I disagree he does sketchy things. I think he's one of the most benevolent mega-philanthropists out there who has dedicated his life to expanding democratic ideals and liberal values throughout the globe.
> A billion people consuming more is surely bad for climate change though, no?
Let me ask you a question: How do you incorporate the concept of efficiency when you talk about wealth? Is wealth and not being impoverished defined by how much you can consume?
I'd argue that the history of technology shows us that we tend to value things that provide more value using fewer resources over a the long term. Most wealth is derived from extracting more value from the same resources and not simple resource consumption.
Let's take light for example. There was an article written by Tim Harford discussed the economic history of producing light and how price per lumen has dropped by a factor of 500,000. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38650976
Obviously, not all consumables can enjoy those tremendous gains in efficiencies, but there are technologies today whose price/performance is improving at a rate far faster than inflation. That's what we should invest in and accelerate.
In my lifetime, I've watched the cell phone and laptop replace the need to buy dozens of other things, not just in the home, but in the office too. Cheap/viable/comfortable augmented reality will only push this trend further.
A billion people consuming more natural resources, non-renewable resources and carbon emitting resources at the levels we consume them would be bad for our environment.
A billion people having access to cheap/free sources of energy, a quality education, an inexpensive digital infrastructure and devices, and knowing how to use their land efficiently is magnitudes better than a billion people simply living in poverty. Poverty isn't cheap, nor is it good for the environment, especially if it leads to wars destroying wealth and raping natural resources.
My hope is the markets in developing countries will be a huge opportunity for producers of efficient technology, providing those technologies a space where they can incubate until their quality begins to match their less-than-efficient competition. In some circumstances, this is true today.
A lot of the banned subs were downright abusive if not criminal. Shaming, harassing, threatening. Reddit is not obligated to provide them a platform and that's not a free speech issue.
But I have no real solutions. Maybe even if we censor things, we work as hard as possible to keep the censorship records transparent and to make the censored stuff accessible and have some complex accountability system?? I dunno. maybe it's all hopeless.
No, the first amendment of the constitution of the United States (which describes the US government's responsibilities in regards to freedom of speech) has nothing to do with Reddit. Freedom of speech as a concept can be applied to anything: reddit, the government, hacker news, you or I.
American corporatism and singular definition of 'freedom of speech' as being 'the amendment' really polluted the well of any discussion of the topic on English-speaking platforms.
We, in Europe, have limited freedom of speech. You can't do things like denying the holocaust. But that doesn't mean we don't recognize the concept of freedom of speech, and that we don't have discussion platforms that feature freedom of speech -within the limits of our laws-. Censorship is still censorship, even when it's done by a corporation.
Listening to americans there can be no debate as to whether censorship even exists if it's done by a corporation because corporation are free to do anything and we shouldn't even debate what they do and whether we should boycott a place and move onto something else because corporations can do no wrong and exerting individual judgement, opinion, and sharing them, encouraging the growth of freer online platforms and the likes is heavily discouraged. No, everything has to do with the law and if the law doesn't call it bad then it's not bad and it shouldn't be judged as bad. That worship of the law and constitution as the only sacred values in human societies is disgusting.
I get a chill down my spine any time someone uses the phrase "hate speech". Who gets to decide what qualifies? The first amendment must be protected at all costs.
Whoever's exploiting the network effects decides what qualifies, and the First Amendment doesn't apply to them.
It's heartening that OStatus (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) are getting some uptake, but existing federated networks are even more poorly equipped to compete with Facebook than with Twitter and Tumblr. The nice thing about Facebook is its privacy settings -- I can, say, post about going to Pride and make sure no one in my family sees it.
The problem is, Facebook could set up its rules so that campaign messaging for candidates they dislike just happens to violate them, and campaign messaging for candidates they like just happens not to. There's a lot of potential for abuse of power here.
It seems like a lot of people aren't worried about that, because they figure the targets of the current uses of this power really need to be suppressed. But there's no reason this power can't be directed elsewhere. I bet there are people who thought it was OK to fire us for being gay who are now pretty mad that people can be fired for donating to Prop 8.
There's no good stopping point. Britain recently convicted a comedian for putting up a youtube video where he trained a dog to raise his paw (like a Nazi salute) when he said "gas the Jews". Poor taste? Yes. Crime? Shouldn't be one.
