Browser Politics

GoustiFruit

Oh, ~~Firefox~~ Mozilla is asking for censorship after Trump was banned from social networks, so I finally completely uninstalled Firefox, destroyed my "Sync" account, and am now 100% with Vivaldi.

Take the good decision, Vivaldi.

Gregor

@GoustiFruit said in Happy New Year – Vivaldi Browser snapshot 2160.3:

Oh, Firefox is asking for censorship after Trump was banned from social networks, so I finally completely uninstalled Firefox, destroyed my "Sync" account, and am now 100% with Vivaldi.

Take the good decision, Vivaldi.

This is a mega scandal, like everything big tech is doing now with mass censorship. I hope vivaldi is not on the side of totalitarian corporations and the communist establishment and will resist political pressure, blackmail and intimidation. They want blood, it's coordinated attack by tech giants to kill competition. Vivaldi can now gain a lot of new users. Please stay strong and be different in these difficult times Vivaldi.

Ayespy

I moved these posts to their own topic, as they did not relate in any way to the thread they were under.

Vivaldi does not have any politics or any political position, and so discussion of whether it will or will not make any sort of political move is relatively pointless.

Catweazle

Everything is political in life, badly only if opinions other than one's own are censored, violent or totalitarian acts are proclaimed.
Vivaldi is for everyone, regardless of their political or religious orientation, it is a product that is for what it is, to make life on the web more pleasant and comfortable for everyone.
Although the Vivaldi model, being a cooperative, owned by its employees and developed democratically with the user, certainly does not coincide with the philosophy of other traditional companies.

LonM

I haven't seen any indication that mozilla is asking for censorship. I did find a corporate blog post where they asked for the following:

Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.

Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.

Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.

Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.

All of which sounds perfectly sensible to me, and doesn't mention censorship at all.

echodeltauniform

Hi @LonM, somehow I agree with you, but what is making me leave Firefox and checking what is Vivaldi position about that topic. Is the way is written, out of these four bullet points.
I would assume there was a lot of thoughts and review before posting the message.

I'm listen a lot of the term Virtue Signaling lately and after checking what it means (https://simplicable.com/new/virtue-signaling).

It's seems to me that they want to pass a political message behind the four bullet points, "Virtue Signaling". That's why I lost the confidence and start to leave, also, leading a leave from mozzila.

ugly

How is changing your browser because you perceive some slight against a political position not virtue signaling?

Virtue signaling is a loaded term used to push a false narrative. When you hear someone calling out something as virtual signaling, it's a good hint that the person can be ignored and nothing of value is lost.

Anyone can twist anything into being virtue signaling. In fact, calling something out for virtue signaling is in itself a form of virtue signaling.

luetage

@tmaxcontact Vivaldi hasn’t been in the position to take a stance so far. The blogging system is the only part of Vivaldi that could potentially be forced to take action in this regard. Community terms of use.

Catweazle

@tmaxcontact , a browser has nothing to do with politics, but, as you correctly say, a search engine does, apart from the user himself and what he hopes to find by searching in the web.
At this point, search engines that record user activity, such as Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, are precisely dangerous, because precisely because of their criterion of satisfying the user's preferences in front of objective and truthful information. A Trump fan will always find positive articles about this politician first in the search result (filter bubble).
This is why it is preferable to use private search engines (DDG, Startpage, SearX, Qwant, etc.), but here we have the question, if the search results are neutral, apart from that in certain cases, they are not as abundant as with 'official' search engines, or even fail completely, like some instances of SearX, which stop working overnight.
In the end the weight falls on the user himself and Aristotle's phrase
'It is ignorance not to know the difference between what needs verification and what does not.'

Priest72

Facebook is the worst offender in my humble opinion for blatant censorship and even a slight whiff of political angst in any form is quickly dealt with by account restrictions.

Catweazle

@Priest72 , Facebook and his products WhatsApp and Instagram, are simply spyware with right oriented "Flandersfamily friendly" censorship.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/facebook-censorship-little-mermaid-denmark-copenhagen-401984

LonM

@Priest72 I have seen many people complain that facebook removes too much, and many other people say facebook does not remove enough content from its site.

Whatever they're doing, they've managed to successfully find a middle ground that solves nothing and angers everyone.

I think the real solution is just for everyone to stop using facebook.

LonM

@tmaxcontact said in Browser Politics:

DDG is not innocent either. I don't necessarily know how it all works, but despite their searches appearing impartial, their image searches appear to yield exactly the same results as Google.

