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ShutUp Software
ShutUp Software is a great example of how technology works in seemingly small and unpredictable ways to make enormous and sometimes unforeseen changes.
Generally known as blocking, filtering, disabling, convenience or preference software, it's spreading wildly on the Web, especially as investors and businesspeople flock online. For many of these people, as opposed to yakky and curious geeks and nerds, time is literally money. They don't want to waste a cent listening to the posturers, screamers, and head-bangers who swarm the Net and Web's public threads and talk areas like angry hornets. Hence - my own tem, ShutUp Software, which has enormous implications although, typically they're rarely considered.
Here's how it works: the website Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com) grew from 5,000 members last July to 95,000 members on New Year's Day, primarily by emphasizing its new "ignore" buttons. Co-founder Bill Martin told the magazine Brill's Content that "ignore" buttons were developed in response to the raucous, foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric that's long been a trademark of top e-trading sites.
"Jerks would come up," said Martin, and disrupt informative, (and lucrative) exchanges and discussions by posting unfounded rumors, off-topic babble, or personal attacks.
Not anymore. Raging Bull now promotes itself as the "only message board that empowers you to filter out annoying posters and irrelevant information by providing an 'ignore' feature."
Users just instruct Raging Bull to block any posts or posters they don't like. Raging Bull says it has "zero tolerance" for foul language and insults. In addition a partner and an "advocate" respond to complaints, remove inappropriate posts, and in extreme cases revoke membership. Other sites have begun monitoring public postings as well, including Silicon Investor (www.techstocks.com), The Motley Fool (www.fool.com), and Yahoo@Finance (finance.yahoo.com).
AOL provides chat room monitors who moderate speech and are authorized to suspend disruptive, obscene or abusive chatters. The members of the computer conferencing system The WELL devised a "bozo filter" program members can use to screen out flamers, cybercreeps, the anarchic assaults that have always been part of open discussions online.
Slashdot, too, recently began offering users the option of disabling or eliminating subjects by author, topic or section. Although these preferences are offered as a choice or convenience, not a monitoring tool, posters do use them to eliminate opinions they don't like. I lead the list of the damned and the banned by a wide margin: of the more than 80,000 (by unofficial estimate) daily Slashdot readers, 650 have blocked me, compared to the 79 who've blocked Sengan, 78 blocking Cmdr Taco, and the 60 or so ignoring Hemos and Cliff). Rob (Malda) points out that the number of "disabled" authors hasn't grown much since the preferences were offered a few weeks ago. He estimates that 75 per cent of the Slashdot regulars never post. He guesses that about half the site's users probably don't read public comments.
ShutUp Software seems an almost inevitable evolution in the history of the Net and the Web, until now the freest space in the global information spectrum. Flamers are ultimate tyranny of the minority, usually a tiny handful of posters who drive away the vast majority. E-trading sites have no interest in free speech, unless it's about making money. But the new software is a mixed blessing, if ever there was one.
As the Web gets bigger, busier, and more business-driven, the tolerance for posturing, abusive flaming inevitably diminishes.
The Net has always been about empowering users, about choice, and this new kind of software clearly can give people more choices in their daily information lives. Like programming a radio for certain stations, selecting the TV channels you want, or picking the song cuts you'd prefer rather than buying the whole CD, it's legitimate and understandable. I love the choices my MP3 player and TV zapper give me, but I wonder if the people making all this cool new ShutUp Software sometimes lose sight of the difference between choosing and blocking.
In my own view, ShutUp Software, no matter how well-intended, is increasingly also a form of censorship, even if it's self-censorship. I should know; I'm a much-read and much-blocked person. I'm proud to say that I'm blocked by almost all of the major blocking programs, including CyberPatrol, CyberSitter and CyberNanny (for criticizing blocking software and for advocating children's access to the Internet), and Disney's Go.Com (presumably for defending rap and vulgar TV shows like "South Park" and "Beavis & Butt-head,") - though you never know the reason for sure).
It hardly ever bothers me when people disagree with me, or even flame me. But being blocked is a much more visceral, personal experience.
And now I'm blocked by hundreds of Slashdotters as well. The people who've posted messages about this or e-mail me don't cite choice, convenience or time constraints - they simply claim to dislike my writing style or ideas, and want me to know that they're banning them and me, from their own individual experience.
This is everybody's absolute right; nobody should be forced to read me if he or she don't want to. But the ShutUp Software will almost certainly be used in unforeseen, sometimes unintended ways. What can be used against me can - and will -- be used against you.
I can always find an audience for my ranting (in addition to other sites and links, there are those 79,350 Slashdot readers who can somehow survive having my work appear on the site). But angry kids posting messages can be marginalized, even obliterated, in a snap.
Flamers are an enormous problem online. They chill free speech, frighten or drive off weaker, older, less experienced or more benign and thoughtful posters. Often they are abusive. But they are also important, daily reminders that the Net and the Web are free. They keep gasbags in check, and, in my case, have taught me (often inadvertently) a lot about Linux, open source, geekhood, and how to write more knowingly, concisely and informally.
They have the right to be heard, to exist on websites.
Had I blocked or filtered these people because they are hostile, insulting, even sometimes profoundly ignorant, I would have been worse, not better off. So , I argue, will the 650 people who won't even know this column exists, or be aware of the discussion that follows it. That seems to counter the nature of the Net. Convenience and choice are two values, but not the only values. Blocking, filter, disabling and preference software counters the free nature of the Net. Is the new hacker motto, "Information wants to be free if we like it, or if it's convenient?"
I love praise, and I need criticism, and I get a lot of both. Everybody needs both, which is why the freedom to criticize is literally incorporated into the infrastructure of genuinely interactive sites like Slashdot.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm comfortable making this statement here:
I won't ever use an "ignore" button, or set my preferences to screen out anybody else's criticism or ideas. The ideas I least want to read are the ones I most often need to.
I think ShutUp Software is a short-sighted convenience at best. I think it's ill-considered, a way of Balkanizing sites and communities, of exposing people only to the echoes of their own thoughts, of distorting reality and discouraging real communication. One of the most significant things about the Internet is the way that it brings so many different kinds of people and ideas into continuous contact. It's not about only listening to the ideas you agree with.
To consider the alternative, pick up any daily newspaper or turn on any TV news broadcast. Old media have for years screened out raucous, outspoken or obnoxious opinion on the grounds of balance and probity.
The irony is that the people quickest to use ShutUp Software are the ones whose voices will vanish the most quickly from the Web, as sites who wouldn't have dared to try "ignore" buttons a few years ago are rapidly deploying them to sanitize speech in the name of money, safety or time-saving.
One of the most elemental, if not technological, freedoms of any reader is to simply ignore what he or she deems a waste of time. Scroll to the next column or feature; why isn't that choice enough? Why build new software to ban ideas?
Because censorship is the easy, especially when it's made no tougher than the click of a button.
Censorship is the great temptation, particularly when we see something that offends or frightens us. At moments when this impulse occurs to me, I remember the caution of J.M. Coetzee, the great and often - banned South African writer and involuntary scholar of censorship.
"The one who pronounces the ban?.becomes, in effect, the blind one, the one at the center of the ring in the game of blind man's buff."
Thanks for the article.
Now to block Katz.
Katz has some decent points against this software in general, but the most specific problem is that filtering software is used against third parties without their consent -- by parents, schools, and governments. It's a lot worse when your father or your legislator decides that you should be ignorant than when you decide that you should be ignorant.
I am still waiting for a browser that
gives me the option of filtering out
specific hosts, in particular the
ad serving sites, which are a
big waste of time. And frequent
cause of DNS lookup failures, which is
a real nasty on netscape/linux.
How come that you could find out how many
.procmailrc files.
users blocked you, and a few of the other
authors?
It's like being "root" and making a public
statistic about your users'
You explain in detail why you dislike the
behaviour of others that dare to ignore others'
posts. And then this; why are you so interested
in what *others* do?
"Usenet says:" There's no right to be read.
It hardly ever bothers me when people disagree with me, or even flame me. But being blocked is a much more visceral, personal experience.
Ohhhhhhhkay now.
The population of the world is something on the order of 5,980,196,573.
Around eighty thousand of these people read slashdot, at least occasionally.
Six hundred and fifty of these have decided that they are not interested in articles by Jon Katz.
That means that 5,980,117,223 people ARE CENSORING JON KATZ! Awwwwww... The poor guy....
I think a sense of perspective is in order here. It's not censorship if I choose for myself whether or not to read something. Are you with me so far, Jon?
Webster defines the word censor as to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. For me, as a slashdot user, to censor an article, I would have to have the power to prevent my fellow slashdotians from seein g it. The key here is that _I_ would be taking the _choice_ away from _others_, rather than making that choice for myself.
Is it censorship if I walk past a newsstand and _choose_ not to buy the Weekly World News? Is it censorship if I _choose_ not to walk past the newsstand at all? Is it censorship if I _never_ go to wired.com? Is it censorship if I see a copy of Rolling Stone magazine with an article by Jon Katz and _don't buy it_? I say it is not. Mr. Katz' article seems to disagree.
And I think that's a load of crap.
-D
dcross@cryogen.com
"Watch what you like, and don't blame other people for your own preferences."
Well, that would exactly be a spammer's opinion.
Cure the symptoms, not the illness itself.
And let the enduser pay for it.
Uh, so I should intentionally READ all of those "Surf the Web and Earn $$$" offtopic posts on Yahoo's Hasbro Stock Board?
Exactly how does this make the world a better place?
It's one thing for Somebody Else(tm) to filter for me. It's a completely different thing for me to attempt to save time by applying a Bozo Filter.
Killfiles are great. Quit your whining.
When faced with a disruptive idiot, the
best way to minimize disruption is for everyone
to ignore him. Sad, but true.
Damn, the filter only works if you login.
Oh well, this wasn't as bad as usual.
I think the Sexbots article is enough to get
you banned from every filtering service forever.
Please realize that there is a significant difference between the individual's choice to not view something and censorship by a site. To "ignore" a particular writer is no different than choosing not to read a particular newspaper, website or newsgroup. NO ONE reads EVERYTHING; conscious and unconscious individual filtering are necessities. It seems like you're trying to get people all excited about something that has happened both on the net and the rest of the world since their respective creations.
You might want to try the Internet
JunkBuster (IJB), which (also) does exactly
this.
So Basically we should have to put up with people we know we do not agree with no matter what? I guess my email filter for spam should be turned off. Your right dam choice, my life would be much richer if I stopped to read all of the porno spam that i got instead of helping people with their linux problems.
I have to say this is the worst article Mr. Katz has written so far. Why must everything evolve around him? All of his solutions to problems seem to be the ones that we are urged to follow at least in spirit.
As far as him being ignored by some slashdot readers he seems to have taken it personally, although he would be sure to say he has "thick skin" . I think that is the real issue here and should not be confused with filtering which continues to prove to be a valuable service.
Absolutely every information source is filtered. It's just the way the Universe works.
You say you don't want to filter to filter Slashdot. That's fine. You will need to spend more time reading Slashdot. You can't spend that time reading Usenet or other web sites. You say that you are an Uberhuman with no life and an OC3 so you read all the web sites. You read all the web sites (er, sure). But what about all the books and managizes you aren't reading? What about all the real people you aren't talking to?
Just like chosing not to decide is, itself, a choice, choosing not to filter imposes a filter.
All we get to choose is how we filter. I filter (Score/Kill) on usenet because if I didn't, I couldn't read half the groups I do. I think it's a good choice. Reading more groups is more valuable to me than reading all the articles in fewer groups. At present, I don't filter Slashdot. Perhaps I should. I only read a very small fraction of the comments, most of which are of little value to me. Perhaps if I imposed filters, I could get to more of the good stuff th at I am now missing.
("The nature of the web is about to change." Gee, and it's been so static up till now...)
I would dump you into my killfile in a flat second if I weren't a moderator. Because I do moderate, I hold my nose, read the article and get into the comments.
But this just pisses me off -- I've never seen a more depressing response to not being popular.
"jerks [...] are being blocked out of existence."
Well, no. The opinion of jerks is being ignored on Slashdot by some people. That's their choice.
If you read Wired Magazine and complain that jerks are being filtered out of existence because they don't show up in the letters section, you get the general idea. The point of a journalist is to present worthwhile information, which is presumably why you have your own Slashdot soapbox upon which to stand while all the other poor bastards have to write in comments and hope they get a look in. The least you could do is not whine about being filtered.
I have to disagree here.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean everyone has to read you. What you call ShutUp software is just a mean for the individual to have the computer filter out things he has no interest in reading.
You say the person becomes more ignorant. This could be a problem with the improper use of ShutUp software: If I filter out *important* information, I become ignorant. But I can't see how will I become ignorant by filtering out things I wouldn't bother to read anyway, such as childish flames. If I can teach my ShutUp software properly, it'll just help me.
I made a program very similar to Procmail. Whenever an email arrives, it looks it's hearders and filters it to different folders. One is the Spam folder. It stores ALL messages I receive, but many go to the spam software, which I hardly ever read. This could be seen as what you call ShutUp software, but I have found it to be VERY useful and time saving.
Besides, the whole internet is about freedom and I can't see how ShutUp software limits it, when everyone can build a web site and put whatever he wants there. That does not mean others will visit it, he has to make a GOOD web site if he wants to get heard. There's no need for ShutUp software because no one will visit the site anyway. But when the crap you don't want to hear becomes mixed with the important messages (as in the case of comments here in Slashdot (supposing you are among those who read them) or in the case of Spam mixed with email from your girlfriend), ShutUp software is very useful: it gives you access to the things you want to hear, you no longer have to get your hands inside the shit to search for the golden stuff. It does it for you.
A different subject is the quality of ShutUp software. If it is improperly implemented and does filter out messages you should have seen or if it filters out messages *you* want to see (but others thought you wouldn't like), it is a bad thing.
There's something interesting I find in your article. Would you rather be flamed than ignored? Why? It adds some light to some things I have been thinking about lately (that have nothing to do with you).
Forgot his password, is in a computer that doesn't have it stored in cookies and doesn't have time to get it mailed,
Azul.
http://bachue.com/alejo/
Net Nanny and its ilk are known for being inflicted upon unwilling third parties (kids, library patrons...), and being dishonest or just brain-damaged about what they block - womens' health info, liberal politics, the city of Scunthorpe (bing! I just blocked this thread), and most of all criticism of imposed badly-implemented filtering.
I always think of censorship as meaning "to keep someone's voice from being heard [by others]".
... (presumably for defending rap and vulgar TV...) - though you never know the reason for sure).", but there is no doubt in my mind that those in power must weigh these issues heavily.
I think the word we're looking for here is ignorship. Using the word censorship is just inflammitory. In fact, calling it "ShutUp" software is inflammitory - nobody is being told to shut up - they're just being ignored.
"[Flamers] have the right to be heard, to exist on websites."
1/2 right. They have the right to speak, to exist on websites. I have the right to not hear.
I think flaming != constructive criticism. A message can contain both, but I don't think that a 'pure flame' is useful (except, perhaps a a vote of disagreement).
"Scroll to the next column or feature; why isn't that choice enough?"
Because there are around 6 websites that I hit for info on a daily basis, and to read all of all of them would take all day. I NEED to cut out the stuff that is not interesting to me. At excite I only list a few topics. According to you I'm screening out some, and that's bad.
"Why build new software to ban ideas?"
Offhand:
1. It is illegal to voice some ideas.
2. It is detrimental to [a given] society/culture to propend some ideas (this includes giving them a voice).
3. For the same reason people are banned from society - because their constructive input is so much less than their destructive input.
Freedom of speech comes with great responsibility: those in power are responsible to LIMIT the speech of all (including themselves). Even in America it's illegal to yell FIRE in a crowded theater, and to advocate the killing of all [insert ethnic group here]. To those not in power, this can be a big gray area: "I'm proud to say that I'm blocked by almost all of the major blocking programs
"90% of anything is shit." -- Steve Beitzel in reference to science fiction writers, usenet, and (on a bad day) humanity.
Jon, do you read UseNet? If you do, I suspect that you are a liar:
"I won't ever use an "ignore" button, or set my preferences to screen out anybody else's criticism or ideas. The ideas I least want to read are the ones I most often need to."
Are you subscribed to ALL of usenet? Do you read it ALL? Or do you use your software to screen out the ideas proposed and put forth in "alt.music.cravin-melon?"
Think about it - even if you could listen to EVERYONE's ideas - you had the time (omnipresence and comprehension) - would you? I can't imagine even 40,000,000 people having things to say that I really wanted to hear.
Kurt Werle
kwerle@pobox.com
Time reading garbage hoping for a surprise is time taken away from reading content that's more likely worthwhile.
Exactly! We're *going* to miss something - that's inevitable, time and bandwidth are finite. The question is whether we choose to miss something at random, or something most likely to be useless. This is why scoring is best - how much I miss depends on how much time I have, and what I read is as close as I can get to the most useful stuff I could have read.
For me it depends on the reason. I can't say I enjoy being disagreed with, but I welcome debates with rational people who think things through. But I find reading "YOU SUC|< D00D!!1!" has no value whatsoever, and the sort of person who'd post that has so little respect for the medium that I'm betting they won't bother to say anything interesting, much less substantial or true. I don't filter out controversial content, I filter out the absence of content.
Usenet imposes no interface, so it has many, almost all of which work better than anything possible with Web-like latencies. I really wish I could just fetch the recent Slashdot message database and run a decent client over it offline.
Basic stylometry (frequency of usage of phrases and such) should be able to distinguish pr0n from salty self-expression readily enough. Down-filtering on expletives in a language as ambiguous as English is painfully stupid. I generally only up-filter on specific terms that relate to my interest in a particular forum.
This sounds like the "engrams" Scientologists are on about. I'm not convinced. But just in case,
Hearing something more doesn't make you agree with it. Hearing something more doesn't make you agree with it. Hearing something more doesn't make you agree with it. Hearing something more doesn't make you agree with it.
:-)
I was about to say the same thing. I fail to understand how someone's use of software the prevents them from seeing what they do not want to see (WITH the qualification that the person consciously makes that choice) is any different then them manually bypassing that which they don't want to see. The only difference is that the latter can mean they must scroll through page after page (and KB after KB) of comments they care not for.
Now, if the filter rules were being imposed by the site and the user did not have a choice in the matter, I would agree. However, this "Shut-Up Software" by definition is not so. It is functionally no different than a killfile.
With what this article states, it could be theorized that a Web messageboard where you must be a member (in some cases, paid member) to post (and in some cases read) messages is the same thing.
As was stated by others: the right to say what you want != the right to have a captive audience. Everyone similarly has to right to choose what they wish to hear, read, etc.
The analogy to Newspaper and TV News is flawed: I do not have the ability to tell them what stories they print, they make that choice for me. I do, however, have the right to not read a story (since, by definition, they are not interactive forums, "filtering" as defined by the article cannot be done.)
Is this article a case of "Chicken Little?"
A few people will, and we'll probably consider them the poorer for it. But I think most will care more whether you have a point than what it is. Meritocracy. Think of it as evolution in action.
It's easy enough to make filters that expire - "probation" for abusers. But in the meantime, you're choosing to give your irreplacable attention to cretins who don't deserve it, and withholding it from other content that more likely does. I'd never do that.
it seems to me that Katz is making no distinction here between killfiling an obnoxious poster, a spammer, or a subject you simply aren't interested in, and killfiling someone who disagrees with you but can back it up with actual arguments, or at least something more substantial than "y0u $u(K!!!1".
