Ability to speak on the internet

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xen
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Location: NH, Netherlands

Ability to speak on the internet

Post by xen » Thu Aug 03, 2017 10:07 pm

I just want to rant a little here.

Back in the day all forums used to be functional forums like this. Today, many times not only has the software been "upgraded" to something non-functional (new visual styles that are very hard to use) but also in many places freedom of speech has gone by the wayside and moderators do their utmost best to micromanage every interaction.

For instance on Quora you are not allowed to give any life advice answers that does not coincide with the views of the moderators. If you tell someone to annoy their mother, your content might be blocked or moderated.

I recently posted on the Huffington a comment about how the article and the commenters were wrong and that a Japanese version of the same story including Japanese language comments showed a different side of the story. The comment was deleted.

Facebook is a place that gets many people in trouble including myself in the past and so I do not use it. People pretend to be your friend but they can any day betray you.

MSN and similar apps are gone. The only things that remain are Whatsapp which needs a mobile number and smart phone, including the mobile number of the one you are talking to. Kik is senseless, Skype is horrid for a chat application, Discord is not all that great I think due to lacking receipt notifications of any kind (will happily let you send a message that will never be received, and Skype does the same), Instagram is not a great chat app and requires a good online presence on that platform.

YouTube, the most important of all here, in this message, routinely censors and blocks comments (without telling you it did that) called shadow-banning or ghost-banning where your comments will simply not show up for anyone but yourself. How do you find out? For each and every freaking comment you have to log in to another account and check there.

I have never excessively spammed YouTube but the problems start if you are on YouTube more than usual and write a larger number of comments in a few days. Then suddenly your account enters a sort of flagged state and almost nothing you write is posted anymore.

Creating a new account alleviates it as long as you do not use the same IP address for both, or I am sure they actually link them together pretty quickly.

So I wake up in the morning and write a very short and simple message. It gets hidden from everyone.

I do the same on the other account. It gets hidden from everyone too.

Completely silenced.

Completely pointless.

It has happened to me before and I had to delete my entire google account (all of them) and recreate a new one, then it was okay for several months.

But that also means re-uploading everything to YouTube etc.

I simply have no place left to speak.

Except here I guess, I don't know.

MikeC
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Re: Ability to speak on the internet

Post by MikeC » Fri Aug 04, 2017 5:45 am

Hey Xen, you're always welcome to chat here! :wink:

Interesting observations & experience. I don't do much posting except in niche topic forums which continue to have a more open atmosphere & practice, so can't really confirm all you say -- but I don't doubt it. The Internet has moved so far from where it was in 1990 when I first stumbled on.

An Aside: The globalization (in the economic sense) of the web was inevitable. IMO, it follows the pattern for mass media established a hundred years ago when radio first began. Radio broadcasting in the US was initially begun by tube manufacturers to give kit radio hobbyists something to listen to with their newly made radios. This was apparently a good business model. The first commercial ever was a 40-min monologue about real estate on Long Island in the 1900s, the fee for which was something like $20, iirc. By 1920, ad-based radio in the US had clearly begun. Post-war, TV simply followed the network systems already set up by radio in previous decades. The web seemed initially to break the control of the centralized networks but large corporations still rule -- Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, etc...

xen
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Re: Ability to speak on the internet

Post by xen » Fri Aug 04, 2017 7:10 am

Yeah. Thanks.

This site existed in the days when the web was still normal, and that doesn't have to be more than 10 years ago or even shorter. It started some 4-5 years ago.

But I have been locked up somewhere for a year. When in 2014 everything was still fine for me, but I already had the feeling things would go haywire. Because I was locked up and have... been damaged since, I haven't been able to develop the stuff that I wanted to use myself.

Ie. I wanted to go back to the systems and atmosphere of the 80s (that I never experienced myself) and recreate, like, in that sense, or create anew, a new chat environment that would be more underground than what we have today.

Whatsapp pushed for encryption for end users and this has endangered encryption for everyone.

So basically I felt in 2014 that I needed to develop something new because MSN was being phased out. But I never got there.

The consequence has been that I haven't had platforms to talk on ever since.

I failed to build my own house and now I have nowhere to live ;-).

Reachable
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Re: Ability to speak on the internet

Post by Reachable » Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:47 am

MikeC wrote: An Aside: The globalization (in the economic sense) of the web was inevitable. IMO, it follows the pattern for mass media established a hundred years ago when radio first began. Radio broadcasting in the US was initially begun by tube manufacturers to give kit radio hobbyists something to listen to with their newly made radios. This was apparently a good business model. The first commercial ever was a 40-min monologue about real estate on Long Island in the 1900s, the fee for which was something like $20, iirc. By 1920, ad-based radio in the US had clearly begun. Post-war, TV simply followed the network systems already set up by radio in previous decades. The web seemed initially to break the control of the centralized networks but large corporations still rule -- Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, etc...
I recall learning once that the U.S. was the only country to initially set up television broadcasting to be funded by advertising.


The OP's experience would appear to be more severe than that of most others, but even so, Web censorship is a problem. How much that has to do with the reliance on advertisers for support is hard to tell, for at this point the personal values of the leaders of Google, Facebook, etc. and the tyranny of their advertisers would be difficult to separate.

