There's a lot of consideration of if we could, and previous little of if we should. Unmoderated sites inevitably become breading grounds for harassment and worse, especially as more mainstream platforms get better at driving this content away. I would be terrified to live in a world where kiwifarms and its ilk cannot be shut down
Have you considered that maybe de-plaforming people on the fringe and forcing them into their own private silos actually ends up boosting their message?
When you try to be the goody two-shoes and block anything and everything that could potentially be offensive to someone you just make controversial opinions more intriguing. At least I want to see what the big fuss was about and determine myself it such banishment was actually justified and more often than not it feels like too hash of a punishment, which in turn makes it more likely that I go look for the next banished person's shit and so on.
One can then easily get directed to one of these silos where there are no opposing arguments at all. At least when someone acts out on a public forum majority of users can rein them back in line and avoid further indoctrination. However this last part is hard pill to swallow for most, since they don't want their own bad opinions to be called out.
I mean, it's worth _considering_, but it does not appear to be true. See reddit; reddit has gone through a number of waves of banning abominable subreddits. In general the result is that the most extreme members create a nightmarish reddit clone which no-one else cares about, the rest disperse.
How would you know when the very existence of these new silos is hidden from you?
This is like saying "our model recognizes 99% of the AI generated images", but it leave out that you don't know the actual amount since when your model does not recognize that an image in the wild was generated by AI you dont know that it was generated by an AI.
... I mean, it's not hidden at all. If you want (you probably do not; they are astonishingly obsessive and horrible) to find the alternative reddit clones that people fled to when fatpeoplehate or the Nazi subreddits or the worst of the TERF subreddits or whatever were banned, well, they're right there, they are not a secret.
> When you try to be the goody two-shoes and block anything and everything that could potentially be offensive to someone
This is intentionally trivializing the actual approach and making it seem as arbitrary and low impact as possible. I certainly wouldn't support a ban on "everything that could potentially be offensive" and I haven't seen a proposal for one. I do support a ban on violent far right extremist movements on social media platforms though, because they coherently use these platforms as a venue for harassment, recruitment, and messaging.
The "marketplace of ideas" ideology or "don't feed the trolls" tactic don't actually work in practice. It's the sartre quote. Having a public policy debate with, for example, an ethnonationalist is a victory for the ethnonationalist in itself. They don't have to "win" the debate, they've won by getting you to have it in the first place.
Bans do work. Reddits used to have a serious problem with extremist antifeminists and literally, self-identified neonazis brigading semi-related posts in other subreddits. Banning the extremist subs had a huge impact in reducing it! You don't have to give people a forum to self-organize against your other users.
Or like, what is milo yiannopoulos up to these days? His influence and reach shriveled into insignificance after he got banned from everything a few years ago. The idea that the best way to combat extremism is by discussing it with extremists is a particular ideology. It is not a pragmatic goal- or result-based approach to moderation, or an abstinence from making ideological decisions about moderation.
Deplatforming people doesn't boost their message though. You don't get the Streisand effect when its 1000 trolls instead of one famous person. Also the free market of ideas just hasn't proven effective at stopping harassment and worse. There's nothing illogical about what you've said, but the real world data just doesn't support your conclusions.
I mean yeah, it's a scary time to be a queer person. Lots of our rights and protections are under attack now in ways they weren't 5 years ago. I hadn't heard that kiwi farms was back up, that's deeply disappointing.
This is something I said, but didn't explain well in the thread about Bluesky using domains as handles. You did a much better job of explaining it in your article. Being able to adjust the moderation rules to fit specific scenarios is useful.
I also think the use of domains could have a significant impact on the quality of online discourse because building a good reputation on a domain and having that transferable anywhere on the internet is a lot more valuable than a handle that's only usable within the silo of a single company.
Sub-domains add another layer where the owner of the top level domain has incentive to make sure they're not bringing bad actors onto the network because moderation could be enacted against the base domain, not just individual sub-domains.
Domain based attestation could also drive significant change. Imagine a system where spending money at a reputable company gave you a digital token / receipt that you could attribute to a domain (aka identity) as a way to attest to that domain being a good participant.
The attestation wouldn't cost anything beyond what you're already spending, but it's valuable because it demonstrates you're spending real money somewhere and attributing it to an identity. That doesn't scale well for bad actors running millions of bots because someone like me might have thousands of dollars of spending per year that I can attribute to my reputation or the reputation of someone I've had a good interaction with and bots can't throw that kind of money away. IE: It's a good indicator that a domain / identity isn't a bot, spammer, jerk, etc..
The vast majority of people aren't interested in terrorising minority groups, or anyone, or enacting violence of any kind on any people of any kind.
While situations like that, and sites like that are an important issue, they're not the type of issue that spirals wildly out of control and takes over the world if left unchecked.
It doesn't mean they should be left unchecked - any such negative outcomes are horrific and awful and should be minimised as much as possible.
But it does mean we don't need to feel terrorised by them, which is good - as we'll make calmer, more rational and, so, better decisions about them.
