Ethics of Adblockers

[dapper cedar]

In light of youtube's war on adblockers - https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/11/youtube-tries-to-kill-ad-blockers-in-push-for-ad-dollars-premium-subs/

1. Do you use an adblocker for your daily web browsing/video watching?
2. Is using an adblocker unethical?
3. Are companies justified in pushing back against adblockers? Is pushing back against good tactic at all?

[candid gulch]

Legally (or ethically, if you will) its back and forth at the moment.

“The script that [YouTube] deploys is detecting what software people are running on their machines or what behaviour their browser is exhibiting in relation to their private activities. It's not okay. It's illegal,” https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-ad-blocker-detection-eu-privacy-law/

[gritty rain]

I'm of the belief that almost all advertising is itself unethical, on the basis that it is always someone presenting biased information with an agenda that is not clearly stated, and most of it is specifically designed to exploit people's psychological vulnerabilities.

Subjecting people to advertising is literally brainwashing. Nobody should have the right to do that. So I have no problem with pretty much any actions taken to block it. I'd prefer advertising to be banned completely, but in the meantime I'm settling for ignoring it as best I can, in any way that I can. I'm not going to allow dishonest people to force ideas into my head if I can possibly avoid it.

[candid gulch]

I totally agree that advertisement has ethical questions within itself. That would be a separate ethical question though. If advertisements were completely honest and forthright (setting ethical questions about advertisements aside), what would raising money to support media that rely (sometimes unethically lean on, again setting that aside) on advertisements look like? I mean, if they don't have the right to have advertisements, should they just go away, be funded by the state (which brings about its own ethical questions), or directly deduct money based on hours viewed by all individuals viewing the media? Does media have the right to be free to those that cannot afford paying for it? What is the way forward without advertisements in media?

[dapper cedar]

Yeah i think its impossible to ignore the fact that most of our content 100% would not exist without advertising, and any alternative to free infrastructure supported by ads has nowhere near the success that youtube has.

[gritty rain]

Oh, it absolutely would exist without advertising. Advertising doesn't just create money out of nowhere. Everything that advertising enables, we're still paying for them, just in a different way. We pay inflated prices for products, so that the companies we pay can in turn pay for the advertising. If you got rid of advertising we'd save hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could be spent on something useful instead. Especially given that products would suddenly cost a tenth of the price.

The reason other 'free' infrastructure doesn't work as well, is because the internet is run on a for-profit basis by companies that make huge profits as a result of the advertising system. Look up Net Neutrality. Anything that doesn't make money for the companies that control internet traffic is never going to be allowed to be successful.

[gritty rain]

Ok, well firstly state funding is infinitely more ethical than funding by private companies, because the state actually has some very small amount of accountability, compared to absolutely none for a limited company.

The thing with everything that is based on the internet, is that it actually costs almost nothing to produce and run. The global advertising budget is somewhere around $500bn, and for that amount of money you could easily give everyone in the world free internet access and whatever cloud hosting they wanted, and still have billions left over. I mean, the advertising budget is already paying for it anyway, so really we'd just be cutting out the salaries of advertising agents.

Given that you could make the whole internet free if you wanted to by eliminating advertising, that basically opens up the whole world of options. We could literally do it any way we wanted. For example, we could crowd fund everything, but where people don't have to actually donate money. If you find enough people that support your idea, great, we give you the means to do it.

I would say in general there is no ethical reason to withhold anything from anyone. Nobody intrinsically deserves any more or any less than anyone else. If you're going to differentiate between people and restrict access to some things, the gold standard would be to do it on the basis of need. If people need something in order to be safe, healthy and happy, they should have the right to it. Money, on the other hand, doesn't correlate to anything good. Some of the worst people in the world are some of the richest, and some of the kindest are the poorest. So restricting access to anything based on money is incredibly immoral.

[candid gulch]

Wikipedia is one of the largest example of the stuff your talking about. It doesn't advertise, asks directly for money occasionally and is free for everyone. Its the prime example of collaboration of individuals who are passionate about the subjects. Yet there are serious problems with what is referred to as Wiki-Nazi's and getting established in the community in order to edit Wikipedia directly and join in the effort. So its not free exactly. Is that the type of thing you think should happen to the entire internet? Passionate individuals who devote time to content are just that in their efforts (passionate to a fault). Crowd funding is also a reflection of passion. Kickstarter is one of the largest examples of crowd funding for starting new products but it is just a pile of advertisements people become passionate about.

[gritty rain]

I'm not claiming to know what would be the best alternative. All I'm saying is that advertising is not a good system, and that if we can choose literally anything else there is bound to be a system that works better than the current system which is based on everyone constantly being forced to listen to lies.

[fresh bluff]

What are you doing if it isn’t advertising? You are trying to communicate an idea that you have in your head that you want in mine. Are you brainwashing me? Are my ideas now in your head? Whatever you do don’t think about an elephant.

[gritty rain]

Not all communication is advertising. Most communication is done for essentially educational purposes, sharing information. But advertising is a particular form of communication that is done for the purpose of persuading people to buy products. The fact that it is done with an agenda means it has specific ethical concerns.

[fresh bluff]

Of course there are ethical concerns with all communication. Advertising is often more about trying to persuade people to accept an idea rather than directly pushing the product.
The idea might be that your life is inadequate and you would feel better if you drove a new Ford pickup or it might be something more insidious. If you don’t see the similarities between what I am doing right now and advertising then you missed the point. All communication has to treated with some skepticism. There is always an agenda even if the person “teaching” you doesn’t even know the agenda themselves.

In my original obtuse comment I was alluding to the fact that it is a slippery slope to say things like “all advertising is itself unethical”. Suppose I accepted your idea as true and thought it was important to share it. I felt so strongly I formed a nonprofit and we begin messaging (in other words advertising) to spread your good idea to as many minds as possible. So our advertising of the idea that “all advertising is unethical” is unethical?

[gritty rain]

Oh yes, absolutely, advertising isn't the only form of communication that needs care taken around it. All communication has a purpose, definitely. But I would maintain that some purposes are better than others. This conversation we're having here, for instance, is much less problematic because there isn't a substantial conflict of interest like there is with most advertising of products.

Your slippery slope analogy is again talking about communication, not product advertising. Product advertising sometimes uses the idea of giving people an idea, but it's still doing that in order to sell a product. It's therefore a very different situation from a simple public information campaign.

Again, the issue for me is the basic conflict of interest that comes from a situation where someone is trying to persuade you of something where they have a vested interest in the outcome. There are many such problematic situations, but advertising products for sale always falls into that category.

[dapper cedar]

There's more than one slippery slope here. At what point would restricting product advertising start to infringe on free speech? Is this one of those things that we acknowledge is unethical, but don't really regulate/legislate it it due to the negative effects restricting speech this strongly?

[gritty rain]

I don't have a problem at all with restricting free speech. Many forms of speech are harmful, and it seems insane to me that we should allow people to say whatever they like.

But yes, people getting hung up on the idea of free speech might be why there is so little control over advertising.

[candid gulch]

Speaking is tied to thinking. You may as well have said "it seems insane to me that we should allow people to think whatever they like" inasmuch as allowing communication of thought is what your speaking of. Your idea (thinking) that advertisement is unethical is being freely spoken but someone else may see that it is harmful to our current system. Your saying that having new ideas is insane and speaking them should be restricted. You don't claim to know best alternatives, just that advertisement is not good. Its very easy to be destructive with ideas in that very way, with almost any system. The thing is the freedom for you to speak may spark someone else to come up with a better alternative. Harmful speech is only harmful when it has direct effects, ideas are not harmful and bad ideas can be countered with free speech of good ideas. You don't have a counter the the bad idea of advertising as you claim just that its bad. That can be very destructive to any system. It often dwells on the system that is bad and doesn't construct any systems that is good to the point that bad systems are often overstated. Like your saying that all we hear are lies in advertising your message against advertisements. Its a self fulfilling oversimplification of the situation.

[buoyant moon]

1. Do you use an adblocker for your daily web browsing/video watching?
   Yes, always (except on Twitch which I rarely use and just couldn't be bothered to find a blocker that actually works on there)

2. Is using an adblocker unethical?
   In most cases yes. You are effectively stealing money from someone. If you knew the extend of financial damage that you caused by using an adbocker and would compensate the affected parties accordingly, there'd be no ethical concerns, but that's impractical in almost all cases.

3.1. Are companies justified in pushing back against adblockers?
I don't see why not. Legally or otherwise.

3.2. Is pushing back against [adblockers a] good tactic at all?
I think that very much depends. I think it can be a good move for certain companies and completely backfire for others.

Additionally: Why would I still use an adblocker if I thought it unethical?
Because the benefit of protecting myself against the manipulation of companies pushing the ads and the time saved that would otherwise have been spent on viewing the ads far outweighs the miniscule amount of financial harm that I cause either the content creator (if the platform actually figures out that an impression was suppressed) or the company running the ad.

[gritty rain]

I'm sorry, but speaking is not tied to thinking like that at all. Do you have to say everything you think out loud? No, of course not. Speaking is an action, which is quite distinct from thought.

I think you misunderstood a fair bit of what I was saying. I said that I don't know the absolute best alternative to advertising. I didn't say that I didn't know better alternatives. I've listed some better alternatives above. There are many better alternatives to allowing free advertising. My idea is not a destructive one in the slightest.

The idea that communication of bad ideas can be countered with communication of good ideas is both incorrect and naive. Not all communication is equal. For starters, first impressions always matter more than subsequent encounters, and there are many examples of incorrect that have been spread, and continue to be spread, despite attempts to counter them with accurate information. There is also the issue that a false idea being spread by someone who is rich and powerful is almost impossible to counter without spending at least an equal amount of money. So really, the idea that you can freely counter bad communication is nonsense. Most of what is in our media is harmful misinformation, and we are entirely powerless to counter it.

Actions have consequences, and speech is no different in that respect. We should hold people accountable for the consequences of their actions, whatever form those actions take. If my communicating of an idea in a discord channel turns out to cause problems that I should have foreseen, well, then that's absolutely on me, and I have no problem with being held to account for it. But obviously the chances of my actions here being harmful are miniscule compared to the risks of significant consequences coming from all the misinformation that takes place in advertising. What I'm doing is not problematic, unlike advertising.

[wooden mason]

You're not allowed to say that

[candid gulch]

Speaking freely is expressing thought. Which means that they are tied together (trying to untie thought and speaking is binding communication). You did list alternatives and I presented real world examples of your alternatives. To that you replied that you don't know the best alternatives (I am just assuming that you don't approve of the real world alternatives either, not to endorse them).

[gritty rain]

Wikipedia is still the best example of publicly' accessible knowledge in the world, so claiming that it has flaws, while true, is perhaps not the part to focus on. It is an amazing example of something really positive coming out of people doing stuff just for the inherent good in doing it.

So as far as I'm concerned, the real life examples prove that it works.

[candid gulch]

That only accounts for the fact that free speech works (only to a large degree) within Wikipedia. The problems with Wikipedia all stem from not being allowed to edit the pages (which is free speech). Without devoting lots of time and effort within the community of editors to gain standing, edits often are reverted.

[gritty rain]

Having some degree of control on who edits it is a good and necessary thing. Completely free speech is a very bad idea. You SHOULD have to prove yourself before being given a platform to communicate to others.

[dapper cedar]

Man so much of this free speech stuff I thought was almost a consensus its facinating to read someone who disagrees with it.

So some of the strongest protected speech in the US is political speech, for good reason, cause ANY restrictions on political speech is a VERY clear slippery slope. A blanket ban on advertising defiantly would infringe on this, and would greatly advantage maintaining current status quo and stifle any and every positive change.

[candid gulch]

That belays other claims you make regarding the media who have, in the past, proven themselves. Its when they change into a narrative, changing how they do procedures that changes from information to disinformation. I do agree that speech should be held accountable but to say that people cannot say whatever they want is to deny accountability in the first place. Its a loop of SHOULD have to prove what you say before you say it, meaning that accountability comes before free speech and not the other way around. But back to Wikipedia, there are what is referred to as Wiki-Nazi's who safeguard their pages (which they have invested in) and squeeze out any new ideas (thoughts, speech, etc.) that get edited onto the page. Thus the reference. These people have, in the past, proven themselves within the community and the community largely leaves them alone to guard their pages. As a point of exercise, find things you totally agree with and try to put your views on advertising within Wikipedia and see how you fair. Will any of your edits stand? My bet? Your free speech of marking advertisements as mostly misinformation and a highly problematic system will be reverted multiple times and never stand within the pages of Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising

[gritty rain]

I did some Wikipedia editing and conflict resolving a few years ago. I found the processes to work well. When there are disputes, there are some frankly world-leading methods for resolving them. I think there are a very small percentage of pages that need regular new ideas adding to them.

I don't really need to try and edit my views on advertising into Wikipedia, since they are there already. There is a whole page on Criticism of Advertising. Don't forget through that Wikipedia is aiming to be representative of everyone's views on a subject, not just one.

Even people or organisations that have proven themselves in the past still need to be held responsible for their actions. But looking at the history of a lot of advertising organisations, I don't think I would necessarily agree that their actions in the past prove they should be allowed to continue in the present. Our mainstream media has in the main proven itself unreliable and untrustworthy, and social media even more so.

What I want is proper accountability for all forms of communication. In places where displaying communication gives what is being said extra weight (such as Wikipedia or mainstream media) then it makes sense for there to be checks before that information is passed on, to avoid creating serious problems. In other places, it is ok to sort out the responsibility after the event, allowing people to say what they like but holding them responsible if what they say causes problems.

[candid gulch]

Apparently we are not reading the same article. I mean there is a very small section on criticism (mostly for food advertisement) and a couple of footnotes that would give some information (some contained on the wayback machine and not even on the internet at the present) but no where near the alarmist view of "the risks of significant consequences coming from all the misinformation that takes place in advertising" that you claim. There are three instances of the term "MIS" within the article, none of which are mistakes, misinformation or misdirection of advertisements. The few small footnotes related to that is miniscule and not alarmists to advertisements at all but to consumer awareness (buyer beware) to a large degree. There is absolutely nothing on that page that justifies an alarmist view on advertising or the system we are in.

Also, edits on Wikipedia are saved. They are reverted afterward. The largest plus on Wikipedia is the edit history where you can see what people were trying to put within articles and how they were reverted. Its the largest part of free speech within Wikipedia. One of the problems is that people put facts in, get reverted because of syntax or grammar errors and never check back to see that their edit was reverted (or the reason for it). Coupled with that is instead of fixing syntax or grammar errors on facts, people guarding the page just revert instead of investing time.

[gritty rain]

The section on criticism of advertising in the main advertising article is just a small exert from the main article. That's how it works on Wikipedia, topics that are large enough get their own page and are merely mentioned briefly on connected pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_advertising

[candid gulch]

And again, that page doesn't justify an alarmist view of advertisement. No instances of misinformation, misleading or misdirection is within the main article except one sentence with an emissions test as the only example for VW (and a single footnote). Its even worse for information regarding an alarmists point of view. Wikipedia takes the point of view of "buyer beware" and doesn't tear down our system at all. It does go into Opposition and campaigns against advertisements that may reflect some of your view but makes a STATEMENT completely contrary to an alarmist point of view directly following within that same section "New York City without Times Square's huge digital billboards or Tokyo without the Ginza's commercial panorama is unthinkable. Piccadilly Circus would be just a London roundabout without its signage. Still, other cities, like Moscow, have reached their limit and have begun to crack down on over-the-top outdoor advertising." Largely negating that point of view.

I am not saying that advertisements are problem free but I am very unsure why you think Wikipedia has all the unbiased answers to free thought and we shouldn't concentrate on its problems as well. ALL systems have problems.

Only free speech can address problems within known systems and hash out problems within proposed systems.

[gritty rain]

Like I said, Wikipedia aims to represent all views on a subject. So of course there will be some parts of the articles there that disagree.

I'm not saying or thinking at all that WIkipedia has all the unbiased answers. I don't know why you would think that was what I was saying or thinking. I'm just saying that it does what it sets out to do very well.

