Post by goldensandslash on May 13, 2017 3:06:34 GMT
In a recent post by mainstreet in his commentary on humanity, he stated that it is important that we have both freedom and security.
This implies that freedom vs security is a false dichotomy, and I don't think it is. I think that freedom and security are two opposite ends of the same scale. The more you have of one, the less you get of the other.
Allow me to go into detail on this.
Imagine if you have a world with true freedom. There are no restrictions. Anyone can do anything. Well, at this point, there's nothing stopping anyone from just going up to you and killing you. Well, that's a problem, so you make a law to deal with that.
From now on, killing other people is illegal. That's more secure, as you no longer have to worry about being killed, but now it means you are less free: you no longer have the ability to kill others. One of the things that you could do has been lost. Your life has become more restricted.
This later gets expanded to include laws against kidnapping, theft, and so on. Eventually you end up with laws of a society and then you can function as normal people.
If you go too far in the other direction, you end up with a government that monitors all of its citizens extremely carefully and doesn't let them do a single thing that isn't regulated by them. This is tyranny.
So, in the real world, you end up with a scale of anarchy-tyranny. Most societies fall somewhere in the middle.
That's the real world. But what about the digital world? As strange as it sounds, I think the same principle applies.
On one hand, you have websites that closely regulate what users can and can't say. On the other end, you have websites that are freely open. Let's explore each of these.
Level 1: 4Chan
4Chan is the most uncensored website on the Internet. Literally the only thing that you are not allowed to post there is child porn, and even that decision was met with a lot of scrutiny from 4Chan members. You still occasionally see a child porn post, but mods are always quick to remove it. As such, this is Level 1. Level 0, I suppose, would be a website that allowed everything including child porn, but such a website doesn't exist, since America seems to think that this is one area where they can impose their law on the Internet, despite the fact that the Internet is, you know, the WORLD wide web.
Other than that, though, anything goes. When you go to 4Chan, you will be called a faggot hundreds of times, and that's okay. You will see images of real people getting tortured and killed, and that's okay. You will see demands from male users for female users to post boob pics, and that's okay. You will see mods abusing their power and banning people for no reason, and that's okay.
4Chan is the ideal place for people who don't want their ideas to be censored. The evidence is clear that they will not censor anything at this point. (If you want me to tell you about some truly disgusting stuff that I've seen on 4Chan, I am willing to share and give you nightmares for a while, but please PM me for that, I do not want to post that kind of stuff publicly.)
Level 2: Reddit
Reddit is the next-most free website. Its policy is the same as 4Chan: no child porn, anything else goes. However, unlike 4Chan, Reddit is organized into subreddits, and each subreddit has its own rules that regulate what can and cannot be posted. Reddit is honestly just as disgusting as 4Chan if you are willing to look for it. There is a subreddit, for example, for plotting the murders of children and then carrying them out in the real world. But you have to actually be LOOKING for that in order to find it. You will not just stumble upon it on your own.
As such, Reddit provides a security that 4Chan does not: the ability to look away from the dark side of the website. The cost to doing so, however, is that if you are the type to participate in dark subreddits, your audience is significantly more limited than it would be on 4Chan.
Reddit is ideal for people who want a place to discuss anything, but without running an unnecessary risk of finding something that they never wanted to see.
Level 3: Tumblr
Tumblr is very strict about what can and cannot be posted. However, they oddly seem to appeal to both sides. Tumblr, at times, feels to me like there are two separate sites. A lot of people on Tumblr are feminists, advocating for female supremacy in all matters. They believe that anyone who has a penis is by definition a rapist and ought to be imprisoned or killed. Meanwhile, there's also a lot of people on Tumblr who post a bunch of porn that's degrading to women. They believe that women are objects to be used and then discarded (Fem-dom/Male-sub porn is notoriously rare on Tumblr). And then there's also the third, significantly smaller, group, which just posts about the latest TV shows. But again, that group barely registers on the radar compared to the other two.
Now, the security here is that the different parts of the site seem to pretend that each of the others don't exist. I've talked to enough porn posters to realize that they honestly don't know the feminism movement there is so strong, and I've talked to a lot of feminists (after lying about my gender, because they won't talk to me otherwise) who were completely unaware that people used Tumblr for porn. As such, if you'd like to join one of these groups, you're effectively heavily censored, as you can then ONLY use Tumblr for that purpose from now on and nothing else.
Tumblr is a good place for people who want to deal with like-minded people, but still keeping the other side there.
Obviously, Tumblr is incredibly limited, because if you want to do LITERALLY ANYTHING other than these two things, you're going to have difficulty, but I can't really think of a better example of a well-known website that has two sides to an argument and separates them from each other. But a hypothetical other website that can do this can do so on any number of other issues, not just misogyny/misandry.
