There is no general solution to high-quality large-membership deeply-unpopular discussion. Quality requires discussion filtering, and unpopular requires membership filtering, both of which require long-term identity (even if pseudonymous, the pseudonym is consistent and _will_ leak a bit into other domains). Important and unpopular topics will be attacked by mobs of semi-coordinated actors, sometimes (depending on topic and regime) supported by state-level agencies.
Rational discussion far outside the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window is indistinguishable from conspiracy, and part of the right answer is to just keep such topics off of the public well-known and somewhat respectable fora. “Politics is the mind-killer” may not be exactly right, but politics is the site-killer is a worse slogan while being more true.
We _do_ need places to discuss such things, and in fact they exist. But they’re smaller, more diverse and distributed, harder to find, and generally somewhat lower quality (at least the ones that’ll let me in). They are not open to everyone, fearing infiltration and disruption. They’re not advertised on the more legit sites, for fear of reputational taint (to the larger site). And they tend to drift towards actual craziness over time, because they don’t have public anchors for the discourse. And also because there is a very real correlation between the ability to seriously consider outlandish ideas and the propensity to over-focus on the useless or improbable.
I have always assumed longterm pseudonyms will be traceable, but I have not seen much analysis or datapoints on it. Do you have some links on that?
On coordinated attacks; Can’t a “recursive” karma system that assigns more weight to higher-karma users’ votes, combined with a good moderation team, and possibly an invite-based registry system work? I think you’re too pessimistic. Have many competent people researched this problem at all?
Dr. Hsu is now being “cancelled.” He is using a Google Docs to gather signatures in his defense. That Google Docs was very hard to sign, possibly because of high genuine traffic or DDoS attacks. It’s clear that we have no machinery for coordinating again cancellation. I am no expert, but I can already think of a website that gathers academics, and uses anonymized ring signatures for them to support their peers against attacks.
Honestly, the only single accomplishment I have seen in this area is Sam Harris. He understood the danger early, and communicated that to his followers, subsequently building his platform via direct subscriptions that is somewhat “cancelproof.”
There is no general solution to high-quality large-membership deeply-unpopular discussion. Quality requires discussion filtering, and unpopular requires membership filtering, both of which require long-term identity (even if pseudonymous, the pseudonym is consistent and _will_ leak a bit into other domains). Important and unpopular topics will be attacked by mobs of semi-coordinated actors, sometimes (depending on topic and regime) supported by state-level agencies.
Rational discussion far outside the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window is indistinguishable from conspiracy, and part of the right answer is to just keep such topics off of the public well-known and somewhat respectable fora. “Politics is the mind-killer” may not be exactly right, but politics is the site-killer is a worse slogan while being more true.
We _do_ need places to discuss such things, and in fact they exist. But they’re smaller, more diverse and distributed, harder to find, and generally somewhat lower quality (at least the ones that’ll let me in). They are not open to everyone, fearing infiltration and disruption. They’re not advertised on the more legit sites, for fear of reputational taint (to the larger site). And they tend to drift towards actual craziness over time, because they don’t have public anchors for the discourse. And also because there is a very real correlation between the ability to seriously consider outlandish ideas and the propensity to over-focus on the useless or improbable.
I have always assumed longterm pseudonyms will be traceable, but I have not seen much analysis or datapoints on it. Do you have some links on that?
On coordinated attacks; Can’t a “recursive” karma system that assigns more weight to higher-karma users’ votes, combined with a good moderation team, and possibly an invite-based registry system work? I think you’re too pessimistic. Have many competent people researched this problem at all?
Dr. Hsu is now being “cancelled.” He is using a Google Docs to gather signatures in his defense. That Google Docs was very hard to sign, possibly because of high genuine traffic or DDoS attacks. It’s clear that we have no machinery for coordinating again cancellation. I am no expert, but I can already think of a website that gathers academics, and uses anonymized ring signatures for them to support their peers against attacks.
Honestly, the only single accomplishment I have seen in this area is Sam Harris. He understood the danger early, and communicated that to his followers, subsequently building his platform via direct subscriptions that is somewhat “cancelproof.”