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10 votes
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The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising
37 votes -
After three months offline, 8chan returns as 8kun
24 votes -
ISPs lied to Congress to spread confusion about encrypted DNS, Mozilla says
15 votes -
Why 3D logos fell out of favor overnight
8 votes -
First Contact (Internet at 50yrs old) - Dr Julian Onions recalls working to bring the Internet to Nottingham
4 votes -
Australia's idiotic war on porn returns, this time using facial recognition
16 votes -
Firefox to hide notification popups by default starting next year
22 votes -
Those people we tried to cancel? They’re all hanging out together
17 votes -
How to stay safe online and prevent phishing with FIDO2, WebAuthn and security keys
5 votes -
Reddit’s automoderator is the future of the internet, and deeply imperfect | The good: AutoMod saves time and prevents potential mental health issues. The bad: Humans still have to clean up after it.
21 votes -
Nokia's collapse turned a sleepy town in Finland into an internet wonderland
5 votes -
The internet at 50: It has enabled many wonderful things, but we have to fight to keep it that way
6 votes -
How can we betray each other less on the Internet?
I was thinking about having a general purpose thread about internet drama venting, but that seems like a very bad idea if all the top level threads are different gripes and one in particular gets...
I was thinking about having a general purpose thread about internet drama venting, but that seems like a very bad idea if all the top level threads are different gripes and one in particular gets out of control, so here's mine and this can be dealt with as needed.
There was this recent issue in left adjacent Twitter of a notable YouTube person inviting someone else to read a quote for a bigger project. Invitee had controversial views on gender dysphoria, the host defended their decision, and details aren't super important for what I want to talk about.
I see where Natalie is coming from if she wants to make a point about Tolerance and Outgroups. I think this was the wrong way to do that, #BuckisWrong, but I don't think brigading her on Twitter and asking her social group to disavow her is appropriate, however, I don't have any skin in the game outside of being an anxious cis white male who thinks Twitter enables and thrives off of toxic discourse.I get that this is all some of you are willing to talk about but I want to talk about the meta and the behavior here, so please pretend they're all Martians for the time being.
What I want to talk about is how the internet specifically reacted, asking the creator's circle to walk back any endorsement of them, holding them to a fire and how much it kind of fits in into a pattern of isolation featured earlier in Lindsay Ellis' presentation about being shamed online, and propose that what makes an internet outrage mob is kind of values neutral.
Obviously, your -ism of choice would factor into an internet hate mob and make it into the Eternal Tire Fire that the internet is known for birthing these days, but the key spark seems to be a betrayal of trust. You thought someone or something was in your corner/was values neutral/shared your politics and when that is not the case, you simply want it gone. It was kind of always in the discussion with "Cancel Culture Concern," but it hasn't really clicked until now for me that it's such a common thread.
So, assuming we can't nor want to make it impossible to betray one another or make the Internet a safe space for everybody and for all sensibilities, can we cut down on this outcome, is it incentivised through engagement metrics, and/or is it just something that comes with the ability to mass broadcast and mass response?
9 votes -
In Norilsk, Russia's most isolated major city, the arrival of high-speed internet gave residents a new window onto the world
9 votes -
A series of mysterious bleeps and bloops defined the early days of the internet
8 votes -
Yahoo Groups will prevent new content from being uploaded on October 28, and all previous content will be deleted on December 14
12 votes -
Your options for saving Yahoo Groups content
9 votes -
The case for fiber to the home, today: Why fiber is a superior medium for 21st century broadband
11 votes -
SpaceX submits paperwork for 30,000 more Starlink satellites
21 votes -
'South Park' scrubbed from Chinese internet after critical episode
12 votes -
The court allowed the FCC to kill net neutrality because washing machines can’t make phone calls
8 votes -
Iraq blocks Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram, then shuts down internet amid civil unrest
27 votes -
The internet is overrun with images of child sexual abuse. What went wrong?
18 votes -
Centralised DNS-over-HTTPS is bad for privacy, in 2019 and beyond
7 votes -
Communicating science online increases interest, engagement and access to funds
7 votes -
Colorado town offers 1 gbps for $60 after years of battling Comcast
11 votes -
New Wi-Fi 6 certification is officially released, up to 3x faster than 802.11ac
11 votes -
Coil, Mozilla, and Creative Commons have launched Grant for the Web, a $100 million fund to invest in reshaping the economics of the web
19 votes -
Would the internet be healthier without 'like' counts?
10 votes -
Search advertising and information discovery: Are consumers averse to sponsored messages?
