[mirimir]

Exactly. Because once everything isn't protected, someone gets to choose. So what we need are systems where content can't be removed, and users can't be banned, by design.

And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.

[AlexMax]

> Exactly. Because once everything isn't protected, someone gets to choose. So what we need are systems where content can't be removed, and users can't be banned, by design.

This is naive at best. I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.

This is the internet. There are uncountable social spaces on it, and the fantastic thing is that the owners of each social space are free to enforce rules as they see fit. If you are unhappy with the moderation of a social space, or if you get booted, find another one. Or, you could even create your own.

Heck, because this is the internet, you are likely keeping up with many of the people you know from a social space through multiple other platforms, and if you want to peace out from one, you can coordinate a migration.

[mirimir]

> I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.

The cypherpunks list comes pretty close. I don't believe that anyone has ever been banned, and there's no censorship. But yes, there are no ~modern social media like that. Perhaps Notabug could become that, once peers exist.

Dumpster fires aren't problematic if you can filter well enough. And sometimes they're good for lulz :)

[josinalvo]

When people build their own platforms, the censorship minded mobs go after their upstream providers, like aws and visa. So this "you can always build your own" is not 100% true.

Also, mobs do go after you for your online speech, so the possibility of a platform that keeps your speech up does not preclude the possibility (and fact) of censorship

[mirimir]

True enough. However, I don't believe that anyone has taken down a Tor onion service, except by first identifying the server in meatspace. And that's typically depended on OPSEC failures.

It's true that CMU researchers deanonymized onion services and their users by exploiting the relay early bug, and then produced data to the FBI. However, site owners and users would have been safe if they had protected themselves better. By reaching Tor through nested VPN chains, and by using firewall rules or Whonix to prevent leaks around Tor.

[dcow]

So build accountability into interactions with the internet. For example, I believe for most purposes people should use government-issued access to the internet with an identity that ties to their physical self. Anonymity should cost extra and there should be an implicit lack of trust, credibility, etc. from anything anonymous until it can be thoroughly vetted. I like the urbit model for this where short memorable addresses convey value and social reputation whilst fully anonymous entities are allowed but implicitly untrusted.

[AnthonyMouse]

I don't think this fixes anything. Alex Jones already isn't anonymous.

Real name requirements deter dissidents and vulnerable people, not populist bullies. They even make it worse, because you can be more easily targeted by populist bullies who have your legal name than if everyone is using pseudonyms.

If anything we should make it harder to associate internet users with real people to deter this type of in-person harassment from spilling over from the internet.

[dcow]

It's less the real name aspect and more the fact that identity shouldn't be disposable. Anonymity is not a universal fundamental human right at least as understood historically. Perhaps today many would be interested in making it one. I, however, am more interested in preserving things like freedom of expression, formally, than suggesting that we achieve it by way of universal access to anonymity. It's one of my less popular opinions, but I think it's an important topic to discuss especially light of the whole privacy debate, and certainly in light of dismantling internet mobs.

There's also the element of making the reputation war bi-directional. If somebody can trash my reputation without staking theirs, that's pretty harmful and toxic, except in exceptional cases. I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real". On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation or find someone else to do it for them, but they don't get an easy out just because they're perceived as vulnerable.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Anonymity is not a universal fundamental human right at least as understood historically.

In practice starting over was. For almost all of human history, no matter how bad things turned against you where you were, you could pick up and go somewhere else. You would have to start over from nothing in a place where no one knew you, but at least you wouldn't have to deal with having negative a billion social points forever because of some slanderous allegations that were all anyone would talk about in your home town before slamming the door in your face.

Which you're obviously taking away if someone can effectively move a thousand miles away but still can't change their name, because then any slander would follow you everywhere.

> I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real".

This doesn't actually resolve the asymmetry, because there are a great many people whose reputations aren't worth anything to begin with, or who are too young to realize that they are.

You also still have the problem that reputations are community-specific. If someone is a vicious extremist in a community of vicious extremists, anti-social behavior against outsiders improves their reputation within their community. They may regret it later when they grow up and tire of that lifestyle, but that doesn't stop them at the time. It may even make it worse, because once they've trashed their own reputation among reasonable people by behaving badly, they can't get a do-over and their best option becomes to continue to behave badly and stay in the community where that gets rewarded.

> On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation

It's not about reputation in that context, it's about safety. Democracy advocates in China get arrested or worse. Any system that rate limits pseudonyms has got to be mapping them to real people to determine whether you have one already, but the existence of that mapping is the thing that compromises their safety when their oppressors use it to find them.