[gritty rain]

Free speech doesn't address the problems with free speech. It allows the free manipulation of others and the spread of misinformation of all kinds.

[candid gulch]

I agree. It paints a very good picture of not having advertisements as unthinkable even on its criticism of advertising page. I was addressing your "people doing stuff just for the inherent good in doing it" vs. your views on advertising carrying significant consequences (which I am assuming is not inherently good) and the contradiction that brings. Wikipedia does it very well through understating criticisms and making statements which are biased while presenting all the facts in the meantime so it can claim unbias. That is what the mainstream media used to do before it went full on narrative mode which is slightly less biased.

[candid gulch]

Controlled speech allows the manipulation of others. Unaccountability allows the spread of misinformation. Your conflating freedom of speech and information control.

[gritty rain]

I'm really not understanding what your point is regarding Wikipedia. People maintain it because it's a good thing to do, but I don't see how that's connected at all to the idea of advertising being problematic. I also don't understand what parallel you're trying to draw between Wikipedia and the mainstream media, as they have very different aims. I think you might have skipped part of your reasoning as some of your sentences don't make sense.

[gritty rain]

Creating accountability for speech, I.e. controlling it, strongly discourages the manipulation of others.

You can't control the spread of misinformation without placing limits on free speech. Limiting misinformation is a good thing.

[gritty rain]

Free speech is a peculiarly American idea, and isn't even a conversation in many countries. Over here in the UK for example, we generally regard it as being very important to not allow the press to report on certain things, and to stop people telling damaging lies.

Political speech is one of the most important types of speech to control, because of the severe effects of misinformation in that context. Democracy relies on accurate information above all else.

It actually benefits the status quo more to allow people to say what they want, because in a lawless environment those with advantages like money and media contacts keep those advantages and turn them into other advantages.

[dapper cedar]

Political speech is one of the most important types of speech to control, because of the severe effects of misinformation in that context. Democracy relies on accurate information above all else.
The reason political speech is important to important to keep free is because if you allow individuals with authority to control speech, then they can suppress any speech or protest that is against their interests. You are basically giving up the freedom to critisize whoever is restricting speech in this case.

It actually benefits the status quo more to allow people to say what they want, because in a lawless environment those with advantages like money and media contacts keep those advantages and turn them into other advantages.
This 100% makes things worse. You've moved the people with money and influence having an advantage in the reach of their platform to whoever controls the laws to have ABSOLUTE power over what is allowable speech.

[candid gulch]

The parallel is bias. The media used to do it like Wikipedia and now they do it with narrative. Its the direction of bias allowed unchecked goes. And almost every piece of information has bias as its interpretation. That is why judges and journalists alike are supposed to strive to be unbiased (even though they have to have some bias, its a struggle). Your idea that advertisement is significantly problematic is your bias which you cannot publish within Wikipedia, being a biased source of information (not a free speech source).

[candid gulch]

You are totally backward here. Controlling speech is the mechanism for manipulation and misinformation. Limiting information flow is controlling the narrative. Its the recipe for effective propaganda.

[dapper cedar]

"Create accountability" is just flowery language for "controlling speech" you can't create accountability without having an arbiter of what is "good speech" and what is "bad speech"

[candid gulch]

When I say accountability for speech I am saying that people are free to point out lies, etc. I am not saying that people cannot lie.

[dapper cedar]

obligatory posting of the brandenburg test for determining if free speech can be regulated. Probably US centric but one I wholeheartedly agree with

1. The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND
2. The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”

[candid gulch]

A totally non-political example is flat earthers. Flat earthers are being held accountable in all areas for their nonsense. They are free to believe what they want and communicate their beliefs however they like. They are contested repeatedly.

[gritty rain]

Well no, that's not actually true, because with speech being controlled by a government authority you have oversight on all their choices. The democratic process is always there as a check on their power. They are checking you, and you are checking them. You're both covered.

[candid gulch]

The more control you give to a government, the more control they take. It is within the individuals running the governments best interest to keep as much power (individually) as possible. To pretend that the governments individuals have your best interests at heart is naïve. Over time governments gain control, they don't give it up. It is not within their nature to give up on control. That is why checking them in a democratic way is so important.

[gritty rain]

I just don't understand how what you are saying is relevant to what I'm saying. Wikipedia has bias on it? Yes, of course. But it has much, much less than mainstream media because of the number of people involved who can check and correct it.

[dapper cedar]

Right and part of the check that we have on the government's power is the power to criticize them freely.

[gritty rain]

Controlling speech does not control the narrative when it is only done for the purpose of fact checking. As I have pointed out, with government doing it we get to control exactly how they are controlling it. When it is controlled by unaccountable companies, like it is now, you have absolutely no method for countering propaganda. That's why most of the US media is world famous for being a total pack of lies.

You already are living in a world of only-propaganda.

[candid gulch]

Its ok if you don't understand. I am just telling you that the media used to operate like Wikipedia does now by giving a large amount of information that goes to its bias while giving a small amount of information that goes against its bias while being able to say it reports on all aspects (but not really). Now the media operates on narrative and Wikipedia used to operate in a much less biased manner than it does now. Information is powerful and bias goes in one direction over time.

[gritty rain]

And contesting them achieves nothing, because everyone is so used to ignoring people they disagree with, because of the basic unreliability of media currently under this 'free speech' system.

[dapper cedar]

The difference is that these unaccountable companies can't straight up outlaw speech, whereas the government can.

As I have pointed out, with government doing it we get to control exactly how they are controlling it.
Also I do not agree with this point at all. It's incredible naive to think that if the existing government wouldn't start outlawing dissident speech to remain in power. There's tons of examples of this, Russia, China, etc

[gritty rain]

The change in mainstream media is a downgrade to something with much greater bias, to follow the trend of making all media into entertainment because that's what sells. It is virtually impossible to get accurate information out of mainstream media now, whereas Wikipedia is much, much more reliable.

[candid gulch]

That is completely false. One political example but not very controversial is the reporting that it was impossible for Covid to come from a lab leak and any other narrative was a conspiracy theory. That was government/media collusion with the reports and government/corporate collusion with enforcement of "misinformation".

[candid gulch]

And that is my point. The media used to operate much closer to how Wikipedia does now and Wikipedia used to be more unbiased than it is now. Its all a downgrade.

[candid gulch]

Except for the free speech against narratives.

[gritty rain]

That's obviously untrue. You have a constant check on the power of any government, far and above that on any private company.

Governments are literally regular people plus agents of corporate interests. The only people who don't want to give up control are the private companies. Get rid of them from government and we're just ruling ourselves.

[candid gulch]

The "literal regular people" that is the government are the ones who will not get rid of the corporate interests.

[gritty rain]

The government can't do that either, because people would object and through the democratic process it would be stopped.

There is no incentive for governments to start restricting dissident speech unless the people in their country want it. Ultimately, governments do have to do what the people want or the democratic process removes them.

[gritty rain]

I have genuinely no idea what you are talking about. That sounds like a US thing.

[dapper cedar]

There is no incentive for governments to start restricting dissident speech unless the people in their country want it.
There is 100% an incentive for a government to restrict speech. You could label all good news against your democratic challenger as misinformation and stay in power. You could suppress any scandal and all negative news about your government. You won't have a democracy then.

[candid gulch]

It is possible over a very long period of time with voters voting consistently for a goal that the parties in control finally bow down to the will of the people but individuals within the party just get replaced. The parties themselves are the driving force behind the government. For instance, in the US the parties have been the same since the slaves. I have no idea how long the parties in the UK have been around but I would wager that new parties are not a thing over there as well.

[gritty rain]

I don't know what you mean by that. But yes, the narrative that the media is spinning narratives for us is itself being spread as a piece of propaganda.

[candid gulch]

The propaganda you are hearing is a party line. The media would not be spouting propaganda that goes against a party line.

[gritty rain]

...because they are hostages to the interests of private companies. You can't get into politics without getting a lot of money from somewhere, that's what you get when there is 'free speech', and so you just guarantee that your politicians will be puppets of the corporations.

[candid gulch]

Free speech of individuals of a country has nothing to do with government party corruption.

Other than to keep it in check.

[gritty rain]

No, you couldn't do that, because in a functional government it's not down to just one person or one party to have complete control of anything.

[candid gulch]

Yep, its a collusion. Just like corporate interests and media.

[fresh bluff]

Is this where we talk about whether or not the mute button on my remote has been stealing the rightful privilege of advertisers to rampage my ears. I feel a serious sense of ethical violation indeed I do. They paid for their ad time and yet were prevented from penetrating my skull in the way they wished to. Oh the tragedy! And what about fast forwarding through commercials… good god the ethical conundrums here pile up like so many tainted tacos in a dumpster of unspeakable tragic waste.

[gritty rain]

Ok, I need to sleep now, but I'll try and come back to the discussion as soon as I can. Good night folks.

[candid gulch]

Don't tell me that the flat earthers got to you. They have been busy on the internet spouting thoughts that should be banned by an accountable perfect government of literal regular individuals.

[dapper cedar]

Not saying we outlaw them, but I would wholeheartedly vote for flat earth reeducation camps

[candid gulch]

I literally stumbled on a video of how to shut them up last night. I have never encountered them myself but its fascinating.

[dapper cedar]

We'll make bezos pay for it

[fresh bluff]

I suggest we locate the camps right at the edge where the land is the least valuable due to the scary dark abyss.

[candid gulch]

Cant we just push them off?

[dapper cedar]

Good luck getting past the great Antarctica ice wall

[candid gulch]

Damn, they have an answer for everything...

[fresh bluff]

The earth is flat. It is space time that is curved.

[fresh bluff]

This kind of flat is called a sphere in three dimensional space*.

• three dimensional space: a wide spread liberal conspiracy to rob us of our natural 2 dimensional existence?

[candid gulch]

https://i.stack.imgur.com/j67nn.gif

[candid gulch]

hippys with slinkys do it best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL2Chc6p_Kk

[gritty rain]

The point is that in a functional democratic system, literally everyone has oversight on how things are done. Things are infinitely more transparent than in a private company, and when you can see what's going on it's much easier to trust that things are being done fairly. Yes, you need to keep working to maintain that democratic system, but if you do that then it works better than private companies.

'Free speech' is a synonym for "speech controlled by the rich and powerful", so it has everything to do with corruption. Any system where there are no checks and controls becomes an oligarchy very quickly. The US political system is exceedingly corrupt as a result.

[dapper cedar]

The rich and powerful having a disproportionate impact on speech is a problem yes.
The existing system probably covers what you really care about, here's a link on FTC rules on advertising. Would you say these are sufficient? Or do you advocate for more? https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/advertising-marketing

[candid gulch]

The rich and powerful having a platform for speech as an argument to regulate speech is like saying that we should jail anyone without trial because there are some who are guilty. It would ignore the poor and innocent. Pretending that the rich and powerful are NOT going to be the ones who control speech is naïve. In fact, the powerful would like nothing better than to control speech by definition.

[dapper cedar]

+1. The rich and powerful already have a disproportionate influence on our democratic system, it seems incredibly naive to trust that the rich and powerful wouldn't also try to erode free speech to further their interests.

The reason that free speech is basically a blanket allow all speech except in very rare cases is that without such a strong protection towards all speech, it'll be gradually eroded away.

[gritty rain]

I don't think they go anywhere near sufficient. A one-line sentence on a website, that says that claims in advertising must be truthful and cannot be deceptive or unfair, is all very well and good. But in practice the law itself doesn't ensure that at all.

Aside from the specific legislating problems, there is always the big problem that rich companies or people can advertise more than poorer ones. That immediately destroys the idea of fair competition, which then produces a market that doesn't function even according to ideal market principles. I'm no fan of the market economy, but I think it's clear that the current advertising system doesn't even function in support of that.

[gritty rain]

@candid gulch @dapper cedar The problem that both of your most recent posts have, is that they ignore the fact that a system free from rules is not the same thing as a fair system at all.

If you remove the rules, all that happens is that the people with the most immediate advantages almost always win. The athletes who can afford the most performance enhancing drugs win the race, the person who can punch the hardest becomes chief, the company who can pay the most for advertising gets all the best advertising locations and reaches the most people.

We always need rules in order to have a fair system. Without exception. Free speech is not remotely a fair system. It is a system that allows the rich and powerful to dominate the flow of information. They can pay for more advertising spots, they can pay for advertising that contains a more effective message, and they can pay for better lawyers than even the government if anyone even tries to claim that there is a problem. You live in a land utterly dominated by the richest.

The point with placing controls on speech is that you then give a bit of power back to regular people. Instead of allowing the rich companies to say whatever they like, you have a group of regular people that represent all of society who can make the decisions, taking into account the needs of everyone. Yes, the rich companies can try and influence them. But if you put safeguards in place, like you have with juries for example, to stop them being unduly influenced by people with a vested interest, then they can make generally good and fair decisions. Not saying it's perfect, it's just a lot better, but it is a lot better than what you have now.

[candid gulch]

Your conflating free speech with corporate regulation. Your focus is all over the place. This side talk started with "it seems insane to me that we should allow people to say whatever they like". Meaning all people, poor and rich, powerful and normal. If your talking about corporate regulation (in the area of advertising for this thread), that is one discussion. Free speech for all people is completely different. Talking about misinformation on social media is completely separate from the rich and powerful being able to advertise more than smaller businesses.

[gritty rain]

I'm giving examples. One example of the problems of allowing people to say whatever they like is that it allows the richest and more powerful to dominate. Another is that it allows people to spread misinformation.

Speech can be used to cause harm in many ways. I assume everyone agrees on this. The part not everyone agrees on, seems to be about whether the supposed benefits of a free speech system actually exist in reality. I am really not sure that they do.

[candid gulch]

Being able to speak freely allows counters to misinformation. Misinformation comes from narratives driven by political party lines and are spread by the powerful (i.e. mainstream media). All propaganda is driven by narrative. Does propaganda come from smaller subsets of the population who are not part of the mainstream political parties? Yes. But its the major political parties are who control the mainstream narratives that the media supports. The mainstream media does not go against all major political parties but aligns with one political party completely. That is where the power is. You would have political parties in control of what can be said and what cannot. Political parties are the ones who paint narrative, far earlier than the mainstream media started to. This is completely separate from rich vs. poor. Its government narratives preached through mainstream media vs. common people. Most social media of common people are people who believe in the narrative and just keep spouting the misinformation of that narrative. Its source is unchanged. If you want to concentrate on sources and how the powerful should be held accountable legally (including political party narratives) then that is a separate discussion to common people being able to speak.

[gritty rain]

If you make the claim that free speech allows misinformation to be countered, where is the evidence? Misinformation is literally everywhere at the moment. We live in a post-truth society. Private companies spread at least as much propaganda as political parties do, if not far more. So how is it being effectively countered in the current system?

A 'free speech' society allows common people the freedom speak only in a situation that means they will be completely ignored. I don't regard that as being fair, or desirable.

[candid gulch]

That is extremely confusing to me. You know that political parties spread propaganda via mainstream media yet you want them to be able to control speech. In other words, you want them to be in total control of what narratives are able to be formed and nothing can be spoken against that narrative because government is voted on? You want proof that free speech is a safeguard against narrative yet you know that narratives are produced by the very entity you say can be controlled. Being able to speak out against such power is what I am doing now. Its my free speech. You would have someone be able to shut me down about it because we vote yet you know that the source is the political parties who are in power. Extremely confusing.

[gritty rain]

Maybe the part you're missing is that there is a substantial difference between a political party and a government. As soon as you get into government, all of a sudden there is a lot more scrutiny of what you're doing. Your meetings have to be public, you have to keep public records of all your decisions, of your finances.

You're acting like someone gets into government and then they can do whatever they like, which is not the case at all.

I'm asking for any evidence whatsoever that misinformation can be countered in a free speech society. I don't think that evidence exists, because it seems immediately obvious to me that misinformation isn't countered in the slightest in the current system.

[dapper cedar]

I'm asking for any evidence whatsoever that misinformation can be countered in a free speech society.
My point is that countering misinformation would require some entity to determine what counts as misinformation and what doesn't. Giving anything the power to make this determination would be easily abusable and NOT worth the upside of giving ANY entity this power.

