"It's really, really hard to build a world" - Philip on Civility

[Anaiya Ahren]

Quote

That's taking down content that offends certain people,

Can we please not continue this disingenuous game of pretending "offense" is the big risk here.  Offense might be a good motivator to someone who wants to maximize use of their site by not putting off too many people with distasteful content but my concerns are about the safety of our communities, about radicalization, dehumanization, fear mongering, hate mongering and dangerous misinformation and disinformation.

Whether or not I'm offended by "replacement theory" conspiracies has no impact on how likely someone else is to believe and act on the notion; I can't bring dead people back to life by not being offended.

 

Quote

I use the public square analogy because of the protections that section 230 provides.

  Private property is not analogous to public property where speech is concerned, and non government operators are not analogous to the government where speech is concerned.

 

 

Quote

A private bar does not have said protections, they'd get into trouble if a customer one night decided to play a copyrighted movie on all the TVs for all the patrons.

The inability to operate some services and the significant barrier to operating others is the rationale for the 230 protections, any liability offline that doesn't make whole services impossible and provide a significant barrier to others is not analogous when discussing why those protections exist.

The ordinary operation of a bar doesn't involve patrons having free for all access to the tvs - it's no impediment to a bar's ordinary business to not allow that. 

 

User submitted content on many internet platform services is more akin to patron chatter than whatever is playing on the bar's tvs.  Operator liability for user-submissions is  more more like making the bar responsible for whether their patrons recite, sing or hum a copyright work than it is like making a venue operator liable for what is played on their TVs.

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

15 minutes ago, Anaiya Ahren said:

but my concerns are about the safety of our communities, about radicalization, dehumanization, fear mongering, hate mongering and dangerous misinformation and disinformation.

Amazing how many people seem to believe that "free speech" is more important than these concerns.

[Theresa Tennyson]

5 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

 

I use the public square analogy because of the protections that section 230 provides. A private bar does not have said protections, they'd get into trouble if a customer one night decided to play a copyrighted movie on all the TVs for all the patrons. Or perhaps more relevant to SL, a DJ set up every Friday and no one was paying the license fees. A website can allow users to serve anything through their platform and face little to no consequences due to 230.

Explain to us how a private bar would be in a situation where a customer would be in a position to play a copyrighted movie on all the TV's without the bar owner's knowledge and permission.

Are you saying that the bar owner would get in trouble if a drunk patron jumped over the bar and hooked up video player to the televisions without the bar owner's knowledge?

Or, more likely, would they only be liable if they set up a situation where they knew of the situation, allowed it and advertised it or set up a recurring event?

Section 230 exists because with the way internet sites that allow customer posting work, the owners generally have no control over what any given customer will post until after the fact, and aren't in a position to know the specifics of every given post.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Theresa Tennyson

[Pixieplumb Flanagan]

On 6/2/2022 at 12:16 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

So I'll note again that the people who have griefed me for two decades in SL come from the same 4chan websites now frequented by certain school shooters, and this isn't an accident.

Yes, owner of the liberal site "The Hill," certainly anti-gun and a leftist Democrat should not have bankrolled Christopher Poole, owner of 4chan. I protested this loudly and still do. Yes, money and power. 

As  a registered Democrat I vote for any and all gun control and more is needed, raising the age, making universal background checks, etc. It's not enough by itself or we wouldn't have dozens of shooting deaths every weekend in NYC.

I surely do hope you're not accusing me of  ever griefing you, because that would be a lie and you know it would.  I've had precisely zero in world interactions with you, and I'm happy to keep to that schedule. 

[Innula Zenovka]

6 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

I didn't say no moderation. I said curated content. A rule that says "no random spam" is much different than a rule that says "no [type of] flags". That's taking down content that offends certain people, while leaving up the ones they do agree with. And as we've seen, as has been said in these very forums, if you don't speak out against it/prevent it, then you agree with it.

I use the public square analogy because of the protections that section 230 provides. A private bar does not have said protections, they'd get into trouble if a customer one night decided to play a copyrighted movie on all the TVs for all the patrons. Or perhaps more relevant to SL, a DJ set up every Friday and no one was paying the license fees. A website can allow users to serve anything through their platform and face little to no consequences due to 230.

