely to get successfully phished as a GMail user.
Actually Social Media is so far quite expectional, being the only proprietary centralized service that survived that long. Compuserve, AOL and other domestic solutions were eventually obsoleted by E-Mail and WWW.
>Did the media write about email being used negatively when it was taking off?
When email was taking off, the media was still making vast amounts of money from print editions.
Now that this part of the industry is rapidly dying, it has pivoted to outrage-driven ad-clicks for revenue and their content has tailored itself appropriately.
Not a binary thing, no. But who gets to be in charge of that speech? Do you trust them? Do you trust who will follow them in power?
Where I live, I'm vastly outnumbered by people who have vastly different values than me. Their party is in control now. Pretty scary to think they could shut off my voice at whim, or worse.
Not allowing information to exist, regardless of intent or how it's perceived as "good", is an authoritarian act in and of itself. It will only polarize those that feed on it.
It's the "let's burn books" mindset, which is just a bad tactic. Misinformation in the modern(or any) age can't be fought that way. The internet is good at amplifying that which people seek to censor. I hope we can agree this is good for positive ideas, but the mechanism employed doesn't care how "good" you find the idea.
And to be entirely clear: I think the subject matter at hand is abhorrent. Fascism feeds on censorship. It doesn't hurt that side, it helps them control the narrative.
I honestly don't know why it's better to ban denial rather than trying to engage and educate. It's been very confusing to me. Could you please explain?
Probably because it's "simply" easier (said). Let's take SandyHook (and the false information that is was all faked.)
It would be much easier to say "let's ban the dissemination of the idea that it was faked" than to say, let's go out there and show all those deniers and people who listen to them and show them the facts.
We know it's difficult to change the minds of people who hold steadfast views like these.
But the side-effect of something like this is pretty dire. You get what the PLA and the CCP exercise in China. There is the official, sanctioned version, which because it is shaped by body can take any shape the controllers want.
So instead of random people making up facts, you can have a center of power making up faked facts --and you can't dispute it, since they provide the official version of things.
The entire school system is based on how bad they were, how many bad things they did and how how everyone in Germany should never repeat the same mistakes again. Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's the general idea. I think Germany was one of the only countries to actually deal, accept and discuss openly in society the atrocities they did in WWII. So it's not just banning and getting over denial.
I suppose only country in the history which has gone to such an extent in educating the new generation about the past mistakes. Still people won't take a second before bringing it up, especially American and other European countries, in order to win their argument. I am not even German, and it makes me angry. I can hardly imagine how a German feels when they are thrown in their face their Nazi past in an argument which has nothing to do with WW2.
It's hard not to do it if you don't think much/deeply about it. Many family members of mine were brutally murdered by Nazis. I used to seriously hate Germans - I was a child though (it changed around 15 y/o) - not because of my parents/teachers/..., they actively tried to change it. Many people in my country never change their mind, there are even many swear words based on words that used to mean "German [person]".
I'm not really sure we can blame them. The atrocities that Nazis have commited are still in living memory, there are still bullet holes in walls, whole villages are destroyed and the remains are still there... and hate over death of family members is an extremely strong emotion.
The german school system is not about indoctrination or assigning guilt.
The post war german generations were not teached that they are guilty, but that they do carry responsibility for being aware of how easily facism and dehumanisation happens and escalates, and of keeping the memory of such evil present.
And yes, this includes the responsibility of being aware that similar things may happen again, clearly detecting extremism by the root, calling it out and hopefully averting it. Probably every country in the world should put such emphasis in their history lessons, but nobody else ever really will for obvious reasons.
So this kind of became a responsibility of the people born in modern germany. This is why it is one possible Abitur topic in politics, history and german lessons, why it is one element of the curriculum in (3 to 4)+2 different middle school years + Abitur (saxony speaking) and why there are high school visits to concentration camps.
Holocaust denial is, on the root, pure antisemitism, which has been an evil element of every Western society since the beginning of the diaspora. The ideology behind it is pretty much equal to that part of nazi ideology (and I'm not one of those who is quick to run around calling everybody nazi these days).
As someone whose school system has provided them with some insight on how this all happened I see the US absolutist view on free speech when it is about outright lies like Holocaust denial as a bit dangerous. Preventing deluted individuals from spreading a life-threatening lie is not censorship. I see that the US view is coming from a very humanist view here, but tolerance needs to have limits set by basic human rights values, otherwise it will be destroyed by itself sooner or later.
The approach to "educate the deniers" is indicating to them and the listeners that you are taking them and their delusions seriously, and dissiminate them in the process. In the current debates about e.g. evolution you clearly see what happens in wider society if you talk to the 1% "skeptics".
Well, that's a pointless argument since free speech as in the US doesn't exist in Germany. There is freedom of opinion which has a higher level of entry, so the speak, than free speech.
