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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      There are only 3 real challenges to free speech at the tech level a) the need for CDNs at scale b) distortions of net neutrality c) nation-state firewalls. All other claims are about social governance on private sites, where applying free speech doctrine is a stretch at best

      7 replies 7 retweets 50 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      Baseline free speech has expanded modestly since 1776 or whatever your reference point is. About 20% beyond core case of government-critical speech in formally public spaces and media I'd say.

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      You can (for example) have more kinds of conversations in a bar without getting punched or kicked out by other patrons or management. You can teach more things in colleges than 100 years ago. That's a genuine de facto increase in practical, informal free speech/expression.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      But online free "speech" is, as @reneed has pointed out, not an expansion of free speech at all, but an expansion of reach. It is like the secondary freedom of the press to print as many copies as they can afford, not primary freedom to say what they want https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-is-not-the-same-as-free-reach/ …

      1 reply 4 retweets 22 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      If a newspaper wants to print more copies it has buy more printing equipment and front more upfront costs. Reach for a paper publication is not "free", but a function of desired circulation, which in turn is a function of demand prediction etc. But that logic is obscured online.

      1 reply 3 retweets 10 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      Online, the most expensive kind of "reach" is to run your own server at home (or redundant set of mirroring servers) where your only reliance on contracts with others is with ISPs. You can run your own installs of open-source sw like Wordpress or write your own.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      EVERY single thing you do to lower the cost of this setup -- using a cloud vendor, a third-party hosted application layer, a privately owned social network for distribution... these are expansions of reach achieved by trading off control for cost.

      1 reply 3 retweets 10 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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      Your reach is not YOUR reach. It's a set of agreements binding you to the speech politics of a bunch of other private parties. What you say is what they endorse by renting you servers, pipes or software installs or whatever. You want minimal constraints, run your own server

      11:52 AM - 18 Nov 2018
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      • Pavel A. Samsonov Passing Strange At Present Dan listens to the last days of the first days Sina Kevin Schultz Peter Lewis Corn Woman 🌽 Nathaniel Hedman
      2 replies 2 retweets 10 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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          Beyond a certain scale, you'll need things like CDNs to serve your audience. This means you either have to get into the Internet infrastructure business yourself to keep your reach insured, or agree with their policies to stay in business.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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          Level up yet again and you basically need your own country to insure your reach. This is reasonable. You should not expect no-strings-attached access to the attention of potentially billions of people under the same terms as ranting from a soapbox in a 19th century town square.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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          Here's the thing free speech fundamentalists don't get about "free" reach technology capable of reaching billions: given what is possible, what it costs, and how many thousands of people have to be voluntarily involved to keep the system running, it is nothing like "public air"

          1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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          When you ask for conditions of use of this infrastructure to be the same as the conditions governing Q&A time at a physical townhall in a village in a room with 100 people, you're basically asking "give me a free dictatorship to rule over".

          2 replies 1 retweet 2 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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          You're a wannabe tinpot dictator who wants the privileges of being ruler of a country-scale entity without all that fussy trouble of actually running a country and maintaining an army who can make internet infrastructure people do what you want at gunpoint.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        7. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. ystriya #MeghanMurphy‏ @ystriya 18 Nov 2018
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          Replying to @vgr @ReneeD

          However, these may not be reliable agreements, in that the service provider can unilaterally change the TOS overnight without notice and delete all content posted in good faith under the previous TOS with no possibility for content retrieval by the owner. As wordpress did.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 18 Nov 2018
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          Replying to @ystriya @ReneeD

          And this is fine. If you enter into agreements that give counterparty right to change terms, then you cannot complain when they in fact do so. You can only delete your account. The most you can reasonably ask is to take a copy of your past data with you, which GDPR enables

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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