I'm starting to think that there is some misunderstanding between what I'm referring to free speech and what you are. I'm referring to free speech like I can head out to a park and start preaching in favor for a flat earth model. Should there be any consequences for this act?

If you want a more charitable example, something like slavery can be used as an example. If the 1800s government was given the power to regulate free speech, a pro slavery could classify any pro-slavery talk as "harmful misinformation" and prevent anybody from talking about it.

Another example is tobacco companies, which I hope we can both agree is an example of bad advertising. If the government was able to regulate speech in the way you are proposing, we would have seen tobacco companies endlessly lobby politicians (both above and below board) to shut down any mentions of the link between tobacco and cancer. And because they are throwing their billions of dollars at the problem, there would be no way the truth about tobacco could have come out, because talking about tobacco would be illegal

[gritty rain]

I really don't think there is a problem at all with giving someone the power to determine what counts as misinformation. We give power to other people all the time, it's a normal part of living in a society. If they don't do the job well, we replace them, simple. A government has a mechanism for that.

I would generally say that consequences should be based on outcomes. If harm comes from you preaching a flat earth model in a park (and I would think that it probably would, unless nobody was around to hear you), then yes, there should be consequences.

You're only going to get a government restricting anti-slavery speech if you've already elected a government who is anti-slavery. You can solve that issue by only electing people to do jobs if you agree with them on the issues relevant to those jobs. We can do that with more subtlety than we currently do, sure, but we do still currently have the power to choose who we delegate power to.

[gritty rain]

And yes, lobbying with money is itself an example of the problems of some aspects of free speech. So you would of course get rid of that at the same time as you implemented other controls on speech.

[candid gulch]

I already did which you dismissed as "must be a USA thing". I get that you never heard about the stifling of "misinformation" that the Covid virus came from a lab in China. The WHO, US government and Canadian government (as far as I can name) all preached a narrative that it was NOT from the China lab. It was even painted as not coming from China at all, which the Australian government (as one that I know of) pushed back against that narrative. Now it is a non-controversial issue (even though its political) which is why I brought it up. How does that counter the "misinformation" that the WHO and governments sought to control? We know about the WHO and which political parties were in support of stifling evidence contrary to the narrative. Because of free speech. Otherwise, no one would know if they were able to erase all speech to the contrary (which they indeed tried to do via government/corporate collusion). Being able to control free speech is being able to control the entire scope of narratives. This is only done in dictatorships.

[dapper cedar]

fyi - covid talk is dangerously close to violating discord TOS

for the sake of the server we should probably stick to other examples

[candid gulch]

Which is why free speech is so important.

[dapper cedar]

Yeah I mean this is another thing right. Should private companies be able to regulate speech on their platform. Because we are chatting on discord, they've got stricter rules than are enforced by the US government

[candid gulch]

That is exactly how government/corporate collusion is a natural thing for people in power. They rely on each other to do things. If one can't get it done, the other one steps in. There are two theories that remark on this dynamic. One is that there is direct conspiracy, the other is that there is a pack mentality like individual wolves hunting in a pack just doing what comes natural for each. We do know that there is at least evidence that both may have truth to it.

[gritty rain]

The big problem with all of that, is that we still don't know if any of that is true. So we can't really point to that as an example of free speech countering misinformation, because the misinformation is still out there in the form of all the various different theories. Maybe free speech was the source of the misinformation there? We can't say that it definitely wasn't.

There are many, many countries around the world that place restrictions on free speech, the UK included. It does not make the UK a dictatorship at all.

[gritty rain]

Fair point.

[candid gulch]

Yes but people being able to talk about causes that have world wide ramifications, such as the cause of the great depression (a US thing) is something that should not be narrated from seats of power such as the government or corporations. It doesn't matter what you believe the cause of the great depression is or what the government wants you to believe, if you are not allowed to speak about it, it is controlling speech and controlling whatever narrative the government wants (as an example thats not entirely real). I brought up a real world example of the government trying to control speech through its own narration, mainstream media narration and outright banning of information from corporate. We can't really go into details about that thing in its entirety because we are skating on thin ice on this very platform and may get banned by a corporation for speaking about it. Your answer to that is "we don't know" which is the same answer about the government, it "doesn't know" and still exercised as much power as it could. Its a prime example of how voting doesn't matter when it comes to handing control of information (who can speak it and how its portrayed) to governments, democratic or not.

[dapper cedar]

Part of free speech is the freedom to kick people off of your platform if you want to

[candid gulch]

I regard that as a conflation. Banning people from your platform is not tied to free speech but tied to freedom of ownership which is a different debate about public platforms. It also give power to taking away free speech on public platforms because of ownership.

[dapper cedar]

Yeah, and discord is not a public platform. A public platform would be like a public park, or a website you created.

[candid gulch]

Discord allows anyone to create an account. That is what is part of the problem of definitions within ownership. If the entire public around the world can create an account, you are effectively a public platform. I get that the current definition doesn't claim that but it should. There is too much power within corporations to control the public when the public is what they use as their base. My definition of a public platform is a platform anyone can access. Like this server is a public server that anyone can join. This server itself, therefore, is a platform anyone from the public can use. Anyone from around the world can come into this server and start discussions on philosophy. It is wrong that certain ideas can be banned and others can be fully discussed publicly.

[dapper cedar]

Discord allows anyone to create an account.
My definition of a public platform is a platform anyone can access.
I mean technically this is false? If you refuse to agree to the terms+conditions you can't create an account. If that's your only distinction for a public vs private platform than discord falls squarely in the private category.

Before I sound too much like a devil's advocate here, both deplatforming and obscure, unevenly enforced terms and conditions are problematic in their own ways. I'm generally okay with the "fix" for this being consumers voting with their wallet/attention, but I will agree its probably unworkable once a platform has reached like a critical mass.

[candid gulch]

I get what your saying but when a app has the primary function of chatting and allows the public to join, it needs to be accountable to the public and not the other way around. Terms and conditions need to be regulated to serve the public that the platform is made for. Way too much importance is placed on a corporations ability to regulate its users. Do I agree that they can regulate its users? Yes, but within certain parameters only. Typing a word such as bubonic should not throw up red flags on TOS (obviously being vague here but you get the point). The public should be able to discuss the bubonic plague as much as they like on any chat platform.

[gritty rain]

You brought up an example of a time when it was absolutely critical to try and control the flow of misinformation. People believing the wrong thing were at serious risk of death, so the US's free speech policies almost certainly resulted in the deaths of thousands of people through misinformation. So for me, it's just a prime example of the problems of free speech.

[candid gulch]

So your answer to the WHO, US government and Canadian government not knowing if it was from a lab or not but narrating that it wasn't is because of deaths? The prime example of free speech in your eyes is that origins cannot be discussed because of misinformation? Your on board with censorship for protecting interests that you don't even know the motives for? We still don't know the motives of narrating that it was a conspiracy theory to mention a lab. We can only guess (which would lead to conspiracy theories on their interests). Protecting unknown interests that goes against common people inquiring is exactly why free speech has prevailed against misinformation put out by governments (the ones that you want to have control over speech against it). You say its insane for people to be able to say whatever they like. I say its insane to allow governments and organizations to protect unknown interests by controlling free speech.

[gritty rain]

It's not unknown interests, there is a very clear reason for opposing baseless accusations made against people in other countries. It's because those sorts of accusations promote racism.
Free speech in this instance involved making accusations without evidence. As it often does. I'm totally happy for the WHO, US government and Canadian government to restrict free speech in order to oppose racism.
The idea that all three of those organisations were involved in a conspiracy to hide the cause of covid is another baseless accusation. Sure, with free speech we can accuse everyone of anything we like. But spending time thinking about imaginary scenarios (particularly those that promote paranoia) doesn't really help us that much.

[candid gulch]

Well, I brought up a political but largely non-controversial subject. The misinformation on its origins put out by governments and organizations and saying any thoughts otherwise (again this is where thought is tied to speech) to that narrative was called a conspiracy theory. Its largely non-controversial now because its not a crazy idea. You get that right? Both scenarios were plausible. Apparently I am wrong about the non-controversial part because you are still painting a narrative of "imaginary". As if going against the "truth" of narratives painted by governments and organizations are just common people imagining things out of thin air.

Ok, lets back up a bit. Yes, at first these governments and organizations were saying the origin wasn't from China in the first place. That narrative got shot down by other governments who could actually show that it did. That was very early on. Once it was known that the origin was from China, how is it racist to say it was from a lab? Wouldn't it be more racist to say it came from a wet market that is normal for them? What makes the lab racist compared to a wet market? I am at a loss at the deflection of reason here.

[verbal fox]

Ethics of ad-blockers is quite a wide topic (there's not really a right or wrong answer) because it really depends on why you're using them.

If you use ad blockers because you don't like watching an ad for 30 seconds, you are:

• impacting revenue for YouTube
• impacting revenue for creator
  The reason you are doing this could be considered selfish - as you are receiving content and not "paying the toll fee"

If you use an ad-blocker because you do not want your action of viewing specific content to be shared with 250 3rd parties (and even if you trust the platform, you may not trust the 250+ unknown entities) :

• same impact as before on platform and creator
  However the reason is for safety/security

If you use an ad-blocker because you don't want to be profiled:

• same impact as before on content and creator
  However the reason is for your right to privacy

If you're using an ad blocker for reason 1, then definitely agree it's unethical - however for reason 2 & reason 3 I would personally consider it a justified reason to use one.

Don't really want to get into the free speech argument (there's good and bad points both for and against) - the only concerns I'd have with it would be if free speech is held above everything else, things like racism fuels hate crimes - you'll even see governments already overrule free speech where it causes harm to others (whether "national security" or rallying against people by race for example)

[candid gulch]

Interesting. What is your position on YouTube using ad-blocker blockers? On the free speech, there are exceptions. The largest problem is consistency within those exceptions (including institutions and governments alike) across all issues objectively and the idea that exceptions should be extremely limited in scope and contain extreme transparency. Impartiality is not a present day goal politically. That influences the very idea of actual harm.

[verbal fox]

I think they're well within their rights to do so - from their perspective:
Users should pay or watch ads
Some users evade ads
Somehow find a solution to that (in this case, they want to give a warning)
I'd say they'd be perfectly within their rights to just ban accounts from YouTube for using ad blockers too.
As a user, you are opting to use their software/website, and are bound by terms you accept. Now, violating their TOS may not qualify as illegal by law, however it doesn't mean they can't enforce how they deem necessary.
It reminds me of when I see ban appeals from players that have bought premium in RISK - sure, you bought premium - then you broke our terms of use - so now you're permanently banned - and any new account with this purchase will also be banned
Now, that's users paying for an optional benefit / add-on rather than paying ad free or premium - but it'll have similarities too. Your use of our platform is at our discretion - and should you violate our policies, we are well within our right to take action.

That said, considering that they even have malware etc being distributed, alongside heavily political content, heavily racist & sexist content, heavily abusive promotional content - it can range from a safety perspective (especially if your child is watching it?) and other times it can be to shield yourself from abuse.

They also do not take responsibility for the content they distribute to you via ads, so if you get scammed or your device gets hacked by one of their ads - it's not our fault! says Google - yet they will also claim that ads are considered part of their service - just not have any form of verification/safety for their users. If something you provide to your users can potentially (and as a result, sometimes does) cause them harm, it is your responsibility to address it - and currently at best they'd just remove an ad and continue working with the provider because it's more $ for them.

[candid gulch]

Legal arguments have gone forth that it is illegal for YouTube to invade a device to block an ad-blocker. I assume it will have YouTube adjust its TOS. Not sure if you checked on this so I will leave it here. https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-ad-blocker-detection-eu-privacy-law/

[verbal fox]

Even if so that only protects EU citizens, and does not protect anyone else worldwide.

It's a bit of a losing battle either way though. Are you familiar with setting your cookie preferences?
You have nicer ones with "Reject All / Accept All" but majority also have "legitimate interest" as an addition outside of standard "yes I consent to this data being shared with this provider" - they also do not enable a REJECT ALL feature for this.
So, if you want to OPT OUT you will spend 8 minutes (I timed for one 😶) opting out of each individual item that wasn't covered by "Reject All" - this was to read a 4 minute article.

Now, arguably you are REQUIRING CONSENT just like a Terms of Service / Terms of Use / Terms and Conditions - however they simply make it soo convoluted and time consuming that people just accept it or leave - which means they get all of this data even when selecting "Reject All" - and the end users / consumers are the ones being profiled / suffering as a result.

I've even seen cookie popups that RESET your selection when you switch between their cookie tabs, so you have user consent, legitimate interest, and links to 500+ websites for updating preferences. You reject all user consent, go to legitimate interest and spend an extra 10 minutes rejecting them - go back to user consent to check you didn't miss anything? They are all enabled again....
Now, "oops, error in our cookie navigation" is a simple excuse, however it's predatory and exploitative. There's also no incentive to change it unless legally forced to / end up with a more expensive lawsuit than the $ they get for sharing your data. In Google's case, they make so much money from ad revenue that they can just start a new predatory project to screw up something else like this even if it was possible to prove malicious intent (usually isn't though....)

When your users are your product, this is what happens

[gritty rain]

I think there are potential gaps in some of those arguments.

If I'm using YouTube, and it displays ads to me, is it ethical for me to go away and do something else while the ads are playing? Is it ethical to mute my sound? Or look away from the screen? By refusing to watch the ads that are playing, is that also me refusing to pay the toll for receiving the content?

Companies presumably want their messages to be passed on to people who watch it, not for them to be playing to thin air. So am I obliged to actually watch the ads? Have I made a contractual agreement to have their messages beamed into my brain?

It seems to me that all advertising would have to acknowledge that people might simply not watch. People that put up billboards must surely realise that not everyone is going to notice them, and I would think the same would go for people who make ads for the internet. Surely that's why the rate of pay for displaying ads is so low, because there is already an understanding that there is no guarantee anyone will actually watch them? So for me, what advertisers are paying for, and what advertising companies like Google/YouTube are providing, and what content makers are providing for them, is the possibility that people are going to watch the advert, not the guarantee.

I regard ad blockers as doing nothing more than making it easier for me to do something I am always perfectly entitled to do, i.e. simply not watch the ad. I think the ethical grey area is actually the idea of trying to detect when someone is choosing not to watch an ad and refusing to pay the content creator because of that. Just because a viewer chose not to watch your ad, it doesn't mean the content creator didn't still do the work to show them your ad. It's like paying sales people only on commission, it's just a company trying to pass all the risks off onto other people while keeping all the benefits themselves.

[gritty rain]

It's imaginary when there is no evidence for the scenario they're spreading. The 'common' people's narrative was imaginary because they have absolutely no way of knowing where the source of covid was. Did they track the virus DNA back from patient to patient? No. That's what the WHO and governments did. Anyone else making any claims is, yes, just making things up out of thin air.

But of course, even the notion that it was 'common' people doing spreading those unsubstantiated rumours is a bit misleading. Rumours like that only really spread when they get picked up by people with power, who actually can spread them using their influence. If you put out a tweet, that tweet is going nowhere unless someone with a lot of followers retweets it. Social media has spread the power out a little with regards to communication, but we're still entirely reliant on people with power. Who, of course, basically all have advertising or sponsorship deals or business interests of some kind they are trying to promote, and so are themselves nothing more than representatives of businesses.

It's racist because it promotes a negative view of China that is not based on evidence. That is what prejudice is, preconceived opinions that are not based on facts.
Saying it was from a lab, as opposed to just an accidental transmission from another animal, plays into the bigoted belief that China is doing dangerous and/or unethical things in their labs, and/or that they are running their labs in a dangerously unsafe way. Saying that it was from a lab as opposed to a market shifts the emphasis from cultural and geographical differences, to governmental-level flaws. It is a remarkable coincidence, don't you think, that we ended up with business-sponsored rumours about Chinese governing, when the business world feels threatened by Chinese governing?
There are valid criticisms of China, of course. But doing so without evidence is just prejudice.