6 votes -
Web scraping doesn’t violate anti-hacking law, appeals court rules
12 votes -
Tildenet (Not related to tildes.net)
5 votes -
Our past on the internet is disappearing before we can make it history
12 votes -
Sally Floyd, who helped things run smoothly online, dies at 69
7 votes -
Communications and internet have been blacked out in Kashmir since August 4 - five people explain what it's like to live through
8 votes -
Urgent statement of Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association on selective blocking of internet services
11 votes -
Standard for light-based wireless internet connectivity (LiFi) provides emerging alternative to cramped radio bands employed by WiFi and cellular
8 votes -
I'm not a robot
7 votes -
How to find old instruction manuals for free online | No Sweat Tech
9 votes -
The world's oldest webcam is shutting down after a quarter of a century
21 votes -
Absolute scale corrupts absolutely
5 votes -
When limiting online speech to curb violence, we should be careful
14 votes -
The weaponisation of information is mutating at alarming speed
11 votes -
'Where's the line of free speech – are you removing voices that should be heard?': As YouTube struggles with extreme content, Susan Wojcicki talks about her role as the internet’s gatekeeper
11 votes -
India shut down Kashmir’s internet access. Now, ‘we cannot do anything.’
14 votes -
Extended Validation Certificates are (Really, Really) Dead
8 votes -
Some thoughts on freedom on the Web, explained through a simple analogy
I'm writing this in an attempt to explain more clearly some ideas about the dangers of having an oligopoly in control of the Web, and the current difficulties of discussing that without being...
I'm writing this in an attempt to explain more clearly some ideas about the dangers of having an oligopoly in control of the Web, and the current difficulties of discussing that without being taken as some kind of "free speech absolutist". It's an analogy and, as in any analogy, it's only valid to a certain extent. The important thing is for it to be valid enough to explain a point.
There was a city in which four companies had ended up owning every bar, except for a handful of them in the outskirts. Upon one moment, they started to regulate which kind of conversations could be held in their bars and which couldn't, something they had a legal right to do and felt was their responsibility. So they prohibited any racist, homophobic or sexually explicit conversation, as well as conversations which they thought could carry any risk for society as a whole. Almost no one could really object to that, after all who would defend that kind of behavior? Some far right gangs said it was against their right to free speech, but they were correctly answered that they didn't have any right to determine the conversation policy of bars that weren't theirs.
Others tried to point that, while that policy wasn't inherently wrong and those companies were in their right to implement it, in the past this was dealt with on a bar-per-bar basis, and although the immense majority of bars didn't allow that kind of behaviors, they had different degrees of flexibility about different topics so bars were more varied and diverse, and you were free to choose a bar which conformed to your interests.
But they were quickly accused of defending some supposed right of that people to be given a place to discuss and organize, and sometimes even accused of defending those ideas. "If you don't like how the Four Companies manage their bars, go elsewhere".
The problem is that the far right gangs and other kind of undesirable people, when forced to leave the Four Companies' bars, went straight to the bars in the outskirts, overflowing them. Some of those bars were already owned by far right people, others though the answer to the Four Companies was to keep a more tolerant policy, and were overtook by neo-nazis. The few independent bars that didn't accept to become far right havens were forced to implement policies not that far from those of the Four Companies, or else face a far right invasion. Their clients spent a lot of time discussing wether something was off-limits or not instead of just enjoying a good time like they did before, and those bars were also very small and far away. They were interesting places, to be sure, but they were cut apart from most of the night life of the city, which took place on the hundreds of Four Companies' bars.
But now, there was a growing problem. The Four Companies had started to prohibit other subjects, for several reasons that aren't really important. Some were distasteful subjects, other were against their political interests or the city council's. But, as the far right gangs kept stabbing people and trying to reclaim their "right" to be accepted into the Four Companies' bars, most people thought that the risk they posed weighed more than anything else.
But they were missing the point. In another nearby city, there were never a handful of companies owning most bars. Still most bars didn't allow far right gangs, and discussion was diverse and fun, and sometimes helpful to combat the excesses of the city council and local police. Still, there were some neo-nazi bars, and most bars had one or two unlikable people. Neo-nazi bars sometimes caused trouble and had to be closed by the police, most were not only under police surveillance but under the neighbors' surveillance too. And, as neo-nazis were a very small minority, if you didn't support the same team as the owner of your closest bar, you could go to another bar which supported your team without it being forcefully full of neo-nazis or otherwise disgusting people.
Both cities had neo-nazis and sometimes problems in their bars, although Four Companies' bars were quite more peaceful on average, as they were heavily policed in a uniform and homogeneous way. But they were lifeless too, and lots of interesting discussions and possibilities of neighbors facing local injustice together were lost forever. Everyone ended up thinking the same, watching the same, liking the same sports and supporting the same teams. Bars weren't a fun and exciting place anymore.
This is just an analogy, so it's limited. But I think it explains well my general view and worries on the subject, which have nothing to do with leaving free way to racists and neo-nazis. It has to do with putting an end to the oligopoly before it's too late.
6 votes -
The creator of the "Upcoming Reactionary Movement Venn Diagram" explains what led to its creation on Tumblr in 2014
7 votes -
Cloudflare is terminating service for 8Chan
69 votes