I don't see how Section 230 is relevant, at least not as you explain it.    The owner of a site cannot be expected to know who owns the IP to any particular item uploaded to the site, and neither can they know whether whoever uploads it has the permission of the IP holder to use it.    Section 230 protects them, as I understand it, so long as they respond promptly from the copyright holder to remove offending items.

What's that got to do with a site deciding what sort of content it will or won't permit -- banning content depicting extreme violence, or content that's sexual in nature, or content promoting particular political ideas, or content that's off-topic to the site or whatever?  

One is a question of protecting other people's intellectual property, and the other is a question of the kind of site the owner wants to run and the kind of audience/advertisers they want to attract.

[Luna Bliss]

19 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Well, you've made my point for me on multiple counts. But hey, why use this charity with such low recognition value and ideological tilt that is obvious and say it's only 13 million, when you could cite Save the Children, with more recognition value, that says 17 million? Well I say, don't, as Save the Children is the most top heavy and least effective charity I ever dealt with in my years at the UN. And don't go by some campaigning NGO's tendentious statistics. Think. Use common sense. Research.

So let's start with the USDA's statistics that show 6 million children as *food insecure* which is not the same as "hungry".  That's 0.08 percent of the population, and therefore 0.018 million. And that's *food insecure* which is NOT the same as hungry. It means non-nutritious or low-nutrition and insufficient food, not absence of food.

Let's note that half of the children in America now are people of colour. So it's still a serious problem you can work on practically and beneficially, just not with the tendentious ideology you hold, and the hysteria you invoke, with the solutions you imagine (so...let's have more abortions so we won't have as many hungry children? Or what's the logic?).

The existence of the food insecure is a complex phenomenon, not the lock-step result of some imagined cabal of neoliberals starving children in basements. There are all sorts of factors you can site, with statistics and linkie-links, but you don't want to be confused by facts. Drug addiction, imprisonment, single mother households, gangs in schools, etc. You can write all those off as "neo-liberalism" if you like; since I live in these neighbourhoods and my children went to these city schools, I'm here to tell you it's not what you imagine, but far more complex. 

Example, in Buffalo, the mass shooting took place at a TOPS supermarket, which the Black community there struggled to get opened in their wasteland of no stores, a direct result of racism, but also the unwillingness of stores to go into what they view as, and are actually, high crime areas -- so it's a vicious cycle. Social scientists campaign to get fresh foods into neighbourhoods and even give you spacebux if you are chronically ill on Medicaid, like me, that can only be used at farmer's markets, and only for fresh fruits and vegetables. I always asked the Latinos who have driven 6 hours and slept in their cars with their produce if they really mind taking the spacebux and can they cash them out efficiently. And the answer is yes, because that agency maintains a desk there at the market to handle EBT cards, etc.

To be sure, that market is a 2.3 mile walk from my house, because I am not spending $5.00 round trip to take 4 buses there (NYC is on a grid and like that) or spend $20 for a cab there and back which kind of undoes the point. Still, on a good day, I will make that walk and shop on the edges of the market to avoid crowds, and while $261 per year in fresh fruit and vegetable spacebux is not going to change my health, still, it's something and you can freeze some of it.

So...Do you think that TOPS, which the gunman researched diligently as the place that would yield the maximum number of victims and the highest coverage of his horrendous ideology, will ever open there again? They've closed now. So give generous directly to the community funds in Buffalo. Or to Invisible Hands, which brings groceries directly to people in need who can't get out, my daughter volunteered for them for some time. Anyone can send money on their phone, and that can be directly used to feed a family on the spot. 

No, the illusions of ideological extremism don't fix society and lead to violence that doesn't change society for the better. There has to be a combination of public and private means, state and religious programs, individual initiative and corporate programs to meet the need. Destroying wealth and redistributing the meager remains doesn't work. Regulating wealth production does. That's why America long had the highest number of immigrants in the world, and still has many who want to move into it, even as you wish to move out.

