[Stupulous]

Anonymous speech is an essential facet of free speech- maybe the most important. Getting rid of anonymity means removing the voice of the trans woman stuck in a conservative town or in the year 2000- or the Satanist, the Muslim, the ex-con, the furry, or the BDSM enthusiast. It means making corporate whistleblowers put their livelihood on the line. It means telling John Fryer, the (at the time) anonymous gay psychiatrist who spoke out in 1972 against their treatment of gay people, to sit down and shut up. It means stopping the author of African Slavery in America (probably Thomas Paine, but left anonymous) from speaking out against slavery in 1775.

In another vein, Scott Alexander needed (partial) anonymity not to speak truth to power but to keep his patients from finding him, finding a disagreement, and treating him as an enemy. Even if it were just him in that situation, you'd be robbing me of books worth of philosophy, politics, and science- stuff that has made me a better person and a better thinker.

And you'd be removing me from this conversation, because I have friends and family across the political spectrum who I would prefer not to offend, and I have heterodox views that would upset the right with leftness and the left with rightness. Perhaps you think I should be prevented from speaking openly, but you certainly can't say it's because I am avoiding feedback- I'm seeking feedback for positions I would otherwise quietly go on believing.

What is the value added that would justify taking away the rights of so many powerless? Of suppressing any ideas that are not already mainstream?

[Aloha]

I dont think you can or should get rid of anonymous free speech, but I that because of the nature of their platforms - the platforms publishing it have a right, if not obligation to exert editorial control.

I'm also fairly heterodox in my views (and queer on top of that) but when you have a random dude on a couch who can reach an audience of millions at the press of a button, the math changes - algorithmic amplification of hate, wingnuttery, etc - is a serious problem for the stability of democracy.

The issue isnt anonymous speech persay, that always has existed and should - it just used to cost something before, you had to have money for a printer, convince the printer to print your screed, distribute it widely enough to have an impact. Those costs lessened the impact, and reduced the societal risks.

Elsewhere on here, I proposed a federated karma system that extends the idea of community reputation (a norm in closed communities, like HN, Furry, etc) as a transparent replacement for direct editorial control, while still persisting anonymity.

[Stupulous]

I guess it's one of those things where I'm seeing a different reality from everyone else, but the notion that uncensored speech is the source of our present strife is one that I don't accept. I witnessed this series of events:

1. Early 2000s created a bunch of social media websites with free speech (then meaning protection from Christian-right censorship, which was the concern at the time) as a premise. These were fine places. There were occasional nutjobs and constant arguments, but people were generally comfortable participating. I argued with racists one day, communists the next, fascists, nazis. I developed a deeper understanding of my own beliefs on those issues. I argued against but was eventually convinced by drug legalization, trans rights, abortion rights- the list is long and embarrassing.

2. These websites saw an opportunity for growth, accelerated maybe by Facebook's IPO, but starting somewhere around the late 00s. The nutjobs and arguments were a turn-off to a potentially larger user base. So they drew a line in the sand, clefting the population into the would-be-censored and the would-not-be. The would-bes had to go express themselves somewhere else. If I wanted to argue with fringe people, I had to go into their echo chamber. It was not the place for me.

3. Opinions that were common on both sides in the 90s became opinions of the right only, and then became forbidden. The line in the sand moved leftwards. Little effort was made to convince anyone that these changes were good (I agree they were); mockery and 'educate yourself, bigot' became the norm. Extremism grew rapidly in both the de jure right-leaning spaces and the de facto left-leaning spaces, because the two groups had entered into feedback loops. Remaining holdouts were forced to move because expressing correlated viewpoints was now faux pas, and they faced guilt by association.

4. Sometime around 2015, people collectively decided that everything needed to be political all the time. This was a moral imperative. My apolitical communities were overrun by propagandists of one side or another (mostly the left, but I was on Reddit so that biases things). As Trump's campaign wore on, people concluded that the issue was not enough censorship, and added more.

5. The situation worsened, and COVID made 'misinformation' the new pro-censorship buzzword. More censorship was clearly the answer. Lab-leak theorists were suppressed and the Hunter Biden story was censored weeks before the election. Any remaining general public trust in the institutions responsible and their allies faded further. Election doubts festered the same way everything else had and we wound up with Jan 6.

6. More censorship?

7. Profit

That's just my personal experience, and I recognize that others see things differently. On top of that, fascism gained power a number of times through the 1900s, which was pre-internet, and often did so in censorious environments like Weimar Germany. Things like climate change denial and anti-vax both predate mainstream social media. All-in-all, blaming the lack of internet censorship for our polarization and extremism today falls very flat for me.

Setting all of that aside, it does not make sense to me that we should restrict human rights because some corporate algorithm amplifies hateful or extreme speech. Rewrite the damn algorithm.

