There are plenty of workplaces that require a more secure development environment. Centralizing the dev environment without having to go full PC over IP would be a very cost friendly way to manage this.
Nyxt is a new interesting browser. WebKit engine but configured by lisp under the hood, and fully keyboard controllable with emacs, vim, or cua controls.
nice..had an idea of a browser engine powered by a different scripting language like Lisp. Even better, a browser engine that can plug in any language runtime through which web apps can be coded (WebAssembly is working in that direction to provide a single portable runtime I think).
I think Microsoft is smarter than that, look at Github for example, people have largely forgotten it's owned by MSFT. They would have left Discord as a gaming platform and used it's tech in Teams instead. Teams is so behind Discord in all areas except video quality.
Very poorly polished stuff, to be honest. Before, they always seemed to take great care in making their core product (and the API for it) great. The only thing I can think of that was similarly unpolished was GitHub Enterprise.
I don't think GitHub staff has forgotten. Actions are straight up Azure Pipelines. The code is a huge mess. If I didn't know better I'd say it's obscured by design. Check out the actions/runner repo if you don't believe me. They polished them very well for the hosted version, but the cracks show if you try to use the self-hosted version.
I can't believe anyone at GitHub is particularly thrilled about having a Microsoft technology that broken imposed on them.
Can I just say, while I believe Discord will die anyway if it IPOs (as with anything that believes in infinite scaling), I would have loved to see Microsoft enact the special fucked up kind of integration that only they can manage
This is how tech startups work, isn't it? Use investors to build a product with no business model, then the founders cash out via purchase or IPO, and soon after the fact that you have no business model comes to light and the product falls apart trying to find a business model, while users move on to the next shiny thing with no business model.
Glad I'm not the only one thinking this. Seems obvious, but I always felt like I was missing something. How is it that most of the tech/SV world is just the same con being run over and over again, yet it keeps working? Does it operate on the same psychological glitch as a lottery? Do the giant corps buying these startups all think "I know how it's been in the past, but surely THIS startup WON'T turn to shit the moment I buy it because it was never a real business to begin with! This time for sure!"
Or are the real suckers the investors, and the corps are just doing these purchases in a performative capacity to keep razzle-dazzling them?
A lot of actual profits have been made by mature tech companies. Valuations seem too high right now, but I don’t think it’s a giant fraud. More like there’s nothing better to invest in.
Yes, the model is entirely built on acquisitions, where discord itself can't be profitable, but part of Microsoft it can deliver value by deepening the mote around everything else.
Many things are only valuable as a public good or part of monopoly. Such is funny relationship between monopolization and socialism.
Discord has a business model: Get people engaged in a community, sell them Nitro so they can boost their communities [1][2]. The "buy benefits for you community" scheme is wildly successful in mobile games, so I wouldn't be surprised if it works well for Discord.
The fact that they are trying to sell/IPO is pretty strong evidence that they are not profitable, I think. But regardless, I will give them massive props for not just doing the ad thing, which is the last gasp of this style of startup before they finish circling the drain. Lookin' at you, Imgur.
I would in all honesty give them even bigger props, as someone who used to be but isn't a fan anymore. They tried to add a game store a la steam into it but realized it didn't get the engagement they'd hoped for so they stopped putting time and effort into it and shut it down.
My first impression when they first added it was that they'd just shove it down people's throats and keep trying to make it work.
I hope I'm not wrong about them getting rid of it again and I've just gotten used to tuning all that out when using discord.
This is what flailing around trying to find a business model looks like. If Imgur was profitable without those ads, they wouldn't be abusing their users like this.
The second they try to monetize discord like a mobile game is the second all of my friends stop using it and hop to the next silicon Valley chat app that pops up
I’d slightly revise your description of the scheme from no business model to a intentional no revenue business model allowing for the valuation speculation to run rampant (i.e. at anytime we could stop investing in our growth, then it’s all profits). Of course by the time they go public like say Uber and set multiple records on quarterly losses and the investors drop the bag on the public it becomes obvious they can’t stop spending or the business will go under so instead they will continue accumulating billion dollar plus losses every quarter so by the time the shit hits the fan original founders and investors are on to the next thing and can always say they took a xx billion dollar startup public and that’s when the company lost its culture and the corporate greed ruined it.
Corporate greed is for sure a problem, but... does Discord even make money? I'm guessing their S-1 will reveal that they are ludicrously unprofitable, and they will actually have to fix that if they go public, corporate greed or no.
In general, I try not to fall in love with free products that seem too good to be true, because the party has to come to an end at some point.
At least on my hardware Skype and Teams are much more responsive than Discord though. And the laptop's coolers get the workout of their lifetime whenever Discord spins up.
They'd probably turn this IM into family friendly safe bay with strictly moderated content - because let's be honest, nowadays anything goes in. Discord accounts at first would be offered an optional merge with MSA and in long time, you'd have to log into using MSA credentials only. Microsoft Discord branding would arrive. There would be a business oriented version created and MS would abandon Teams; basic Discord would have ads related to your activity - you could avoid that (along with telemetry) by purchasing a subscription as the current monetization options would be removed. A special version with github/git related features would be created - for free, but only for those who are really using it in code related tasks.
