Stoic Ethics Post 4

Summary of Net Neutrality Stakeholders and their Beliefs

There are multiple parties involved in Net Neutrality: internet service providers, the government, the public, big tech companies, and small tech startups. Internet service providers, like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are pushing for the repeal of Net Neutrality because they would directly benefit from people paying for internet. Ajit Pai and the Federal Communications Commission are the ones planning to repeal it, though there are some states like California, New York, and Washington that are creating bills to re-create Net Neutrality in their states. The FCC’s main argument is that they are protecting the internet. They are basing their plan on consumer protection, transparency, and removing unnecessary regulations to promote broadband investment. According to the FCC, removing the outdated regulations of Net Neutrality would create a “strong incentive for companies to pour resources into building better online infrastructure across the country and bringing faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to more Americans”.

The general public seems to be largely against the repeal of Net Neutrality as they believe access to information should be equitable, a priced internet harms free speech, and a free internet encourages innovation. With a free internet, more people are able to access information and use that information to create value. It is similar to the music industry in that patents restrict access to creators and leads to less innovation. The repeal could lead to the possibility of discriminatory pricing, as is feasible with any sort of unregulated pricing. However, there are some members of the public that support the repeal of Net Neutrality, in favor of more privacy and competition. In a free market for internet service providers, giants like Verizon and Comcast won’t be the only ones controlling the market anymore. There would be many more new companies in the mix. Without Net Neutrality, the government does not have as much access to our online activities, instead letting the private companies handle it. This also begs the question of how much privacy should the average citizen have online. A lot of the support for the repeal of Net Neutrality from the general public seems to come from a distrust of the government, preferring to opt into a free market where the government is not involved.

In addition, tech companies are directly impacted. Small tech startups are generally against the repeal, as they would have trouble attracting a customer base with limited internet access. The big tech companies also have been opposed for the most part, like Netflix, who opposes the repeal as it would heap extra charges onto them. Google released a statement that they are “committed to the Net Neutrality policies that enjoy overwhelming support”. Twitter opposes the repeal as well, stating that the repeal “is a body blow to innovation and expression”. Other big companies like Mozilla and Credo Mobile have spoken out against the repeal as well.

Analysis of Deplatforming in the Context of Stoicism

In the context of the Fight for the Net, a conversation on deplatforming must take place. First of all, what is it? No platform, or deplatforming, is a form of censorship whereby a person or organization is denied a platform to speak, especially in the context of the Internet. In a world where the internet is a harbinger of all kinds of ideas, ideologies, and motivations, it might not seem too relevant at first glance. However, if an entity is deplatformed from a common community or area of conversation, such as Twitter, Facebook, or even their own domain, such individuals could be prevented from disseminating their ideas to other individuals or organizations. Deplatforming has become a point of debate because it regularly occurs to entities who espouse hate speech, incitements of violence, and other similar messages that pose a danger to society in some way. Some of the more notable entities that have been deplatformed from major social media platforms and other areas of the Internet include Andrew Anglin and the Daily Stormer, as well as InfoWars host Alex Jones.

Deplatforming is opposed by some who see it as a dangerous infringement of free speech. One primary objection is that social media companies and other large companies in the pipeline that host information accessible to the masses have incredible power to magnify the voices of those they agree with, or to silence the voices of those whose ideas they oppose. Though these companies are regulated and required to uphold the tenets of freedom of speech, this notion that a slippery slope could occur is raised by those who oppose deplatforming.

For years, registrars, site hosts, social media companies and more resisted the deplatforming of certain individuals because of the need to remain neutral and to not be overpowered or influenced by political motives. 2018 definitely saw a turning point in which some of these groups were indeed deplatformed. (It should be noted that individuals like Andrew Anglin and Alex Jones did incite violence against particular groups of people, and that inciting violence is not protected under freedom of speech laws in the United States or elsewhere.) However, the reasons for each social media company’s decision to ban certain users varied greatly, with little consistency in policy implementation between the various platforms. For something like this to be an adequate punishment for espousing hate speech or breaking the law in some way, a more centralized approach to deplatforming must be reached in consensus with all those who have the power to do so to its various users that ensures the right to freedom of speech on the Internet. On the other hand, there are plenty who are proponents of deplatforming because of the protection it grants vulnerable groups or individuals. In the case of Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who not only denies the happening of the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012 but also harasses the victims’ families, his deplatforming has generally been welcomed due to the protection it granted those he attacked. His lawyer might consider him to be a “performance artist,” but that does not excuse the real-world actions and reactions that his words have caused. In the case of Andrew Anglin, a literal neo-nazi, Holocaust denier, alt-right antisemite, his deplatforming by most of the world’s domain registrars is almost unanimously considered a positive thing. I hope I don’t have to explain why limiting the spread of ideologies like Nazism and antisemitism is good, but just in case, I will say that it is problematic (illegal) to incite crimes against humanity, and incredibly dangerous to portray these views and ideologies in a sympathetic way. Genocide, no matter the group, no matter the time, is unacceptable.