[glad ferry]

I don’t think there is any ethical concerns with blocking, ignoring or silencing ads in general. It’s upon the content creator and the ad creator to have the ads be more interesting and better blended/involved/ into the content being watched. I’m all for free speech. But free speech doesn’t mean that I’m obliged to listen to nonsense. Someone wants to spew out nonsense? So be it, but it’s on them if their feelings are hurt when people ignore them. Some content creators on youtube try very hard to involve the ads and camouflage them somewhat into their content; Often times much more pleasant, humorous and non disturbing to the content being watched when done well and or when relevant.

And both free speech of any kind and silencing of any kind are required for a society to advance to it’s full potential; It comes with the good and the bad. It’s difficult to rightfully predict wether or not an idea will end up having value come out of it; Impossible to know it’s full effects well into the far future. Things need to be tried out, others need to be squashed, and it’s a complicated game of teamwork to determine what’s what.
It really comes down to each individual to try their damned best to stay open and aware, but also willing to have their mind changed. To try alternatives, open to change, etc. Teaching others as best we can, and knowing when to talk and when to keep our mouth shut and listen. It’s all a dance, and some are stomping their feet in objection.

[candid gulch]

So according to you, it is less racist to supply the scenario that a culturally specific activity (China and southeast Asia) is dirty enough to cause world wide havoc and calls for it to be regulated (clamping down on a cultural population) because the virus was tracked back to Wuhan where a wet market is. You think they have identified the specific vendor and product so calls for regulation of a culture is justified? As opposed to understanding that if laboratories world wide that deal with viruses are not within certain regulations, they could be dangerous. There is no evidence either way, as you claim. You cannot claim evidence for a wet market and still say "we still don't know if any of that is true" (as a point against free speech, saying "that misinformation is still out there") while at the same time claiming one scenario is valid (pushing the wet market cultural restrictions) while the other is straight misinformation and prejudice (involving censorship and conspiracy actively induced). One points to a culture and the other to a institution. Saying that its racist to think (free speech) that it may have come from an institution is certainly prejudice against a dictatorship that fails to regulate not only labs but the VERY KNOWN emissions of institutions within its borders. Your reaching that acknowledging horrible emissions of China is racist and that safety of emissions is bigoted. But the worst part of your argument is justifying a government defending the emissions of China and to speak freely about them should be censored accordingly (by way of the same logical argument). There are a plethora of valid criticisms of China and conflating that with a culture instead of a government is what your trying to do here with the claim of bigotry. Meanwhile, the message is spread by governments and mainstream media that wet markets are dirty is not bigoted. As I said, all that is lost on me. You do you.

[candid gulch]

Oh I agree that invasive practices should be done away with. Cookies go through legal proceedings also. Let me ask a different question though. Is it ethical to walk away from ads that are playing (and not blocked)?

The point you have about revenue sharing with the creator is the most valid since (its supposed) that you do want the creator rewarded for content. There is a slight difference from pop-up ads and sponsored speech from the creator itself. One would leave the creator in the dust (ad sharing wise, with a ad-blocker) while the other would only cut down on time seen (by skipping forward in the video itself). Is it ethical that unsponsored creators be left in the dust by YouTube?

Unsponsored creators have way more against them on YouTube, including data on people not being present while the video is playing (a pop up ad can halt a video entirely by looping forever in ads if not actively skipped after the alloted time).

[candid gulch]

One instance not reflected on philosophically is that my friend chooses videos that he likes but doesn't care about enough in order to have the content playing while he sleeps (he uses it to watch until he falls asleep and have some noise in the background which helps him while asleep). Pop-up ads will go into the thousands if he is not actively clicking to skip after the allotted time. Is it ethical for him to use ad-blockers to keep content playing while sleeping or does he not have enough control over his method to justify ad-blockers? Should he wake up in the middle of the night and be annoyed that ads are playing, waking him up further? Or is it ethical that he wakes up to content that he can look at and still fall back to sleep? Its a very niche thing, I do understand. Should he go for drugs instead or keep using ad-blockers to use the method he found to work? Is watching the creator that many hours (approximately one third of his life) enough to compensate the creator or does blocking ads mean that the creator is being robbed?

[verbal fox]

If you are actively using YouTube for a third of your life, you definitely have a more than justified value for money with YouTube premium (and get around the ads issue that way) if you watch one video a month or so then the ad revenue is virtually negligible especially as you'd not be clicking on it anyway (so using an ad blocker is more ethical)
The friend definitely should be using premium considering usage imo

[candid gulch]

That is a good answer, however, I know he is not going to use premium for his sleeping method since ad-blockers work and are free. The questions I have are more about the ethics of YouTube (being a business doesn't exempt from ethics) and how they treat creators with different methods of compensation. There are pop-up ads, sponsored speech, views, subscriptions, notifications, numbers of views, time viewed, etc. Is YouTube itself fair and ethical within its allocation of compensation for all these areas? Do they even care about known statistics such as views and likes? Is YouTube robbing creators or is the responsibility on viewers?

[verbal fox]

It's similar to if someone was to issue a chargeback to your company, the bank won't say "this person issued a chargeback but it'll come out of our pocket" because it will be open to abuse and could (potentially) be heavily abused by malicious actors / criminals to make a fortune (reselling etc) at the expense of the business.

Banks are simply processing purchases for you & they're providing you with a method for doing so, you can always use another bank / platform or even "make your own" in theory if you disagree with their practices. But you can't really expect a business to foot the cost of your viewers refusing to follow their TOS / through watching ads or paying for premium. I'm pretty sure Patreon (which although not exactly a "white knight" still a better option than YouTube / Google) wouldn't be footing the cost for chargebacks or abuse by a creator's viewers.

That said, the biggest argument on the creator's side is that they are spending $ / time on production, they are then footing the cost of this at their own expense/risk - but they are then only receiving a tiny % of the profit even if it does do well. YouTube then successfully makes 2x / 3x / 4x what all of their creators combined will be making through their platform, and the only reason they still can is because there is such a giant monopoly held. Anti-competitiveness doesn't seem to really apply to Apple / Google / Amazon, even though they will intentionally go out of their way to either buy their competition or run them out of business (and they'll use malicious methods like misinformation campaigns / push media that is against their practices - that is then receiving higher ad revenue & they are basically being paid for taking the giant conglomerate side - being bought off in the process 😄)

Without user trust, YouTube simply wouldn't work (people would not watch it, maybe they'd jump to twitch instead as a decent example) - but you can only really jump between one giant evil corporation to another, because the rest cannot survive in the competitive environment because they only have the one honeypot & only one hand, while the other businesses are stacking their honeypots in warehouses, all of the bees just visit the warehouse because it's cheaper & has been there longer & is guaranteed to keep supplying honey, even if it's extortionate/abusive/malicious practices going on...
Google has spent a vast fortune on first establishing a monopoly on a product, followed by over-monetisation & anti-competitive practices to then make it a fortune back in revenue - if it fails it simply discontinues the product and makes a new one (and keeps getting hype along the way)

What I did like in the article was the consideration given to the quality & safety & security of the ads being presented. Imagine if you were watching a show on Netflix. You see a recommended show, click on it then get a big red popup "suspicious activity detected, sign in with your email & password to continue watching" - you do so, and continue watching.
The following day you find out your email has been hacked, on malicious actor side all emails have been downloaded / categorised and now issued password resets on every login system you use without 2FA enabled, including seeing your bank information as you've shared a picture of your card directly with the bank in the past. Now you have no social accounts & all of your friends have received a link to watch the show as "it was great!" and anyone that went to it also got compromised too.
Who would you blame? Is it my fault for logging in while using their platform? Is it the provider of the show that takes responsibility? No, you would blame netflix for providing you with content that was unsafe / malicious - and you'd probably be suing them over it.
The fact that Google / YouTube claim ownership of ads / user generated content yet refuse to claim ownership for ad content provided by them is crazy

[candid gulch]

All of that presumes that YouTube is being ethical with business placing ads, not charging ad fees if ads are blocked (charging any money at all for the ability to place ads). Ads that do not require a viewer to be there can be walked away from. In the case of YouTube, those ads are too quick to actually make use of the time. Other platforms will play several ads at once where people walk away and come back. Advertisers still pay the same amount of money if there are viewers or if there are not. One way certain events get around this is effort to promote exceptional ads like super bowl ads. Ads are hyped on the super bowl, showing in full a new ad that will be shown throughout the year in, at least, part.

[dapper cedar]

I agree with the whole "adblocking is probably unethical" on some level. It's kinda of a tragedy of the commons type situation where if too many people were to do it everyone were to do it it would be bad for everyone.

except at it's core though, all ad blockers do is maintain a list of URLs (advertising domains) that you don't want to accept connections from, which I definitely don't think is unethical. I'm not sure how I would connect the two.

I guess it's also important to draw a distinction between sponsored segments in a video and YouTube pre-video ads.

[candid gulch]

If we are going with the content creators point of view, they get penalized for all types of things and are basically on a commission only basis. It also takes a huge amount of work just to get the point where they are earning commission. Its like a job where only bonuses matter without an hourly rate from an extremely stingy employer. Becoming sponsored has its own challenges for the average content creator trying to maximize commission. That being said, I looked up the highest earner which supposedly is MrBeast. Its really fluff content. "7 Days Stranded At Sea" with a picture of a raft is actually a floating anchored dock that is claimed to be a raft with food, water, shelter, sleeping bags and cots. Its basically the same as sailing on a well equipped boat without the worry of getting lost. Ethics can be questioned for all types of things on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhB3BgJyGl8

[gritty rain]

I think you maybe misunderstood what I wrote, because I didn't say any of the things you're claiming I said, or argue any of the points you're trying to argue against there.

I'm not making any kind of judgement about what form of racism is either more or less racist than another. I'm just saying that spreading baseless accusations about another group of people promotes prejudice, and that preventing people from spreading baseless accusations is generally a good thing.

[gritty rain]

I don't know if any of this was a reply to my message about the ad payment method being unethical. But I don't really see the parallel between a bank processing a payment and an advertising company paying for advertising.

Users choose not to watch ads because the ads themselves don't provide anything the users want. It's as simple as that. The issue here is that YouTube has a bad product that it's trying to force users to accept. Instead of continuing trying to flog a dead horse, YouTube and other advertising companies should be trying to make better adverts that people actually want to watch. That would solve the issue immediately.

Saying that content creators should only be paid for their work when viewers watch ads, is like saying that a store should only pay for the electricity they are using when customers buy something, or that I should only pay rent for the hours I'm actually in the house. Content creators are bringing people to YouTube's website (what they are being paid to do) perfectly, whether people watch the ads or not. They shouldn't be penalised just because other people can't do their job.

[verbal fox]

The advertising company won't be paying for content that they've flagged as not being watched, and they're not charged for it by YouTube for any that are identified as blocked either.
If average clicks / 1000 drop, the cost of advertising drops / the cost that advertisers are willing to pay at drops (so yt & creators suffer)
Ad blockers reduce the average clicks (whether accidental or not) because the content isn't even being displayed to the end user.

The comparison I was drawing was that YouTube serves the ads (usually ad provider selects target demographics and yt is then showing these to X people)
So YouTube is processing ads rather than payments
If the payment isn't processed successfully (in this case it's sent but rejected, or it is charged back) then the receiver will not receive $
So ad company is the sender, yt is the processor, creator is basically the receiver (with massive deduction of 60% or so)

The creators are not employees of the platform, YouTube has always been a commission based payment model (twitch is similar to an extent too)
You also will not see any platform that pays all of their content creators upfront for posting content - it's based solely on whether or not it makes them money

[gritty rain]

First of all, it's not true at all that no platforms pay content creators directly for content irrespective of advertising revenue generated. That's actually the standard model used by all TV companies. The ability to track advertising by clicks and views is a very recent one, and only exists with online content. In almost all of the business world, you pay people for the work they do for you, not for the outcomes you get from it.

This is because outcomes never depend only on the work of any one person. This is still true with online content, because the number of clicks an advert generates also depends on the quality of the advert, among other things. Commission-based systems are therefore always fundamentally exploitative of the role on which you are placing full responsibility for outcomes.

Trying to argue that content creators are not employees is arguing semantics. Whatever the nonsense contractual definitions might be, content creators are employees of YouTube in practice. They are paid by YouTube, they provide a service for YouTube, they make money for YouTube, they follow the instructions of YouTube. The only difference is that they aren't given the rights of an employee. They are 100% being exploited by YouTube.

[candid gulch]

Of course. You took the baseless accusations about the lab and have painted it in the most negative light possible. I took the baseless accusations of wet markets (and the calls for regulation) and painted it in the most negative light possible. The difference is one is suppressed and the other is spouted by mainstream media. Painting things, like the government has, is called a narrative. Which is the danger against free speech. When the government doesn't know the answers it turns on cultures rather than institutions by its very nature of supporting institutions (itself). It would rather call wet markets dirty than labs ran under governments.

[candid gulch]

I know less about advertisers situation in relation to YouTube. I was just saying that I don't know if advertisers just pay tons for advertisement or if they also have a certain threshold they have to meet (like content creators do). For instance, I know that its not easy or cheap to get into the door, so to speak, and be able to advertise on YouTube in the first place. I know that advertisers need to put a ton of effort in being on YouTube, I just don't know how much that entails. Is the contract between YouTube and advertisers ethical? or are advertisers within the same boat as content creators and YouTube still makes the majority of money through bogus contracts? Like do advertisers have to buy tons of spots to make advertising cheaper? and if so, does YouTube not count advertisements being blocked? Just trying to find out the extent at which all parties are being screwed by YouTube while ad-blocking is screwing YouTubes golden goose.

[fresh bluff]

And…I think we may have wandered a little too far from the ethics of ad blockers

[candid gulch]

No problem. Its going to get a response if its stated that allowing people to say what they want is insane, giving complete control over chosen narratives of governments. Wherever and whenever. I get what your saying though. Free speech discussion does tie to advertisement ethics but in only the most tentative way.

[fresh bluff]

Unless we want to talk about the ethics of running a PSA on how to properly sanitize your wet market or your lab for that matter… 😂

[candid gulch]

That's racist in both narratives!

[fresh bluff]

Obviously 🙄

[candid gulch]

I like it (probably because I am completely racist and unreasonable, the government is right after all).

[fresh bluff]

You tube are the dudes who try not to pay anything of the money they take from the dudes who buy the ads to the dudes who actually make the only thing of value on the platform. I’m just the dude dressed as the dude trying to look like the dude who has any relevant thoughts on how to correct this.

[candid gulch]

Listen to Aerosmith or the Kinks? Singing about it always helps.

[gritty rain]

I don't think that you telling me what you think I'm doing is helping this conversation, because I already know what I'm doing, and you're getting it wrong most of the time.

Anyone trying to communicate anything can create a narrative to give to people. That's not something exclusive to governments.

The two options are either that you have governments controlling information, or you have big private businesses controlling it. Of the two, I think governments are by far the preferable choice. They do at least have some incentive to combat misinformation.

[gritty rain]

The argument about free speech is relevant to this discussion about ad blockers because it's important to establish that it's ok to allow limits and controls on advertising. Advertising isn't something that needs to be protected, it's more something we need to be protected from. So rather than thinking about adblockers from the point of view that they are stopping something legitimate or positive, they instead become part of a wider conversation about what should be acceptable in the field of advertising.

[candid gulch]

Saying things like "letting people say whatever they like is insane" is trying to control all information. Controlling information is the exact opposite of free speech. Saying which of two lesser evils should control information is saying that information should be controlled by an evil instead of controlled by free logic.

[fresh bluff]

I use an artisanal ad blocker that removes the ads in the gentlest way possible. Without injuring the ads or even hurting their feelings. Is that ethical enough?

[fresh bluff]

Letting people say things like “Letting people say things like “letting people say whatever they like is insane” is insane” is insane.

[candid gulch]

Wait. I am lost now. Is it insanely free and logical or insanely controlled by narrative?

[fresh bluff]

Your freedom extents to you being allowed to diagram the sentence for yourself. 😂

I’m looking forward to thought control. A lot of people have been thinking things that are far too dangerous. But again I am wandering far away from ad blockers.

[gritty rain]

What on earth is "free logic"?