Yes, but Microsoft would probably prefer to offer such subscription among own plans - like 356, and that would also happen after Discord would get Microsoft branding. It's a pure guess of course but I think it could happen.
Deeper Xbox integration, probably. Microsoft knows the writing is on the wall that Xbox Party Chat usage is way down and a lot of it has been replaced by gamers with Discord.
They know it so well the new Xbox Wireless Headset essentially has a "Discord feature" though obviously not named or marketed directly as that. (It supports dual pairing with a bluetooth phone for "phone calls over game audio", but everyone I know got the message between lines that it supports Discord chat, and were talking about the headset precisely because of that feature.)
Microsoft would have bought Discord for the gaming community and pursued tight integration with the XBox ecosystem. Which could have boosted the platform, but probably not in a way that resulted in a lot of direct revenue.
The S-1 will reveal all, a tight integration with Xbox and not a lot of direct revenue may still ultimately result in a sustainable and viable product, once you go public indefinite quarterly losses don’t get saved by the next funding round at higher valuations.
its more like Vivaldi's tab stacks or FF's Tree Tabs. With groups there are no inherent additional security mechanisms in place to prevent cross-group contamination/access. i.e., two different tab groups can access the same site data.
containers however are completely isolated from each other. i.e., two different containers have completely different sets of site data.
> no inherent additional security mechanisms in place to prevent cross-group contamination/access
Are you saying the biggest advertiser on the planet likely doesn't want to add functionality that could potentially hinder tracking for advertising purposes...?
Elaine Chao’s sister is married to Xi, while Elaine, as transportation secretary under Trump, was busted inviting family with business ties to the CCP to official US government meetings.
The fear on this forum is imagined political thriller more than realistic.
Every technologist is grifting off the military industrial complex.
I still don't understand what they mean by "loss". Why is this even a problem? The information isn't gone, its right -there- in the black hole, which until proven otherwise, is part of the universe.
Until someone can prove the universe cares whether the info is in a black hole or not, its not really a problem is it? If anything the universe usually shows it doesn't care what we humans think, its going to do its own thing, regardless: i.e., weak nuclear force and "symmetries"
> The information isn't gone, its right -there- in the black hole
No, it isn't; it hits the singularity inside of the hole and gets destroyed. At least, that's what Hawking's original model, the one he used to predict that black holes evaporate, says.
One way of seeing why Hawking's model had to say this is to combine the following facts about the evaporating black hole and the Hawking radiation in Hawking's model:
(1) The hole itself cannot contain any information other than its mass, charge, and spin (because of the "black holes have no hair" theorem), which is far too little information to describe everything that fell into the hole.
(2) The Hawking radiation cannot contain any information about what fell into the hole because it is thermal, black-body radiation, i.e., the only information it contains is its temperature, which is related to the mass of the hole.
So the information can't be stored either inside the hole or outside the hole, which means it must be destroyed, and the only place it can be destroyed is by hitting the singularity inside the hole.
The black hole information loss problem is that the above is inconsistent with quantum unitarity. So Hawking's original model can't be right; but nobody knows what model should replace it.
> Maybe the information gets encoded in digits of value of mass expressed in some unit.
No, it can't, not all the information. Two objects of the same mass but different internal composition would add the same mass to the hole, but would be described by different information. So the hole can't store in the value of its mass which of the two objects fell in.
More generally, a hole of, say, ten Solar masses could have gotten that mass by an infinite number of possible combinations of things falling in. The mass itself can't distinguish between any of those possibilities; all it can tell you is that ten Solar masses total of stuff fell in.
But why do you assume two objects of same mass but different composition will add the same mass to the black hole? Different composition means different interactions during the fall and different amount of radiated energy. Infinite number of bits can be encoded in single real number. It is hard to measure more than few digits of it, but so it is hard to measure all the information.
> why do you assume two objects of same mass but different composition will add the same mass to the black hole?
Because that's what the physics says. See below.
> Different composition means different interactions during the fall and different amount of radiated energy.
All of that can be taken into account before the object falls into the hole; the observer outside can measure it all and deduct it from the mass he expects to be added to the hole.
We are talking about the mass that gets added after all that; and for any given mass added to the hole after all those things are taken into account, there are many different possible combinations of objects falling into the hole that can add that mass.
> Infinite number of bits can be encoded in single real number.
We are not talking about math, we are talking about physics. The number of bits that can be stored in an object of finite size is finite as far as physics is concerned.
> "for any given mass added to the hole after all those things are taken into account, there are many different possible combinations of objects falling into the hole that can add that mass."
Approximately, sure, best scales can do around 5 significant digits and null measurements can get us few more digits. But we can't verify equality of mass to arbitrary precision. For elementary particles of same kind, we can assume their masses are the same. But there is infinity of digits available. Perhaps there are no two differently composed bodies that have the same real number as mass (too many options to be different). Then maybe any mass addition to mass of the black hole can encode all the information there is about the body.