Level 4: Facebook
Facebook's terms of service don't really say much about what kind of content you can post. Want to post a picture of your penis/vagina on Facebook? Go ahead. But then, as soon as you finish with that, watch how many friends you lose. I mean, unless that's the type of content that you are usually posting, people don't friend you on Facebook unless they want to see the content that you are making. So by doing something out of the ordinary, you're going to invoke a strong response. And Facebook's algorithms guarantee that you will only see posts that are similar to what you're posting.
This plants you into the middle of an echo chamber. You feel safe here. Your friends are like you. If someone calls you gay or retarded or whatever, you won't see it. You're safe here. On the other hand, good luck getting your friends who don't think the way you do to see any of your posts.
Facebook is a good place for people who want to feel safe, but don't want to feel controlled.
Level 5: Mainstream Media
Websites belonging to the mainstream media are the most dangerous, as they often "hide" any comments from view that disagree with their news stories. You know how President Obama was the worst president in all of American history? You know, cause he was black? No? Well, that's what Fox News told me. And if you read any Fox News article, you'll see comments that agree with it. Because they hide the comments that disagree with it. (Admittedly, they have been doing less of this now. It seems like even they can't defend the Trump administration very well.)
Overall, the mainstream media is good at controlling you, but you will be safe from any and all external thought. No one will ever disagree with you, so you will be at peace. This is a good place for... people who like that type of thing, I guess.
Yeah, okay, if it isn't obvious from my tone and word choice there, let me be blunt about it: I prefer the lower levels. Each side has its ups and its downs. One side gives you total freedom to say whatever the fuck you want. One side ensures that you won't ever have to hear anything unpleasant. Much like security and freedom in the real world. One side lets you do whatever you want, the other side assures you that you won't ever have to deal with bad things.
And like the real world, most people fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I personally place WyvernIRC between Level 2 and Level 3.
But at the end of the day, I would prefer a Level 1 website over any other. Why? Because any idea can be placed there. Oh, sure, there are a lot of bad ideas on 4Chan. The idea of "we should go around and make fun of fat people" is something that might pop up on 4Chan. And that, on its surface, sounds like a terrible idea. You know what else sounded like a terrible idea when it was first proposed? Gay marriage. Women's voting rights. And so on. All the good ideas start out bad. While I highly doubt that making fun of fat people will be seen as a good idea in the future, who knows? Allowing gays to get married and allowing women to vote probably seemed equally silly back in the day. That's why it's important that Level 1 exists: because we need these ideas in order to move forward. Whatever the next big revolutionary idea is, I guarantee you that it will start on 4Chan.
This implies that freedom vs security is a false dichotomy, and I don't think it is. I think that freedom and security are two opposite ends of the same scale. The more you have of one, the less you get of the other.
Allow me to go into detail on this.
Imagine if you have a world with true freedom. There are no restrictions. Anyone can do anything. Well, at this point, there's nothing stopping anyone from just going up to you and killing you. Well, that's a problem, so you make a law to deal with that.
From now on, killing other people is illegal. That's more secure, as you no longer have to worry about being killed, but now it means you are less free: you no longer have the ability to kill others. One of the things that you could do has been lost. Your life has become more restricted.
This later gets expanded to include laws against kidnapping, theft, and so on. Eventually you end up with laws of a society and then you can function as normal people.
If you go too far in the other direction, you end up with a government that monitors all of its citizens extremely carefully and doesn't let them do a single thing that isn't regulated by them. This is tyranny.
So, in the real world, you end up with a scale of anarchy-tyranny. Most societies fall somewhere in the middle.
That's the real world. But what about the digital world? As strange as it sounds, I think the same principle applies.
On one hand, you have websites that closely regulate what users can and can't say. On the other end, you have websites that are freely open. Let's explore each of these.
Level 1: 4Chan
4Chan is the most uncensored website on the Internet. Literally the only thing that you are not allowed to post there is child porn, and even that decision was met with a lot of scrutiny from 4Chan members. You still occasionally see a child porn post, but mods are always quick to remove it. As such, this is Level 1. Level 0, I suppose, would be a website that allowed everything including child porn, but such a website doesn't exist, since America seems to think that this is one area where they can impose their law on the Internet, despite the fact that the Internet is, you know, the WORLD wide web.
Other than that, though, anything goes. When you go to 4Chan, you will be called a faggot hundreds of times, and that's okay. You will see images of real people getting tortured and killed, and that's okay. You will see demands from male users for female users to post boob pics, and that's okay. You will see mods abusing their power and banning people for no reason, and that's okay.
4Chan is the ideal place for people who don't want their ideas to be censored. The evidence is clear that they will not censor anything at this point. (If you want me to tell you about some truly disgusting stuff that I've seen on 4Chan, I am willing to share and give you nightmares for a while, but please PM me for that, I do not want to post that kind of stuff publicly.)
