That was also [one of my primary concerns](https://ruqqus.com/+technology/post/bf3m/humanity-wastes-about-500-years-per/yil1). Like you said, this would be a wet-dream for advertisers and governments.

It's not much effort to go from that anonymous, but unique identifier, to a person. It only takes using that identifier on a website that knows how you are, like Amazon, Facebook, Ebay, etc or pairing that with an advertising cookie to determine who you are. You'd be surprised how much personal information online-advertisers have on an average internet user, even the ones who are concerned about their privacy.

This is interesting, but I have a few concerns: * What stops spammers from setting up several banks of these keys? It's not significantly different from how telemarketers buy hundreds or thousands of phone-numbers to place calls from. * If the device has an unique identifier (which it appears to), it could be used to track a user across the internet, which is something advertisers and NSA types are very interested in doing. On the flip-side, I'm happy to see attempts being made in this space. I won't hate on innovation (so long as it's not required) that has challenges to overcome. This first pass definitely needs more work and changes.

Take everything with a grain of salt. This could just be the ransomware gang's attempt to cover their tracks.

You don't strengthen cybersecurity with an executive order. That's not how things work.

It does try to establish that connection later, correct. However it's like like starting an argument with "you're racist" before then proving someone is verbally abusive. They're two different subjects.

I looked through about half of the lawsuit, and it seemed rather flimsy. It focused on a lot of stuff like "greed" as it that's evil, and has several unrealistic expectations around verifying user's age, and forcing users to jump through hoops. I hate Reddit as much as anyone else, and I've seen some far more convincing arguments that Reddit allows/enables CP, but the lawsuit I looked at wasn't one of them.

The simple truth is that some covid "conspiracy theories" are true. Or phrased differently, the centrally-controlled highly authoritarian narrative which allows no dissent or nuance, is quite frequently wrong. Sometimes it's... * partially wrong * VERY WRONG * doesn't have sufficient evidence to back up it's claims. * pulls wild assertions out of it's ass * heavily decides the "correct" answer based almost entirely on political preference * suppressing "wrong thing" for no other reason than it conflicts with a political preference I don't really give a fuck about Covid anymore. But if you look at my username "Who Flu" that's inspired by... "World Health Organization Flu." There's a massive amount of stuff, especially from the first 4 months that was well known in the "conspiracy-circles" which went against the narrative, which is almost certainly true. Stopping "conspiracy theories" means stopping a lot of stuff that is true or likely true. Suppressing that which is true, is destructive, but also requires more effort.

> I think we can have different platforms for different things. The problem is people expect 100% free speech, no idiots and zero toxicity and that just isn't gonna happen. Precisely. Whatever rules you pick, there will always be pros and cons. One of the perspectives I'm looking at this from is scientific. Throwing a few examples out there: * Recent corona-virus censorship is a good example of how the world is being held back by censorship, often done by people with little or no background in the thing they're censoring. I estimate many thousands of people have died, and over $1-trillion in economic losses have come as a result. That's not even counting loss of freedom, suicides, increases in drug-use, etc. * Recent censorship aside, people like Eric Weinstein talk about the ["DISC" or Distributed Idea Suppression Complex](https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Distributed_Idea_Suppression_Complex). A lot of smart people make incredible discoveries, which are crushed and suppressed in ways other than overt censorship. * If you try to have a scientific discussion on an open internet forum, you'll get a large number of "armchair scientists" who have little genuine knowledge of a topic, and serve far more to distract and disrupt (even if they mean well) than to contribute to a topic. * Consider how "round earthers" used to be an extreme minority and how they were treated. I can imagine trying to have a round-earth discussion in 2020; you could barely start to talk about round-earth before you're bombarded with the same 20 arguments, which you've thoroughly debunked 19/20 countless times. At some point you might need a highly curated invite-only space to actually advance the science, perhaps to start estimating the size or mass of the earth, the movement of planets. Considering the above, it makes sense that diverse rules are where it's at. I even imagine section of my platform where the rules of that section explicitly state people are allowed to be dicks to eachother, somewhat like a mutual combat arena. A world without rap-battles or comedy-roasts is just not as interesting of a place.