The point of the child hunger website I posted wasn't to quibble over the exact number of hungry or food insecure children which exist in the US, but to present the video where children describe their experience. I should have known better than to expect any empathy from you that might occur from watching children express their feelings about experiencing hunger I guess?

The exact number of hungry and food insecure children will vary according to factors such as qualification for social services and school breakfast/lunch programs in operation. America became more aware of the problem when schools were closed due to Covid btw -- schools that previously provided additional meals for food insecure households.

With your own situation you point to another population underserved -- senior citizens -- as well as the problem of food deserts in large cities. Fortunately, where I live we have a daily meal delivered to senior citizens and quite a few food banks are also in operation, some governmentally provided and some charities via various churches in the area. These do make a dent in the problem but don't solve it by any means, and rely too much on strangers to provide extra cans of food they might have.

I don't see a problem with redistribution of wealth such as we had during the New Deal after the Great Depression, when the wealthy were taxed more (as high as 83% in 1940). And some say neoliberalism was a backlash against the New Deal as it took hold and progressively lowered taxes on the wealthy, which is another reason I hate it.

Of course hunger and poverty is a multifaceted problem with all sorts of factors that need to be taken into consideration -- I never said it wasn't. The point is that without money most of these approaches don't have the means to do so because neoliberalism sucks the money out of society as it funnels money to the to wealthiest, leaving very little for those in poverty at the bottom levels. The root of the problem is the economic system of neoliberalism. Why you would champion a system that stratifies society to this degree makes no sense. I mean you're almost at the level of the 'freedumbs' on the far right.

[Prokofy Neva]

19 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

The point of the child hunger website I posted wasn't to quibble over the exact number of hungry or food insecure children which exist in the US, but to present the video where children describe their experience. I should have known better than to expect any empathy from you that might occur from watching children express their feelings about experiencing hunger I guess?

The exact number of hungry and food insecure children will vary according to factors such as qualification for social services and school breakfast/lunch programs in operation. America became more aware of the problem when schools were closed due to Covid btw -- schools that previously provided additional meals for food insecure households.

With your own situation you point to another population underserved -- senior citizens -- as well as the problem of food deserts in large cities. Fortunately, where I live we have a daily meal delivered to senior citizens and quite a few food banks are also in operation, some governmentally provided and some charities via various churches in the area. These do make a dent in the problem but don't solve it by any means, and rely too much on strangers to provide extra cans of food they might have.

I don't see a problem with redistribution of wealth such as we had during the New Deal after the Great Depression, when the wealthy were taxed more (as high as 83% in 1940). And some say neoliberalism was a backlash against the New Deal as it took hold and progressively lowered taxes on the wealthy, which is another reason I hate it.

Of course hunger and poverty is a multifaceted problem with all sorts of factors that need to be taken into consideration -- I never said it wasn't. The point is that without money most of these approaches don't have the means to do so because neoliberalism sucks the money out of society as it funnels money to the to wealthiest, leaving very little for those in poverty at the bottom levels. The root of the problem is the economic system of neoliberalism. Why you would champion a system that stratifies society to this degree makes no sense. I mean you're almost at the level of the 'freedumbs' on the far right.

It's not possible to have reasonable debates with ideologues who assume that if someone disagrees with their incendiary generalities, why, they must be callous and cruel and indifferent to hungry or food insecure children and that you "should have known better to expect empathy". That is, if someone disagrees that these wildly ideological and usually extremist terms like "neoliberal" and "structrual" need challenging, questioning, unpacking, grounding in real life experience, etc., what they must lack is empathy. It shouldn't need explaining that it's not lack of empathy, but a practical desire to actual address the problem without imposing wildly ideological and unfounded "solutions". 

If I have to choose between my church and AOC coming to power, guess what I will choose. But I don't have to get to that point or invoke it as a horror because I have a less ideological and impractical local assemblyman who is more willing to compromise and get things done, even with his political slant towards AOC.  Etc.