:)
I would have no compunctions about doing the former but would hesitate to do the latter, for exactly the same reasons Katz describes: I don't want to miss a valid point just because it's made by someone who disagrees with me.
I don't see how blocking spammers and idiots is going to threaten the open discourse of modern society, though... maybe that's why I'm an AC instead of a columnist
Once again, Katz delves into the depth of his own stupidity to produce this fractured pearl of foolishness. You are simply either stupid or a moron, quite probably both, but I don't care to analyse such dim-wittedness. You as a member of the mainstream media should be shot for even putting forth such a hypocritical remark! Media has been censoring information for eternity. Hell, the bible has been re-written so many times there's probably a religion devoted to revising the thing. It is mental midgets like you, Jon Katz, that propagate such poor interpretations of fine ideas such as those of Locke and Jefferson. I should hope that I always get a choice in what information my brain processes, at least the input/information I recognize as such. But it is your right to be stupid. And it is my right to ignore your dumb-ass. I don't wish you any harm or ill-will. I hope you do well. I hope you are satiated by your profession as a writer, as much as not reading your words satiates me. I wish this for all people. Be Happy! Read not that which enrages and ignites the fires of hatred. Nay, I say unto you, verily, smite thine fools with the mighty sword of ignominity...
A favourite Parking Lot Is Full cartoon on this topic... www.plif.com/archive/wc161.gif
We are missing the point. We need software to keep
the spammers from nailing us with 30 pop ups and spam-mail. Flaming is fun. You can flame back, Flaming is judo - maybe you can throw the flamer.
Spamming and pop ups, banners, suck. We need software to stop that kind of thing
I really think there is a difference between "Censorship" Filtering and Signal to Noise filtering.
Censorship filtering is filtering someone filtering content because they don't want to see what it says for reasons of upsetting their sensiblities, things like Porn, to some it seems you Mr. Katz, and the KKK fall into such a catagory typically for some people. I personally have problems with this type of filtering being done for me, or even me doing it.
Signal to Noise filtering is a different issue. This type of filter is often used when some weenie on IRC decides he wants your nick so he and 10 of his friends decide to send you personal messages constantly, or some moron spamming your e-mail through an otherwise good mailing list. Personally, I am *FOR* this kind of filtering. We as users of the internet need a way to say: "No, I don't want to hear about your great p0rN site for the 500th time, nor your pyramid scheme, etc, etc..."
Alas, we need the above so we can stay sane and get our work done, and communicate effectively even when there are some people who would rather we didn't.
As a thought for you out there, the name of a document included in the MH distribution shows this need clearly, "How to process 200 messages a day and still get some real work done."
Think hard, you really CAN'T read everything.
-Ira Cooper / ira@mit.edu
I know you're reading. Do not try to pretend I do not exist.
What the hell are you trying to do, Katz? Get on the hof? Or are you just pissed off by Rob's anti-Katz new feature? (Yes we both know its main purpose is to filter out what you write.)
Well anyway, _excellent_ point. You might always be 'verbose mode' on, but you say meanigful things half of the time.
Katz and almost all others seem to be missing the point. Here
I am only referring to user controlled filters such as web proxies
and not to filters controlled by networks or ISP's or browsers,
which are evil.
Time is time, and that is more important to home users and web
surfers than money. It can take a long *time* to download and
view web pages, and also to sort through email, and this causes
immense frustration. As bandwidth increases, so does the volume
of data much of which is without meaningful content to the user.
Mostly, ads. Animated banner ads are sometime slow to load and
sometimes never load fully. Look at Slashdot with Netscape.
Certain ads have to be stopped with escape. Better to use a]
proxy to filter out all animated gif ads or turn off animations, etc.
Many pages are more ads than anything else, but some of these
pages also have useful content.
I disagree that most people who use shut-up software do so to
filter out persons and opinions they disagee with . They do so
in order to have the time to work with the content they want.
Another alternative is to use robots to download pages one
desires periodically or as they change and read them offline, but
this can be very limiting, especially when one wants to follow links
which the bot hat no way of knowing would be of interest and anyway
no point in downloading the entire web!
The entire concept of commercializing the internet to this degree
really limits its potential. Ideally, point to point communication
similar to telenet to selected sites should be possible without
an ISP. This ability should come with basic phone service, but
does not. Every telephone address hooked up to an internet -
capable computer should also be a fully qualified server with
a free domain. Instead, what we have is largely surfers (consumers)
and servers, which are all to some degree gateways as well
even if they don't advertise themselves as such. A little unfair.
This makes the surfer (consumer) a victim, having to pay just to
browse, but unable to serve content without paying even more.
Who benefits here?
Blocking and proxy software helps the little guy even the playing
field some, but not nearly enough. It's a small step towards
empowerment.
That's what expiration times on scorefiles are for. If Katz is simply arguing against badly-implemented filtering, that's a no-brainer.
In other words you do bother with him, just not for very long (by our standards). If there were a million writers all trying to be the next Katz (this is by no means inconceivable), that wouldn't even be feasible.
Well, I always suspected that it would come to this. And high time, too!
A few years ago on usenet, after having had to put up with one too many abusive flamers and having had to wade through one too many span-ridden newsgroups, I posited that filtering software would become more and more prevelant due to the jerk contingent on the net. I was greeted with derisive hoots of "no way!" "this is the NET, and that's the way it works, and it can't be stopped!" "Get used to it" etc. Well, hah hah, mofo's!
I can always find an audience for my ranting (in addition to other sites and links, there are those 79,350 Slashdot readers who can somehow survive having my work appear on the site). But angry kids posting messages can be marginalized, even obliterated, in a snap.
REALLY?! Oh, how simply AWFUL for these po' little waifs. Cry me a river.
Flamers are an enormous problem online.
Yes, they are--hence the increasing prevelance of filterware, moderated newsgroups and mailing lists, etc.
They chill free speech, frighten or drive off weaker, older, less experienced or more benign and thoughtful posters. Often they are abusive.
Exactly. Sorry, guy, but I will take nobody's abuse. These people act the way they do because they can--if they said these things to their targets face to face chances are the least they would get is a broken jaw. And don't even get me started on spammers--I don't want my inbox full of their "Make $300k a year stuffing envelopes!" garbage.
But they are also important, daily reminders that the Net and the Web are free.
With freedom comes responsibility. That's something a lot of people want to forget.
They keep gasbags in check, and, in my case, have taught me (often inadvertently) a lot about Linux, open source, geekhood, and how to write more knowingly, concisely and informally.
Oh, and they can't do that in a polite and civil manner? Yeah, right. Flamers teach me nothing except that they are immature at best. I automaticlly ignore anything that they have to say. Now let me be clear on what I mean by this: yes, they have the right to post whatever they want, but no, I don't have to read their trash, and I like having access to the tools which help me filter them out.
They have the right to be heard, to exist on websites.
Uh, no they do NOT. They do, however, need to die. So long live filterware! Oh--and I'll be setting my reply threshold at 3+.
I've already seen this misused over on zdnet. Not all that long ago, *I* was censored. And, after reviewing the talkback articles zdnet accepted, I was left with the distinct impression, correctly or incorrectly, that zdnet was intentionally censoring responses to give the impression that only children & cranks were using Linux.
In America, I have the right to free speech. And I have the right to decide not to listen to somebody. What irks me is when someone else decides who I may or may not listen to.... Or speak to...
...when it's so easy to just not read his long, self-involved narratives about the current weather conditions in his navel - who needs an automated block for this?
Then again, I'm one of many who rarely look at the comments section here. There are plenty of postings that are far less useful than Katz's, and they are far more common. And that, I guess, is why I never bother to login, either - what's the point of doing so just to see what new links have been posted?
If you wrote a newspaper column, we could turn the page. If you had a TV show, we could turn the channel. But with "web writing", we have no such option OTHER than "ShutUp" software. Me thinks Katz is stepping out of the role of writer, and more into Minister of Information, or at least wants to.
Sorry Katz, but I've gotta disagree on this one with you. What someone wants to see displayed on THEIR screen in THEIR free time is THEIR choice. Make your column available. Make it good. That's all you can do, and should do. No cramming it down anyone's throat, or telling us we should all read your stuff, or even all have to be subjected to the wasted space on the slashdot front page.
I seem to have a lot of personal blockers at home and at work. Right there on the television remote is the best instance of a filter - the keypad.
I block stations I don't like by not selecting them. I filter out information (like adverts) by clicking on the ignore (mute) button. I censor the television networks' right to communicate with me by leaving the television off while I read a good book.
I block out Harlequin romance novels in favor of the latest by Stephenson or Bujold. I gratuitously choose not to engage in macarame tutorials, and I refuse to let those National Enquirers cross my threshold.
Am I censoring others by choosing to involve myself in 'only what I like'? No, I am exercising my freedom to choose. I am exercising my freedom to get away from what I don't like - to keep from being force fed a diet rich in obnoxiousness.
Yes, the Internet is indeed a community. Some of us are assholes. Some of us are just not popular. most of the time it isn't because of the message, but the tone of the message that makes me tune out the message.
Do I care if I'm ignored? Not particularly. My life is not so defined by what other people think of me that I question my existence if my email drops off. In fact, i wish some of it would drop off. So take what I say with or without a grain of salt. Or don't take it at all. And if you don't like it, I'll just ignore you (grin).
Mark Edwards
-----------------------------------
Proof of sanity forged upon request
The most important benefit of allowing slashdot readers to block authors who's material they dislike is the very pleasant side effect of the absence of their whining flames. Some folks feel obliged to spend ten minutes composing a tirade complaining that a feature editorial isn't worth the ten minutes spent reading it, rather than moving on and spending the time reading something they're interested in. This is a waste of the respondents' time, and other readers' time.
Since blocking was implemented, there have been fewer complaints overall, and that's a good thing, IMO.
slashdot broke my sig
Yeah- I sometimes _like_ reading the arguments of idiots. I don't post to alt.flame, but I do also read some Usenet- and I don't block Jon Katz, even though I now know that would hurt him the only way he _can_ be hurt (much like newsgroup trolls with an infinite appetite for flames but no stomach for ignoring).
If Jon was entirely worthless, _all_ (or maybe 50%) Slashdotters would block him. If he was any good he'd be at 80 or so with the other opinionated editors, he'd be in line with Sengan who's ruffled some feathers.
The reason he's blocked by over 650 people in spite of the fact that one has to make an effort to do so _and_ choose to not even take a chance on his ever saying anything useful, is because he _almost_ never says anything useful at all. The 'gasbag' has been ditched, effectively.
If he doesn't like this, he can find other forums or actually try to write something good- or at least pick good subjects and stay out of the way of them, as he managed to do with his decent profile of those two hacker kids. He should pointedly refrain from ever doing any more opinion pieces, because it would appear that almost ten times the slashdotters don't even want to hear his opinion compared with other story posters' ratios.
If he can't take that advice, then he should at least work on learning to find acceptance and humility with the idea that he is not very important and people don't care what he thinks. Hell, there are very few subjects where people care what _I_ think. Jon certainly has not struck a special bargain with the Deity to be rendered more worthy of even minimal attention, so I am both amused and exasperated that this is so hard for him. In all the chasing of mountaintop enlightenment, doesn't he have the faintest notion of what humility means?
Jon's enlightenment has primarily been self-realization. He grew up in a different world than the one facing kids today, one where his entire generation was demonized and canonized alternately- either they were the hope for the future, the Woodstock generation, or they were drug addicts and moral reprobates beyond any imagining.
He, understandably, has a hard time fitting into a 'So what?' world, where some of us younger geeks are very accustomed to it. This is part of his continuing difficulty in holding credibility- he has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the majority of people care nada for what he thinks, and in fact that he'd have to put a lot of work into simply getting their attention long enough for them to parse what he's saying and make up their minds whether they like it or not. On top of this he doesn't put any work into how he says it- his first and third paragraphs repeat the exact same sentence blindly, suggesting that he does not even bother to proof his writing, or that he feels he does not even owe readers the slightest consideration. It's as if his stream of consciousness is supposed to merit the level of publicity he gets. It does not.
Again: attention is not a right, but Jon _feels_ worthy of it by default- and this clashes jarringly with the more Gen-X experience a lot of slashdotters grew up with, where you have to do a _lot_ more to even be heard, and even then, odds are your efforts will be in vain.
The fact is, someone who lives in the latter world, who has to accept the great uncaringness of most of existence and rejoice in what little bits of it _can_ be grown and cultivated, will probably find Jon's assumption that he has a _right_ to credibility and attention, as annoying.
This is one reason Jon's special status as story poster has historically rankled: this status gives him the special power to gain more attention than the average yob, and he _writes_ as if he is more enlightened and aware than us geeky masses, and the problem is he's not- he's not even smart enough to figure this out, and in spite of his continuing failure to be _more_ worthy than your average slashdotter, he _still_ _gets_ story posting privileges. Because that's CmdrTaco's privilege, it's Rob's site in the final analysis.
Is it any wonder that ten times the usual number block hearing from him at all? If he had the spark of humility in his soul, things would be very different. Nobody would resent a 'kid brother' approach of the eager Linux newbie learning more and posting their experiences. Instead, even when functioning in the areas where he deserves to show the most humility, such as being a Linux amateur, he insists, is determined to, put the whole thing in the light of spiritual development ("It's a test of the human spirit")... an area where he, being a published author and an older man than your usual slashdot reader, feels he has dominance and can assert a spiritual authority. This, even in areas where humility and willingness to learn would be most fitting and even obligatory...
In summary, this article perfectly epitomizes just who Jon Katz is, and throws a vivid light on why there's been so much friction. Jon's not a technical guru, has little to say on social trends, and in fact his complete innocence of the concept of humility suggests that he has little to say spiritually either.
Being the ambulance watcher I am, naturally I am entertained by deconstructing him- I can't help but wonder whether this post will be elevated to high levels or forcibly moderated down to suppressed levels! But either way- _I_ do not have the luxury of ignoring humility. I'm late to post, and few people will read past the spam spouting fellow, and of those who do, few will care that much what I say.
If anybody does care, they can go to my site as listed in the URL link, and read more things I've had to say. I don't have a special hotline to high-bandwidth attention, as Jon has, and in fact I couldn't tell you whether I merit one. In some areas, maybe. In other areas, certainly not.
I'm content in the knowledge that, after a stressful day of web site and brochure-hacking, and being accepted within a small group of co-workers as the ranking authority on web and layout stuff, I've come to slashdot, read yet another Jon Katz expostulation, and uncovered still more of what makes the man tick, and just why he's so incredibly irritating to many Slashdotters. I'm content to know that I've worked harder on this simple reply than Jon did on his feature article- and I feel that I have more respect for Slashdot readers by doing so. Why shouldn't I revise my post and put in paragraph indents and correct typos, if I wish to register on the radar screens of Slashdot? I take the same pains with my web site. Jon doesn't seem willing to take any pains- he behaves as if he is entitled to our attention, on principle, in case he might have an idea of some sort. If it wasn't so fun studying him, it would annoy me too, but in fact it's meta-useful, in that nothing he says is significant, but studying him is very useful for understanding certain semi-pathological social dynamics. Jon, in other circumstances, could be the guy who talks too loud at parties and starts fights. Instead, he's apparently very decent and nice in person and in private- and it is his public persona that cannot stomach humility.
This, though it's far from the point he wants us to listen to, is still an interesting thing to consider, and though I'm not sure CmdrTaco intends for Jon to be a study of irritants in online social constructs, nevertheless he serves as a revealing example.
And I gotta blush and laugh when I realise that Slashdot has been changed and no longer permits paragraph indenting with nonbreaking spaces! *blush* well... I said I had to have humility, and by God, do I ever have to have it now ;) uh, sorry about that, thought it still worked...
That's a synonym, and a more accurate one, missing from Katz's list.
When a product such as NetNanny or CyberPatrol that purports to block "offensive" content goes around blocking sites that criticize it, that's censorship, not filtering. How is a site that criticizes CyberPatrol deemed "inappropriate"? It has nothing anybody could reasonably consider offensive, it just criticizes a company that happens to be in a position to do something about the criticism. In addition, why is alt.atheism blocked, while alt.judaism and alt.christianity are not?
This is basically why I consider the use of censorware in libraries and schools to be unconstitutional - the government does not have the right to empower a company or companies to decide what speech is and is not accepted according to that company's personal opinions and business strategy. Why should CyberPatrol be given the right to say "nobody shall criticize CyberPatrol from a library or school"?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by Mike@ABC:
...whether or not there's ShutUp Software out there. For the vast majority of us, we don't LIKE hearing other people's opinions, and generally tune them out whether or not there's software to help us. Out of the 79,350 Slashdot readers who haven't blocked Jon, how many hits does he get when he posts an article? That's probably a better count.
We all know there's stuff out on the internet that's patently offensive, stuff that I wouldn't want my kid to see (if I indeed had a kid). Used judiciously, filtering can help. And as for free speech, well, you can talk all you want, but I don't have to listen.
Personally, I keep my Slashdot settings at -1. I want to hear everything, the good, the bad and the ugly. If someone wants to set it at 0, however, and skip all the AC's who post "first!" every time, more power to them.
In general, I've found that if people are predisposed NOT to listen, then you can't force them. And you shouldn't. The right to tune out speech is just as sacrosanct as the right to speak it.
Thanks for reading this. Or not.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
sorry- I didn't pay close enough attention to what you were saying.
Posted by Bastard Operator From Hell:
... I am not a fair man, and don't want to heard both sides. - H.L. Mencken.
Using computers to filter out what we want and don't want to see, is what they are they for. I have mail filters, I have filters on Slashdot, I use search engines.
How are search engines much different from filters? The both do pretty much the same thing.
I think Jon is backing the wrong horse on this one.
Shaun
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
I have to agree- I am shocked and amazed that katz would be censored by go.com, etc. for merely political views. (I assume that he wasn't posting porno as well in former columns =)
However, Jon, you should not be so dismissive of "flaming" as you call it. It's true that many flames are just bitter or bored people looking for a rise, but it is also easy to dismiss legitimate, civil comments that are unpleasent to read as simple flames. For instance, during the running to the website incident, I published what I felt was a civil criticism of what I felt smacked of self-promotion. This is an unpleasent thing for you to read, I realize, and not a nice thing to say. But I didn't make wild accusations about kickback schemes, and all that other crap that so many other people did. And yet, from a number of responses to my post, many of which were personal, angry, and uncivil, I assume that it was taken to be a flame.
If you don't like blocking software, be sure that you are not too quick to dismiss comments as flames; that too is the kind of censorship you are talking about.
Jon,
You're quite right, blocking tools can be used to screen things one doesn't like, but that one really, really ought to be reading.
The problem isn't the software here. The problem is the closed minded individuals who've decided they don't want to read your column, or my comment, or Rob's Quickies.
Take a look at what's happened to Usenet, Jon. Back when it was 2 articles per day, all was fine. Then it kinda scaled out of control. The result is a medium that some swear by, but most - in my humble experience - just dismiss as unusable.
So what are we to do? I hate to see good, level headed moderation referred to as censorship. Censorship is an attack on free speech. Moderation is a defence against those who would destroy a forum.
Yeah, I know, there are bad moderators. And hell, they probably outnumber the good ones and all. What can you do. But Jon, much as I take your point, I fail to see an alternative. Please don't condemn us all to a network full of flamers and First Comment posters.
