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by jeromic
2498 days ago
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Imagine if humans weren't born with biological mouths, instead synthetic mouths were invented and sold by a company, allowing people to speak. We wouldn't accept the company installing a blacklist of words or phrases to stop people from saying them. The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps online discourse is already more important than oral discourse. My metaphor obviously differs in some regards to the article, but I think it elucidates my main point, that Google has become sufficiently large and important that we can't really excuse this type of censorship on the basis that they are a private company. For example the list clearly shows that Google is pro-choice, with phrases such as "abortion is wrong" appearing on the blacklist. This is not up to Google to decide for others. If Google, or its employees, want to voice their perspective, that is fine. It is not fine to try to manipulate people through their software while pretending to be a neutral party. |
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It's an Eternal September[0] problem, though, in the fact that any discourse has effectively been quashed by setting up "us versus them" factions, yeah?
In our bubble (on HN), sure, we can have respectable (or maybe not so much) discourse but we all come not holding our fingers in our ears, stamping our feet because we think 'x' person is in 'y' camp.
You don't see the festering problems that have affected other platforms (yet) and I think it's very telling that we recognise that discourse is important - but we seem to be in the minority (in this sense of openness to exchange).
The problem with YouTube, however, is that discourse hasn't been a principle part of YoutTube for quite some time. Someone makes a video. If we're lucky someone else might make a "My Response To..." video and, if we're luckier, a further response might be made, "My Response to the Response To...".
However, all one needs to do is look at the cesspool that has become YouTube comments and they will see that discourse isn't a fundamentally important principle there (anymore).
The likewise goes with places like Reddit, which has divided itself into "us versus them" camps about almost everything under the sun.
So, I agree that (online) discourse is important - but it seems to be a bygone idea that a select few of us (present company included) are desperately trying to hold on to.
I'm conflicted as to whether that should give me a feeling of hope or an immense sadness.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September