Since I don't believe in the ideology that invented the term "neoliberalism" (various forms of Marxism and socialism), I don't believe that this airy and inanimate entity does things like "sucks the money out of society" and "funnels money to the wealthiest," who must therefore by definition be undeserving and evil. Exasperated with your inability to get people to believe in your religious mantras, you begin calling names, "freedumbs" etc etc. So I'm done, and if I ever answer you, it's not to convince you of anything, as you have your deeply held articles of fate, but to speak over your shoulder in general to people who wish to think about these topics.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[cunomar]

If everyone would just agree to disagree the world would be a wonderful place 🤣

 

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, Codex Alpha said:

To be fair, and the risk of going off topic, that would be an unfair comparison.

I can disagree with an implementation or policy, and not be a threat to anyone.

I can disagree with 0 second orbs, and yet not be a griefer, troll or threat to anyone.

I can be against the over-regulation of firearms, and not be some psycho or criminal.

Or the classic comparison in this vein "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" regarding surveillance, monitoring, etc. One can have nothing to hide at least for criminal or other actions, and still be against unreasonable search or surveillance of their lives.

I can be seriously upset about a sudden requirement by an employer to submit to a random drug test, or be *****ed by a needle - and yet not do any drugs.

We need to discuss ideas here only, and not the person underneath. It's also a trait of intelligence to discuss and explore ideas without actually having to agree with them, or even believe in them ourselves - as by discussion or knowledge and understanding can be expanded.

 

I'm also for Free Speech and Expression to be allowed for all, or NONE at all, and nothing inbetween and just short of breaking the TOS.

I don't agree that you should be able to AR or call to ban those who hold different political views to your own - even if it is Nazi, or other. Being offended or severely disagreeing with another worldview should not be considered abuse, unless they have gone outside that normal expression and purposefully have done things to grief, troll or taunt you... then that becomes an actionable abuse report.

If we are to exclude, silence, censor, limit and ultimately ban everyone who offends us - then the same governance should extend to anything political and social, and scrub SL of all of it.

Including movements or ideas that YOU may support.

After all, is Second LIfe advertised as a virtual world for everyone to come explore and build, or as some sort of political and social platform to spread ideas on their dime?

No, because you are an enabler of the culture. It's like the time Philip banned several dozen denizens of Something Awful, which crossed over into 4chan and inworld griefing groups like "b" etc. There are those that maintain the land or maintain the open prims where griefing items are stored so that alts can easily get them when they re-spawn. They hold the cloak. They post selfies of themselves with griefers (even certain Lindens have done this historically) yet can remain technically free of the charge of griefing because they haven't acted or haven't been caught

All this "outrage on principle" like the refusal to accept random drug tests may all sound noble, but it enables a culture where the drug users can also get up their high dudgeon and undermine the system.

The Lindens remove swastikas as a hate symbol. They do take action on anti-gay attacks. So it's reasonable to expect that they can act on a "Z," but even if they won't, I can, and find it fully justified. 

It's not what I support or don't. SL is not real; it is virtual; it is a highly controlled and censored society which is also highly uneven in its management. So the discussion is about how you cope within that artificial set of rules. In RL, under the First Amendment, I wouldn't report a swastika despite aversion to it because it is "protected speech". If it appears on the tombstones of Jewish graves, then I would, because then it is not just vandalism but hate speech which in some communities and states can lead to civil or criminal action. The Buffalo shooter is not just arrested for murder, but hatred of minorities, and not just that, but white supremacist terror. That might not even have been possible (all three of those types of charges) even 10 or 15 years ago, but the media and society at large has increasingly come to accept this as necessary.

Regardless of the advertising, SL is a world where capture roleplay is tolerated and many kinds of violent and broadly offensive activity that LL will not act on, especially if in adult reasons, despite championing an event like "Billion Rising" in the "Destinations" or a blog post. 