This is irrelevant to the argument; our finite ability to measure masses is not what we are talking about. We are talking about what masses are physically possible, whether or not we can measure all of them with unbounded accuracy.
> there is infinity of digits available
You can't have it both ways. If it is physically true that there are an infinite number of digits available to specify an object's mass, then it is also physically true that there are multiple possible combinations of objects whose masses can sum to that same mass (in fact there will be an infinite number of them).
Conversely, if it is not physically true that there are multiple possible combinations of objects whose masses can sum to a given mass, there cannot be an infinite number of digits available to specify an object's mass: there must be only a finite number of possible masses, and the numbers specifying the possible masses must be such that no two such numbers add up to another such number.
It is relevant because the limitation to our measurement capability means we can't know most of the digits. We can't confirm experimentally that a given mass can be composed of "multiple possible combinations of objects whose masses can sum to that same mass". The mass number for an object can exist and yet it may be impossible to duplicate it with other objects. Imagine every object having unique ID with infinity of digits.
> Imagine every object having unique ID with infinity of digits.
And then, as I said, there will be an infinite number of possible combinations of other masses that will add to that mass. The fact that we can't verify that experimentally is irrelevant; your model allows it and that means that, in your model, the unique ID of a given black hole's mass would not uniquely identify the original pieces of matter that formed it, and therefore would not provide the information that you originally claimed it could provide, in the post of yours that started this subthread.
Imagine a 2t object falls into the hole and then a 3t object. Can that be differentiated than what would have happened had there been only one 5t object using mass alone?
Only if mass conservation is broken, and current theory does not predict this (where does the extra mass go to?). Same applies for the other 'no-hair' theorem properties - spin and charge.
Sure, and the point of this video is that while that may be _mathematically and theoretically_ sound, there's no way you can realistically make any measurements or any observations to confirm or deny your particular idea. What we have a lot of these ideas, with no way to discern between theories which accurately represent nature and theories which are merely mathematically correct.
The black hole is not eternal. Once it is fully evaporated, you still need to account for the information that was contained within (or accept information loss).
I believe this was addressed in the first few paragraphs of the article: this problem is not about 'information', which is a vague phrase. Rather, it is about how black hole evaporation is fundamentally time irreversible.
Right, but that is using a semi-classical calculation, whereas we know that ultimately any process (evolution of a closed system like the universe) compatible with quantum mechanics needs to be unitary/reversible.
That mismatch is what sets up the BH information “paradox”.
All of Quantum Mechanics respect unitary evolution, unitary evolution can be rewinded back. Black hole evaporation breaks unitary evolution, at least in the semi-classical approximation of Hawking. If you prepare a pure quantum state it will come out as mangled thermal radiation. You cannot return to the pure quantum state from the thermal radiation (i.e. we have lost information about it).
This transition is impossible in Quantum Mechanics and it would suppose a killing blow to Quantum Mechanics if true. So a better way to rephrase our worries is that if Black Holes do not respect unitary evolution then our most precise physical theory is fundamentally wrong.
No, the utterly ridiculous "paradox of tolerance" is just a bad cope for people who truly do not believe in free speech. "Free speech" which only applies to your predefined set of approved speech is not free speech, but a monstrous parody of it. The purpose of free speech is to enable dissent, not to affirm the status quo.
Nonsense. Do you think movies of child abuse are "free speech", or recruitment/instruction videos tot terrorist organizations, or inciting violence and hate? What about Assange, he published some stuff, could that be free speech? Or violations of copyright?
To me free speech is like free markets. The word does not adequately cover the implementation as boundaries do apply. There are little to non truly free markets (no tax, no imp/ex restrictions, etc). And there is not truly free speech.
And to limit freedom to speech to prevent hate/violence inciting crowds to get a platform may --according to me-- be necessary in some cases and is allowed by many of the worlds constitutions.
On top of that Reddit is a private platform, so they are free to set their standard, just like you may prohibit some speech in your own household (under the thread of being expelled or "no longer welcome).
The line where free speech ends is pretty clearly delineated, and that's when it crosses over into criminal or violent action in the "world of atoms".
Almost all of your examples can be prosecuted based on their direct effect on the real world (or representation of a crime, such as with child abuse videos), not the content of their speech. The difference is crucial.
To take things to an extreme, if I say "all XXXX should be killed", that's very different from actually killing all members of the XXXX group, or even plotting to do so.
So you want law to protect people that say "all X should be killed", then X is not demonstrably super violent/intolerant in the first place?
Let's say someone campaigns that all people that have gay sex should be killed: do you want this "speech" protected?
Well: I dont. That's why I think "intolerance of the intolerant" is good. Most law books in developed democracies agree with me. White supremacists, racists, fascists, extreme wahabists/salafits dont. They want to incite hatred/violence (to non-violent/tolerant people). I'd say shut 'm down and/or dont give platform.