It's simply a different philosophy than the US freedom of speech. As long as it is merely your opinion and only your opinion, you can use any medium you want to tell others your opinion without repercussions. The moment your opinion starts to hurt others, even if it's not directly violent, those protections collapse.
It's part of the concept of a defensive democracy.
Look at what's happening in the US recently... we live in an outrage culture. Everything is offensive and hurtful now. Because things like this can happen, can you see why hurtful opinions being outlawed is risky?
So the German people can be guilted into paying over 80 billion dollars yet the Allies pay nothing for the war crimes of Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
The West European bans on holocaust denial must be seen in their historical context.
After WWII, there was a massive backlash against german collaborators. Everyone even slightly suspect of being pro german was at risk of being looted, tortured or killed by their furious neighbours.
Mob rule had to be replaced by lawfull governement, and this required appeasing the mob. Part of it were dishonest trials, a blind eye against some revenges. A very small price to pay was forbidding the denial of the crimes that the Nazis had done.
I am not proud of this part of our history but it was probably necessary.
However, we are a few generations further now and a lot of relevant people are dead now. Maybe the time is ready to review this rule. Discussing this stuf is especially important as we seem to remake some of the errors that led to the war
The holocaust deniers certainly aren't dead. The denial is the one of the early steps of facist subversion and should remain banned. It's time to review the rule when nobody is denying it anymore.
Do you believe that humans in general should not be trusted to read/hear certain things? If yes (I guess), do you believe the censorship cannot be exploited politically by those in power?
Can't you see that censoring an idea will lead people who are simply curious to think that there must be something in it, or else why would they ban it?
Far better that idiocy should be on public display where it can be mocked and destroyed.
Agreed, and curious to see you downvoted. It's one of the most ridiculous parts of European law imo.
In Belgium I can write a thesis about whatever lie I want. Our king is dead and an imposter took his place, the Belgium genocide in the Congo never happened, etc, etc..
But If I write that the holocaust never happened I face jail time.
Of course it happened! And anybody who writes a book denying that should be ridiculed, and openly countered (verbally).
We effectively have free speech (... except for this one very specific thing)
I find it far more interesting on how other content is dealt with. From what I can gather from the heise.de and this report, unless it's specifically against ethnic or religious groups, it stays up. "dirty muslims" is not okay, "dirty muslim immigrants" is. I fail to see the difference, in both cases the author is going against a group of people based on attributes of that group.
I hope that we can get federated facebook alternatives off the ground, FB is clearly not capable of solving these problems on their own without displeasing everyone. Want to see these comments? Go to an instance that permits them. Don't want to see them? Go to an instance that deletes them. Problem solved.
49 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 94.3 ms ] threadRelatedly, assuming it's wrong for Facebook to host this content, where should the line be drawn when it comes to systems that are already decentralized? Is it wrong for email systems to transport emails with such content? Is it wrong for a browser to render such web pages? For a feed reader to allow subscriptions to such a feed? Does the answer change if a "centralized" component is involved (eg: webmail, a vpn or http proxy, or a web based feed reader)?
- are you exercising administrative control over the system?
- have you been made aware of the content?
That makes it clearer; there isn't a general obligation for every email sysadmin to check every message for terrorism, but that doesn't mean that hosting their email after you've been informed about them is a totally innocent act. Providing software that is installed on the customer's systems (no administrative control) is generally fine (the browser/feed reader examples), but the web based ones re-assert the administrative control element.
Email is a different beast, being private communication. But Usenet is exactly what you describe, a decentralized forum. And unsuprisingly it had both the best and the worst of humanity in there.
You get one guess as to which of those two got portrayed more in the media.
When you have decentralized social media infrastructure, hopefully, the cognitive overload of being active on all of them will be overwhelming enough to prevent people from not paying too much attention to it. And hopefully, it will remain out of our political lives.
But unlike traditional media organizations, there are far fewer laws in place regulating the responsibility that comes with that reach.
It is an interesting problem, and I'm not sure there is a good solution, other than try to combat it head on with education (how to properly evaluate the information you accept), and possibly PSAs.
You are free to say or feel whatever you want in your own living room, amongst your friends, private function, your head, email, decentralised hate-sites or even reddit or 4chan.
Precisely the problem with Facebook is that they are actively stirring the pot to sell ads. They are making money off this stuff.
The decentralised stuff will probably be left alone until people start getting killed by it in the West. Once that happens there's a choice: allow it to escalate or start banning it.
It's very hard to imagine a country that makes everyone submit to the TSA allowing decentralisation to continue once it's used by a non-white terrorist group to start blowing up airliners.
>it was taking off?
E-Mail is the first useful mainstream service of the Internet. It's already in reasonable use since the 80s. Not sure when one would consider E-Mail having taken off - no History expert. But at some point Spam was a big issue and it was covered in the news, same was true for phishing.
Spam seems to me a solved problem. Phishing at least to some degree, I think it's quite unlikely to get successfully phished as a GMail user.