Cheers, Dave
--
That is why reader-implemented filtering is a Good Thing. And why administrator-implemented filtering is not always bad (Cancel Moose, for example, was helpful for a while).
Blocking software like Net Nanny, etc., *is* evil, though, if only because of the way it seems to filter out dissenting opinion, not just the things it claims to filter.
This is an issue I've dealt with a few times, having been a proponent of a moderated news group, and a proponent of all the filtering available here at /. It seems to me that it's an issue of trust, and of community. With the newsgroup (rec.martial-arts.moderated), the people doing the filtering were in one sense poor candidates, since they'd volunteered for the job. But they were perfect candidates, because they were trusted members of the community. It had become a necessity, after all of the two person, hundred plus flame wars on rec.martial-arts, and because of all the irrelevant spam (in fact, relevant spam is still allowed by the moderators today). I don't have the time to read a newsgroup with 5-600 new posts a day. The new moderators were well-known for posting content, and for agreeing with people who they generally disagreed with, when valid arguments were made.
/. -- but I disagree with the opinion that moderation is something that, available or not, should not be used. Back to my original example, rec.martial-arts.moderated has been growing as more people have discovered they can not deal with the constantly growing size of rec.martial-arts, even though they were originally marginally against reading a moderated forum.
So how does that apply here? Simple: it can lead us to the belief that filtering out bits, while good, is different from filtering out ideas. It also showed me that, not restricting anyone's priviledge to be heard allows a DoS attack on everyone's right to free speech (in the 'Net paradigm). The problem is quite clear: do we decide that we must strive for a perfect world, wherein such an attack wouldn't be made? Or do we decide that we must strive for an imperfect world, but one wherein a DoS of our right to free speech is more difficult to do?
My opinion is this: given that we live in a populated world, we must expect a DoS regardless of intent; thus, we can not assume that everyone's good intentions will protect us. Filtering becomes a necessity, not just of having robustness, but to have even the more basic rights! However, it must be done correctly: and one of the best ways to do this isn't democratic filtering, but meritocratic; the ones most fit to participate in a forum should know the best what doesn't belong, and what does belong despite disagreements.
This, then, is why I don't filter stories on Slashdot, but have filtering set up to +1 or +2 (depending on my mood). There is no meritocratic way to decide something as broad as "appropriateness of something Geek and/or News-related to Slashdot's community" (although, of course, appropriateness to Slashdot itself is decided by CmdrTaco), but there is a way to decide "appropriateness of a particular post in a particular context to Slashdot's community."
Thus, I agree with one point of this article -- to try to view the bigger picture as much as possible at
--Matthew
Information that I might find useful or informative is being produced far faster than I could ever read it/view it. I must self-censor, simply by choosing not to partake of a particular source. A ShutUp list strikes me as the same as simply not choosing to watch a particular channel.
Now, if I'm looking for feedback to something I've created (and JK clearly falls in this category a lot), I think I do have more of an obligation to listen to responses than I do in simply selecting what's worth reading. However, even then I reserve the right not to let a particular person command most of my attention.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I have bad news for you, if you are worried about blocking. You are guilty of it. You do it all the time. Every day, with every breath you take, you block. It might be that you choose not to read the latest news about the Kosovo crisis, or you choose not to find out how one would give one's poodle a perm.
Humans encounter more information today than they ever have before, and as in the past, the method of dealing with it is to filter it. As a matter of fact, all five of your senses are actively filtering the world around you with every breath that you take.
This is *not* the same as censorship. Censorship is when someone *else* filters for you. When I put up my proxy filter and choose which ads to block out, I am simply filtering a barrage of information which has little use to me in my life, or at least I *think* it has little use to me. Your eyes and ears, your sense of smell all do this on a regular basis. If I'm wrong -- well, that is my loss. However it is my right to choose what I see. And I do, and you do it too.
Some forms of "blocking", like slashdot, come very close to censorship, particularly when the moderators come into play. You could almost percieve it as having a *huge* committee of people who choose what you see -- if you opt for moderated content. But it is important to remember that you are still able to choose whether you want moderated content or not, so in my opinion even this is not censorship. It is much like watching the news on TV. You "vote with your dollar" for someone to filter information for you.
If the persons you select to filter information for you do it in a way that you didn't think they were doing it -- that's censorship. But we all know how moderators here work, so if you opt for it.. well, you picks yer filters, and you installs them.
Deal.
I didn't understand your post at all, but since it seems to have nothing to do with mine, I will ask you this.
:)
Doesn't the golden rule condone rape?
"But I thought she'd want to, I know that's what *I* wanted her to do..."
Sometimes, what people say can be taken the wrong way. I don't see how my personal choices in what I want to see on the internet has anything to do with the unsolicited e-mail stupid people might send me. In fact, in the spirit of this thread, that's a good reason to filter your e-mail.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I also don't agree with content filters. I often *agree* with the points that Katz has to say, just not necessarily his style.
I also didn't see this on the main slashdot page, but it's in ultramode.txt, which I parse into lynx when I just want to see headlines (yeah, yeah, not more than every hour).
However, I do love the new moderation feature of slashdot. I also enjoy being able to track my replies. The reason I usually disagree with web content filtering is because it's completely impersonal. Usually, it just matches text strings looking for offensive words or links, or something equally stupid. That may be content filtering, but it isn't accurate.
However, the moderators on slashdot are users, just like I am. They recognize good comments when they see them, and I generally agree with them. It has the net effect of making slashdot back into the small community it used to be, which is what I liked originally.
Also, with the moderation on slashdot, "if you don't like it, turn it off". That is an essential feature, and it's also my answer to people who want to censor television, books, or anything else. Watch what you like, and don't blame other people for your own preferences. If you want to censor yourself, go ahead, as long as it's your choice.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I had no idea that in 1987 when I first hit ^K in trn that I repressing the idiot flamer I never saw again. This is not a new idea. It is necessary. I wish Katz had written more about the difference between me choosing to ignore someone and AOL hiring people to censor. That bothers me. But giving me the choice to not listen to someone, that is not censorship. That is personal choice.
Just one of the things to mull over next time you fire up Gimp to do some photo retouching ;)
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
It's hard to disagree with that sentiment in principle. The problem is that in practice, I (for instance) have a finite amount of time to spend reading, and an even more limited amount of time to spend reading on the net.
I already use shutup ``wetware'' by not clicking my way to Microsoft advocacy sites, or by not picking up up Bill Gates' new book, or not reading journal articles in my field by authors who are doing work I don't find interesting. I already filter what I read; it's somewhat disingenious to suggest otherwise.
It's absolutely true that I'm missing out useful insights by doing this. But given how short my time each day is I can spend reading, I have no choice but to try to select things that have the highest signal-of-relevance-to-me to noise ratio I can find. I will always miss some very useful signal that way; and, what's worse, I will systematically be missing the same sort of signal all the time -- stuff that I don't find interesting or that I disagree with. But I don't see that I have a choice.
I'd love to read everything I can get my hands on, regardless of relevence or intelligence; but it would be irresponsible, because ultimately I have to sleep and work and eat and spend time with my loved ones. So I don't read Danielle Steele novels, Republican election materials, Bill Gates books, or flamers on usenet. Life's too short.
It sounds like it's time to sign Katz up as a Freedom Knight. Now isn't _that_ a scary thought.
Simply because he has to. There is a million new items on the net every day. An ordinary human can read (or scan) maybe a thousand of those. So he is filtering (or self-censoring) about 999.000 items away. Each day.
/. but "censor" cnn by not accessing their site. Not because cnn never have any news that interest me, but because if I spend time there, I'd have to give up other sources of information, which -- in average -- are more interesting.
/., the moderation system makes it worthwhile to read (or at least skim) comments. Before the the latest incarnation of the moderation system, the average quality of the comments were so low, that looking for the occational gem was not worth the time. You'd get better results elsewhere.
Everybody has to select the 1000 (or whatever number they can manage) items in some way. Smart people use every accesible technology to help select the items, the they -- in average -- are as interesting as possible.
One simple way is to select your sources. I select to read
On Usenet and on mailing lists, I use quite advanced scoring to make smart people and subjects that interest me stand out, so I don't accidentially skip them, and to mark articles by idiots and threads started by well-known trolls and kooks as read, making them easy to skip. This allows me to follow lists and newsgroups, I'd otherwise had to "censor" out because of lack of time.
On
I disagree with the pedagogical ideals that make some American parents attempt to shield their children from the world, rather than spending time with them to learn them how to deal with the world. But that is really a separate issue.
In general, selecting/filtering/censoring your information sources is not even a question. It is a necessity. The only relevant question is how to do it most efficiently.
You are absolutely right.
My only excuse is that Jon Katz used the term "self-censorship" for self-imposed filtering of information, and my point required that I stayed in the terminology of his article.
Most people complain about your style (too longish), not your content. Other people claim that you are too repetitive, i.e. there is too little new stuff in your features. Both are perfectly valid reasons to filter you out.
You show a lack of usability understanding when you suggest that filtering software is a bad idea.
Do you ever read Usenet? I spend my time reading some quality posts (and a few posts of less quality), *after* reams of trash has been filtered out. You seem to suggest that it would be a good idea if I didn't have the option to do so - in other words, that I should spend a few more hours a day wasting my time reading flames and posts about topics that I'm not interested in, just so I can get a broader view.
No thanks. I find a new conversation when somebody won't stop ranting about the Tri-Lateral Commission at a party, and I do the same with the radio and the net. It's an old idea, and giving it a name in StudlyCaps isn't going to make it more dangerous.
The idea that if you use filtering algorithms, rather than human selected filtering, you can end up with censorship.
Someone can be pissy and hornery and insulting and still be right. Algorithms can miss this. Adults have a better chance admitting it.
While preferences-sort of things help, and a cadre of moderators can assist, and even filtering out someone your really do just want to ignore, there will always be the danger that the filtered material will get better while you're not looking.
--
Erskin
geek.
Katz is really marginalizing himself. I suppose that Usenet is a form of censorship too, since it's possible to not subscribe to every group?
Sheesh.
It's people like this that really hurt the fight against REAL censorship. "Viewer discretion" will never be stopped, thank goodness -- no matter how often you and others call it censorship.
I defended Katz back when; I thought it was silly to fight him posting. I still think it's silly, although now I see why the others fought. Katz is an empty talker, nothing more.
-Billy
There's disagreement, and then there is plain stupidity. Some of the people I tend to disagree with most have the highest scores in my GNUS scorefile. Why? Because I found that I learn more by reading posts from intelligent rational people who happen to see things differently.
On the other hand, there are some people who NEVER have something intelligent to say. They swear, they brag, they invent stories, and they insult. So I ignore them. This is, however, my choice. I am not interested in an Internet where Disney makes that choice for me. In this regard I couldn't agree with you more.
In fact, this is all that Slashdot is doing. It is trying to use dynamic HTML to recreate UseNet. Personally I don't think that CmdrTaco has a prayer in this endeavor. After all, it would take a whole lot of horsepower to simulate emacs for 80,000 posters. It is certainly getting better, but it isn't anywhere near reading UseNet with a good news reader.
Of course, people who don't use a powerful (read complicated) news reader doesn't understand how it makes UseNet readable. It is like explaining colors to blind people.
It's you.
/. posters, it's not your opinion or the content of your posts that is being filtered. It is your 'style' or lack thereof. It is the lack of content that we find wasteful. Expressions like "gas/wind bag", "hot air", "full of it" come easily to mind. These are not expressions of disagreement, they are expressions of dissatisfaction. They are applied to things that are low in value and not considered worthy of attention.
>...posters do use them to eliminate opinions they don't like.
>I lead the list of the damned and the banned by a wide margin.
If I may summarise for many of the anti-Katz
This in combination with our value for our time causes many of us to consider you and your stuff as part of the noise rather than the signal. So...we treat your noise just as we treat the noise in our designs, we apply a filter. It's not personal Jon.
Only the weak of mind and knowledge filter dissenting opinions. The strong and literate will gladly engage in a debate/argument/discussion with someone that disagrees, if for no other reasons than simply to learn for themselves or to teach others. Quite often the strong will filter the noise, but they will also be willing to lift the earmuffs/blinders every so often just to make sure that they aren't missing anything.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
>So if you use them, you don't have freedom of choice at all - you place yourself in a situation where you must trust someone else to know what you want to block
This is just the sort of poor thinking and lack of personal responsibility that I was lamenting. Read your own words!
"if you use them, you don't have freedom of choice at all"
Again!
"if you use them, you don't have freedom of choice at all"
There's a very big "IF" right there for all to see. IF you don't trust the product, why use it? Duh! Watch your kids yourself. IF you cannot trust your kids on the 'net, don't leave them alone on the 'net. Duh! None of these things are really that hard to understand. All you have to do is think about it. Apply some effort to achieving a solution rather than whining to the gov or someone else about the problem.
>because they block their critics! That surely is censorship
Not if they do it, and you know that they do it and you still choose to use their product. Even if you don't know that they do it, you should have enough mental capacity to figure out that they might just be motivated to do such a thing so you should uh...let's see, check the logs for records of blocked content, whoa, that's hard to do, time consuming. How about turning off the filter occasionally just to get a whiff of reality every now and then?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
...learn what "censorship" is. It is the limitation of information by a third party, notably the government. Anything that individuals or private organizations choose to do for or to themselves is just that, freedom of choice.
I choose not to watch Springer. That is not censorship, that is my personal choice. If I could program my tv or remote so that it would automatically skip over what ever channel Springer is on, I would. Again that is my choice.
If OTOH, you decide that I can't watch Spinger, that is a different situation entirely. This is where we start getting into trouble with the thick skin idea. I don't have a problem with skipping by boring, stupid, or otherwise useless information flow, but when someone else decides that not only will they skip over something, that I will as well, then we will start having problems.
I just had a major league "discussion" with a co-worker about his efforts to shut down the Marilyn Manson concert that was recently in town. I tried to make it clear that it was fine with me if he chose not to attend the show or to keep his kids away, but he has no responsibility nor authority to make that decision for me or my children. The poor sap just couldn't comprehend the idea.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I personally don't block much because you never know when there's a valuable nugget there. This article is a good example. I don't normally bother with Mr. Katz anymore, but I don't filter him either. I can tell from the snippet on the front page if he's going to really annoy me and just don't go there. I think this is one of his better-written pieces in awhile, and if I blocked him entirely I wouldn't have read it. That said, I disagree with his basic premise - people should be free to block out others. They should of course realize that this may dilute their intellectual scope, but given that there are those who we know we don't want to deal with because they inflame or annoy us, it's not unreasonable to filter them out. Most of this is taken care of already by the mere fact that you're not likely to bother visiting a site if you know you don't agree with them. I mean, there's little point in me visiting the Aryan Nation website unless I'm looking to fight with them. I just don't do it; they're idiots and I don't have to bother reading their crap. So we practice self-selection all the time. I don't know what he's so worried about.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Your areas of disagreement seems clear to me. Simply put, you're saying blocking is bad, whether it's a personal choice or not, and they're saying it's a useful technique that helps deal with information overload. As the writer of a public column you have more of an obligation to read what people think about what you write, at least if you want to respond to your audience. As a private citizen attempting to use the net for mostly business purposes, it's up to us to do what we want. That would include being free to not get bogged down with _____. (insert your pet peeve here) Considering the level of flaming you've experienced here in the past, I'd hardly consider this a particularly hostile response to your article.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
With all the stuff going on in the world you'd think he could pick some better topics, eh? Maybe the use of Iridium to get messages out of Kosovo or something. His own statistics would indicate to me it's a non-issue. 650 people out of 85000 filter him and he's upset? Sheesh.
I think what's more to the point is that as commerce sites start to personalize more and more you'll only be offered choices that correspond to their profile of you. It's like never getting to see the vegetarian menu because you usually get a burger. That *will* serve to unknowingly restrict your choices. A filter *you* turned on? I don't see the problem. But then again, I've never been published in Wired. (Did you know he was published in Wired?)
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Basically, people had filtering software so powerful, that they could filter out anything they didn't want to see - bad news, people they didn't agree with, etc. By doing this, they warped their worldview to the extent that they were no longer capable of understanding what was going on out there. Some hacker wrote a virii (I use hacker on purpose on here - this I consider a cool hack, not a crack) which randomized people's settings, forcing them to be aware of other things that were going on. He was put in jail for it.
InThane
I think Jon is right when he talks about ignore buttons. In my preferences, I have my threshold set at 1, so I don't have to deal with all those really absent-minded people who post garbage. Sure, some of them post thoughtful comments, which are then upgraded to a Score of 1. Slashdot allows you to only ignore some and not all of users feedback, which is good, and helpful.
--
Scott Miga
I have the feeling that Katz, although a superb writer in any account ( except for some misspelling errors.. got to fix that, Jon) belongs more in Salon or another Webzine. I see Slashdot as more of an information and geek site, not a philosophical discussion site. So, as I choose not to ban Katz from my view, I still find his articles interesting and worth the read, but just a tad too much off the Slashdot norm.
write a hardware review once in a while, Jon, and I think your popularity will improve.
You can read more about this here.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Consider the especially repulsive example of e-mail spam. Whenever someone tries to tell me that e-mail filters are censorship, I refer them to Paul Vixie's excellent writeup of the issue. Free speech only covers your right to say something. It does not give anyone the right to force me to read what they are saying and have me pay an ISP for the privilege!
I really wish Katz had drawn a line somewhere in between Web filtering software and e-mail filtering. The former is imposed upon users who don't wish to use it and have no control over how it is used. The latter is embraced by users as a sad necessity of modern life, and typically these users have full control over how to filter their mail. Much as in the case of open source software, user control makes all the difference in the world.
Killfiles, or their more powerful score file cousins, can be great. There are some people who just never have anything useful to say. And when you receive hundreds or thousands of pieces of mail a day, you don't read every one anyway. Scoring simply helps to narrow them down in a useful, SELF-DEFINED way. I would do the exact same thing mentally. It is a perfect use of the power of computers -- to free up my mind for better things.
Now, the netnanny stuff is different. There, people don't specifically decide to ban things. Rather, others ban them for people. This, I agree, is bad. But please don't lump them all together as one.
I use these tools as a means of dealing with information overload. Take ACs for instance. Yes, perhaps that one anonymous coward in a hundred has something sensible to say, but the signal to noise ratio of AC comments makes it too expensive time-wise for me to look at it. Hopefully, a moderator will pick it up and put it in the plus-scores.
This is no different than the way we read a newspaper (by skipping most of it) and judge books by their covers or publisher blurbs. In an ideal world, we'd be immortal and have the time not to have to rely on such crude ways of sorting. But in the real world, time is limited, and this type of software can be used as a tool for using that limited time more efficiently.
Because, if the volume of stuff on some forum is sufficiently high, a little technological assistance in separating wheat from chaff might make the difference between continuing to read a forum - including, perhaps, some stuff with which you disagree - and simply giving up, which still means you don't see the stuff that you would have blocked, but also means you see stuff that you wouldn't have blocked.
If somebody wishes to choose to use meatware to do all their filtering, more power to them; I will not always make that choice. I don't consider everything worth reading, and am willing to take the risk of not seeing something worth reading if it's in a thread filled with, say, fact-free opining - or, for that matter, if it's discussing a topic in which I have no interest.