We have a number of tiny fringe groups like this in the US, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, which would surely be illegal in most of Europe. I will defend their full right to speech so I can have my full right to speech.
In Europe, free speech laws shut down leftist activists, not just "white supremacists, racists, fascists, extreme wahabists/salafits". I think this is a strawman and an idealistic vision of being able to control speech fairly. One of the biggest active groups is the IHRA, a Zionist organization. The IHRA consists of 31 member nations including the United States, Canada, Australia, France, England, Germany, and twenty-six other European countries.
This has become a big problem in Germany for Palestinian/Muslim activists who are critical of Israel. Curtailing free speech is a slippery slope.
Now, perhaps the AfD will be banned in Germany, as it has been placed under so-called "Verfassungsschütz beobachtung", an agency that protects the German constitution. Should it be criminal to identify as a communist or nationalist in Germany? What comes after that — perhaps it should be criminal to be a Jew or Muslim or Christian, given the hateful teachings of the Torah, Quran, and Bible?
A political party may be banned in Germany, as in: You cannot vote for them any more. For that to happen, they have to be hostile against fundamental parts of the constitution. That is division of powers, free development of the individual, independence of courts and stuff like that. Only then a ban might be even considered.
And it is still fully legal to be against these things, tweet about them or whatever.
This is to -protect- Jews, Muslims and Christians, because as was so colourfully demonstrated in Germany 33-45 it is very easy to run a platform striving to destroy these values within a democratic framework. (Similar to what the Free Speech Paradox is about)
There is no slippery slope here, and your argument that there is either bad faith or extremely uniformed.
> > By accusing Muhammad of paedophilia, [E.S.] had merely sought to defame him, without providing evidence that his primary sexual interest in Aisha had been her not yet having reached puberty or that his other wives or concubines had been similarly young. In particular, [E.S.] had disregarded the fact that the marriage with Aisha had continued until the Prophet’s death, when she had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty.
To which the author rightly responds:
> Having sex with a child isn’t pedophilia, in other words, if the child’s prepubescence is not your biggest turn-on, or if you also have sex with adults, or if you continue having sex after the child reaches maturity. (Am I alone in finding the Austrian court’s reasoning offensive?
Just look at a map of blasphemy laws in Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law). Germany is on par with Yemen, Oman, Turkey, Indonesia, Myanmar... This is not a good thing to have in common with those countries.
I maintain that the government should never hold the right of censure. It is a slippery slope. Given the ECHR rules, it's quite possible criticism of Islam will be fully illegal in the next 10 years. This is dangerous.
The Muhammad story is about Austria (which I did not discuss and do not know a lot about). I don't know much about the religious issue at hand either, but the possibility of getting fined 500€ for accusing people of paedophilia if your claim does not hold does not strike me as such horrendous. Isn't this slander in the US and illegal as well?
How is Germany on par with the countries you listed? You may not disturb public peace with speech and not insult people. Example is a dude who printed "The Holy Quran" on toilet paper. Nothing wrong with enforcing human decency via the law. Such insults is also literally what Nazis did in the first stage of the holocaust. Looking at the countries this is supposed to be on par with: Yemen uses blasphemy laws to imprison establishment enemies. Oman is not even on the list. Turkey is extra ironic because there was a comedian who made a parody of the Turkish government and Germany had a diplomatic crisis because Germany refused to do something against it (obv. totally on par). Myanmar put a guy in jail for wearing Buddha headphones. Indonesia's mention is so brief I guess you could say the law sounds similar.
Dann haben wir haben ganz verschiedene Weltbilder.
The right to religious criticism should be absolute.
The reason I bring up the Austrian case is because itw was upheld by the ECHR, which Germany also defers to. To defend the woman in that case from the ECHR's deranged ruling: Scholars estimate that Mohammed married Aisha, his youngest wife, when she was only 6. If that is not paedophilia, I don't know what is.
You bring up libel laws in the US. Historically, they have had a very, very high burden of proof. Only oligarchal authoritarians like Trump try to expand their reach. Libel cases are also exceedingly rare, and if they are brought to court, they are brought to court as a civil matter. And, to top it off, criticism or slander of a figure who is:
- Dead
- Partly mythologized
- A religious figure
is completely fair game under the US doctrine of free speech and religious freedom. In the US I would be just as free to say "Jesus was a gay man" or "Mohammed was schizophrenic" as anything else, and in my opinion this is the proper approach. Anyone should also be allowed to print the text of the Quran on toilet paper or burn the Bible or deface the Talmud — why the hell should that be illegal???
Noam Chomsky (who is an extremely prominent Jewish-American scholar and linguist), is one of the staunchest supporters of free speech, from a leftist position. He even made efforts to defend a French Holocaust denier (holocaust denial is also not something I believe should be illegal). I would recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oV42OMQoE if you would like to see more on that specific case.
If you take a look of the depicted world map, you'll see what I was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#/media/File:Blas.... What Germany shares in common with the other countries I named is that blasphemy is a potentially imprisonable offence.