5% of the population is diagnosable with severe personality disorders that lead to anti-social behavior. Approx 1% have NPD, a bit over that have diagnosable psychopathy, and there are several other disorders to round out that 5%. They aren’t going to “terrorise” people so much as troll, manipulate, disrupt, abuse. Any specific form of attack is often only a means to an ends.
The vast majority of people (95%) are not like this, however if you cannot police those 5%, then your platform will be the playground of the malcontents. Moderation is a non-negotiable for any social platform.
The point isn't that its one or the other, the point is that spending on social programs is much cheaper than national security programs and makes a more meaningful difference in more peoples lives. The point is that either-or is a false dichotomy, we can have good social safety nets and still have robust national security. The reason we don't have both isn't that we can't afford both, its that much of this country views poverty as a moral failing and intentionally neglects the poor because "they deserve it".
> makes a more meaningful difference in more peoples lives
Many people in this country want their chances to be better, and not have those opportunities distributed evenly. They want a shot of improving their status by ascending career, wealth, and opportunity gradients. This is how they vote. This is how companies operate too.
On the flip side, true universal equity doesn't even stop at the national boarder. If you're a proponent of equitability for all, then you want to distribute all high income jobs, housing, medical care, and wealth all around the world and give everyone access and good chances. To some degree this has happened with manufacturing. In time it will happen to knowledge work as well.
There are problems with both models of the world. Power and resources become concentrated. With slowing growth, wealth building up the lower class of one nation leads to the eroding of the middle class in another.
It's unclear to me that these choices are even the ones that will dominate the future outcomes for our civilization. It's resource reallocation. The big trends will be war, technological disruptions, and ecosystem changes.
> the point is that spending on social programs is much cheaper than national security programs and makes a more meaningful difference in more peoples lives
That's not the point presented by the OP. If he was to advance such a point, he'll have to cite a research that shows that investing in poorer families will lead to semi-conductor advancement in the country.
Unless you think the US (or any reasonably advanced big economy) doesn't need a competitive semi-conductor industry.
It seems like the burden of proof should be the other way around. The proponents of this bill should have to prove to the hungry and poor that handouts to Intel are ultimately better for them than food in their mouths and money in their pockets.
I think its reasonable to write off development costs, given that it was the first of its kind. This is why we have government funded research: to create technologies that would be too risky for any private company to pursue. The question shouldn't be "is it profitable to create the first one?", its "once we've solved the hard problems, can the industry be profitable?".
> The question shouldn't be "is it profitable to create the first one?", its "once we've solved the hard problems, can the industry be profitable?".
Given that the original project ran into delays and overages throughout, it strains credibility to propose that, starting with the 'B', all the hard problems would be in the past, and that performance would henceforward live up to the promises.
Not quite, it's causing someone to commit a crime they wouldn't ordinarily commit, so it all depends how pushy they were about it. If you could argue they coerced the contractors into doing the work, that's entrapment. But inviting them over under false pretenses and then simply asking them to commit a crime, while of questionable value to the community, isn't entrapment.
Oh the story behind that is a wild ride from start to finish. Babson's sister drowned when they were children, and he decided the real reason that happened is anti-gravity technology wasn't sufficiently advanced to prevent her drowning. He spent a large amount of his philanthropy funding anti-gravity research for the rest of his life.
Edit:
Just realized this is mentioned in the article you linked.
It's still worth a call-out. The other line in the article that always gets me is "Sometimes, attendees [of the Gravity Research Foundation] sat in chairs with their feet higher than their heads, to counterbalance gravity."
It feels like absurd lore in Fallout, but probably actually happened.
NYC is kind of a joke in urban planning circles, they have a lot of crazy ideas and have executed on approximately one of them in 20 years.
Many other cities are heads and shoulders ahead when it comes to rolling out proper separated bike lanes. Nobody is looking to NYC for leadership on anything in this field.
NYC faces problems at a scale that make it much more difficult to get done than in a lot of cities. It's not ridiculous to suggest they try, but it also doesn't naturally follow: NYC and Des Moines are not solving the same problem.
"It's not ridiculous to say the urbanest area should try to set an example for other urban areas" - yet, OP says if NYC can't set an example then we can't expect other cities to have good examples either. That's false. We can expect good examples everywhere no matter what NYC does.
How is it a special place to expect decent infrastructure, when NYC of all places has it for driving, walking and public transit?
The cumulative investment in each of those has gotta be 100x as much as for biking, and you're accusing bikes of getting special treatment?
For the cost of a mile of new subway, you could probably coat most of NYC's arterials with protected bike lanes across the whole damn city. Not that I'm opposed to subways, but bike infrastructure is extremely cost-effective, redirecting money away from it is ridiculous.
This is about transit safety. Cyclists are in a lot more danger than pedestrians, because unlike peds, they don't have special infrastructure set aside from them for the most part.
Why must we accomodate the needs of drivers? Why do they hold a special place? Can we instead invest in bike infrastructure?
