ShutUp Software

Generally known as blocking, filtering, disabling, convenience or preference software, ShutUp Software (my term) is spreading wildly on the Web, especially on e-trading sites where time is literally money. Other sites, including this one, use it so people will have more choices. Here's why I -- a frequently blocked Web writer -- will never use it, and hope nobody else will either.

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."

Comments

Katz misses the point, I think.

[Brian Knotts]

He rails against the "censorship" of people not wanting to listen to people rant and rave, but doesn't seem to understand that the sheer volume of irrelevant flaming, spamming, etc. (on Usenet, for instance) essentially constitutes a kind of censorship itself, because it drowns out the sort of information exchange that the medium was intended for.

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.

"ShutUp Software" -- Web Content Filters and Katz.

[pb]

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.

Response

[astroboy]

I think the basic idea of the article is that if you block things that annoy you, you're going to end up losing out, because there'll inevitably be something of interest in what's filtered out, and by narrowing your exposure to other ideas, you're hurting yourself.

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's a tool

[Ray Dassen]

Filtering / censoring / blocking / killfile / scorefile software are tools. In my opinion, like all tools, they are not evils in and of themselves, but can be bad if people use them wrongly (or are not given a choice not to use them): censorware doesn't censor people, people censor people.

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.

Filters are a good thing

[kels]

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.

John, you're missing a point, if not THE point.

[BlackHawk]

John, I don't usually respond to your columns, though I do read them. I hope you read the public comments attached to your column, even if you don't use Rob's IgnoreWare©.

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.

The coming attention economy

[genehckr]

'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.