I strongly believe that there are many things which are done far better in the German/European system:
- Healthcare
- Data privacy
- Taxation
- Criminal prosecution/the prison system
- etc.
but there are a few things about the American system which I ascribe extreme value to, chiefly the right to freedom of speech.
I say all of this as a dual German-American citizen myself.
> Should it be criminal to identify as a communist or nationalist in Germany?
It seems somewhat likely that it'll become illegal to identify as a communist in the US, since, as of two days ago [1], Communist Party members are no longer allowed to enter the country.
What if they spread their ideas via proselyting and convert more people to their way of thinking, causing abortion centers to close and gay marriage to become illegal? Should that be allowed?
It's not just a saying, the pen is truly mightier than the sword.
Hitler never physically dragged a jew into a gas chamber. After 1933 he never shot someone or so much as brawled with anyone. Yet it was only words, his words, his speech, or ink on a paper, that compelled millions of people to commit some of the greatest atrocities in modern history.
Words can obviously be a more powerful thing than actions. In another example, if someone is depressed or suicidal, and they are close to you, you can probably make them kill themselves with words alone, if you choose them correctly.
Hitler's orders had an extremely clear and well-traced direct effect on the physical world, borne out in the tragedies you mention. He could therefore be tried for war crimes. His actions were not free speech, they were military orders. This is not an argument against freedom of speech.
The first thing any dictator does is begin to curtail the rights of their citizenry. The first right to go is the right to free speech.
Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech. Recruitment and instructional videos are speech. Assange is speech, but, he wasn't a journalist with protections for handling secret information. Copyright used to have a limited term before it dropped in to the public domain where it would become speech.
These are all different things with their own problems.
A video is a form of expression that falls under speech for all intents and purposes. There is no general caveat to freedom of speech which states that one cannot create a video of some illegal act. Child pornography seems to be the only exception in the US.
Further, metaphysically, 'physical acts' such as burning flags fall under freedom of expression, and all physical actions are themselves expressive. We prohibit child abuse because it is abuse, not because it is a physical act and therefore not speech.
The expression of copyrighted material, likewise, is speech. Disney is exercising its right to free speech by releasing a movie, even if that movie falls under copyright. Just as in the case of child porn, copying and/or distributing such media is a restriction on speech, albeit a widely accepted one.
To me, there is no way to argue that child porn and unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material isn't a kind of speech, or at least a kind of expression. It is absolutely speech, just as sharing a video of a murder or theft is speech, and just as sharing some public domain music is speech, and it is also speech that most people agree should be restricted.
Your point about child abuse is ridiculous. We prohibit child abuse precisely because it is a physical act. If I said "I will whip my child 50 times", and didn't do it, that would not be child abuse. It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.
You make the faulty presumption that speech itself can be a form of abuse. This is where free speech absolutists such as myself would disagree. Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.
To argue that child pornography is a form of speech is rather ridiculous, if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words". A form of expression, sure, but there are limits on forms of expression. I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.
>It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.
Agreed, so being a physical act seems to be necessary for its prohibition. But we're not talking about child abuse, we're talking about the creation and distribution of child abuse videos, i.e. child pornography. These are two separate crimes.
>Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.
People can absolutely be abused by speech, even in the common meaning of the word. Spousal and child abuse often happens through speech. Teachers may abuse their students through speech. Cyberbullying is widely regarded as a form of abuse through speech. Threats are themselves speech. If speech is so important as to have no real-world consequences, what makes freedom of speech such an important principle?
> if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words"
Freedom of speech (or more accurately, expression) law is much wider than this, and applies to, say, artistic works in which not a single word is spoken, and it also applies to burning flags or silently protesting. There is no need for a word to be spoken, or even a concrete thought - speech can be purely emotive, or a command, or a shopping list, too. Child pornography can easily be considered artistic. The fact that it is art, and therefore expression, is irrelevant to illegalizing it.
>I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.
The same law that protects freedom of expression also protects freedom of speech. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are two sides of the same coin. You're noticing that not all physical acts count as speech, and this is certainly true for child abuse, stabbing people, or torching buildings. However, in general, it is not true for videos depicting those things, with the exception of child porn.
Obviously this is probably the most egregious and disgusting form of criminality out there, so it's an important issue to deal with. I'm not sure what the proper solution is, but what we have now seems to work, given its extremely limited and well-defined scope.
I say movies of such acts. That's not the act itself. See Japan where comics that show sexual abuse of "young looking individuals" are freely distributed.
> These are all different things with their own problems.
> You're mixing up a lot of things.
No, they are all current limitations to free speech encoded in law. I mean to say (please re-read my comment) that "true free speech" already does not exist (just like "truly free markets" dont).
> Recruitment and instructional videos are speech.
Try massively sharing those to the wider public: I'm curious how long you stay free or your endeavors remain uninterrupted. Lol.
A manga that depicts serious child abuse that turned the author into a porn star. It's written by herself. Maybe she shouldn't be allowed to express herself and hide it. We can all then live a happy fantasy where everyone is a good person in any depiction.
