Free Listening Manifesto

What is free speech? Looking at the history of this term, I think free speech is really about printing presses. It means that the government is not allowed to throw you in jail (or burn you at the stake) because they do not like what you are saying.

But free speech does not mean that anyone is obliged to read your pamphlets! You still have to publish things that other people want to read, if you want people to read it. If people get upset about what you have to say, and express that loudly, that is not censorship - that is actually more free speech.

If other people getting upset affects you, congratulations! you have empathy!

If an individual chooses to ignore you, or advise others to ignore you, that is also their freedom. This becomes censorship when someone in a position of power uses a technical means to make decision for others - for example, by throwing your into prison or kicking you off a centralized service.

Although, that act may well represent the will of the other users of that service - This may be fairly evident when someone is kicked off, say, a forum with a small community.
This is harder to establish on large centralized platforms such as twitter - but anyway, judging from the amount of harassment on those platforms, they are not effective at censorship anyway. The inept censorship they do manage only seems to amplify the voices of those they feel obliged take a stand against... (because a high profile banning becomes a viral news piece)

I think we need a new concept: Free Listening.

Free Listening is the missing right of the internet age. There is so much information that choosing what not to read becomes a major challenge. Getting access to the material you want to read is already achived, but we lack power to filter what we don't want. This right is based on individual freedom and thus does not conflict with free speech. I think this freedom will be empowered by sharing information for the filter - things the the ability to subscribe to other's moderations.

This is power given not power taken, free listening via free speech.

Free Listening is a consequence of the same freedoms that open source builds on, but is more oriented towards data. You should have the freedom to control the data that comes onto your computer (free listening) and the freedom to make statements about what data you want (free listening via free speech).

Unfortunately most software today is not really implemented in a way that supports these freedoms in a nuanced way... and I think that is because most software is created by people who profit from that lack of freedom. I think decentralized software will eventually win because it will deliver these freedoms that people don't currently even realize they want.

Brilliant new concept, I love it.

How do you prevent the "filter bubble" from self-reinforcing the same perspectives?

This is relevant but it's not really. Filter bubbles have always existed, and as you mentioned, clubs etc have always had this.

Modern filter bubble, though, usually refers to an effect which is machine-produced. Algorithms on facebook and youtube actively reinforce beliefs, simply because showing content which a person agrees makes them feel good, and these companies want you to stay feeling good on their platform.

None of that applies to the scuttleverse, so we go back to the status of "PHP forums" and other ancient forms of tribalism. One could argue that filter bubbles have always been bad. That may be true, but SSB is not adding to that problem.

So I'd say the real problem is algorithm-induced for-profit filter bubbles.

How do you prevent the "filter bubble" from self-reinforcing the same perspectives?

I am pro-bubble, or at least, I embrace the bubble. I don't believe you can solve bubble problems by forcing people together. Me making decisions about how to do that would mean I have technical power over what other people read, which I oppose.

If you want a filter bubble, that is your (free) choice. Just because you have that ability doesn't mean you have to use it. If you can't force someone to listen to you, it just means you need to talk to them in such a way that they want to listen.

If I am free to filter you, and I'm still talking to you that means I'm really choosing that, which means our interaction has more meaning than if that wasn't a volentary choice.

If I filter too much, then my bubble gets boring! Also, since other people are involved, you are still fairly likely to meet opposing views via friends of friends.

I love the way "free listening" turns the traditional model on its head. Rather than making this about muting, for example, where the (misleading) implication is that you are silencing someone and challenging their right to free speech, you make it explicitly about where you want to place your attention right now. I am not doing anything to you or taking anything from you - I am simply choosing not to listen.

As an extension to this, perhaps we could make it easy to move our attention, to expand and contract depending on how able we feel in a moment to cope with more or fewer voices and to make a choice moment by moment as to which of our friends or groups we are making time for right now.

or as that Aunt who is a die-hard Republican. Instead of filtering them out you discuss them in a sort of "safe space"

I think this is a great example of why it would be nice to have multiple bubbles, which may or may not overlap.

You don't invite your friend who is an ardent socialist to a birthday celebration for your Republican aunt and you don't invite your aunt for a vegan potluck with your friend at a local squat because in both cases while you love each for what you have in common with them you fear that they will dislike each other for the ways in which they differ from you and/or each other (although in practice, people can surprise us).

If I am paying attention to my aunt then not only should I not be distracted by comments from my friend but the conversation itself ideally should not be public by default so my friend does not politely see me refusing to be drawn by a provocative comment by a republican family member (my aunt has been ill: I don't want to row with her so let something slide). Yes this enables hypocrisy but it also enables diplomacy and by preserving some barriers gives us spaces in which to develop common understanding and to challenge ideas at the right moment that might ultimately lead to those barriers coming down.

Wouldn't it be nice not to filter out people so much as give different groups of people our attention at different times and, for convenience, have those conversations in private or semi-private spaces but without having to explicitly create separate private groups and just having it flow automagically out of an attention filter?

SSB feels like a protocol made to enable meaningful conversations with fewer people rather than for making statements to broadcast to the world. Obviously what I've just suggested goes beyond the scope of Dominic's excellent concept but if we are considering building something completely new, why not aim for the stars?

So I'd say the real problem is algorithm-induced for-profit filter bubbles.

Yes.

"Free listening" makes me thing about the right TO listen to someone.

I Agree.

@cinnamon hmm, yes in isolation i'd agree "freedom of attention" is more literally the meaning I'm going for... but "listening" is the opposite of "speaking" and so "free listening" sets it self up as a complement or opposite of "free speech". So, I feel that is more poetic, but lets just see which one sticks better...

@greg k nicholson when the service is small and there are many alternatives then "editorial control" is fine - but when there are only a handfull of large distributors then you don't get to make a nuanced decision, and then it's more like censorship.

Let's not let Facebook, Twitter and Google get away with the profitable idea that they are “neutral platforms”, as if they were the modern equivalent to email.

Too late.

#free-listening