There is no scenario where speech isn't controlled by someone. Speech in a "free speech" system is controlled by the rich and powerful, and speech in a speech-controlled system is controlled by the government and therefore the people. Where does 'free logic' come into it?

[candid gulch]

Free logic is the freedom to apply logic (i.e. thoughts that are free) in the form of speaking them (in the context of free speech). That would be opposed to narrative logic that supplies logic to the narrative, trying to control the direction of thought.

[gritty rain]

But there is always something trying to control your direction of thought, so there is no such thing as being free to express logic.

[dapper cedar]

There is no scenario where speech isn't controlled by someone.
Influence, yes I would agree to that. Controlled I would say is too strong of a word for what you are describing here.

Tobacco companies are a good example. For all the billions they spent trying to suppress the truth of tobacco, they never once could completely prohibit the free exchange of info regarding the risks of cigarettes.

[candid gulch]

With free speech you can speak against narratives. So you can resist thought control and bring new ideas into the framework. We are freely able to express logic on this platform (other than maybe violating TOS which can be bypassed logically).

[brisk palm]

Not gonna lie Arklar, your opinion has peaked my interest. It's not everyday I see an unique perspective like yours. If you don't mind, I have three questions for you. Afterwards, I'll crawl back into the hole I curl up in for 23 hours a day.

1. When you say you want to ban the method of advertising, to what extent do you mean? For example, would this be limited to direct advertising from corporations (buy this product using one of your kidneys and second born child), or would this be extended to "indirect advertising", which I classify as someone recommending a product through word of mouth (hey, I got this new propeller hat that lights up, you should get one so we can match)?

2. What mechanisms would this ban entail? Like, what regulations would the government introduce in this situation that you believe would be ideal?

3. By implementing said changes, what direct benefit do you think will be applied to society as a whole that would make life better than the conditions we currently live in during our day-to-day lives?

[candid gulch]

Propeller hats are great. Propeller hats that light up should be advertised for free (my take).

[gritty rain]

OK, but in that specific example the tobacco companies managed to control the flow of information sufficiently well to stop anyone taking any action to combat their narrative for decades, and made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their lies. They are still making billions of dollars every year. So how is this a good scenario?

A free speech system where anyone can say anything and it is all given equal weight, results in everyone being equally ignored. That is what has created the post-truth world we live in now, where we can't trust anything we hear. Without controls on communication, there is nothing to say which messages are reliable. Without anything to tell us what is reliable, we use our own judgement, and so that inexorably brings us to the present situation where people only believe the media that they already agree with. What free speech has done is make people almost impervious to learning.

Tobacco companies will continue to profit from lies until enough people can prove that they are lies. But we can't prove they are lies until we have information we can rely on. And we can't have information we can rely on without listening to someone who tells us that it is reliable. So, in a free speech system, how do we get that?

[gritty rain]

A person who is already thinking differently to the narrative can express a different view in theory. But in practice that expression will go nowhere because only the people who already agree with it will believe it. So the net result is the same, nothing changes.

[candid gulch]

Your conflating free speech with narratives. Narratives are why we cant trust anything we hear. As opposed to journalistic impartiality. Narratives is what got us were we are with the echo chambers you describe.

[candid gulch]

No, that is incorrect. We have already been over the narrative of wet markets and people being censored over talking about labs.

[gritty rain]

1. I would ideally ban anything that gave undue weight to any product. Any scenario where any information at all is presented about a product, I would requite it to present all similar products with the same level of information.

We can't ban advertising by word of mouth, but we also don't need to, because we humans we are able to realise that a single human's recommendation is subjective and not objective. It's just our psychology that means we can't do that with published information.

2. Simply ban all private advertising. The government would keep a list of all products, a catalogue if you will, and if you need something you go to a catalogue and look for products that do what you want them to do.

3. When it's that easy to tell the difference between products, the companies that make inferior products stop doing so because nobody will buy them. So the catalogues very quickly become short and simple to use. It's easier to find products that work. We also don't have 80% of our economy devoted to producing products that are either useless or poor quality, which means we don't waste materials to anything like the same degree we do now, and we also have a lot more free time to do things we enjoy. The world is a much happier and more relaxed place.

[candid gulch]

1. You have to give complete undue weight to hat propellers that light up. You just have to.

[gritty rain]

There's no such thing as journalistic impartiality in a free speech system where all journalism is controlled by rich people. We can't get close to having journalistic impartiality without implementing controls to stop influence on journalists.

[dapper cedar]

Is the Lego movie an advertisement?

[gritty rain]

We will have narratives with any information system. There's no differential there.

[candid gulch]

There is no such thing as total impartiality at all. The point is not to make judges and journalist completely impartial. The point is that judges and journalist strive for impartiality and look at all sources. We understand about being human, however, to abandon impartiality completely in favor of narratives is not what we are referring to with "free speech". You are conflating the two.

[gritty rain]

That's a good and interesting question. I would say for things where it's not clear if there is another purpose besides simple product advertising, the test to apply would be if they communicate anything that is untrue or misleading. I don't think the Lego Movie does, so if I was the person in charge of making that decision I would say it's fine.

[candid gulch]

Free speech is the ability to speak against narratives no matter what the power of the holder of the narrative is. The highest power being the government.

[gritty rain]

Yes, the point actually is to try and make judges and journalists as impartial as possible. That is a desirable outcome. But we can't have that with a 'free speech' system.

[candid gulch]

You mean we cant do that with narratives dictating logic.

[gritty rain]

Free speech is the ability to speak against narratives, yes, but in a situation where what you say will be entirely ignored. You accomplish absolutely nothing by speaking as an individual in a free speech system.

[dapper cedar]

MLMs?

[gritty rain]

...what are MLMs?

[dapper cedar]

Multi level marketing schemes. Basically pyramid schemes but for marketing and selling products

They definitely fit under word of mouth advertising

[candid gulch]

I accomplish my duty of speaking truth against narratives. Being able to point against lies. Its not easy to do, not saying it is. Sometimes it takes decades or centuries, like your saying about tobacco. But without free speech, it would take much longer, if at all.

[gritty rain]

Without knowing precisely what you mean, if they are giving undue weight to any products then yes, I would ban them if it involves publishing or promoting something.

[dapper cedar]

It's definitely worth looking into, because it is pretty predatory, but relies very heavily on small scale, word of mouth advertising that you mentioned isn't bannable. Furthermore, because of the word of mouth stuff, a lot of the untruthy claims and exaggetations that are made individual to individual, which would make it hard to regulate

[gritty rain]

A duty that accomplishes nothing seems like a bad idea to me.

It's not that improvements and learning take decades or centuries in a free speech system, it's that they might not even happen at all. But historically we've all been living in a society with quite strict controls on speech until very recently. Certainly before the internet was invented all published information was controlled, because it was only a very small number of people who had the abiltiy to publish anything at all.

[candid gulch]

I mean if you don't want to speak against tobacco, you don't have to but to say that people should not have the power to speak against it is something else.

[gritty rain]

The ultimate test for any action is: Is this causing people to be mislead, or harmed? If it is predatory as you describe, then the answer to that question will be yes, and if there is any kind of structure to it then it should be possible to identify.
Of course, it's never going to be possible to control all information flow. But I'm not suggesting we even try. All I'm suggesting we do, is try and create a situation where there is some more reliable source of information about things. I don't care if there are infinite unreliable sources of information as well, as long as the reliable source is available and accessible.

[gritty rain]

Who's saying they shouldn't have the power to speak against it?

[candid gulch]

If you give the government power to stop people from speaking against it, the government can certainly say people can't speak against it. That is the the power of handing over free speech to the government.

[candid gulch]

The second part of strict controls on speech except by the internet is not true at all. The internet helped, for sure but abolitionist movements within the USA was more than 16 decades ago with huge opposition. The freedom to speak out against slavery was cherished.

[gritty rain]

If the government don't have the power to regulate people speaking about it, then the tobacco companies are the ones that have the power to stop you speaking against it. Someone is going to have that power. Our only choice is who.

[candid gulch]

Tobacco companies don't have the power of the government to regulate speech.

[gritty rain]

They don't need the power of the government to do that. Instead they have the power of being very rich in an environment which gives all power to the rich, which is even more powerful than the government in a scenario where the government can exert some controls.

[candid gulch]

Your conflating regulation and enforcement of speech with ability to influence through money. Tobacco companies cannot throw you in jail because you said something against them. Governments can.

[gritty rain]

Why would they want to throw you in jail? They can just enslave you instead by taking you to court and making you pay legal fees until the end of time.

[candid gulch]

Either way, your conflating regulation and enforcement of speech by governments vs. influence money can buy. Governments have the ultimate power to regulate speech, not companies.

[gritty rain]

What I'm saying is that there is no practical difference between the two in terms of the level of power they can wield. The only real difference, is whether you trust a big business to look out for you, or whether you trust the people you picked to do that job yourself.

[candid gulch]

I will never pick anyone to do the job of regulating my speech. I get that you would, but I would never give that power over to anyone. Speaking freely is my power and my power alone. I would never give power for someone to punish me for speaking freely.

[gritty rain]

You already have given that power away, by living in a 'free speech' society.

Any big company can punish you for speaking freely if they choose.

Big companies can, and regularly do, ruin people's lives for speaking freely.

[candid gulch]

Now your just in a circular argument. I am not talking about defaming a company or any legal exceptions to being able to express thoughts freely. I am talking about allowing people to say whatever they like (apart from legal exceptions).

[gritty rain]

Well now you're contradicting what was said before. Are you free to say whatever you like or not?

[candid gulch]

I have said there are exceptions. You do understand what is actually meant by free speech, correct?

[gritty rain]

I understand what is normally meant by 'free speech'. But I don't know if that is what you're talking about.

What we're talking about in this conversation, is the ability of anyone to have any control whatsoever about any type of speech.

[candid gulch]

Mostly I have been talking about the ability to speak out against governmental narratives. Like the ability to not be censored by bringing up a lab, for instance.

[gritty rain]

So what happens if you speak out against a government narrative in a way that breaks the law? Is it good that the government can stop you doing that, or not?

[candid gulch]

Within the current system? Yes, if you are advocating to physically other throw the government, that would be an exception. If the government is in control of misinformation, such as a ministry of misinformation, that is not regulation of companies but of a population, then that is dictatorship. Especially when misinformation is coming from government officials. Are you advocating for non-free speech of the population or of companies?

[gritty rain]

You can't make a legal distinction between individuals and companies without creating loopholes. So you have to be able to say to anyone, "What you're doing is harmful and you need to stop."

If you do that based on laws, then you're accepting a system where someone else tells you what you can or cannot say.

Well, it's accepting that situation whatever it's based on. But if it's based on laws, then you're basically accepting government control over it.

[candid gulch]

I would never accept a system where someone else tells me what I can say or not as an individual that doesn't represent a company (on my own time). That would be a reason to over throw a dictatorship. It would start small like speaking out against the upcoming laws that would prevent me from speaking out against the upcoming laws for a start. It would grow worse as time went on, especially if new upcoming laws would introduce slavery again and prevented me from speaking out against slavery, etc.

[gritty rain]

Sorry, it's not clear what you're saying there. Are you saying that you wouldn't accept a representative of a government telling you what you can or cannot say, but that you would accept a representative of a company doing the same thing?

[candid gulch]

Companies don't tell me what I can say or not say against them. That is the point of my free speech. Slander is an exception, if your going that route. Companies don't have the power to jail me for saying its a bad company that has predatory practices, etc.

[dapper cedar]

Yes - the government has more power than corporations. They have control of the police force and a justice system that can legally restrict your freedoms if you do not comply.

Unless we are talking some future bladerunner cyberpunk type corporations of course

[gritty rain]

Companies don't have the power to jail you immediately, but they do have the power to destroy your life in different ways.

This isn't some theoretical dystopian future I'm talking about, there are companies that destroy people's lives for pointing out unethical practices all the time.

[dapper cedar]

yes, but being thrown in prison is like the ultimate restriction of freedom, and the power of capital punishment in some cases. I'm not aware of anything a corporation can legally do that can destroy your life more than that.

[candid gulch]

But the government can prevent you from saying it in the first place and jail you anyway.

[gritty rain]

The government only has the powers that we give them. I don't think anyone's suggesting that we give the government the power to kill us if we criticise it.

This isn't some all or nothing scenario where we have to give up all control over everything in order to have a government that can tell people not to lie in their advertising. We give the government the power to stop people lying to us through advertising, and we say no if they ever ask us to give them the power to kill us whenever they choose.

[candid gulch]

So your answer is for corporations and not individuals.

[gritty rain]

With a functioning democratic system, we retain control over what the government can do to us. The same cannot be said for a system where big companies are the ones that have all the power.

[gritty rain]

What? No, my idea is is to apply rules to everyone equally, like I already said.

[candid gulch]

From my point of view, we have a dysfunctional democratic system. Giving the power of speech to a dysfunctional democratic system is going to go the same direction as the mainstream media. It will be a downgrade for sure.

[dapper cedar]

Here's a fun one - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abolish-the-monarchy-protesters-king-proclamation-b2165294.html

[gritty rain]

A big part of the reason that your democratic system is so bad, is because you let big companies rule it. Because you don't impose rules on what people can do.

[candid gulch]

I am all for corporate regulation and getting rid of government/corporate collusion. Individuals need free speech to speak out about it.

[gritty rain]

What do you think an individual can actually achieve with free speech in the current system?

I'm going to have to get some sleep again now, but I'll check in again tomorrow if I can.

[candid gulch]

What do you think the government can actually achieve with control of free speech in the current dysfunctional system? Whatever the wind blows its way. Free speech is a safeguard against government corruption. That is why the government spins narratives on looking at labs that may have been funded by said government. We need to press and find out, if that is possible, what the case actually is. Censorship of what the government calls misinformation (which is really information inquiry and exploring possibilities) about lab problems in the past is what flow of information with free speech allows. When governments go hard with narratives, it is generally something they don't want the public to know. If the government has the power to shut down free speech, they will use it any way they see fit. China does that now. They have people report on their neighbors and disappear people. The more hidden things are within a government, the easier it is to make mistakes, opposition and corruption vanish. Suppression of free speech of individuals will only hasten the direction of misinformation the government puts out. To allow the government to control free speech of individuals only strengthens the ability of collusion and corruption for a government.

[candid gulch]

https://todayinsci.com/Events/Patent/PropellerBeanieDuBois300px.jpg

[gritty rain]

Don't get me wrong, I know that allowing government to prevent people saying certain things won't solve all the problems on its own. There are a lot of other things we need to do to improve our public systems as well. But the fundamental point it addresses is that it allows people to place more trust in the information they are presented with, preventing the most seriously exploitative stuff.

Most governments in most countries around the world take some actions to restrict what people can say, and most of them do it in a way that only moderates the really harmful stuff, without in any way using it as a blanket approach to preventing criticism of themselves. We're not restricted to only two options where we must either allow everything or else totally close off people's ability to communicate entirely.

Governments controlling what people are allowed to publish and spread doesn't affect corruption. What prevents corruption is an effective democratic process that includes transparency and oversight of everything, including of private companies. It is perfectly possible to have a government that prevents people from saying harmful stuff, that is also open about its internal processes and held accountable by the public.

Oversight of private companies (and individuals) is in fact only possible with a government that can control what they can say and do. There needs to be someone with power over companies and individuals, otherwise the selfish people in society will keep on doing their best to exploit others and exert unfair influence over processes. If it's the government that has that power, then at least you know that if there is a problem you can do something about it. In a functioning democracy, the people as a whole maintain power over the government.

If you're worried about corruption, worry about protecting your democratic processes from bribery, not about the ability of a random member of the public to make an Instagram post criticising your government.

In short, free speech and democratic transparency are two completely different things.

