I'm an individual who's opinions on unfettered anonymous speech have changed over the years, so I'll give my take.
I was a "free speech absolutist" in the early 00s, which was the "default" on places like Slashdot, and later on places like Reddit and HN. The reason I changed my opinion is that I was generally surprised by the amount of real harm that can be caused by the way technology can amplify false or harmful content. Specific examples:
1. I was actually surprised by the amount of glee people would take in online harassment, things like r/jailbait and fatpeoplehate. I believe that the social norms that would have prevented the proliferation of this content "in the real world" were ineffective in the anonymous, online world.
2. I was surprised by the amount of laughable BS that got real, widespread traction, stuff like QAnon.
3. Regardless of your politics, interference from foreign powers in democratic governments is now a much more realistic and effective attack scenario.
So I guess the short of it is that some "axioms" that I used to believe about free speech (e.g. "the truth will always bubble to the top in open debate") I no longer believe to be true in the way that technology can "hack" people's emotions. I definitely don't know what the right solution is, but I think that unfettered anonymous free speech on the Internet will lead to a type of society that scares me.
I'm in the same boat as you, but I have been mostly just floored by #2. The lack of critical thinking ability amongst the general population is just shocking.
The fact that social media companies optimized for screen time just exacerbated the problem.
I would venture that it is not that your opinion has changed but that the fabric of people engaging online has changed.
Free speech absolutism worked 20 years ago when you just hosted a PHP message board on a server in Iceland or Romania and a few hundreds of curious people got together around a specific topic or hobby.
The problem now is 1) the volume of people online. 2) the normal distribution of people online (no longer just the curious one).
The solution is the same as it was 20 years ago: let people hang out in a place that moderates according to their preferences. It's not like everything on the Net was uncensored 20 years ago, after all. It's that it wasn't so centralized, and you could easily find unmoderated places if you wanted - they weren't actively pursued to force them to shut down.
Thanks for writing this comment. I mostly disagree with it (although I struggle to formulate my objections), but you summarized this change in attitude very well and helped me understand it. Even if I disagree on points, your argument makes a lot of sense to me.
I just wanted to say thank you very much for this reply, I really appreciate reading it. Honestly I get pretty annoyed (even though I shouldn't) by silly responses that falsely caricature-ize what I said ("You've just become an authoritarian", "You just disagreed with Bush" - I lol'ed at that one), especially when I felt I tried to emphasize that I'm not sure what the solution is. I can definitely appreciate there are people of good faith who don't share my opinion, and I like that you expressed that without a "tribal" response of "you're just the bad guy now".
I think your position is a pretty reasonable take but I’ll try to take it on as someone who still has the early 00s mentality.
I think the primary argument against it basically boils down to the fact that the internet hasn’t actually changed things as much as most people of our generation who grew up with it think, and many of the changes are better, not worse.
1) For harassment, it would be hard to do worse than the harassment we had in the past. Open racism has certainly declined since the 60s/70s. There was significantly more actual violence against people during that time than today.
2) Misinformation was certainly more prevelent in the past. Did you know that in 1970 30% of Americans thought the moon landing was faked? The number now is much much lower and has only gone down.
3) The idea that foreign powers were influencing America was certainly a lot bigger in the past. The “red scare” was a thing. People were mistrusting of thier neighbours and accusations of being communist abounded.
I think the main thing the internet has done is surface the craziness so that more people know about the fewer actual number of crazies.
> 1) For harassment, it would be hard to do worse than the harassment we had in the past.
I'm not sure I agree. As someone who was bullied pretty badly in middle school, I don't think I would have survived with modern social media. At least when I was a kid, I got a respite from the bullying when I went home. For a lot of kids today it's 24/7. Certainly mental health surveys of young people show that something drastic has occurred in the past decade, and it's not good.
> Did you know that in 1970 30% of Americans thought the moon landing was faked?
What is your source for this? I tried to find this info online and couldn't.
> 3) The idea that foreign powers were influencing America was certainly a lot bigger in the past. The “red scare” was a thing.
The idea that there were conspiracy theories about foreign influence in the US, vs. actual documented foreign influence and its effects are 2 different things.
> I think the main thing the internet has done is surface the craziness so that more people know about the fewer actual number of crazies.
I do agree it's possible the Internet just makes the crazy more apparent. My fear, though, is that it makes crazies "easier to find each other" so that, in a pre-Internet world, someone might have a "crazy" idea but then re-evaluate after not finding many compatriots, but these days it's so easy to find thousands and thousands of people who can "confirm" any batshit idea.
I would challenge you to show the effects of foreign influence. I haven't seen anything about what Russia did that even looked remotely effective. I recall reading an arstechnica article about it and I was shocked that they were citing posts with ~1.5k views... When facts aren't presented, the media make it sound like Russia had a major impact, but I can't find any facts that back that up.
I am much more concerned about foreign influence on the relatively centralized media outlets. For example, Bezos owns the Washington Post and does billions of dollars of business with China every year. All that economic activity gives china leverage they can use to suppress stories they don't like.
That is the real foreign influence to be worried about. Not them making posts and competing for attention with the same rules as everyone else.