I sympathize with your comments about software that blocks at the source, as that's Person A keeping Person B from seeing something; I don't sympathize with your comments about blocking at the reader, as that's just Person A choosing to have something they don't want to read not even offered to them, rather than dismissing it after a quick glance (if there's enough stuff to read, the fact that you only have to glance quickly at one item to realize you're not interested doesn't necessarily mean glancing at all the items won't take a significant amount of your time).
I do, however, filter on topic. I read Slashdot in order to get the latest technical news; I really don't want to be bothered by the latest round of Microsoft bashing. The mechanism is really much like choosing which Usenet groups, or mailing lists to subscribe to. Your view point (carried to an extreme, I admit) suggests that we should subscribe to every newsgroup and mailing list to make sure that we aren't "filtering" anyone elses viewpoint.
I will continue to choose which topics I see on this web site, for the same reasons I pick and choose which web sites I view. I don't think this makes me a narrow-minded person...
Not so much a sig as a lack of one.
What you refer to as self censorship is in fact filtering. You have a right to free speech. But I am under no obligation to listen to you. If, for instance, you call me during dinner and try to sell me something I will probably hang up on you. Yet I do not consider this type of filtering to be harmful. Another example is that I refuse to watch the Springer show. Does that mean that I am refusing to face reality? No, it means I have better things to do with my time (watch grass grow, boil a pot of water, etc.).
/. readers choose to filter your articles and postings, that is their choice. If you choose to take it personally, that is your choice.
While reading articles or postings I am going to skip some. If there is an automated feature to save me time in the selection, I might use it. Sure, some people are going to take this type of filtering to extreme lengths. But that is their choice to make. If certain
Please do not confuse filtering choices with censorship. There is absolutely no comparison.
(Overall, this was a good article.)
"Free speech" means that people have a right to say just about anything. It does not mean that others must be forced to listen to them.
/. moderators' filtering preferences. By setting my viewing threshold to 1 (or more, for articles with lots of comments), my /. experience becomes much more pleasurable.
In online communities, when the signal cannot be found due to the noise, the community disappears. This is bad. I don't want my favorite newsgroups or other online discussion sites to be like alt.2600.
Online filtering ("shut-up software"), used properly, is the equivalent of fast-forwarding through commercials.
Of course, just as I don't trust companies to fast-forward through commercials for me, I don't trust companies to do my filtering for me. That, however, is my decision, and other people have the right to decide to filter what they see according to the standards of others (ie, the standards of the companies that sell filtering software.)
I do choose to trust the
The problem with calling it 'ShutUp Software' is that while yes, it hurts someone to not read a specific critical article/posting/website, it hurts much MORE to never read ANY critical article/posting or website. So really, NOT filtering out the complete trash is an even more insidious form of censorship: You find that you only have time to listen to the quick-written first-posted flames (and there are tons of them) and by the time you've found the well-thought out critiques, you have to get back to work.
Suddenly it's all in a new perspective. It's like blaring loud music at a conference. If for some reason you can't (First amendment! I've got my rights dammit!) stop them, would not a viable solution be to filter it out? (there's a number of options. Easiest is a low-power FM broadcast and cheap radio headsets)
And suddenly the signal level is boosted above the noise and everyone wins. And anyone who decides the conference is boring is perfectly free to take off the headset and listen to the music instead.
It's not a matter of convienience, it's a matter of usability. /. was nearly unusable for comments before moderation. I for one hardly ever read them, since it took too long to find anything worth reading. This also means that I never bothered to write, knowing my voice would be lost among the flamers and 'first post' kiddiez.
No, the only concern of filtering is false-positives. If I chose never to listen to someone again, so be it. I for one only do that for people who resort to personal attacks and profanity. If someone disagrees with me and has reasonable arguments, they not only do not get filtered, often I put them in my highlights.
Much better to spend time debating with a critique then a flame.
--Dan
Everybody repeat after me: "The first ammendment only applies to the government."
It does NOT mean you can write some drivel and force any newspaper to publish it. It does not give you free national airtime to voice your opinions. It only means that should you be able to be published/buy that airtime that the government cannot stop you.
People confuse the right to speak with a "right" to be heard. You have every right to say whatever you want, within bounds; however, no one has to listen to you.
/. software does and the reader simply skipping anything with "JonKatz" at the top is that the software removes the tedium of the latter option. Sounds good to me.
Typically I enjoy Katz' articles, but I found this one to have a rather "whiny" tone. Perhaps he should feel proud that so many people dislike his opinions enough to filter them out.
At any rate, it is my right to filter out whatever I want. The only difference between doing what the
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
--- snip ---
And now I'm blocked by hundreds of Slashdotters as well. The people who've
posted messages about this or e-mail me don't cite choice, convenience or time
constraints - they simply claim to dislike my writing style or ideas, and want me
to know that they're banning them and me, from their own individual
experience.
This is everybody's absolute right; nobody should be forced to read me if he or
she don't want to. But the ShutUp Software will almost certainly be used in
unforeseen, sometimes unintended ways. What can be used against me can -
and will -- be used against you.
I can always find an audience for my ranting (in addition to other sites and links,
there are those 79,350 Slashdot readers who can somehow survive having my
work appear on the site). But angry kids posting messages can be marginalized,
even obliterated, in a snap.
--- snip ---
Read: "Well, fine. If you losers don't want to listen, I'll take my writing someplace else, and then you'll all be screwed!"
Really.
To be fair, he's probably just blowing off steam.
I normally have Katz filtered -- the SexBots article was kind of the last straw for me. (I say, yeah! Robot sex slaves! Heralding a new age of sociosexual dysfunctionality, totally disconnected from real human social experience! We'll never have to relate quasi-functionally with another human being again and we can Get It On any time we like with no responsibility or compassion!)
It's kind of sad. Despite his content (or lack thereof), he's a pretty good writer, and is at least capable of using the language properly. Sometimes he has actually written something cool. I'm just not willing to gamble my time away on that anymore.
DNA just wants to be free...
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, it's still on the ground. If Katz posts to Slashdot and everybody filters it, it's still there. If somebody new comes along without their Katz filter on and they want to read a Katz post if one is there, then all those other Slashdot readers who filtered him out don't keep the new person from seeing the Katz post. That ain't censorship.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Self-censoring isn't when you filter what you see and hear, it's when you don't say or do something which you might otherwise. If I'm out at a bar in the company of friends, I might very well use language that I would not have used over the air or in front of children. If I had grown up in the Soviet Union, I probably would have restrained myself from publicly criticizing the government. Both are examples of self-censorship. As you can see, the reasons for it vary, so sometimes it's a Good Thing, and sometimes not.
Think of self-censorship as self-editing. I don't think anyone's accused Katz of that.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Nah, those are just big ears.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I see what Jon is saying--that people may do themselves a disservice by over-insulating themselves from opposing opinions, and thus preventing any possibility of diversification or (if you want to look at it from a fundamentalist--like me--point of view) correction. But I don't begrudge the people who use ShutUp software, even if people use it en masse, because just as people have a right to speak, they also have a right to not listen. What I'm worried about is the possibility of online forums becoming so polarized and protected that we lose easy access to truly free areas, and the flamers and radicals and reactionaries are forever restricted to tiny, remote corners of cyberspace.
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
Especially this part...
To consider the alternative, pick up any daily newspaper or turn on any TV news broadcast. Old media have for years screened out raucous, outspoken or obnoxious opinion on the grounds of balance and probity.
Two VERY wrong things here:
1) Currently the raucous, the outspoken and the obnoxious are EXACTLY what gets reported and preferental treatment in many cases. See Fred Phelps the rabid gay-basher, Jack Kevorkian the quasi-legal murderer (opinion), Newt Gingrich (nuf said), talk radio, snuff television, yet-another-"Real-life"-television-show, MTV, and on and on and on. If you believe what is reported as news, every important event in life is a murder, rape, other violent crime, politics, corruption, business event, advertisement, or animal lust. Not much mention of what 'normal' people do.
2) Most of the television may be toned down where every third word isn't a swear word and it gets a PG-13 rating, but in return we get lots and lots of mind-numbing, inane, ignorant, badly done television shows, IMHO.
Now yes, it is my right to change the channel. But imagine I have 200 channels (not unreal at this point), and only 10 of them ever have any useful/interesting/good programming (also not unreal). Do I HAVE to surf the rest of them to get to the 10 I like? Why can't I just have the 10, and dump the rest.
Is that censorship? I don't think so.
Filters are about what WE want to listen to/watch/pay attention to. There is no reason that we MUST be forced to get a soundbite of an already proven waste of info (No Fred Phelps Channel for me, thank you), just to get to the information that might be interesting. If so, then some of the interesting and useful info (to me) gets lost in the noise.
The only caveat here is "Who makes the filters". If you completely allow someone else to filter out your world, then you have the possibilites of abuse. But the people who allow other people to think for them will ALWAYS allow others to think for them, whether is it through filters, the 'legitimate' media, or peer pressure.
We who can think, prefer to turn down the white noise, when we can.
> reinventing Usenet (but with a very lousy user interface)
:)
as opposed to Usenet which (traditionally) has no user interface at all...
i'm gonna play "dittohead" for one of the few times in my life.
"yeah, what she said"
joe
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
While I may not be interested in JonKatz' writing on any given topic, leaving his "headlines" on my Slashdot front page doesn't cost me much in terms of time or energy. There's a small chance that seeing his synopsis will intrigue me and allow me to learn something new about myself or the world around me. If I filter, I lose that.
So what if I don't filter, at all? Well, then, in theory, I would have to read about First Comment, how JonKatz sucks, how Slashdot is going to crap. None of this provides any value to me.
Were it up to me, I would keep the Slashdot front page unfiltered. Allowing everything which the editorial board of Slashdot considers appropriate to be displayed on there. That would be a favor tothe community, even if they don't appreciate it right away.
I'd keep the ability to filter responses to those articles.. since they are not subject to any review prior to posting.
I'm not sure I agree with exactly what Jon is saying here. On /. for instance, the shutup software exists in two forms, first there's the moderation/filtering out of flamers/trolls and just downright idiots in the comment forums, and this I appreciate greatly. Secondly, there's the author filtering. I can't help but feel that this creates exactly the sort of balance which is needed, ie. a sort of chaotic democracy. It would be a little bit one-sided if it were possible for a post which you, the average reader, made to be filtered out, and not to give those same reader's the opportunity to filter out the posts (in this case onto the front page) made be the people who run the system, and hence who are in charge of filtering.
It creates a nice sense of evenness and fairness; Despite the fact that CmdrTaco runs the site, I still have the power to remove him from the front page if I want, the same as I have to power to filter out a hoard of other things, be they by article type, comment rating, or any of the other options. I see it more as CmdrTaco (and anyone else who runs a site like his) empowering his readers, instead of the tradition media where you get even *less* choice.
Saying that, I don't use the filtering myself. I may not like someone's style of writing, or even the things which they write about, but at the end of the day it's still worth checking out what they've written, since without you checking and perhaps commenting on what they've said, then they're never going to get any better at it, and they'll keep making the same mistakes over and over. Not to mention the fact that if you filter out a bunch of stuff, you might miss something important, or at least something which appeals to you or touches you personally in some way. Sure, it might not be much, but if you ask me, it's better to keep about an open mind about an article (or anything else), rather than just assuming it'll all be guff before you even click the link.
As a person who's spent thousands of hours participating in a wide variety of online discussion forums, I can say that the killfile is the greatest invention ever, slightly eclipsing sliced bread in sheer usefulness.
Katz doesn't like filters because they block critics that would otherwise provide valuable feedback. Filters do sometimes do that. Very, very rarely do they do that. 99%(warning: number pulled forth from ass) of the time the critics aren't even critics, they're off topic flamers, or trolls, or that particularly lame breed of online idiot that like to pollute forums with their inane unreadable chatter and think they're being artistic.
Without any kind of filter system, an online forum will have a very short lifespan. At some point in the development of any forum, the signal to noise ratio drops rapidly, usually becuase of a flamewar, but sometimes just one person can post enough off topic or hostile information to drive away the core of the group. Once the noise starts going up, the signal starts to drop. Then the flamers get distracted by other bright shiny things, and leave. At that point a lot of groups simply cease to exist. A lot of mailing lists die this way, when the administrators of the list decide that it's not worth it to continue working on them if there's nobody around to discuss anything. A lot of mailing lists are simply forgotten, running along on forgotten servers in the corners of university computer labs and corporate IT shops.
By giving people the option to filter, however, the group can often survive the tribulations which tear apart other groups. It does two things: It provides the users the ability to block out flaming, and it can reduce flaming by giving those prone to whipping out the flamethrower the abiltiy to filter out those who annoy them. That way, the signal to noise ratio can remain at a higher level, and the group will continue to be useful to its memebers.
Katz doesn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and that's fine. He will have to put up with a lot of abuse, but if his skin is thick enough to tolerate that, more power to him. For most people, however, the killfile can make otherwise useless discussion groups into useful sources of information. It is a tool, perhaps not for everyone, but for those who need it, it can help increase communication levels, which is ultamately good.
Anything that individuals or private organizations choose to do for or to themselves is just that, freedom of choice.
The problem is that these products don't let you know what they block. So if you use them, you don't have freedom of choice at all - you place yourself in a situation where you must trust someone else to know what you want to block.
But, more importantly, you have no way of knowing whether they block material they shouldn't - because they block their critics! That surely is censorship, and I doubt it's what people who simply want to keep their children away from pornography thought they were choosing.
I miss Meept.
Leave it to Katz to come out against personal empowerment and freedom of choice.
I sometimes wonder if JonKatz actually writes more than one version of each article, because people continually seem to see things in them that directly contradict what I'm reading.
This is from what I read:
I think that makes it perfectly clear that he is not "against personal empowerment".
What he does seem to be against is software that blocks things it shouldn't - software which actually takes away freedom from the individual.
I miss Meept.
This is just the sort of poor thinking and lack of personal responsibility that I was lamenting.
Poor thinking I'm willing to concede; that was terribly written. But "lack of personal responsibility" is an absurd claim.
I don't want to use this software. I am more than happy to look at the Internet without having someone else tell me whether or not it's "safe". If I see something I don't like, I click the "back" button, or move on to the next message.
All I'm trying to say is that those who do want to use filtering software should be able to see for themselves that it actually does what its publishers say it does, and nothing more.
IF you don't trust the product, why use it? Duh! Watch your kids yourself. IF you cannot trust your kids on the 'net, don't leave them alone on the 'net. Duh! None of these things are really that hard to understand. All you have to do is think about it.
Indeed I have thought about it, and that is how I have come to the conclusion this software isn't worth using, and I would never choose to use it.
But there are places like public libraries using this kind of software. There was a story here on Slashdot recently about the US Constitution (or perhaps it was the declaration of independence) being blocked in Utah. If filtering software is to be worth using, people must be able to find out exactly what the software is filtering out, not by happening to stumble across a page which is blocked, but by having that information open for all to see. As it is now, the software cannot be trusted.
I would like there to be worthwhile filtering software available - not because I want to use it, but because I want others to use it instead of trying to force the government to censor the Internet. Here in Australia censorship is a serious problem because we don't have the same protection of freedom of speech as the US Constitution provides. (Only political speech is protected here.) Decent filtering software would eliminate the need for government censorship. But today's filtering software just isn't good enough, because it isn't open, which makes it susceptible to abuse.
Apply some effort to achieving a solution rather than whining to the gov or someone else about the problem.
That's funny, I didn't mention the government once in the comment you replied to. Where did you get that from? It's because of the worthlessness of filtering software that censorship by the government is a threat.
Even if you don't know that they do it, you should have enough mental capacity to figure out that they might just be motivated to do such a thing so you should uh...let's see, check the logs for records of blocked content, whoa, that's hard to do, time consuming. How about turning off the filter occasionally just to get a whiff of reality every now and then?
I shouldn't have to check the logs of blocked content. I should be able to see exactly what they're blocking and why.
I miss Meept.
Every consumer has the duty to inform themselves about the products they're using.
I agree totally, and that is why I find it so abhorrent that the publishers of filtering software try to prevent consumers from keeping themselves informed.
I miss Meept.
I can't believe it... how could you read Slashdot without CmdrTaco's posts? They're easily the majority of all the new articles I see every day.
I miss Meept.
But you are free to use the products or not! If you don't want to be censored, by all means, don't use a product that filters!
You're missing the point. If I say something unflattering about their products, noone who uses those products will see it. It's not about what I can see, because I don't use this software. The problem is they claim to be making the net "safe" for children, but what they don't tell you is that they also try to keep you away from information that might hurt their commercial interests.
Noone is forcing you to use such a product.
This is a separate issue; I live in a country where the minister for communications is talking about forcing ISPs to block "illegal or obscene" content which comes from overseas. So what you say may not be true for much longer, if the government gets its way.
I miss Meept.
I think we have to distinguish between two major types of filtering, one of which is good (and will become incresingly necessary as net use grows), and one that is a Bad Thing.
/., banner removal proxies a'la JunkBuster (I love that program!), etc. are fine for me, as I know what content I am removing. There are plenty other techniques that would also qualify as filters; when a mail gets sorted into my 'maybe take a look at it someday' bin, I perform a powerful form of filtering to separate what mail I think is important from my perceived junk. Just as with killfiles and banners, I might (and sometimes do) miss stuff that could have been useful for me, but it is a chance I am prepared to take.
Good filters are those you as a user have chosen yourself -- you know what you are filtering and you know what you are filtering. Most filters, like killfiles, scoring threshold on
In contrast, NetNanny and the like function on the premise that "they" (PTA or whoever) know better than you do yourself what you should see. For all practical purposes you have relegated the responsibilities of a part of your own life to another party -- and one who does not have the same goals for your well-being as you do yourself. This could become especially distressing if such filters become mandatory for all public access points to the net; if you have the means, you can choose what ideas to be exposed to, if you do not (and have to rely on libraries or schools for net access), you will only get a selection deemed appropriate by somebody else. This is when it gets scary.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
As a much-flamed writer, I think I do get the point, Brian. I'd love it if flamers went away, but I fear the sanitizing of public discussions on the Net. When you can make somebody go away by the simple click of a button, then I can envisage a culture in which you end up only hearing what you like. That does unnerve me. Flamers don't carry any weight with me. I do listen to criticism. But that doesn't mean that flamers have no value, or shouldn't be seen or heard.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Having trouble getting this post to go thru..I'm confused. Are we talking about the same column? I'm defending the right of people to flame, not dismissing it? If this software continues to spread, there won't be any flames.
As to the self-promotion issue, that criticism wasn't flaming. It was criticism. Flaming is "Katz Sucks." My book excerpt was one of my finer hours, as far as I'm concerned. This is a small book..it will never make money for me or the publisher. I wanted to show that the Web could be used to by pass the big-publisher marketing structures. It did..but don't confuse that with making money.
I was very proud of that and very grateful to Slashdot for helping me. Many writers are now using the Web to reach their audiences and get their ideas out because of that excerpt. I'd do it again in a second. If that came across as self-promotion, I'm sorry. I don't self-promote. I won't even take money for speeches or go on TV.
But I do believe writers who are being extinguished by greedy publishers ought to know the Net gives them an alternative. I'm sorry you see that so cynically, but I con't consider you to be flaming me at all.