[candid gulch]

No doubt that yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is harmful. But we were speaking of free speech with very few exceptions that can be clearly and transparently defined. Not about misinformation that can be interpreted with a narrative. In other words, shutting down and suppressing speech about labs because of interpreted racism and, at the same time, calling for restrictions of a culture without proof. The power to interpret intentions for us is bogus and there are many things a government has to hide from its people (not just corruption in a singular form). Saying that free speech and democratic transparency are two completely different things denies both application of dictatorship and democracy. If we are not allowed to speak about what to vote for/against, we are never allowed to vote for/against it. On the other hand, we get to interpret the intentions of the government however we like and can call for investigation into the government to uncover corruption. To say that governments will never become corrupt and giving that power over to a government narrative is in serious error.

[dapper cedar]

Most governments in most countries around the world take some actions to restrict what people can say, and most of them do it in a way that only moderates the really harmful stuff, without in any way using it as a blanket approach to preventing criticism of themselves.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abolish-the-monarchy-protesters-king-proclamation-b2165294.html
Exhibit A

[gritty rain]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make exactly. But the police being stupid is an entirely different thing from the government trying to silence criticism. That's not in any way an example of silencing criticism of the government, which is a point that can pretty much be proven by the fact it was heavily publicised in the press in the UK. Criticism of the government is very much not silenced in the UK.

I assume you're aware that police in many countries act stupidly from time to time, definitely including the US (where they have been known to shoot protesters).

[gritty rain]

I'm finding it very difficult to follow what you're trying to say in this message. I don't understand what most of your sentences mean.

Replying to the one sentence I do understand, I'm not for one moment suggesting that governments should have the power to forbid us from speaking about what to vote for or against. I'm very much only talking about making sure governments have the power to forbid harmful forms of speech, not just any speech they feel like restricting.

[candid gulch]

Ok, I was still going with your statement about "I really don't think there is a problem at all with giving someone the power to determine what counts as misinformation." It seems like you agree that calling for a restriction of a cultural practice (wet markets) without proof is misinformation from the media and governments. Which we can agree on is the worst entity to determine what counts as misinformation since they are putting out misinformation.

[gritty rain]

I've never said that calling for restriction of wet markets is misinformation from the media and governments. Firstly, I even know if the US government or media even did that. Secondly, I have no information to enable me to decide whether it was justified or not. Show me where the US government or media called for that, and what information they were basing that on, and maybe I can offer an opinion about it.

The government is definitely the best entity to determine what counts as misinformation, because the public have some degree of power and oversight over the government. That means if we don't like the decisions that they make, we can get rid of them. That's the safeguard. We tell them to do it on our behalf, and we check their work to make sure they are doing it right. That's how government is supposed to work.

[candid gulch]

I can look around a bit but we lived through it and pretending things didn't happen just a few years ago doesn't erase the memory. I am not the only one with Google and YouTube though.

Calling for restriction of Asian wet markets without proof is misinformation. Just like being told that Asian wet markets is the origin without proof is misinformation. You may as well call into question all non-western cultural activities that you don't like. Your right, the administration responsible should be voted out. Unfortunately, an administration change doesn't change those who are not voted on. Which is what we refer to as the deep state which are the unaccountable employees of powerful government entities such as the CDC, the ones who can spin narratives such as Asian wet markets should be regulated to prevent world wide havoc without any proof. You may want to start your search on regulating Asian wet markets on the CDC site.

[candid gulch]

In researching its actually worse than I remembered. I have seen more recent back offs that call for regulation rather than outright calls for complete shut down of cultural practices.

Feb 19,2020
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext

..."they overwhelmingly concluded that this [virus] originated in wildlife"...

April 2020
Media conspiracy theory feeding fear in western populations by criticizing Asian tradition and practices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0W97pVXOIk

April 2020
Wet market cringe racism spawned by governmental/media conspiracy theory. Being disgusted by Asians is normalized in the western mind and preyed on by fear mongering "what we are going through right now is a direct result of that"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbuEavqp7zs

[candid gulch]

These are the people who say a lab leak is racist and misinformation. These are the people who want to be in charge of who has the power to determine what counts as misinformation.

[candid gulch]

Do I like Asian ways? No, I am a western white male. I wouldn't touch a wet market with a ten foot pole. Do I want Asians blamed without proof? Never. Do I think for a second that talking about labs is racist? Not at all, its some type of smoke screen. Does it anger me that Asian culture is blamed without proof? For sure. Should we jump on the nearest western bias during the outbreak? Nope, there is a lab there as well. Do we know where the origins are today? Its up for grabs. Pretty despicable behavior from our enlightened government and media. Government intentions blaming our intentions as racist by not following the narrative is unknown exactly but its definitely a despicable act.

I would never trust my free speech with those type of people.

[gritty rain]

Just to clarify, although you may have lived through it, I did not, because I don't live in the US. Although it might be theoretically possible to access some US media here in the UK, the consensus here is the US media in the main might as well be showing Disney films for all the real world relevance it contains. Consequently, I normally try and block it as much as possible from entering my mind. I wouldn't know where to begin to try and get an accurate view of what the US media was saying at any given time.

[candid gulch]

No problem. If the UK defies the WHO instead of blindly following its narrative and call lab talk misinformation then its way better than the US. It does puzzle me though that you would, without actual knowledge, claim:

"It's because those sorts of accusations promote racism.
Free speech in this instance involved making accusations without evidence. As it often does. I'm totally happy for the WHO, US government and Canadian government to restrict free speech in order to oppose racism."

My free speech is for me to decide what is misinformation and what is racism and the ability to speak out against powerful organizations.

[gritty rain]

Ok, then I can further clarify that I have seen what I would call misinformation in my media, and that I am happy calling it misinformation because of the supposed evidence they use to try and justify it. I don't however know what the US media was saying, or what evidence they were presenting, and I certainly don't know what the US was saying. Here in the UK, what I remember being the general view was that we didn't know where it came from, and there were a lot of cautionary statements to that effect. But of course, I can't speak for the UK media I don't engage with.

I'll check your links later, but I'm happy to agree now that in general all accusations without evidence made against other racial groups promote racism, whether it is about labs or wet markets.

[candid gulch]

How is a lab a racial group?

[gritty rain]

What? I'm not saying a lab is a racial group. Let me rephrase it if it looks like I am.

[candid gulch]

I think we are misunderstanding each other in multiple ways so we will go with basic questions.

[gritty rain]

"Whether it is an accusation regarding labs, or wet markets, or any other quality of the other racial group."

[candid gulch]

Labs are worldwide and not within a group. Are you trying to follow some type of small thread that would protect science itself? Because we have heard that come from officials in the US to deflect criticism. Questioning whether a lab leaked a deadly virus is questioning science itself and the practice of science? I guess it is, sort of, so we can see where scientists would be offended. That is not a culture or racial group though. Its not racism in the slightest to talk about it.

It would be misinformation that talking about a lab leak is racist.

[candid gulch]

I believe it was Australia that confirmed China. Probably with the help of other countries in the region. After that, there are only two choices to talk about. The lab or the market. Are you saying Australia is the true accuser here? Just making sure we are not misunderstanding each other again. Why is it misinformation to talk about one but not the other?

[gritty rain]

I can't answer any of your questions in this message directly because I don't understand them. However, if someone publishes "Covid came from a Chinese lab" without evidence, then the word 'Chinese' in that sentence is the part that promotes racism, because that's creating an association in people's minds.

[gritty rain]

I'm sorry, but I don't see how any of this message is relevant to the discussion we've been having, and don't follow the logic of what you're saying here either. I think you might be having a completely different conversation than the one I'm having, and using a different version of English than any of the ones I'm familiar with. Can you try explaining what you're asking in slightly longer form?

Misinformation is misinformation regardless of what the topic is.

[candid gulch]

Sure. I believe I can clear up both of your concerns. What I was responding to is the ability (free speech) to talk about origins from Wuhan, a Chinese city. Within that Chinese city is a Chinese lab and a Chinese wet market. Talking about one (the lab) is mislabeled as racist and mislabeled as misinformation while talking about the other (the wet market) is mainstream news sourced from government officials that is shown as racist (in the links provided) with calls for closure of Asian wet market practices (as opposed any other 3rd world butcher practices or 1st world western butcher shop practices).

Talking about Chinese scientific labs and lab practices, North Korean scientific labs and lab practices, Indian scientific labs and lab practices, Vietnamese scientific labs and lab practices, Russian scientific labs and lab practices, French scientific labs and lab practices, American scientific labs and lab practices, Canadian scientific labs and lab practices, Mexican scientific labs and lab practices, (etc.,etc.,etc.) are a refection of the governments and powerful organizations that influence those lab practices, not of racial groups. It is misinformation to say that talking about a scientific lab and lab practices is racist. It does speak to the governments and powerful organizations behind those labs but not the people being governed.

[gritty rain]

It looks like you saying that claims that Covid came from a Chinese lab are not racist and not misinformation. And also that claims that Covid was likely transmitted from animals to humans in a wet market ARE racist. Is this right? If so, I disagree entirely.

As I've already explained, the important difference for me is between claims that have evidence, and claims that have no evidence. Claims that have evidence to back them up are fine. Claims based on no evidence are not fine, because they are generally spreading prejudice.

Consequently, I believe that the claims about Covid being likely transmitted from animals to humans in a wet market are fine, because they have the evidence from scientists who were researching the origins. The claims about Covid originating in a Chinese lab are not fine, because there was no evidence to support that. It's really that simple. We can discuss exactly what form of harm those false claims are causing, sure. Maybe it's targeting the Chinese, maybe it's targeting scientists, maybe it's targeting both. But, what seems to be very clear to me, is that claims made without evidence do cause harm. I would like to see that stopped.

[candid gulch]

There is evidence for both and not enough substantial evidence to prove either. That is the thing about narratives and racist talk born without having proof.

Claims of "what we are going through right now is a direct result of that [wet markets]" from government officials without proof is creating prejudice. Calling for shutting down Asian practices without proof is extremely prejudicial. You may be fine with all that but I am not fine for the increased violence against Asian people by having Asian wet markets blamed all over the news without proof. There is a reason Asian people held signs saying "I am not a virus". It wasn't because of talk about labs but racist news casts about Asian wet market practices sourced from government officials.

[gritty rain]

So you reject the Lancet journal as a reporter of reliable evidence?

They quoted 9 scientific studies on the page you linked to, which all concluded that Covid didn't come from a lab.

How much evidence is enough evidence for you?

[candid gulch]

You mean conclusions of a small group of people who have members to have been proven to be involved in the Wuhan lab directly? And that subsequent investigations recently declassified give conflicting results which lean more toward a lab leak? Science doesn't hinge on a small group of people or stop searching for answers without definitive proof. It never has.

[gritty rain]

Proven to be directly involved in the Wuhan lab? All of the scientists who have done research into the origins of Covid are directly involved in the Wuhan lab? That's quite a claim. Where's the evidence to support that claim?

Presumably it must be evidence that is more reliable than peer reviewed scientific studies?

Also, where's the evidence of those declassified investigations?

[candid gulch]

Members of a group is not an entire group. I get that your not used to reading my English but you can try a bit harder. I will give you the link to the declassified investigations but I am not here to be google for you. You need to learn information on your own in order to make up your own mind. Do a bit of research instead of follow every narrative without question. Your own logic should question marking talk about scientific labs (influenced by powerful organizations) as racist. Its a red flag for watching for propaganda. Learn to recognize those red flags. If you ever hear that talking about Russian labs is racist, you can take it as a lesson. Also, if you hear calls for closing all African meat trade, you may scrutinize that as racist. Its your free speech that allows it. https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-Summary-of-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf

[gritty rain]

With all due respect, I'm not a mind reader. Unless you tell me, I don't know what evidence you are basing your statements on. It's not on me to search the internet to try and find what evidence you 'might' be using. It's on you to provide it if you want to include it in this conversation.

There's also nothing I can do to magic up some meaning from a sentence that doesn't make sense. I can't create something from nothing. I'm asking you to take care with your English so that I can understand what you're saying. If you don't want to do that, there's absolutely nothing I can do to engage more with your messages.

The document you posted doesn't support your claim (you linked the unclassified document not the more detailed declassified version, but I read both anyway). It explicitly states that they (the National Intelligence Council) judge Covid was most likely caused by natural exposure to animals. It does say that some people believe the theory that it originates in a lab, but it makes it clear that they are a minority.

[candid gulch]

Your reading the parts that you want and not the entire thing. The conclusion is "low confidence... by natural exposure" and "moderate confidence... of a laboratory-associated incident" meaning exactly what I said as giving conflicting results which lean more toward a lab leak. These are separate elements coming to varying confidences of causes including "low confidence that [it] probably was not genetically engineered" meaning that there is some level of confidence that it was. You have to read all the elements if your going to read the full details. The summary I linked is included as the overview of the full details. It is the conclusion, which is inconclusive. If you want some start on research into individuals involved in the Lancet letter, you can get names, conflicts of interest and admissions here: https://news.yahoo.com/daszak-scientists-stand-lancet-letter-192900005.html

[gritty rain]

No, that's not what it says at all. You're either misunderstanding what's in the report, or cherry-picking yourself.

(Apologies if I misunderstood what you were saying before. I thought you were saying that the results of investigations were leaning more towards the lab leak theory (which appears false), but I now wonder if you were saying only that there are some conflicting views (which would be true).)

The document summarises the views of 8 Intelligence Community elements (i.e. intelligence organisations), and the National Intelligence Council itself who is producing the report.

4 of those elements believe it was caused by natural exposure. They have low confidence in this conclusion, but that's their best guess.
1 of those elements believes it was caused by a lab leak. They are moderately confident in this conclusion, but still accept it might be wrong.
3 of those elements have too much internal disagreement to express any opinion.
The NIC overall believes it was caused by natural exposure. It too has low confidence in that conclusion, but again that is the best guess.

Yes, the organisation that leans towards the lab leak theory feels slightly more confident in their view than the four who lean the other way. But that doesn't mean anything. The National Intelligence Council overall judges the four to be more likely to be correct than the one.

That article on Yahoo news is basically worthless conjecture.

[candid gulch]

Which is why calling talk about lab leaks as misinformation is, itself misinformation. Its allowed to be talked about, allowed to be examined and allowed to have confidence in it. On the other hand, talk about meat markets as if it is 100% confidence is misinformation which is what government officials did.

[candid gulch]

If you want some start on research into individuals involved in the Lancet letter, you can get names, conflicts of interest and admissions within the article, to do research for yourself and come to your own conclusions without believing everything that small group says.

[gritty rain]

The lab leaks idea was thought about by experts, and judged incorrect. Asking the public to think about theories that they cannot possibly have the necessary information to make an informed judgement about is never a great idea (look at Brexit), and it's a particularly bad idea when the experts are telling you it's incorrect and you're not passing that on when you're spreading the rumour. Spreading the idea that Covid came from a lab leak is most certainly dangerous misinformation.

If the government did say that it was 100% confident that Covid came from a meat market then yes, that is misinformation too. I have searched a bit, and haven't found them saying anything like that. But if they did, I agree, it would also be misinformation. However, saying that it is the most likely origin would be accurate, and not misinformation.

I did research the named authors of the reports on the origins of Covid, and didn't find anything I wouldn't expect to see from any academic community. People in the same field often have connections to each other. Does that prevent criticism and disagreement? Not usually, in my experience.

The part of all of this that I find most amusing, is that we're talking about whether we can trust people to control information for us, and the source of the information we're using to make a decision about this is, of course, controlled. You seem to be saying a Government document is reliable enough to prove that the Government isn't reliable. Or am I misunderstanding?

[candid gulch]

Experts had different theories. You speak about experts as if they are a a single unit and none had any suspicions and none spoke out. When ordinary people pointed out those suspicions, its judged as dangerous and racist which is misinformation.

I am not surprised you can't find any mainstream searches that give 100% confidence on the meat market. Mainstream loves to hide information and pretend it was never there, back off of stances to soften the stance and hope people forget hard line stances they took.

What does surprise me is that you have not looked at links that I said was racism (seeing how you follow the narrative that saying a Chinese lab, as opposed to a Asian market, brings prejudice) and have ignored me quoting multiple times those statements in the link: "what we are going through right now is a direct result of that", meaning a 100% confident statement that the market is the cause with the calls to shut down all Asian markets which is very racist without proof (or 100% confidence). I can only point it out. You have to come to your own conclusions without ignoring it.