Actually Social Media is so far quite expectional, being the only proprietary centralized service that survived that long. Compuserve, AOL and other domestic solutions were eventually obsoleted by E-Mail and WWW.
When email was taking off, the media was still making vast amounts of money from print editions.
Now that this part of the industry is rapidly dying, it has pivoted to outrage-driven ad-clicks for revenue and their content has tailored itself appropriately.
There is a ban but it doesn't mean the german government goes out of it's way to remove any piece of such material before it even hits the internet.
It's largely post-factum, when the piece is already on the internet and spread elsewhere when the original author of the information is punished.
Where I live, I'm vastly outnumbered by people who have vastly different values than me. Their party is in control now. Pretty scary to think they could shut off my voice at whim, or worse.
It's the "let's burn books" mindset, which is just a bad tactic. Misinformation in the modern(or any) age can't be fought that way. The internet is good at amplifying that which people seek to censor. I hope we can agree this is good for positive ideas, but the mechanism employed doesn't care how "good" you find the idea.
And to be entirely clear: I think the subject matter at hand is abhorrent. Fascism feeds on censorship. It doesn't hurt that side, it helps them control the narrative.
It would be much easier to say "let's ban the dissemination of the idea that it was faked" than to say, let's go out there and show all those deniers and people who listen to them and show them the facts.
We know it's difficult to change the minds of people who hold steadfast views like these.
But the side-effect of something like this is pretty dire. You get what the PLA and the CCP exercise in China. There is the official, sanctioned version, which because it is shaped by body can take any shape the controllers want.
So instead of random people making up facts, you can have a center of power making up faked facts --and you can't dispute it, since they provide the official version of things.
What other information should the government deem fake? And where should this Ministry of Truth be headquartered?
This is so self referential it should be called Brandolini's paradox.
I'm not really sure we can blame them. The atrocities that Nazis have commited are still in living memory, there are still bullet holes in walls, whole villages are destroyed and the remains are still there... and hate over death of family members is an extremely strong emotion.
The post war german generations were not teached that they are guilty, but that they do carry responsibility for being aware of how easily facism and dehumanisation happens and escalates, and of keeping the memory of such evil present.
And yes, this includes the responsibility of being aware that similar things may happen again, clearly detecting extremism by the root, calling it out and hopefully averting it. Probably every country in the world should put such emphasis in their history lessons, but nobody else ever really will for obvious reasons.
So this kind of became a responsibility of the people born in modern germany. This is why it is one possible Abitur topic in politics, history and german lessons, why it is one element of the curriculum in (3 to 4)+2 different middle school years + Abitur (saxony speaking) and why there are high school visits to concentration camps.
As someone whose school system has provided them with some insight on how this all happened I see the US absolutist view on free speech when it is about outright lies like Holocaust denial as a bit dangerous. Preventing deluted individuals from spreading a life-threatening lie is not censorship. I see that the US view is coming from a very humanist view here, but tolerance needs to have limits set by basic human rights values, otherwise it will be destroyed by itself sooner or later.
The approach to "educate the deniers" is indicating to them and the listeners that you are taking them and their delusions seriously, and dissiminate them in the process. In the current debates about e.g. evolution you clearly see what happens in wider society if you talk to the 1% "skeptics".
It's simply a different philosophy than the US freedom of speech. As long as it is merely your opinion and only your opinion, you can use any medium you want to tell others your opinion without repercussions. The moment your opinion starts to hurt others, even if it's not directly violent, those protections collapse.
It's part of the concept of a defensive democracy.
Nobody wanted the Nazis to return. That goal was more important than any other. The Soviets accomplished it through pogroms. The west was more subtle.
After WWII, there was a massive backlash against german collaborators. Everyone even slightly suspect of being pro german was at risk of being looted, tortured or killed by their furious neighbours.
Mob rule had to be replaced by lawfull governement, and this required appeasing the mob. Part of it were dishonest trials, a blind eye against some revenges. A very small price to pay was forbidding the denial of the crimes that the Nazis had done.
I am not proud of this part of our history but it was probably necessary.
However, we are a few generations further now and a lot of relevant people are dead now. Maybe the time is ready to review this rule. Discussing this stuf is especially important as we seem to remake some of the errors that led to the war
Far better that idiocy should be on public display where it can be mocked and destroyed.
In Belgium I can write a thesis about whatever lie I want. Our king is dead and an imposter took his place, the Belgium genocide in the Congo never happened, etc, etc..
But If I write that the holocaust never happened I face jail time.
Of course it happened! And anybody who writes a book denying that should be ridiculed, and openly countered (verbally).
We effectively have free speech (... except for this one very specific thing)
I hope that we can get federated facebook alternatives off the ground, FB is clearly not capable of solving these problems on their own without displeasing everyone. Want to see these comments? Go to an instance that permits them. Don't want to see them? Go to an instance that deletes them. Problem solved.
Maybe what people really want is to be outraged...