My first thought when reading the manga, how can we stop this?
Suffice to say, I didn't enjoy it one bit but I never thought this should be censored.
There are many similar manga that depicts all sorts of stuff. Some of them written by the people which were unfortunate.
It's also evident you don't care about the medium because you used the word comic.
Censorship of evil acts was rampant in the history. People didn't want to admit what others were doing. There are broader issues if people are pushed to the extreme by media. Why would someone join a terrorist group after watching one of their videos? There must be something else causing the problem. The videos are a symptom, not a cause.
Last, I have consumed media of both your examples. It didn't turn me into a child abuser or a terrorist. I want to help make world a safer place for children and terrorism free more than before. I want to stop it so it stops get depicted on its own.
Incitement of violence and abuse is already illegal. I am not sure what your point is then. Your first comment paints a broad stroke. Please be more concise when talking about censoring heavy handed topics because otherwise you may be causing a chilling effect.
There are limits in every country for free speech. It's usually images of child abuse, threats of direct and imminent harm to specific people, etc. I just did a post about this:
Remember, at one time, saying homosexuality was okay was considered dangerous, hateful, flawed and needed to be banned. Saying god didn't exist could get you expelled from a university, excommunicated from your community or killed.
You only view some speech as okay today because you don't understand what some people went through to fight for that idea.
Assange is clearly free speech. However leaking that information is a crime if you're a member of the US military (hence Manning; maliciously prosecuted by Obama, and then also symbolically freed by Obama).
The NYT published information about Trump's taxes. That's free speech. The Person who leaked it committed a Federal crime. (technically NYT may be guilty of a crime here too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvYNfsAgJY)
I would argue that your argument is nice in theory, nonsense in practicality.
Who decides what speech is hateful or violent and should be limited? You, me, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un ?
How easy is it to label something as hateful and ban it? Very easy.
That's the flaw in your argument, the human element.
The revolution to create America had violent and hateful speech towards the British crown.
Private companies can do what they want, but in public sphere the parent poster was right free speech exists to enable dissent, not support the status quo.
> I would argue that your argument is nice in theory, nonsense in practicality.
Well, it already is encoded in law. Most countries prohibit hate speech and/or inciting violence, while most people consider that free speech is protected in those places. So it's already practical.
> Who decides what speech is hateful or violent and should be limited? You, me, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un ?
This gets coded in law and jurisprudence and gets enforced by police. Just like any other unlawful acts. Again: this is already how it works in most developed democracies.
> How easy is it to label something as hateful and ban it? Very easy.
See my other comment about pesticide. Please answer that question. Inciting hate/violence is quite easy to detect in practice.
> That's the flaw in your argument, the human element.
Please explain. I dont get it. It's all down to culture, true. But that does not prevent it from being pretty much universal.
> The revolution to create America had violent and hateful speech towards the British crown.
Yes. Which was behaving intolerant and violent in the first place!! Just like now with police brutality in the US: so much violence from them that expressing/inciting hate toward them becomes acceptable in my book.
> Private companies can do what they want, but in public sphere the parent poster was right free speech exists to enable dissent, not support the status quo.
Dissent have no need to exist when there is no oppression/violence/exploitation/marginalization. Hence dissent is the best example of "intolerance of the intolerant". Thanks.
> Just like now with police brutality in the US: so much violence from them that expressing/inciting hate toward them becomes acceptable in my book.
So it is you, personally, that is the arbiter of what is and isn't OK? Does your own repeated expression of intolerance for the fundamentals of free speech in this thread similarly allow me to mark "expressing/inciting hate" toward you as "acceptable" as well? Where does this kind of reasoning end?
> Well, it already is encoded in law. Most countries prohibit hate speech and/or inciting violence, while most people consider that free speech is protected in those places.
Depends. Germany for example takes a similar route as Reddit does. If you're Turkish, you're allowed to say "Germans are a dog race" when the German parliament recognize the fact that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians (hey, fun fact, they're re-activating their ISIS-buddies to try again right now).
If a German said "Turks are a dog race", they'd be prosecuted.
Hate speech isn't outlawed, it's majority hate speech that's outlawed.
This is the exact problem I'm talking about. Millions of people all are arbitraily classified as Germans or Turks just because they were born in a geographical region... most of them did not participate and had zero connection to any genocides.
But their free speech can be infringed upon simply because they've been labeled a certain way by other human beings, no matter how accurate or inaccurate.
As much as we would like to censor speech that sounds horrible to us you can't because it's such a slippery slope.
Painting an opposing view as "utterly ridiculous" is not the best way to start an argument. But moving on.
It's always interesting to see that, when actually probing deeper, almost no-one believes in truly unrestricted free speech, even people who proclaim themselves as free speech champions (such as yourself). For example, can I slander you? If I own a newspaper, can I try to convince my readers that you're a pedophile? Can I tell someone to commit murder for me (after all, it's just speech, it was the other guy who pulled the trigger)? Can I tell a suicidal person that they're worthless, nobody will ever like them, and they should just kill themselves? Can I lie under oath? Can I psychologically abuse my children? If you responded "no" to any of these questions, you also don't believe in absolute free speech, now it's just a matter of arguing where to draw the line.