[fresh bluff]

Maybe a new channel for this very special discussion that you two are having. One of you is trying to recruit the other to some cause. I’m just not sure which one is the recruiter or what the cause is 🤣

Just kidding… please continue to explore the ethics of adblockers or whatever you are doing. While this is not truly a free speech forum it is pretty close apparently… enjoy

[glad ferry]

Yeah, talk about Ethics of Adblockers has become talk about misinformation of covid19. I guess I’ve seen worse tangents.

[candid gulch]

Ya sorry. I tried to come up with a non-controversial example of free speech.

[gritty rain]

And you're talking like experts are all considering all of the information. But of course they are not. There's a reason all these separate elements of the IC exist. Each of the IC elements mentioned in the report are looking at things from their own particular angle, and it's the NIC that brings all those perspectives together and makes an overall balanced judgement. Saying that we should give as much weight to the views of a small number of analysts looking at specific things, as we do to the viewpoint of the people combining all of the views, is like saying we should give as much weight to the views of one particular member of Congress as we do to the combined decisions of the whole.

This is exactly why we have government, it's why we have democracy in fact, so that we can have people to collate and combine all the different perspectives into one that makes the most sense overall. Because none of the individual perspectives can look at the whole picture.

I looked at all the links you posted. The Lancet is pretty reliable because it uses peer-reviewed sources. The CBS piece is just random garbage tv entertainment masquerading as news, highlighting the problems with giving private companies control over your information. We could spend hours going into the problems in that piece. But why bother?

The video featuring Dr Fauci's comments has selectively edited them, so it's impossible to say for sure if he is saying that Covid came from those wet markets, or whether he was referring to the wider problem of animal-to-human disease transmission in general. I don't know him, I've not seen a lot from him, but I have also seen him state quite clearly a couple of times views that mirror the balanced perspective of the NIC report you linked, which I wouldn't call misinformation or any kind of promotion of racism. So my guess is that the comments in the video you linked to were not intended to be taken as meaning Covid was 100% caused by a wet market.

[candid gulch]

You do you. Just don't ever be in charge of free speech. Thanks.

[gritty rain]

Thanks. I will of course do my best to encourage the restriction of harmful speech. 👍

[candid gulch]

So does Kim Jong Un. He makes sure speech from the people will not harm any established narratives from those in power. Especially in advertisements. Those are scrutinized very hard for harm.

[fresh bluff]

The definition of what is and isn’t harm is something that cannot be properly established without the discourse allowed through free speech. Unless you plan on ruling by edict based solely in your authority as “the person who knows best” … in which case lead on great and most revered leader, lead on!

[candid gulch]

I feel a "but our democracy is error free and advertisements are lies" coming up.

[glad ferry]

I don’t think Arklar is even close to thinking like some type of Kim Jong Un. He’s probably just concerned for people’s well being and perhaps clumsy in his choice of words when saying things like: « I don’t have a problem with restricting free speech. » Perhaps if Arklar had just left out the word ‘free’ in there, it would have better aligned with his or her values. I may also be wrong in understanding Arklar’s values.

To Arklar’s defence, anyone using an Adblocker (which is a lot of people I’m sure) is in essence restricting speech, but only restricting the speech from being heard by themselves, not restricting it from being spoken. So that seems to be ethical (or at least I think it’s ethically proper to listen to what is good for you and ignore what you know to be bad for you after having at least listened to it a few times to get an idea of it’s worth). Now when it comes to restricting speech from being heard by others, it’s more of a gray area, needing more careful attention. But you will want to restrict certain speech for others’ sake; Lets say some drug pushers are trying to convince your young kids in the park to try hard drugs, as one example, you probably won’t want your kids to listen to them. Maybe you’ll want to go in the park and shut the drug dealers up. Perhaps, another way would be to stop your kids from going into that park. Personally I would want to inform my kids about all the dangers of hard drugs so that they can listen to what the pushers have to say and make their own judgement of how to say no to them and why. And how to ignore them afterwards if they persist.

So yeah, in resume; I think restricting ourselves from listening to speech after having made our own judgement on it; to be ethical. I think restricting others from even having the chance to express themselves to you once or twice to be unethical.

But when it come to advertising, wether someone is ignoring your ads or not, it’s their gain or their loss. The ads are still there if someone wants to listen to them even if you are personally ignoring them, they are not being restricted from existing. I have a construction company, and we have a sideline of building products we believe are good for people. The only advertising we do is having the products displayed at our commerce’s location. We do quite well with word of mouth. I’m of the belief that most products that don’t sell well with word of mouth are not worth much in the first place. I’m sure there are many exceptions out there, but I don’t think I miss out much from not looking at advertisements most of the time. When I want inspiration from the world or want to learn about what is going on and what people are doing or selling, I go out there and look for it, I find it when I feel the need to, and I ignore it when I need to stay focused.

As long as Arklar is not of the position that a few people in power should decide what is to be allowed to be said, but rather if Arklar means that people should together decide what they want to listen to, then I don’t find a problem with Arklar’s position on ‘restricting’ harmful speech. Restricting it as in restricting it from our own ears if we feel like it’s good for us to do so.

[fresh bluff]

I think silencing someone else’s speech in any manner short of violence is just another form of free speech (For individuals. Powerful groups or governments doing the same is not free speech but instead the suppression of speech).

But it gets into a sticky area when money is equated with speech. If you pay a million dollars for billboards and I don’t like the message so I am willing to pay two million dollars to have the billboards removed it can be argued that I’m am just speaking over you not restricting your speech. I don’t really have a problem with this example (since it’s just about two individuals with too much loose money to spend on billboards) but when money is used to silence or restrict the speech of a large portion of the population as in the case of much of our world then this seems to fall into the same category as government restricted speech. Since wealth and power is essentially acting in a quasi governmental roll.

[glad ferry]

Agreed. Not wanting what I’m about to say to lead into another tangent but; That is why I would be opposed to people no longer owning property as some of the ‘New World Order’ people are pushing. You should have the chance to own some land and have a say of what goes on on that land. And now that the world is going more digital, the same should be true of the internet. People should get to have more ownership of their little pieces or groups of pieces of ‘internet land’ along with their right for free speech on it.

Anyways, if I was the owner of a big powerful company, I would pity myself at crying over people not watching my ads… pity myself at wanting to make sure/force people to watch my ads… pity those trying to silence my ads… but I am not the owner of a big company, and I have no idea exactly what it would be like… So I’ll shut myself up on the subject now.

[gritty rain]

Sure, but the forms of speech necessary to talk about what is an isn't acceptable doesn't need to include harmful speech. For example, you don't need to mislead someone to say that misleading someone is bad. Restricting some harmful forms of speech doesn't impact on the forms of speech that are necessary and useful.

[gritty rain]

I don't feel you ever understood what I was saying, but I don't really feel like continuing to try and explain it to you after spending days getting nowhere. Maybe if you read my replies to other people that will help you understand what I mean.

[gritty rain]

Yeah, wealth and power gives people the ability to dominate discourse to the same degree as a government can. The difference is that there is accountability if the government does it, because that power is being lent to them by the people. Whereas there is no accountability if it just comes from a person just taking it for themselves, due to wealth and power. It's oligarchy vs democracy, as to which you prefer.

The only way to stop wealthy and powerful people dominating discourse, is for the government to place limits on them. Having a government control speech is the least bad option available.

[gritty rain]

Yes, the rules should ideally be decided by everyone.

In practice, its going to be a smaller number of people actually applying the rules, just like we don't have everyone acting as a police force, or everyone trying to be a doctor. Society works when we assign people specific jobs they can concentrate on. But, like with every public service job, the public should keep oversight of it, so that if anyone is doing their job badly, they can be replaced.

[fresh bluff]

Much of what you say makes sense. But the government controlling speech is not the least bad option, unless you mean controlling speech through enforcing the freedom of speech on itself which is what we have in a few places. Total anarchy would be a less bad bad option than government control over speech without protection for the freedom of speech since in reality there is no actual accountability or control mechanism that can turn back a runaway reaction towards total governmental control (thought police) once you surrender freedom of speech.

[gritty rain]

I completely disagree that total anarchy would be better than government control of speech without protections for speech. As soon as you remove rules, the people with the most existing advantages start to dominate everything completely. So I think they would be the same thing, equally bad, because either way you end up with regular people unable to be heard.

Personally I'm advocating for a situation where some types of speech would be restricted, and some would be unrestricted. Our safety requires a bit of both.

The function of Government is to protect regular people. We need it. The only question is, how to make it function well.

[fresh bluff]

Well this is not true since existing advantages are almost all totally dependent on the existing situation. Anarchy is a complete removal of the rules norms and structure of the situation therefore the existing advantages you mention would not exist other than the advantages of bigger muscles I guess.

[gritty rain]

Bigger muscles, bigger social networks, access to more natural resources, more machinery and equipment. There are a lot of advantages that remain I think.

But the point is not that it's the same people remaining in power, it's that we still end up with a small number of people, whoever they are, having the vast majority of the power.

(Which is bad, right?)

[fresh bluff]

In the absence of government (imagine the true absence of government not its removal, it never existed). I yell “fire” in an un-burning theater and a stampede occurs, someone’s child is trampled and their clan seeks revenge and attacks my clan. This along with any sense of regret I might have within myself are the natural controls on my bad speech. Suppose instead no one is injured but those who have seen bad outcomes in similar situations still insist on punishment. I am tied to a tree for three days by agreement between the clans… this is government. I’m not opposed to it. But it is just an extension of mob rule or power rule with a gloss of legal structure hiding its actual violent underpinnings.

[fresh bluff]

That is not total anarchy. Total anarchy is not the conversion of our current system into one with less rules. It is no structure at all and no history of structure. You are presupposing advantages as if I am proposing a change to our current system. I was just pointing out that there is a less bad worst choice than government control.

You are correct that even in that hypothetical situation it is quite possible that a few individuals might accumulate a lot of the power at least locally, but I’d rather live under Pre-Stone Age conditions than big brother.

[candid gulch]

You cannot explain why its dangerous to talk about research instead of a culture. I have explained that hard line positions like "its dangerous to talk about labs" has been backed off and have shown proof. Its largely non-controversial that the origins are in conflict and no one can say for sure which it is. Besides someone who thinks speech about research is dangerous while promoting media spouting of a cultural explanation, that is. Promoting a cultural bias is extremely dangerous and Asian violence went up. One of the reasons why everyone backed off of their hard lines. Everyone except you, that is. Saying that talk against a handful of scientists is dangerous while scientists within that group contributed to the lab and others refused to sign the second letter, is dangerous itself. That means that any small group can determine a narrative and have 'defenders of what is dangerous and what isn't' argue about it for days. That type of power, no corporation could ever achieve.

[gritty rain]

It's true, making a government is basically just making a bigger mob, to prevent other mobs from ruling everyone. But when everyone gets together to make a mob like that, they all get to decide together on the rules. No small group has total control. Which means it's much fairer. It's a night and day difference for me, and fairer just seems obviously better.

I think it's obvious that we don't really have a choice to go back to the stone age. I'm talking about different rules systems for the present day. I view a government who has all the power and no accountability, as not appreciably different from a private company who has all the power and no accountability. Both are terrible ideas, and differ only in name as far as I'm concerned. Private companies now don't have quite that level of power, it's true, but that's because we have had governments to keep them in check. If we allowed them to keep doing and saying what they like, they will, soon, have the power the government does. And shortly after, they will have more power, because the public has absolutely no way to impose checks on private companies. Only a government does.

[gritty rain]

But why would I want to explain that? That's not my point of view. I've already said several times that I think it's dangerous to spread misinformation whether it's about labs or about markets. You're the only one saying there's a difference between those two things.

[candid gulch]

This just keeps going back to regulation of corporations. What we are saying is free speech of individuals and not corporations. As I keep saying, your conflating the two.

[gritty rain]

I'm not conflating them. I'm intentionally treating them the same way, because I think everyone should abide by the same rules.

[candid gulch]

Your treating one as having power over the other as an excuse to impose power over them. 'the public has absolutely no way to impose checks on private companies. Only a government does.' is an excuse to silence the public because of private company power because of equality. Its a conflation.

[candid gulch]

I totally agree that one small group should never have definitively said that it came from a cultural practice.

[gritty rain]

Ok cool, we agree on something apparently.

[candid gulch]

How is it dangerous to talk about the labs then?

[gritty rain]

It's not an 'excuse' to impose power over someone, it's a 'reason' to impose power over them. I believe that everyone, no matter who they are, should be prevented from causing harm to others.

[gritty rain]

For basically the same reason that blaming the markets without evidence is dangerous. Because spreading any narrative that is not true encourages people to make bad choices.

[candid gulch]

So just have everyone shut up. That is your preference. To control the conversation entirely by not having it. No speech is better than free speech.

[gritty rain]

Lies are worse than silence, yes. I suggest that we present the information we do have, and discourage people from making wild claims that the evidence doesn't support.

[candid gulch]

Evidence is overwhelming on the city. And the city has a lab and a market. Neither one is wild to talk about (what we are saying as free speech).

[candid gulch]

Using private corporations as the reason to impose power over the public is a conflation.

[gritty rain]

See my previous reply to that question: #1176258275696726117 message

[candid gulch]

The conflation is the narrative painted (which is not totally disagreed with) that private companies have more power than the public so speech regulation on the public is needed to keep private companies in check because of equality. Your claiming inequality of power as a reason. Your claiming equality as a reason. Its a conflation.

[dapper cedar]

I'm still of the opinion that any idea that starts with "in a functioning democracy" is basically a pure pipe dream though. There's so many examples of democracy failing the people it's supposed to serve that having a functional democracy as a requirement for your policy to work at all basically invalidates it

[gritty rain]

The same thing applies to literally any system though. It's not a reason to reject one particular system when every other system has the same flaw.

Every system relies on certain principles being kept to.

[gritty rain]

That is incorrect. I'm am not at all claiming inequality of power as a reason to restrict some forms of speech.

My argument for restricting some forms of speech is very simple. Telling lies causes harm. Everyone has the power to harm others by telling lies, not just private companies. We should try and stop anyone doing that.

'Inequality of power' is my reason for choosing 'Government' to be responsible for implementing those restrictions. 'Government' is our protection from power inequalities.

(Specifically, 'democratic' government)

[candid gulch]

Diverse views will always see extreme views as a lie. I am all about being in the middle. In the US, we should have a middle party so the extremes can be rejected. That is not how the government wants it though and will enforce all the power it can to prevent a third party because division is its main power source (which is a side discussion, sorry). It only requires accusation of lying or of misinformation to enact censorship in the present day (within its present form). A government whose sole power coming from division will use the power of speech restriction against its opposition (even more than it does today). It takes power away from diverse viewpoints and allows the government more power to create division. I have no idea how many parties are in the UK but a two party system is junk. They abuse power of influence for division as its main tool, stamping out diverse views to carry the party line. The type of power of being able to stamp out diverse views would be abused in the US, for sure. That is always why I claim power over my free speech. Its the only check the public has against the government in the US.

[dapper cedar]

Any restrictions on speech imo should be

1. Retroactive. The restrictions should apply AFTER the speech has happened. No preemptive bans on speech.
   Should only apply to speech that is
2. Directly harmful. Burden of proof should be on the government. They have to prove that this speech is directly caused the harm you are talking about.
3. Intentionally malicious. Burden of proof also on government. Can't just be speculation, but directly malicious.

[candid gulch]

Does this apply to corporations or individuals or both? #1 seems to be individuals only since advertisements are given boundaries (whether those boundaries are enough or not). #2 is slightly vague on harm. Since political parties trend toward extreme ideas to create division, it can be said that opposing ideas cause harm.

#3 makes me think harm in #2 is physically directly harmful to someone. Just asking.

[dapper cedar]

Yeah harm is still pretty subjective, the burden of proof lying on the government is an important point here I think.

So current US rulings the wording is "imminent lawless action" which doesn't cover stuff like tobacco companies advertising, because cigarettes aren't illegal. Switching to the word "harm" would likely include stuff like this.

[fresh bluff]

I’m going to run some ads. And try to get a few more people to join this channel. This time I’m going to use all the most unethical, misleading and manipulative advertising techniques I can think of.