So ultimately this guy's post about gun control, which people especially on the right will pick apart, is a reasonable analogy because those with the culture of objection may not themselves be miscreants but they create the climate of impunity and don't want to take responsibility for it. The Wired journo stumping to go after Japanese state capitalist toy companies while willing to overlook Ken Lerer's bankrolling of Moot and flippant Washpo articles on the edginess of 4chan is exactly part of the problem. He doesn't want to ban 4chan because: 1st Amendment, although the platform providers could unilaterally make that decision. He wants to be able to target only the extreme right or foreigners (Russia, Japan, whatever) but not look at leftists and liberals at home who also make up that culture of enablement and impunity. And this climate is not one to be legislated. It is one that changes with social movements like #MeToo. If every company that suffered a DDoS complained to Ken Lerer that his support of a group that not only commits them, but their founder who is supposedly becoming more artistic and less of a griefer won't denounce them, then they can boycott him and his works and socially ostracize him until he grasps that if you want free speech for all, then you have to combat DDoS for all, and not accept violence/force as a method, by looking the other way when people you don't like get DDoS'd, instead of universally condemning the tactic. 

[Luna Bliss]

20 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

if I ever answer you, it's not to convince you of anything, as you have your deeply held articles of fate

The problem is that you've never offered anything that convinces me we don't have a stratification in society which funnels too many goods and rights to the top wealthy/powerful oligarchs. It's like you have a blind spot because a socialist person (Marx) noticed the problem and wrote a lot about it, a philosophy you associate with communism.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Luna Bliss

[Mollymews]

12 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Would not a better analogy be a bar, or some other privately-owned place that's open to the public?    While the bar owner is generally responsible for maintaining good order on the premises, no one suggests they're responsible for everything that goes on there, and no one questions their right to ask customers to leave if they're they're making a nuisance of themselves or upsetting the other patrons.

is a interesting thought that a forum could be considered in the same way as a pub. Where members of the public are invited to come participate

a thing tho about the pub is that the conversations at each of tables are considered private to the people at the table. This is an expectation that we have when we go to the pub. That we on a table are not part of the conversation on another table. And if we interject ourselves into another table's conversation, are typically asked to go mind our own business

a forum like this one for example is not a collection of private conversations, is a single table with everybody able to participate in the conversation. Is more like the pub owner has an open mic stage where anybody can stand and address the patrons as a singular body. And the pub patrons can either ignore the speaker completely, or argue with them, or support what is being said with approval or acclaim

a question is what does the pub owner have to put in place to avoid liability for what the speaker says on the pub's open mic stage ?

they would have to provide a list of rules to the speaker before they get on the mic. Can't say this, can't say that. Like a ToS

and they would have to have a way to cut the speaker off. Turn off the mic, kick the speaker out of the pub, etc. Again like a ToS

which seems pretty reasonable in this pub like context

or the pub owner is not so much a pub owner. They are more like a radio station owner which provides a talkback facility. Where people are invited to speak publicly to the station audience. In the talkback radio station context setting, the conversation has to be actively moderated in realtime. There is a to-air broadcast delay and a bleep button (pre-moderation). And if the conversation being broadcast is not actively moderated in realtime then the station can be shut down

given who voted which way on the US Supreme Court recently, it was 5-4 with Justice Kagan in the minority with Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas. Justice Kavanaugh while voting with the majority expressed a view that should it come again later to a full bench hearing then he has reservations which he will take into consideration at that time.

I think that decision, should it come again before the US Supreme Court, is more going to go down the talk back radio path than it will the open mic stage pub owner with ToS path

at  this high level of judicial decision-making, justices don't care about the cost to business of their decisions. What they only care about is do the conditions imposed by the law create a constitutionally undue burden on the business

if the forum owner argues that as we have a billion active users, is a burden to pre-moderate or actively moderate in realtime, then the Supreme Court wont in the normal course accept this argument. A burden we create for ourselves is not an undue burden. And the Court will refer the forum owner to the legislature for relief. Which is how section 230  came about. Is within the power of the legislature to grant this kind of relief 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Mollymews
typs

[Prokofy Neva]

16 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

The problem is that you've never offered anything that convinces me we don't have a stratification in society which funnels too many goods and rights to the top wealthy/powerful oligarchs. It's like you have a blind spot because a socialist person (Marx) noticed the problem and wrote a lot about it, a philosophy you associate with communism.