DDG licenses its search results from other sources. It gets raw data and doesn't personalise further. So at best it can only show you what other services give to it.

ugly

@tmaxcontact said in Browser Politics:

If I've read your statement correctly then you view as dangerous a Trump fan being fed pro-Trump results first. You have expressed bias. A Trump fan searching for pro-Trump content should find what he's looking for in exactly the same way as an anti-Trump person should find anti-Trump content. You don't get to decide which side is more dangerous than the other, and neither should a search engine, despite how it may feed confirmation bias. I don't like using polarising and partisan examples like him because I view the continued use of Trump in this context as the same as Hitler in Godwin's law, as well as those arguments that come perilously close to the slippery slope fallacy, so won't continue with that example.
If I want to search for information on..... flat earthers, then I expect to find information on flat earthers. If I use DDG, then I'll be presented with information on flat earthers. If I use Google, then the majority of the first page results will be "here's why flat earthers are stupid". Google are wrong to do that.

Even if a search engine is 'apolitical' results need to be provided in some type of order of relevance. There has to be an order to the results. A search engine can't just throw up a random ball of links in response to a search. Something is going to be on top. People who design web pages, design them specifically designed Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in order to get their web pages to the top.

So, an apolitical search engine is going to be manipulated by people who know how to game the algorithm the best. And that doesn't give the most relevant information. That gives particular people or groups a more prominant voice, which is the same result as a 'political' search engine.

And there is a distinction between 'political' and 'facts'. A big problem lately is that many people belive that their opinion has as much value as an actual fact.

To use the flat-earthers example, if I want to search for information about flat-eathers then I should receive results about flat-earthers. But if I want to search for information on whether the earth is flat, then that is a matter of fact. The earth is not flat. So I should not receive information about the earth being flat as the top results. Flat earthers should not get an equal voice. They can have an opinion all they like. But their opinion is factually wrong. If someone does not know whether the earth is flat or not wants information about the whether the earth is flat or not, then they should not be guided first to a flat-earther website that has misinformation because the flat-earther website has managed to design a page that has better SEO. If lies and misinformation get an equal voice, then the internet becomes useless.

This is what Mozilla has called for:

Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.

Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.

Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.

Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.

So what there is objectionable? What in there is political?

Ayespy

@ugly said in Browser Politics:

Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.

This is what flat-earthers and "stop the steal" adherents object to. Their battle cry is, "who is to decide what's factual, and what's disinformation?" To their minds, conspiracy theories are more likely than real world facts, and therefore deserve at least equal distribution. Because, due to the human tendency toward confirmation bias, they desire to read and hear what agrees with their pre-existing beliefs, as that makes them comfortable. It makes them feel right. And rightness as a north star is baked in to the human genome because species-specific genetic memory informs the organism that wrong guesses equal reduced or terminated survival and right guesses equal extended survival. Hence, rightness is the most important value to be sought. It literally can be felt as life or death.

That said, a computational framework based on misinformation seeks to perpetuate itself, rather than the organism that harbors it. It is perceived by the organism as ESSENTIAL that the computational framework be preserved, even at the cost of direct and accurate perception. The unfortunate results of such pursuit are twofold - but often substantially delayed. First, overall survival of the society of which the organism is a member is inhibited and ultimately, the organism itself is brought to, often lethal, grief. The problem for us is that the civilization suffers first and the individual suffers last.

Disinformation is a society-killer and for this reason is a favored tactic of rival governments. Even Sun Tzu knew that if you can convince your adversary of a false reality, you have, at least potentially, won. And when you lack the physical means to overcome a rival political entity, information warfare is your most potent tool.

Catweazle

The network contains all the information available in the world, both the right one and the wrong one. It is this that we always find, either with search engines that show results to the user's liking or those that show them in the order they appear.
Añadiendo que la red misma ordena en primer lugar los que más pagan y no por que sean ciertos o no, no queda otra posibilidad que el usuario mismo sea capaz de contrastar la información que obtiene.
It is the true reflection of our world, where each observation does not depend on what we believe, but on a scientific method to get closer to the truth in these contents of billions of people guided equal amount of interests and beliefs.
We only have to apply the principle of parsimony, as long as an automatism is not capable of doing so.
This is what it is.

jamesbeardmore

Personally I think it's not appropriate for a browser, business, or institution, to take a political stance or "virtue signal"*, unless that browser/business/institution is specifically a political one. It's simply none of their business. To put it another way, a good engineer is a good engineer, regardless of who they vote for. I'm not interested in finding-out if a white-supremacist was on the assembly-line the day my car was built, as long as it was a good car and they don't promote their views at work - although I would perhaps choose another car if I knew that the CEO donated funds to a white-supremacist group, or favoured the hiring of white-supremacist workers.

Mozilla is somewhat political because they market themselves very much as campaigning for privacy, the health of the web, openness and freedom. Whether they practise those values in actuality, is of course a continuing source of argument. I'm not actually aware of them calling for any sort of censorship at the moment, though. I think if they did, it'd be going against what they claim to be their core values. I think OP's original post is possibly a slightly extreme interpretation of Mozilla's actions.