The point of this column is that preference software is threatening to eliminate flaming completely. Hope that's clearer.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
This is very true, Per. But I would never block you because you disagreed with me or posted something I didn't like.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm actually having a great week, MG. But try, for a second, to get past me and your feelings about me...I would not block you because you wrote this post. All over the Web, that's precisely what's happening. I'd rather you be free to poke at me all you want. That doesn't make me bitter. It makes me want to support your right to do this, and my obligation to listen to you.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
This is well said, I think. But the issue isn't whether or not we have to listen to every single thing sent out way. The issue isn't me, either.I get plenty of e-mail.
The issue is really whether the web will be sanitized by new software that we may not have thought about. We all have to make our own choices, and mine is to skip over what I don't want to read. I choose not to block people because they flame, disagree with or don't like me. It's just my choice.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I've been mail-bombed, attacked by virus-writers and spammed repeatedly in my time writing on the Web. People have the absolute right to defend themselves using filtering or blocking software or any other means. /. -- are being blocked out of existence.
But what's happening on sites all over the Web is that flamers, obnoxious posters or what some people would consider "jerks" -- of whom there are platoons here on
I don't argue that people shouldn't use software to protect or defend themselves. I just argue that the nature of the Web is about to change as people wipe out obnoxious voices with the click of a buttom. I think that will be a loss.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Yes, definitely a choice. But it should be a considered choice. It's not about me. I get enuf e-mail, believe me. It's about how we respond to disagreement. Do we ever want to hear any or not?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Everybody has the right to deal with information overload in their own way. We all make choices. But I would not respond to your characterization of my writing style -- surly and cynical -- by using my preferences to block you. And I appreciate your not blocking me.
As to reading critiques, I wonder how you could possibly read this column and think that I wouldn't (I can't read all of them, as a lot of people e-mail me, and blessedly, have a more benign view of my writing style.) But this point is, you have the right to criticize my writing style --er..thisis sort of my point..and I have the obligation to try and read and consider it. Past the hostility towards me, I'm struggling to figure out where we disagree here.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Hey Pinhead...not in this world..Now which part of open source do you like the best?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
As I said in the column, censorship and choice are very different. But people are going to see argument disappear across websites when obnoxious posters can be vaporized with the click of a button.
There's something neat about being censored by Disney. And I have to say, I completely marvel at the innate exclusivity of people on an open source site. This is for anthropologists to ponder, I think.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Maybe those 650 people filtering you have the right idea! I have the right to disagree with any opinion and I also have the right to ignore it. If someone wants to ignore what I have to say then so what - big freaking deal! That's their right. And, yes, flamers are a problem but the only purpose they serve is to piss other people off and to reafirm my faith in Darwinism. What a cry baby...
[jonkatz] writes: Flamers don't carry any weight with me. I do listen to criticism. But that doesn't mean that flamers have no value, or shouldn't be seen or heard.
Who do you think should be watching and listening to the flamers, then? Why do you seem to suggest that others should wade through what you yourself deem as weightless fluff?
Either you read the flamers, or you don't read the flamers. What others choose to read or filter is, well, none of your business.
You need to hit Usenet more often, IMHO. When you're familiar with the likes of Dave Hayes (and the rest of the "Freedom Knights"), John Grubor, the Hell Flame Wars group, the Meowers, the alt.fan.karl-malden.nose bunch, Bill Palmer, Steve Boursy, Rahul Dhesi, and *dozens* of other posters with varying degrees of kookiness, you'll begin to have a much better idea of what kill files and score files are meant to address. Some of these people are fine until you get them going on their pet Crusade; others are just so far out-there that our most sophisticated devices have yet to be able to pick up on their signals.
Interestingly enough, I don't have anything or anyone filtered here on Slashdot; and I rarely filter anyone in Usenet, unless they've been posting the same viewpoints so frequently for so long that I've grown weary of them.
Those people who have Katz filtered? They are the few people who knew they hated Katz, but read his articles and spammed us all with hate-posts anyway, because they couldn't control themselves. By filtering out Katz, they have saved the rest of us an awful lot of annoyance, and allowed those who are interested in debating the questions Jon raises a clearer channel.
If they have no control over their actions, I'm glad that there is at least a voluntary straitjacket they can climb into.
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
I think it's generally agreed that we all have or ought to have a right to free speech. But what Jon Katz is talking about is not a right to free speech, it's a right to harrass. I submit to you that I have a fundamental right NOT to listen to you for any reason I deem fit. It may be because I think your ideas are stupid, boring, offensive, or poorly presented. It may be just because I don't like the way you look. It really doesn't matter whether I have a good reason or a bad reason or no reason at all; I don't have to justify my use of my rights.
I think kill filters are great. They enable me to filter out not only people I find annoying, but -- to take Usenet as an example -- to filter out uninteresting subtopics in high-traffic newsgroups. I use filters to eliminate much of the spam I would otherwise receive via email. Filters help me concentrate on my interests and get more value for my time on the net.
I understand Jon's concern that filters could make it easy to ignore, say, a pressing social issue. But people do that anyway, and you're not going to win any converts by holding someone down and forcing them to listen to you.
It is worth noting that despite the fact that I find most of Jon's writing to be the kind of tediously trendy, poorly reasoned, pop-culture fluff I have come to associate with rags like Wired, I haven't filtered him out, and I occasionally read his articles just in case he accidentally had something worthwhile to say. I am even resisting the temptation to filter him out just for having the audacity to tell me that I shouldn't.
I do, however, reserve the right to change my mind about that.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The 'ShutUp' software is only ShutUp software because, by default, all authors are turned on. What if, by default, no authors are turned on in the Preferences?
/. bandwidth. Same goes for the "/. departments" which seemingly take moore's law into account, but use days instead of months.
/., or a newsgroup, produce a lot of content that isn't for everyone. Thats why irc has a mute option. Thats why DejaNews has a business model. And why there are Filters in most email clients. There is a thin line between Filtering and Personalization. And on /. the emphasis is on personalization. Would you still be ranting if every author and every topic was "ShutUp" be default, and you had to select them to "SpeakUp" to hear them?
I mean, look at it this way-- over the past year, slashdot authors have grown from around five or six authors, to seventeen. Lets say in the next year, it continues up to perhaps 25-30? I'm afraid there are too many editors, and too little page space and
Jon, by their inherent nature, online communities, by their inherent nature, whether it is a chat room,
Something to think about.
After reading the article and all of the replies-above-1 (just trying to get a feel for what's been said in replies), I must say... Jon, are your feelings hurt? You're talking about the evils of a 99% readership base, for crying out loud (79,000/80,000).
Noteworthy points: attention economics (with all the sites I frequent on a daily basis, I've pretty much screwed myself out of a normal social life as it is. filtering options are helpful in this regard), filtering dissenting opinions/personalities (I feel sorry for the 1% readership who filter all of Jon's stuff. Personally, I don't use the filters - I don't use any of the user.pl stuff - cookies disabled, I read the default pages and filter by score. The idiots who don't wanna hear a specific *PERSON* damage themselves... and in the process increase my benefits by making me that much more aware than them WITHOUT ME HAVING TO READ ANYTHING EXTRA!! HAHAHA!).
I like having the choices (to use or not to use filters).
And like some of the other commenters, I'm against having someone else filter for me (this may seem counter-intuitive on the surface, since I'm basically allowing the slashdot team select some of my reading materials for me... but I'm not really allowing them to *select* my reading material, rather I'm selecting for myself from the offerings they present).
Netnanny, Cybercop, etc. had a place when it was to keep porn out of the middle school computer lab, but it went too far when it blocked ideas and their authors. The sad part of this is that the blame cannot be properly focused on any one place. Some of the fault belongs to the software makers, some of it belongs to the porn-advocates who deliberately blur the lines between porn and free speech -- 'backdoor bimbos' and 'cum faced coeds' are porn, not free speech. But it seems some of the free speech advocates insist on making a million fictitious 'examples' of the dangers of censorship which ultimately protect sites such as these. And, on the flipside, because sites such as these gain free speech protection (through this commando blur tactic), censorwares then extend their censorship as a countermeasure to include the sites that advocate... and so on and so forth.
I cherish my right to chose what I read/ignore as much as I cherish yours to speak/write. If you're going to flame filtering software (which makes it easier for me to ignore), then you also need to flame spellcheck, grammarcheck, and voice recognition software (which makes it easier for you to write stuff that I might want to ignore).
All in all, Jon's article raised good points. He explored many of the facets and stimulated some thoughtful replies. But, as I've tried to illustrate in my reply, his own point of view (people who filter him with software are evil) permeated.
~~~~~~~~
Signature illegible, could be somebody else.
The biggest problem seems to be sorting the relevant bits of a discussion from the sidebars, flames, and other assorted junk that seems to accumulate. What would seem to be in order is a system that can sort this based on content. All the content would still be there, but you could get the most relevant stuff easily, and browse through the other stuff when you want background information or to find something that isn't in what your "core" interests might be.
I do this with my mail, as would a lot of people. Mail is sorted based on where it comes from or which of my addresses it's coming to, allowing me to quickly get to the relevant stuff. When I'm at work, I don't need to read the GNOME lists. So they get filed seperately, and I can refer to them when I need to.
This is important, because I generally don't have time to read everything that drops into my mailbox. I can scan the subjects occassionally, and remove what's not relevant. I make that choice based on time and interest, and that choice is essential, because I have limited time (and patience). But I also can go through everything that is of high priority to me (work stuff mainly).
Now what we need is a decent content rating system that I can set up to work on more than just email headers. Something that can determine by content that I'd really like to know about the latest gnome core package release, but have little interest in helping a clueless user work out where their power button is. Such a system would rank the messages for me, but would not block them (OK, it would block spam if possible, but when in doubt would err towards me seeing it)
Colin Scott
Final Year Computer Systems Engineering Student
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
Personally I opted not to ignore anyone via these checkboxes in UserPrefs. In my view there is no need of it for a mature person who can ignore an article or a post, which deemed to be stupid or (at least) arrogant without going to flame. If you strong and have force with you then you can do that. Rare author posts crap all the time and thus by blindly ignoring all possible posts from this author and some (probably) profound replies one loses that bit of new knowledge.
/. From the other hand maybe most of us are just lazy? I am, and that's why I get used to programming, how about you???
Consequently, this feature is in effect test of one's maturity.
I am glad fewer people use it on
AtW,
http://www.investigatio.com
alexc
Join Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine
Everyone has the right to speak, but nobody has the "right" to make us listen. There is nothing wrong with content filters (like the /. scoring system). The subject hiding feature *is* useful (I could care less about the latest invectives that RMS is throwing around) You have a valid point about people hiding from opinions they don't like, but right now this all sounds like sour grapes because you're the most frequently blocked writer on slashdot. Cheer up, you'll get fewer flames this way
0 1 - just my two bits
Can I forward my ValuPak coupon packets to you Jon? Perhaps you can mull over the free carpet cleaning offers while enjoying a snifter of brandy with the other literary bigwigs.
Junk mail is junk. Let the filtering begin.
...posters do use them to eliminate opinions they don't like.
I have to disagree with this. The moderation system that Rob has set up does not rate the opinion, it rates the quality of the statement. The purpose is not to quash statements because the moderator disagrees with the opinion, but to reward posters who have put some time into both thinking through their position, and into composing a thoughtful post. It's a noise filter -- it causes the good comments, those worth considering, to float to the top, while the mindless flames sink to the bottom.
Furthermore, I would hope that Rob's moderators would have the guts and the decency to give good ratings to thoughtful posts even if they disagree with the opinion expressed. Even if that's not the case, Rob doesn't select his moderators based on what their opinions are. He selects them based their ability to discriminate between which posts are "signal" and which are "noise".
He also chooses a fairly large number of moderators, enough that all opinions are represented, and in roughly equals numbers to their percentages in the Slashdot population. This helps to ensure that, on the average, the moderators' ratings don't favor one opinion over the other.
--JT
While fundamentally I agree with your conclusion that ShutUp Software is limiting in the communal sense, I have to say that the inclusion of these filters is a great liberating feature for most. In reading /. while I don't post replys often it usually tends to be because the content relavent posts are buried beneath a deluge of ph*ck you and First Comment posts. Filtering out these in any way is a great help in my limited reading time to get to the meat of the discussion without having to drift through the flotsom. But as far as posting articles go, if a posted article does not meet my tastes, it is just as easy to not read it in whole than to ignore everything that poster ever submits. And much less limiting. Perhaps if more people found it within themselves to use that discretion when reading instead of simply (and simple mindedly) blocking out all articles. They would be acting upon the intelligence they try to exude through their flames.
---------- Hot Rats!
Dogma: putting choice in the hands of users is ALWAYS good. an ignore button is choice. the ability to share ignore lists (and I'm sure that'll come in due time, adn I'm sure Katz will hate it, probably because he'll be on some of them) is choice too. repeat after me: choice is good.
I completely fail to see how filtering of one's own choosing is bad. OK, I agree that it can possibly border on censorship if it's not your own doing, but then again, it can just be good editing. If I want to read content that's been checked and edited and filtered, I'll read the NY Times or equivalent. If I don't, I'll read Usenet. Guess which one I read more often. Slashdot is great because we can choose exactly how we want to do the filtering. So some people don't want to read Jon Katz - why is it worse to have him automatically not listed than just to skim over and not click the titles? It's still their choice.
One thing the web shows again and again is the importance of editors. I think they will become more, not less, important in the future. We can't read everything, and it's good to have ways to choose what's important. Sometimes it will be a real person (or people), sometimes it will be a team of moderators and/or user preferences, like Slashdot.
More choice is good. So are more ways to find the things we actually want to take the time to read.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Jon,
A lot of your argument hangs on the idea that this software makes the target "shut up", but it has no such effect -- "ear plug" is a better description of how killfiles et al actually work.
-clay
How can you claim that selective blocking is censorship? I still don't believe that anyone can claim that selective blocking is actually censorship after reading your article. You have the right to free speech. However, it does not mean you have the right to force people to listen to you. If I choose not too read your article or to listen to you it is not censorship. It is my choice. It is my freedom.
I work at a University and this whole idea comes about quite often. People have become very angry with me after I politely decline to listen to their opinions, these complete strangers, claiming that I must listen to them because they could say something profound at any moment.
No one has the right to force me to listen to their opinion. I will not be held hostage to other people's rants, insightful or not. I will choose to listen, or not listen. I am intelligent enough to make my own decisions on my own, after doing my own research, on my own accord. And that will obviously involve reading works by people with varied opinions, but I choose too read it.
I personally have found your writing to be unappealing because of your self-references, and informal writing style, but that does not mean that other people must to listen to my thoughts on your writing. They have a choice. I expect much from professional writers. Others may not.
Having read your article, and seen some of the responses, I wonder how many more people will selectively block you using their personalized Slashdot page.
"Here's how it works: the website Raging Bull(www.ragingbull.com) grew from 5,000 members last July to 95,000 members on New Year's Day, primarily by emphasizing its new "ignore" buttons. Co-founder Bill Martin told the magazine Brill's Content that "ignore" buttons were developed in response to the raucous, foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric that's long been a trademark of top e-trading sites."
If the site grew so rapidly in users because of the selective blocking feature, is it really a loss not to read posts that you choose to ignore? (and choose to ignore for good reasons?) How much of a loss is it not to read "You're a jerk" for the 10th time that day? The site seemed to have grown because the content improved due to the use of selective blocking. Thats hardly a loss.
We've been ignoring fools long before the web, and for good reasons too.
Jon,
You must be some kind of idiot. I'm being charitable; many other people would surely brand you as an evil man.
Most educated adults in the Western world are probably libertarians to some degree but very few would advocate total freedom to do as one wants. The usual term for that kind of society is 'anarchy'. Anarchy is undesirable because unfortunately total freedom to do as one wishes denies the freedom of others. Therefore society must define in law what constitutes a reasonable exercise of freedom, in order to protect us all from those who would exercise their will at our expense. Some forms of censorship are used benignly for such a purpose. To brand all censorship as bad is to deny the validity of the above line of reasoning.
I apologise to other readers for stating the obvious but you, Jon, seem to have missed this vital point.
I agreed with the main thread of your argument perhaps because I have yet to encounter any material on the Internet which offends me personally to such a degree that I cannot bear to see it.
However my children (aged 4 and 5) are not so thick-skinned as I, and moreover there are some things I would not wish them to see even if it was so alien to them that they could not understand it. This is my inalienable moral right as a parent, to protect my children from whatever I deem harmful to them. No-one can take that right away from me, not you, not society, not the government, no-one. I would defend this right with my last breath.
I therefore reserve the right to restrict my children's access to the Internet. Much of the pornography on the net is in my view certainly unsuitable for children of that age. I am not talking about nudity per se, but I do have a responsibility to ensure that they are not exposed to pictures of oral sex, vaginal or anal penetration or sadomasochism. If they are to be allowed to roam the internet without constant supervision then blocking software is vitally necessary.
You have frequently criticised the use of this type of software and have even specifically advocated access to the internet for children without any restrictions. To the best of my knowledge you have never qualified this argument with exceptions relating to the age or maturity of the children or to the type of material. From my point of view that makes you (and anyone else who thinks the same as you) either a naive fool, an irresponsible lunatic or an evil pervert.
I've never complained about your style of writing and I've never blocked your posts (or indeed anyone else's). I've even sympathised with you for all the verbal kickings you've had for no apparent reason other than the fact that some adolescent onanists think it's fashionable to flame Jon Katz just for a laugh.
But I don't think I'll bother to read your articles in future because your constant repetition of this stupid and offensive message about uncensored access for children only taints everything else you have to say with a complete lack of credibility. Whether or not I use Slashdot's filtering features to achieve this is beside the point.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
There is a difference between not reading something you don't agree with or do not find interesting and using filtering or shutup software to filter out people. By using the latter you will never come across ideas that you could find interesting. Not picking up Bill Gate's book or any other book is Freedom of choice. If it or any other book was filtered out you would not see it on the shelf at all. In fact you would not know it existed. That is what Jon is against. I want to be given the choice not to read or see something. Even if that means that I have to spend an extra second or two deciding that I don't want it. So you see you're not really using shutup software at all, even if you decide to ignore the same things over and over.
Although I agree that one should be open-minded and open to new or controversial ideas, I must disagree with Mr. Katz and say that some people just need filtering. I equate this will the CNN movie critic Tartara. The guy is a blithering idiot and I know from experience that I do not need to hear anything he has to say because he is always wrong. Should I continue to torture myself by reading what he has to say or should I, with full knowledge and forethought, filter his ignorance from my world?
I do not know much about Mr. Katz but from this article I find him to be articulate and seemingly intelligent so he won't be removed from my sight just yet but if I find that he becomes a fountain of useless and wrong information, he might hit the moron filter pretty quick. I only have a limited amount of time in each day, 24 hours to be exact, and I must make decisions on how I am to spend those hours. Two of them are for sleep and that is final, so I only have 22 or so (depending on if it is finals week) to catch up with school work, play Quake II, check my email, read Slashdot, and go offline long enough to order a pizza. I cannot be slowed down by people I know to be morons. There is a reason we all called them "twit" filters in the old days of the local BBS.
Sometimes you get a feel for what people are going to say even before they say it and you know that if they hold true to previous patterns all you are going to do is kick yourself in the ass because you listened to them or read their stuff. If I were a writer, I would expect that not everyone agrees with my point of view, that they do not have time to be bothered by me or to have my opinions imposed upon them. So, in closing, filter me all you want, I expect that I will find an audience for my own rantings just by going off prozac and talking to the other people that live in my head.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Just by the way the world works, none of us read/see/experience every bit of "information" out there. So by social and more intentional means, we filter out all that "information" into a sect of information that we consider to be within the realm of the agreeable, and inside the boundaries of our ability to process that "information" in the short amount of time we have to exist.