Proponents of deplatforming as a tool to keep the Internet safe disagree with the notion that there is a slippery slope through which more and more people will have their ability to communicate with the world revoked. For one thing, while freedom of speech is protected by law in the United States, one cannot impersonate another person and pretend that their speech is indeed genuine. (This is why so many Russian accounts impersonating Americans or American interest groups got deplatformed by Facebook in the time after the 2016 presidential election.) For another thing, there is a pretty distinct line between political viewpoints and hate-speech viewpoints. It’s ludicrous to misconstrue neo-nazism as conservatism, just as it’s ridiculous to conflate extremists on the left with those who communicate ideas about true conceptual liberalism. Deplatforming, in the eyes of its proponents, protects various groups of people from being attacked or harrassed by those who might encounter hate-speech or incitements to violence online, and it also helps to ensure that users of the Internet can receive access to real information, and won’t be swayed by impersonations, scams, or fake news.

In the context of Stoicism, deplatforming when used as a legitimate tool would generally be accepted. Stoics place reason at the top of all things humans should strive for. Virtue, and virtuous practices, lead Stoics to attain a life of reason, and vice causes a corruption of reason. The primary virtues to uphold as a Stoic include courage, justice, wisdom, and moderation. When considered in this context, removing the platform of individuals and organizations who openly espouse vices, lies, and disordered ideologies could have a positive impact on the attainment of rational and virtuous lives of the rest of the world community. The virtue of justice in Stoicism makes deplatforming in some fashion an appropriate response to entities whose interactions on the internet have caused harm, injury or defamation in some way to others. Furthermore, the virtue of wisdom invokes the notion that Stoic leaders, and those responsible for making decisions as it relates to the banning of individuals from certain platforms, can make appropriate decisions when considering whether a person in question is communicating inside or outside the boundaries of what the law considers to be protected speech. As Stoics strive to not act in passion, but only while grounded in reason, there is no concrete worry that a true Stoic leader or decision maker would deplatform another individual for personal or political gain.

Proposition on Online Echo Chambers and Deplatforming

Personal echo chambers are having greater and greater prevalence in our age of social media and online information. Echo chambers of online content and opinions occurs from personalization algorithms online that increasingly give you content that you’ve interacted with and post yourself. These then reinforce our beliefs and preferences and increasingly prevent users who aren’t aware of their echo chamber from interacting with and seeing content of different viewpoints.

Many factors play into the power of echo chambers. It was found that generally people with a high reliance on content popularity were more susceptible to echo chambers and not necessarily information or content that they preferred individually. Furthermore, more common demographics that were susceptible to the echo chambers were groups such as highly social individuals, younger users, and those who did not consider themselves “opinion-leaders” (people who did not have separate groups of followers). Additionally, these demographics only applied to men as no statistically significant patterns for females were found in the sample. To mitigate the effects of content popularity, it was found that reducing the visibility of popularity counts would directly improve echo chamber effects. Additionally, the study failed to find a statistically significant correlation between the type of content viewed (popular or topic-based) and the users’ enjoyment of the content. This says that removing popularity metrics would not affect user satisfaction when mitigating echo chambers.

Recently, online technology companies have been working on the user and group spaces on their platforms. Particularly, this has involved the forced removal - or “deplatforming” - of people and groups from online platforms that spread conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, or promote hate and violence. One of the first major examples was the removal of the Daily Stormer from Cloudflare in 2017, a CDN and DNS provider. Cloudflare essentially protected the Daily Stormer from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and other hacks, enabling the Daily Stormer to continue online operation. The Daily Stormer itself is an American Neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial commentary website that advocates for genocide of the Jews. When the Daily Stormer published commentary that Cloudflare secretly supported their views, Cloudflare decided to remove the Daily Stormer from their service. This set off major discussion on online censorship by private companies and they leverage they had against government and private pressures as Cloudflare potentially went against its own Transparency Report. Another more recent deplatforming event was the removal of Alex Jones and his media company InfoWars.com from various social media platforms, most prominently Twitter. Much online outcry surrounded Jones and InfoWars, but the tipping point to removing Jones and InfoWars was the class action lawsuit filed against them by parents of the victims in the Sandy Hook Massacre. Jones was accused of spreading a conspiracy that the Massacre was faked for various reasons. The removal of Jones from social media drew uproar from far-right groups complaining about the concentrated attacks on conservative viewpoints, but his removal from the most prominent websites has reduced his influence in the most popular spheres of conversation.

Similar to the increasing prevalence of online echo chambers, deplatforming of various groups has become an increasingly used tactic by private technology companies to protect their online platforms and their users not affiliated with these people or groups. This new normal for technology companies does have an impact on online echo chambers, but not necessarily in a bad way. Often, the sites and groups that are deplatformed contribute directly to the online echo chamber community. The conspiracy theorists, white/male supremacists, and alternative media sources above perpetuate the online echo chamber by touting their brand of ideology as the only truth in a sea of lies while attacking and attempting to discredit all others. By removing the most prominent voices who perpetuate the most polarizing viewpoints, those most susceptible to falling into these echo chambers can be exposed to more ideas - including ones that challenge their own ideas and points-of-view. However, there is a fine line to be walked and deplatforming should be reserved only for those with the most violent and hateful perpetrators. As Matthew Prince from Cloudflare has stated, due process is a right for all citizens, including online, under public law but when the actions of particular people and groups threaten to radicalize and endanger the general public there are grounds for removal.