For the record, I'm not a fan of Trump but I'm also not a fan of censorship. If a point of view is flawed, let it be out in the open and let it be eventually discredited. Where I think the various media outlets were right to step in (and finally ban Trump) was when, rightly or wrongly, people interpreted what he was posting as an incentive for violence. It's one thing claiming the earth is flat, it's another starting a riot and marching on anyone who dares question it.

Based on the above reasoning, I therefore see no reason (yet) to boycott Firefox, although Vivaldi's certainly a great choice. In fact, one of the reasons I think it's important not to boycott Firefox (yet) is semi-political: we need more than one mainstream rendering-engine on the web.

*I know someone on here said they don't like the term "virtue-signalling" (I think it might have been @ugly ), but I suspect they probably actually dislike the overuse or misuse of it, as a lot of people casually use the term to attempt to discredit any sort of social-justice effort. True virtue-signalling itself, really is a thing (and a toxic thing at that). For instance, during the "Black Lives Matter" mass-hysteria, many (most?) people were actually virtue-signalling. In short, their main concern was not for black lives themselves, it was for their own life. The idea of a racist became the "bogeyman" that everyone was scared of. They therefore felt compelled to say and do the right things in order to prove that they were not the bogeyman, or else the mob would come for them too. They were therefore not making noise to raise awareness (it had already been raised) or to actually help black people, they were making noise to shout out to the world "I am not a racist" just in case they were mistaken for one. The original purpose was lost. That's the very definition of virtue-signalling, and it leads to mob rule or bizarrely extreme actions in an attempt to appease an actual or perceived authority. It's also one contributing factor to various historical events where the bogeyman was a "witch", "Jew", or "communist". To see how easily this happens, just search for "third wave experiment", "stanford prison experiment", and "Milgram experiment" online, and have a think about how those phenomena interact. In the case of BLM, it's actually very easy to prove you're not a racist: just don't be one. What you are and what you stand for should be self-evident from everything you say and do, with no explanation necessary. No amount of gestures or hashtags can change that, and they're not necessary: that's virtue-signalling.

jamesbeardmore

...and yes, sorry guys I've just invoked Godwin's law in my last post! ...although I do try to use it to illustrate possible consequences of behaviour patterns rather than doing the cheap 'reductio ad hitlerum' fallacy.

ugly

@jamesbeardmore said in Browser Politics:

*I know someone on here said they don't like the term "virtue-signalling" (I think it might have been @ugly ), but I suspect they probably actually dislike the overuse or misuse of it, as a lot of people casually use the term to attempt to discredit any sort of social-justice effort. True virtue-signalling itself, really is a thing (and a toxic thing at that). For instance, during the "Black Lives Matter" mass-hysteria, many (most?) people were actually virtue-signalling. In short, their main concern was not for black lives themselves, it was for their own life. The idea of a racist became the "bogeyman" that everyone was scared of. They therefore felt compelled to say and do the right things in order to prove that they were not the bogeyman, or else the mob would come for them too. They were therefore not making noise to raise awareness (it had already been raised) or to actually help black people, they were making noise to shout out to the world "I am not a racist" just in case they were mistaken for one. The original purpose was lost. That's the very definition of virtue-signalling, and it leads to mob rule or bizarrely extreme actions in an attempt to appease an actual or perceived authority. It's also one contributing factor to various historical events where the bogeyman was a "witch", "Jew", or "communist". To see how easily this happens, just search for "third wave experiment", "stanford prison experiment", and "Milgram experiment" online, and have a think about how those phenomena interact. In the case of BLM, it's actually very easy to prove you're not a racist: just don't be one. What you are and what you stand for should be self-evident from everything you say and do, with no explanation necessary. No amount of gestures or hashtags can change that, and they're not necessary: that's virtue-signalling.

Impressive. You managed to nicely encapsule the exact type of false narratives I was talking about when I mentioned that calling out virtue signaling is a loaded term. Bonus points for using an alt-right wedge issue as an example.

I was going to write up a long post about how people who call out virtue signaling do it to push false narratives that 'most people don't really feel a certain way' (without evidence) and they're just 'afraid to be seen as opposed to something' to play into their audience's victim-complex and try to claim that there is a silent majority that is being shut out by some top-down control. But now I don't really need to.

aja

@Ayespy I am neither a flat earther nor a stop the steal merchant. But of late I've seen people claiming that X is a communist or Y is a far right terrorist, when talking about more or less moderate people with whom they just happen disagree. Both statements are disinformation. Who at Firefox will decide which gets "amplified" over the other? I tend to agree with the original poster and I'm glad that V will take no position.