/. 'ers have. Background in terms of thought-provoking literature, philosophical rhetoric (from Stallman, or Wall, or FSF folks, or non-FSF folks).... It should be their choice to sign up with an institution like AOL and let AOL filter out the stuff they wouldn't be able to deal with anyhow because they may lack the tools to deal with that sort of "free-thought".
It's just not a plausible idea to even consider happily having an open mind for _everything_.
So given that, we have to filter out the information, we have to block out voices in the nebulous cloud out there, we have to risk not hearing ideas which may benefit us in an effort to hear as much as possible without being unproductive in life's pursuits.
I think the issues isn't specified well. I think that the issue is not whether or not to filter or block, but who gets to control that filter--i.e. is it within our power as individuals to control the filters we apply to society's information media, or do we relinquish that control, that freedom, to some "Shutup Software" program or agency.
Theoretically, if one is consistent in one's messages, he/she will be blocked by those who are opposed to those messages anyways. The existance of "Shutup Software" neither helps nor hinders this plight, imo--so long as it is in the hands of the individual, and not some blocking thing like AOL's stuff. But the nature of the AOL service is to protect those AOLers from the dangers of the free-thinking world.
And that's good. Some folks don't have the backgrounds many
On the one hand, I think this is a charged issue. On the other, who cares--it's one of those things. Social forces, whether we band together and make bumper stickers or not, are propelling society in unusual directions. If we want to avoid this, we should all live in our own little bubbles and never interact. The freedom of the individual and the freedom of the individual within an increasingly complex and growing society is not the same thing. Some communities don't want porn palaces in their neighborhoods. Maybe they would benefit from this. Maybe not. It's their choice. Maybe they'll decide something different later on. Maybe the "community" will abuse the freedoms of the individual....
Hmmm.... I know there was a point in there somewhere.... Ack.... Lost my track.
Hold your individual freedom to filter. And retain your individual freedom to not filter. Your freedom is your ability to say yes, no or ignore the question altogether.
The issue is not so much that the act of reading undesirable posts is a detriment to me, rather it is an issue of displacement. Most everyone only has a finite amount of time in their day, the act of reading lame posts simply takes up free time that one could be spending reading good ones. I, for one, believe that only a small percentage of what is found on the net is worth reading. You combine this in with the fact that it takes a couple seconds to load each page, and I simply don't have enough time to read all of them.
Like you said, this process of filtering is nothing new. When one goes to a library or bookstore, they don't just pick out a book randomly, even in a given topic. They select one or two that they think is probably good. I find it hard to believe that even Katz would argue that we should pick a book in whatever order they happen to come at us. This leads me to believe that selection is primarily a function of the level of resources available to the person in question. eg: Time, Money, etc. Katz may have plenty of time to read the ditritus, in fact, its probably a requirement in his new age fad-dish writing industry -- to know who is readership is and what they want to hear. This does not entitle him to preach to the rest of the world about how they should or should not read.
It seems to me, since the filtering system was implemented, that the responses to Katz' articles have cooled enormously.
/. to find the signal, whether an opinion I agree with or disagree with. I contrast this with the way ZDNet arranges their comments, forcing me to load each one individually. Such a system means I have alot more invested (10s vs .01s) in each comment; this is where I see user-defined filtering as useful. Usenet falls into this latter category, as do most other public forums, unfortunately.
I agree with this completely.
On another note, I think the format information is presented in makes a huge difference. With nested comments and a mouse-wheel, I don't mind scrolling by endless useless/uninteresting comments on
hey, I like this - but maybe we should mod the posts too, with synthetic mutation or some sillifying processor...(snork).
Why not just have only positive votes? Then it wouldn't be censorship, per se. You like the article, you vote for it. You hate it, you ignore it. If the person has a clue, eventually they will post something which gets more than one yes. Otherwise they'll have to use some other medium to get the message out.
no, because groups of obnoxious posters are know to exist. Also, if everyone is set on 3, no new opinions will exist....
Mr. Katz, before you go any further with this anti-blocking crusade of yours, I think that you should sit down and view the sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet." In this movie you will see the logical end product of your desires, the Krell machine. The Krell machine is everything that the Internet aspires to be. I tend to view the Internet as humankind's crude, first-order approximation of the Krell machine. In the movie the Krell machine was built entirely without safety features, no filtering software, no blocking software, nada, neyet (sp?), zippo. It was the libertarian worker's paradise, no censorship of any kind.
I'm sure that when "Doc" Ostrow was dying on Dr. Morbius's sofa that he had to give Commander Adams the "Reader's Digest" version of the last days of the Krell. What probably happened was as follows. The Krell engineers actually designed safety override features, but then the KCLU got wind of this development and filed a First Amendment brief with the Krell Supreme Court. The court, controlled by libertarian justices, struck down the safety override features as being an unconstitutional abridgement of freedom of expression. So the Krell engineers had to scrap the safety override features.
When they completed the great machine it stood to reason that every Krell wanted to go on-line and link up ASAP. The WYTIWYG (What You Think Is What You Get) interface was irresistible to a race of creative geniuses. It wasn't long before the demands became so heavy that system performance started to suffer. What with all those Krell brains constructing cloud-piercing towers of atomantine steel, even the mighty Krell machine started to groan under the work load. Then the inevitable happened, net congestion. Imagine the frustration of being in mid-3-D rendering and having the connection to the Krell machine stall out. There is nothing worse that to be interrupted in the middle of a particularly exquisite 3-D molecular morph routine, seeking to get just the right patina on one's cloud-piercing tower. Naturally tempers started to flare, and soon intemperate thoughts started to be exchanged over the censorship-free Krell net. Well soon the mother of all flame wars broke out, and the Krell were history.
We can see that the actions of the monsters of the id are present and functioning on the Internet. The flamers, the spammers, the virus writers, and the hate sites are all firmly under the control of their id monsters. I credit the general absence of death to a lack of opportunity, not a lack of desire. Why is it that you counsel caution when it comes to Techno-War, but you place blind faith in the Internet? The Internet did originate from out of the DOD. There is no technology that cannot be abused by those of bad will. I think that that is the whole point of the "Star Wars" films. George Lucas has said that these films are a story of human failure. That was why Luke unmasked Darth Vader in the ROTJ movie.
The twentieth century has been both the most technologically advanced and the most barbaric in the recorded history of our race. No other century can rival the body count of our own. Scholars credit about three thousand deaths to the three hundred-year history of the Inquisition. Three thousand too many, but compared to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the Cambodian killing fields, they were bumbling fools and amateurs. They aren't even in the same league as this century's secular mass murderers, who liquidated tens of millions of their fellow human beings. Upon what do you base your faith that the Internet can somehow be made immune to these socially destructive forces? We humans are all too easily blinded by the sin of pride, as was Dr. Morbius.
This is exactly right. Instead of looking for another geek related web site, but without all that crap about Microsoft (or Apple or Katz or whatever) we can choose.
The argument that this is censorship in any way simply fails. When I go into a bookstore (which I do every week) I never go into the Romance novel section or the Travel section. Could I be missing something? Probably not. Because I don't care.
If I filter Katz could I miss something? Not if I don't care what Katz has to say.
In a twisted version of self-censorship, I once avoided news programs and current events for almost a year. I did every thing I could not even to look at at paper, or see even a snip of local or national news on the TV. I changed the channel on the radio at the slightest hint of current events. I became one ignorant person. But I wasn't stupid. Denying this type of knowledge from myself didn't hurt me.
Web filtering software is different. The challenge there is you willingly give up some personal choice. You let someone else decide what is appropriate. Slashdot public comments are a lot like that. I hide all AC posts and all posts moderated below 1. One of my comments last week, which was not a flame or a rant, was moderated to a -2. It went back up to a 0, but I was censored to a degree. No need to begin a censorship chant. Somone didn't like it, but it was still there if anyone cared.
What if everyone filters Katz? Then he's totally silenced. This is censorship. Solution: Get your own damn web site, advertise on Yahoo, buy the top search position from AltaVista for keyword censorship. There, no more censorship.
Open letter to moderators: Please don't censor me. I need the attention. That -2 really hurt last week. What did I do to deserve it? God, help me! What did I do?
I was wondering if someone was going to mention the programs like JunkBusters (which I also love) and how/if they are different than the scoring/filtering options available on popular online services. I personally don't think there is much of a difference. As you said, it's the viewer's choice of what they block and what they don't.
I think Jon made a mistake when he lumped filtering that is done by others like AOL that the end users have no control over. I remember seeing a list of the guidelines that the AOL censors are supposed to use. One of them was you couldn't say anything bad about AOL?!?! This would be unacceptable to me, and that's why I would never use AOL, even if offered free. If he didn't include these types of filtering in his argument, I think many more would disagree with him. If he was only talking about this type of censorship, then I think many more would agree with him.
Filtering posts causes us to narrow our range of experience making us less well-rounded and well-informed citizens.
/. article and response do you? I didn't think so...
I would dis-agree with this statement. While this may have been true in the past, when the information flow was miniscule compared to today, I don't think this hold water anymore. Today, anyone connected on the Internet has an overflow of ideas, views, and experiences. Filtering software (when chosen by the viewer and not imposed) is a good thing because it allows one to concentrate on the information you are seeking. I would, and I would hazard to say that you would, be stuck in front of the computer all day if we didn't "filter" our input. As another poster said, you are filtering with "wetware" (i.e., your own brain and what you choose to drill down into) even if you don't have and software filters enabled. You don't read EVERY
The web has, until now, lacked many of the editorial mechanism that we have in all other forms of mass media.
This 'shutup' software provides an editorial mechanism, but does the traditional methods one better. I can decide what my own editorial policy will be.
This is somehow a bad thing? Yes fewer radical viewpoints will get heard. But this is a function of the fact that the vast majority of people simply don't want to hear radical viewpoints.
-josh
i think there's a fundamental distinction that needs to be made here.
censorship happens when one person filters content for someone else. that's generally not a good idea, and i agree with parts of katz's posting condemning censorship.
but that's completely different from people filtering content for themselves! that sort of filtering happens all the time, and not just on cognitive level - and i don't see a reason to condemn it. anyone who ever blocked out kiddies cross-flaming on usenet will agree.
of course, an argument could be made that intelligent people shouldn't block out speech just because they don't agree with the message, but that's completely different from saying that filtering speech for one's own use equals censorship.
My other car is a cons.
John,
I do agree that ShutUp Software should exist not to block individuals but to block subjects. I **sometimes** block subjects that I do not want to see/read about. But then again I do not block people no matter how ignorant, annoying, wrong, etc.. Because maybe one day they will say something that is intelligent, correct, worth reading. I use the mental blocking software. While reading the list of replies or the author's name, I can mentally say "Hey this guy (or gal) is a bozo and I will not read him (or her) now.." but I make that choice everytime.
Overall I do agree with you. ShutUp Software will be the destruction of free speach. Block subjects and not people....
That is my humble opinion.
Scott
Scott
janitor
sdn website family
email: scott at sboss dot net
Every once in a while you get someone one Usenet that adds more to noise bin than the signal. Kill-files aren't really censorship in this situation, but more of a convenience to those trying to read for content. If I could have had some sort of blocking software that would kill any post that was authored, a reply to or had anything to do with Scott Nudds, I might have been able to read the volume of mail in the x86 newsgroups. Unfortunately, I couldn't, so I was forced to wade through flamewars and loads of drivel created by a SINGLE PERSON.
Personal censorship is a necessity in some cases.
æeee!
I think I'll be filtering out a certain gasbag from now on. :P.
It's not that Katz doesn't have interesting points. Its just that experince tells me reading his stuff is uasually not really about the community, but about **him**. No thanks. There's a difference between one man having a closed mind and another man talking trash.
Jon, here's a tissue. Cry about it to everyone else from now on
They studied advertising and found that the more you hear something, the more you agree with it, even if you have no other reason. Someone mentioned white supremacists; I wouldn't want them to have that kind of impact on my head. I'm starting to think JonKatz isn't worth seeing either, so rather than avoid /. altogether (my "filtering" solution for David Every and MacKiDo) I'll just go set my preferences now...
I don't find your argument very convincing at all. I'm sure you realize that in real life, people choose what they want to read and hear all the time. So what makes choosing to block you different from that?
You seem to be saying that this is more evil simply because it's so easy to do so on the net -- just block out what you don't want to hear with a click of a button. But I find this argument pretty weak; I don't see how this is qualitatively different from choosing not to, say, read a column by a columnist that you don't like or whose opinions you don't respect. Is it different or worse just because it's easier? I don't see why.
Remember that people don't choose to block you arbitrarily -- this is a considered choice that people make. You're first given a chance to be heard, before people decide that they don't want to hear anymore of what you say -- it's about credibility and convincing people that your opinions count.
As you have pointed out numerous times in the past, the internet is a form of media. By the very nature of media, things are filtered. When you watch the news, you don't hear about the little boy who skinned his knee while riding his bike. I, personally, think you are sitting in an ivory tower, taking an idealistic approach to censorship, with delusions of a Farenheit 451-esque government stupifying the people by way of media. Not to be insulting, but I truly don't understand you. One moment you talk about the "paradigm shift" that is taking place in and on the internet, and then the next you act like the last of the old guard who must protect the status quo. If I don't like upside.com, then I don't visit upside.com. Stop thinking of the internet as this utopian paradise where ideas flow like water, because it is not and never was. Instead, think of each individual as a "website," if you like. If you don't like a website, you don't visit it. The result is that you have no idea what that website had to say. The same rules apply to individuals. Perhaps the reason some readers block you is not because they rabidly disagree with your opinions, but because they find nothing useful in what you say. It's true that you stimulate some interesting debates, but all you are really giving is opinions, and just YOUR opinions, and at least in my eyes you have not yet gained the credibility to make me put special emphasis on your opinions. Why see a jonkatz opinion prominently featured as a headline when it belongs in the forum, like everyone else's opinion?
Colin@ij.net
does the name pavlov ring a bell?
It's my opinion that there's a different reason for the preference setting software you're seeing. Information overload. At present, I have subscriptions to 8 different trade rags covering the IT industry and the TQM industry that this business runs in. No, I have nothing to do with the latter, except the network I administrate is used to get the work done. (Imagine that!) I'm on four email lists, only because I refuse to be on more. I keep tabs on 18 newsgroups ranging from NetWare to MS Office to StarOffice to Linux Mandrake. And all this is just my business-oriented electronic information stream. Add to that my personal interests in Freemasonry, heraldry, LDAP, the C++ self-course I'm taking, Wicca, social justice and the church school committee, and I'm just about tapped out. Oh yeah, I'm married and have a five year old daughter.
So why am I boring you with this? Perhaps it's because I want you to know that I don't limit the information I see because I want to restrict someone's freedom, nor is it because I can't stand trolls. I can't, but I choose to ignore them where I must. But given the choice of removing them from the signal-to-noise ratio, I will, because I have to exert some level of control over the sheer mass of information that dumps on me every day.
Now if my emploment required me to transact business across the wire, you bet I'd take any chance to screen out the losers who clog the works with useless posts designed to demonstrate their "opinion". And as for the vague threat you mentioned... that what's used against you can be used against me... it already is. My posts are scored, and if they fall below someone else's threshold, they won't see me. Can it be done elsewhere, other than /.? Yep, and they do it there too. Frankly, the mainstream media screens out the voices of those whose opinions are either mixed, or centered. They want the extremes, and they present every issue as polarized. It's wrong, but that's the way it is.
BTW, John, as a critique, I have to say I don't like your writing style. You come off as a surly, cynical individual who's sure that the "powers that be" are always one jack-booted step from crushing our heads. While you may not be wrong, consider this: If you are wrong, your style turns off potential readers. If you're right, They are coming to get you first.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
I agree with mr. katz, i dont like "shutup" software. At work we have software, a proxy server, that blocks content. Every time a new sight gets blocked, someone complains, and it gets taken off. But the fact is, we dont have the money for fat pipes. i wish we did. So in a effort to curtail traffic, they instituted blocking and caching proxies. what happened? our bandwidth usage went down like 15%, but still half the sites employees want to go to are blocked. its annoying as hell, but sometimes it has to be done. btw we did find out though that nearly half of the traffic going to the internet was going to finance and stock sites, about a quarter to porn sites etc. etc. etc.
End Transmission....
I agree, if all his articles are as clueless as this one, I'll block him too. I'll start paying attention to his stuff in the future and see if it is more interesting.
I just don't have time for people who don't get the difference between censorship and filtering. Is it censorship when I don't subscribe to some newsgroup? How is it different if I put an individual author (or subject) in my killfile?
He sounds like he's upset that people don't want to spend their time reading his articles.
*Sigh*
You know, I like Katz's writing... I really do. But sometimes I really feel that he fails to take his train of thought all the way unto its logical destination - if he DID, I'm sure he wouldn't even bother to write half of the time.
This article is a perfect example: he complains about the "ignore" feature, and about filtering in general, without even stopping to understand the basic concepts that form these circumstances, or the alternative he may be advocating.
To put it simply, everyone always has something they don't like. That's really what this boils down to; preference. I don't like what someone will say, and someone will not like something I say. This applies to music, TV shows, books, you name it.
Now, as humans, we tend to make changes based on our preferences; i.e., get rid of that which we dislike, and harbor that which we do. And there are two (that I can see) ways to do this: either we do it ourselves, or we have our ruling government do it for us. There are the types of people who change the radio station when they hear a song they don't like, and there are those who complain to the station about never playing said song again - its that simple.
And we've come a long way towards empowering the individual - as well we should. This has pretty much been the message of the 80s and 90s: help yourself. Change the channel, if the station offends you. Don't read this book if you are opposed to the content. Stop talking with someone who gets on your nerves. These are all underlying themes that I've seen emphasized in my personal relationships, in courtrooms, and in the media over the last decade or two: the right to choose for yourself.
And now Katz is telling us that we're making the wrong choice in being our own censors. I'm not sure that he's advocating censorship on a higher level or not; personally, I think that it seems more like he's telling us to just grin and bear the crap we don't like. Which of course, will never happen: its in our nature to better ourselves.
So Katz, if you're reading, listen up: either WE censor ourselves, or someone censors FOR us. There's no two ways around that. I really think you should have thought about this before you wrote that article... by damning one, you may very well be advocating the other.
--WorLord (if more government is the answer, than the question is really stupid)
You are in a good mood now. Suddenly, a 16 yr old boy comes across Make Money Fast, and having never seen it before, decides "What a great idea! Pyramid schemes have gotta work, I mean, look at the stock market..." So, he dicides to mail this great message out with his own name and address at the top of the list.
Joncats is one of the recipients. In fact, he is a recipient every single day, cause the 16 year old boy has devised a system by which a slightly different message is sent, different subject, different text. Now, joncats realizes that this message is arriving in his email every day, cause he's a smart cookie and keeps tabs of his correspondance. Does joncats filter out this email? He knows that this is not personal mail, but that he is one of many on a very large list, so probably very quickly.
