Re: [freenet-chat] Re: flaming ;-)

Matthew Toseland wrote:

>On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 10:49:29AM -0700, Tom Kaitchuck wrote:
>  
>
>>We can easily allow blocking of CHK keys on a per node basis. Yes, it 
>>will be ineffective and distributing blacklists won't do too much good 
>>as it is easy to alter a file by a few bits. But that is sort of the 
>>point: We want people to not feel they are supporting material they 
>>don't approve of. However we don't want to allow the network to reveal 
>>anyone's identity.
>>    
>>
>
>What I have suggested is a means to not expose someone's real identity
>(except to his immediate links), but rather to reprimand him and expel
>him from the network (or sever links with a larger sub-network).
>
>  
>
>>The issue we are addressing here is public 
>>perception. It is much less offensive to know that theoretical somewhere 
>>there is material you disapprove of and you can only take limited steps 
>>to stop it, than it is if the software constantly picks the most 
>>offensive content possible and puts it in  your browser window and says 
>>"Does this disturb you?".
>>    
>>
>
>It is quite disturbing for the average human to load up Freenet, have a
>look at TFE, and figure "hmmm, so some of that's in my datastore? Fuck
>you all...". But as far as constantly picking offensive content, that is
>not true.. if the mechanism works, complaints should be extremely rare,
>because of an effective deterrent, and we don't need to be quite _that_
>blunt with them. We'd certainly have a list of current complaints, and
>people would often follow others, and there would likely be means to
>discuss them, but anyone who wanted to could verify that the process was
>not being abused.
>  
>
If people look at TFE and says, "Hey that looks bad" and click a few 
links, how many more people have to look at (or get a link to) what the 
first person was offended by? Your assumption in saying that it will be 
infrequent is that there will be a standard for acceptable content, over 
which general agreement can be reached by a few people viewing the 
offending content without the benefit of real context. This is not the 
case, and I don't expect that freenet's users will simply accept that 
their site is considered bad. They will try to keep it available and 
because there will be some people that agree that it is good, they will 
likely succeed. I can't see how this could result in FEWER people seeing 
things they don't like. If we made sure the pages freenet links to by 
default are sufficiently well categorized that users will not click 
links to pages that connect to material that they find offensive, then 
the only way would see offensive material is if some web page was 
deliberately misleading people into clicking an offensive link. (Why 
would other sites link to such a page?)

So if we are causing people see more offencive content, I don't think 
this will improve the user's experence even if they know they are 
helping to censor it.