Read on Twitter
My favorite essay of all time was written in 2011, and pretty much predicted the inevitability of today's culture wars (because it happened throughout history over and over again with the advent of each new piece of new media tech) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-information
I first read it in maybe 2013? At the time, I kinda glossed over the "Counter-Reformation" bits and focused on all the clever points (like how technology is more magical than magic, since Hermione used books rather than Google). But now it's a sobering reminder abt misinformation
Juxtapose this against Ev Wiliams, founder of Blogger and Twitter. Ev was idealistic in his early days. A small-town boy who was in love with books. He recognized that the Internet gives people what they want... but not that people want to hurt people http://visakanv.com/marketing/ev/
That was in 2013. 2 years after The Information was written. Then Gamergate happened, Trump became POTUS, and the volume of disinformation and abuse just skyrocketed, or at least public perception of it. If only we learned from history https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-medium-twitter-internet.html
PS: if you liked this and wondered what the rest of my favorite reads are, here you go! http://www.visakanv.com/blog/bookmarks
A common refrain you’ll hear is “the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”, and/or “the way to fight bad speech is good speech”. These statements sound broadly correct in the abstract, but the devil is really in the details. In the economics, to be specific
Like, suppose we use war as an analogy. You can terrorize a large standing army with a relatively small, mobile, nimble guerrilla forces. This nuance doesn’t get conveyed in that 101 analogy. It takes a smaller # of guns. Which costs less $$ and resources
naive techno-optimism is part of a multi-century tradition https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/948797803504984064
"I didn't know freedom meant people doing stuff that sucks."
More about $$ and media funding https://twitter.com/leavittalone/status/1043179294523047936?s=21
The history of “thinking machines” https://twitter.com/xfoml/status/885926932772040704?s=21
more naive techno-optimism
considering that zuck is someone that actually prides himself on reading, my guess is it's less "we don't believe anything bad could happen with our technology" and more "we don't care until the consequences have costs for us"
https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1059677825202978817
considering that zuck is someone that actually prides himself on reading, my guess is it's less "we don't believe anything bad could happen with our technology" and more "we don't care until the consequences have costs for us"
https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1059677825202978817
right before WW2 https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1067775836135161856
I used to idealistically endorse this position but the more I read history and the more I learn about people, the more I've come to believe that there's a fundamental asymmetry that has to be reckoned with – bad speech is cheaper than good speech https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/1072208865343799299
Which isn't to say that I'm eager to exercise the banhammer, or to endorse a culture of censorship. Censorship has iatrogenic effects – ie the surgery can be more damaging than the disease, especially when the surgeon is empowered by a sense of moral superiority. It's complicated
What I'd maybe focus on: If the answer to bad speech is good speech, how are we going to pay for it? How are we going to support and encourage it? As human beings, how do we evaluate the state of our collective conversations? How do we know good speech isn't losing?
I empathise with Melissa’s predicament. One of the most painful and frustrating things in life is when you work hard to uphold your sincerely-held values, then discover that you were being taken advantage of by an selfish, opportunistic asshole https://twitter.com/msmelchen/status/1072396292368883713?s=21
“oops there are nazis again lol what can you do” https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1017317980164669440?s=21
"If people become the distribution network, that should be something good for media, good for reporting, and good for journalism" 
https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1092340118675808258
https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1092340118675808258
naive techno-optimism is when you think about how tech will be used to liberate a group of people, but not how it will be used to abuse, blackmail and torment them https://twitter.com/rachitaprasadET/status/1093779142292762624
"It dawned on me that this was not some small subset of people acting aberrantly. This might be how people behave. And that scared me to death.”
"Oh no, we put power into the hands of the people." https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1153761914079420416
"Oh no, we put power into the hands of the people." https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1153761914079420416
it's interesting to juxtapose the above tweet with https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1054906804403003392