Now, this 16 year old boy grows himself up and has himself a web site. In fact, this website is one where a select few posters can make interesting new material available for a very large and dedicated web audience. He is the founder and chooses to post new articles under the name CmdrBurrito. His days of Make Money Fast have evolved and he now posts all sorts of things on his website (he doesn't send email anymore, he lost his account for SPAMMING) His topics are now "Make Burritos Fast", "Make Spicy Bean Dip Fast" (That's right, just send one bean to everyone on this list..) which is kinda strange because every other poster on the site posts things relating to whether mice should be round or oblong or rectangular or laser-fixated on the eyeball. (This explains the motto of the site: Mice for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. Joncats is a dedicated reader to this site, because he collects mice (being a cat) and has an opinion on the mouse world. Does he have to continuously see these articles about MMF? He can say It doesn't take much time to see that CmdrBurrito is back at it again, so let's move on to the next article ASAP. However, and this is the crux of the matter: If joncats decides that he wants to filter out all of CmdrBurrito's posted articles, how should CmdrBurrito feel about it? Should he be personally offended? Should he chug away at a bottle to soothe those blues? Should CmdrBurrito post an article saying that people shouldn't do what joncats did, namely not even checking to see if the latest CmdrBurrito post was worth while?
Riddle me this!
--paul
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
I like this phrase "expose people to the echoes of their own reflexions". I think this is the ultimate consequence of using Shut-up software.
(By the way, it would be a good idea to buy "shutupsoftware.com" as well as "Shut-up Software Inc" after this discussion...maybe someone is gonna get rich?)
Zeb
Before you decide if you want to read a particular newspaper article you have the opportunity to scan the headlines, blurbs and any pictures relating to the story. These give you an idea of the stories content and let you make an informed decision of whether to read the article or skip on to the next one.
A filter will not give you that option. If you read an article by Mr. Katz and decide he's just a windbag, you can set your preferences to filter him out from then on. You would miss any future articles by him, even if they were on a topic extremely relevant or interesting to you.
While I agree with you that there is too much information noise to deal with it all, this argument supporting the idea of filtering is oddly similar to the issue of GUIs here on Slashdot.
We've heard it hundreds of times: without a user-friendly GUI Linux will have limited penetration on the desktop. The reason? The average user doesn't want to deal with the nuts and bolts of the OS (read noise) to get their work done (read signal).
The inevitable comment that comes up when the GUI is discussed again: all a GUI does is make your choices for you, you can't have a user-friendly OS without eliminating choices.
I don't think I'm alone in disagreeing with this idea. I believe that a flexible, powerful, and easier-to-use OS can and will emerge because of Free Software/Open Source efforts.
I feel the same way about filters; cutting out noise does not mean you must exclude content (and reduce your choices). Here are two suggestions on how it is possible here on Slashdot:
-leave off the filters and decide if you want to read an article based on the summaries that appear on the home page. This could still result in a large amount of articles you don't want to read, but you can decide on a case-by-case basis, and you'll know what everyone else is reading and thinking about.
-a filter-up sytem could be used, in which articles that you prefer would be given more weight, and you would see those first. The other articles would still be there, just lower on the page. Then, if some day you think "I wonder what Foo is babbeling about today?", you will have the choice available to you, to check or not.
So, unless you skip whole sections of the paper without even peeking, the way your brain filters the paper is quite different than the way a software filter would. With wetware you always have a choice, with software you make one and and have to live with it.
I don't care for some of the articles written by Mr. Katz in the past, but I didn't choose to filter him out(apparently you didn't either), and I'm glad because this is an interesting discussion.
The post you are responding to did not say that there is no decent filtering software in existence, they said that most people don't get a choice.
What good is X-STOP if the Utah school system (as an example) decides to use a poorly implemented or biased filter? The students won't have a choice.
With that being said, how are you going to ensure that all the schools, libraries, institutions in the world, use a fair and well designed filtering system?
I hope the librarians and people in charge of these things aren't just like most people, because I think most people (including myself) put in that position would probably want to filter out some of the noise and garbage.
This requires them to make a decision about what exactly should be considered noise and garbage. And at that point they start making decisons for every user under them.
I would rather have every user make those choices for themselves.
Simpletoneity, n. -- The phenomenon of many people all doing the same stupid thing at the same time.
VERY true! The software does not force somebody to shut up - it can, however, keep me from having to "hear" them. "Flames" can, and *should*, be phrased as a well argued opinion, not as "flames". If a poster cannot, consistantly cannot, do that, I'll stop listening to hym, plain and simple.
As for the "thick skin" suggestion, I have multiple sclerosis. Stress makes my symptoms worse, sometimes to the point where it may take me hours to be able to use my limbs again. I cannot just develop thicker skin, especially when it is so easy for a moron to send flames unthinkingly. If somebody argues in a calm and rational way with me, I can return the favor. If they flame me, I cannot return "fire" for hours. Instead, I ignore them, and henceforth and forevermore they disappear from my world.
The point is, if you wish to be heard, be rational. If you act like a spoiled brat, you'll be ignored, and some of us have medical reasons to ignore brats.
Lemon curry?
Darn, that's exactly what I was going to say, except that I would seperate a per-user filter from a system-wide filter.
If you can set up NetNanny so that it only filters for you and no one else, and that was the default, that would be OK. If the admin could set up a killfile that everyone at the company was forced to use, then that would be Evil & Wrong.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
anyone who has been spammed should appreciate this fundamental human right. moreover, if i know that X is a twit, all the more reason for me to be freed from his intrusive expression.
if software can assist me by matching unknowns agains known twit profiles, i will insist upon it.
Lacking such software, folks simply tune out of low SNR media.
If there is some obligation of the twit to be heard, then those who now tune out must be forced to listen. Perhaps on one of those 1984 television sets that cannot be turned off.
As Webster's puts it, censoring is the act of "supervis[ing] conduct and morals."
My drawn out point being, while I am strong against the notion of any person supervising the conduct and morals of others, I also believe that individuals have an inherent right to impose morals and codes of conduct over themselves. While everyone has a right to speak, and not to be outright censored, I also believe that individuals have the right to choose not to listen to what you say. We're not living in anyone's personal reeducation camp. This is parallel to my support of freedom of press - but not only to people have a right not to listen to what the press reports, they also have a right to privacy (which often suffers via the media machine).
I don't use ShutUp Software personally, but I certainly defend it as a choice that should be there for those who wish to.
-- ~ I dare you... to take me on... I dare you... to show me your palms... ~ Björk, "I Dare You", _5 Years_
-- did you get my letter? / did you get it today? yeah, i got a letter / i threw it away - Sleater-Kinney
Perhaps this seems like a trite example, but this is exactly what will happen if people "filter out" ideas that "waste their time." Now, I'm not talking about crap spam -- on one email account of mine that was added to a spam list, I've had to send any message with the "dollar," "$," or "buck" straight to the trash or else there are 30 useless messages waiting for me every day.
What I am talking about are the people who get on their soapboxes and sound like lunatics to most "normal" people. Many people who introduce revolutionary ideas are branded as lunatics initially, and when their ideas "catch on," they are immediately converted from nutcases to heroes.
In true free speech, the rights of people to be heard should be paramount to the desire of other people not to hear them. If nobody can hear them then they do not have free speech. America is supposed to be a melting pot of ideas -- not just the ideas we like, but ALL ideas, in which people are exposed to many different viewpoints and then decide for themselves as to the merit of the viewpoints. If we leave out the loonies -- or the revolutionaries, depending on your perspective -- we are agreeing to a dire form of censorship.
You may say that the people who agree with these lunatics can still hear them, but that eliminates the possibility that they may say something of merit at any time in the future. And if people begin filtering out every idea with which they don't agree, those people will begin living in a perfect little world without any conflicts of interests; a world, I say, very far from our own.
I had more to say but I think I forgot the rest.
-Begin Evan's Dumb Signature.....
rooooar
SHUT UP!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
The Zealotry...
Take a joke or something... Sheesh!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
And while you're at it, why don't you shut down the spam spewing out from RGInvestments@ragingbull.com?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The potential problem --- and I say potential because i'm far from convinced that filters will automagically lead to this --- is that, if everyone is filtering their news down to only what they want to hear, then
... and the net has the potential to be a partial antidote to it. But it can also be used to exacerbate it ...
(a) there will be little to no cross-exposure to new ideas. [this problem already exists in overly-specialized scientific fields.]
(b) there will be no common information base; without a shared set of information, an established court (if you will), what basis is there for discussion of anything?
One of the problems in western society is that we became, with the coming of urbanization and the industrial revolution, significantly more atomized and disconnected from one another than _most_ people had been in the past. The modern consumer economy is accelerating that trend
So Disney sensors you? You should stop slandering Mickey Mouse! :)
But really, I must say that censorship is not the same thing as choosing what you see or hear. If I choose, on Slashdot, not to see articles by Mr. Katz here, then that's very different than having some Net Nanny program decide what I want and don't want to see. The first is choice, the second is censorship.
Furthermore, this issue borders on parents not wanting to be parents. Adults and legislators call for some of this software because they don't want to take responsibility themselves. Instead of watching what your kid is doing, or even asking them, they want some mechanical means of controlling what they see. Is this responsible?
At least you have to click the button to vaporize them. The user decides. It's much worse if someone else clicks that button for you. Censorship is when you don't even know that something is being blocked.
I don't object to being able to selectively remove certain users' comments, but I do object to someone else choosing on my behalf.
Wow. Surely the Australian government has seen just how badly the CDA went over over here in the US.
I'm shocked that any non-Communist, non-dictatorship country would try something like this.
-- Shawn K. Quinn
The fact that censorware/shutupware/filterware companies frequently do this should tell you something about the faith they have in their product standing on its merits.
Which brings me to something else: I remember hearing of a program once that would filter/drop "nasty words" even if they were far apart in the text.
i.e. if you had a program with code like:
if (u * c
you'd wind up with a mangled program that would not compile. Damn if I remember what software it was right off hand though.
-- Shawn K. Quinn
Oops, lemme try that again. The theoretical program line should have been:
if (u * c <= k) { abort(); }
-- Shawn K. Quinn
I don't think he's railing on Rob's new feature that was added not too long ago; Katz seems to be making more of a general stand.
I've certainly been ignored, kicked/banned, hell, I've even had Internet accounts turned off because people didn't like me. I've pretty much been there, done that in this vein.
My opinion is, obviously, at least somewhat anti-censorship, but I'm also more of the opinion those who use crappy censorware deserve what they get, especially if they don't know it.
-- Shawn K. Quinn
You chose to make this column about freedom, and about the "right to speak".
.kill file when browsing news groups, and even now on my email, inorder to get the MOST important, and highest quality information I can.
Along with the right to speak comes the right to ignore. I will vigoursously defend the rights of anyone to say anything in a public forum. I don't care if it's offensive to some, and I certainly don't care if some choose to ignore it.
"Nanny" Software like cybernanny, itself is not bad. As much as publications like wired and yourself tend to rail on against it, it holds no intrinsic evil or restriction.
It's the implementation that leads to censorship. I believe that all people have the absolute right to choose for themselves what to view, but as important as that right is, it's equally if not more important that anyone have the right NOT to view (or be exposed to) whatever they care.
Saying that it's somehow a violation of your rights not to be read after speaking is potentially true, but certainly about 1/100th as important as anyones right to simply not hear you.
In the information age, information becomes more and more valuable. As anything ioncreases in value the inherant quality of said item also becomes more and more apparent.
I use a comprehensive and effective
For any right, it would seem, there is an equal right that may seem to contradict that right.
--A
JK,
I think you're wide of the mark to link the rise of filtering tools to the increasing use of the net for marketing.
Ten years ago, I could read many USENET groups -- both technical and local political/general groups -- and a good fraction of the posts were useful or at least droll. Two years ago I stopped reading USENET altogether, save for one or two very specific groups -- and I have a very active KILL file. Most of the stuff I read nowadays is mailing list traffic. Lists are generally a better-kept secret; the membership is smaller and more focused, so the signal/noise ratio is higher.
The reason that USENET is USELESS these days is *not* because the net has been taken over by marketroids, although they are a big nuisance too, but because the net has been inundated by the "general public", too many of whom can't put two coherent sentences together, but don't know enough not to try in public.
Inevitably, the useful content is drowned out by the mediocre.
Ten years ago, when the average online IQ was higher, a few messages, be they public or private, polite or flaming generally served to convince an individual to behave. If not, there was always the kill-file. Yes, filtering has been around just about forever; it is not a new phenomenon. Today, civil discussion hasn't got a chance in an open forum. The online world is starting to have the same distribution of people as the offline world.
Everyone relies on filtering, offline as well as online. Life is too short to wade through all the drivel if one didn't filter.
Ugh. Got it wrong again.
Censorship is when the government (or perhaps, by analogy, some large, powerful entity like a corporation) prevents views from being heard. Software to screen out certain content from certain users, whether it be an ignore button, or filtering software, is not censorship. Yes, people have a right to say what they want, but I have a right to not listen, or ignore, or be part of a for-pay service which screens out the garbage. That's my right. Self-determination is part of our fundamental human rights, just like free speech is. You have the constitutionally protected right to be an ignorant moron (in the US, anyway), and it makes no sense to me why some people (Katz, in this case) choose to defend just their favorite parts of the constitution.
I think that this is sour grapes coming from someone with a propensity for annoying people to the point where they just won't listen anymore, no matter how intelligent or germaine what he has to say is. I've read lots of authors who I disagree with, but whose approach is much less off-putting, and who I continue to read, despite the disagreement. Grow up and quit whining.
The major problem I see between software doing the filtering and (as one clever reader put it) wetware is that software rules aren't flexible. It's a given that things change, authors have changes of hart, flamers burn out, and hopefully script kiddies grow up. Ignore software doesn't take this into account, once I've ignored you, even if you have a complete change of heart and are coming up with truly insightful things, I won't know because I'm still ignoring you.
In my subject I said it's not natural, until the software is modeled after a more biological approach I won't use it. Consider cutting your thumb, you won't use it because every time you do it hurts, so you consciously don't pick up things with it. As time passes it heals and though you may still avoid using it but accidentally you might, and since it doesn't hurt any more that "fear" will go away. Ignore features need to be like that, they should wear off over time. If it starts to wear off and you're still a flaming prick well I'll just ignore you again and this time it'll last longer. Eventually it'll reach a threshold where I won't hear from you again unless you make some complete 180 in opinion (which would require some intelligence on the filters part).
Oh well I'll keep dreaming (and sorting through the crap) until then.
Leave it to Katz to come out against personal empowerment and freedom of choice.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
But you still have the choice of whether or not to use that software. Every consumer has the duty to inform themselves about the products they're using.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Me too. I think that if you're using filtering software, and you find out that it's filtering something it shouldn't be, you should be able to return it for a full refund. Likewise, I tink that you're making a bad decision if use a piece of software without having recieved full disclosure about what exactly it does.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
In the real world though I found myself having to deal with the very things I despised then on a daily basis. I learned quite quickly the more I ignore them, the harder my life would become. The suits, the peons, and the scum sucking lawyers all needed time and attention, and if they did not get it I would be in a world of hurt professionally. Then it happened, I actually started enjoying (in the case of lawyers tolerating) them. It was like a mini vacation in the middle of the day to think about things in a different way. It opened up a whole new range of possibilities. Finding something useful in a 1/2 hour of dribble from an ex frat boy turned businessman happens on a regular basis now, and expands my possibilities immensely.
It takes all kinds. Squelching anyone only hurts yourself.
There were several posts I could've replied to with this, but I thought it'd be nice to counter one SF reference with another..
This whole thing hinges on the assumption that people in general have dislike anything that might change the way they think. But if we all had such hermetic memes, why would we ever read this discussion?
Those who want to ignore things can always do it - whether it's by using a filter, an outlook (as in Diaspora - not the M$ program, though I suppose that'd apply too) or their own mind. All those different levels accomplish the same thing, and the fact that we haven't turned into solipsist lotus-eaters already proves that we won't be doing so in the future either.
This I would indeed consider a good thing, but it has little to do with the debate. (How much it has to do with Katz's original text depends on how one interprets it.) If you wear a bag over your head and bump into things, the bag is not to blame. A culture that doesn't want to learn and be aware of the world surrounding it is self-destructive, and can only recover through harsh and invasive treatment.
Luckily, we in general can and want to perceive reality, and that trait isn't likely to vanish - even if everything else fails, natural selection will take care of that, by favoring those not bumping blindly into things. What has gotten us this far from the trees is a desire to learn new things, and no filter is going to elminate that.
(Oh, and I really shouldn't be posting at 4am..)
'Shutup software' (nice neologism, Jon) is a side effect of the new attention economy. Now so long ago, Wired had a short article about how attention is (or will be shortly) the economic element in shortest supply. (Sorry if that's a crappy summary; I'm not an economist.)
Given that, it seems like 'shutup software' is a natural outgrowth. Anything that lets me use (or appears to let me use) my small amount of attention more efficiently is a Good Thing.
Personally, I'd like to seem some kill|score-filing 'ware that offered some level of randomness. That is, scoring rules that would be applied with some probability, rather that all the time. Anybody know of anything like that?
john.
GeneHack {--(bioinfo*linux*opinion)
I was a little confused about what his point was. Is he talking about people who are using the web for business purposes, in which case it makes perfect sense to try to be as efficient as possible. Or is he talking about people who are using the web for social forums. In my mind there is a large differnece between the two. Either way I like the freedom of choice, even if I choose not to excersise it. Freedom is a double edged sword, the things that make it great also make it dangerous.
FUD - It's not just for breakfast anymore.
I fear you may be in the minority here. Although I avoid it, many people simply add one person or another to a filter and never look back. Though sometimes necessary, this is short-sighted and very closed-minded behavior.
My reading of Katz's article and postings (and I reserve the right to be wrong) is that he is in no way taking issue with the simple existence of these filters. In fact, he acknowleges that the choice to listen must exist. What he is trying to point out is what the consequences of not listening may be. It is indeed a frightening though that the Internet may some day be seen only through rose-colored glasses that eliminate anything offensive or contrarian from view. Criticism and disagreement are the foundation of intelligent discussion. They prevent stagnation of thought. They force us to analyze our assumptions and further investigate the world we live in. Without the challenge, without the disagreement, how will we learn? How will we grow as intelligent creatures?
Overuse of filtering software puts those thick, rose-colored glasses on us. They restrict our vision and, as a result, our thought. This is too heavy a burden to wear, and one which I choose to never carry.
I'd like to suggest that there are many types of filters; here are some points on the spectrum:
Machine filters from commercial companies - the NetNannies, etc.
Machine filters you configure yourself - a killfile
Human filters from propoganda sources - www.microsoft.com
Human filters from mainstream society - www.abcnews.com
Human filters from [alleged] countercultures - www.drudgereport.com
Human filters from true countercultures - www.gnu.org
Human filters from people you trust as peers - www.slashdot.org
Human filters from people you know - those damn emails of stuff that was on slashdot last month.
Which filters you gravitate towards can be construed to be a measure of your skepticism / gullibility. Personally, I'm much heartened by the development of filters in the last four categories above, because they reduce the amount of dreck I have to wade through in order to keep up with what's important to me.
If I wrote prose full time for a living, I'd probably be interested in consuming as much information as I could, so I wouldn't filter. I don't. I write code, so I want a friend to drop me a note every now and again with perfectly accurate, well attributed information on the latest free vs commercial debates.
While I once depended on a network of friends to do that, more and more we depend on services like /. Would I be happy with mandatory NetNanny? Hell no. But I don't see a general problem with filters; they're simply the analogue of choosing who you talk with over lunch.