Bigoted speech should really not be censored. Allowing it to be expressed allows it to be debated (and vented, perhaps, preventing more severe behavior), and no one's opinion is changed by not allowing him to speak. But what Web sites need to watch out for is libel or potential libel, unfounded allegations against individuals -- because that can cause real damage. Bigoted speech is only going to appear in topics and forums for which it is relevant; you're not likely, for instance, to see it in a thread discussing the merits of various heatsinks.

The precursor to this was call-in talk radio, where any dim-witted individual could get widespread public airing of their opinion which otherwise would not have been allowed to appear in print or other media. But getting on the air was largely a matter of luck and very limited, and the difference with the Web is that every single user can now post to every single topic.

There have been times when my well thought out and carefully written posts in various places have been deleted simply because they encroached on sensitive territory, and that's a shame. Not only is it frustrating for me, but, frankly, it also means that less light is being shed.

In case the OP doesn't know, there is --or was -- a new Twitter-type operation that I think is called "Gab" (I'm averse to even looking it up to verify). It's mostly right wing and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but they don't censor what users post.

Anthony2
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Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2020 5:48 am

Re: Ability to speak on the internet

Post by Anthony2 » Sat Jun 13, 2020 5:53 am

xen wrote:
Thu Aug 03, 2017 10:07 pm
I just want to rant a little here.

Back in the day all forums used to be functional forums like this. Today, many times not only has the software been "upgraded" to something non-functional (new visual styles that are very hard to use) but also in many places freedom of speech has gone by the wayside and moderators do their utmost best to micromanage every interaction.

For instance on Quora you are not allowed to give any life advice answers that does not coincide with the views of the moderators. If you tell someone to annoy their mother, your content might be blocked or moderated.

I recently posted on the Huffington a comment about how the article and the commenters were wrong and that a Japanese version of the same story including Japanese language comments showed a different side of the story. The comment was deleted.

Facebook is a place that gets many people in trouble including myself in the past and so I do not use it. People pretend to be your friend but they can any day betray you.

MSN and similar apps are gone. The only things that remain are FM Whatsapp which needs a mobile number and smart phone, including the mobile number of the one you are talking to. Kik is senseless, Skype is horrid for a chat application, Discord is not all that great I think due to lacking receipt notifications of any kind (will happily let you send a message that will never be received, and Skype does the same), Instagram is not a great chat app and requires a good online presence on that platform.

YouTube, the most important of all here, in this message, routinely censors and blocks comments (without telling you it did that) called shadow-banning or ghost-banning where your comments will simply not show up for anyone but yourself. How do you find out? For each and every freaking comment you have to log in to another account and check there.

I have never excessively spammed YouTube but the problems start if you are on YouTube more than usual and write a larger number of comments in a few days. Then suddenly your account enters a sort of flagged state and almost nothing you write is posted anymore.

Creating a new account alleviates it as long as you do not use the same IP address for both, or I am sure they actually link them together pretty quickly.

So I wake up in the morning and write a very short and simple message. It gets hidden from everyone.

I do the same on the other account. It gets hidden from everyone too.

Completely silenced.

Completely pointless.

It has happened to me before and I had to delete my entire google account (all of them) and recreate a new one, then it was okay for several months.

But that also means re-uploading everything to YouTube etc.

I simply have no place left to speak.

Except here I guess, I don't know.
no one's opinion is changed by not allowing him to speak. But what Web sites need to watch out for is libel or potential libel, unfounded allegations against individuals -- because that can cause real damage. Bigoted speech is only going to appear in topics and forums

JohnEvans
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Location: USA

Re: Ability to speak on the internet

Post by JohnEvans » Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:39 pm

Hello, xen
xen wrote:
Thu Aug 03, 2017 10:07 pm
Facebook is a place that gets many people in trouble including myself in the past and so I do not use it. People pretend to be your friend but they can any day betray you.
That's not only facebook problem. It's just some humans nature. I'm sure if you have something to tell to this world you'll find your audience which will be willing to listen to you.

TommyJ
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:18 am

Re: Ability to speak on the internet

Post by TommyJ » Fri Dec 04, 2020 6:02 am

JohnEvans wrote:
Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:39 pm
Hello, xen
xen wrote:
Thu Aug 03, 2017 10:07 pm
Facebook is a place that gets many people in trouble including myself in the past and so I do not use it. People pretend to be your friend but they can any day betray you.
That's not only facebook problem. It's just some humans nature. I'm sure if you have something to tell to this world you'll find your audience which will be willing to listen to you.

Yes, this is a very strange problem for a century of development of a huge number of ways of communication. I've come across this lately more often than I would like. I am trying to find a company for myself with which I can discuss some interesting space news, but I am often censored or banned by moderators.
But I'm a little person who just wants to talk. And bans do not happen to me as often as to those who express the "wrong" opinion about certain events. It is wrong, however, only from the point of view of the moderators.
It would seem that we live in the era of freedom of speech. But it's not such freedom, it seems ...

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