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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)


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  • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday August 31 2019, @08:30AM (4 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday August 31 2019, @08:30AM (#888158) Journal

    This is a form of protest and a refusal to assist these companies in their marketing that is now bordering on brainwashing.

    Also, I have worked in the threat intelligence industry, briefly, so you should be aware that nearly every brand name has a private NSA-like network scanning all clearnet content for their brand. Companies like faceb hire actual private spies to harass and follow their opponents around in public. Criticizing any company beyond a certain size is an actual risk of covert violence against you. Pass it on.

    These words are just words I hear way too often, it is also damaging to the psyche and a form of brainwashing to constantly repeat a brand name, any brand name really.

    At this point these main brand names of the (a)social media are so core to our language that it leads easily to the argument that now that this technology exists and everyone uses it to the point we are sick of hearing the word, these institutions not just with a public responsibilty but a core role in human governance. At the moment this has been realized by the elites who already have tons of power and money and 13 year old girls on their yachts, so they are taking advantage of everyone, horrifically, through things like cambridge analytica.

    Did you predict cambridge analysitica? Did you predict the iphone backdoor situation? Did you predict google was tracking people with android maps who opted out of tracking?

    I predicted all of those things. No medals have yet been awarded. But should you not have predicted those things, that means you are living in a delusion where you can trust people you cannot.

    And *those very people* are aided when you repeat their idiotic non-word brandnames over and over and over again.

    If you are unable to come to any of these realizations on your own, then you are in sore shape indeed.

    Language is morphable, humans change language as they use it, it is a sign of intelligence and creativity. Facegag I find appropriate because for most people who use the platform, it essentially shuts down your ability to broadcast. It's a gamed/rigged algorithm that is weaponized against people who anti-capitalist and anti-zionist, among other things. In many cases it is essentially mercenary, it is now a known fact that if you went to a party with Zuckerborg and he liked you, he might have given you access to *everyone* on facegag's private messages.

    Conformity on the other hand can be a sign of multiple things, but I can tell you after ten years of being on reddit, a government or corporate schill agent does exactly what you did, pick out *the one thing* that is most original or unexpected and then point to this one thing and use it to dismiss the entire argument, especially as top response comment, as a way to poison all other reactions to what has been posted.

    If you were not aware of that, glad to inform you, but in every way your post is anti-intellectual and dismissive prior to any real consideration, and if this isn't intentional, then you have a lot of reading to do before you catch up. My website might help. You might want to also try contributing more, running around and nitpicking other peoples' informed and carefully thought out comments essentially by throwing turds is well, makes you look like a turd.

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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday September 02 2019, @04:00PM (3 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Monday September 02 2019, @04:00PM (#888862) Journal

    American Psychological Association on brainwashing
    Main article: APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control

    In 1983, the American Psychological Association (APA) asked Singer to chair a taskforce called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC) to investigate whether brainwashing or coercive persuasion did indeed play a role in recruitment by NRMs. [75] It came to the following conclusion:[76]

            Cults and large group awareness trainings have generated considerable controversy because of their widespread use of deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control. These techniques can compromise individual freedom, and their use has resulted in serious harm to thousands of individuals and families. This report reviews the literature on this subject, proposes a new way of conceptualizing influence techniques, explores the ethical ramifications of deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control, and makes recommendations addressing the problems described in the report.

    On 11 May 1987, the APA's Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) rejected the DIMPAC report because the report "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur", and concluded that "after much consideration, BSERP does not believe that we have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a position on this issue."[77]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing [wikipedia.org]

    I was going to say something about the need for constant repetition of a phrase or word, being needed. Then, I decided to google Brainwashing. Apparently, the APA doesn't even have a position on the topic. Which seems kinda weird to me, for something that would be extremely bad. Unless, it's a load of hogwash, as they say.

    Even, if brainwashing is a thing. Using the names, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. to refer to the entities you're talking about. Shouldn't be detrimental to your cause, if you're protesting specific grievances you have regarding the aforementioned entities. In contrast, your position will be more informative and less outrage speak.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday September 03 2019, @04:20AM (2 children)

      by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday September 03 2019, @04:20AM (#889109) Journal

      I have a lower english standard for forum language. I would not do the same in something that was professional or academic. I note your critique, I won't dismiss it but it does still seem like you don't get why I think it's important. Have you ever heard of culture jamming? adbusters?

      Repeating something over and over, or integrating a brandname as an integral part of your language to describe present reality, is giving that real estate of your mind over to someone else.

      Kleenex and Qtips are too other instances where they have managed this, in ways that I'm not particularly upset about but as a trend and with core components of the internet, it is a bad thing that should be resisted.

      It is also a protest, are you not protesting the facething? They betrayed all of their users in ways that would curdle the blood of any inhabitant of the 1990's but inhabitants of 2019 seem to be totally unphased and getting hit by vehicles while looking down at their phones using exactly the things that have been demonstrated over and over to simply provide their entire life as a series of datapoints to bizarro datamining entities with subsidiaries that make candy crush knockoffs.

      Are we living in the same world? Do you really care that it weakens my argument or are you just trying to enforce a social norms? Does it really bother you to read that and are you really going to say in the big picture, that is something you want to mention? Are you sure this is the element of my carefully considered mini essay you think it's most important to discuss?

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday September 03 2019, @02:24PM (1 child)

        by Freeman (732) on Tuesday September 03 2019, @02:24PM (#889190) Journal

        Having a recognized brand can be helpful, especially when considering what to buy. Sure, you can buy the off-brand version, but generally the on-brand version will have an image they're trying to uphold. Thus, will likely be of a consistent quality.

        Facebook, specifically, is furthering a dystopian agenda. Tracking everyone and everything all the time. Sure, they're "just" doing it for the money, but the technology will be and likely already has been abused. I avoided Facebook like the plague, until I realized, they already had all of my information. So, yes, I do have a Facebook account, that I almost never use. There should be some kind of privacy controls that will keep them in check, but that seems to be a lost cause. The right to privacy is built into our laws. Unfortunately unlike a lot of "with a computer" crimes. Our rights to privacy are being trampled on and it seems as though, no one is fighting for it. We're only free, so far as we are willing to fight to stay that way.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
        • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday September 03 2019, @03:01PM

          by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday September 03 2019, @03:01PM (#889201) Journal

          Speak for yourself.

          I am showing you how to revolt in a way it will be noticed with just your keyboard and you are basically spitting in my face telling me there is nothing that can be done because you can't think of anything.

          Let that sink in once you realize what that says about you.