So, here's my personal opinion. For the record, i live in a bike-friendly mid-sized central-european city, do own a car, walk a lot (if the bike is not an option) and use public transport - but whenever possible, i use my bike. For me it's the superior mode of transportation. It's the cheapest option after walking, healthy, fun, efficient and for 90% of my day-to-day transportation needs it's also the fastest option. The overhead of finding a parking spot (twice) is mostly nil and there are pretty much no bike traffic jams. I shop every day and carry the groceries in my backpack (upside: fresh produce every day, don't need as much storage space). Car usage is mostly limited to longer distances (i.e. visiting relatives) and transporting unwieldly stuff - i wouldn't even own one if i hadn't gotten this one for free. The same applies to pretty much all of my friends. If the infrastructure is there, they all prefer riding a bike.
That said, as a young adult (early twenties), my car was part of my male identity. All of my friends believed they were good drivers and could be promising race drivers if they wanted. That's all gone now; my car is not a status symbol anymore, but a utility. And i don't respect someone just because they drive a fast car, that usually just means they were willing to invest a bigger share of their income in that particular hobby. My previous car had 60hp and that was plenty enough for my needs. Cars never made me really happy; they meant long commutes, road rage due to other bad drivers and congestion and terrifyingly dangerous situations aplenty, even though i'm a careful driver.
So, back to the discussion. In my opinion, the biggest problems for cyclists are:
1. Infrastructure: It's not that we're unjustly taking away from the drivers to give to the cyclists - cyclists have been neglected for decades and what happens now is just that they get a little bit of what should have been theirs from the beginning. Cars take a bigger share than they deserve. There was a time where cars weren't welcome in the cities too, i took a huge marketing campaign and lobbyists to change that.
2. Infrastructure: bike lanes mostly suck, because they're crammed into existing spaces that were planned for cars and pedestrians; spaces where they just don't really fit. They're often too narrow, of disastrous quality (ever wonder why road bike cyclists without shock absorbers prefer the road even if there are bike lanes present? That's even legal around here!) and sometimes feature unnecessary stops that could have been avoided if the street had been planned with cyclists from the start.
3. Drivers: some drivers hate cyclists for no apparent reason. Luckily, this is not a huge problem here as almost everyone spends time on a bike, but the stories i have to read on reddit ... some cyclists are probably victims of carelessly attempted manslaughter (i.e. drivers throwing full cans at cyclists).
4. Storage: bike theft is a rampant problem almost anywhere (for several reasons, afaik there's no easy solution). You really shouldn't leave your bike outside overnight if it's worth anything (disregarding rust as this is a problem for cars too). But secure bike storage options are pretty rare if you don't happen to have the option of storing it in your flat.
You should try riding a bike. It's fun, it's healthy and you'll mature as automobile driver as you'll learn to get more perceptive. Don't get angry if you have to stay behind a cyclists for a couple of seconds until it's safe to overtake - you're actually losing only an neglectible amount of time. If you live in a city, try a bike commute; depending on the distance you might be faster than by car. In my case, due to traffic jams and searching for parking it'd probably have taken me three times as long to commute by car. My previous city has one of the best public transport systems in the world and still i was faster by bike).
And you should support biking, even if you drive a car: more people on bikes means less traffic, less congestion. Parking spots will probably be reduced, but there won't be as many car owners, so there's that - and you can easily fit 10 bikes on a single car parking spot. Less pollution, less noise, healthier people are probably reducing costs on public health care, but i don't know how true that'd be for the U.S. with a privatized system. Old people on e-bikes means fewer old people driving their cars at half the allowed speed.
That is a strange way to look at it. Question I am asking is not whether biking should be made safer instead I am asking why biking should be considered a form of transportation at all that needs to be funded by taxpayers? This is a serious question try to answer without getting emotional. Should we have another lane for skaters? How about hand walkers?
Cycling is the most energy efficient mode of transportation, ever. More than walking, more than skating, more than motorcycles, more than gliding birds, and yes, more than the subway.
That on top of its health benefits, relative safety to those hit by bikes, its traffic efficiency, parking space efficiency, benefit to retail...
You bring up taxpayers. It is far, far cheaper to subsidize a bike lane than a new subway tunnel. And the bike lane is open more hours of the year, with more entrances and exits, more interchanges to other lines, a shorter distance point-to-point, with drastically lower maintenance costs. Taxpayers should be rioting over the costs spent on trains and traffic relative to bikes.
Just about every cyclist means a car taken off the road. they take maybe about one-sixth the roadspace of a car and that's not factoring in the additional distance heavy and slow-breaking cars need between them to drive safely at speed. which means each extra cyclists reduces congestion which helps drivers especially in congested cities. so it stands to reason it's net-positive to have more cyclists relative to drivers. subways also become more useful when decently fast last-mile options are available. having bikes on pedestrian lanes is unsafe and unattractive and having them on driveways is also unsafe and unattractive, so both of these options lead to less cyclists, more cars and hence a terrible driving experience.
I suppose one could frame it as “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
To be frank, and I say this having addicted family members, sometimes it’s rather hard to care about a junkie.
I’m not exactly in the “fuck ‘em” camp, as a society we should have a better answer than leaving them a nuisance, but the idea that we should give up at a certain point is scarcely exotic.
