[throw7]

We did have a way. It was called a kill file.

Unfortunately, we don't have adults anymore. We have children that need to be protected from hearing anything they don't like to hear and must be giving the right to shutdown people's speech they disagree with ("heckler's veto").

[cptskippy]

> Unfortunately, we don't have adults anymore. We have children that need to be protected

I absolutely agree and this is a problem of our own design. This issue goes beyond the web. We hear about how a neighbor called the police when a child was left unattended in their front yard. Or the countless posts on community forums starting out with "who do I contact to report XYZ?" and the most controversial response is always "did you talk to the person?"

Everyone today is so afraid that they're being exploited and taken advantage of by everyone who isn't. They don't want to speak out or stand up to anything, they'd rather just have someone come and take care of it for them.

[DanBC]

But kill files didn't work. Many newsgroups were destroyed because people relied on killfiles instead of allowing proper moderating tools.

Trolling your way past a killfile was trivial, and sock-puppeting evolved on Usenet as a troll technique.

[ebiester]

In a walled garden, like facebook, I have a private/public space. I can send out a message to a subset of my friends. The open web does not have these controls.

Further, if one of the people I thought was trustworthy starts abusing that trust, I can kick them out. Because it's a walled garden. I don't have to worry about spam. I don't have to worry about hate speech. I don't have to worry about any of that shit.

Facebook means that I can approve anyone from seeing that content individually. As of now, we don't have an equivalent way to handle that on the open web.

Facebook means I don't have to deal with spam to have a conversation with anyone involved. As of now, the equivalent ways to handle that on the open web take far too much time to be practical.

Facebook, over the last decade, has solved a legitimately hard problem, and I don't see "kill file" as a sufficient solution.

The open web is about public space. Facebook is a more private space.

[jononor]

How are the ads that FB pushes into your feed not spam? Seems more or less indistinguishable too me

[amdavidson]

Do you consider ads on cable TV to be spam? Likely not.

Like them or don't, but the ads on FB are not spam because they are not unsolicited and are targeted.

[jononor]

Of course I do. It is one of the reasons I do not have a TV.

If there was a plain choice between without ads and with (probably at different prices), I could accept them as a transaction I have accepted. But such choices are often not available, they are bundled in with a bunch of other choices.

[zodPod]

Agreed on all counts! It's pretty weird that we pay really good money for TV and then still have to sit through commercials, isn't it?

[0x445442]

100% agree. I hate paying for TV which still has ads. It's why almost all content I consume through the flat screen in the living room now is either Netflix, Amazon or Youtube. About the only thing I watch OTA or via Sling now is sports. And I was born before Nixon was President.

[hackeraccount]

When I hear something I know to be untrue that knowledge is not enough. It's not enough to tell that speaker that what they said is untrue. It's not enough to tell any potential listener that what the speaker said is untrue. Nope, I need to make sure that there is no listener for that speaker. Nothing less will satisfy.

If necessary I'll use a public club i.e. the government. Everyone will rightfully shout "Free Speech!" Maybe I don't use the government though and just get the speakers platform to walk away by asking platform to do that, or yelling at them.

And the I'll sleep easy with the knowledge that no one will hear those lies. No one will think those lies.