> But it's always a slippery slope and it's frustrating to see it over and over. That's an area I've been putting a lot of thought into. Lets say I'm a software engineer, and a guy with a good idea, who happens to be building some website with social-features. I also like free speech, so I throw it in as much as possible. It's not my goal or interest to police speech, in fact the whole idea of doing content moderation just sounds tedious and unfun. Managing people is pretty much the last thing I want to do. However, lets say this project becomes popular. The natural state of things will be that it will attract some level of garbage, including illegal content, abusive behavior, vile content, etc, and no matter what standard(s) I set, people will complain both that it's too restrictive and not restrictive enough. It's tempting to make promises around protecting free speech, but that can be a liability. No matter what standard you set, people will intentionally abuse it. For example, I've seen plenty of people intentionally abuse free speech policies on sites like Ruqqus and Bitchute, because they hate free speech policies. Or if you wanted to protect users from abusive copyright takedown notices, it could land you in court with expensive legal bills even if you win. Even something like Political or Religious speech, it's tempting to say you would never restrict such a thing, but some religions and politics openly advocate for murder of others. Eventually politicians or governments will take an interest in censoring speech on your site as well. My own project isn't intended to be free-speech in-your-face, but it's got a completely different purpose, and just happens to be free speech. When it's your ass on the line, and you're actually doing it, things look a little different. Something as simple as "I'd like to create a website" necessitates making decisions around what people can or can't post. I'm sure there would be some difference between where you draw that line, and where I do. I've come to realize a few things: * The line exists. Even if you push as close to 100% as possible. * It's better to be honest that you have a line, where you've drawn it, and try to remain consistent. * Understand someone will be unhappy, no matter where you choose to draw that line. I'm always open to suggestions for how to keep that line from moving & have a few ideas myself.

Definitely a big part of it. People need a reason to use the site, more than just "we're free speech."

Setting up infrastructure "from scratch" can be rather expensive and painful. Flying under-the-radar obviously will only go so far, but I understand why Ruqqus might not have made the move yet.

When you take a deep enough look, no platform really hits the "all" mark 100.0%. Some sites like 4chan or voat might be pretty far down the free speech spectrum, but they're maybe 98% there. Ruqqus is probably closer to 95%, Parler and Gab at about 85%, and then when you get to sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc, they're around 30%. These are obviously made-up numbers, but basically free speech is a spectrum, and technically any restriction at all is not 100% pure unrestricted free speech. Personally, I recognize that no platform will hit 100%, I just think the ideal is somewhere in the 85%+ range, AND being transparent, honest, and consistent about what that last 15% to 1% that's restricted. For example, I'm working on a project and I've pretty much already decided that I'll have policies around child porn, abusive behavior, spam, and some NSFL content. Just taking the last one NSFL, the goal isn't to restrict speech, it's just that I'd rather not see it or subject any potential future employees to that nonsense. Sites like Parler and Gab could do a better job communicating that they're mostly free speech, with specific limits.

Of course she is; can't endlessly print money when people have somewhere else to flee to.

This is a good article overall. A few notes: * Unfortunately, cancel culture has such a strong foothold in major institutions, that we may have no choice but to build our own for some time. This isn't necessarily the worst outcome, since ostracizing half the market leaves MANY business opportunities for new businesses. * Even if it is a private platform; we can still call out the private platform for behaving like a bunch of assholes, in order to encourage change or encourage people to not use it. "But private platform" is a bullshit in the context of avoiding critique. * Corporations are acting on behalf of governments, or acting as government-like entities. * While unfortunate and annoying in the short term, I think we should stop trying to save companies like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, and Google from themselves. If we do get them to reverse policies, and continue using them, all we're doing is rewarding them ... rather than taking our business elsewhere.

There's nothing inherently bad about big tech. However most big tech does bad things. Currently, the vast majority of them are engaging in heavy censorship, and manipulating the information we see or don't see.

Lots of Evidence of Arson by Multiple Actors Here: https://ruqqus.com/post/34zh/sources-series-of-wildfires-may-be

Any time I hear the word "disinformation" I already know they're attempting to control the narrative, and be the arbiters of "truth."

The entire website of Twitter should be labeled as "manipulated media." My thought is that after the election, everyone who is not a radical leftist, should refuse to use any radical-leftist social media platform.

True. It wouldn't take much effort to write a a script ("bot") which does that. Still, dual-posting might mean people are more likely to use a site like Gab.

True. They did the same with HCQ and a number of other things.

Hah, his opponents are the ones always talking about "lol at the latest dumb thing trump tweeted!" I've been trying to avoid Trump news for the last 4 years, and the only reason I can't avoid it is because literally everyone talks about it. What Trump could do is first post on a place like Gab, and then only post it to Twitter 30-90 minutes later. Now THAT would be hilarious.