Level 2: Reddit
Reddit is the next-most free website. Its policy is the same as 4Chan: no child porn, anything else goes. However, unlike 4Chan, Reddit is organized into subreddits, and each subreddit has its own rules that regulate what can and cannot be posted. Reddit is honestly just as disgusting as 4Chan if you are willing to look for it. There is a subreddit, for example, for plotting the murders of children and then carrying them out in the real world. But you have to actually be LOOKING for that in order to find it. You will not just stumble upon it on your own.
As such, Reddit provides a security that 4Chan does not: the ability to look away from the dark side of the website. The cost to doing so, however, is that if you are the type to participate in dark subreddits, your audience is significantly more limited than it would be on 4Chan.
Reddit is ideal for people who want a place to discuss anything, but without running an unnecessary risk of finding something that they never wanted to see.
Level 3: Tumblr
Tumblr is very strict about what can and cannot be posted. However, they oddly seem to appeal to both sides. Tumblr, at times, feels to me like there are two separate sites. A lot of people on Tumblr are feminists, advocating for female supremacy in all matters. They believe that anyone who has a penis is by definition a rapist and ought to be imprisoned or killed. Meanwhile, there's also a lot of people on Tumblr who post a bunch of porn that's degrading to women. They believe that women are objects to be used and then discarded (Fem-dom/Male-sub porn is notoriously rare on Tumblr). And then there's also the third, significantly smaller, group, which just posts about the latest TV shows. But again, that group barely registers on the radar compared to the other two.
Now, the security here is that the different parts of the site seem to pretend that each of the others don't exist. I've talked to enough porn posters to realize that they honestly don't know the feminism movement there is so strong, and I've talked to a lot of feminists (after lying about my gender, because they won't talk to me otherwise) who were completely unaware that people used Tumblr for porn. As such, if you'd like to join one of these groups, you're effectively heavily censored, as you can then ONLY use Tumblr for that purpose from now on and nothing else.
Tumblr is a good place for people who want to deal with like-minded people, but still keeping the other side there.
Obviously, Tumblr is incredibly limited, because if you want to do LITERALLY ANYTHING other than these two things, you're going to have difficulty, but I can't really think of a better example of a well-known website that has two sides to an argument and separates them from each other. But a hypothetical other website that can do this can do so on any number of other issues, not just misogyny/misandry.
Level 4: Facebook
Facebook's terms of service don't really say much about what kind of content you can post. Want to post a picture of your penis/vagina on Facebook? Go ahead. But then, as soon as you finish with that, watch how many friends you lose. I mean, unless that's the type of content that you are usually posting, people don't friend you on Facebook unless they want to see the content that you are making. So by doing something out of the ordinary, you're going to invoke a strong response. And Facebook's algorithms guarantee that you will only see posts that are similar to what you're posting.
This plants you into the middle of an echo chamber. You feel safe here. Your friends are like you. If someone calls you gay or retarded or whatever, you won't see it. You're safe here. On the other hand, good luck getting your friends who don't think the way you do to see any of your posts.
Facebook is a good place for people who want to feel safe, but don't want to feel controlled.
Level 5: Mainstream Media
Websites belonging to the mainstream media are the most dangerous, as they often "hide" any comments from view that disagree with their news stories. You know how President Obama was the worst president in all of American history? You know, cause he was black? No? Well, that's what Fox News told me. And if you read any Fox News article, you'll see comments that agree with it. Because they hide the comments that disagree with it. (Admittedly, they have been doing less of this now. It seems like even they can't defend the Trump administration very well.)
Overall, the mainstream media is good at controlling you, but you will be safe from any and all external thought. No one will ever disagree with you, so you will be at peace. This is a good place for... people who like that type of thing, I guess.
Yeah, okay, if it isn't obvious from my tone and word choice there, let me be blunt about it: I prefer the lower levels. Each side has its ups and its downs. One side gives you total freedom to say whatever the fuck you want. One side ensures that you won't ever have to hear anything unpleasant. Much like security and freedom in the real world. One side lets you do whatever you want, the other side assures you that you won't ever have to deal with bad things.
And like the real world, most people fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I personally place WyvernIRC between Level 2 and Level 3.
But at the end of the day, I would prefer a Level 1 website over any other. Why? Because any idea can be placed there. Oh, sure, there are a lot of bad ideas on 4Chan. The idea of "we should go around and make fun of fat people" is something that might pop up on 4Chan. And that, on its surface, sounds like a terrible idea. You know what else sounded like a terrible idea when it was first proposed? Gay marriage. Women's voting rights. And so on. All the good ideas start out bad. While I highly doubt that making fun of fat people will be seen as a good idea in the future, who knows? Allowing gays to get married and allowing women to vote probably seemed equally silly back in the day. That's why it's important that Level 1 exists: because we need these ideas in order to move forward. Whatever the next big revolutionary idea is, I guarantee you that it will start on 4Chan.