Censorship and the online discussion forum

[Orange Fuzzball]

I'm copying and reposting this from the "What do you think of the new organization" thread in The Ring. Kinda went off on a tangent for that thread, but it's got me thinking about how things used to be and how they've changed. Love to hear from people both "older" and "newer" than myself WRT this whole online discussion thingy (in general, not just at Itchmo).

Orange Fuzzball,

Now I understand your concerns.  The Internet portrait painted in your post is truly nightmarish.  You could do an 'Internet Unmasked' documentary about your experiences, but we would all end up in our own locked threads if we saw it from the sound of it. WOW!

Well, it's really not all that unusual when you consider the history...

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Once upon a time, a couple of decades ago and way before my time, the Internet was populated almost entirely by academics, who used it for the civilized and educated exchange of ideas. Signal to noise ratio was good, discourse was high, moderation was unnecessary, peace reigned online.

Then along came the mid-90s and AOL. All of a sudden, everyone and their idiot cousin could get online*, and they did. The intelligent, respectful contributors of the past became outnumbered by the morons flinging insults from their mothers' basements. Usenet was still largely unmoderated, and the type of behaviour I described in my last post** was common. The oldbies despaired.

Fast forward another decade. Inspired by the need for some way of controlling these idiots and frustrated by the inability to discern any signal amongst the noise, people fled Usenet in droves. Discussion forums have migrated to a web-based format like this one, and moderation is the norm rather than the exception. Nobody uses Usenet anymore - it's become a giant spamcatcher. The noise has been reduced again, but at the cost of the truly free expression of ideas that prevailed at the beginning. In short: the Internet has been dumbed down.

(*I was, at that time, a newbie, but I held myself to a higher standard of behaviour than many others who were discovering the Internet right around then.)

(**The post I refer to here, and that Klondike refers to in his quote, involved the various things we have been accused of by random idiots who prefer flaming to rationality.)

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I think a lot of people who have started participating online in the "post-Usenet" era are surprised that it once was so crazy. But people got used to the lack of rules. I know that when I finally left Usenet behind I was very resistant to posting in moderated web forums, because I hated the idea of anyone having the ability to control or censor what I said. Still do, in many respects. But I accept it (to a degree) as a tradeoff: as the Internet becomes more and more accessible and diverse, a little bit of censorship helps teach newbies the rules. Pretty ironic that censorship (an elitist concept in itself) is so closely tied to an increase in online populism. 

[Poco]

It's a little late for me to read this, but this looks like it relates to the topic.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=9302

Survey of Government Internet Filtering Practices Indicates Increasing Internet Censorship
First year of global survey examines 41 countries by political, social and national security filtering
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 18 June 2007

Government censorship is growing in sophistication, according to a survey of internet filtering practices in 41 nations. Such censorship is “becoming more pervasive and more subtle over time, often disguised as network errors,” warns Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, according to a release from the MacArthur Foundation. The foundation funded Open Net Initiative, which relied on resources of four universities – Oxford, Harvard, Toronto and Cambridge to conduct the survey and analyze the results. More than half the nations surveyed rely on censorship: some countries block sites or applications, while others focus on political or national-security content. “Cyberspace has become a strategic forum of competition between states, as well as between citizens and states,” said Rafal Rohozinski, research fellow of the Cambridge University Security Programme. The survey did not cover European nations or the US, where private entities often lead the filtering effort, often against pornography or hate speech. The internet and sophisticated filters may be powerful tools, but are no match to human curiosity and the ability to reason. – YaleGlobal

(Full text at link.)

[Orange Fuzzball]

As someone with deeply ingrained resistance to even private censorship, you can imagine my feelings about government or corporate censorship. I don't worry about it too much in Canada, but as far as the US is concerned, I wonder ... how far down that road will things progress if the far-righters are able to keep pushing their agenda?    Kind of reminds me of that "adopt a Chinese blog" project. Will we eventually be adopting American blogs up here?

On a smaller scale though, average citizens who participate in online discussion forums are subjecting themselves to a larger amount of voluntary regulation than they used to. I would have expected the opposite: that as more people came online, the boundaries would push outward even further, opinions multiplying, and new generations demanding more freedom of expression. And that did happen for a while, with consequences both good and bad (see above re: mid-90s). What's interesting is that the pendulum is now swinging back in the other direction. The people coming online this decade are no longer the boundary-pushers; they're just average folks, grade-schoolers and grandmothers and people more interested in social interaction than in ideology. Their world is a little more foam-padded, and they accept that someone else has control in exchange for a "nicer" online environment.

Freedom versus security. Old debate, new format. And with technology accelerating social change at an unprecedented level, we can sit back and watch it happen within a few years instead of a generation or two.

[dingbat]

he Internet was populated almost entirely by academics, who used it for the civilized and educated exchange of ideas. Signal to noise ratio was good, discourse was high, moderation was unnecessary, peace reigned online.

OF

Actually I was one of those ancient ones, we didn't even have http protocol, used ancient stuff like, usenet, chameleon, telnet, arcnet, etc. All  were text based, no pretty pictures and one needed to have some sense of the internet, tcp/ip, protocols, etiquette to use them.

Then HTTP came into being and for me it seems like that is when it all went to hell.

Now anyone (AOL) could get on and they did. Ultimately it has proven to be a good thing, with the increase in business but it also allows anyone to get on and do anything they want. Freedom is not free, what allows me to be free, may offend or injure you. Responsibility and freedom must go hand in hand, otherwise censorship occurs.

Freedom of speech is not something that most of us immediately grasp. One is not allowed to falsely yell fire in a crowded building, so there have to be rules that prevail, hence censorship, or as I like to look at it, the existence of common sense.