I really do not see what your point is. Of course there are things that are and should be illegal to say — but none of them are really politically relevant. Protecting free speech is about protecting dissent and the expression of political and related (e.g. artistic) ideas. Perhaps you can contrive of situations where your examples overlap with dissent. I guess the main one will be inciting violence, and in this case the "paradox" isn't entirely ridiculous. The problem is that it can be used as a very convenient justification for the suppression of entire heterogeneous groups. Which is why the violence itself is what should be illegal, and not the speech.
Libel laws have historically had an extremely high burden of proof. The right wing is usually the first to try to expand these laws (as with Trump, maybe Peter Thiel/Gawker). Libel is also a civil offence if it is one, which again, is extremely hard to prove.
Telling someone to commit murder for you is an example of speech directly inciting violent action, so no, that would be a criminal act.
It's iffy whether telling someone they should commit suicide is free speech or not. Given that suicide is illegal in most societies, it would probably be illegal in the same way directly inciting violent action is, though the subtleties of the case matter.
No, lying under oath is a violation of a contract. That is outside the realm of free speech because you willingly and knowingly restrict your freedom of speech to testify under oath.
Psychologically abusing your children — again, a very fine line, with a very high burden of proof. Psychological abuse is almost never punishable unless it crosses over into the physical world, which can also include things like curtailing access to proper nutrition, etc. But at that point, it's not a matter of free speech, but of child neglect.
To piggyback on this, here is a quote from Karl Popper (the "discoverer" of the Paradox of Tolerance):
> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.
With t_D it was clearly not possible to counter them with rational arguments, because all users who went against their moderators' views were immediately banned from the sub.
When one sides always takes the intellectual high ground, the other side can go continually lower, all while amassing significant cult-like follower ship. Alphabet Soup, machinegun argumentation, at hominem, gaslighting, oversimplification, non sequitur. It does not end in free society prevailing.
>as long as we can counter them by rational argument
I don't know if y'all are new to the internet, but I've been here since around 1990 and we ration argument hasn't done any good. I feel like a lot of these ideas around speech are ones that came from people who were used to arguing with other intelligent people. When the unwashed masses are involved, rational argument doesn't work at all. Some people understand this, which is why people like Trump can get elected. It wasn't as if there was a failure of making rational arguments to counter him. The average person just does not care/understand what a rational argument is.
> When the unwashed masses are involved, rational argument doesn't work at all
I believe this is an extremely illiberal viewpoint. Someone who can make this argument could well be a monarchist, fascist, or totalitarian at heart. The foundation of a democracy is the belief that the "unwashed masses" can hold informed views on politics, and at the very least should have the right to.
Also, the average person DOES care what a rational argument is. A significant amount of Trump's 2016 voter base understood him to be a populist to the left of Hillary. His campaign rhetoric of isolationism and ending the wars spoke to large swaths of the population, which swept him into office.
Now, all the issues you point out are important, and must be tackled, but I don't think the right way to tackle them is to label groups of people with a broad brush.
If we understand that people are capable of being informed, we should ask: "how can people be informed>", and "what can we do to make sure that informing people in an unbiased way is possible?". I don't think social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit have asked themselves these questions, at least not with any sincerity.
I think HN is a great example of the principles of (nearly) free speech in action. Look at the discussion we're having now!
You can start by not referring to the public at large as ‘unwashed masses.’ With rhetoric like that commonplace among the media elite, are you really surprised Trump won?
Clearly I must have misunderstood something, then. Reddit's suppression is obviously an anomaly, and in actuality the POTUS and his followers are dictating the boundaries of acceptable speech via their domination of academia, the media, and tech giants.
Yeah, but r/thedonald did not provide free speech to the other side. Don't try to tell me it was some bastion of free speech that could be brought up as an example of such.
>is just a bad cope for people who truly do not believe in free speech
I don't think this is the case; there are theories which are highly skeptical of free speech, and they are easy to turn to; one doesn't have to give up much in order to be a free speech skeptic. Further, even in the United States, the country with the fewest restrictions of free speech, there are still several kinds of speech prohibited by law. I'm not aware of any theory, liberal or not, which argues for purely unrestricted speech. There are always caveats in every theory proposed, whether it relates to incitement of violence, child pornography, threatening letters, hate speech, or pornography.
It's good that you acknowledge your (or so I assume) skepticism of the concept as such. Pretending that the exceptions which do not relate to political speech are relevant or even interesting is almost in bad faith, however. Free speech is about political speech, and the expression of controversial views. Things which you cannot say which are non-political are curiosities, things for lawyers to get excited about. They are of no concern to those who actually care about freedom of speech and thought as such. But "hate speech", which you offhandedly list among other largely irrelevant forms of expression, should most certainly be covered by any serious definition of free speech. And that is the actual reason for why many find free speech so repulsive — it requires them to accept the expression of political views which are inimical to their own. This is of course not exclusive to that particular form of speech — I think history can provide plenty of similar examples.
