intopieces

>paying taxes to, or simply being a member of the US (or almost any country) is contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human harm.

I agree with that. But I also assert that people have an ethical obligation to opt-out of systems that cause harm when / if they are able, or at least advocate to change them.

I don't have the ability to change Facebook. But I have the ability to opt out of it, though my actions on the Internet, and the ability to advocate for others to do the same. So, here I am.

I can't say for sure, since I don't know every site. But I would posit that ethical operation is inversely correlated with user base size.

>And again, you run into the problem where nobody wants their website to work like that.

Cancer patients don't want chemo, but it's better than dying, some might say.

>Other sites like Hacker News, Reddit, youtube, and various other forums aren't even designed with the concept of friends that are the sole consumers of your content.

Right, which is why those sites (besides HackerNews) would require slightly different solutions.

Reddit: Limit subreddits to 500 participants at most. Eliminate the number next to upvotes. Verify accounts. Limit posting.

YouTube: Not sure. This one is video-forward, probably the most difficult problem in terms of bad content. Definitely remove the algorithm for targeting people based on interest, though.

>That's not a social media thing. That's just an internet thing where most things are visible to everyone.

This is not any feature inherent to the Web, it's a function of sites that purposefully link together and allow people to rapidly post information. Pre-social media, to get your idea out you had to build a website. There was friction. The earl y web had little moderation because you really had to go searching for bad stuff.

>And again, people still post horrible content to small groups just like they post it in large ones. You've divided the problem up, but you haven't really solved anything. Someone has to moderate the content.

Dividing the problem up is a strategy that I propose lessens the impact to both the users (because content can't spread as fast) and the moderators (because there will be less content to moderate).

Elimination of advertisers and the implementation of cost (as a form of friction), I think, would also go a long way. Cost per post would be ideal.

> But the problem doesn't go away when you shrink the size of the social media site. The same people will still try to post disturbing content. In fact, you're giving them more places to post that content, so potentially more people will have to moderate it.

I’m not sure I follow. A site like Facebook already has mechanisms for detecting multiple accounts, and in any case, multiple accounts don’t mean that there are more “places” to post. It’s still Facebook.

I don’t propose breaking Facebook into smaller websites. I propose limiting the reach of a single individual on those sites. Basically, normalizing the localness of social media to be more meaningful.

As well, I think Facebook and other platforms need to reckon with the consent when it comes to posting images of people, in general. That’s why I suggested limiting the posts to only those of friends who consent.

I agree that no one wants this.

Size is not the determining factor. It's a single factor that highly influences the value in posting damaging content. It's clear from the rise of influencers on YT, IG, Twitter, etc -- as well as the prolific use of these platforms by terrorists and other malefactors -- that being able to reach many people with a single post is a significant driver of people to post content.

My concern is not primarily with the outsourcing of moderation, but with the type of moderation that is required. There are ways to limit the kind of content that people post. Making things less sharable is one way of doing that. Creating barriers to entry is another. My list of suggestions encompasses both. Of course, these are two suggestions which are antithetical to the ad-riddle, growth-driven social network model, so there is no way they would ever be implemented.

I should add another solution to my wish-list: remove ads entirely.

> What specifically is the reason you consider those particular platforms to be unethical, and what is the solution.

These platforms are so large that they require hundreds of thousands of moderators in order to remove vile, illegal content, causing trauma for a vast underclass of foreign workers.

Here’s a few solutions:

Limit the number of people that a person can be friends with to 150, the Dunbar number.

Restrict the posting of photos to those which have been identified as having you or your friends in the picture, or no humans at all. Require permission from all human participants to post.

Charge a fee for access.

Every time you use Facebook, see an advertisement there, or click it, every time you share content on Facebook and get others to engage with that platform, you are contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human psychological harm, in many different ways.

Same for Twitter, and for Reddit, and Instagram... and probably TikTok.

I don’t believe the use of these platforms can be considered ethical.

>Though I don't fully understand their ridiculously long trousers.

As others have pointed out, they hem them for free. This is a clever bit of optimization for them, for two reasons:

(1) Fewer SKUs to stock. Each type of pant only varies in waist, not length.

(2) The pants become non-returnable after alternation. This reduces the number of items that can be returned substantially, since very few people fit the dimension of the pants.

India banning TikTok creates a fourth Internet.

As much as I agree with Lovelock's sentiments about the environment, Gaia is more wishful thinking and certainly doesn't have its foundations in science. That is, the world does not tend towards stability. Ecosystems tend towards chaos and don't return a norm.

It’s important to consider not your specific implementation, but the common implementation that is Android. And that implementation is chock full of spyware/adware/malware.

Android is open, and therefore exhibits the classic tension of liberty: free to do what you want, including harm yourself.

Were rioters looting private homes? I don't think it makes sense to buy a gun to defend your local Wal*Mart.