So how does this relate to the internet??

Without some form of 'censorship' the internet drifts into an obscene mess of transient ideas, none of which can be coalesced into a stream of thought patterns that become useful to anyone.

I despise censorship in any form, however is this censorship or is it moderation??

Are we allowed to say anything we want?? or are we being guided to stay on topic??

I have been at some forums, they go everywhere and every other word is profane. So I just don't go there, not because of the profanity but because none of it makes sense.

Some people out there just love to write, blah, blah, blah, just love to get their opinions out there no matter what, have no ideas about protocol or etiquette, don't care about anyone else or if their comments are relevant to the topic. Some people also love to disrupt things, just love to come into a forum and make everyone crazy. These same people would never think of doing this face to face but the internet gives them a rare opportunity to be as rude and disgusting as they want with no responsibility.

Again freedom without responsibility begets chaos.

So I would venture to say that if we eliminated those that disrupt then 'moderation' isn't necessary, however since we can't do that, 'moderation' becomes standard practice.

Government censorship is another thing entirely and I would be extremely opposed to that, but the owner  of a forum, setting rules and moderating things, that seems like the way it should be.

IMO

db

[Orange Fuzzball]

Again freedom without responsibility begets chaos.

I think this sentence is right at the core of this whole issue. "Back in the day", responsibility was innate. The community was already self-selected for intelligence and mutual respect, since you had to work a lot harder to get online in the first place. But as the barriers to entry are lowered more and more, people without that sense of common decency treat the Internet as a license to be irresponsible.

So, how do we get the responsibility back without putting the barriers back up? Is it even possible? And where will we see this whole process happen next?

[dingbat]

So, how do we get the responsibility back without putting the barriers back up? Is it even possible? And where will we see this whole process happen next?

OF

Once the flood gates have been opened there is no way to put the water back.

I agree that in the beginning the mere nature of the internet was respectful, now that anyone that can click a mouse can get on respect, decency, and responsibility are gone.

The nature of the internet now is prime for government control. An unbridled wasteland where everything and anything can go on, without any controls. The question is how do we control and eliminate that which is offensive, destructive without controlling freedoms. I don't believe we can.

Private forums are popular because they provide that middle ground of freedom with minimal controls. They are usually spam free, no hate speech, no planning criminal activities.

Maybe that is the future, more and more private forums, where moderation, not censorship, prevails. Where the forum is a self policing entity that can exist in the very narrow line between freedom and censorship??

It will be interesting to watch.

db

[shibadiva]

The priests and monks probably said the same when the unwashed masses began to learn to read and write...

[Orange Fuzzball]

The priests and monks probably said the same when the unwashed masses began to learn to read and write...

  Yep, you're probably right. The argument's as old as dirt, only the medium changes. What's unique this time around is the speed at which everything's happening. We can discuss it now and then look back in five years and see how much has changed, whereas those priests and monks never got to see what all happened with the unwashed masses because it took generations.

[dingbat]

What's unique this time around is the speed at which everything's happening.

OF

I would agree totally, only the time frame is much shorter than 5 years, in the IT world, about every 6 months things change dramatically. The internet has gone through many changes over the years, and will continue at about that rate. The speeds that we use today were unheard of 5 years ago. The backbone speeds have increased many fold over the past 5 years, personal speeds from 56k only a few years ago, now there are DSL at 7mg. T3, OC3 are common in business environments.

db

[catmom5]

Okay, here's another perspective ~

When I started teaching in the public schools a long time ago, students and parents alike were more polite, respectful and civilized.  Unfortunately, in many areas of society today that civility has gone the way of the dodo bird.  I believe that's another piece of what we sometimes see on the internet.  It's easy access and people are too often just not nice to one another online because we accept that kind of behavior in the rest of our society.

In addition, as we lose a sense of "right and wrong", it has become "okay" to say whatever you care to say without consideration of how what you say affects others. I realize that many of us have different opinions of "right and wrong" but IMHO there are respectful ways of stating your opinion without attacking another person's beliefs. Censorship and "free" speech will always be up for debate. 

Just some things to consider . . .

[dingbat]

It's easy access and people are too often just not nice to one another online because we accept that kind of behavior in the rest of our society.

catmom5

Indeed, and the internet gives some a rare opportunity to insult, degrade, and just be rude to anyone without the fear of reprisal. I believe that you would find few if any that would act this way face to face.

db

[dingbat]

This is the kind of censorship/data manipulation that I fear could go really wrong. 

Klondike

Agreed, did you ever notice that all these projects start out with 'good intentions' and then slowly degrade into secretive, manipulative, organizations concerned with national security??

db

[petslave]

I think it's more like they start out telling us it's good intentions, when they actually have been secretive & manipulative from the start.  Everything they do goes along these lines.

In reading about the internet in some of the books I've purchased recently, it sounds like it's one of the last places we can speak relatively freely.  That's being taken care of rapidly though, getting everyone on DSL/cable, which run as private channels rather then more uncontrolled public channels of phone lines.  Then probably instigating some kind of major filtering & censorship once it's more controlled.

[dingbat]

Petslave

Any kind of transmission line can be tapped, whether it be, analog or digital. It is a simple matter to do either, and I am sure all of them are being 'listened too' now.

db

[petslave]

This chapter was talking more of large scale control of the internet, to control what people can say, & what content can be accessed.  Then we will be cut off from the last great place for info on what is REALLY going on in the world.  We will be left with a Fox/CNN/mainstream media-type internet to browse through & post sunny little cheery comments on, or maybe no comments will be allowed at all.  Hopefully we are a ways from that degree of censorship, but it's moving along at a nice clip.