The last two sentences say that censorship is not a functional solution to the problem and that we need to find something better, so I’d say very definitely no.
I’m not the person you responded to, of course, but I don’t see how you could’ve read their post and thought they were advocating for inescapable censorship.
It's not a gripe, it's a reality. I have no horse in this race other than the systemic outcome.
Censorship (or official annotation, let's call it) was an attempt to curb the tribalism or put some controls on the spread of it; I'm certainly saying that it will not work.
I can't imagine alternative solutions at this time, but we need to. It will likely be some sort of system we can't yet imagine, and it will likely need to be at the societal level of mutual agreement. Think less of controlling speech, more "wow cars can kill people, we should probably agree to some rules around driving them around."
I expect things will get much worse before those types of systems are put in place.
By saying I have no horse in the race, I'm saying that I'm trying to take an objective viewpoint on what is happening and what impact that has, not that I have no opinions or moral positions on the matter. Keep those separate.
Keep in mind also that censorship is a government matter: the government should not censor people; that's enshrined in the 1st amendment. But private platforms and companies have every right to design their communications systems the way they see fit, and I expect them to do so ethically with societal impact in mind.
I expect soon the government will need to enter into this race and take some wider action, but I don't know what that will be, nor how it will play with our constitution. It's going to be a wild ride as the psychological nuclear weapons we've created duke it out with the individual rights principles we've laid in stone hundreds of years ago. I can only hope we design some systemic solution that does not require that fight to take place.
And just to give an idea of the solution type I have in mind: right now the social network systems we have are optimized for addiction and engagement of content, and quick viral spread of content with minimal thought. Could we instead design systems that are more about human communication and understanding? Could we alter our existing platforms to tune down the addictive tribal dopamine hit in their nature? I bet that would have a large impact.
In other words, simply censoring speech without considering the design of the technology would be foolish. The platforms, not the speech, are the problem.
No. I'm saying that censorship isn't the long-term solution here, because it's untenable from a human rights perspective as well as simply a functional perspective (people don't like it).
We'll need to find something better, but it's difficult to imagine what shape that'll take at this point.
then I would say your vision is incoherent since you obviously aren't for small pockets "absolute free speech" but aren't willing to commit yourself to controlling speech ubiquitously which would be necessary to prevent the former.
I would say you're not looking wide enough here. Absolute free speech isn't a problem in isolation by any means; but there are impacts to the ability of that to grow into self-reinforcing belief that doesn't match reality. One appears harmless, like a single alpha particle; but the other is an impact akin to an alpha particle chain reaction, or nuclear explosion. Similar impact on society, I would argue.
Could we conceive of a way not to control speech, but to inform or educate or provide information in context--or do something, anything so that it doesn't have the power to self-reinforce and create psychological weapons of mass destruction? What if it's the design of our current social networks around instant engagement and addictive content that's the root of the problem? Could we change the nature and design of that platform without restricting the speech on it whatsoever?
I have to believe it's possible. I'm under no illusion that I know the answer, or that the answer is even something that we have a name for yet. This is not contradictory or incoherent, it's just yet unknown.
While I disagree with the GP, I think you are drawing a false dichotomy and there are multiple conceptions of free speech besides the negative, non-interferential, liberal one that would permit limits on some speech without "ubiquitous" control.
Take, for instance, limits on total expenditures on political speech over $1,000,000.
No. The post explicitly said that censorship isn't solving the problem and we need a better approach.
The problem is the asymmetry between bad-faith and good-faith action. In tightly-connected local societies that asymmetry is generally countered by reputation effects and limited scope of bad-faith action. In the worst cases, it's countered by societies being small enough that even when bad-faith ideas take over their spread is limited.
Technology has broken down the limitations. Information is spread by entities with no history or reputation at all (Twitter bots, for instance). The spread of bad-faith ideas is no longer limited spatially. The result of this is that obvious scams like QAnon (created to sell merchandise) thriving because there are now mechanisms to bypass all the natural limitations that used to constrain them throughout centuries of history.
Censorship is kind of like slapping a tourniquet on it. It may stop some of the worst symptoms, but it has a lot of terrible side effects and doesn't work that well anyway.
The biggest advances that need to be made are in recognizing that there is a problem in the first place, and that a "marketplace of ideas" is not equipped to deal with asymmetric bad actors. I don't know what the solution is, but "marketplace of ideas" has proven insufficient to deal with the real world. We need people to be looking for something better instead of claiming there is no problem.