I do like your federated karma system, and I have also thought about things like opt-in moderation (to enable opposing voices to occupy the same space comfortably) or a small limit on comments per user per day (to prevent things like 1% of twitter users write 80% of tweets, and encourage higher effort contributions). I don't think these solutions violate free speech, and they may produce better outcomes than 'don't censor'. But 'don't censor' would be a great start.

[Aloha]

> I guess it's one of those things where I'm seeing a different reality from everyone else, but the notion that uncensored speech is the source of our present strife is one that I don't accept. I witnessed this series of events:

> 1. Early 2000s created a bunch of social media websites with free speech (then meaning protection from Christian-right censorship, which was the concern at the time) as a premise. These were fine places. There were occasional nutjobs and constant arguments, but people were generally comfortable participating. I argued with racists one day, communists the next, fascists, nazis. I developed a deeper understanding of my own beliefs on those issues. I argued against but was eventually convinced by drug legalization, trans rights, abortion rights- the list is long and embarrassing.

I started out towards the center, and remain towards the center, but because I'm not particularly lefty or conservative, I tend to hold a whole lot of heterodox opinions which makes the left consider me a conservative, and the right a lefty. I've had some look in convincing people to change their views though because of those heterodox views. I even wrote a substack about it.

> 2. These websites saw an opportunity for growth, accelerated maybe by Facebook's IPO, but starting somewhere around the late 00s. The nutjobs and arguments were a turn-off to a potentially larger user base. So they drew a line in the sand, clefting the population into the would-be-censored and the would-not-be. The would-bes had to go express themselves somewhere else. If I wanted to argue with fringe people, I had to go into their echo chamber. It was not the place for me.

See, I dont see it that way, it was the rise of algorithmic promotion of posts, and the need to monetize with advertising that caused the issue - they got embarrassed by racists or crazy ass shit going viral. The issue for me wasn't the censorship, it was that they algorithmically game the system to lift engagement every higher.

> 3. Opinions that were common on both sides in the 90s became opinions of the right only, and then became forbidden. The line in the sand moved leftwards. Little effort was made to convince anyone that these changes were good (I agree they were); mockery and 'educate yourself, bigot' became the norm. Extremism grew rapidly in both the de jure right-leaning spaces and the de facto left-leaning spaces, because the two groups had entered into feedback loops. Remaining holdouts were forced to move because expressing correlated viewpoints was now faux pas, and they faced guilt by association.

Right leaning spaces moved significantly further right as an anti-establishment backlash was unleashed. The lefties did move left, but not anywhere near as far left as the right have moved right. (and I had conservatives telling in in 2012 that dems had moved far far left over the last 8 years - and I couldn't see it, I did eventually start to see it around 2018, when I detected a drift left.)

> 4. Sometime around 2015, people collectively decided that everything needed to be political all the time. This was a moral imperative. My apolitical communities were overrun by propagandists of one side or another (mostly the left, but I was on Reddit so that biases things). As Trump's campaign wore on, people concluded that the issue was not enough censorship, and added more.

There was this point in 2012-2013 when I realized that everyone was angry all the time about basically everything all the time.

I didnt see the censorship start to crop up until 2018, 2019, most of it was silencing things that.. even by my free speech oriented perspective, was intended to incite violence. I will argue firmly as a centrist that the right's rhetoric by this point was firmly violent.

> 5. The situation worsened, and COVID made 'misinformation' the new pro-censorship buzzword. More censorship was clearly the answer. Lab-leak theorists were suppressed and the Hunter Biden story was censored weeks before the election. Any remaining general public trust in the institutions responsible and their allies faded further. Election doubts festered the same way everything else had and we wound up with Jan 6.

Thats the issue with censorship - its a coarse tool, you want the stolen election and QAnon to go away, but need to lint out news from.. weasel words and outright lying.

> 6. More censorship?

> 7. Profit

> That's just my personal experience, and I recognize that others see things differently. On top of that, fascism gained power a number of times through the 1900s, which was pre-internet, and often did so in censorious environments like Weimar Germany. Things like climate change denial and anti-vax both predate mainstream social media. All-in-all, blaming the lack of internet censorship for our polarization and extremism today falls very flat for me.

> Setting all of that aside, it does not make sense to me that we should restrict human rights because some corporate algorithm amplifies hateful or extreme speech. Rewrite the damn algorithm.

I think the answer is to force companies to only show items without algo enhancement, timeline only. That will give them a reason to try to filter out low value content.

>I do like your federated karma system, and I have also thought about things like opt-in moderation (to enable opposing voices to occupy the same space comfortably) or a small limit on comments per user per day (to prevent things like 1% of twitter users write 80% of tweets, and encourage higher effort contributions). I don't think these solutions violate free speech, and they may produce better outcomes than 'don't censor'. But 'don't censor' would be a great start.

Here is the thread that launched that conversation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33231563#33234583

I think everyone should be able to basically say whatever they want, but until you have credibility as a poster, and where your long term and short term Karma are not showing a low number, you should be able to post and be seen widely, to me there is nothing more dangerous than a random dude sitting on a couch who now has an audience of millions.