I will stop just short of inciting imminent lawless action, but I will totally mumble and read at double speed when I read the surgeon general’s warning.

[candid gulch]

I will counter that by advertising the buyer beware mentality. I will get everyone to check reviews before joining and spam reviews.

I will never stop short of thwarting your efforts and it will take years to get me to stop writing bad reviews. I will push for legislation to illegalize advertisements with reviews in negative ratios. I will implement the YouTube dislike button again and get everyone to participate, setting up for the future, to cut off that avenue.

[I have actually threatened to spam bad reviews, the most recent is getting my security deposit back from my storage unit. They tried to withhold it because I used their trash cans because of damage from mice.]

[fresh bluff]

It helps to have ten thousand sycophants following you on social media… then you can just feed them some misinformation about what a shitty place that taco stand that forgot to give you an extra hot sauce packet is. Soon you can hold the entire world’s economy hostage to your every whim.

“Too big to fail” means big on social media 🤣

[glad ferry]

I will definitely not tell my kids: « You’ll find more answers to life by listening to the trees rather than listening to what is on social media. Let’s go hug some trees kids! Start a sect and say ‘Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya!’ »  Instead, I will tell them: « Look onto social media, kids, look at the idiocy of today… learn from it! »

[glad ferry]

I will definitely not tell my kids: « You’ll find more answers to life by listening to the trees rather than listening to what is on social media. Let’s go hug some trees kids! Start a sect and say ‘Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya!’ »  Instead, I will tell them: « Look onto social media, kids, look at the idiocy of today… learn from it! »

Quote from the movie ‘Burn after reading | 2008’ : « You represent the idiocy of today… .. you’re part of a league of morons… »

Please burn after reading, it was just meant to be humorous, not harmful speech. Please ignore this ad if it troubles you…

[glad ferry]

You’re right, I do speak of ideals, and you speak of present situations. As long as we can agree to keep pushing for ideals whilst we manage with what we have already established as you seem to say. Who knows, maybe as mammals, we will one day come to realize that this whole experiment was good while it lasted but revert to a new and improved primal structure similar to the anarchy @fresh bluff mentions; But this time, with so much more to offer as a new ‘enlightened’ species.

[glad ferry]

Spoiler Alert for ´Burn after reading’ movie…
This article about the movie contains spoilers but it conflates well with the discussion here that seems to have become more about information and misinformation rather than Ethics of Adblockers.

https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/focus-features-20th-anniversary_burn-after-reading

[glad ferry]

Laughter is the Worst Medicine
FOCUS FEATURES 09.16.2008

If you’ve been feeling down lately, one thing that’s guaranteed to cheer you up is a trip to the movies for a good, hearty belly-laugh laugh. Or so they say. I wonder how many other people apart from me find this idea to be strange and absurd.
Before I come off as a miserable old curmudgeon, let me hasten to add that I do enjoy comedies, but I enjoy them quietly. This usually means watching a DVD in the peace and calm of my own home, where I am not disturbed by other people’s laughter. You’ve probably noticed that it’s almost impossible to sit through a blockbuster comedy in a movie theater without being assailed on all fronts by public yelps and hee-haws. In my case, this laughter inevitably draws attention away from the film until I find myself focusing entirely on the laughers around me, like an ornithologist identifying various birds by their song.
The loudest laughter, I’ve observed, seems to be stimulated by (i) ribaldy; (ii) toilet humor; and (iii) current affairs, suggesting a public desperate to externalize the comforting distance that protects them from recognizing their own anxieties writ large before them on the screen. Least offensive are the ubiquitous titterers, whose laughter remains flat, never veering from a nervous staccato. More annoying are the chucklers, whose avuncular tones suggest a genial, what-the-hell delight at a joke that, under other circumstances, they might find suspect or unwelcome. Most repellent are the strained whines of those unaccustomed to outbursts of public hilarity; the condescending snorts that form the lazy mask of snobbery; and the hysterical screech that cries out, “Look at me!” Beyond these, there are jeerers and hooters, squawkers and cacklers, the low guffaws of men and the high cackles of women.

…It’s almost enough to make me yearn for the eerie canned laughter of dead people that accompanies much comedy on television. Canned laughter is disturbing, for sure, but at least it’s carefully mixed and edited to ensure an even tone.
The live audience, on the other hand, transforms itself in my imagination into a grotesque image of one dense, self-devouring body with multiple laughing heads, yapping all at once like Cerberus.
Even since Aristotle, for whom tragedy, not comedy, was the superior genre, writers and philosophers from Hobbes and Bergson to Darwin and Freud have pondered the ambiguous dynamics of laughter. To Hobbes, laughter was "sudden glory" – with the clear connotation of crowning glee, especially at another's downfall. Bergson, in his well-known book on the subject, asserted that laughter "always implies a secret or unconscious... unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbor, if not in his will, at least in his deed." Darwin remarked on the close connection between the fit of laughter and the flow of tears, and Freud regarded laughter as a release which occurs when some experience or observation hits on repressed material, and the psychic energy diverted to the task of repression becomes, for a second, superfluous.
Going back to the movies, comedy differs from other genres in that, for its success, it is uniquely audience dependent, just as an untold joke is not—structurally, at least— really a joke. In fact, the success of blockbuster movie comedies depends to a large extent on the amount of audience laughter they can provoke on first release, with the ideal response, theoretically, being a constant wave of unanimous, uninterrupted laughter. I think the reason why such films are only successful when viewed with a large audience is, at least in part, because this kind of laughter neutralizes individuality, reducing the individual capacity to sit in judgment.

…An audience that has been weakened and disabled by laughter is an audience that has been made impotent—infantilized, even—and thereby rendered incapable of disapproval.
This neutralizing of the audience then allows the comedy to function as a form of cultural disavowal, a socially acceptable safety valve for the expression of what otherwise cannot be said openly. Naturally, there is a great deal of relief to be derived from expressing concealed truths, and yet this relief occurs, paradoxically, because we laugh loudest and with most abandon at that which, albeit at an unconscious level, makes us most uncomfortable and apprehensive.
Finally, anyone who thinks I should just lighten up and relax ought to bear in mind that there have been times when for a civilized person to crack up in public would have seemed as rude as public spitting (or smoking) today. In 1774, Lord Chesterfield, a connoisseur of proper social etiquette, advised his son: “loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things… A man of parts and fashion is therefore only seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.”

Mikita Brottman is the author of Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor (Analytic Press, 2004).

[gritty rain]

The problem with retroactive restrictions is that if you only look at stuff after it's been publicised then all the harm has already been caused. So it would defeat the whole purpose of having restrictions to do it that way. The same way that ideally you want to catch terrorists before they kill people, rather than after.

I agree that the burden of proof has to be on whoever it is that is trying to impose a restriction on the other. I would hold that as a general principle for all laws, that anyone trying to impose anything on anyone else should have the burden of proof placed on them.

Intent cannot be a part of it though, because intent is literally impossible to prove. Whether something is allowed to be published and publicised has to be based only on its likely effect.

[candid gulch]

Intent will always be an element of law no matter if it can be proven or not. Consciousness of innocence or consciousness of guilt can be argued within the court of law. To say that intent cannot be part of it (as in argued) is saying the same as consciousness of guilt or innocence cannot be argued.

If someone yells fire in a crowded theatre and there isn't one, if they thought there was and they thought they were helping people, their lawyers can show evidence of intent (if there is any besides the witnesses testimony).

The problem with restricting speech beforehand is that there is no burden of proof. No court of law, just judgement with no way to explain what you mean. Your speech is taken away before you get a chance.

[dapper cedar]

Intent cannot be a part of it though, because intent is literally impossible to prove.
We prove intent all the time with law. Like the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder.

The problem with retroactive restrictions is that if you only look at stuff after it's been publicised then all the harm has already been caused.
This happens with ALL crimes though. You can't lock up a potential murderer before they murder. Our entire legal system is retroactive punishments, and speech restrictions should be the same way.

[gritty rain]

I would say that we don't prove intent. We try to decide beyond reasonable doubt, but there's always a huge grey area.

I agree that a lot of our respective legal systems are based on retrospective punishment. But that's because stuff never even gets to the legal system if you stop it in the first place. There are plenty of things in our society that aim to prevent us causing harm, such as locks. But if you want an example within the legal system, then DUI offences are there to take people off the roads before they cause a serious accident, not after.

[glad ferry]

Here’s an interview with Albert Einstein. He talks about morals and free speech and tolerance for the creative ideas of the individual.

https://youtu.be/-H5IjQkC8HM?si=Um4CbDyk25DJwyZA

[candid gulch]

DUI is proven to inhibit ability to drive and DUI is measured on a scale when it can be (giving burden of proof). Using completely different examples than actual speech is conflation. Intent is explained when yelling fire in a theatre when there is no fire. If its proven that smoke was seen before the violation, that would go to intent.

[fresh bluff]

This is a misunderstanding of DUI. If the intent was to take the drivers off the road before they cause harm then every car would have a breath testing system or there would have to be check points every quarter mile along every road. Since this is not the case we must conclude something else is going on.
DUI charges are a form of punitive response to socially harmful (or potentially harmful) behavior.

A quick way to understand this is if the punishment is out of proportion to the crime then the system is acknowledging that it can’t or won’t catch most infractions. So their remedy is to make the punishment severe enough to dissuade the action that is deemed unacceptable by society. I have always been pretty strongly against this type of system.

Instead: Swift sure justice even if the punishment is relatively minor is proven to be a much more effective deterrent. This is more complicated to implement and takes intelligent planning and dedication to the follow through, which explains the rarity of its implementation but it is worth it.

Severe punishments for those unlucky to get caught while the rest walk free is not a just system.

[candid gulch]

They did talk about going to the system of individual cars having a breath test (long after DUI was enforced) but the fact that they never did is a good point. That was decades ago though. From what I remember, most complaints were about costs and ways to get around it (the expense of both the breath test in the car and support systems to make it work properly like weight transfer on the seat). I could be wrong though, it was so long ago. Although if someone did get around it, the government would have burden of proof to prove DUI.

Intent would obviously be criminal to get around multiple systems.

Todays tech should have such costs lowered by now.

[fresh bluff]

They have implemented these kinds of systems for previous offenders. I believe as a voluntary condition of the reinstatement of driving privilege. And yes they can be circumvented.

But drunk driving never should have been illegal anyway… bad driving should be illegal. The alcohol percentage present in one’s blood or detectable on one’s breath is not relevant to whether or not you have made a driving infraction.

I’d rather be on the road with highly skilled drivers who each just shotgunned a dozen beers than with one of the average morons that are allowed to drive.

Anyway all a non issue soon… unless the self driving cars get “drunk” in their AI chat rooms.

[candid gulch]

That is a completely different take. Are you saying that proven reaction time of drunk people is a scam? I understand your saying there are tons of morons on the road, I am just asking about the reaction time.

[fresh bluff]

Yes two different viewpoints both mine.

One (very strongly felt) punitive justice systems are wrong. Both because they are unjust through uneven application and because they are ineffective in that they do not actually act as the deterrent that their supporters claim. (And because of the more philosophical point that since free will is an illusion and therefore punishment is inherently wrong headed).

Two (more of a view point meant to provoke thought). Drunk driving makes no sense as a crime. Since the crime is the poor execution of the driving responsible and the crime is not the internal physical causes of the failure. Whether those be alcohol or general dumbassery.
If alcohol impairs one’s judgement (as well as slowing reaction times) then how can one say when the crime occurs? When you drink the alcohol, when you decide to drive or when you actually drive? When you drink the alcohol you are engaged in a legal activity (assuming local law agrees) and when you decide to drive you are making a decision in an impaired state so how can you be culpable?

[candid gulch]

Well maybe its cultural, not sure. In the part of the US that took 300 years to conquer (east of the Mississippi) even in rural areas there are intersections all over. There are also tons and tons of morons on the road pretty much at all times. You would be hard pressed to drive a few miles without an intersection unless your on windy mountainous roads (maybe, not sure on distances in the mountains). Combining regular morons and lessened reactions time along with a cultural influence of going crazy after 21 (drinking age) and DUI enforcement is a drop in the bucket (totally granted). It does make morons slightly more responsible because of the consequences, either knowing before hand or having experienced it. Statistics show that it does lessen the deaths in the US and since the US is the pusher of our culture and science onto the rest of the world it may be backlash. Its possible that in other cultures, they have just went with our "all knowing" stats without taking into account their cultural influences, traffic situation, number of actual morons, and don't care to do their own statistics. Again, not sure.

[candid gulch]

Although there are very interesting stats for 1st world countries for dying in a car crash vs. dying in a plane crash. Our planes are, at least, maintained better than morons maintain their car.

Morons drinking while repairing cars is normal but largely a non-issue.

https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/66QGMFK7HKMIOLDKPVNQYQYJWE.jpg

Oh, we don't have car inspection unless your using it to pass a drivers test or something like that.

[fresh bluff]

I love the feeling of grass between my toes… just before I drop an engine block on them.

[candid gulch]

Our inspection is a fine dance of fixing it before being ticketed.

I am pretty sure our cars would never make it past official scrutiny in other countries. This one wont get a ticket. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcScWrBPggfVLR56EkRRw7rXAzRmD4nf0S43whdqrmGap37ABzIqVRNHzNqWRs0wNUjQ9gE&usqp=CAU

The light still works.

[gritty rain]

It's not a misunderstanding of DUI at all. Targeting behaviour that is "potentially harmful" is exactly what I'm talking about, i.e. preventative measures.

Punishments in general are not a good deterrent, because nobody ever thinks they will get caught. At best, they discourage some casual crime. The only way to seriously reduce crime is to target the problems in our society that cause people to find themselves in situations where crime seems desirable.

[gritty rain]

Drunk driving actually makes a lot more sense as a crime than many other crimes. Most crimes only target the person committing the final act, whereas the true responsibility for the act should be placed on the people that created that situation. While drunk driving still doesn't target the true causes of the problem, it is at least a step in the right direction, back towards the source.

[gritty rain]

OK, that's interesting. So you don't have mandatory regular checks on your cars to make sure they are safe to drive? That seems like an incredibly obvious bit of preventative law to me.

[candid gulch]

If a car is "unsafe" it gets pulled over. Depending on the police discretion. My right headlight is out at the moment and I can get a warning or a ticket for it. I have to remove the entire front bumper assembly for it and its prudent to change both headlights at that time. Its snowing and I don't have money for it so I don't drive at night a whole lot and any cops I see haven't pulled me over for it yet. Like I said, its a fine dance of fixing it before you let it long enough to get ticketed (most likely a warning). The car in the picture may actually get pulled over for the tail pipe with tape on it before working tail lights.

Most of the damaged cars you see on the internet (flapping in the wind) are from US or third world countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7_hKPcSQE&list=PLYQY-LLO7fxGUnS9hq58xx9h7N2ixiuDw&index=5&t=333s

[gritty rain]

We have a compulsory annual safety check for all cars over three years old. In more than 20 years of driving in the UK, I have probably seen less than ten cars being driven with anything more seriously wrong than a lightbulb that stopped working or the odd superficial dent. Nobody would try anything like that car in the photo unless you were literally on your way to a garage to get it repaired after an accident.

[candid gulch]

Yes, I remembered about inspection so I mentioned it. Over here, that would be another system against the poor. Its a culture shock.

It seems to be a cultural push from colonization onto the rest of the world rather than normal cultural push from the US onto the rest of the world.

[gritty rain]

I think there are probably a lot of things, that we consider basic essentials, that wouldn't work in the US in isolation because they need to be part of a larger framework that just doesn't exist in the US. It really does baffle me sometimes how the US manages to exist as a country when the people there provide so little support to each other.

[candid gulch]

You mean "how does duct tape repair everything"? There are videos.

[tepid inlet]

Ads are popping in every 2 minutes in a video. Considering, youtube had no interruptable ads in the beginning, having one unskipable ad and one skippable every two minutes is absurd.
We are in a loop here. People use ad blockers > youtube push out more interruptable ads > more people use ad blockers, and so it goes.