Monday Memory: How the Metaverse Illustrates the Limits of Libertarianism

With a certain tech billionaire currently railing against companies including Apple withdrawing their ads from Twitter, it's a good time to remember a fairly related story from 2007-2008 -- when Linden Lab began to pivot away from its libertarian approach to governing Second Life content:

In 2006, for example, Philip Rosedale refused to intercede against Ginko, the SL bank with a high rate of return, which many Residents accused of being a Ponzi scheme.  That same year, in response to Residents protests against age play (i.e. simulated avatar-based pedophilia), Robin Linden said it would be forbidden "[i]f this activity were in public areas"-- implying that it was still permissible in private.  Casinos and other gambling institutions, of course, were rampant over the land.

The reversals started last year, continuing into this one: 

Age play and other vaguely defined "broadly offensive" behavior was universally forbidden in May 2007. 

Gambling was prohibited in July 2007. 

Unregulated banks were banned this January. 

This February's prohibition against "ad farms" was preceded by the debut of a Linden Department of Public Works, also overseen by Jack Linden, "all about improving  the experience for residents living on or visiting the Linden mainland." 

Of course, some of these decisions were at least partly motivated by concern over real world laws, but the pattern is still hard to miss.  The Lindens are restructuring the mainland into a communitarian society it once was in 2003.  Expect more prohibitions to go into effect soon, also aimed at curbing other libertarian externalities-- bot farms, for example, and camping chairs.

More here. The problem with establishing a content moderation guideline that's simply pinned to "free speech" is that it inevitably leads to forms of expression that hurt a company's bottom line. Many customers feel their experience is being degraded so much by noxious content, it's no longer worth what they're paying for it. Outside advertisers too pull away, fearful they no longer have a brand safe environment.

That's a business decision that's important even aside from the moral considerations of allowing free expression that's hateful and bigoted, targeting vulnerable minorities. (What reactionaries contemptuously call "woke".) But in this case, the ethical principle and the commercial consideration is aligned:  "Free speech" that hurts users' overall experience more than enriches it is simply bad for business.

Comments

[Luther Weymann]

Take note that Twitter never banned the Taliban, who are terrorizing, raping, and murdering women and children. Nor did Twitter ban any country government that does not prosecute anyone that hangs, beheads, imprisons, or throws off the roof of tall buildings people accused right or wrong of being homosexual. Twitter has many of the most oppressive dictators in the world posting on Twitter, and their human rights abuses are legendary. Also, note that no business stopped doing business with Twitter even though Twitter allows these individuals and country governments to continue on Twitter. Nor has any celebrity left Twitter because Twitter supported these rampant and well-documented hate crimes. But do these people who leave Twitter, these businesses who are evaluating the “new hate” on Twitter, really care that the worst hate has been there all along? No. Does anyone hold an Apple or Android phone care that most of its parts were made with what experts have deemed slave labor? No, they only care about the slaves in America generations ago, not any current slaves. It is called “virtue signaling,” History books will someday document this period in history as civilization became so degraded that society lived massive lies to perpetuate “their truth.”

[geek]

Excellent!

[DT42]

No, Luther, it's called "the USA (mostly) only cares for the USA" and wake up when something happen in the USA or, at times, in Europe. Trump has been banned when eventually an insurrection happened... in the United States Capitol. And that wasn't a little thing either. A crowd erected gallows hangs near it and then people died during the attack. Also promoting disinformation and hate against minorities who are then subject to hate crimes isn't that better. But among other things, elections are the alternative to insurrections and revolutions. Not recognizing votes is a severe insult to a democracy and pose a danger, and the delusional liar kept doing that over and over, distorting reality with his manipulations, projections and inciting his "useful idiots" at the same time.

As for the Taliban, Twitter suspended a load of ISIS accounts instead:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35505996
Again, the USA cared less for the Taliban and Afghanistan lately, rather wanting (Obama, Trump, Biden) to pull out of from there. ISIS, instead, was committing terror attacks directly against the west from the mid 2010s.
Surely Twitter could have done better.

However, whataboutism is utter disgusting. Your arguments are exactly what Fox News used to make Trump suspension sound wrong. Suspending Trump was right and they should have done it earlier. More awful folks around the world should have been suspended as well, as they are a danger, even if not a direct danger to the USA.
Twitter at least suspended many accounts promoting Ferdinand Marcos Jr, which it said had violated rules on spam and manipulation.

Still, you are trying to shift the blame. The actual and main problem are the delusional narcissists and manipulative sociopaths, but even more their followers, promptly eating their distorted and delusional bullshit. And the narcissists know that: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters". They are the first ones to think their followers are idiots to exploit. They even tell you right in your face. But the followers keep to avidly lick those boots.

Now you have:
- a systematic liar who has a "Truth" social.
- disinformation parrots pretending "common sense" while telling nonsense, distorting facts, sowing discord, polarizing and radicalizing.
- their followers, who listen nobody but those, they blindly believe the nonsense and cling on that, but (fully projecting) they call "sheep" and "a cult" scientists, debunkers and everyone who shows their nonsense is nonsense.
They mirror everything that way, except it's a distorted mirror.
Projection is what sociopaths do, now you have this at a whole society level.
... Until the delusion reaches the point where it eventually gets out of hand, ending up assaulting the Capitol. And who knows what next.
I agree with your last sentence, but you are part of it.

[Luther Weymann]

@DT42. Again, your post exemplifies the current belief that "my truth" is The Truth. But sadly, it never is. Thank you for your reply.

[nope]

Donald Trump has been the biggest source of COVID-19 misinformation - from bizzarre and dangerous ideas such as chloroquine and injecting disinfectants and downplaying the pandemic, up to encouraging negativity against protective devices - he is responsible for lots of preventable deaths, he he killed more repubblicans, though, who kept trusting Trump to provide reliable information on COVID-19.

[nope]

By the way, the term "derangement" has been typically used by Trump supporters to discredit criticism of his actions, as a way of reframing the discussion by suggesting that his opponents are incapable of accurately perceiving the world, although who actually was (and still is) constantly deranging beyond any measure is Trump himself. The supporters of this lunatic consistently ignore facts, logic and reality, driven by blind faith against health officers and not only who try to save them from their own stupidity.
https://i.imgur.com/j9mwi.jpg