Re: <nettime> Sign the BAN X in EUROPE petition and join the campaign

[Cade Diehm via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Sad to hear that your reaction to my advocacy for a nuanced 
re-evaluation of the relationship between infrastructure and speech is 
to outright dismiss it as 'childish,' Harv. I wish I were capable of 
labeling the world in such stark black and white.

Either way, one of us will be right in the end. Personally, I am at ease 
in being spectacularly wrong, so if in twenty years, your fears of a 
digital Reich are validated and/or averted, please come find me and 
remind me of my alarmist proposal. only I ask the same courtesy from you.

Unfortunately for me — and my peers — you, nettime and the wider 
European digital rights project is losing and has been for many years. 
With that track record in mind, I worry that my fears are not unfounded 
and as a result, that I may not have the opportunity to reciprocate in 
the future.

Cade

~

Founder, New Design Congress
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/join

On 12.10.24 02:14, Harv Stanic Staalman wrote:
> Censorship attempts on internet are  recognised as a bugs and internet itself finds the way around it . Eriç R. so wisely wrote ages ago.
> Where is the petition coming from and with which intent? Also how one implements it?
> Historical attempts failed as neo Nazi sites were attacked in a same manner resulting in their multiplication.
> Why support banning something bad over creating something better?
>
> Childish proposal.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Oct 11, 2024 15:19:46 Cade Diehm <cade@newdesigncongress.org>:
>
> > Hi nettime,
> >
> > In the years to come, the digital rights community will need to answer for the conflation of free speech of a democratic society with the formats and operations of the private platforms for which we interact on.
> >
> > Indeed, the US-borne legal stance enshrined by Section 230 — that the platform is (within reason) not broadly responsible for the content of what its users post — is something that should be heeded by the wider democratic world. But what continues to be missed is the interface as it relates to speech: the editorialised algorithmic timeline, the scaffolds that dictate and shape platform speech (be it short form video, 200 characters, or pictures with filters), or what one must give up in order to participate.
> >
> > Turns out, all of these properties are just as important in the context of speech, and how they shape what is said, who gets to say it, and how they say it. And yet, beyond meandering gestures towards interoperability by the EU, or the endless protest by NGOs against endless social-media accelerated genocides, we widely continue to equate the platform with the speech. The two could not be further from each other.
> >
> > Put simply, the democratic enshrinement of free speech is the cloak that has successfully kept these controllers of discourse firmly in the seats of power. That has been the mantra, to attack the platform is to attack speech itself, what a convenient reality for these now-juggernaughts!
> >
> > Forgive me, but in 2024 this kind of free speech discourse rings as hollow as Musks' facile speech absolutism. A digitalised democracy must evolve beyond the infantile technolibertariancore EFF understanding of free speech, where the platform and its designed constraints and rules are invisible to the demands of a free press. There is a very real accelerationist attack underway that leverages this very flaw in the 30+ years of digital discourse, driven by a flaw we have all perpetuated to varying degrees. Killing a platform for being run by a Epstein-adjacent hyper-criminal who once flashed a woman on an aeroplane and then offered to buy her a horse is not the same as kicking in the doors of citizens who post on the platform owned by Epstein-adjacent hyper-criminal who once flashed a woman on an aeroplane and then offered to buy her a horse. Frankly I'm tired of the claims that these are one and the same.
> >
> > I am not an authoritarian, I don't give a fuck about the Nazis on X. What I care about is that, after 40 years of fighting for internet freedoms, the Nazis are now freely flowing into the timelines of everyone you care about. To continue to parrot this 20th century idea of free speech without considering the infrastructure actor is to be in denial as this information warfare submerges us. It is exactly the belief here, cloaking the corpo platform in the dream of the democratic voice, that has kept us from the nuance needed to navigate these pathetic implementations of mass media we are still just beginning to grapple with.
> >
> > Thanks for reading.
> >
> > Cade
> >
> > ~
> >
> > Founder, New Design Congress
> > https://newdesigncongress.org/en/join
> >
> > On 11.10.24 18:55, Harv Stanic Staalman via nettime-l wrote:
> > > Oh, how democratic and advanced. Asking for a censorship in a 21st century, after 40 years of fighting for internet freedoms certainly brings memories of the
> > > //Reichsministerium//// für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda//.
> > > I wonder which EU funding scheme sponsors this?
> > > Geert should know better.
--
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org