Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Friday August 30 2019, @12:08PM   Printer-friendly

Mike Masnick, usually editor for Techdirt, has written an essay on a technological approach to preserving free speech online in spite of the direction things have been heading in regards to locked-in platforms. He proposes moving back to an Internet where protocols dominate.

This article proposes an entirely different approach—one that might seem counterintuitive but might actually provide for a workable plan that enables more free speech, while minimizing the impact of trolling, hateful speech, and large-scale disinformation efforts. As a bonus, it also might help the users of these platforms regain control of their privacy. And to top it all off, it could even provide an entirely new revenue stream for these platforms.

That approach: build protocols, not platforms.

To be clear, this is an approach that would bring us back to the way the internet used to be. The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface. Email used SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Chat was done over IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Usenet served as a distributed discussion system using NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). The World Wide Web itself was its own protocol: HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP.

In the past few decades, however, rather than building new protocols, the internet has grown up around controlled platforms that are privately owned. These can function in ways that appear similar to the earlier protocols, but they are controlled by a single entity. This has happened for a variety of reasons. Obviously, a single entity controlling a platform can then profit off of it. In addition, having a single entity can often mean that new features, upgrades, bug fixes, and the like can be rolled out much more quickly, in ways that would increase the user base.

Earlier on SN:
Re-decentralizing the World-Wide Web (2019)
Decentralized Sharing (2014)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @03:56PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @03:56PM (#887796)

    Try, not using "words" like "facegag", "rddoot", and "twoottar". Then, I might be inclined to read most of your post.

    I'm not a fan of any of these platforms (in fact, my stress levels have plunged and my life improved vastly since I stopped using most of them), nor am I particularly a fan of cutsy derogatory misnames for such entities, but to dismiss the content of what was actually an interesting and on-point post for that reason is even sillier.

    You may not like the presentation, but to dismiss facts and an interesting (and quite valid) argument because you don't like how it's dressed up doesn't hurt the messenger. It just hurts you, because if you do that you never consider important viewpoints, and thus limit your own ability to correlate data, think through, and draw conclusions on a subject that might more closely triangulate reality.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Disagree=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @06:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @06:31PM (#887852)

    It was very hard to read. Speak thine enemy’s name or some such?

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @07:15PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @07:15PM (#887881)

    The presentation is part of the message. Using derogatory misnomers hurts your message in multiple ways. It increases the mental effort your reader has to go through to decipher what you are saying, if they actually get that far. Using it early on also makes it look like immature trolling or reactionary ranting, neither of which is usually informative or insightful, before getting to the meat of the argument. It also speaks to motive as pettiness, and that is also not a sign of a well-thought-out writing. Combine the above with conspiracy theories about the government, and you've just made yourself that much easier to dismiss as inane ramblings before the opportunity to inform.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 01 2019, @03:28AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 01 2019, @03:28AM (#888383)

      The presentation is part of the message. Using derogatory misnomers hurts your message in multiple ways. It increases the mental effort your reader has to go through to decipher what you are saying, if they actually get that far.

      That's subjective. You never know what stupid thing or choice of words will set off some fragile snowflake and increase the mental effort they must expend to read your post. Worrying about it is a waste of time.

      and you've just made yourself that much easier to dismiss as inane ramblings before the opportunity to inform.

      Maybe that says more about the critical thinking skills of the reader than anything else.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 01 2019, @05:37AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 01 2019, @05:37AM (#888400)

        Two scientists know for a fact that the world is going to end and has the evidence to prove it. One tells you calmly, on television as part of an international broadcast shown simultaneously around the world. The other tells you while running down the sidewalk of a public park while screaming at the top of his lungs. Which do you listen to and which do you dismiss as just another mentally-ill individual after the first few sentences?

  • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday August 31 2019, @09:14AM (1 child)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday August 31 2019, @09:14AM (#888163) Journal

    Thanks for saying this.

    I use it as a form of protest and to call attention to how often we say them, that this is marketing, brainwashing in a way.

    What FB, R, T, I, are, are essentially like phone service now. Do you have ATT or Verizon, are you on FB or minds.com. It used to be about who owned the train tracks. This argument is absolutely critical to the understanding of american history, maybe to understanding government itself, it is not trivial or just about the company FB.

    These basic functionalities are undeniably core to the wants, needs and desires of humans on computer networks. The internet started out respecting this, the backbones are basically operated like common carrier and level 3 or sprint lines, who cares, it's all getting copied to the same underground bases for later analysis by our overlords.

    But we now live in several layers of abstraction on top of that, and in this very in your face user layer, some companies are running the same monopolization tricks but on digital steroids. FB is paradigmatic, it's like the standard oil or drew, fisk and gould of our time, except this new thing now has the ability to mass manipulate the population on a second to second basis, and this is all exercised covertly through algorithms and intentional backdoors in convoluted javascript.

    I think we should protest this, if it were 1890 I might be holding a sign blocking the railroad tracks. I think it is a crisis for humanity, and so I am pushing the envelope a little to be loud and clear about where I stand.

    Check out my response to the guy who *just can't stand* to consider my ideas because I don't want to see the word FB 8 times in my comment, I go into it some there too.

    You may notice a pattern in the responses to my comments, I frequently get early completely dismissive comments and incorrect troll moddings...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 31 2019, @06:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 31 2019, @06:58PM (#888287)

      You may notice a pattern in the responses to my comments, I frequently get early completely dismissive comments and incorrect troll moddings...

      If you keep getting the same response to your comments, maybe, just maybe, part of the problem is how you write the comments, not their content.

      This response seems somewhat disingenuous as well. You say you do it purposefully as protest of the names. Yet, your own comment lets many of them sail by unadulterated. The reason why, I suspect, is because at that point of your writing, you were more concerned about making your overarching point. However, protest is the point, so why not fix them or double check? The natural explanation seems to be that you don't actually care about the "name protest" or to draw attention to how they are used, but to take cheap and immature shots at the name. Otherwise, you would have done so in the first place.