Тег: Censorship

The “Shut Up” Button: How Reddit, Habr, and Pikabu Became Branches of a Digital GULAG

Sounds familiar? You go on Reddit, see a post where an enthusiastic crowd is happily discussing how to further regulate entrepreneurs, raise taxes, or ban something in the name of the common good. Being a rational person (and especially a libertarian), you write a polite, rock-solid, well-argued comment about the harm of government regulation and the fact that taxes are theft.
 
What happens next? Perhaps a constructive dialogue or a battle of intellects? Not a chance! Within five minutes, your comment is sent to hidden, your “karma” plummets, and the platform system informs you: “You are posting too often, please wait 15 minutes.” And the next day, you discover that due to your negative rating, you can no longer leave comments or publish posts at all. That’s it, you’ve been silenced.
 
Therefore, the system of downvotes (dislikes) and collectively assessed ratings (“karma”) can only be described as one of the most vile and sophisticated tools for suppressing freedom of speech online. Of course, it is absolutely correct to say that these are private platforms and they have every right to set whatever conditions they wish. But no one is calling for the antitrust service to be unleashed upon them. The conversation right now is not about property rights, but about the culture of free speech.
 
In terms of suffocating discussion, the mechanics of these platforms have long since equaled state censorship. The only difference is the form: Comrade Major beats you with a baton and files a criminal charge, whereas here you are stoned by the “democratic majority.” The result is identical—dissent is erased from the public sphere.
 
This is nothing other than the tyranny of the majority, the dictatorship of the mainstream. If your opinion deviates even by a millimeter from the general line of the local clique (be it left, right, or simply conventional), you are literally erased from visibility. This fosters a level of conformism in people that makes Soviet schools look mild. People begin to engage in cowardly self-censorship: “Oh, I’d better not write that I’m against the gun ban, otherwise they’ll drain my karma and I won’t be able to publish my programming articles.”
 
This affects libertarians directly and hits them the hardest. Why? Because we historically stand in stark opposition to the etatist mainstream! Ideas of freedom, voluntary exchange, and personal responsibility have always been a thorn in the side of those who love a “strong hand,” free rides, and collectivism. By trying to promote ideas of freedom on platforms with karma, we are playing in a casino where the croupier has rigged the roulette wheel from the start. As a result, such sites quickly turn into sterile, stale echo chambers where everyone happily pats each other on the back, and any non-conformist thought is extinguished on arrival.
 
This vicious practice of collective silencing should be sent to the dustbin of history immediately. Social ratings in this form belong in dystopias, not in free communities!
 
But what should replace dislikes? First, leave only likes (upvotes). Do you like the thought? Support it, and then it will rise to the top. Good ideas will surface naturally. Second, if you disagree—write a reply! Let people see your arguments. Discussion should be conducted with words, not by an anonymous click of the “bury” button that hides someone else’s text under a gray banner. Third, personal rather than collective moderation. Don’t want to see posts from a specific author because they annoy you? Hit the “Block User” button personally for yourself. Customize your own feed! But do not dare decide for other people what they should read and what they should not.
 
The removal of dislikes will not lead to chaos. It will return to the web what we all originally came here for—the ability to speak and argue openly, without looking back to see what an aggressive crowd with pitchforks thinks of you. Good ideas should compete and win based on their value, not because a crowd of conformists staged a corporate raid and burned down the competitor’s stall using downvotes.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Mega-corporation censorship

Yesterday, I read the tragic news that US President Donald Trump had his Twitch disabled, and Stefan Molyneux, whom I translate, had his YouTube disabled. After all, what a mess this creates—our opponents will say—here you are, wanting to rid us of the state, after which power will pass to mega-corporations; state censorship can at least be defeated democratically, but what can be opposed against the whims of a corporation owner? You say that the market and the institution of reputation will work against this, but the owners of media platforms don’t give a damn about their reputation in the eyes of their ideological enemies, and they only get more money because they fight those they position as a global evil.

Furthermore, they continue, you say that private discrimination will lead to the emergence of alternative platforms that will serve those who were discriminated against by others. But Twitter banned people for Nazi views, and indeed, an independent platform called Gab was created in opposition to it, where anyone could speak without any censorship, and what happened? It is being disconnected from payment systems. How do you like this triumph of ostracism and private discrimination, gentlemen ancaps?

At the same time, it is hard not to notice that this case differs greatly from the corporate wars depicted in caricatures of ancap. For instance, in the most famous parodic description of anarcho-capitalism, the subject is a war between mega-corporations McDonald’s and Burger King for market share—serious business sharks seeking only money.

In our world, however, the enmity of corporations toward customers is not about money, or at least not directly about money—but about ideology. What introduces such a strange correction? It is not hard to guess—it is the state.

In a free market, you get the maximum number of customers when you start satisfying them better than your competitor, but in a state, you have an additional powerful option—to ban the competitor. However, in a democracy, you cannot simply declare that this company should be given a tax break because it feeds the ruling party, and that one should be banned because it feeds the opposition. Instead, you can declare that the competitors are evil incarnate, literally Hitler, and a hundred other epithets—and therefore they deserve shame, condemnation, censorship, and ostracism. The state distorts market incentives. Always. From the towers of high theory, this may look like harmless private discrimination, but from the ground, it is perfectly clear that we are dealing with good old political struggle.

The market by itself does not defeat the state, only in combination with an ideology that asserts the values of individual freedom. Otherwise, it leads a subjugated existence, being over-regulated by those in power and subjected to arbitrary interventions under the guise of morality, behind which political reasons often stand.

Therefore, the recipe remains the same: defending the values of freedom, promoting them, and constantly searching for new bypasses that are, in principle, not subject to external dictate. And after mega-corporations protected by the state, corporations under ancap will seem to you like innocent lambs.

And we’ll all feel great when Money comes marching home…