P.S. Those web pages above are illustrative of concepts. The links ain't s'posed to work, and further, I make no representation about their quality. Except /. ;-)
Filtering software always makes me worry I might be missing something interesting. I remember when my company first installed Outlook98. The spam and porn email filters were turned on by default. I got a call from my dad, who was wondering why I hadn't responded to his email. It turns out that because my dad tends to be rather profane in his writing style, the software thought his email was porn related and deleted it automatically! This makes me worry about the NetNanny type filters, since someone else is deciding what I see and what I don't, and that is unacceptable. If, however - as is the situation on Slashdot - I get to decide who I see and who I don't, that is in my view entirely different. I give people lots of chances, but if I feel that they consistently waste my time and make it more difficult for me to get to the information I am interested in, then why shouldn't I filter them out? They have only their own lack of discipline and civility to blame. And if some people who don't like to read opinions that disagree with theirs filter them out, well, isn't that the same thing as ignoring the message, which was Jon's suggestion?
There is absolutely no basis to this claim. If you take the time and do the research on filtering/blocking software you can easily find a product that is legitimate and uses careful standards for blocking. X-STOP for instance is a very good one. Most modern filtering apps use very careful criterias for blocking. Despite what you might think it's not just a bunch of zealous Republican Christians sitting in a room deciding to block stuff because they don't like it. Believe it or not...most of the people in charge of creating these libraries are just like you and I.
What Fools These Mortals Be!
Really, that's what it's all about - signal to noise. There is an incredible abount of information on the web. Sites like
Human intervention means someone must read it first to see if it's worth reading. Well, that might work for a sysop/moderator/whatever, but when you do that it's a lot like "software" anyway.
If you read the posts yourself, you have no filter. It's not a filter when you have to read every post to decide if reading the post was a waste of time. And while you're reading a bunch of posts that your are 90% certain are going to be junk (because you've read a lot of crap from the same poster before), you're wasting time that could be spent reading "good" stuff. Would you rather read a MEEPT post? A first poster post? A post that goes completely off the subject and into a person rant?
I wouldn't.
So I'm happy to have choices. I'm happy to have a moderation system I can take advantage of. I'm happy that I can, if I so desire, turn all the filters off and see anything I would otherwise miss. Frankly, I don't think I'm really missing anything. I never finish with the content I'm interested in, anyway.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
One, I don't think this is a loss. I think this is a good thing.
Two, this isn't anything new, and it won't change the nature of the web. Until fairly recently, most public discussion on the internet was done on usenet (and before that, bbs, but I wan't to keep focus here). Due to being harder to navigate large discussions, the web has really lagged behind usenet. Even now, it remains one of the top ways of discussing and issue. It's had complex filtering software for ages.
Yet discussion on the web (the "nature" of the web) is pretty much similar to that on the usenet. The only real difference is that it's harder to navigate. So when you make the claim that this is a big change, I think you're just wrong.
Until we get some highly advanced AI, like some filtering software that thinks almost exactly like me, filtering is going to be pretty tame. All it lets you do is avoid seeing posts from certain known trolls, spammers and plain idiots. I don't think the vast majority of people would use it to avoid certain people that they disagree with that rationally discuss issues. After all, they wouldn't even read/write in those forums if they don't want to discuss things like this.
The other problem, as many have pointed out, is that you've mashed up too many different topics together into one article, making a lot of vague predictions/observations. You should have seperated these out into a bunch of different topics:
These are really four very different topics, each with it's own discussion of reasons and ramifications. If you had discussed them individually, you might find more people agreeing with parts of your article, rather than having to disagree with the whole thing because they've all been vaguely lumped together.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
But then you usually agree with me. Missed you when you left HotWired and they lost a frequent visitor to their site for it. Found you in a article in my Rolling Stone (one of the few paper rags I get delivered). I must say you're finding more appropriate medium. Or times change.... whatever.
I especially liked "the views I least likely want to read..." line. I may borrow that quote.
Using Lynx for years as I did, I missed the rise in banner ads, really. I just saw links to "Click here!" and doubleclick and so on. When I got Netscape, I started taking about 10 times longer to download pages, and they all had these damned "Click here for your speed" and on clicking, you got redirected to adverts. It took me not very long at all to realise why people had eulogised the Internet Junkbuster. I have a slow link, and this program _really_ _helps_ cut down on the rubbish. Now if only they recognised content-free sites...:) Deals with a lot of other things, too, like cookies. It's not a block all/block none choice, either; you can select places you do trust with cookies. Definitely recommended: makes the web a lot faster. For those of us unlike Katz who don't feel compelled to give all sources of information equal priority, it's a handy thing.
Jon, the article was interesting. Leaving filters off certainly does expose the reader to more interesting stuff than he/she might see otherwise.
However, when you say (concerning anyone or anything) "They have the right to be heard, to exist on websites" you are absolutely wrong. They do NOT have the right to be heard, any more than I have the right to go to CBS, or CNN, or Public Radio, or Slashdot, and demand that they broadcast whatever drivel I spout.
You have the right of free speech, not the right to be heard.
TMD
Before you decide if you want to read a particular newspaper article you have the opportunity to scan the headlines, blurbs and any pictures relating to the story. These give you an idea of the stories content and let you make an informed decision of whether to read the article or skip on to the next one.
/. on +2 score only, and only browse on lower scores if I find some articles extremely interesting and would like to see responses to them.
But you don't but all newspapers and then choose what you want to read, do you ? You don't buy National Geographics for example, because there is little chance that you will find something interesting there. There may be something that you may find extremely interesting from time to time, but S/N ratio is just to low for you to try it all the time just to find out if there is something interesting.
The problem is that in current society, we live in constant information overload. There is absolutely no way in which human can absorb that information and parse what is interesting and what is not for him.
So humans are forced to use filters. We do not buy newspapers we think we are not interested in (and in many case we never even bought one piece of them to find out that we don't like them - it is just that we "figured out" we won't like it). We do not watch TV channels we once found non-interesting (or we didn't but just figured out that for example there is nothing interesting on "disneyworld"). We don't visit tons on WWW sites with news unless we have acquired information that there is some thing that would most likely interest us.
I regullary browse just few newssites, (/. being one of them), but there is no way I could find enough time even to read all of stuff I find interesting on them. I read comments on
Ideally, we would be able to process information so fast that we would be able to keep up and browse all information and process that we find interesting. But that would probably requre either massive destruction of most of human race (reducing flow of information), or cybernetic implants in brain (increasing our processing abilty).
The new slashdot system IS censorship. here is why ...
..... the SCRIPTS are the third party. Sure you decide whether to use it or not, but you DONT decide what gets filtered out. Its the system that Rob has set up which decides (and it is very specific).
/. then you KNOW you have EVERYTHING. reading an other newspaper you just have access to different censorship.
/.
/. hate the filtering. it really scares me.
.... ....... .... !
If we define that censorship is a third party then the slashdot system still remains a form of censorship
Just the same as a newspaper. If a newspaper censors certain content then this is bad right, BUT you can decide NOT TO READ the newpaper. It is exactly the same thing.
Here lies the danger of censorship.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAS BEEN CENSORED. so you will never know what you are missing out on.
If someone said "alright, but with slashdot you CAN read everything", the other side would say "so you can read an other newspaper". But that would not be quite right since when you turn all comments on in
That said, I have stopped using the filtering option in slashdot. This because I have twice found comments with rating 0 and 1 which I found extremely important and informative. I hence came to the conclusion that this system was dangerous, and I will NEVER KNOW what I missed in the several weeks I had the system set to 2.
The question is Time vs Squashed opinions and how much you trust the filtering system in
love
there has to be an other option
As much as I think Katz is often a victim of his own hype, and his articles more a reflection of his "desire to be" rather than him "being" whatever he might like us to think he is, I will never do myself the diss-service of not giving his posts on slashdot equal importance with all other posts.
... and low level editing is where it starts.
I think it is extremely serious that most people seem to agree with the use this software and I think that a lot of people need to do a lot of thinking about how society works, about communication, about co-habitation, about equality, supression, misconceptions.
Think about HOW something gets filtered out, WHY that thing has been filtered out, WHO or WHAT decides on the implementation of filtering and WHO or WHAT is getting filtered out.
The internet is a media like all others. It is well known that manipulation of information to a public is a form of high power (this is how supressive governements work)
hang on, all the moderators on this discussion must be in favour of editing, since they are actually doing it right?
so if someone puts their cut out mark at 2 then they will most probably all get comments for PRO-FILTERING
when in fact there are a lot of anti-filtering comments.
there you have it.
try it, go on, put your comments at 2 and see how many pro-filtering comments you get.
I don't think most reasonable people filter opinions from reasonable people. They filter whole subjects or whole authors who aren't "reasonable". Obviously "reasonable" is fuzzy.
In the Usenet world, people get killfiled for expressing the same thing over and over again. They don't get killfiled for saying "You're wrong and here are the (specific) reasons why..."
I think your choice of words and examples are very confusing and ambiguous. In the same paragraph, you talk about AOL removing posts, which would be "censorship" in my view, and the WELL's bozo filters, which from my (possibly incorrect) understanding are user-defined and thus "choice"
As others have said, there's the ability to speak, what Jon's calling "censorship", and the ability to listen, what he calls "choice".
I would classify these more as "mechanism" and "policy". I wouldn't want any filters on the mechanism of posting. I should be able to enter my comment on /. no matter what the blip Katz, Taco or anyone else has to say. But if someone thinks I'm an blathering idiot, they should have the ability to implement the policy of a filter of not having to hear me anymore.
In that sense, the examples of Raging Bull (of post removal) and AOL are mechanism filters and not those I agree with and the WELL and Usenet killfiles as policy filters and I use those.
I also turn off the filters every once in a while to see what I'm "missing". Sometimes I find things that I should filter back in, most of the time I don't. But having the ability to see things unfiltered is necessary.
An aside: It would be nice to have the feedback that I'm being killfiled and why and have the choice to change my behavior or not. (Since sometimes I am a blithering idiot...)
Nonsense! Have a little bit of faith in yourself. Perh. it is that the ideas you least want to read are the ones of least value. If one is a clear-thinking rational being with true assumptions, one cannot help but come to true conclusions. If one has come to true conclusions regarding others, then one is perfectly right to act upon those conclusions.
This strange pre-occupation in certain circles for a sort of uber-free speech is odd at best. Others are free to speak, sure, but you have every right to ignore what they say. What is more, you have a veritable need to ignore the vast majority by simple reason of finite time to attend them. Previously this was very difficult. New software has made this easier than it has ever been. If you dislike a person's attitude or logic (or, more likely, the lack thereof), you can save precious free time by ignoring him. In a sea of information, one must manage the data so as not to be drowned thereby.
It's really no different from not subscribing to certain magazines. Some magazines are worth a subscription, some might be read if particularly interesting this week, some are never picked up. Ranking software enables the reader an unprecedented opportunity to rank according to his own ideas. I take the National Review, MacUser and Field & Stream. But of these has articles which I would rather not read and would rather not pay for. Why pay for that which I do not want? Why have my time wasted by having to browse through pages I do not need?
On the Web, bandwidth is time is money. Why should I waste time and money downloading a summary of an article I do not wish to see? Why should Slashdot waste badnwidth sending me a summary I will skip over immediately? Why not conserve bandwidth and send me only that in which I am interested?
You have every right to forego blocking those you do not desire to read. I wish you luck in digesting all the millions of words written and published ea. day on the web. I myself will be programming and studying.
1) You're arguing like an email spammer - 'You shouldn't block spam because you might find something interesting in it'. Yes, I might. But *I* find that risk (of missing something interesting) acceptable. So I block spam. Similarly, when I make the decision to filter the posts of certain people from mailing lists I'm on, it means that _to me_, the cost of wading through the crap to get to a few gems is too high. You wouldn't suggest that I MUST spend all my money (time) on high-risk stocks (random people's opinions) in the hope of getting lucky and striking it rich (finding useful or interesting opinions), when I can rather put that money (time) into something like a managed fund (filtered site) or, if I so deem, get a brokerage account and do my own trading (personal filtering), would you? (wow, that came out long and bizzare - I hope the
basic idea came through)
2) That aside, you seem to be mostly advocating that diversity of opinion is a good thing, and tring to warn that filtering will lead to the narrowing of that diversity. My answer is: Yeah, so? If it's what *I* want, who are you to force your (or anyone's) dogma down my throat? I don't listen to religious radio, the rantings of neo-nazis, or the President's public addresses. I don't read _The National Enquirer_, _Globe_, _The Washington Post_, or the _London Times_ (I'm in Austin, TX). Those are my choices. Yours are probably different. Good for you.
3) As others have pointed out, everyone _already_ filters things, in a fairly informal way. My friends recommend books and movies. They tell me about cool or interesting stories they've heard or read about. I don't read any newspapers, but if I did, it'd probably be the local one and not the one in Bangladesh. I can even get restraining orders against people who harass me constantly in person. How are these filters different from the ability Slashdot gives me to filter out flames, trolls, and 'f1r5+ p05+!' messages? In both cases I basically have to trust the filterer. So, I do. I trust my friends to recommend good books and to keep me at least somewhat up to date if they hear about any cool new stuff going on. I also trust the Slashdot staff and moderators not to waste my time with drivel. But that's my choice. If you don't like it, fine, don't filter. See everything. I'd rather be productive.
To people crying censorship: The basic wrongness of censorship is not the suppression of free speech or the right to be heard, but the big-brotherish 'I know better than you' decision that someone _OTHER THAN THE INDIVIDUAL_ has control over what the individual is allowed to see. For better or for worse, I'm the only one with the right to decide what I want to see. So don't try and stop me from seeing things I want. Similarly, don't try and force me to see things I don't want.
It really doesn't matter if you do or do not want your information filtered. We could argue about that forever and get nowhere - we'd be missing the most (only) important issue. What matters here is your ability to choose whether or not you can see everything that is posted. The one thing we must prevent are sites that do not allow visitors the option, whether or not anyone takes it, of reading every post.
As someone pointed out above, free speech is totally independent of whether of not anyone is listening. But we've missed the distinction between listening and hearing. If no one can hear you, you are essentially not speaking. If no one is listening, that's okay. It is our responsiblity to allow everyone to be heard, that is the right guaranteed by free speech and the one that we must protect.
-- First post (by a female living in a state that begins with M and does not end in a vowel with a birthday that falls
I find an argument that "automatic filtering is bad, but scanning a title with my eyes and then choosing whether to read it is not bad" to be academic at best, and downright silly at heart. Filters are a practical solution to an impossible problem: spam aside, usenet has orders of magnitude too much information for a single person to digest. A team of trained Mr. Katzs could not even scan all the titles of the usenet articles, much less peruse the juicy ones. A single article, taken at random from all of usenet, would have a negligible probability of possessing information of interest to me. Killfiles, topical selection, blatant disregard for any titles possessing more than three dollar signs or the word "horny"--these are just practical measures to increase the signal to noise ratio. Call me subhuman if you wish, Mr. Katz. Most would say I'm just pragmatic.
When I first read the article, I thought that Katz was full of it. I've been using killfiles for years with usenet, and I think the new ./ moderation is great.
We are reaching a point, though, where CPU power, internet access, and human frustration are converging. It's one thing when you experience a full, unfiltered discussion then decide to stop putting up with some of the worst elements. It's another when you can press the "block out the idiots" button without ever judging them on your own.
Looking at the situation today, filters are a godsend. In a decade, though, it's concevable that the people who look at the online world without a filter will be rare. Everyone else will be trusting others to sanitize their discussions for them. When that happens, everyone will lose.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
There is no substitute for a thick skin,
Its like watching TV, if you don't like whats
on or find it offensive, change the channel.
Regards Redemption
There is no substitute for a thick skin,
Its like watching TV, if you don't like whats
on or find it offensive, change the channel.
Regards Redemption
Yes thanks I do understand what censorship is,
I was arguing that censorship no matter what the reason is usually a very bad idea, we should be able to make the desicion on personal level whether we expose ourselves to something or not and not have someone elses morality imposed upon us.
Regards Redemption
The Site is called JunkBusters. They offer a proxy server that will enables a person to disallow access to certain sites -- like ad.doubleclick.net, thus the advertising, banners, and cookies don't get in! Nice feature.
This links to the proxy server page. It is distributed as freeware under the GNU GPL. C source and documentation are available.
In fact, their whole website (copyrighted though it is) is stated to be covered under the GNU GPL. I think they understand what they're saying, unlike VP Gore.
They also have a campaign going against the PIII ProcessorID 'feature'. (Radio collars! Step right up and get your ear tag and radio collar!!)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
There's an important point missing here.
Filtering software can be a very powerful tool for prioritizing and aranging.
Personally, I've never used software that flat out ignores or deletes messages, but I do use software that sorts my email. It's far from perfect, but I can make the choice of postponing work-related things while replying to my friends (or vice-versa), or saving a message from someone I don't care for so that I can read it later, instead of having to waste some time on it to realise that I'm too busy to worry.
I used to be on a list that provided technical support, and it was wonderful not to have to worry about questions that already had been answered others - I could concentrate my time on things that everyone else was having trouble figuring out.
Facilities like these are necissary things for an 'information age' to function.
They can also promote bigoted and close-minded behavior, however. Such is life.
-------
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive;
the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
Eric Hoffer
--
As for AOL and other sites rejecting posts on certain criteria, that also has its Usenet equivalent: moderated newsgroups. If you want to post foul language, just don't do it on a site that doesn't tolerate it. Pick a site that does, or make your own site.
The comparison with Free Speech is wrong. Free Speech gives you the right to voice your opinion, but it doesn't force anyone to actually listen to you. And Free Speech says that the government will not prevent you for saying what you want to say; it doesn't give you the right to piss in someone elses livingroom.
If you're upset people don't listen to you, well, play a different tune. Don't blame the person who opens the door to theatre some the audience can leave!
--- Abigail
But you are free to use the products or not! If you don't want to be censored, by all means, don't use a product that filters! Noone is forcing you to use such a product.
--- Abigail
Blocking software like Net Nanny, etc., *is* evil, though.
No it's not. You might not like how it works, but others might like it. You are free to use Net Nanny, and you are free to not use it. Since it will filter for you only if you take specific actions, how can its filtering be evil?
--- Abigail
Someone can be pissy and hornery and insulting and still be right. Algorithms can miss this. Adults have a better chance admitting it.
So what? I can decide not to read the NY Times, not to visit Slashdot, or not to watch Jerry Springer and miss someone who was right. That doesn't make censorship. I would have made the decision, purely based on the lable. Automating such a process doesn't make a different.
Slashdotters afraid of automation?
--- Abigail
And the same is true of newspaper that don't publish articles that are unflattering to themselves, television networks that don't broadcast programs that are unflattering to themselves and you not telling your boss that your coworker thinks you do a lousy job. It's independent of whether something is automated or not.
As for the proposals of your minister, I'd say the minister is evil, not the products. If you kill someone with an axe, you are evil, not the axe.
--- Abigail
There's a vast difference between being gagged and being ignored. Often, it seems, those being ignored confuse the issue with rants about free speech.
I only infringe on your rights if I tell you that you may not speak.
What of my rights when you tell me that I must listen?
I agree with ShutUp Software to a point, but when will it go too far? Once people start blocking everything that offends them, they won't be exposed to anything besides the idea which they already have set in thier mind. It has always been my understanding that the internet is a place where people can freely exchange ideas. If ShutUp Software starts becoming overused, the purpose of the internet, in my opinion, could be totally defeated.