> or find someone else to do it for them

So you have a dozen Democracy advocates in China. None of them can use their own name or they'll be arrested. If they use the name of one of their compatriots, they get arrested instead, so how does that help?

[dcow]

Which is why it must be illegal to arrest someone for an opinion in the first place. Anonymity is a tool that can help in certain circumstances, but the problem is that a vulnerable person feels vulnerable to begin with. Anonymity doesn't fix that, the cultural climate does.

[mirimir]

> Real name requirements deter dissidents and vulnerable people, not populist bullies.

That's where I'm coming from, for sure.

[mirimir]

You and like-minded peers could have that, for sure. I can see the value for professional networks. Otherwise it'd arguably be far too dangerous.

[dcow]

I'd love to discuss this in some other context somewhere sometime (: I believe the internet is facing a type of identity crisis, so to speak and there's got to be a middle ground between a giant mass of anons and a polite dinner table gathering. But I'm not sure what the right balance is or the exact mechanisms we're lacking.

[mirimir]

Hey, I'm pretty sure that Steve Newman would create a group for us on Podaero :)

The Internet is way large enough for all the spaces that we want. It just happens that I primarily focus on anonymity, privacy, and resistance to censorship. Both to protect dissidents, and to protect the ~clueless from destroying their lives.

[dcow]

Invite only ):

[AlexMax]

> And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.

I'd be careful about mentioning filtering.

I just remembered that there was a Reddit Masstagger that helped folks with that filtering, but people got really upset about how it infringed on free speech and might have even gotten Google or Mozilla to remove it from the extension store.

I think there might have also been some for Twitter, which I imagine would have elicited a similar reaction.

[mirimir]

How can filtering infringe free speech? People can say whatever they want, but why should I have to hear them?

Also, any software tool that can be removed by someone else is broken by design. But yeah, maybe that's why there aren't any useful tools for using Twitter :(

[AlexMax]

> How can filtering infringe free speech? People can say whatever they want, but why should I have to hear them?

Simple. There's people agitating for free speech on idealistic terms, and then there's people agitating for free speech because they have an agenda and want a captive audience.

You can even see it in this comment thread. Take a look around and see if you can find any greyed-out comments that are arguing against the pro free-speech crowd. Down-voting is censorship via mob rule, so that should be twice as distasteful, but yet you see greyed out comments. The folks doing that are the latter, and not the former.

[mirimir]

I advocate free speech idealistically. In case it wasn't obvious.

I don't want filtering that's imposed by sites or their users. I want filtering that's implemented locally. I'm OK with opt-in filter lists, such as those used by ad-block extensions, as long as they can easily be customized. But I'm not OK with server-based filter rules that prevent me from ever seeing stuff.

On HN, I have "show dead" enabled, and I occasionally vouch for dead comments.

Edit: typos

[dcow]

Hold on, "down-voting is censorship"? Since when? The content remains. No disciplinary action is taken against anyone who's comment starts to turn grey. It's simply a feedback mechanism members of this forum use to signal to each other the quality of the content being posted. The analog would be if people here started mass down-vote campaigns against a person because they posted something off-beat, or if we all started petitioning mods to remove content we found uncomfortable.

You generally gravitate towards down-voting unhelpful, out-of-place, or in some way inaccurate content not simply content you don't agree with, BTW. More often than not I see comments start to turn grey because they miss the point and/or aren't really useful contributions to the discussion. Good points, despite the position being argued, tend to remain opaque.

[mistermann]

> Hold on, "down-voting is censorship"? Since when? The content remains. No disciplinary action is taken against anyone who's comment starts to turn grey. It's simply a feedback mechanism members of this forum use to signal to each other the quality of the content being posted.

If one fails to stay within the boundaries of HN's Overton Window, you run a high chance of being rate-limited for "starting flame wars", regardless of whether you were the one who actually started it. What comes after that I'd rather not find out so I try to keep my opinions to myself as much as possible. Whether downvotes are used to detect instances of dissenting opinions is unknown, but it's one of the most obvious ways to discover it I'd think.

> ...not simply content you don't agree with, BTW

You do not actually know this, it is a heuristic prediction. Even getting a half-accurate feel for that would require access to voting data and a lot of time reading over downvoted comments.

People often do not even know why they themselves are doing many things, such is the nature of the human mind, that evolved to optimize for speed over accuracy.