>It's good that you acknowledge your (or so I assume) skepticism of the concept as such.
Personally, I'm skeptical only to a philosophical level, as I am critical of both liberalism and the state, and in particular how the state would exercise its blunt power if free speech protections were weakened. In practical terms, I'm in favour of freedom of speech.
> Pretending that the exceptions which do not relate to political speech are relevant or even interesting is almost in bad faith, however.
My point was more to get accross the idea that there are political theories of free speech (actually implemented or not) which (1) have what is called a "free speech principle", that is, an explicit endorsement and guarantee, to some or any extent, of the right to speak freely (2) enshrine this principle into a law, or suggest that it should be enshrined.
>Things which you cannot say which are non-political are curiosities, things for lawyers to get excited about.
They're also interesting in philosophical thought experiments and determining the value and extents of free speech - most imporantly in the idea of consistency. If threatening letters are disallowed, for instance, what implications does this have, speaking in terms of principles, for more "interesting" sorts of speech? It may have no implications (according to one theory of justification) but it may have far-reaching implications for another.
>But "hate speech", which you offhandedly list among other largely irrelevant forms of expression, should most certainly be covered by any serious definition of free speech.
My point in listing the exceptions was to say that if there is some exception, any exception, it means the rule is not absolute, and caveats can be made under certain circumstances. For example, incitement to immediate and direct violence is often an "uninteresting" exception. This is because violence is a kind of harm. However, the law also recognizes various other forms of harm (such as psychological harms). Which harms should or shouldn't be included, and why?
The question that 1A scholars and political philosophers have tried to answer is what, precisely, the exceptions should be, what the existing exceptions may allow scope for (copyright infringement? child pornography? cyberbullying? obscenity? defamation? - by no means uninteresting), and in general, whether we should have a fundamental law to guarantee freedom of speech at all. I think they're valid questions, and I think that too often we take ideas such as free speech allowing hate speech (however those two things are defined[0]), or free speech being worth the cost of hate speech, for granted.
[0] To paraphrase Susan Brison, these are hard to define. That's okay, we can talk about it. We don't have to write the law before we can discuss whether there could be alaw.
Sorry,free speech does not mean that private companies have to provide their resources and time to support your hate speech. It means that you, on public property, using your own resources, have the freedom to say what you want without reprisal from the government. But even that should have limits, especially when your “free speech” limits the right to liberty and prosperity of others (most isms).
The first half of your statement is true but irrelevant here as the controversy touched on in the OP is that reddit as an organization _used to_ purport to stand for free speech.
Thedonald existed on reddit for quite some time and during that period, free speech survived relatively intact. Since the banning of thedonald along with hundreds of other subs, free speech has suffered, not improved, inconsistent with your hypothesis.
Also, "the paradox of tolerance" can be trotted out to justify just about any banning or censoring of someone you don't like
Nope, it specifically covers "preaching of intolerance", that's not "just someone's speech you dont like".
Lets say I speak about gardening without pesticides, and someone with a pesticide factory does not like that speech. How do you think the "the paradox of tolerance" can be used to shut me up in this case? You can't. Case closed.
I was referring to the health of free speech across the site in general, I wasn't making a defense of thedonald. And 90% of political subs on reddit blatantly ban people from $opposite_side, that's just how reddit is
> I do not imply for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would be most unwise.
> the intolerant using violence to physically make it impossible for the tolerant to exist.
Are the KKK and some extreme white supremacist org not exactly that?
They want a sub group of society to be removed, and have shown to not shun violence.
Being intolerant to these hate groups is VERY NORMAL to me, and sometime we need law help platform them. It get really sad when a president seems to kinda like these groups.
If any extremists act on their ideas using violence, then of course they would count. Otherwise, tolerance of negative ideas is a part of the ‘free society’ package. Merely having unpopular or wrong opinions is not equivalent to preventing the tolerant from existing.
If that majority has been oppressing a minority then I find a little push back to that majority acceptable. Anyone should be able to address and counter oppression/exploitation. Hating the oppressor falls in line with my expectations.
All those political bannnings by admins aren't really the big issue (and only relatively recent). The big issue re: reddit and free speech has to do with things that Reddit corp has trouble monetizing and putting ads beside. Sure, some of the bans might come from a partisan political place but the vast majority of reddit admin actions are just that of corporate drones protecting corporate image in order to make more money.
Centralized corporate run proprietary systems will always end up like this. It's the circle of web life.
Yep, an interesting idea, and definitely something worth thinking about and discussing.
The problem is that people like the GC pretend that this is some sort of Universal Law which has been proved to be true, and therefore use it as a carte blanche to "weed out intolerance".
Unfortunately it is not a such. It's just an idea, unproven and untested.
Though it's also worth noting that I highly doubt Karl Popper would've agreed (based on his various clarifications) with almost any situation where it has been used to justify silencing "the intolerant" on the internet in the last decade.