The beginning of enlightenment comes when you step back and notice your irrational belief in impersonal forces like Hegel's "world-historical forces" that "funnel" or "suck out of" or "steal". Then you begin to contemplate that redistribution is actually the theft, whatever the stories of "unearned gains" of the rich. This concept that there are impersonal agents unattached to people (or if attached, only evil people we don't like) that unfairly channel goods and rights to "the top" or "the most wealthy" or "the most powerful" which are always ill-defined, so that anyone better off than those surrounding, whether Elon Musk in the "one percent" or a Pakistani newspaper vendor or deli owner, himself a victim of racism and in the "99 percent", can wrongly impersonate such an evil.

In these ideologies, the prevalence of phenomena like racism and discrimination mean that every single person in a class or race is guilty automatically of it. There's no personal agency or autonomy or redemption. Etc. "Off with their heads! Nail to the lampost!" It's the belief in wide, sweeping forces and notions that generally serve to prop up the sense of self-worth and importance of the believers themselves, when wielded. The belief that disagreement isn't legitimate, but a function of "lack of empathy" or "blindness" or "evil". A belief that if you if you possess what is in fact a cramped, generalized, rigid ideology that is sanctified only because you believe is right, why, someone with different beliefs must also have a cramped and rigid ideology and believe in caricatures of notions like "Marx" only "associated" with communism. Etc. Etc. Or they "must not understand actually what the real definition of socialism is". And so on. It really is a hopeless situation so I can't spend more time on it.

[cunomar]

Im RL familiar with a single pub ban automatically results in a comprehensive ban of all pubs/bars in your locality . 

So if the guy that runs the bar got dumped by your mum in school 40 years ago or you got the job his son wanted 20 years ago you will be outcast and it will be enforced by police .

To make it appear legal they will occasionally lift the ban though everyone knows its a temporary respite .

Of all those i know who were ever put on this list i cannot think of one who didn't ultimately decide to earn the ban and wind up in prison .

Silverstein explained it best after 36 years in solitary confinement when he said "they keep treating me mean so i keep getting meaner" .

[Luna Bliss]

25 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

is a interesting thought that a forum could be considered in the same way as a pub. Where members of the public are invited to come participate

a thing tho about the pub is that the conversations at each of tables are considered private to the people at the table. This is an expectation that we have when we go to the pub. That we on a table are not part of the conversation on another table. And if we interject ourselves into another table's conversation, are typically asked to go mind our own business

a forum like this one for example is not a collection of private conversations, is a single table with everybody able to participate in the conversation. Is more like the pub owner has an open mic stage where anybody can stand and address the patrons as a singular body. And the pub patrons can either ignore the speaker completely, or argue with them, or support what is being said with approval or acclaim

a question is what does the pub owner have to put in place to avoid liability for what the speaker says on the pub's open mic stage ?

they would have to provide a list of rules to the speaker before they get on the mic. Can't say this, can't say that. Like a ToS

and they would have to have a way to cut the speaker off. Turn off the mic, kick the speaker out of the pub, etc. Again like a ToS

which seems pretty reasonable in this pub like context

or the pub owner is not so much a pub owner. They are more like a radio station owner which provides a talkback facility. Where people are invited to speak publicly to the station audience. In the talkback radio station context setting, the conversation has to be actively moderated in realtime. There is a to-air broadcast delay and a bleep button (pre-moderation). And if the conversation being broadcast is not actively moderated in realtime then the station can be shut down

given who voted which way on the US Supreme Court recently, it was 5-4 with Justice Kagan in the minority with Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas. Justice Kavanaugh while voting with the majority expressed a view that should it come again later to a full bench hearing then he has reservations which he will take into consideration at that time.

I think that decision, should it come again before the US Supreme Court, is more going to go down the talk back radio path than it will the open mic stage pub owner with ToS path

at  this high level of judicial decision-making, justices don't care about the cost to business of their decisions. What they only care about is do the conditions imposed by the law create a constitutionally undue burden on the business

if the forum owner argues that as we have a billion active users, is a burden to pre-moderate or actively moderate in realtime, then the Supreme Court wont in the normal course accept this argument. A burden we create for ourselves is not an undue burden. And the Court will refer the forum owner to the legislature for relief. Which is how section 230  came about. Is within the power of the legislature to grant this kind of relief 

Unfortunately, in the Supreme Court now we do have to take into consideration what a Christian Nationalist would do...what would further their cause.