1. I do agree that calls of "Russian inteference!!" tend to be overblown. While I think it's clear there was Russian interference, I think it's also a way to minimize, for example, the real underlying discontent that was present "below the surface" and instead just blame the Russians.
2. That said, I think the evidence is pretty clear that from Russia's perspective, given how much they invest in these Internet propoganda tools, that they view it as an effective channel. And yes, opposing governments have always had propaganda arms, I think the big difference now is that it is much easier to obfuscate the source of that propaganda than it was in the pre-Internet era.
> 3) The idea that foreign powers were influencing America was certainly a lot bigger in the past. The “red scare” was a thing. People were mistrusting of thier neighbours and accusations of being communist abounded.
You're conflating two entirely different things. Actual foreign powers using information warfare to influence American politics has very little to do with the Red Scare.
The Red Scare is a political tactic of accusing political enemies and disfavored classes of secretly aiding foreign powers. It was happening then and it is still happening now. The modern Red Scare isn't "Russian disinformation on the internet", it's "the communists and the queers and and and are trying to overthrow the government and indoctrinate our children and destroy the economy and and and". It hasn't changed much from the 50s. It's not terribly uncommon to see people literally advocate for a new House Un-American Activities Commission.
I think most US citizens would associate Un-american activities with maga / Jan 6th / oath keepers stuff. I think that is more analogous to the modern 'red scare'.
Fear is never a good guide, and leads straight to authoritarianism, every time. We need a rational approach not ever-more-emotion.
The 230 protections have done more damage to the world than good. Platforms should be responsible against horrible things, but the laws should also be lax enough to allow platforms to remove the worst without being liable to go to jail every time someone shows a nipple. Our legal/tech system is dysfunctional by its ancient nature and the easy/populist politics around censorship.
> Fear is never a good guide, and leads straight to authoritarianism, every time. We need a rational approach not ever-more-emotion.
This blanket statement is silly. I also support laws against murder, theft and sexual assault because I would "fear the type of society" that would result if we didn't have those laws. This is not me making "an emotional decision", it is a rational assessment of the type of society that would result.
More to the point in this discussion, the main argument for free speech is that advocates say they would fear how government would abuse that power if they had widespread censorship capabilities. And to be clear, I 100% agree with that, which is why I said I'm not sure what the right solution is. But we have always had a tradeoff between free speech and other negative outcomes (e.g. "clear and present danger" rules, libel, etc.) Other countries that have real, intimate experience with the dangers of unfettered populism still have robust free speech generally but also have laws against specific types of falsehoods (e.g. Holocaust denialism laws in Germany).
> I'm an individual who's opinions on unfettered anonymous speech have changed over the years, so I'll give my take.
Alternative take: you never supported free speech and were just upset Bush era policies censored porn, gays and contraception. Once those things stopped being censored you stopped caring.
I'd imagine the people who are now pro-censorship would turn back to free speech zealots if we banned all mentions of homosexuality online like they have in Russia.
> Alternative take: you never supported free speech and were just upset Bush era policies censored porn, gays and contraception.
With all due respect, what are you talking about? I think this is pretty silly, primarily because as someone who lived through that era I don't ever remember being worried that Bush era policies were "censoring" porn, gays or, especially, contraception?? I may have strongly disagreed with Bush policies on some of these topics, but I certainly watched plenty of porn, including gay porn, and never had problems looking up contraception information, and I never had any fear that my right to discuss those topics freely would go away due to Bush policies.
> I'd imagine the people who are now pro-censorship would turn back to free speech zealots if we banned all mentions of homosexuality online like they have in Russia.
Of course people who believe there should be specific limits to free speech are specific about those limits. It's already pretty common for activists to be in favor of allowing sex work while also wanting hate sites like Stormfront removed from the internet. If you remove both, then they'll focus on allowing sex work because the Stormfront problem is presently solved. That doesn't mean they stopped believing Stormfront should not exist on the internet.
Plus the fact that social networks today are intentionally designed around a dopamine reaction feedback loop.
They’re hacking your emotions as you describe, but they’re also hacking you chemically to get you addicted, which is why I no longer support giving young people access to those social media sites.
In all due respect nobody needs an explanation for such flip flopping. It’s merely human nature. We all want freedom for ourselves, but not our enemies who will use their freedom against us. You have become an authoritarian, which is the natural reaction. It’s what most humans default to when they are scared.
I was a "free speech absolutist" in the early 00s, which was the "default" on places like Slashdot, and later on places like Reddit and HN. The reason I changed my opinion is that I was generally surprised by the amount of real harm that can be caused by the way technology can amplify false or harmful content. Specific examples:
1. I was actually surprised by the amount of glee people would take in online harassment, things like r/jailbait and fatpeoplehate. I believe that the social norms that would have prevented the proliferation of this content "in the real world" were ineffective in the anonymous, online world.
2. I was surprised by the amount of laughable BS that got real, widespread traction, stuff like QAnon.
3. Regardless of your politics, interference from foreign powers in democratic governments is now a much more realistic and effective attack scenario.
So I guess the short of it is that some "axioms" that I used to believe about free speech (e.g. "the truth will always bubble to the top in open debate") I no longer believe to be true in the way that technology can "hack" people's emotions. I definitely don't know what the right solution is, but I think that unfettered anonymous free speech on the Internet will lead to a type of society that scares me.