[Love Zhaoying]

Hope we get back on topic..

[Luna Bliss]

9 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The beginning of enlightenment comes when you step back and notice your irrational belief in impersonal forces like Hegel's "world-historical forces" that "funnel" or "suck out of" or "steal". Then you begin to contemplate that redistribution is actually the theft, whatever the stories of "unearned gains" of the rich. This concept that there are impersonal agents unattached to people (or if attached, only evil people we don't like) that unfairly channel goods and rights to "the top" or "the most wealthy" or "the most powerful" which are always ill-defined, so that anyone better off than those surrounding, whether Elon Musk in the "one percent" or a Pakistani newspaper vendor or deli owner, himself a victim of racism and in the "99 percent", can wrongly impersonate such an evil.

In these ideologies, the prevalence of phenomena like racism and discrimination mean that every single person in a class or race is guilty automatically of it. There's no personal agency or autonomy or redemption. Etc. "Off with their heads! Nail to the lampost!" It's the belief in wide, sweeping forces and notions that generally serve to prop up the sense of self-worth and importance of the believers themselves, when wielded. The belief that disagreement isn't legitimate, but a function of "lack of empathy" or "blindness" or "evil". A belief that if you if you possess what is in fact a cramped, generalized, rigid ideology that is sanctified only because you believe is right, why, someone with different beliefs must also have a cramped and rigid ideology and believe in caricatures of notions like "Marx" only "associated" with communism. Etc. Etc. Or they "must not understand actually what the real definition of socialism is". And so on. It really is a hopeless situation so I can't spend more time on it.

It's not an ideology I hold. It's a simple observation. Facts. Money buys power and influence in an endless spiral until something puts a stop to it. Like a revolution. History demonstrates this. Capitalism has a grave flaw.

[Luna Bliss]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hope we get back on topic..

Hope that you can think about it more and recognize this is all on topic -- how we would create a civil society in a virtual world.

[Coffee Pancake]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hope we get back on topic..

Nah doomed .. the capture roleplay card has been played.

Chase me Daddy.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

13 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hope we get back on topic..

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic even IS.

[Luna Bliss]

Just now, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic even IS.

I think the topic is, "We need to get out of the US, and any Metaverse company located here should move elsewhere".

[cunomar]

Move it to the EU where they will not tolerate intolerance and are happy to ban absolutely anything unless it makes a profit 🤣

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic even IS.

Something to do with entering someone else's virtual space being free speech I think.

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic even IS.

Umm...it's hard to build a [thing] because [reason].  Mostly about web stuff, social networks, virtual worlds, hard to build because of liability / laws / moderation.

The [thing] seems to change, as does the [reason].

[Ayashe Ninetails]

16 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I think the topic is, "We need to get out of the US, and any Metaverse company located here should move elsewhere".

I can't wait until the word "metaverse" disappears forever!!!111oneone

But no really - if the topic is about how to promote civility in a virtual world - well...I guess you could look to spaces that have been doing that for decades? Large guilds in multiplayer online games, for example. Sure, there's drama and goofiness, but there are some massive guilds that have traveled between games and managed to stay intact for years while simultaneously welcoming new people in. Moderation is usually pretty good, people within the community are invested in the guild's success and overall reputation, most members get along, disagreements are handled and dealt with, and extreme troublemakers don't tend to last very long.

That all falls apart when talking about something huge and difficult to moderate, like social media, but if the concern is building a "world" and keeping things civil-ish - well, dozens of community worlds have been built already (FFXIV, for one recent example).

Am I on topic yet? 😂

Edited June 3, 2022 by Ayashe Ninetails
Grammaring

[Silent Mistwalker]

41 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic even IS.

I'm still trying to figure out the one about the bar and the movie. If the bar isn't charging people to be able to watch the movie there is no copyright violation. Cover charge at the door? That still isn't charging to watch the movie.

This whole discussion is pointless when it comes down to the brass tacks.